NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Gil Asakawa’s Japanese American perspective on pop culture, media and politics

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Entries Tagged as 'pop culture'

KTown Cowboys: Web series with LA’s young Korean Americans

August 10th, 2010 · 3 Comments

Yeah, I know I’m late to the KTown Cowboys party. Fellow Asian American bloggers have been raving about this web series since the first episode (above) and now they’ve posted their 8th and final episode (below), with a bonus installment to come, featuring comic Bobby Lee. But I had a fabulous meal of all-you-can-eat BBQ [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

3rd episode of Andrea Lwin’s “Slanted” is online

August 10th, 2010 · No Comments

I met the affable, energetic Andrea Lwin last fall at the Banana conference of Asian American bloggers (Banana II details coming soon!). At the time, she had just launched “Slanted,” a comedic web series based on her one-woman show of the same name, about an Asian American actresses’ struggles to make her mark in Hollywood. [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

Do we still call ourselves “Asian American?”

May 28th, 2010 · 13 Comments

With Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month about to end, I thought I’d write a bit about the terms we choose to describe our identity. Like other ethnic groups, the labels we use for ourselves seems to be always evolving. Hispanic evolves into Latino; Negro to Black to African American; Native American to American Indian. [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · pop culture

Sushi Poppers: is sushi in a tube progress?

May 27th, 2010 · 4 Comments

Wow. As if buying crappy-tasting, unauthentic “sushi” at your local supermarket or Costco wasn’t enough, they’ve found a way to completely commodify sushi — sushi rolls, at least — as a mass-produced pre-packaged snack food. Sushi Poppers are individually wrapped sushi rolls on a stick that you eat like… a Popsicle, those quiescently frozen confections. [...]

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Tags: Food & Dining · japan & asia · pop culture

Margaret Kasahara’s pop art pokes at Asian stereotypes

May 20th, 2010 · No Comments

Margaret Kasahara was almost half an hour late to the opening reception of her first Denver solo exhibit, at the Sandra Phillips Gallery along the Arts District on Santa Fe Drive. Her fans, friends and collectors milled around soaking in the art on the wall, and made chit-chat until she entered, flustered from being stuck [...]

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Tags: asian american · japan & asia · pop culture

Iron Man, Marvel-ous superheroes and Asian Americans

May 17th, 2010 · 3 Comments

Once upon a time, I went to art school. And although I graduated with a completely useless (career-wise, anyway) BFA in Painting, I chose art school because once upon a time, I wanted to work for Marvel Comics. Real bad. See above. When I was a kid, I loved Marvel’s lineup of superheroes because they [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · media · pop culture

Next on visualizAsian.com: Meet Naomi Hirahara, award-winning mystery author

April 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment

Erin and I are thrilled to announce the next call in our visualizAsian.com AAPI Empowerment Series, with Edgar Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara, whose fourth Mas Arai mystery, “Blood Hina,” was recently released. The Edgars, by the way, are the prestigious annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards for the best in mystery writing. I fell in love [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

NH State Rep. hates on anime, says it’s a “prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough”

March 30th, 2010 · 6 Comments

Holy cow, what was this guy thinking? New Hampshire State Rep. Nick Levasseur posted on his Facebook wall earlier this week that “Anime is a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough…..” Huh? That rates a WTF?! from any perspective. Otaku Review, an anime fan blog first picked up the quote, then Levasseur [...]

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Tags: asian american · japan & asia · media · pop culture

Next on visualizAsian.com: Meet Corky Lee!

March 28th, 2010 · No Comments

I caught Corky Lee preparing to shoot photos of singer-songwriter Cynthia Lin at a 2006 Asian festival in New York City (picture #22) We’re thrilled to announce the next interview of visualizAsian.com’s Asian American Empowerment Series, a free one-hour conversation with award-winning photojournalist Corky Lee, who has captured Asian America through his lenses for over [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · pop culture

A quick note to readers…

March 28th, 2010 · No Comments

Yes, I know I’ve been slacking off my Nikkei View scribblings for more than a month now. Sorry about that. I’ve been busy with the day job (which I enjoy a lot, working on Internet and new media stuff for MediaNews Group Interactive, the parent company of The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News and [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

visualizAsian.com interview 3/16 with Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot magazine

