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

Ads without Asian stereotypes

April 26th, 2008 · No Comments

Bill Imada, founder and CEO of IW Group, a PR/Marketing firm, is part of a group blog at Advertising Age called “The Big Tent” that’s worth following. In this recent post, Bill writes about (and includes embedded videos of) TV commercials that include Asians and Asian Americans without using demeaning stereotypes.
Here are the ads [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

Lunching at Japantown in San Francisco

April 20th, 2008 · No Comments

I just had a great meal at our favorite restaurant in San Francisco’s Japantown, Iroha. It’s a noodle house that serves up a great deal: A lunch combination special of ramen topped with a couple slices of pork, and gyoza dumplings on the side.
The restaurant is more crowded than usual, and filled with lots of [...]

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Tags: asian american · food · places

Listening to oldies when they were new

April 20th, 2008 · No Comments

“Time-shifting” is a new media term for the ability of technology to allow us to consume media — whether it’s video or music or text — at any time. The most obvious example is people recording TV shows on the DVRs to watch later, at their leisure.
You can hear a teleseminar via podcast any [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · music · pop culture

Colorado weather: snow joking

April 16th, 2008 · No Comments

Yesterday it was 82 degrees, close to a record high, in Denver. It was as if summer had arrived in one day, with students sunning themselves at the University of Colorado, and people everywhere doing what Coloradans do during the summer: biking, walking, throwing Frisbees.
Yesterday is like a dream. You wouldn’t know it happened. Today [...]

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Tags: places

Update on the University of Colorado’s “War Against Asians” controversy

April 16th, 2008 · No Comments

Here’s a video produced by Annie Guo, a Denver journalist and entrepreneur who is editor of Asian Avenue magazine, a pretty solid monthly publication, for a website she and other young APA activists have created called In-Solidarity.com. This is an Asian community response to the “satire” published by the University of Colorado’s Campus Press Web [...]

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Tags: asian american

Asian Americans can dance

April 13th, 2008 · No Comments

Whenever I see an Asian on TV, either in a program or on a commercial, who’s the brunt of some comedic joke, my first reaction is to clench my stomach in anticipation of some personal embarrassment, as if the Asian on screen could easily be me.
But here’s a TV commercial that makes fun of [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

The Donger’s legacy

April 13th, 2008 · No Comments

I missed this NPR report a couple of weeks ago, about the impact of the character Long Duk Dong from the 1980s hit movie, “16 Candles.” I had heard a promo for the report while driving but got home before it came on.
I finally went back to check it out and it’s worth hearing. [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

1968 redux

April 9th, 2008 · No Comments

As a card-carrying baby boomer (I guess officially, with my AARP membership!), I was 10 when most of 1968 happened. It was a pivotal year, no doubt — though in my consciousness, ‘69 left a deeper impact.
AARP magazine does a fine job of using the Web as a story-telling device to revisit the year. [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · pop culture · technology