I'm sure my Asian readers will be more familiar with the sticker picture phenomenon that was so popular in the late 1990s to early 2000s. My friends and I always took sticker pictures when we got together, and traded them among ourselves like baseball cards. It was always fun to find a familiar face on someone's sticker picture collection, to exclaim, "I didn't know you know _____!" I used to collect all my sticker pictures in my planner, which I personalized and made pretty with tons of stickers and colored pens (decorating planners was another trend back then). Here's just one page out of the dozens I had in my planner: Slowly, the sticker picture fad died out and was soon replaced with...
Continue readingI still am astonished whenever I see little kids of grade school age sporting their own mobile phones. "Did I even have anyone to call at that age?" I ask myself. "Didn't I just go outside to play and expect to meet my friends there?" While I still think that allowing very young children their own cell phones may be overdoing it, I understand the need for safety precautions. As such, I can get on board with cell phones that are designed specifically for kids, like this one by the Japanese company KDDI. Mamorino is a cute, almost toy-like cell phone that has minimal functions that are limited to calls, E-mail, GPS and SECOM Rescue (which I believe to be similar to 911). Safety...
Continue readingCircle Lenses are special contact lenses that are designed to make the wearer's irises appear larger, creating a doe-eyed, anime-like appearance. Many in the western world first became acquainted with them when the NYTimes and The Inquisitr recently ran pieces warning consumers of their potential dangers. The fact of the matter is, Circle Lenses have been around in Asia for years now and are just as safe as regular contact lenses (provided that you purchase them from a reputable dealer). Just as long as you take care to clean and store them properly, do not wear them for extended periods of time, never wear them past their expiration dates, do not share them with friends, and wear the correct prescription strength (if needed)...
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Like Japan, Korea also has an obsession with blood typing. Celebrity profiles include blood types along with height, weight, and interests. Dating/matchmaking service questionnaires always include blood type as one of the first questions. Casual social interactions usually include the exchange of blood type information. And my mother about had a cow when she discovered that J does not know his blood type, and has been bugging us to get it checked ASAP. Blood typing has taken such a strong hold on society that they will prescribe diets, therapies, and even relationship advice based on your blood type! "Blood type horoscopes" are common features in media outlets, and employers may use blood type in hiring decisions. I personally don't take much stock...
Continue readingStudies have long shown that people of different cultures act differently, but a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that culture even affects our cognition. Take a look at the images above and try to interpret the overall emotion of the picture. Do your eyes linger on the center man in the foreground? Or do you consider the people in the background more? “North Americans try to identify the single important thing that is key to making a decision,” explains Dr. Takahiko Masuda, the study’s author, over the phone from his office at the University of Alberta. “In East Asia they really care about the context.” He studied the eye movement of Americans and Japanese when analyzing a picture...
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