(Edited to delete full copy-paste)
A friend who recently visited Penang noted that at the Penang Musuem, a room that described the contributions of different peoples to the island, the Japanese section read: “[…] Besides traders, women were prominent in this emerging society. Most of them were prostitutes.”
(Note: This report is unconfirmed and I myself failed to notice it during my own quick trip through the same museum)
On my last post Aceface asked:
Hey,why not write some more about the garden state for non American readers for this is travelogue afterall.
I’m wondering what becomes of the turnpike after nearly quater of a century of my absence from New Jersey.Is Great Adventure(of the six flags theme park) still there?What happened to Flushing/Fort Lee Japan town that I’ve heard it is now changed as Taiwan/Korea town?I really really miss New Jersey!
You should come visit then!
I did just do a NYC related post the other day, and when I start carrying my camera around more you may see more local things. But if you really need a New Jersey fix, I recommend Weird New Jersey. Get some copies of the physical magazine if you can, it’s loads of fun.
The Turnpike is pretty much the same. They briefly discussed privatizing it before people realized it was just a cash infusion with no real long term gain or service enhancements. I believe tokens have been completely phased out- the toll is 35 cents cash, or in some areas 70 cents but only in one direction (to improve traffic flow the other way) and most people who use it more than once in a blue moon have EZ-PASS, a battery powered radio transducer box that sits on your dashboard or sticks to the windshield up by the rear-view mirror and passes your account information wirelessly to the toll booth as you drive through, making the whole payment process way easier. To get one of these boxes you pay a small deposit ($20?) and get a free replacement when the battery runs low. There is an electronic sign that warns you when your account is low on money.
Six Flags is still there, I have not been since I was in 8th grade though.
Flushing is Chinese and Korean. I don’t know if there are many Taiwanese there or not, but Cantonese still go to Manhattan Chinatown, and Chinatown definitely has a Taiwanese presence still. I was there last week and saw a sign for the USA headquarters of the KMT, and there was also a sign in the window with Lien Chan’s (連戰) name on it.
I feel like Fort Lee is almost all Korean, but also Japanese still live in the Fort Lee/Edgewater area. There is a Japanese supermarket/shopping center there in Edgewater, which used to have a Kinokuniya branch, but I think now has some other bookstore in its place. I haven’t been to Fort Lee or Flushing this year, so I haven’t got any current personal observations.
In NYC, St Marks Place, the former locus of punk culture in the region (a culture which has taken a near mortal blow with the passing of CBGB’s), is now the closest thing to a Japanese area in the city, with at least a half dozen izakaya type places on just the one block, and a little Japanese market around the corner to the north, which is on the second floor above a bookstore (elevator access), and sells Japanese products. I believe last week I saw a sign down the street to the north-west that Kinokuniya was either opening a second location near there, or perhaps moving from their old Rockefeller location, which makes sense. I doubt many Japanese are hanging out over there these days, compared to the numbers you see every day in the Village.
One of these places, which I was at last week, is labeled as something like “日本帝國居酒屋” (Japanese Empire Izakaya – although I forget the place’s actual name), with lots of old-timey Showa-period kitch and decoration, like old posters, antique pachinko machines, etc. Signs with random vaguely pro-Japanese imperialist slogans and phrases, also written on the t-shirts worn by staff, such as “神風特攻隊.” (Kamikaze special attack squad) In the men’s bathroom, next to the mirror, there was a red sign that just says “長崎原爆.” (Nagasaki Nuclear Bomb) This is also the only place I have ever seen outside of Japan that has “Hoppy” on the menu- and even in Japan it’s usually just places going for an oldy-timey kind of mood. (This paragraph is taken from some comments I just made on a tangentially related topic at Neomarxisme.)
Update: the friend I went with reminds me the place is called ケンカ, meaning “to argue.” They also have an actual stuffed tanuki inside, posed to look like the cartoonish tanuki statues you often see in Japan, which is both a little awesome and a little creepy.
There are of course many, many other Japanese restaurants and bars throughout the city, which there’s really no need to discuss. There are also a few other Japanese markets/stores of note, but actually for Japanese food products your best bet is probably a Korean store, some of which are much bigger and carry a large amount of food and drinks from Japan. Of special note is the NYC branch of Japanese used bookstore mega-chain Book Off, located on 41st St, just south of Grand Central Station, and just east of the public library. Just down the block from Book Off is a Japanese restaurant, a Japanese bakery/cafe, with some of the sorts of baked goods that you normally only see in bakeries in Japan, and a Japanese market/lunch place that does things like katsudon for eat-in or take-away.
