Most of us I think are stilling getting “419 Scam” or “Nigerian” scam email that I talked about here. In an interesting geographic shift, Joel over at Far Outliers has just got one of these scam emails claiming to be from the brother of Chun Doo-hwan (as in 전두환 of 1980 Kwangju infamy).
The Athens games organizing commitee actually thinks they can make you agree to a contract by linking to them! Whoever put this together is amazingly ignorant of the internet and I feel incredibly compelled to defy them for purposes of ridicule (perhaps this is their plan to get more links, in which case it works!). [...]
My primary offline source of news is The Economist, a favorite I picked up in high school as a member of my school’s Model United Nations team. The consistently libertarian magazine is great for a number of reasons. Its articles tend to be really global in their news coverage, a little less sensitive to the [...]
In less than 24 hours I leave Japan for the USA. I have been here almost two years, mostly as a scholarship research student at Waseda University’s Political Science department studying Sino-Japanese relations history with Hirano, Kenichiro (平野健一郎). He has been incredibly kind to me, supporting me both in my studies with him, and in [...]
I wrote a rather long winded article about the Asian Cup and the media coverage of its last game. It is posted over at the new EAIA blog.
I am starting 4 or 5 new blogs, all with the goal of increasing communication and cooperation between graduate students in places like the US and those in places like Japan, China, etc. The first of these to go online is the East Asian International Affairs Blog (temporary title until we think of a cool [...]
My friend Lars, dressed like a Western tourist might, emerged from Tokyo station’s ticket gate yesterday to be suddenly swarmed on by three police officers. “Are you a tourist?” Lars answers, “Umm, No.” Then they ask, “Do you work here?” and Lars replies, “No. I am a graduate student [at Waseda University]” The police officers [...]
I just read a beautiful Japanese war poem. I don’t know who it is by. It was in an collection of essays by the scholar 田中正俊 called 『戦中戦後』 敗戦の祖国へ 君にはほかにどんな帰り方もなかったのだ。 −海峡の底を歩いて帰る以外。 To the motherland that lost the war For you there was no way to return, Except to walk the channel’s deep. (As always feel [...]
I have been living in Japan for almost two years now and exactly two weeks before I leave, I found what is perhaps Tokyo’s best non-used bookstore for academic nerds. Many friends have told me that there is a great bookstore in Ikebukuro (池袋) and I thought I had found it long ago. There is [...]
I’m going to post a few things about my recent trip to China. See also Sayaka’s recent postings on our trip. July 23rd, 2004: I’ll post this next time I have a net connection. I’m currently in Qingdao (pictures here), a coastal city in China’s Shandong province. Getting here was a thirty-four hour adventure that [...]