Tag Archives: Japan

From a Times article about rice cookers: Japanese cooks, however, consider toasted rice overcooked and highly undesirable. The unwanted crust left stuck to the bottom of the rice cooker is called okoge — the same word used as slang for a single woman who spends a lot of time with gay men. And now you know.

Tech blogs like Gizmodo are all over this Japanese mobile phone company’s ad in which a monkey (long their official corporate mascot) appears as an Obama-like figure exhorting the crowds to “Change!” to their phone. Totally racist. Unless it isn’t. Maybe we shouldn’t expect a local Japanese ad campaign to be sensitive to America’s racism trigger points. Unless we should. …