It’s offical: H1N1 is a National Emergency, so should we wear face masks like the Japanese?

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In Japan, people wear face masks as matter of courtesy when theyWhen President Obama officially declared the 2009 H1N1 outbreak a national emergency over the weekend, I thought, “good. Now it’ll force Americans to wear masks when they’re sick, or if they don’t want to get sick, like in Japan.

The Japanese (and other people throughout Asia) have always worn face masks to prevent the spread of illness. It’s partly out of personal interest — so they won’t have to breath in allergens, pollutants or other peoples’ yucky germs. But it’s also out of plain politeness and consideration — to keep your own damn germs to yourself.

H1N1, or as lots of people still call it, Swine Flu, is the first time in my memory in the U.S. that everyone is being reminded of simple ways to stay healthy with hygiene (wash your hands often) and even told how to sneeze or cough (into your elbow). At my office building, hand sanitizer dispensers have magically appeared everywhere from the lobby to the bathrooms. And, there are signs and poster everywhere, including on the door to the bathroom and on the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom, with diagrams showing people how to sneeze into their elbows, and to wash their hands.

I always thought it was gross when someone sneezed or coughed into their hands, which was what our parents taught us when we were told to “cover your mouth,” but then extended their hand in greeting. Continue reading →

Help Lori & Jackson win Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest

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Lori and Jackson are an Asian American couple from Long Beach, California who love Thailand and want your vote to win the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest.Help out a brother and sister, everyone. Lori Fujikawa-Choy and Jackson Choy are newlyweds from Long Beach, California. She’s Japanese American; he’s Chinese American, and they both love Thailand. They first went to Thailand as “college sweethearts” (awww, aren’t they cute!) to do some volunteer work there and fell in love with the country and its culture. They’ve traveled there several times since then, but now they need your help to go again… as guests of the Thai government.

They’ve entered the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest, which sounds a little like a reality TV show and in fact would probably make a pretty interesting one. The contest is sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and it works like this: Couples from all over the world (not just spouses, but friends too) submitted applications and a video saying why they should win a trip to one of five destinations in Thailand. A panel of judges sifted through the applicants and chose five semifinalists for each destination.

Our intrepid AAPI couple are semifinalists for Phuket, Thailand’s largest island in the southern part of the country, and the site of terrible devastation from the 2004 tsunami. To get to the Finalist stage, Lori and Jackson need your help: the couples are judged this round by public votes on the contest website. As of this moment, the two Californians are third behind a French couple and a couple from Oshkosh.

Take a look at their profile page (their video entry is above) and give Lori and Jackson your support and vote them to the next round. Continue reading →

Philippines prison dancers’ best Michael Jackson tribute

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I know it’s several months late, but I didn’t see a lot of sites spreading this around. Back in 2007, after the prison in Cebu, Philippines started using dance as a way to rehabilitate its prisoners by having them participate in a group creative endeavor and letting them perform for visitors, a video of the inmates grooving in the prison yard to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” became a runaway sensation on YouTube — as of this writing, there are a mind-boggling 34,505,236 views and counting.

They’ve danced since then to rock, classical, R&B and Filipino music. The prison’s security consultant, Byron F. Garcia, the man who came up with the idea, even has a byronfgarcia YouTube channel where he shares the prisoners’ awesome performances.

But the coolest and most moving of them might be the above 10-minute tribute to Michael Jackson, which was choreographed and rehearsed in a 10-hour-straight session after the prisoners heard about his death, and performed performed on June 27 (Jackson died June 25 in the U.S., but it was June 26 in the Philippines by then).

It’s a testament to Garcia’s progressive thinking on rehabilitating criminals, that these men (and some women, who are in a separate wing) can pull together and create what are essentially great performance art. Back in 2007, on the video of the Pointers Sisters’ “Jump,” Garcia notes, “This is a tribute to all Prison facilities in the Philippines (8 and counting) who are now adopting this non-violent approach to rehabilitation! Thank you, inmates deserve a second chance! If we make prisons a living hell for them, then we might just be sending out devils once they are released. Cruel methods to achieve discipline are a thing of the past! So, keep on dancing!”

Here are the original “Thriller” video, and a performance of “Dangerous” (you can click to see all the videos of the inmates, and subscribe to them on Garcia’s YouTube Channel page): Continue reading →

Astro Boy is still flying high after 57 years of fighting crime with technology

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tetsuwan_atomu_1_21Astro Boy,” the new American computer-animated version of the Japanese comic and cartoon that launched the revolution we now call anime, opens today.

I’m more than a little nervous about seeing the movie, since it may not resemble the Japanese cartoon I grew up with, and because Hollywood really screwed up “Speed Racer” when they decided to turn that classic anime into a big live-action spectacle.

(The following text is a re-worked version of a pre-blog Nikkei View column I wrote back in 2003.)

Astro Boy, called “Tetsuwan Atomu” in Japan, was originally introduced in 1952, as a manga, or comic book character, and later turned into an animated television series. Created by the pioneering Japanese comic and anime (animation) artist Osamu Tezuka, his name stands for “The Mighty Atom,” an image still vivid in the minds of millions of Japanese who had lived through the end of World War II just seven years before, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The cartoon character is best-known in the US for the English-dubbed versions of the “Astro Boy” series that first aired in 1963 and then was re-launched with a new series in 1982 and resurrected in a computer-animated film opening today, featuring the voices of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy and Samuel L. Jackson.

The story line is a spin on Pinocchio and superhero comics, mixed with a dose of Steven Spielberg’s film “A.I.” (actually “A.I.” borrows more than a dose from Astro Boy). When the kindhearted Dr. Boynton’s (Professor Tenna in the Japanese original) son is killed in a car accident, he invents an atomic-powered robotic replacement only to discover that there’s no way that the android can truly be human. The mechanical boy was born on April 7, 2003 — the far future — in the original manga. Continue reading →

Racist and stereotypical Halloween costumes never die – they come out every October

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Racist "Fee Ling yu

Variation of the racist "Fee Ling yuI’m starting to dread Hallowe’en. It seems like every year, there’s some new offensive costume that makes racist fun of Asians or perpetuates a racial stereotype. I wrote about this back in 2002, when a really sick costume called “Kung Fool” was sold.

Today I read AngryAsianMan.com and saw that mainstream America once again thinks it’s cool to manufacture a caricature of Asians into a mass-market costume: One that’s even available on Amazon.com. The Fee Ling Yu mask is disgusting — the mask itself is bad enough, but there are variations being sold and shown online that include a different cap and thick round glasses.

I grew up with this image of myself and others like me. It’s incredible and sad and horrifying… downright scary… that I still have to see this now, decades later.

Some of the annual parade of costumes simply perpetuate a stereotype, like geisha costumes and wigs that are standard fare. Continue reading →