stormtrooper dancing in tokyo

Danny Choo, who has one of the most visited blogs in Japan written in English, puts on a stormtrooper armor and dances in the streets and subways of Tokyo, to the groovy sound of Earth, Wind & Fire. Watch it here.
The particular scene below was shot in Akihabara, Danny dancing with the local cosplay gang. Too funny.

how cool is your name?

Very interesting piece on PingMag about "Infoesthetics: the beauty of data visualization". There are several examples, but the one that caught my attention was this one: The Name Voyager. It's an interactive tool showing the popularity rank of baby names from 1880 to 2005. As you can see below, "Nelson" used to be a popular name... around 1890!The accompanying blog, by Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard", offers a fascinating look into baby name trends and pop culture influence.

the diffusion of culture

Zapping through the TV channels in Singapore, I happen to catch a lot of the 'international' channels programming, state-owned TV channels such as Germany's DW-World, Japan's NHK, France's TV5 Monde, and China's CCTV, and I couldn't help but noticing how differently they approach their job.
While they all state their goals as promoting their respective country's culture, through news and entertainment, as well as to provide a more 'balanced' view of the world, the commonalities stop there.
France's TV5 Monde is a channel almost exclusively dedicated to French speakers. The only exceptions are some late night movies sub-titled in English (which are pretty cool by the way). This approach however, definitely limits the number of people they can reach, which makes me think they're not really that interested in promoting their culture as much as they are in promoting their language (sort of, "if you really want to know more about us, learn French first, monsieur").
Japan's NHK does have a few shows for non-Japanese speakers. There's one news program dubbed in English (with a Japanese-speaking anchor and an English-speaking commentator's voice-over), and other newscasts and variety shows in English (with a mix of native and non-native English-speaking anchors). Despite being a little more accessible than TV5, I really would like to see more English-spoken or English-subtitled shows, especially their documentaries and movies. My favorite NHK show is "Cool Japan" (about which I blogged here), and which incidentally is spoken mainly in Japanese (only the guests speak English but it's enough to give a general understanding about the context of the show). See the video below about the Japanese influence on the Paris fashion scene (spoken in Japanese and French, on YouTube here).In contrast with the two channels above, China's CCTV takes a bolder, more ambitious approach, albeit a more expensive one. Instead of mixing their programming grid with Chinese and English-spoken shows, they set up two different channels altogether, CCTV-4, spoken in Chinese, and CCTV-9, spoken mainly in English (there are only a few shows spoken in Chinese, but always with English dubbing or sub-titles). Take a look, for example, at the video below, a show in Beijing last year, celebrating Deng Li Jun, a.k.a. Teresa Teng (on YouTube here).
And finally, Germany's DW-World stands somewhere in the middle, airing some newscasts and variety shows in English (my favorite is Euromaxx, a variety show about interesting things in Europe. You can view a short segment on Danish designer Arne Jacobsen on YouTube here).These differences in strategy show two things: (a) some state-owned channels compromise the diffusion of their country's culture by trying to be too "pure" (dangerous word, but in the lack of a better one), sticking to their own language; (b) the Chinese government is willing to make high investments to promote their culture, trying to leverage their newly acquired economic status. Keep an eye for Chinese brands to follow.
One final note: to be fair, this analysis is based mainly on the nightly programming, so while they reach a prime-time audience, I can't say for sure they represent the entire programming (though I'm almost certain they do).
I do hope these channels take on a more accessible approach to non-speakers of their countries' languages. After all, where else could we have better access to news about Boston's Daisuke Matsuzaka, Houston's Yao Ming, or the latest Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie?

ali rap on espn

Watched "Ali Rap" on ESPN, a documentary based on the George Lois' book I blogged about the other day. It's a fitting tribute to Ali's verbal punching power, featuring some of his classic moments, as well as some famous guests such as Sylvester Stallone, James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier, Ludacris, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Diane Sawyer, Angelo Dundee, and George Lois.
The documentary has been released on DVD as well, including the entire 1974 Ali vs. Foreman fight in Zaire.
You might be led to think I'm a big boxing fan, which I'm not. Actually I rarely watch boxing matches. Having said that, there are 4 fights that every sports fan should watch: the three Ali vs. Frazier clashes, and of course, Ali vs. Foreman, a master class on how strategy and finesse (if you could say so about a heavyweight boxer) can triumph over brute force.

