Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

There’s currently a festival for the Naruto anime going on in Japan called Naruto Ninja Dome ‘06.  It’s being described by the Hiragana Times as:

“Naruto” is a very popular cartoon series authored by KISHIMOTO Masashi. The series appears in the weekly magazine “Shonen Jump,” published by Shueisha Inc., and so far, more than 60 million copies have been sold. The “experiencing attraction” called the “Naruto Ninja Dome” that is created with the theme of Ninja Training, will be held at Tokyo Dome City Prism Hall again this year. The world of NARUTO will be on show at this exhibition, which will be bigger and better than last year’s successful event that attracted 200,000 people. This year’s theme is “Executing a Ninja Mission.” Open from July 29 to August 23. Admission fee: 600 yen.

They even appear to have a logo for the event, but I can’t tell because I do not read Japanese:

It looks like China’s making excellent progress towards an internet-ready society! The good thing about this is that it may bring some modernity to Chinese thought. It should also continue to lubricate the clash between Chinese and Western culture.

According to the Register, the Chinese military has build an enormous model of the China-India border in Huangyangtan, a remote village:

The model measures 900×700 meters, and models an area of 450×350 kilometers.  So, the big question is why would China build a 250,000:1 scale model of a mountainous border?

The Korea Times posted a picture of two lovely asian contestants for the 2006.  On the left is Miss Korea, Kim Ju-hee, and Kuara Chibana, Miss Japan, is on the right:

I came across a WWII guide published in 1942 for American soldiers called “How To Spot A Jap,” and noticed that the opposing page has a Chinese pronounciation guide:

It’s interesting how 你是谁？ becomes nee_EE SHER! SHAY.  Still, I suppose there’s still some value in soldiers being able to look up half-broken Chinese and say something to their allies…