Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | asian american
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May 3, 2011

Meet Cheryl Tan on visualizAsian.com on May 24!We're thrilled to announce that we're celebrating the second anniversary of visualizAsian.com with TWO shows during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! We launbched visualizAsian in May of 2009 with a conversation with former Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, and we've had almost two dozen calls since then. This month we have a show with Albert Kim, one of the writers and producers of the hit action series "Nikita" on Tuesday May 10, and we're closing out the month with a conversation with journalist and author Cheryl Tan on Tuesday, May 24! Click here to register for the call and you'll receive the dial-in and webcast information. Cheryl Tan has written for bigtime publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and earlier this year published "A Tiger in the Kitchen" (not to be confused with that other "Tiger" book...). Here's her biography from her website:
April 28, 2011

Maggie Q and Albert Kim on the set of "Nikita"Wow, we're excited to announce our Second Anniversary show in honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month: A one-hour conversation with Albert Kim, a writer and co-producer for the hit CW network action series "Nikita" starring Maggie Q! We'll be speaking with Albert on TUESDAY, MAY 10 at 7 pm Pacific Time (10 PM ET). Just register with visualizAsian (it's free) and you'll get the information to dial in to our conference line, or listen on our live webcast. If you've already registered for visualizAsian calls in the past, you'll automatically receive the dial-in information via email. Remember, you can always submit questions to our visualizAsian guests in advance and during the livecast. You missed our show with Albert Kim! But for a limited time you can still register to hear the archived replay MP3 of the conversation. You may not recognize the name, but if you watch "Nikita" or have watched "Leverage" in the past, you've seen him in the front credits. Here's Albert's bio: Albert Kim is a TV writer, producer, and award-winning journalist. Before his stint the staff of "Nikita," Kim spent three seasons on the hit TNT show "Leverage," and has also written episodes of FX’s "Dirt." But his roots aren't in television scriptwriting.
April 19, 2011

A couple of days after the tragic earthquake and tsunami struck the northeast coast of Japan's main island on March 11, the Newark Star Ledger newspaper ran an article with a headline that promised Japanese Americans' concerns for relatives in Japan: "Japanese-Americans in Fort Lee, Edgewater describe frantic calls to loved ones in quake's wake." I was bemused -- and a little disappointed -- to find that the story wasn't about Japanese Americans. The reporter went up to some shoppers in Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey, and from their names and their quotes, I could tell immediately that the people quoted were Japanese. You know, Japanese Japanese. Immigrants from Japan. Or more precisely, shin-Issei, or "new first-generation" Japanese. Or maybe even just Japanese families of business men (or women) or diplomats assigned for a year or three in the U.S. before rotating back to Japan or to another post elsewhere in the world. There are fewer Japanese Japanese in America than other Asian populations, because fewer Japanese are immigrating to the U.S. than in the past. As of the 2000 census, about 7,000 new Japanese immigrants came to the U.S every year. In contrast, 50,900 Chinese and 17,900 Koreans per year came to the U.S. So it's not surprising that a mainstream news organization would mistake Japanese immigrants for Japanese Americans. (I should note that West Coast newspapers did better, and when they interviewed Japanese Americans they were indeed JAs, and when Japanese nationals were interviewed, they were identified as such.) But still, it struck me that many Japanese Americans are not necessarily closely connected to Japan.
April 17, 2011

Japan Relief Concert Thousand Hearts Japan relief efforts in Los Angeles should get a big boost next weekend from the all-star concert being organized by Asian American organizations including the Asian Bar Association and the Asian American Journalists Association. "A Thousand Hearts" promises to be a great show as well as hopefully, a great fundraiser. As always, wish I lived in Cali, but if any of you readers are in the area, don't miss it. Here are the details via press release:
April 12, 2011

UnityI’m disappointed that the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is pulling out of Unity, a partnership of journalists of color with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) and Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA — full disclosure: I’m the president of the Denver chapter of AAJA). It’ll diminish the power of next year’s Unity convention, which is slated for Las Vegas. The four Unity orgs have gotten together every four years for a combined confab since 1994. My introduction to both AAJA and Unity was an inspiring convention in 2004 in Washington DC, when both then-President Bush and presidential hopeful John Kerry spoke to the gathered attendees. Kerry got a noticeably more robust welcome from the assembled journalists of color, which was noted in the mainstream media. I also attended the 2008 Unity convention in Chicago, where candidate Barack Obama spoke. Both conventions were great learning experiences, and emotionally powerful experiences as well, for just being part of a large group of people of color.
April 12, 2011

wasabi doritosIt's one of those things that you taste and go, "Damn! Why didn't someone think of this sooner?" We bought a bag of Wasabi Doritos at our local Costco the other day, and though I try not to over-indulge, they're hard to resist. I've always considered Nacho Doritos the perfect American snack chip. But I think Wasabi Doritos outdoes them. They're what you'd expect: Crunchy, salty and satisfying, but instead of cheesy they have the flash of wasabi that floods your mouth and makes you go "aaaaaah." Wasabi's no stranger to the U.S. Ever since sushi became mainstream in the 1990s and made for the most memorable of the early 2000s' Budweiser "Whassup" TV commercials (see below), Americans have embraced the green glob of fiery horseradish that you mix with soy sauce to dip sushi. Wasabi's a common snack flavor in Japan already, as anyone who shops at Asian groceries in the U.S. knows. You can find wasabi-coated peas and wasabi-flavored rice crackers that can bring the familiar horseradish burn that makes you inhale (and sometimes cough) and brings a tear to your eye.
April 8, 2011

Curt Yagi"Live My Life," the lead track from the new album, "Close My Eyes" by Curt Yagi and The People Standing Behind Me (great band name) grabs me right away. It reveals Yagi's wide-ranging musical palette with dabs of color -- Yagi's funky acoustic guitar, then a drum flourish -- before he splashes the canvas with bass and very cool horn section riffing, and then Yagi's vocals and grungy electric guitar add a sonic signature that has me tapping my toes and nodding my head to the catchy melody. The album (which is officially released on April 12 but is available for advance purchase online) is full of such sweet pop confections that take diverse musical elements and mashes them together into memorable hooks and melodies. "Sweep Me," the second track starts with a ballad intro but kicks into an acoustic ska arrangement pushed along by that horn section. Yagi, who's a Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American born and raised in the Bay Area, credits the reggae and ska influences to his love for the genres when he was in high school. He added alt-rock influences when he was in college. He became a musician relatively late in life -- he started writing songs after his father died of a rare disease 10 years ago -- and started singing at open mics. He holds down a day job as executive director of a non-profit, Real Options for City Kids (ROCK) that serves at-risk children with enhanced public school and after-school programs. He started as a volunteer in 1998 and was also a board member before taking on his current role. So he's an artist who already invests his heart and soul in his day-to-day life and is talented enough to also express it musically. Yagi's now 40 (he looks 25) and he and his band were voted "Best of the Bay" by the alt-weekly SF Bay Guardian, and they regularly play Bay Area venues. I wish I could see him live just to experience the intriguing mix of acoustic, electric and horns in person. It's tempting to pigeonhole Yagi's music as steeped in R&B because of the horns, funky rhythms and his often soulful vocals, but after a few listens to the album, I've decided he's a musical omnivore, who likes a lot of different sounds and is able to call on them all as elements to mix in like pigments a painter might use to get just the right shade, the right tone, the right light and shadow.