Ewwww…:

Ancient rice festival has reputation smeared by ‘therapeutic’ facial cream claims

MSN-Mainichi— A Fukuoka festival dating back to ancient times is growing increasingly popular with Japan’s adult movie fans because it involves smearing gooey, white liquid all over the faces of participants…

…the Oshiroi Festival held every December at the Oyamazumi Shrine in the Fukuoka Prefecture town of Haki…,men draw out handfuls of the gooey mess from the containers they’re carrying and smear it all over the face of all those taking part in the banquet, whether they like it or not, with results closely resembling what the adult video world refers to as a gansha, or facial shot.

Oshiroi is said to have a therapeutic effect on the skin, which has attracted a growing number of young women to the festival in recent years…more…

Ok, ok, here’s the rest of the story. The Oshiroi Matsuri involves most old men smearing ‘therapeutic’ facials on the faces of each other in a thanksgiving festival for abundant crops. The local tourist board obliquely mentions that everyone involved is drunk out of their skulls when they report: “It is comical to see the celebrants weaving their way home after the ritual.”

Watch the Japanese the news video here おしろい祭り—Oshiroi Matsuri (Windows Media, 110 seconds).

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia

Due to new laws restricting political parties from owning broadcasting interests, Taiwan’s nationalist Kuomintang has sold its broadcasting interests for a not too shabby chunk of change. But Jason says no changes in content should be expected.:

I guess Day-After-Christmas sales are no longer a solely American phenomenon: the KMT has reportedly sold its shares in the anachronistically-named China Television (中視), China Broadcasting (中廣), and the Central Motion Picture Corporation (中影) to the China Times Group (中國時報團隊) for a cool US$264 million, just as the National Broadcasting Law’s Dec. 26 deadline for political parties to sell their stakes in media companies arrived.

KMT Deputy Secretary Zhang Zhe-chen officially announced the deal Monday afternoon after the KMT’s Chung-hsia Company handed over its stake in the so-called “3 Chungs (Zhongs)” including a 33.94% stake in China TV, a whoppin’ 97% share in China Broadcasting, and a 50% part in the Central Motion Picture Corporation ) for around US$264 million cash (NT$9 billion). The China Times Group is also taking over US$147 million (NT$5 billion) in debt as part of the deal.

But as with most other deals involving the KMT and large amounts of money, someone ended up getting the shit end of the stick. Just as Zhang had announced the deal, he was chased back into his office by employees of the Central Motion Picture Corporation , who were not a little bit pissed off that KMT HQ hadn’t given them advance notice of the sale. After Zhang had, uh, retired to safety, scuffles reportedly broke out among the legion of journalists present covering the story.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan

AsiaPundit closely tracks the activities of the evil mouthless one from Sanrio and files entries under the category “Hello Kitty watch.” Because of that, AP is linked on the frontpage of Google for searches looking for a . AP is happy to report that those who accidently end up on this page from Google will no longer have come here in vain. Sanrio is now trying to bankrupt fans of the evil mouthless one with overpriced diamond-studded watches.

Though Christmas was only a day or two ago, here is something you can start saving up for next year.

The models in this lineup of Hello Kitty diamond watches are available for about $1,500 each.

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Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, hello kitty, japan, northeast asia

Gaurav at Vantage Point discovers a reason behind the spread of AIDs in India, government-sponsored STD booths.:

When I spotted the first one, I put it down to jetlag. But then, I kept seeing an “STD Booth” every few metres. I asked my driver to stop the car near one and I realised that the “booth” which was a small yellow kiosk, actually boasted of being “Government Approved”.

There are Government Approved STD Booths all over India, and we are wondering why AIDS is spreading so fast.

As I reached my hotel, I was greeted by an official from the Health Ministry. I immediately asked him to explain to me why there were STD booths all over the place. For some reason, he beamed, and said,

“Oh yes, that is one of your greatest achievements!”

“Excuse me? Achievements?”

“Yes. You see what happened is, our late great Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi, in 84, realised that STD was there only in the big cities, and there too, only with rich folks. Rajeev Gandhi felt this was not fair. He wanted every Indian to have STD.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yes, Rajeevji was a great visionary. He wanted even the poorest to be able to have STD. So he called an expert from abroad, a NonResident Indian called Sam Pitroda. Pitroda was asked to suggest how all Indians could have STD in their homes. That time, India had very low rate of STD penetration. Mr. Pitroda travelled far and wide, and suggested that the way to spread STD amongst the masses was simple. It may not be possible for everyone to get STD at home. So he suggested that he would come up with a revolutionary new method to spread STD. That was to set up STD booths so that common people, poor people, everywhere could get STD at a nominal fee.”

“I am shocked!”

(Via Amit Varma)

Technorati Tags: asia, india, south asia

ESWN’s Roland Soong is profiled by Andres Gentry, who has resurrected his blogger profiles after an extended hiatus.:

17. Zhao Ziyang recently died. Non-Chinese seemed to have much greater interest in this story than Chinese. Is this observation correct? Whether true or false, why?

