I was trying to think of some way to incorporate this into relating to our program, but I guess I’ll place this into the uncategorized for now.
For this past week, I have been addicted to two particular songs; ones that I put on replay while while writing these blogs. Heck, while writing this blog.
The first one is by a band called 妖精帝國 (Yousei Teitoku), called “Astral Dogma”.
This is my favorite genre, so it’s not surprising for me to be so into a song like this. All of their songs are amazing honestly, having a similar feel to this. I think they may be my favorite, alongside 和楽器バンド (Wagakki Band).
Wagakki Band, as implied by their name, uses traditional Japanese instruments (called “wagakki” in Japanese). However, they are well-known for mixing these instruments with more modern instruments, such as guitars and drums, to make amazing music. They recently came out with a new song, called “シンクロニシティ” (Shinkuronishiti/”Synchronicity”), which combines jazz, J-Rock, and traditional music to make yet another amazing song.
The video also shows a Japanese couple in western-style clothing, dancing a western-styled dance in what appears to be England, which I found appealing.
They also have an album covering Vocaloid songs, so if you are into that, this band is definitely worth checking out.
For me, the DS and 3DS has been a part of me for around 10+ years now. Heck, as of now I have a 3DS XL, awaiting for the new Pokemon game to come out for it this month, as I have done with every other Pokemon game. Handheld electronics have always been a way for me to take home with me to any place, whether a couple miles away or across the Pacific Ocean. It just makes me feel at ease and allows me to relax.
In “Playing to Wiin : Nintendo and the Video Game Industry’s Greatest Comeback” by Daniel Sloan, he covers the success of the video game industry around the world, focusing on major companies like Nintendo and Sony. The DS/3DS is also covered in this, describing how it “… was hoped to be a vehicle to carry Nintendo’s new share price to new heights and maintain its handheld dominance, although competition with its two main hardware rivals for motion control and three-dimensional bragging rights was intensifying.” It was considered the “next generation console”, the first of its kind to offer a 3DS feature without having 3DS glasses. Despite it losing millions later on, the console still is held dear to my heart and made up my childhood. In my paper, I am wanting to include this in my essay by describing when I first got the DS/3DS, though I will talk more specifically about the 3DS, since I remember very vividly how I got it.
When I first read the title “We Should Never Meet” for this week’s reading, the immediate first question that popped into my head was “Why?” It’s definitely an attention-grabbing title, making the reader curious by what exactly it means. It wasn’t until the very end when I realized what it meant
This title resonates with all the characters. For example, the more obvious example would be the last two examples given in the book, Huan and Mai. I think that Huan helped me realize that they should never meet their biological parents. I have mixed thoughts on why exactly they shouldn’t meet, though another fellow student mentioned in our conversation about this that it would be disappointing to them. These kids have held such high expectations for their parents, expecting them to be perfect individuals, but in the end, they would only end up disappointed by reality. They keep doing the blame game as well, blaming their “perfect” parents for abandoning them, blaming the adoption centers for whatever reason, but realized that no one is at fault in the end. Before this, I was thinking about how it would change the characters as a whole if they met their parents; how this would alter their personality, their relationships, and overall their whole life. But that doesn’t mean it’s for the better. Their struggles have led them up to the modern day, and meeting their parents would be taking away from all of that, as if the first 20+ years of their life had been for naught. Another example would be Kim and meeting the lady who ran the Vietnamese shop, with whom she developed an emotional bond to within just a couple of weeks. Once she was hit with the reality that this lady barely knew her, and she barely knew the lady, it affected her mindset in the long-run; throughout the book, it seems that she is vulnerable to forming close attachments, some unhealthily quick, with people that she considers to be like family (as she did with the lady, likely suspecting it was her mother). It’s also shown that she dislikes change, as implied by Mai who called her a child after Kim told her to stop acting older than she was. Eventually, Kim gets married to Vinh, a guy she says that she has been leading on and has been breaking up with multiple times, and has many children with him. But I definitely do not think it was out of romance; rather, I believe that it was out of not knowing what a true family feels like, thus making the decision to keep everything the way it is and live out a life with Vinh.
I also really loved the set-up of the book and how it takes multiple POV’s and gradually merges all of these stories together. The beginning definitely confused me, making me think that Kim was Lien’s child rather than Huan, but as it went on, it started to become clearer and clearer on what the narrator was doing.
