Maybe you’ve seen the video of a border collie doing squats alongside a Japanese guy. No?
Is this a fluke? No! Check them out– outdoors work out!
Even though you’ll see this video out there “from” other sources, these videos were originally uploaded by Japanese YouTube user sararingosaki and this dog is crazy awesome! Check out the videos of the doggie agility runs, doggie balance ball routine, and of course, doing doggie squats sans Japanese sidekick.
I don’t know about you, but I’m totally subscribing to this.
*Statistics could be a little off
h/t: Japanator
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What’s the deal is with this Magibon girl? Apparently she’s some Internet phenomenon and the Japanese adore her, and outside of her cute appearance, the Youtube videos are thirty to forty seconds of… uhm… well, let’s just say that I wish I had those seconds back.
Doing some research, it seems that there are a lot of fans, but even more people that just don’t get it like myself. She does have that anime look, and I can understand the attraction to Japanese culture being how much it’s slowly infiltrated into western culture, via print and television. But wow, this is a fascination that is almost unhealthy. She’s even gone all out and even picked up the way Japanese girls talk, with the whole cutesy thing going on.
While she’s gone and had her fifteen minutes of fame, I’m still not biting on the explanations of why she creates silent Youtube videos. She claims that it’s because she first started by wanting to see the video of herself doing the wave, but let’s be honest here — anyone that has ever used a webcam knows that you can view it locally without having to upload it to Youtube. Somehow, I feel that she uploaded them but didn’t think she’d get the following that she did.
Strangely enough, I don’t know why she knows why she uploaded those videos either. If anyone understands why she does this and why she has the fame that she does, please clue me in since I’m dying to know what the heck I’m actually missing out on. (Okay, maybe I’m not that interested; I might waste another thirty seconds groaning.)
Shopping With GASP!
Don’t get me wrong; Maggie Q is absolutely gorgeous and is a great actress, although I see her more often in American films than Asian ones in the more recent years, and has done more spokesperson and modeling lately. But trying to gain market share with Need For Speed: Undercover in Asia? Come on.
Here’s the thing: there are several franchises of racing games that dominate the racing markets in Asia — none of them owned by EA, as far as I can tell. If you’re going to break a market, the best way is to either take something that a hot racing series in Asia (Initial D) and play off that, or you become the publisher of an already hot racing title (Gran Turismo) and you kick it up a notch.
I think the biggest mistake made here by EA Asia head Jon Niermann is assuming that using American tactics of playing up a hot Asian star will actually sell the item in whatever Asian market they’re targeting. That’s not the case in China, since they’re numero uno in pirated goods and Maggie Q is more of a Chinese action star than Japanese so it’s not there either, although I’d assume that the big console gaming market would be in Japan. Why an American guy is heading an Asian operation isn’t making sense to me; it wouldn’t worry me if it weren’t for the fact that this guy just isn’t understanding the Asian gaming market.
Just my own thoughts, but every single racing game on the console side that has been super popular in Asia has always had their beginnings on a Japanese publisher: Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo come to mind since those are the ones that still hit it big in the Akihabara District.
Maggie Q might be enough to break into the video game market, but somehow I would put my money on other franchises before Need For Speed: Undercover. It’s not that it’s a bad franchise, but I think that it’d be better suited here in the United States and will actually perform better in sales here than in Asia regions.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Kewpie is the sun!
It was junior high when we first met. When mother brought you into the door from the local Uwajimaya and offered you a sandwich. That was the day that our lips first touched.
I recollect the first time I caressed your soft, plastic bottle. As I gently twisted your red cap and unleashed your flow of delectable mayonnaise onto my Iron Kids white bread. The texture. The buoyancy. I remember the enticing smell like it was only yesterday. Your delicious flavor was like sweet nectar to a bumblebee, and making those other bottles on the shelf seem so trivial.
Since then, there have been other mayonnaise in my life and my only excuse is that I have not searched you out like I should have. But I’ve reminisced. I’ve longed for another taste.
I just wanted you to know that there were words that I failed to tell you, when we first met and I’ve regretted ever since. So at our next tryst, I will affectionately whisper to you, “I <3 you, Kewpie. I <3 you."
Photo Credit: (jensteele)
We’ve all heard the joke about UCLA standing for the “University of Caucasians Lost in Asians” but what do you call this news?
