Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

He most likely decided in 2007 to stop dying his hair black and let the gray show through. The last photo is much larger and shows his face more clearly so the comparison to the others should be made with caution.

This is one part cute and one part sad to watch this Japanese newscaster go from black hair to grey. It’s amazing how much older he looks accented by that hair; note his face changes very little.

“Maybe you can live on the moon in next century” [src]

For some reason, Phizer decided to run this Viagra advertisement in China, emphasizing vitality:

I feel sorry for the child that’s produced by these Viagra-powered sperm, because the female-genome of that poor egg looks like it’s being completely pummeled. The ad is almost like Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, that hilarious thought-experiment of a Superman-Lana union.

Would you name your child the literal “@” symbol? In the US there’s probably no law against it. In Chinese, the name “at” even sounds a little bit like 爱他, or “love him.”

However, a Chinese couple who wanted to do so ran afoul of 国家语委, the national language commission. Chinese last names, recently expanded to four characters, have the unique problem of having 129 of 23,000 surnames accounting for 87% of the population.

Any movie with Jason Statham and Jet Li facing off as adversaries must be worth watching. War, a movie about “FBI agent Jack Crawford (Jason Statham) who becomes obsessed with revenge after his partner Tom Wynne (Terry Chen) and family are killed apparently by the infamous and elusive assassin Rogue (Jet Li). His world unravels into a vortex of guilt and betrayal.”

It also stars Steph Song who has a change of adding a bit of romance to an otherwise formulaic (BUT OMG JET LI) action movie.