A few weeks ago, some lucky 8Asians readers in Los Angeles were able to see Outrage, the new film from Japan’s legendary Takeshi Kitano (ZATOICHI: THE BLIND SWORDSMAN, BROTHER, VIOLENT COP). Now it’s time for our readers in the Bay Area to see the film! Opening in Los Angeles and New York on December 2, 2011, it stars Beat Takeshi, Kippei Shiina, Ryo Kase, and Tomokazu Miura.
In a ruthless battle for power, several yakuza clans vie for the favor of their head family in the Japanese underworld. The rival bosses seek to rise through the ranks by scheming and making allegiances sworn over saké.
Long-time yakuza Ôtomo (writer/director Kitano, using his screen name “Beat Takeshi”) has seen his kind go from elaborate body tattoos and severed fingertips to becoming important players on the stock market. Theirs is a never-ending struggle to end up on top, or at least survive, in a corrupt world where there are no heroes but constant betrayal and vengeance…
Running Time: 109 minutes
Language: Japanese (with English subtitles)
Rating: R for violence, language, and brief sexuality
Ok, ok, so you just want to know how you can win some free tickets? Read on!
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From Korea Times: The granddaughter of the Japanese Emperor, “Gako, 17, gave a performance last fall in her high school, copying the choreography of ‘Oh!,’ a hit song of the group’s second album released at the beginning of 2010. One of the local media reported her dancing in a newspaper with a picture, titled, ‘She is a real dancing queen,’ which was the first time when the controversy ignited among the netizens…This has caused controversy as some Japanese have recently shown extreme right-wing views toward Hallyu, or Korean wave, in the country.” Girls Generation, of course, is a Korean Group but has released albums in Korean and Japanese.
Shopping With GASP!
Hey everyone – you have just 1 hour left to submit your name and receive free tickets to to see ‘The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom’ (Limited Engagement), provided by 8Asians and the filmmakers! Tonight is your last chance to catch this film in the Los Angeles area at the Fallbrook 7. See Koji’s 8Questions interview of Lucy Walker, the director of the film and read this post for more information on the giveaway, and enter now!
Dole Japan is setting up to find their “Smile♪ Dole Dance Ambassador” who will make $11k per hour for singing and dancing with SMAP singer Shingo Katori in a commercial. Not really my cup of tea, even for $11k an hour, but I’m sure there are some of you out there that are willing to do it. To apply, visit the Official Dole Japan Facebook Page. [Editor's Note: And you'll probably have to be fluent in Japanese, too.]
NTT DoCoMo has released a smartphone that comes with a radiation jacket. The company will “show off three kinds of ‘jacket’ for use with a model of smartphone loaded with the appropriate software. As well as radiation, the company said it would also demonstrate a case that determines if the holder has bad breath or smells of alcohol as well as checking levels of skin-damaging ultraviolet light.” Sounds to me like a smart cover of some sort for your phone to have different sensors. This allows your phone to interact with its environment better depending on the different types of sensors being used.
When it comes to quakes, Japan is known to have some of the best sensors and detection technology in the world. But for energy, they seem to stray from geothermal which only makes up one percent of their energy production. Alas, it usually takes a tragedy like the recent 9.0 quake and Fukuishima nuclear plant disaster to drum up support for interest in geothermal. Even more ironic is the fact that Japan is number one in geothermal technology but they export all of the technology elsewhere in the world.
One young woman in Japan decided to play some sort of joke on her husband for his birthday and spent the better part of a day digging a 2.5m hole in the sand with a couple of the guy’s buddies. Then she covered it up with a sheet and sand on top, and invited her husband out to the area later that night. As expected, they both fell in, but instead of the amusing “ha ha” moment, the sand toppled over them and they both suffocated.
What bugs me about this story isn’t the fact that the two people died. What bugs me is people not understanding how a sand trap works and using it as a joke. A 2.5m hole would mean that the sand pitfall was basically a 8 foot long by 8 foot deep hole that caves in on itself. There is no way anyone would be escaping from that. Alas, I suppose that some people don’t really think about the worst possible scenarios from their actions and things like this befall them. It’s a sad story, but sometimes you just have to do a facepalm.
