Hello Wonder!

I'm working on my movie review for Wonder Woman, so here is some related entertainment in the meanwhile: the official Japanese ad campaign for the film includes Hello Kitty. Well, of course it does.  Take a look at the official Japanese website after you click away from the trailer that pops up. Here's a closer look:

Quote of the Day: A Tribute to Toshiro Mifune

Check out this review of Mifune: The Last Samurai, a new documentary of the great Japanese actor, and then go check out the film itself. If you don't know who Toshiro Mifune was, you'll certainly want to. Just take a look at this wonderfully mad description:

Mifune was a one-man kamikaze burlesque show, as elegantly savage as his future inheritor Bruce Lee, as dextrous as Errol Flynn, as insanely comic as Curly from the Three Stooges, with a bombs-away ego all his own. 

... He was a hurricane who blew away the landscape that had come before him. He was really the first samurai of action cinema, the one who cast his cross-cultural shadow over everything from the evolution of the martial-arts genre to Eastwood and Bronson.  

He also turned down the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi!

Mifune got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame not too long ago.

Comfort Viewing: "The Karate Kid, Part Two" (1986)

Had enough of the never-ending drumbeat of negativity, identity politics, and divisive rhetoric from all fronts?  Let me recommend one of my favorite movies, now celebrating its 30th anniversary (!).  I assume that you - as properly educated humans - have already seen 1984's original The Karate Kid, yes?  Of course you have.

There is a lot of good stuff in the sequel that it manages to engage without being prissy or preachy - eternally resonant themes like honor, justice, standing up for yourself, respect, mercy, love, friendship, family (both of blood and of choice), forgiveness, and reconciliation across divides of age, race, culture, geography, and time - and I'll leave it to you to enjoy the story, along with a gloriously bombastic, cheesy soundtrack. Hey, it's the 80s! It's OK!

 

By the way, don't bother with the rebooted Karate Kid from 2010.  Look, I love Jackie Chan as much as anybody, but there's only one Mr. Miyagi, and he is the late, great Pat Morita.  Go rewatch the original Karate Kid.

Apparently Pandas Get Culture Shock Too

Poor little fluffballs.

MM in the Kitchen: Kimchi Mussel Bouillabaisse

East meets West as a Korean food icon meets a French one!

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: WHAT?

Sanrio just made a bombshell of an announcement.  So ... basically I've been living under a delusion for my entire life.

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: the Con Is On

Consider yourselves warned.  Details here.

Tasty Chinese

Here's an interesting post about language, translation, and usage.

I can't help including an anecdote from a big family get-together from a while back.  It was late, and some of us were hungry but too tired to go out, so one of my aunts offered to cook something quickly. How about some frozen dumplings?

OK, said my ever-ravenous brother. "What kind?"

"Big Testy," said my aunt (she's got a rather thick accent.)

"Big WHAT?" 

"Big Testy!"

"Big Testy?" he asked, just to be sure.

My aunt started getting flustered. "Testy!" she repeated. "Testy, testy!  Big!  Testy!"

My brother looked at me and smirked.  I knew exactly what he was thinking.  My mother looked confused.  We didn't bother to enlighten her.  My aunt opened a bag of frozen dumplings and proceeded to empty it into a big pot.

The brother then intercepted the bag before it fell into the trash can.  He read it, started laughing hysterically, and waved it at me.  It read "Big Tasty brand frozen dumplings."

Oh, man.  He and I still laugh about it, the Big Testes Dumplings.

Awesomeness: Guns N' Roses On a Ghuzeng

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: Da Plane, Da Plane!

Well, I had noted this thing flying around Asia, but now it's in LA.

Yeah, We Call It "Yellow Fever."

And now PBS has a documentary about it.

China's Harley-Davidson Rally

A cool image gallery.

Online Nerd News: Coursera Opens first Asian MOOC

From Hong Kong to the world:

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have largely been an American innovation thus far. Europe has one or two small programs, but in Asia there are none at all—until now, that is. 

University World News reports that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is now offering a class through Coursera, making it the first Asian school to offer its own MOOC coursework. “Society, Technology and Culture in China” is taught in English, and the majority of its 17,000 students are located in the West. Two more Asian universities are planning to follow HKUST’s lead, and Coursera is looking to develop a Chinese-language platform linked to universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong as part of what appears to be a serious push to gain a foothold in the growing Chinese market.

Quirky Asia Files: Meet King Bazza

Meet a most unusual monarch.

Quirky Asia Files: Chopsticks to China

Here's a neat little tale about a Georgia company making chopsticks to send abroad because China's got a chopstick shortage.  The company also exports to Japan and Korea.  Well, whaddyaknow?  (I like bamboo chopsticks instead of wooden ones, but to each their own.) Belated link xie-xie to Sushiphagos the Progenitor of Alessandra!

Kitchen Notes: A Lychee Martini

It's almost the Year of the Rabbit!  Make yourself a lychee martini and celebrate the Chinese New Year!

Kitchen Notes: Tofu Is Tofu, Not Meat!

Preach it, sister.  Real tofu is a glorious and delicious thing.  It's nothing like those atrocities that you see in fancypants health-food markets.  I love real tofu, but you will never in a million years get me to try tofurkey and its disgusting-looking ilk.  As for all the righteous-sounding excuse-making that vegetarians and vegans somehow "need" to mangle tofu in order to make meat substitutes out of it -- I DON'T CARE.  Making bad food is a crime, a sin, and an abomination. I don't care what the excuse is.   Do you know how I love my tofu?  WITH MEAT.  (Seriously.)

Kitchen Notes: What Japanese Food Can Teach Us

Has an education ever been so delicious?

Holiday Humor: Ninjabread Men!

Traditional Christmas gingerbread men cookies + Asian action movies = AWESOME.

Everybody was kung fu fighting.

Movie Madness: The Cine-Sib Recommends "The Warriors Way"

What a mad mashup of East, West, ninjas, cowboys, South Korean movie stars, and American starlets!