Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

At first, the show seems to be just another Japanese TV show that features a bunch of well-known comedians and other celebrities sampling good food around the country. For this episode of the typical "variety show," the group headed to Yokohama Chinatown to find the best-tasting and best-valued Chinese buffets in the area. The hour-long show featured the group going to four different restaurants to try out shrimp, shark fin, spicy stir-frys, and gourmet fried rice. There were plenty of mouth-watering close-up shots of the food and plenty of celebrities talking about how good the food is. So far so good.

In the past years, reality shows have become a staple of Chinese television.  In particular, owing to the popularity of karaoke and pop music, American Idol -style programs that seek to discover untapped musical talents in the general populace have become extremely popular and widespread.  Different TV stations and independent media websites have invested and competed to host the biggest, most professional, and most lavishly set "talent search," drawing some of the biggest popstars of Chinese musical industry today to help discover some of the best raw talent hidden in plain sight.

Variety shows are a genre to itself in Japanese TV. Comedians, actors, and other TV personalities get together on-stage, crack jokes, watch videos, and talk about their life experiences. Sometimes, these personalities are sent to various restaurants, shops, and other locations, where they interact with locals, shop, eat, and talk so that the audience get to know the personalities, learn some new knowledge, and find out about new destinations to hang out on the weekends in their hometowns and faraway cities. Sometimes, the shows are cringeworthy and xenophobic , but they continue to thrive and evolve.

At first sight, the program seemed like just another travel-themed variety how all too common on Japanese TV in recent years. A group of entertainers, actors, and comedians alike, watched and commented on a video that showed a Japanese chef traveling around the world, checking out local restaurants, and going through the menus. As it is so often the case, the guests at the TV studio bantered about foreign stereotypes and politely but superficially discussed the exotic nature of countries that they frankly have no wishes to ever step onto in their lifetimes.

Switched on TV this morning and immediately saw a variety show where a pre-teen girl was dancing to a song that is supposed to be "sexy" in nature...and the girl, with what little she got, was trying her best to look and move in a sexy way. The show is supposed to be a pre-teen talent show of some sort, but there is really something wrong with this scene I am looking at. Of course, as I said before that I don't believe in anybody lecturing anyone on perceived immorality unless crime can be involved, but having premature girls presented as symbols of sexiness is a little too much even for me. What is scary is that these kind of thing is a lot more common than people would expect. There are Japanese and Korean female music groups in which the majority of members are below the age of eighteen (one in particular, ベリーズ工房 from Japan, averaged about 14-years-old at time of debut) and they are garnering a lot of attention and popularity precisely because the members are pretty...

In an era of the general public being inundated with different kinds of museums displaying a wide variety of exhibits , for any to really stand out from the competitive crowd, new methods are needed to draw in the interest of potential museum-goers.  Factory tours, at the first glance, fit the bill extremely well.  But presenting how everyday products are made from scratch via seeing the process actually at work in a normal setting, factor tours tend to provide a much more interactive experience for the general public, in ways that static displays of words and pictures cannot.

From looks the main urban areas of Cape Town is no different from anywhere in the developed world.  Coming from Tanzania, where paved roads and street lights are luxury even in the main city of Dar es Salaam, the immaculately maintained main streets of the city, flanked by vibrant shops, hotels, and malls,, is, by no exaggeration, the envy of sub-Saharan Africa.  The suburbs immediately surrounding the city center and hugging the Atlantic coastlines are home to first-class expressways and homes with modernistic architectural designs that are not out of place in the most moneyed American residential areas.

Japan is noted for convenience for shoppers , and the focus on convenience is also very much present when its legions of salarymen go out for their lunches on any working weekday.  In major business districts are arrays of different dining options, ranging from take-out microwaved meals in convenience stores, street carts serving up quick freshly cooked meals, and various fast food options ranging from noodles to burgers.  In such a competitive market to feed hungry workers quickly, traditional sit-down restaurants should have little advantage to speak of.

In his heavy Maltese accent, the middle-aged man declared, "You know the Europeans give us money, so we get to renovate all this." Pointing at the big construction site in the middle of the historic town center, the man intended to be both comical and proud. As he casually struck up a conversation with me in my little self-guided tour of his hometown, he was clearly glad to see that there were so many foreigners who were willing to walk its winding stone-cobbled streets, gawking at the Instagram-ready white-washed houses fronted with potted plants.