I noticed Tokyo Craigslist launch a few weeks ago and wondered how it would do, considering that the site is completely in english—is it really going to be used by the japanese, or is it going to be used mainly by resident foreigners? Poking through the site now neither one is the case, most of the posts I’m seeing are from posters in the US. I went through all of the major categories, of course, but since as we all know the most interesting ones are the personals, let’s talk about those.
Men Seeking Women, the most heavily-trafficked so far (where by heavy I mean five or six posts a day) brings us such gems as I AM 23 MALE US CITIZEN, U R ????, IN NEED OF CITEZENSHIP? – 23 (CALIFORNIA), Tom Cruise lookalike in NYC seeks Japanese girlfriend – 37, GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR JAPANESE WOMAN TO LIVE AND WORK IN AMERICA ! – 39 (San Francisco), NYC Musician seeks his Yoko!!, and I would like to find a japanese wife younger,sweet & well off to marry – 50 (California/Hawwaii). So yeah, mostly white guys with japanese fetishes.
Women Seeking Men has less than half the posts of M4W. The posters here are pretty varied: japanese women in Japan, some looking specifically for american men (either in Japan or in the US, race not specified); japanese women or women of japanese descent in the US, some looking specifically for japanese men; and korean women looking for japanese men.
Men Seeking Men has only five posts total right now, which I’m sure anyone who’s ever looked at M4M at any CL incarnation in North America will find shocking. Two of the five are americans visiting Tokyo looking to hook up, another is a curious 29-year-old who writes, “I have recently heard about bukkake and wanted to know if any of you have some stories or advice to give me about it. I would like to get someone to invite to bukkake in California.”
Women Seeking Women is even more pathetic than I expected it to be, only one post! She says, “Ok girlz, I need some help here… if you look like “M” or “Claire” from Sexysappho (dot com) PLEASE contact me ;)” Only one of the SexySappho models (NSFW) is Japanese and she’s not M or Claire, so I’m guessing this post was spammed to various CLs.
Many posts on Casual Encounters are from american men visiting Tokyo looking to hook up with japanese women, or american men (usually New Yorkers, but Los Angeles and San Francisco represent too!) looking to hook up with japanese women in their own cities, which is what I expected, but I did find one post from swingers: bi white couple wants asain couple – mw4mw – 49 (oregon) pic. Too bad they’re a continent away and can’t spell, or they might be getting some hot race-mixing swinger action RIGHT NOW.
Finally, everyone’s favorite category: Rant & Raves! Tokyo RNR gets a few posts every once in a while, some pissed off with how Tokyo Craigslist doesn’t serve the community: The problem with CL Tokyo is… (TOKYO) (“First and foremost, what in the fuck is it that you people don’t get…? It’s craigslist *TOKYO*. Would you stupid mother fuckers stop posting such ridiculous shit like your shitty assed two bedroom apt in buttfuck Kansas?!@”), Assholes, be quiet (Asakusa) (“If you want Japan youhave to come here, otherwise, keep your fantasies to your local R&R board. Please. …If I see you on the train platform I am going to push your ass in front of the shinkansen and you will end up being shitkansen.”). The most well thought out post is this heartfelt plea to Craig himself, Re: Is this CL TOkyo, doesn’t feel like it! (boston):

well other cities have got spsms, too. but just becuase the overall potings are so few in the tokyo site, it looks like a spam bulletin board. as you said, almost all of the tokyo postings are from japan-geeks in the states or spammers.

basically the japanese people’s english skill is limited, and they are not interested in posting ads in english, which, to them, means taking a risk of making grammartical mistakes. (which i don’t care about at all as you can tell) don’t think this country is same as other non-english speaking countries. japan is definitely one of the few countries where people strongly (very strongly) feel englishly-challenged.

craig, you’ve got take some actions to prevent spams and/or attract more japanese readers/posters. otherwise this site is going to die sooner or later. craig, you can’t just rely on month-to-mouth to promote this site in tokyo. a majority of english-speaking people in tokyo are japan-otaku whose japanese friends (mostly girlfriends) are not capable of reading/writing in english. but there are many other potential japanese CL users out there, and they probably don’t have any connections with CL users, or english speakers in general.

craig, you’ve got to reach out directly to real “japanese people” to spread this site in japan. please try to reach the japanese media and tell them this is a great site for those who want to “actually use/practice enligh”—reading and writing. learning english is always a hot issue there. always a lot of top-selling books in japan are related to how to communicate in english. craig, i’m sure, as a japanese, that is the only way to keep this tokyo site alive. i don’t want japan-otaku perverts take it over. i want this site to be a place where japanese people, for the first time, really overcome their negative obsessions about their english skill and fear of communicating in a foreign language… and eventually a place where many english learners enjoy english communication and feel confident in their language skill.