Speaking of Huan, I really liked how this character, who is mentioned very little up until the final chapter, turns out to be the center of mostly all of these stories. It is implied that he is Lien’s son, he was taken to the bigger orphanage by Phuong and Truc, he is nearly adopted by Bridget, and he has a poor relationship with Kim and close relationship with Mai. It’s like the reader unknowingly learned about Huan’s life in Vietnam before Huan himself did. And it clicked together so nicely, I loved it.
Out of all the books we have read so far, I think this one is definitely my favorite. I thought that having all of these stories would make me hate it, having to keep up with every single character and their story, but the merging definitely helped. And, while I dislike cliffhangers, this book made it feel satisfying to have it, rather than full conclusion. In the end, there will never be a conclusion, as life only goes on, for both the characters in this book and people in real life.
Many Nintendo fans know of the popular “Jump Up, Super Star!” theme for the new game “Super Mario Odyssey”, which brings about a very upbeat opening to a very upbeat game. When I first listened to it, the immediate first thing I noticed was the jazz inspiration, which is very evident throughout the song with the many trumpets and the funky beat. The second thing I noticed, when watching the official video for it, is that it has a sort of “big city” theme, as implied by the Empire State Building with “New Donk City” written at the top. It gives a feeling of wonder and excitement, as with many songs describing experiences in this city.
Considering the developers are Japanese, I found it interesting that a game like Super Mario Odyssey would be inspired by this type of genre, as well as New York City itself. While they do have a Japanese singer for this theme, the English singer is considered the international version by Nintendo, which is even more interesting.
(Personally, I prefer the English version, though I also like the Japanese version.)
But yeah! It’s so interesting to see a major Nintendo game being inspired by American music, and the song turning out to be very catchy.
When I was first looking at the Table of Contents for Atari to Zelda: Japans videogames in global contexts, the first chapter I noticed that I thought could definitely relate to my paper is “Localization: Making the Strange Familiar”, where it describes popular Japanese gaming companies being translated and fixed up for people in other countries to buy them as well. A couple quotes that stood out to me included:
“In the early days of video game development, many games never (officially) left Japan, but many of those that did were instant hits and affected the culture of the industry and popular consciousness in ways that we still do not fully understand.”
“Localization has become more critical over the past few decades. Japanese developers and publishers still control a majority of their domestic market, but global sales of Japanese games have been shrinking— from a 50 percent share of the market in 2002 to about a 10 percent share in 2009— as they encounter greater competition from Western developers. 4 In response, Japanese companies have become more aggressive and experimental in their strategies. For example, Square Enix purchased the Western developer Eidos and its library of game titles, and Capcom made the decision to have Vancouver-based Blue Castle Games create the second in its series of Dead Rising games to give the title more “Western appeal.” 5 Companies around the world continue to decide which games deserve global releases, which are for domestic markets only, how to develop intellectual properties that might allow for the creation of different genres of games based on the same IP but are sold in different regions, and how to figure out which of these approaches is the best to take.”
“Like anime and manga fans, some players have hunted down such games and either played them in the original Japanese or figured out how to translate and localize them for themselves and other players, with varying approaches to the concept of professionalization.”
(I have definitely done this)
And one other passage this chapter goes over is currently one of my favorite video game series, Ace Attorney, to give a prime example of the use of westernization in video games. I definitely feel like I’ll use this game as an example for my essay, especially since I have already looked into the differences between the Japanese and American version prior to reading this book.
“Culturalization certainly plays a critical role in the development of the English version of Phoenix Wright because the game relies on conversation, exposition, puns, name-based gags, pop culture references, and the like as a central part of its appeal (figure 5.1). Although the game’s legal system is fiction, the game relies on wit and exacting uses of language in both dialogue and writing. The player must engage with the language of the game as a primary means of gameplay— through interviewing witnesses and defendants, in reading pertinent evidence, and in cross-examinations— and get the content right. Localization is about altering or modifying cultural expressions that might interfere with a game player’s understanding or enjoyment of a game. So if a joke in a game relies on knowledge of a popular television show, localization ensures that players in each targeted market or culture are provided with a reference that they can understand.”
Consalvo, Mia. Atari to Zelda : Japan’s Videogames in Global Contexts, MIT Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Throughout the past 5 weeks, I have enjoyed all of the books we have read so far. I’m not typically one who is a bookworm/reads on my own time, but I do feel like, after reading these books, I’d go back and read them again, in an attempt to spot details I may have missed.
