YeinJee's Asian Journal

Meet Sorrawee Nattee, 20, a university student who was crowned the 12th Miss Tiffany’s Universe in Pattaya, Thailand, on May 16.

The Miss Tiffany’s Universe is an annual beauty contest for Thai transvestites which is broadcast live on National Thai television with an average of 15 million viewers.

The event aims to promote Pattaya as a major tourist destination as well as promoting a positive transvestite image to the local and international public.

Thailand is probably the most social tolerable nation towards transvestites (albeit not legally). I don’t think there’s any other country that came close to being as acceptance as the Thais in this matter.

Japanese horror story writer Koji Suzuki has teamed up with Hayashi Paper to publish his latest work, “Drop”, on toilet papers.

Suzuki is famed for horror stories like “Ring” and “Dark Water” which were adapted into Japanese and Hollywood films.

Drop is set in a public restroom; the story uses up about three feet of a roll and can be read in just a few minutes. The paper roll sells for 210 yen ($2.20 USD) apiece [via Brb]

Printing on toilet papers is nothing new in Japan, but it’s probably a first for horror story. It could prove an unexpected hit with constipation a common issue among Japanese; it might just scare the shit out of the folks.

A Japanese farmer has ‘found’ a 56-leaf clover on May 10. The discovery wasn’t mere luck though; Shigeo Obara from Hanamaki, Iwate, has been conducting research on clovers for over 50 years.

Obara will apply for a new Guinness World Record for the most leaves on a clover stem, currently held by none other than Obara himself since 2002. He also made headlines last year with a 21-leaf clover which he didn’t apply for a record.

Meanwhile, a pair of Yubari melons were auctioned for 500,000 yen (US$5,200) at Sapporo Central Wholesale Market… seems expensive, but it’s far below the record 2.5 million yen fetched in 2008 or the previous record of 2 million yen in 2007.

Yubari melons are popular summer gifts in Japan; buyers would flock to the market for the prestige of winning the very first melons of the year.

Yubari official Kaoru Hirano seems happy with the deflated price though, saying that the previous records were giving misconception that the Yubari melons were too expensive for average folks.

[clover image from Kyodo][melon news via MSNBC]

Eating beer cans, swallowing swords, wielding light saber, lesbian kiss, fire show, wacky performance, loud music, booze, dance, girls… that’s what you are going to see from the below video… [by ronindave@youtube, via Japundit]

Founded in October 2005 by ex-French drag queen Adrien Le Danois, Tokyo Decadance had the goal to mix all the most creative, flashy, crazy, exaggerated, extreme, bizarre styles of the Tokyo streets.

The event is now the rendezvous of gothic, cyberpunk, fetish, manga heroine, lolitas, yamanbas, ko gyaru, drag queen, punk, Tokyo jet-set, partymonsters, and also salaryman and ‘normal people’.

The wild party is occasionally on tour in some European cities beside the monthly show in Japan [check out Decadance' Myspace]

Statue of Colonel Sanders, founder (and mascot?) of KFC franchise, gets a bit of fashion makeover in Japan; some are cool, but mostly bizarre…

Valentino Sanders? [photo by Patrick Bolduan]

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Mikoshi is a large portable shrine used in traditional Japanese festivals; but the folks at Akihabara, Japanese otaku centre, had different ideas.

Instead of the traditional setup, the folks created a mikoshi in late April decorated with a PC, anime figurines, manga, video games and misc gadgets.

A mini-festival was then held with female cosplayers (mostly) parading the mikoshi to “drive away the economic downturn and unpleasant incidents.”

Video from Asahi [Jp] below, pics available on Mainichi…

City of Kuala Lumpur in 1961. Video by Michael Rogge, (former) banker and cinematographer from Netherlands who was stationed in Asia in 1950s…

There’s a huge video collection of Rogge during his stay in Japan and Hong Kong from 1949 to 1961, which I absolutely adore… it’s a valuable cultural heritage imo. You can check all his works on his Youtube channel.

Bumped into this Korean restaurant last week by chance; was settling some stuff at a nearby bank and the restaurant was just a block away.

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