Anyone else have some observations to share for Aceface’s NY/NJ travel guide?
ZAKZAK reports that while authentic North Korean army uniforms have been available for sale in China near the North Korean border for some time, until recently you could only find low-level grunts. But now real rarities have found their way to China – actual ceremonial uniforms worn by colonels at occasions attended by Kim Jong Il himself. In the DPRK’s Korean People’s Army, colonels are 8th from the top of the 24-rank hierarchy of which the late Kim Il Sung remains the top.
Normal usually sell for about 37,000 yen (2300 yuan or about $340) and usually go to South Korean or Japanese tourists, according to one seller. The uniforms are in abundance as soldiers pawn them to pay for daily necessities. Experts quoted in the article felt that this indicated some further degradation of whatever order is left in the North Korean military, who are supposed to be some of the best taken care of people in the country.
The uniforms make it to China through a small network of traders who move back and forth along the border, often making deals from within NK with carefully hidden mobile phones.
The Chinese Baiji river dolphin may be extinct, but if any survivors are eventually found, at least they can safely be relocated to the tunnels used by the New York City subway until this morning.
Readers who remember my discussions of Kokaryo(光華寮), the Kyoto student dormitory for overseas Chinese students which became the center of the longest duration lawsuit in Japanese legal history might be interested to know about Seikaryo (清華寮), a Chinese student dormitory located in Tokyo, which was purchased under significantly different, but also interesting circumstances.Seikaryo recently made the news due to a tragic fire that killed two women living there, which was brought to my attention via an email from Curzon. Seikaryo, like Kokaryo, was originally purchased as a dormitory for Taiwanese students studying in Japan, but where Kokaryo had been purchased by the Taiwanese Republic of China government (possible with funds that may have been repayment for property taken by Japan from mainland China-this and other vagaries led to the bizarre and complex circumstances of the lawsuit, about which one can read in my earlier pieces), Seikaryo was constructed in 1927 by a foundation belonging to the Japanese colonial Governor General in Taiwan, when Taiwan was an internationally recognized colonial possession of Japan.
According to this article, the property rights of the dormitory were unclear after the war, leading to problems involving such things as the assessment of taxes, but apparently-unlike Kokaryo- it remained a residence for students from both Taiwan and China. This article, from a mainland China source, claims that both Kokaryo and Seikaryo were purchased by the Taiwanese government while it was under Japanese occupation, and after Japan’s surrender became property of the People’s Republic of China, but since Kokaryo was in fact not purchased by Taiwan until 1952, when the ROC government had already lost the civil war, the Chinese article is clearly false. Last, this article from a Taiwanese source states that the actual land is owned by Japan, with a term that I believe means something like Right of Occupation (房舍產權) residing with Taiwan. It is unclear however if this refers to the situation at the time of construction (1927), or the present.
If anyone has more information on Seikaryo, particularly as it compares with the somewhat more famous Kokaryo, I would be very interested in hearing.
My original piece on Kokaryo is here, and my piece on the resolution (at least for the time being) of the legal battle is here.
Today’s New York Times has published a moderate sized article on the Chinese phenomenon.
No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online.
These include “Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince,” a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Ms. Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include “Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon,” “Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire,” “Harry Potter and the Young Heroes,” “Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon,” and “Harry Potter and the Big Funnel.”
Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling’s characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like “Journey to the West.”
Harry Potter and the Big Funnel? I’ve heard of that one somewhere before…
In related news, of the 100 or so blogs and other websites that linked to my fake Harry Potter post, this post at the blog of the comic book fansite Newsarama may be the only one to offer a substantial contribution. Now, I had posted a couple of pages from a nice, wholesome Harry Potter Japanese fan comic (dojinshi), but someone at Newsarama had apparently dug into their personal bookmarks collection and dug out links to online archives of-ahem-less than wholesome product. The sort of thing that chronicles the sort of activity that English boarding school was famous for before Hogwarts. Am I going to paste the links here? No, but anyone curious enough to click can take that extra step.
I’ve posted on this before and I guess it’s kind of old news, but check out Captain Japan’s gripping description of a recent visit:
Inside this 25-table eatery of hermit kingdom blandness, slim and fair-skinned North Korean waitresses sing, dance in teams, and play violin in between serving a mix of Asian fare to customers who are afforded a zoo-like peek inside the illicit dining room of Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
“I enjoy this job so much,” said one of the attendants, who like her comrades speaks a bit of English and Chinese, about working in Cambodia’s capital.
