Welcome to my humble blog. I’m Alex, and Asia is my passion. I reside in Washington, D.C., but I have
spent a lot of time studying and working in Japan. Japan is my great passion, but Japan has
strong ties to the continent, and in learning about Japan I was drawn to the
rest of East Asia, in turn. I will write
about the links between the US and Asia through politics, alliances, culture
and trade. Together we will follow
current events, popular culture, history, and delve as deeply into the
significance of all of them as we can.
Asia is about as big as big gets, so
I realize that saying “Asia is my passion” is pretty vague. But I am completely serious. I love Asia in all its incredible diversity. If the twenty-first century is going to be the
Asia Century, the rest of us need to understand this vast, diverse, and, above
all, populous region. You can’t
pigeonhole 2 billion people. Please join
me, so that we can learn together.
Hi Alex - we chatted for an hour or so at a language exchange meetup in Ikebukuro last summer. I was the one with the feverish campaign strategy speculation: that indicating the New Deal as the brainchild of Marriner S. Eccles, a conservative Mormon banker and industrialist from Utah, might help swing that state's voters to Obama, who had the more New-Dealish stimulus policy of the two candidates. Moot, as it turned out - Romney killed in Utah, but lost too many other states.
ReplyDeleteYour blog name refers to this, I assume?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals
"Asia" is indeed a vague concept, a pretty eurocentric one. Even in talking about "the West", you're alluding to an "East" that's a lot more diverse. The longer I live in Japan, the more annoyed I get when someone asks me what it's like in Asia. I tell them, "I'm qualified to talk about 'Asia' the way an American who's lived only in London for the last 18 years is qualified to talk about something called 'Europe'."
But maybe my qualifications will broaden a little soon. Recently I'm going to Indonesia more often, a country might in itself be considered somewhat more diverse than Europe by some measures.
I encourage you to keep blogging. And to keep coming 'here.' Even though there's no 'here', here. ;-)
I'm remember you Mike. Thanks for dropping by. You are right, my blog title does refer to the Eight Immortals. It's poetic, don't you think?
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