How many Americans or Europeans know who Zhao Ziyang is? You must be joking!!! Like 0.00001%! This question must refer not to general populations, but only to those who actually speak up. I once published an academic paper on the theory of the “Spiral of Silence” of Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann about the common fallacy to take the distribution of opinions of those who speak out as the same for the general population. This is a dangerous, because it was exactly how the Nazis created the impression that they represented the majority in Germany. On the matter of Zhao Ziyang, the distribution of opinions should not be based upon only those who are willing to speak out at this time.

Inside China, I would have liked to run an anonymous public opinion survey to ascertain how people feel, but that won’t happen, of course. So all is left to speculation. I would say that it is a function of one’s age and personal history. For the younger Chinese, it is likely that they have no idea who this person was. After all, they were 5 or 10 years old in 1989 and the subjects of Zhao Ziyang and the June 4 ‘incident’ have been excluded from the public discourse. As for those who were old enough in 1989 to know what went on, I can’t get a reading. For the majority of the country who are mostly rural peasants, they did not hear about Zhao Ziyang or the June 4 ‘incident’ back then, and it would have no material effect on them now. For those who were involved or paid attention at the time, I have no way to gauge the preponderance of opinions — a very tiny fraction have gone into exile and written a voluminous amount of protest materials; perhaps some are still despondent and angry; perhaps some have settled down in middle-class comfort; or perhaps others have even accept that what happened was necessary. I have no evidence about the distribution of these opinions.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, china, hong kong, northeast asia

The backlash against continues, with the Indian government now .:

The Indian Government is in the news recently as it expressed its concern over the highly detailed images available via Google Earth and having decided to constitute an expert group to suggest ways to safeguard the country’s interests ()……While Indian Government should follow-up on the recommendations of the expert group, it should also be proactive and assume that the information that it is trying to protect is already available to its enemies. It should put in place a system of security measure that changes frequently and camouflage them (as it did during the Pokhran tests).

(via )

Technorati Tags: asia, india, , south asia

Via the Mises Economics Blog, an NYT item that reflects on the bursting of Japan’s property bubble and lessons that the US can learn from the experience.:

Mr. Nakashima, a Tokyo city government employee who was then 36, took out a loan for almost the entire $400,000 price of a cramped four-bedroom apartment. With property values rising at double-digit rates, he would easily earn back the loan and then some when he decided to sell.

Or so he thought. Not long after he bought the apartment, Japan’s property market collapsed. Today, the apartment is worth half what he paid. He said he would like to move closer to the city but cannot: the sale price would not cover the $300,000 he still owes the bank.

With housing prices in the United States looking wobbly after years of spectacular gains, it may be helpful to look at the last major economy to have a real estate bubble pop: Japan. What Americans see may scare them, but they may also learn ways to ease the pain.

To be sure, there are several major differences between Japan in the 1980’s and the United States today. One is the fact that property prices rose much faster and more steeply in Japan, partly because speculators used paper profits from a booming stock market to invest in property, insupportably leveraging the prices of both higher and higher.

AsiaPundit recommends that readers outside the US, for instance Australia and Shanghai residents, also take note.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, economy, japan, northeast asia, housing bubble

Via Far Outliers, a look at the strict censorship that exists at the Myanmar Times, Burma’s only English-language paper, from Australian journalist Peter Olszewski.:

I discover censorship defines life at the Myanmar Times and depletes the buzz and excitement that’s generally a feature of good newspaper offices where ground-breaking stories are regularly broken. Censorship at the Times is absolute and total, but the system itself is quite simple. All articles selected for possible publication are faxed to Military Intelligence and are either accepted in their totality, completely rejected, or partly censored, with words, paragraphs and sections removed. Such information is relayed to the editor, Goddard, usually by an officer named Wai Lin. Sometimes the Brigadier General himself rolls up his sleeves and pitches in, and if big issues, especially political issues, are discussed in an article, Wai Lin will pass the material to him for ‘instruction and guidance’.

Inside page layouts and story placements are mostly left to the staff to determine, but the front-page layout is carefully scrutinised and stories approved for publication might not be approved for front-page publication, or the emphasis of such stories might be downplayed.

At times, there can be dialogue about decisions. I am told a story about breakdancing becoming a fad among trendy Yangon youth was axed by MI because they only want to promote traditional dancing. A query, asking if there was any way the story could be saved, resulted in a new ruling that it could be used if breakdancing were not defined as a dance but instead as an American fitness regime.

AsiaPundit briefly - very briefly - considered a job at the paper, but in the end just decided that such restrictions would drive him nuts. While state censorship and editorial interference do make the paper a mouthpiece, its editors seem well intentioned. Ross Dunkley, the Australian CEO and managing editor, acknowledges the censorship but says the paper helps educate Burma’s young journalists.:

Mr. Dunkley said despite strict laws against freedom of the press, he taught his journalists and editors to perceive the real situation and report news the best they can.

“I talk to them about ethics, about the law, about corruption and about what a fucked up government this is,” the blunt Mr. Dunkley said, drawing a burst of laughter from the audience of journalists, diplomats, business people, activists and others.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, myanmar, burma, southeast asia