Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | Gil Asakawa
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January 15, 2007

We don't have cable TV -- at least, not at the moment -- and don't have a TiVo or other digital video recorder. We also don't watch much broadcast TV. Instead, we catch up on TV series on DVD, thanks to Netflix. We've burned through entire seasons of "24," "Alias," "X-Files," "Smallville," "Sopranos," "Six Feet Under" and more in just a few evenings of crazed viewing. That's just the TV shows -- we also watch way too many movies, thanks again to Netflix. OK, so it's not healthy. But it means we control our movie and TV consumption. WE control the remote, not "The Outer Limits." Until now, all this controlled viewing still required a television. Now, there's another way: the PC. My laptop not only plays DVDs, it can also play a number of TV programs, because increasingly, television networks are streaming content on the Internet. I love all this access, because it extends my control, and allows me to watch TV when I want, or when I can. I'm currently catching up on "Heroes," because I've missed a few of the episodes.
January 13, 2007

Newspapers come and the news is gone the next day. TV reports are even briefer. Magazines tell their stories week by week, or month by month, and then they're forgotten. But content on the Internet has a more persistent life cycle. Now, content can live forever -- or at least, a lot longer than it used to. And, in our current information age, content of all types can prosper even if it lies in the eddies and swirls along the edges instead of the mainstream of pop culture. Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, wrote an entire book (and blog) about this phenomenon, called The Long Tail. Here's his theory, in a nutshell:
The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.
This idea of the Long Tail perfectly describes my experience with an online tribute page I created for my friend Alan Dumas, who died suddenly of a heart attack in April 1999.
January 9, 2007

The world lost a food pioneer on January 5. Momofuku Ando, 97, the self-professed "Noodle King," was the man who invented instant ramen -- the low budget dining delicacy of college students everywhere. Long before sushi, there was another and more profound Japanese food invasion in the United States. Since the mid-1970s, instant ramen has been bringing Asian culinary subtlety (OK, so it's not exactly subtle) to young American palates for mere pennies a bowl. Ramen may be an ubiquitous presence in US grocery stores today, but it was only introduced in America in 1972. It took several years and some marketing savvy -- the inexpensive packages of fried and dried, boil and serve noodles didn't catch on until they were sold in the soup aisle in the supermarket -- before ramen caught on as a dorm room staple. Although ramen is a relatively young food in America, it has a long and distinguished history in Asia.
January 3, 2007

... Well, maybe not completely different, but music that you most likely haven't heard. It's been a long time since pop music has been a unifying force for an entire generation (or two, or three). Now there are too many genres, too many listeners with too many tastes, too many subcultures, too many niches (it's like the Web, no?). For myself, I listen to a wide variety of stuff but not nearly as much new music, either pop or alternative, or hip-hop or whatever, than I used to when I was a rockcrit. I do my share of iTunes downloads, and back in the halcyon early Napster days, I did my share of file-sharing (or stealing, I know, I know). Most of the music I seek out these days, however, is music within proscribed genres like jazz, world music, blues, "Americana," singer-songwriters or -- gulp -- crass baby-boomer oldies. I seek out very few new bands unless someone recommends an act to me. I manage to keep somewhat current by listening to some music that's offered online for free (and copyright free). Here are three sources downloadable via RSS feeds.
December 29, 2006

A friend of mine just got some nice news to finish out the year. Daigo Fujiwara is a Japanese-born journalist, graphic artist, Web dude and baseball fanatic who now lives in Boston and works for the Boston Globe and Boston.com as a graphic artist. Yesterday, Boston.com announced that it had cut a content partnership with "an established Japanese baseball site" called Go-RedSox.com. It turns out the man behind that Japanese language Web site for the Sox is none other than Daigo Fujiwara.
December 26, 2006

James Brown died on Christmas day, a typically dramatic move for the 73-year-old, self-described “Godfather of Soul,” who was known for dramatic endings in concert. The news of his death caught me off guard, because I hadn’t heard much about the performer in years. Although Brown’s music career was in its sunset years, he was still touring and singing regularly. He was hospitalized with pneumonia just a couple days before, and died of heart failure not long after telling a friend he would perform in Times Square for New Year’s Eve. The man earned another of his many nicknames, “The hardest working man in show business,” to the very end.
December 21, 2006

Note: The blog I just posted got me to thinking about a column I wrote way back in the day, before blogs were a twinkle in some developer's eye, about Asians on TV. It's posted in the archives of my Nikkeiview site, but I thought I'd re-post it here. I wrote this after seeing the final "Seinfeld" episode. Like a zillion other people across the country, I tuned in to the final episode of "Seinfeld," and I gotta say, I was only mildly impressed. Oh, I liked the show whenever I caught it, but I was a casual viewer, so the nasty humor that the characters reveled in didn't connect with me the way they may have for diehard fans. What the show did, especially with its segments making fun of foreigners, was get me thinking about Asian faces on TV. As a Japanese-American kid enchanted by American popular culture of the 1960s, it never occurred to me growing up that there were very few people like me on the shows I watched for hours on end.
December 21, 2006

When “Survivor” announced its just-ended season, I was one of the many critics who thought splitting up the tribes along racial factors was a stupid and potentially harmful idea. After just two episodes, the series mixed the groups. On the season finale that just aired, an Asian American man, Yul Kwon, won. He is the Survivor. How cool is that? In the end, it wasn’t race at all, but his smarts and his determination that helped him outlast the others. It probably didn’t hurt that he’s remarkably hunky, but isn’t everyone on the show? He was quoted eloquently in the Contra Costa Times (and cited by Hyphen Blog): "’I wanted America to see Asian-American men as they truly are,’ he said while speaking about the under-representation of minorities on television. ...’I want to be a very visible spokesman for talking about how we can get more minorities on TV.’"