Brilliant, smart, funny, right on and righteous. Makes me wish I live in LA, and could shop at 99 Ranch anytime I want. I love this video. I love all the food in this video (will have to try the couple of things I'm not familiar with). Kudos to The Fung Brothers David and Andrew, and singer AJ Rafael for...
I shouldn't be surprised or disappointed anymore, and accept the fact that there will always be idiotic people in the United States who probably function perfectly normally most of the time, and then turn into stupid racist haters the moment there's some sort of tragedy in the world that involves people of color. Two years ago, I was dumbfounded that Americans would rant and rave about the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and claim it was somehow "god's revenge" for Pearl Harbor. What?
But the glibness and ease with which such racist drivel finds its way from pea-brained individuals to the social webs is still shocking. Here I've been following the crash of the Asiana jetliner at SFO (an airport I often fly to and from) as a human tragedy, but a miracle with only two casualties. I've felt empathy for the families of the two schoolgirls who were killed, and the many survivors who were injured. But the fact that most of those onboard survived -- and that 123 survivors were able to walk away without being hospitalized -- is nothing short of amazing.
But of course, the human stories of the crash don't matter to the racists who immediately feel the need to respond with jokes about Asian stereotypes (we're lousy drivers, har har) and hateful cracks about North Korea (hellooo, Seoul is in South Korea, and this was not an attack by Kim Jong Un on the US).
That such a lowbrow, juvenile mentality switches on so quickly shows that racism and prejudice are still alive and well just beneath the veneer of political correctness that the haters always complain about. Scratch the veneer just a bit with a news event like this tragedy, and you'll see nothing but ugliness ooze out.
That's why I write about these issues over and over.
I was amused to see a recent news story about a 71-year-old Japanese man, Hoji Takahashi, who has sued Japan’s public television broadcaster, NHK. His reason for filing suit? He’s suffering “mental distress” because of what he considers NHK’s excessive use of foreign words.
He’s no elderly gadfly with a silly gripe. He’s a member of an organization that is dedicated to preserving the Japanese language, so this is an organized effort to try and stop the influx of foreign words. What foreign words, you ask? Here are a few cited by news reports including from the BBC:
If you tune into NHK’s news or entertainment shows, you can easily make out words such as "toraburu" for “trouble,” "risuku" for “risk” and "shisutemu" for “system.” I’ve been at my mom’s house when she has NHK satellite programming on and I’ve heard “toppu hoh-ty” for “Top 40” in a story about pop music, and many other words that I can make out as English, albeit somewhat mangled in pronunciation.
My mom isn’t a member of any group fighting this trend, but she’s griped to me plenty about the same issue.
United flight 139 from Denver International Airport to Tokyo's Narita Airport flies direct daily, and shaves off hours of travel time and stress from flying to the west coast for a connecting flight to Narita. Here's what I wrote when the direct flight on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was first announced. Technical issues grounded the plane for several months from the original...
David Wagner, a consultant, trainer and journalist who is originally from Colorado but has lived for years in Japan, had the opportunity to sit down and speak with two giants of Japan scholarship. Dr. Donald Keene and Dr. Joyce Lebra (a professor at the University of Colorado). It's a fascinating and far-ranging conversation, starting with both Keene and Lebra's...
Not many cats get their own Wikipedia entry, but Maru the Cat does. If you're a cat hater, Maru may leave you cold. But anyone with a soft spot for furry animals in generals and felines in particular won't be able to resist grinning over this "best of" collection by Maru's owner, a woman who remains off-camera and anonymous, under...