Sadly, Dark Blue Suit didn’t quite cut it for me.
Like most of the other books we have read so far, this book was just a bunch of flashbacks, leading up to the last few pages being present-time, where Buddy looks upon the graves of loved ones. I don’t feel like Buddy had any sort of primary struggle, and rather described other’s struggles without knowing the full details (since silence and secrets played a big part in this story). It focused on how Buddy was lucky to be able to accomplish bigger dreams (as also stated by Rico), such as his mother being fully prepared to give her children a great life, allowing him to enter law school. This, in-turn, did not allow him to understand the full struggle of Filipino-Americans in the United States, and how they got where they are today. Also, unlike the other books we have read, Buddy fully embraces both his Filipino and American heritage, not facing some sort of identity crisis. Which is an interesting perspective, especially since it makes Buddy, the main character, more like an observer in this sense, really putting into use the first-person limited perspective.
I noticed one of the biggest themes being mentioned in the first two paragraphs of the book: the American dream. I think that was my favorite part of the book, how it uses the flashbacks to disprove the American dream speculation that they learned in the Philippines. For example, I think it definitely accomplished its goal in disproving that moving to America is a “fresh new start”, by using his father and his cousin as examples. Both of them moved to America in hope of a better life, only to have Leo be arrested upon their first day of arriving, and being told “Welcome to America” even after being told that Leo wasn’t drunk.
The two also had to give up on their dream job in Alaska upon having children and working at a cheaper job. His father wanted to go back to doing that job again even after Buddy was born, often discussing it with Leo, but in the end never got to work there again. In the end, this applies to the many Filipino-Americans who moved here, hoping for the same dream-like results his dad and Uncle Leo searched for, only to come empty-handed. This is the reality of Asian-American immigration.
I also expected the book to cover boxing more than it did, perhaps describe the father’s experience, or perhaps let the son obtain some sort of career in it. I was surprised about how little it was covered, only having one chapter dedicated to it, Rico’s experience, and one memory of it with one of his Uncles, who was a big fan of the sport. I can understand why the son didn’t get into it; it seemed like an unhealthy way to relieve stress (as he noticed from his father, who often picked fights), but the cover has pictures of boxing. Boxing is definitely some sort of symbolism for Filipino-Americans finally being equal to white people, or even better, but I found the cover rather misleading. Unless I am just missing something here.
In the end, I feel like covering Filipino-Americans and their struggle was fine, but… I don’t know. I expected more? I think the boxer on the cover definitely mislead me to believe that this would be about a Filipino-American’s boxing career, so that’s why I feel somewhat disappointed.
Before this class, I had not thought about the representation of Asians in the American music industry; I think that with recent whitewashing movies and shows coming out, such as the “Death Note” Netflix series and Scarlett Johannson’s “Ghost in the Shell”, I’ve been more-so focused on Japanese erasure in the film industry. However, I had never thought about Filipinos in the music industry up until now. I was also very surprised when The Black Eyed Peas, which practically made up my childhood, was brought up, only to learn about the Filipino-American that was in the group who has made a couple songs that are sang in Filipino. There was one pestering thought that popped into my head upon hearing “Bebot” and “The APL song”: how come I had heard most of the Black Eyed Peas songs, but not these two? Was it because they were in a foreign language, and it wasn’t as popular as their other songs due to this? Was there a more hidden meaning behind it, or was I just digging too deep into it?
These two songs are amazing in my opinion; after we entered into our 10 minutes break, I immediately opened up my Spotify and went to add those songs to my playlist. “Bebot” is a hella bop, and I listened to it on repeat throughout the day. Makes me wish that I had heard it earlier.
Apart from the Black Eyed Peas, which is a very popular band and bound to get more attention to these types of songs, I also liked “Morning of America” by Blue Scholars (which I also have on my Spotify). It has such a unique sound, combining jazz and hip-hop to make this funky beat, and goes on to tell their story as a Filipino-American. I went to see how many views it had on YouTube to get a better idea of the general audience, and the official video had approximately 74k views, which isn’t a lot in YouTube standards (but not necessarily bad either). Good songs like this are often overlooked in the industry, which is disappointing.
Not going to lie, I teared up a couple times due to this book. Many may deny it, but we’ve all had that thought cross our minds at least once in our lives: “What will I do if my parents die?” This book brings about a realistic perspective of how death is treated, as well as how it should be dealt with.
