Photo of the Day (11.09.08)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Sorting through our pool today, I found my eye particularly attracted to this photo by jamescapstone. James was in Bangkok when he took this shot of a local temple. I love the perspective – by shooting this from down low, James was able to make the temple tower and stretch up above our field of view. It looks downright otherworldly doesn’t it? I’m curious if this is some kind of camera lens trick. Way to go James…thanks for the photo.

Have any amazing photos of temples in Thailand? Or even a cathedral in Corsica? Add them to the Gadling photo pool on Flickr. We might just pick it as our Photo of the Day.

South Korea’s first female pilots get their wings

by Karen Walrond on

Lest you think that President-Elect Barack Obama’s political win is the only milestone event celebrated in the world this week, think again: South Korea is celebrating its first two female civil aviation pilots.

Shin Soo-Jin, 39, and Hong Soo-In, 36, recently qualified to fly the B-737 airplane for Korean Air.

Said Shin of this achievement: “I’m glad that I’ve achieved my longtime dream. Just as we did, junior female pilot-hopefuls will have to undergo tough challenges. I believe in their capabilities.”

Congratulations to them both!

Sounds of Travel 5: One Night in Tokyo

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Here at Gadling we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each — maybe you’ll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you’ll think that they’re good songs. Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the comments below and we’ll post it at the end of the series.

WEEK 4: Colder – One Night In Tokyo

Japan has a reputation of creating bewilderment and a sense of wonder for visitors from the Western world. For anyone who has ever gotten lost in the “fiction” of Japan created by movies like Lost in Translation or anime series like Gundam, there is a perception created of a place that looks strangely familiar yet somehow slightly askew, like your friend was hiding around the corner, waiting to jump out and scare the crap out of you. You’re left constantly on edge, ready to be surprised, shocked and amused by a constant barrage of stimuli.

It was with these thoughts in mind as I landed in Tokyo for my first trip to Japan earlier this year. My home base for the next 10 days was a high rise in the Shinjuku neighborhood – a bustling, neon-lit business district in central Tokyo. As I unpacked my things in my room, I flipped on my iPod to a song by Colder, a French electronic artist known for his moody, atmospheric compositions, fittingly selecting one of my favorite tracks called “One Night in Tokyo.”

As the track slowly kicked in, I took in my surroundings. Dusk was beginning to settle over this massive metropolis. Thousands of office towers lay before me – giant monoliths of concrete and glass glistening quietly, silhouetted against the quickly darkening sky. Each pulsated at the top with the intermittent blink of tiny red light, creating a vision of thousands of tiny insects flashing alone in the dark, performing a giant light show for an unknown audience that rushed by, oblivious. The scene was punctuated by the clackety-clack of endless subway cars as they rumbled into the gigantic Shinjuku rail station down below.

“One Night in Tokyo” was the perfect complement to my overwhelming sense of vertigo at the scene before me. The song builds slowly, adding layer upon layer of warm keyboard synths, dub echoes and handclaps, while lead singer Marc Tan sings in a detached, mysterious monotone. The sound effects fade in and out of the song chaotically, much like the intermittent trains that pierced the silence of my quiet hotel room.

As isolating as this all may sound, One Night in Tokyo was absolutely perfect for setting the right Tokyo mood. It captured what I found so intriguing about Tokyo at night – the air feels thick with excitement and potential. The dark alleyways, the searing neon, the bustle and the activity all created a sense of mystery and excitement. There was a constant sense that at any moment I would be thrust into my own movie plot, filled with strange characters and shady villans darting onto subway platforms and down sidestreets.

My next 10 days in Japan presented me with an experience I will never forget. The Japan of reality is surprisingly not like the one portrayed in my imagination – in fact it’s far weirder. But for those first few hours in Tokyo, as the day began to dim and One Night in Tokyo slowly dissipated from my speakers, my fantasy vision of Japan was alive and well.

Click here for previous Sounds of Travel

Big in Japan: Woman arrested for murdering [virtual] husband

by Matthew Firestone on

Not sure if you caught this random bit of news last week, but a Japanese woman was arrested for the alleged [virtual] murder of her [virtual] husband…

Apparently, a 43-year old piano teacher from Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido was jailed after allegedly killing her virtual husband in a popular video game, and may face charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data.

