MetaFilter recently had a couple of cool links on Asian pop culture topics. A discussion of Japanese director Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) Visual Kei band X Japan embarks on first-ever US tour An awesome gallery of posters using pop culture images (Superman, Marilyn Monroe) to promote manners on public transit Share and Enjoy!

Some Caucasians living in China have reported making a little extra on the side by renting themselves out. Cool your jets — not that way, but to pose as visiting American businessmen and accompany entrepreneurs hoping to add an air of cultivated connections to their presence at business meetings. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image–particularly, the [...]

Just think- that lady to the right could be putting her knockers to good use and wear a bra that grows rice! Only in Japan Apparently urban farming is the big thing among Japanese hipsters, so this company made urban farms portable. But: However, greenfingered Japanese women will not get the chance to grow their own bra rice, as the [...]

The Japanese like weird flavors in candy. Like beer candy. I wasn’t brave enough to try that shit when we were in Japan. I don’t even like regular beer, how much worse can beer candy be? Crazy Kit Kat Flavors I’ve actually tried Green Tea Kit Kat, and it’s not bad. And Cantelope Kit Kat, which wasn’t even on the [...]

Already engaged in a struggle to emerge from bankruptcy, Japan Air Lines is now engaged in a fight of a different sort: Keeping the stylish outfits of laid-off flight attendants off the black market and out of the hands of uniform fetishists. A jacket alone can fetch several hundred pounds, while one site is presently advertising a full set for [...]

Two strange objects have reportedly crashed in  Nowhere, Mongolia. Might be UFOs, might be jet engine parts. But if that’s the case, what happens to a jet when its engine falls out? Wouldn’t the crew have noticed they no longer had an engine? Mongolian UFO I think it’s probably a UFO. There is a large population of livestock in Mongolia [...]

Like deaf people don’t have it hard enough, now their smoke alarms blast them in the face with wasabi when there’s a fire. Yuck Now, you need an alternative way to alert people if they can’t hear the alarm, but it doesn’t help if their eyes are watering so badly they can’t see the exit and die anyway.

I have no words for this. What has been seen cannot be unseen. C-3PO has a nice ass. Why does food in the 1970′s always look totally garish and gross? I have fondue cookbooks from the 1970′s and the food always looks horrible.  And the people! Good God…like their souls have been devoured by The Unnameable. And those sweaters…!

Dressing up some people is like putting lipstick on a pig (*cough*JuliaRoberts*cough*) but one weirdo artist is taking it a step further in China- he’s putting tattoos on pigs. Wim Delvoye\’s Art Farm Piggy Pics Now, it doesn’t seem nice to tattoo pigs. I understand that afterwards, there is much itching and burning until the skin heals (no tattoos here, [...]

I’ve gone on-call at the bookstore where I used to work, and last night was my first night back. I got to have this great conversation: Co-worker: “AnaKhouri, there is a customer on the phone who wants this movie…” >consults slip of paper< “‘Nailin’ Palin’. Do we have it?” Me: “…that’s a PORNO. Um, don’t ask me how I know [...]

Our recent posts have gone from zombies to James Bond to strippers, so this seems the logical next step (I love zombies and James Bond and strippers, by the way). WALL OF TOILETS! Such an interesting exhibition was presented at the festival of ceramics in China. The wall with a total length of 100 meters and five meters height was [...]

Just in time for Halloween, here are some creepy pics of an abandoned vacation complex in Taiwan…designed to look all futuristic and stuff. Futuristic as of the 1950′s anyway. UFO Pileup! It looks like a bad accident in which multiple UFOs piled up on the highway…but kind of cool too. I wouldn’t mind staying in one. Probably don’t want to [...]

Wow. Apparently one particular bridge in Guangzhou is so popular for suicides that officials got sick of the traffic jams they constantly caused. They tried everything to deter the despairing, but nothing worked. Until someone came up with the ingenious idea of smearing the bridge with butter so no one could climb up. It\’s Like Butter This article raises more [...]

The Philippine government maintains a small garrison of civil servants on Pagasa, a small 75-acre island in the Spratley island chain, in order to claim ownership. While this may sound like paradise, the truth sounds more like an episode of Lost. “Sometimes, when the phones were down, I’d lie in bed and think about my girlfriend back home,” said National [...]

Twitch reviews Mamoru Oshii’s latest flick, a bio of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi – and it sounds astoundingly weird.  Reviewer Todd Brown even goes so far as to claim that it’s Oshii’s ‘least commercial’ film. Seriously? This is the same guy that directed Angel’s Egg, a 70-minute existential anime with less than five words of dialogue. Lest you think he’s [...]