…
As cigarette smoke fills the air above each table, Korean firewater like the grain alcohol Jinro soju and draft Tiger beer are standards for washing down such menu items as beef rib soup ($10), roasted pork ribs ($9), and roasted eel ($15) – selections that do not match the mushrooms and grasses of foreign-correspondent lore, and considering a typical monthly wage for a government worker in Phnom Penh might only be $50 a month, such prices are quite high.The stage show, which is the main attraction, starts at 8 p.m. One waitress, who like her sisters has been trained at an arts college in North Korea, will run through a karaoke number into the reverb-challenged sound system mounted on a small platform pushed into a corner. A duet, perhaps a slightly hip-shaking version of “Let it Be,” might follow. Customers are then encouraged to take their best shot at any of the thousands of English titles or Communist classics in the library. Finishing the set is a rather rousing violin and synthesizer piece.
…
The dance numbers get the most applause from the customers, who will pack each table on Friday and Saturday nights. With a backdrop of gold drapes adorned in tassels, the gals line up, spin and flail their arms in near perfect military-like unison to synthesizer accompaniment over a brown tiled floor.Such uniformity seems to be stressed: shoe heels have been trimmed, giving the appearance of identical height; narrow mirrors are mounted intermittently between the windows to ensure that hair bows can be slightly adjusted while out on the floor; and housing on the property of the restaurant ensure that the girls room together. But lighter moments are possible, such as before the shop’s 11 a.m. opening, when the ladies can be seen happily folding moist towels and exercising their vocal chords.
…
In the northern Cambodian city of Siem Reap, where the majestic temples of the Angkor Wat complex are found, a sister restaurant operates under the same business model. And like the Phnom Penh outlet, which is slightly smaller and a year older, profits are funneled back to North Korea’s coffers. Similar properties have sprouted across Asia, including outlets in China, Thailand, and a fast-food variation in Vietnam.
Is adjusting shoe height (as Kim Jong Il is notorious for doing) some kind of virtue in North Korea? Check out the rest for awesome photos.
Here’s some video footage:
In this BBC article on cultural assimilation of Asians into British society, I encountered the term “coconut,” which apparently means someone who is “brown on the outside but white on the inside.” While I am familiar with similar slang terms used in such as “banana” or “twinkie” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) and “oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside) this one is new to me. Does “coconut” have any currency in other Anglophone countries besides the UK? Are my American examples also used in the UK or other countries? Do any readers know of other similar terms in use in American, British, or some other form of English? Best of all would be equivalent terms in other languages-properly translated of course.
While I am sure most of you are watching the LDP get trounced by the DPJ in today’s upper house election (just as I predicted, of course), I just wanted to let you know that this isn’t the only election happening today (thanks to ZAKZAK):
Elections in North Korea, too? A Sunday election with no losers and 99.8% voter turnout.
On July 29, an election will take place in North Korea. However, with a voter turnout of 99.8%, just one candidate for each election district, and no writing implements to vote with, it would be better described as a “ceremony” than an election.
North Korea uses single-member election districts similar to Japan’s, but there is no proportional representation because of the de facto dominance by the Worker’s Party of Korea. Citizens can vote from age 17, and in this election provincial, city, and county representatives will be selected. On August 3, an election will be held to select members of the Supreme People’s Assembly (NK’s parliament), in which even dictator Kim Jong Il (age 65) will run as a candidate. Kim has won a consecutive 5 terms in office starting in 1982 (but of course, none of the “candidates” ever actually lose in this election).
An unnamed private researcher explains: “The election form says ‘I vote affirmatively to make X a representative’ and if the voter agrees, he/she simply places the vote in the box. The rules state that you are to place an X on the election form if you disagree, but they do not provide any writing implements at the election office.”
There are supposedly more than 600 members of the SPA, but the election districts are listed by number and do not specify which region the candidate is supposed to represent. Neither are voters informed who the candidates are before the election, so it makes no difference to the voters who is in office.
Kim’s election district changes each time: for example, in 1998 he ran in the “Korean People’s Army 666th Electoral District.”
Kazuo Miyazuka, a professor at Yamanashi Gakuin University who is familiar with NK’s internal situation, notes “Since 100% of the voters vote affirmatively, this is not an election at all. It is a chance to test whether the people will faithfully participate and is used as a way to dominate the people.”
For the many thousands of readers who can’t get enough of fake Harry Potter, NPR’s Morning edition had a story on Chinese sequel-legging for their July 13 broadcast. And no, they don’t mention either of the two presented here.
Also, don’t forget the truly awe-inspiring Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese Translation web site, which gives detailed comparisons of the Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese translations of the novels. Fascinating reading for hardcore fans of the series (particularly those with some knowledge of one or more of the languages treated), and truly essential reading for any translators familiar with the world of Harry Potter.
