Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | All Posts
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July 8, 2005

There was an interesting piece in the Washington Post yesterday, about a woman in South Korea whose dog pooped on a subway. She refused to clean it up, much to the consternation of other passengers nearby (what the hell is a dog doing in the subway anyway?). One passenger took a digital photo and put it on a citizen journalism Web site, and then all hell broke loose. Everyone started calling her the "Dog Poop Lady" and chattering back and forth online about how awful she is. Bloggers joined in, and the search for her identity began (her face was obscured in the photo).
June 27, 2005

I saw an A&E program the other day about the Brady Bunch, and how over the decades the story of the archetypal modern family has become an American cultural icon. It was fun to relive the series. I liked watching “The Brady Bunch" when I was a kid, and like everyone my age and younger (since the show has constantly been in syndication since it originally went off the air in the mid-‘70s). But I also have been watching the first-season episodes of “The Partridge Family" on DVD, and having a ball.
May 30, 2005

Post / Gil Asakawa
Real sushi, from the source: a bento box at a sushi restaurant in Sapporo.
I'm in the middle of a two-week trip to Japan, and it's been a fascinating visit. I was born here in Tokyo (an Army brat -- my dad, a Nisei from Hawaii, was stationed here and met my mom during the Korean war) and moved to the states when I was 8. But as an adult, I've only been in Japan twice -- in 1994 and 1995. This time it's for a family trip, and I'm traveling with my mom. Here are some observations:
May 21, 2005

I've been a fan of Apple's TV commercials for the iPod since long before I got my own iPod. The instantly recognizable campaign, with the silhouetted figures dancing with their iPods in hand and the "iconic" white earbuds and wire flopping around are just plain cool. A couple of weeks ago, Apple launched its latest TV commercial, which features "pop-lock" dancers doing their robotic, hip-hoppy thing to their 'Pods. Then, I realized that I never see people in real life listening to iPod and moving along to the music like the silhouettes in these commercials.
May 15, 2005

When Barbie was “born" into the Mattel family of toys in 1959, she wasn’t just a doll. She was the epicenter of a retail revolution. When parents bought their baby-boomer girls a Barbie, they were agreeing to an unspoken but implicit contract with the toy store to return time and again and buy stuff – lots more stuff – for Barbie. That’s how Mattel envisioned her. A kid wouldn’t be happy with just the Barbie and some clothes like any earlier doll would offer. Nope, Mattel created an entire fantasy world, with price tags attached to every damned thing in that world, from friends like Midge and sister Skipper, and of course, the sexless boyfriend Ken (whose irony-drenched advertising slogan was “Ken…. He’s a Doll!") to Barbie houses, Barbie Sports cars, carrying cases, closets, apartments with Barbie-sized furniture, picnic sets and even a tiny Barbie Doll for Barbie to own!
May 11, 2005

(Note: I worked for DenverPost.com from 2003-2006.) No, don't barf. I know a lot of people -- especially the kind of people who read blogs, who I think are by nature technologically savvy and opinionated -- hate even the concept of AOL and everything the company stands for. But hear me out, because I truly believe that without AOL and its millions of users, the Internet wouldn't have evolved as quickly as it has into an everyday part of our lives. Washington Post technology writer Robert MacMillan wrote today in his "Random Access" column about RSS feeds, and how RSS is too complicated and technical to become mainstream, even though there's a huge buzz about it in the online media. I agree completely with him. RSS is bogged down deeply in geek quotient.
May 4, 2005

What do critics know? I was a rock critic for years, and I always knew my opinion was just one crabby person’s opinion – nothing more, nothing less. Yeah, sure, I felt like I knew more than a lot of other people about rock and roll, and that gave me the right to spout off about my good taste. But really, I knew I wasn’t gonna change anyone’s mind about a group they hated or liked. I figured the best I could do was to introduce new and little-known groups or artists or genres to people who hadn’t heard them before, and hopefully they’d like them as much as I did.
April 29, 2005

Every day's bus ride from the Westminster Park and Ride is like listening to the weirdest radio station imaginable -- a lot weirder than even the heyday of "underground" radio of the late '60s and early '70s. And every ride, I hear gems out of the 10,064 tracks on my 40GB 4G iPod that make me smile, or take me back, or get me to notice something new and cool that I didn't know or notice before. That's the beauty of shuffling through the music.