Throughout this book, the number one goal the family has is to find one professional that will say the father’s cancer is not terminal. That everything would be okay, and everything would be taken care of. That was not the case. This book didn’t dance around the topic of death, it didn’t allow this family to witness some sort of “miracle” and have the father’s cancer suddenly disappear. He didn’t get to say those final last words that people in movies typically do, right before they die. He only sat in agony, wanting death to come and take him yet also wanting to stay alive, in this world, with his family. I think the book’s realistic approach to death is what got me emotional; most of the time, with deaths in movies and other books, I don’t get emotional. In fact, I actually criticize it; if a book or movie doesn’t make a part emotional to the reader where it should be emotional at, what’s the point in including it? I feel like the build-up of the relationship between the sisters and their parents definitely helps the reader form some sort of sympathy for the characters, or even empathy, knowing that they all care for one-another, and that they have little time to show this. Something that, again, people fear.
However, despite the characters not accepting that the father was going to die soon, the book also provides a couple of alternatives of how to deal with the death of a loved one, such as the Monks suggesting that one lives and lets go. Really, that’s the only thing one can do at a time like that; enjoy the company of the loved one, while also accepting that death is nature in and of itself.
I also feel that the layer of complexity the characters have also adds onto the greatness of the book. One specific example I remember was how, during seminar, one person mentioned how the father’s sister was “a bitch”. While that is the first impression one gets from her no doubt, the train-of-thought in that instance was analyzing her from the outside, rather than going in-depth on her personality and reactions to certain subjects. For me, I have a bunch of mixed opinions on the sister, mostly due to the fact that her complexity as a character doesn’t only simplify her as a “bad” character. For example, the environment she was raised in encouraged the superiority of men over women, so it wasn’t surprising that she was so lenient with her boys making a ruckus. It’s definitely not acceptable, but she is in the mind-set that this is okay, that this is how things should be. She also saved her brother from a massacre when they were both children and raised him on her own, showing that she does love her family. However, this does not mean she has negative aspects of herself, such as how she keeps trying to convince the family that the father has strayed off god’s path due to his life choices. And, while I did defend her on her mind-set of men > women, she still did not do anything even when the girls came to her about the boys bullying them. It’s so hard to say whether I like or dislike her, since she has so many contradicting traits about herself that make her both a likable and unlikable character.
As with the other books we have read so far, I definitely enjoyed reading this one as well. I had expected Hannah’s disappearance to be the primary conflict, but instead the reader is given insight to how a family that’s torn apart still came together to help care for and love their father even until his last breath.
I am currently reading a book called Power+Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, and I have reached a section in it that goes on to talk about how Akihabara is the primary center of video game culture (which isn’t surprising, since it IS geek capital). As someone who has also been there, I have found myself being able to relate more to this chapter.
I never realized it up until now, but since my idea of home is electronics/video games, visiting Akihabara definitely allowed me to feel at home, like I was in my “zone”. Sounds a bit cheesy, but I had been feeling some anxiety when I had first arrived there, so visiting there definitely relieved that feeling (especially since many people on my trip were also into these types of things).
In this book, it goes to describe how central street in Akihabara, or “Chuo-dori”, is highly packed during the spring and summer time, and how people “… maneuver deftly, balancing huge shopping bags as they weave in and out, past fellow shoppers, past street-side vendors selling everything from takoyaki to cheap costume jewelery to pirated copies of Microsoft Windows. It is like Disneyland, but twice as crowded and twice as exciting.” It also mentions how “… for the last three decades the stores of Akihabara have been filled with every video game you could ever possibly imagine.” (pg. 184) I went there in the summer, so this chapter basically summarizes my experience there.
As of now, I plan to use this while describing my experience there in Japan, though I may switch what I use as a source from this chapter, depending on how it fits in m writing. Definitely plan to use this chapter, though.
I figured out this week that a Eurovision Asia song contest is in the works. At the moment, it is scheduled to start in 2018. Countries that are signed up so far include China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Australia, and Hong Kong.
I’m really interested in how Asia has been influenced by Europe to hold a competition like this. From what many Europeans have told me, Eurovision is a way to bring the continent together as a whole (as well as have fun in the process), so perhaps that is the goal for Asia as well? Either way, I can’t wait to see how it plays out, and I hope that many other Asian/Pacific Islander countries will join as well.
