Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Coffee culture isn’t just a Euro or American thing, it’s hit Japan for sure, but also Korea. Where tea is often thought of as the hot beverage of choice, it’s slowly being crept upon by coffee. Part of the thanks might be a TV show. Balita.com writes: “A wildly popular 2007 TV series called The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince, for example, has been widely credited for kickstarting the coffee craze in the country, as much of the drama unfolded in a coffee shop. The series was also dubbed over in Spanish and aired in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.” Korean American Coffee houses are already evident and growing. Shops are appearing in Los Angeles over the last year or two boasting hand crafted coffees. Meanwhile, there’s been more appearances of coffee in Korean dramas and the coffee consumption is growing.
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Satomi Ono’s story about her town, Kesennuma which is a name you often hear about when the Japanese disaster is brought up. It was destroyed. This is sort of like journal entries and her tale isn’t the worst since she wasn’t there, but it’s well told and talk about her friends and family and what they went through. It’s well written and she’s just trying to get the word out. (Statemanjournal – Satomi Ono)
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From a CNN post, they link to this tumblr page. It’s just photos of Kim Jong Il looking at things. Some of us (this tumblr user) will miss these pics. They are a bit odd, but then again, what else is a person going to do? Not look at things? (Tumblr – Kimjongillookingatthings)
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There’s no RIP for him.
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The Steve Jobs biography reportedly is having brisk sales in Japan, but the cover is causing some minorproblems with the nit picky Apple fans who are channeling the ultimate pickiness of Steve Jobs himself. Would Jobs approve a cover like this? The English version cover is much more stark and has a large photo of jobs with almost no text much like some of the Apple packaging. The Japan version does have two volumes hence the Roman “I”, which is often the case for huge books including Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 which appears as one volume in the US. The reason for the cover change includes a) a sign off from the Author, b) the fact that Steve Jobs by name may be known in Japan, but face perhaps not. (WSJ – Steve Jobs Book)
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