NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Bits of pop culture, media and politics from a Japanese American’s perspective by Gil Asakawa

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Entries from August 2008

Seoulmates

August 31st, 2006 · 2 Comments

The Washington Post ran this fascinating story today, about the ascendence of all things Korean, especially (South) Korean men, in the world pop culture, especially Asia, and double-especially in Japan. The irony is that Koreans for a century have been treated with racist disdain in Japan, and the country still hasn’t officially acknowledged atrocities committed [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

Phyllis Heitjan: A performer worth a listen

August 27th, 2006 · No Comments

One of the most satisfying aspects of the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, the annual Asian community event that I’ve been involved in since its debut in 2001, is the mix of traditional Asian and Pacific Islander culture on display along with the new, Asian American values and ideas. That mix is most evident not in [...]

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Tags: asian american · music · places · pop culture

The reluctant guitar hero

August 27th, 2006 · 1 Comment

The New York Times this morning tracked down the identity of “funtwo,” the musician who has dazzled millions — literally — with his amazing dexterity on electric guitar, captured on a five-minute, 20-second video that is one of the most-watched clips of all time on YouTube.com. The mysterious player turns out to be a 23-year-old [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · music · pop culture · technology

It wasn’t so long ago…

August 22nd, 2006 · 2 Comments

CNN this week ran this Associated Press story, about how musicians who’ve been holdouts from the iPod/iTunes bandwagon — the Beatles, Led Zep, Garth Brooks and others among them — will probably cave in and finally allow their music to be downloaded song-by-song.
Apple’s iPod dominates the digital music player market, and iTunes accounts for over [...]

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Tags: media · music · pop culture · technology

When minorities reveal their own racism

August 18th, 2006 · No Comments

How sad that Andrew Young, a man I (and many others) have admired and thought of as a civil rights leader, reveals that deep-down inside he harbors racist feelings toward other minority communities.
The former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. representative to the U.N. is African American.

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Tags: asian american

Boomerama

August 18th, 2006 · 2 Comments

I’m proud to be a Baby Boomer, because of all the historical implications my generation has had. Not the usual stuff about living through the Vietnam war and rock and roll and Kennedy and civil rights and the space race (all of which is true), but more the fact that simply having such a large [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · pop culture

AOL still has its place

August 17th, 2006 · No Comments

When I wrote last week about the death of AOL, I may have been premature. Maybe it’s just the start of a new chapter in AOL’s lifespan.
Take this Washington Post story today, for proof. AOL last week screwed up and released private information about its users and how they use the company’s search engine.
Significantly, the [...]

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Tags: media · technology

What do you call your grandparents?

August 11th, 2006 · No Comments

An interesting recent AP story raised the issue of what kinds of affectionate nicknames people use for grandparents. In Japanese, the words are “Obaasan” for grandmother and “Ojiisan” for grandfather, and many Japanese Americans still use the terms even if they don’t speak much if any Japanese.
But I have a confession to make. I didn’t [...]

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Tags: asian american

AOL is dead, long live AOL

August 7th, 2006 · 1 Comment

Truly, it’s the end of an era.
My first online job, way back in 1996, was as Content Editor of AOL’s Digital City Denver. It was a great time to be working on the Internet — there was a palpable sense of excitement. Everything was new, and everything was possible.
Never mind that AOL wasn’t exactly the [...]

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Tags: media · technology

A folksing for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

August 6th, 2006 · 2 Comments

Last night I attended the tail end of an all-day event in Manhattan, and was glad I did. The event was a cross-denominational commemoration of Universal Peace Day, to mark the Aug. 6 anniversay of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 with an atomic bomb, and Nagasaki three days later with a second atomic bomb. [...]

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Tags: asian american · music · places · pop culture

South Asians face the anti-immigration backlash

August 5th, 2006 · No Comments

The Indian community of Edison, a town in northern New Jersey, is split over racial boundaries. This article ran in the Newark Star-Ledger the other day, about a protest mounted by the growing Indian community in Edison over an alleged police abuse of an Indian man, and a counter-protest by non-Indians.

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Tags: asian american · places