It’ll be very interesting to come back to this post in a few months, and then a year, to see how Tokyo Craigslist has evolved and what steps (if any) the usually hands off CL team has taken to change things.
Also I’d like to point out that I typed in manila.craigslist.org and for the first time there’s actually something there! I don’t know when they’re going to officially launch Manila Craigslist, but it’s up and running, so pass the word. I’ve long been wanting CL to come to Manila, Filipinos are incredibly social and increasingly netsavvy and it will be fascinating to see how quickly it picks up. How will the CL staff be able to deal with users who effortlessly, naturally codeswitch between English, Tagalog, swardspeak and street slang? How long till office IT departments start blocking CL at work, the way many of them block all IM clients and Friendster?

The update: I’m done with school but not done with school. My thesis essay is three weeks late and I’ve not made much progress since the deadline passed; I had just about half the page count done then, in highly unsatisfactory chunks, I don’t have much more than that now.
Most every day for the past two months or so I’ve spent a few hours sitting in front of my Powerbook, watching the cursor blink in and out, in and out, in and out. I can write short emails about my thesis, regurgitating the elevator spiel that I crafted all semester and perfected during the Winter Show, and discuss it with people in depth, even explaining most everything that I should be talking about in my paper, but I can’t seem to write it out. And it’s really fucking killing me—I have to get my resume and portfolio together (both of which have I haven’t touched in three years) find a job, clean my apartment and find a roommate, and I can’t do any of these things yet because I have this huge thing hanging over my head.
The experiment: I haven’t been writing here (or anywhere else; I can barely get myself to reply to emails these past few weeks) because I’ve been trying to write the paper. Since that clearly hasn’t been successful in the least, perhaps starting to post here again and all that entails will get my juices flowing again?
Here’s Tom Coates from earlier today, nailing how I’ve been feeling, “On forcing oneself to do stuff”:

So why does it sometimes seem such a bloody enormous battle to convince oneself to even start doing a piece of work? What kind of stupid fucking evolutionary process ends up with procrastination, paralysis and apparent indolence? I mean, what kind of creature does well in the world by sitting at home in front of a computer for three hours in the early evening trying to motivate itself to write something about set-top boxes?! Where’s the reproductive advantage there?!

Stupid bloody world that should make me be this way and then make me neurotic about it.

He got his trio of set-top box posts done within the day so hopefully I’ll bang my essay out within the week. Wish me luck?

If you’re in the city either today or tomorrow, come see the ITP Winter Show, a “two-day explosion of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP”.
My thesis project hello, can you see me? (a.k.a. 24in48.org) is in the show, please come say hi! I’ll be doing another run of it in New York with 24 brand new participants sometime in February so if you have a cameraphone and are interested in joining the fun then, drop me a line at hello@24in48.org or leave a comment!
Right now I am also looking to do the project in San Francisco and Manila so if you live there and would like to participate, or would like to see it done in your city, please feel free to get in touch.
Show hours:
Sunday, December 19 from 2 to 6 p.m.
Monday, December 20 from 5 to 9 p.m.
Directions:
ITP is on the fourth floor of NYU’s Tisch School, 721B Broadway corner Waverly Place. You can take the R train to 8th St and walk south two blocks to Waverly, the 6 to Astor Place and walk west to Broadway, or the C to West 4th and walk east through Washington Square Park to Broadway.

Too busy to write a full post but I also feel the need to unload a few random but important things, so I apologize for the haphazard writing of this all and the lack of proper segues:
Okay, so hello, can you see me? went pretty well but I’m not done with my thesis just yet—I’ve got to present in front of a panel of critics, my department chair, and whomever else feels like showing up on December 1st. Which is four days away. All my conversations lately have been much like this one:
ranjit: how’s the presentation-planning going?
lia: i just ate a packet of coconut cream-filled chocolate koala biscuits
ranjit: ah, good progress!
Yesterday I was so stressed out that instead of getting any work done I stayed home and ate all day: pasta for lunch (penne with pesto and BACON), pasta for dinner (very meaty lasagna), a bag of slightly burnt buttered popcorn and then the koala biscuits. I finally went to bed at 3 a.m. still painfully hungry after chugging half a bottle of chocolate milk, and the only thing I’d really gotten done work-wise was picking the font to use in my slideshow, Hoefler Text over Lucida Grande, the first time since high school I’ve ever voluntarily used a serif over a sans serif.
Many thanks to Megatron for having me and a few other people over for an intimate Thanksgiving dinner. Oh, and for making the very tasty salmon wrapped in BACON that went so happily into my belly. You can see a photo of us with our respective eyebags here, if you are so inclined.
Many thanks also to Chris for calling me on my cellphone Monday afternoon to check if I knew about the semi-secret U2 show in Brooklyn that afternoon. I hightailed it out of the doctor’s office after that and cabbed my ass down to DUMBO, and had one of the best nights I’ve had all year, certainly one I’ll remember all my life. You can see a photo of us both looking deranged post-show here, if you are so inclined.
Heck, while you’re at it, why not look at a photo of me and Vena also looking deranged post-show here? Thank you Vena for ditching work to come with, it wouldn’t have been half as fun without you.
Jesse James Garrett has returned to blogging, five whole years after he stopped. As Jay said in the comments, welcome back to the fold you helped create, Jesse. I look forward to reading your Hidden Agenda every single day for the next five years at least. (No pressure there!)
Congratulations to two of my favorite bloggers who’ve recently hit their five year anniversaries: Kevin of Ghost in the Machine and Miranda of Geegaw. Many happy returns of the day!
Months and months after most people in the US have forgotten they even have accounts, Friendster will be rolling out mobile services in the Philippines. My thoughts about this are so Shirky it hurts, so maybe when the semester is done perhaps I can sit down and write a paper about it. Or a really long post?
Jesus may own the last week in December but the first two weeks are Jonny Goldstein’s. Don’t try to fight it, you know it’s true.
I have a ticket to finally see Ted Leo & the Pharmacists on December 11, and two days later I get to finally see Cher. So much information about me can be gleaned from just that one sentence. Diagram away.
Oh, and before I forget: there will be a dinner & booze-type thing in the East or West Village on the 1st, after my thesis presentation. You should totally come!

A poem by Ishle Yi Park, the current poet laureate of Queens, NY:

To Nintendo

Before you, life was unbearable –
a flat screen and ping pong ball.
But oh, you sleek grey box,
you already wrapped present!

We sat in front of you, awed
as if you were the first red sunrise.

We burned a horseshoe
of permanent round circles into the rug
with our asses — a communion
of Afghani, Puerto Rican, Korean kids

trying to unpeel the secrets of a mustached
plumber who swallowed mushrooms,
zapped dumb-eyed turtles, warped
to other zones through green maintenance pipes.

We slept to your lullabies, the digitized
soundtrack of our childhood.

Outside, a world of mothers chastising
in accents thick as static. Blocks of white boys
bored and violent, ready to snap gum,
spit, snap us in half with splintered

Louisville Sluggers. Inside — Zelda
and goblins and magic wing-ed fairies.
Enemies you could throw a pot at,
stab twice, and they’d implode and disappear.

10 years later, we’re split
and scattered, half college drop-outs,
Soju drunk, stumbling,
and I recall how we once fought

to keep alive, counting our hearts,
freezing time to gulp Coke, taking turns
to save each other, anything, anything!
To beat them at their game.

Back then, we never gave up,
never walked away —

if the light wouldn’t bling on,
we’d check the plug, blow into the cartridge,
clean out the dust, bang that sucker on any flat surface —

give a small push, close the door, and pray.

Park’s first book of poetry, The Temperature of This Water, was published in August 2003.
[ via hello, nintendo ]

Updates on what’s been going on with me lately, in bullet form because I am too lazy/tired to write real paragraphs just now:

1. I am not dead. Yayy! Regular posting resumes today.
2. My fifth and hopefully final semester at ITP has begun. I’m doing my thesis with Kathy Wilson as my adviser and taking two classes besides that, Social Software with Clay Shirky and Game Design with Frank Lantz (yes, same guy but different class from the one that spawned super nerd meme Pacmanhattan last semester). The two classes are great and feed perfectly into my thesis, which is fantastic luck.
3. Like all the other cool kids, I’ve been moblogging with good ol’ Flickr. I’ll be integrating my photostream on here sometime in the near future.
4. I’ve been getting sideblog envy as of late, so as soon as I decide between using MT or del.icio.us to power it (mainly I have to figure out if I want to have comments for it or not), it will be up.
5. I could never bring myself to use categories on this blog, but I’ve been getting into the use of tags because of Flickr and del.icio.us and will probably be giving Cal Henderson’s MT 3 tags plugin a spin. Anyone installed this or seen it implemented anywhere?
6. Jarvis was Dogster’s dog of the day on Tuesday!
   

I had no idea until I read Tom Selleck’s IMDB bio this afternoon that he was George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s first choice to play Indiana Jones, only he’d just been signed to Magnum PI and the series producers wouldn’t let him do it and so it went to Harrison Ford instead. Crazy!
Anyway, as we all know, Magnum PI took off in a very big way and soon enough Warner Bros took notice and gave Selleck the lead in an Indy-style movie, High Road to China. TheRaider.net seems to think pretty highly of it, but alas, it’s out of print and barely available on VHS.
Tom Selleck’s a member of and did an ad for the National Rifle Association. Rosie O’Donnell had him on her show to debate gun laws and it didn’t go very well. Cigar Afficionado had him on their cover and did a great interview with him about cigars, his libertarianism, and the strangeness of his career. He did a Celebrity Secrets skit for Late Night With Conan O’Brien a while back, it was okay but not half as funny as, um, Harrison Ford’s, Patrick Stewart’s or George Takei’s.
Also, those of you who are my age or older probably remember the Magnum PI theme as being totally kick ass. I couldn’t find an mp3 of it, alas but this midi version still rocks pretty hard. The Magnum PI theme, like many of the best TV theme songs ever written, was the work of composer Mike Post. Some of my favorites of his are the themes to Law & Order (my current ringtone; but who knows if he was responsible for the Chung! Chung!?), CHiPs, The A Team, LA Law, Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue and the most recent incarnation of Dragnet. Post played guitar on Sonny & Cher’s I Got You, Babe, has five Grammys, and his song for Greatest American Hero is one of only a handful of TV themes to ever hit the top of the pop charts.

Makiko Itoh’s gyoza post is fantastic, especially this bit:

My family has deep emotional ties to the gyoza. My sister Mayumi loved gyoza when she was a teenager. While her schoolmates put little Hello Kitty dolls and such on their school bags, she made a felt gyoza dumpling and hung that from the handle of her bag. I didn’t go that far, but I’ve always loved this little meat-and-vegetable filled dumpling.

Her family sound just like my kind of people! If I was the crafty sort I would make felt soup dumplings for all my friends.
I haven’t had great gyoza since moving to New York (a tragedy, I know—any pointers to tasty gyoza here would be much appreciated) but Alaina mentioned two of my favorite NYC dumpling places, Mandoo and Grand Sichuan International, in her NYC Eats does dumplings round up last year.
In conclusion: dumplings = happy belly. Have some with people you love!

Linguist Amy Perfors, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, posted photos of men and women on the U.S. Web site “Hot or Not,” which lets viewers rate pictures according to how attractive they find them.

When she posted the same pictures with different names, she found that the attractiveness scores went up and down depending on the vowels, the London-based magazine New Scientist reported.

Men with “front vowels” in their names—sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the “a” in Matt—were considered sexier than men with “back vowel” sounds like the “au” in Paul, she concluded.

I know we all love science, so let’s try a little experiment, shall we?
Do we really think Matt

is hottter than Paul?

My friends, the decision is in your hands. Vote once, and vote wisely!