February 23rd, 2010 · No Comments

How cool is this? The March 16 visualizAsian.com show is going to be a conversation with Eric Nakamura, the owner, publisher and co-editor of Giant Robot magazine. Our call with Eric will be at 6 pm PT on Tuesday, March 16! From movie stars, musicians, and skate-boarders to toys, technology, and history, Giant Robot magazine [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · pop culture

CU Independent student news website launches “Speak Out Campaign,” organizes beats to cover racism, other “isms”

February 16th, 2010 · No Comments

Three years ago this week, a student news website at the University of Colorado sparked a firestorm of protest. The website posted a column by a student, Max Karson, which ineptly tried to address racism on the CU campus by poking fun at Asian stereotypes. The column, “If It’s War the Asians Want, It’s War [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · pop culture

New visualizAsian.com interview: Meet Dan Kuramoto, founding member of Grammy-nominated group Hiroshima

February 15th, 2010 · No Comments

We’ve taken several months off, but Erin and I are ready to resume our series of interviews with inspirational Asian Americans for 2010. We’re especially proud to be able to speak with Dan Kuramoto, one of the founding members of the fusion jazz group Hiroshima, because the group has been nominated twice for a Grammy [...]

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Tags: asian american · music · pop culture

Jake Shimabukuro interview from TED conference

February 12th, 2010 · 7 Comments

The social media blog Mashable snagged a pretty cool interview with Hawai’ian ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro at the annual TED conference (TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and it’s a chi-chi invitation-only think-tank gathering of great minds) after his performance yesterday, which drew a standing ovation. I’ve written about Shimabukuro before, and I’m glad he [...]

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Tags: asian american · music · pop culture

Call for Asian American artists to exhibit during AAPI Heritage Month

January 29th, 2010 · No Comments

Kate Agathon, a grad school instructor at Purdue University and producer for photographer William L. Snyder (who took the portrait above, which was used originally on AngryAsianMan.com in a profile of Kate), is taking on a big art project and she needs your help. She’s organizing a show called “ImaginAsian,” and inviting anyone who is [...]

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Tags: asian american · pop culture

Will people in Japan be able to pronounce “iPad?”

January 28th, 2010 · 5 Comments

Like a lot of geeks and a lot of people in journalism, I paid close attention to the weeks of hype and rumors, and then the official announcement yesterday, of Apple’s potentially “game-changing” new tablet computer, the iPad. For weeks, the tech media have passed along rumor after rumor about the device and its features, [...]

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Tags: japan & asia · pop culture · technology

Retired sumo champ Akebono on Japanese promo for “Glee!”

January 23rd, 2010 · 5 Comments

I saw this on Angry Asian Man and it made me smile, both because Erin and I really enjoy the Fox series “Glee!” and because it’s good to see that Akebono, the sumo wrestler who sings “Don’t Stop Believin’” on the commercial, is still a star with drawing power in Japan. You might notice that [...]

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Tags: japan & asia · music · pop culture

JozJozJoz is on Time.com because of a blog post about her racist camera

January 22nd, 2010 · No Comments

Wow, someone I know and have dined with was interviewed for a story on Time.com, “Are Face-Detection Cameras Racist?” and the story is also on Yahoo. That’s some bigtime exposure for Joz Wang, who many Asian Americans may know better as JozJozJoz. Way back in May 2009, she blogged about her mom’s new Nikon S630 [...]

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Tags: asian american · media · pop culture · technology

Gwendoline Yeo’s one-woman stage production captures Asian American identity

January 19th, 2010 · No Comments

We saw an awesome theatrical performance over the weekend, as part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts‘ “Stories on Stage” series of dramatic literary readings. The performance was a draft of “Laughing with My Mouth Wide Open,” a work in progress. It’s a one-woman show by Gwendoline Yeo, an actress and musician from [...]

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Tags: asian american · music · pop culture

Ninjas (Japanese) making kung fu sounds (Chinese) used for Google Nexus One commercial

January 19th, 2010 · 1 Comment

Is it just me, or is it irritating to have some white guy co-opting Asian iconography for a TV commercial and combining two different cultures? Sure, it’s a cool idea, and certainly well-executed production-wise. But this stop-action video made to pimp Google’s new Nexus One “super-phone” (their description, not mine) bugs me. The animated miniature [...]

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Tags: japan & asia · pop culture