According to police officers, the woman was furious at finding herself suddenly divorced in the online game MapleStory. She then proceeded to illegally access the log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character.

The woman was subsequently arrested at her home in Miyazaki, and then driven in a police car 620 miles (1,000 km) to Sapporo, where her [virtual] husband, a 33-year-old office worker, lives.

Believe it or not, the woman, if convicted, could face up to five years in prison, and a fine of up to $5,000. While Japan might look shiny and happy on the surface, the view is decidedly different in prison where forced labor and overcrowding are the norm rather than the exception.

Think about that the next time you try log-in to your friend’s account in World of Warcraft!

Here is a bit of background that might help you in understanding this random bit of weirdness from the Land of the Rising Sun:

MapleStory, a Korean-made online game, has grown in popularity around the world, particularly in Japan where it has attracted players of both sexes and all ages. The game centers on using your digital avatar to defeat monsters in a 2D world, but players can also actively engage in social activities and relationships, including marriage and divorce.

Confused? Yeah, I must confess that I am too! Anyway, as the story goes…

A Sapporo police official told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that the woman had used the man’s ID and password to log in to the game to carry out the virtual murder.

According the alleged [virtual] murderer: “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry!”

In a country where privacy is a highly valued commodity, digital crimes are certainly not taken lightly, especially when it relates to issues concerning identity theft. Of course, it’s kind of hard not to feel sorry for this heartbroken piano teacher, who most likely couldn’t have imagined that she’d be facing jail time for her ill actions.

After all, rejection, breaking up and divorce are hard on anyone in the real world, so it’s only logical that they carry with them their fair share of pain in the virtual world, right?

What do you think?

** All images displayed on this particular posting are copyrighted images of the online game MapleStory. They are presented here for the purposes of identification and/or critical commentary. They were originally sourced from the WikiCommons Media Project **

Big in Japan: Can’t get skinny? Eat slower!

by Matthew Firestone on

Your mother was right – it actually might be a good idea to chew your food 20 times before swallowing…

In a recently published study from Osaka University, researchers examined the eating habits of around 3,000 Japanese people, and found that eating too quickly may be enough to double your risk of being overweight.

On Monday, Big in Japan reported about the Morning Banana Diet, which has catapulted the humble banana into the latest ranks of fad foods. Of course, if you’re not particularly partial to this phallic fruit, fear not as deliberately slowing down at mealtimes might be enough to get your weight down.

According to the Osaka study, which was published in the venerable British Medical Journal (BMJ), obesity is partially caused by problems in signaling systems that tell the body when to stop eating. Furthermore, there appears to be a strong and measureable relationship between eating speed, feelings of fullness and obesity.

The study reported that just under half of the 3,000 volunteers told researchers that they tended to eat quickly or eat until they felt full. In this sample set, fast-eating men were 84% more likely to be overweight, while fast-eating women were twice as likely.

Food for thought, huh?

Need a few reasons to slow down and enjoy your food?

There is now an increasing body of scientific evidence to support the conclusion that eating fast could be bad for your weight. In fact, wolfing down your meal might actually interfere with a crucial signaling system that tells your brain to stop eating because your stomach is swelling up.

In other words, your stomach is a big balloon of an organ, which means that binge eating can cause you to – quite literally – overfill it!

Unfortunately, there are some seriously strong biological and evolutionary reasons why we display this troublesome behavior. Some anthropologists have concluded that we learn how to eat in this manner during infancy, and that this mechanism might have served us well in past times of famine. Medical researchers have also supported this claim, providing evidence that the way we eat seems to be formulated at a very early age.

According to Dr Jason Halford, Director of the Kissileff Human Ingestive Behaviour Laboratory at the University of Liverpool: “What the Japanese research shows is that individual differences in eating behavior underlie over-consumption of food and are linked to obesity. Other research has found evidence of this in childhood, suggesting that it could be inherited or learned at a very early age.”

Dr. Halford has stated that there is currently no evidence that trying to slow down mealtimes for children would have an impact on future obesity rates. However, this is not to say that parents shouldn’t take the time to set good examples for their children at the dinner table.

On the contrary, ‘slow-eating’ certainly increases the chances that your brain and your stomach will be in sync, and – at least in our humble opinion – food tastes a lot better if you take the time to properly chew it before swallowing.

Looks like our mothers were right all along!

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **