Kinda creepy, but probably cheaper than cat food in the long run:
2 weeks ago
Organized Crime and Fukushima
The most important thing is helping the weak. Duty and kindness are second. Then the third would be: don’t betray others.
– Matsuyama Shinichi, chairman of the Kyokuto-kai yakuza organisation, on what it means to be a yakuza member.
For the yakuza helping the relief effort, it’s partly about living up to the slogans they profess. It’s also about getting a stake in the reconstruction of Japan. Construction is big business.
– Tomohiko Suzuki, author of I’ve Met 1,200 Yakuza, investigative journalist and former editor of the yakuza fan magazine Jitsuwa Jidai Bull.
First emergency responders, The Yakuza.
Hat tip to Jake Adelstein
Dirty Cartoon Dilemma part two
In other words, I would argue that reading manga as a white man is rather like driving an expensive sports car as a black man. You are always already a suspect in the eyes of law enforcement authority—not because the car or the comics in themselves are necessarily a problem per se, but because your possession of said items seems to indicate, to our prejudiced little minds, far more serious criminality involving the harm of real people. Do not think for a moment that these cases are only about comics and censorship.
Is Canada profiling White Guys Who Read Manga?
Hat tip to Daryl Surat
Oldschool Find of the Day...
I check eBay out of sheer curiosity, and older collectibles like this vintage Nomura Analyzer from Day Old Antiques are pretty rare.
P.S. Anyone else waiting for a US-release of the live action Yamato DVD? ; )
Kiddie Kink for Korean Kars
One side of ad: Mary Blair-type picture book fun. Other side: sex-dipped schoolgirl fantasy. Now you know why the suits in Advertising & Promotion make the big bux.
And people wonder why I got out of the advertising biz...
A return to shadow puppets?
I'm not trying to be cute here, just wonderin' aloud.
We have fossil fuels ("clean" coal, petroleum, natural gas), unproven tidal and wind energy, unproven geothermal, and woefully inefficient photovoltaic solar. Until 500% efficient variations of the above-mentioned, green technologies are invented and implemented in a dirt-cheap manner (and there's no doubt that we need a cleaner way to generate electricity), I'm doubtful that Nuclear Power will be off the table altogether. Unless of course we somehow ween ourselves off electricity...
In a word: Yuck!
Reading about stuff like this makes me wonder why I open the web browser in the morning :/
The Anime Ambassador
kyu kyu kyu by cicacocadou3
I always wondered what happened to Taro Aso.
I also wonder; is this a little bit like Bill Clinton hawking American Football?
Ramen is "Racist"? Please...
From HuffPo via Japan Probe:
" As Japan’s most popular Chinese dish, shina soba symbolized the expanding Japanese empire, according to Katarzyna Joanna Cwiertka, author of Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity. By the early 20th century, this empire included Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, eastern Siberia, parts of China, and many South Pacific islands. Giddy totalitarianism spawned “a China boom” in Japan, Cwiertka asserts:
“Chinese-style decorations, costumes, and products were eagerly consumed by the Japanese public as they translated colonialism into a concrete experience. By physically interacting with China through the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses were brought closer to the idea of empire.”
In other words, to eat shina soba in those years was to symbolically gobble up China itself. As China represented the empire’s biggest prize, a bowl of shina soba represented nothing less than world domination.
After Japan lost its empire in World War II, the word shina came under fire. Deplored by many as a symbol of imperialist aggression and Japanese wartime atrocities in China and beyond, shina was now seen as a horrific ethnic slur, embodying imperialist xenophobia: in other words, racist. Shina soba was briefly renamed chuka soba; chuka is a less politically incorrect Japanese term for “Chinese-style.” But in 1958, Nissin Foods introduced the first-ever packaged instant version of the dish. As its broth was chicken-flavored, the product was called Chikin Ramen. "
Too lazy to do the links right now, but methinks someone's got their head jammed into those books a little too tightly...
" As Japan’s most popular Chinese dish, shina soba symbolized the expanding Japanese empire, according to Katarzyna Joanna Cwiertka, author of Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity. By the early 20th century, this empire included Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, eastern Siberia, parts of China, and many South Pacific islands. Giddy totalitarianism spawned “a China boom” in Japan, Cwiertka asserts:
“Chinese-style decorations, costumes, and products were eagerly consumed by the Japanese public as they translated colonialism into a concrete experience. By physically interacting with China through the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses were brought closer to the idea of empire.”
In other words, to eat shina soba in those years was to symbolically gobble up China itself. As China represented the empire’s biggest prize, a bowl of shina soba represented nothing less than world domination.
After Japan lost its empire in World War II, the word shina came under fire. Deplored by many as a symbol of imperialist aggression and Japanese wartime atrocities in China and beyond, shina was now seen as a horrific ethnic slur, embodying imperialist xenophobia: in other words, racist. Shina soba was briefly renamed chuka soba; chuka is a less politically incorrect Japanese term for “Chinese-style.” But in 1958, Nissin Foods introduced the first-ever packaged instant version of the dish. As its broth was chicken-flavored, the product was called Chikin Ramen. "
Too lazy to do the links right now, but methinks someone's got their head jammed into those books a little too tightly...
Karate Robo Zaborgar
To call the remake of Denjin Zaborgar "interesting" is putting it mildly, and "spoof" doesn't even come close. It certainly is faithful to the original in terms of characters. Noboru Iguchi took every mannerism and character attribute (even gestures) and amplified or exaggerated them. It's pretty obvious this guy has a background as a porn director even with his films....lots of boob weaponry. The action scenes with Zaborgar were pretty cool, as was the suit. The actions scenes with Daimon...well, they didn't change much from the original...pretty cheesy. The kept the music from the original.....great 70's toku soundtrack. Definitely worth a watch, even if just for the bizarreness.