ZOMG. I’m totally getting some of these Neurowear “necomini” ears that can move based on your brain signals. No, not for my wife. For ME. Yes. I’ve always had this secret fantasy of being cosplaying as Naoto from FLCL and some hot white girl with pink hair is going to beat me with a bass guitar and a portal will appear out of my forehead where phallic objects will appear.
Shh. Don’t tell anyone.
h/t: Ernie
My friend Tracy Nguyen-Chung of Steez360 put together this amazing PSA featuring an incredible number of folks to help raise funds for the Japanese tsunami relief. The folks at Steez360 created this dope Heal JPN t-shirt and all proceeds will be given to Give2Asia’s Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Fund.
Featured in this PSA is yours truly and Joz representing 8Asians, along with a whole slew of artists, activists, poets, writers, and community leaders who gave their voices to this project. While there are too many to name here, you can see folks like Steve Nguyen, Lac Su, Bao Phi, Fatemeh Fakhraie of Muslimah Media Watch, N’jaila Rhee of Blasian Bytch, Mondega, and Notorious MSG.
To do your part in helping Japan, click here to purchase the Heal JPN t-shirt from Steez360!
So here are my thoughts on The Karate Kid: Just kidding! Enjoy this awesome stop motion video of Super Mario making his way around school.
So I was chit-chatting with my beautiful blond wife and talking about the children that mixed couples would have. If you think about it, any features such as blue eyes and blond hair would be pretty much eradicated by the dominant genes. But here’s the rub of it: maybe it wouldn’t? After all, even Time magazine had an article way back in 2001 about the “Eurasian Invasion”. If that trend holds true, there definitely could be some recessive characteristics that show up again.
If you think about how brunettes have married blonds in Caucasians, the only thing that might happen is that the recessive traits would pop back up a few generations down. This should also hold true also with the multi-racial couples–which brings me to another point.
Did the Japanese know something that we didn’t know? If you look at every single RPG, or anything designed by Squaresoft in the 1990s and Square Enix in the 2000s, the main character designs that seem to have Asian features but with genetic traits from Caucasians. Now whether or not anime and manga carry these looks from a popular design style, or they have some time travel device, I couldn’t tell ya.
Digging deeper, we find that this breaks into racial theory on gaming and the anime genres that have been viewed from a number of angles. Some say that the Japanese are secretly admiring certain Caucasian features:
When most foreigners look at manga for the first time today and see characters with huge saucer eyes, lanky legs, and what appears to be blonde hair, they often want to know why there are so many “Caucasian” people in the stories. When told that most of these characters are not “Caucasians” but “Japanese,” they are flabbergasted (Dreamland 60).
Others believe that it’s just a fantasy driven perception in which each race will see themselves overall in the animation. But why get all edumacated about it? What I do know is this: my grandchildren could perhaps look like Tifa Lockhart and and Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy. And that thought is just so dang cool.
Besides Groundhog’s day, my favorite holiday is New Years — I look forward to it every year. I always forget though that most people just think it’s a day to watch football, or a day to recover from a night of partying. For those who don’t know, New Years or oshogatsu in Japan is the most important and elaborate holiday of the year.
When Japanese Americans talk about New Years, they usually just mention the osechi (New Years’ food). Things like: soba (buck wheat noodles) on New Year’s Eve for a long life, the zoni (soup) on New Years’ morning with kurikinton (mashed sweet potato with sweet chestnuts) and kinpira gobo (simmered burdock root) and, of course, the shot of sake.
But when I think of New Years, I think about the Japanese superstition that everything you do on that day is a reflection of the way the rest of the year is going to turn out. To me, this is better than the resolution system because I get to actively shape what’s going to happen to me in the coming year.
I want a good/calm year so I will spend my New Years day relaxing and hanging out with my wife and my doggie. I will also do some writing, take a long walk and make sure to stay happy and positive all day.
Planning the day can be stressful but with the right prep it tends not to be a problem. For example, I can’t spend any money since I don’t want to be spending money all year. So I have to make sure to buy everything I need the day before. I can’t clean or work or do things that can be construed in any way as negative since the last thing I want to be doing next year is any/all of those things.
This tradition has always comforted me because it means that no matter how bad my previous year was, I can shape how the coming year will be.
Are you worried about what you’re going to do on New Years? Don’t. You just have to plan.
(Flickr photo credit: marcokenmoeller)
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Feb 16: Adam WarRock and Kirby Krackle: West Cost Tour Dates!!!
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