Changes to the Blog and Japanese Earthquake Relief

NEW YORK, March 18 – I apologize to my readers about the infrequent blog posts in the last several months. I’ve been dealing with a lot of life changes. I’ve also decided to move the blog over to a private server due to the increasingly prohibitive restrictions of blogger and the personal desire to expand the content on the site. Over the next several months, I will be transitioning slowly over to my own domain name (www.raiwebs.com). Hopefully by July, the entire blog will be fully transferred over to the private hosting server.

Vocaloid Autos in Akihabara

TOKYO, January 3 – While hunting for manga in the Akihabara district (秋葉原), we walked down the block from Mandarake and ran right into an impromptu car show. A significant number of otaku parked their Itasha (痛車) (customized cars with anime themes) along one of the district’s side street. The anime car subculture has been around for a few years, but the current crop of vehicles reflects the Vocaloid craze. The trend seems to be six months behind the dōjinshi fandom. Maybe next year we will start to see more Touhou Project (東方) automobiles.

New Year's Festival Food in Asakusa

New Year's Festival at Asakusa Shrine
TOKYO, January 1 – After tossing our coins into the shrine's collection box and saying our prayers, a small group of us headed over to the rows of vendor boothes (屋台) near the Asakusa Shrine (浅草神社). Many of the stalls were selling tradition Japanese festival food ranging from sweets to grilled fish. Here are some festival foods that we enjoyed on New Year's Day:

Welcome to the Future of Hong Kong

HONG KONG, December 24 – Saw a trio of mannequins that freaked me out at the Hong Kong Museum of Science. They projected video face onto the lifeless humanoid forms and gave them voices in order to narrate the exhibit. It was very trippy.

Christmas Advertising in Hong Kong: Movie Stars, Pop Singers, and Clark Kent

Large Billboard Ad for Gary Chaw’s (曹格) Tour. It’s sponsored by Johnnie Walker.
HONG KONG, December 24 – Marketing and advertisements say a lot about a people. They highlight the best values of a culture as well as its shallowness. In Hong Kong, the corporate graffiti is everywhere you look. Your eyes can’t escape a product pitch or a public service announcement. Most Hong Kong denizens do their best to ignore them. I, on the other hand, obsess over their meaning and over-analyze their subtext. I also document them on this blog.