ninjas are cool

Planners are always on the lookout for some examples of pattern recognition. Writing the previous post about Pucca, it reminded me of some other cool ninja stuff I came across over the years.
The first one, of course, was Samurai Kid (Kaze no Fujimaru): I used to be a big fan as a young boy. Samurai Kid was a boy who was raised by a samurai who taught him the art of ninji-tsu, doing cool stuff such as controlling the wind (he could create a twister with a single raise of his finger), and multiplying himself to confound his opponents (thanks for softindigoeyes for pointing me to this).

But then Hollywood produced the infamous American Ninja series, and ninjas started to get a bad rap. Eventually, it got parodied by the late Chris Farley, in the hilarious comedy Beverly Hills Ninja.
But ninjas are resilient, they always appear from nowhere when you least expect. We couldn't forget, of course, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example.
More recently, some other productions are helping to revive the ninja legend.
One is the French cartoon (French??), Shuriken School (for those not fluent in ninja-speak, shuriken is that sharp, star-shaped ninja blade, which they throw with incomparable skill to kill their opponents). The Jetix webiste says that, "along with your usual Maths and English lessons, you can learn to be a Ninja and melt into walls, fly over rooftops, or disappear in a cloud of smoke". How cool is that?
Naruto, on the other hand, is for the more serious-minded ninja fan, definitely not the "cute ninja" type.
But a serious ninja fan will only be satisfied with a pilgrimage to the Ninja Museum, in Iga-Ueno, Japan, complete with secret passages and ninja paraphernalia.
You get to see ninja weapons...
...and some ninja demonstrations.
But the best part is that to get to the museum, you can take this charming ninja train.
Do you know any other cool ninja stuff?

the new hello kitty?

I spent some time during the holidays watching TV with my son (ok, maybe it was more like 'a lot of time'). Mostly "Power Rangers" stuff, but in the middle of it all, we came across "Pucca Funny Love", and it couldn't be a more refreshing thing.
Pucca is a young girl who is in love with a ninja boy called Garu. Garu, like all ninja boys, is not much into this romance thing, he wants to fight the world. So, as much as he likes Pucca, he tries to avoid any excessive demonstration of affection. Which is exactly what Pucca is all about. Whenever she can, she tries to steal a kiss from Garu, much to his embarrassment.
It is produced by Vooz, a Korean company, all in Macromedia Flash, with very little or no dialogue, and it's impossibly cute. Now, most guys would yawn at the very mention of the word 'cute', as in 'Hello Kitty cute', and I confess I'm not a big fan either, but this is simply too cute. Even my son, who nowadays is very much into "heroes vs. monsters" thing, had fun watching it.
When Pucca and Garu run, tiny sweat drops appear on their foreheads, as if attached by Velcro (it happens all the time with Garu. When he is kissed by Pucca, he flushes with embarrassment and a tiny drop appears on his face). It's so funny, perhaps because it is so true.

brands and pop culture

Two examples of brands that are trying to engage pop culture:
The first one actually is a co-branded effort between Nerf's Showtime Hoops and AND1. Showtime Hoops is a basketball kit that promises to bring the excitement of streetball right into your living room. It has an attached sound system that says when you hit a good shot and when you didn't, all emceed by AND1's Duke Tango. AND1 has been a phenomenon. Riding the wave of NBA's success but trailing an entire different path, the brand has built its reputation as the street, hip-hop version of the (then) clean-cut NBA. They stand for a lifestyle now, selling shoes, DVDs, video-games, magazines, etc. See the TV commercial here.
The other example is Burger King's launching of three X-Box games featuring "the creepy king from the US commercials" (via uncrate.com). You can buy one at US$ 3.99 with the purchase of a Value Meal.