In an attempt to get back into the swing of working on my own blog (most of the time I spend editing and toiling over R’s blog, which has a new design up by yours truly), I’m going to write about what I’m into at the moment every Friday.

Design: I am seriously digging the design for logo of the new Prinny game R wrote about today. (see above) As I was editing his post, I could not get over how frickin’ adorable it is!  So wish I had that kind of creative freedom at work.

Music: I am about a year late into this, which is ironic considering I was in Japan when the album came out, but I have been listening to Rip Slyme’s Fun Fair album at work non-stop on my iPod for three days straight now!  Seriously it is the best thing to happen to my ears since…I can’t even remember!  The video for Speed King has been taken down from You Tube for some reason (seriously: from a design perspective that video was pure eye candy.  Also: DJ is friggin’ hot) so here is the video that should receive an award for most blatantly being in cahoots with Sony VAIO laptops.  It’s basically just a giant commercial. (Also: What is Maicching?)

Movies: Taking a break from my usual excessive Food Network watching, R and I watched Men in Black the other night.  It remains one of my favorite movies, along with Jaws and Jurassic Park.  Seriously!  Let me tell you why:
- pre-I, Robot-Will Smith
- Tommy Lee Jones
- witty dialog
- still-believeable-kinda CG effects
- comic book cred
- pre-Law & Order: CI Vincent D’Onofrio
- (my favorite) D’Onofrio’s character’s wife’s (yeah that was a mouthful) crazy bastardization of how to say “sugar water” (more like “shuhur wahdur.”) I quote this phrase more than you might realize (usually when watching Law & Order: CI)

TV: Wednesday night I watched the premiere of America’s Next Top Model (rooting for the transgendered Isis,  baffled by the behavior of Korean-Japanese-American Sheena for simultaneously saying things like “race doesn’t matter!” but then saying things like “you ain’t ready for this yellow fever!”), followed by Jurassic Fight Club because I need to get my weekly dose of Dinosaur George, and then I fell asleep (yes a show about dinosaurs fighting can be THAT boring), missed an episode of Project Runway, and thus had to avoid on the following day reading on how awesome the episode was on my regular blog reads. X(

Japan: I miss you.

Misc. Love:
- The Cho Show
- Staying awake past 10pm
- V8 Acai Berry concoction thingie–although I’m pretty sure a purple carrot doesn’t exist (or does it?)
- Wii Fit

Misc. Hate:
- Heroes
- Missing Project Runway
- Waking up at 2am and, after doing a series of scared jigs, seeing a freaking beetle fall out of my shirt

Well my friends, that concludes my first week of stuff that’s happenin’.  What have you got going on?

- Music: The Unfortunate Twist by Time Machine
- What's Happening Wednesday
- Comedy Central Loves Black People
- What's Happenin' Friday
- Cher to Play Catwoman

Charisma Man–click for full picture

Here is another reason to learn another language (specifically, Japanese): If you should ever want to stay in Japan, your language skills can get your a 5-year resident visa instead of just 3. The article mentions that it’s based on a “certain level of language proficiency,” which hopefully is a realistic one.

I think this is calls for a huge sigh of relief for foreigners living in Japan, especially since security has been tightened in airports, where to get into the country you need to be fingerprinted and have your photo taken.  A lot of people–especially those who may come from countries with fewer ties to Japan–complain about how hard it is to get into Japan and stay there.

Despite this, in a country where all sorts of measures are taken to ensure that Koreans born in Japan are never made into citizens (regardless of how many generations the family has been there), I find it ironic that there is a push to encourage foreigners to come and make their stay.  In fact, many people in Japan–such as Okinawans, the Ainu, Brazilians, and other races–are discriminated against just because they aren’t “ethnically Japanese,” despite living in the country all their lives.

Rather than patting themselves on the back for nudging open the door for foreigners just a little bit wider, the Japanese government needs to re-examine its own issues with race.  A guy shouldn’t have to work schlock jobs just because he is Brazilian and wasn’t able to get the education he needed to move up in the world.  A woman shouldn’t resort to prostitution because she is Malaysian and is refused normal jobs.  There is still an incredibly embedded sense of “you vs. us” mentality, where “gaijin” (the sometimes-derogatory slang word for “foreigner”) is thrown about casually, lumping all non-Japanese together.

While I’m happy to see that the Japanese government is at least making some kind of effort to persuade those interested to come and live in Japan, it can hardly be looked at as a significant improvement in the way Japan sees other races.  Improvement will come when everybody who lives in Japan are provided equal opportunities to succeed, and not hindered by their lineage.  At this point though, it still seems like wishful thinking.

- What's Happenin' Friday
- All Asians Have Beef With Other Asians
- Algorithm March...with Ninja!
- Japanese Sports Wives: More Than Just Trophies
- The Catch-22 of Japanese Films