LOS ANGELES — A Japanese gang boss and another alleged gangster who had liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center each donated $100,000 to the hospital soon after their surgeries, according to a published report.
The donations came from two of four Japanese gang figures who received liver transplants at a time when several hundred Los Angeles-area patients died while awaiting transplants, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The newspaper published a story Thursday about the liver transplants and posted a separate story on its Web site late Friday discussing the donations.
According to the Times, a donation of $100,000 came from Tadamasa Goto, 65, who leads a gang called the Goto-gumi.
A plaque on an entryway to a surgery office in the hospital reads, “In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr. Tadamasa Goto,” the Times reported
Now of course there are a few notable things to remark on about this article:
1. Oh, those Japanese mobsters with their lavish gifts. I mean, a “research fund”? That makes a gift of cubic watermelons seem downright silly by comparison.
2.Liver transplants. Both of them. Because you know, those Japanese mobsters sure do love their sake.
3. Gang tied Japanese leapt ahead of LA residents in getting a Liver transplant? Man. They have connections everywhere.
4. Everyone. And I mean EVERYONE, appreciates a lovely plaque.
(Modified on a Flickr photo, credit: the_jim)
In completely absurd news that, yet again, “shames our people” out of any perception of model minority-ness, this tidbit from Tokyo is fascinating.
TOKYO – A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.
Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man’s closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.
The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.
One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home Thursday after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed.
And oh yeah, I’m back at 8 Asians.
I can only assume she would p*wn at Ninja Warrior.
I must say, this band was totally off my radar until Death Note. After hearing them do the opening and closing songs for the second season, it basically deemed it worthy enough to at least find on Youtube.
I found that this band has been around since 1998, and they seem to have a pretty loyal following. Some of the music itself definitely spins off as something like Linkin Park but the versatility of this band is something not to be trifled with. Amazingly enough, not only can they sing in your typical jrock style, but they have a lot of punk influence and even heavy and death metal.
I love the fact that Nawo is a chick drummer that rocks it out and how her brother Ryo can do amazing vocals, play guitar like no one else, and he’s the only Japanese guy I’ve ever seen with some amazing dreads and can sing cross eyed and looking absolutely nuts.
Currently, I’m awaiting for the import to show so I headbang to some new music from this brilliant band, Maximum the Hormone, with the windows down. Rock on.
Leave it to the new kid on the block (yours truly) to bring down this venerable site with a blog entry about, well, golden poop. This little tidbit went around the gadget blogs about a couple years ago, but let’s face it — golden poop never gets old. See, the Japanese think these little tiny pieces of golden poop (shaped to look eerily like soft serve ice cream) bring good fortune, and are sold at shrines all over the country. And since the Japanese have a thing for cell phone charms (you know, those dangly things that some people hang on their cell phones), it only made sense that someone somewhere came up with the golden poop cell phone charm. Genius! It has since sold millions of units, and is quite possibly the most popular cell phone strap in Japan. They even have golden poop stamps! Oh, the magic and wonder of the golden poop.
I was a little perplexed at this golden poop worship by the Japanese, and decided to do a little more searching around. According to this Japan Times article:
The product you saw is called Kin no Unko (The Golden Poo), a name that plays on the fact that the Japanese word for poop (unko) starts with the same “oon” sound as a completely unrelated word that means “luck.” Japanese enjoy this kind of pun — traditional storytelling is full of them — which may help explain why more than 2.5 million of the lucky little loads have sold in the last seven years.
And apparently, the golden poop phenomenon only came around in 1999, which isn’t that long ago. But as the article goes on to explain, “there is a long history of poo-related worship in Japan”:
“There are more gods in the Shinto religion than it is possible to count, and they reside just about everywhere, inhabiting natural things like trees, rocks and waterfalls,” he said. “Bodily functions are very important — think what a problem it would be if a person couldn’t defecate or urinate properly — so it’s natural that people worshipped deities linked to these functions.”
Despite myself, I had to laugh. I thought back to my childhood, and remembered a few Chinese cartoons and comic strips that clearly showed drawings of poop, and I wondered if this so-called “poop worship” is an East Asian thing in general. Maybe Asians are more accepting of bodily functions than more Westernized cultures?
Regardless, I have to admit that these tiny little shiny poop charms are kinda cute. Hey, they even have one in a catcher’s mitt! That said, I probably won’t want to have these things hanging from my cell phone. How about you?
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