This is so true it's sad.
I thought that lead photo was a bunch of people dancing for some marketing campaign. Then I realized it was Jason Statham doing ballet at gunpoint.
Because racecar.
Given how Americans pronounce Toyota, the second "t" is practically a "d", Toyoda would roll off the tongue a lot more easily for most Americans. I'm pretty sure that didn't even factor into the naming. But the rationale behind going with Toyota is pretty cool and that kind of thinking is quite common in Asia when creating identities.
This is the kind of stimulus spending Americans need. It actually address traffic concerns, provides new links and helps stimulate the local economy long after it's been built.
Instead, around here, an obscene amount of money has been spent on minor improvements to an existing highway. And the best part is how this project started with a repaving. That was then torn up, with newly painted lines scratched off so that the whole roadway could be shifted over 3-4ft. They then proceed to install new wooden guardrails that were selected more for visual appeal than effectiveness. And the final paving was a lumpy, inconsistent mess. There are even stretches where the lines wander around like the driver was drunk or not paying attention. On top of that the money all went into the pockets of a construction company that already gets plenty of business from the state and this work has added nothing whatsoever to the region.
The article has photos of the roadway over the bridge. It's incredible how smooth and neat it looks. I think kind of quality is pretty much unheard of here. That same bridge in the US would cost at least twice as much, take 3 times as long to build and would come out a total mess. They actually managed to build the bridge below cost!
And that bridge doesn't go "nowhere". The Bloomberg article specifically states that the bridge was build to address population growth. Tokyo's suburbs have been seeing massive growth; the 3 fastest growing prefectures are all in the greater Tokyo region, also stated in the article.
These guys aren't right-wing so much as straight up racist. Right-wing is fundamentally a political ideology, and is not racially motivated. Left-wing governments can also be racist, i.e. Nazi Germany. A lot of the policies they'd support would be considered left-wing.
These guys basically drive around spewing crap about how great WW2 imperialist Japan, how pure the Japanese people are and how Japan's recession is the fault of foreigners and how they should all leave the country. I've also heard stories of those guys attacking foreigners, but I don't think it's nearly as prevalent as what you'll find in South Korea.
Japanese have a distinct tendency to claim guys like these are not really Japanese merely because it makes them uncomfortable. Kind of like the Japanese minor celebrity who recently attacked a taxi driver in Taiwan who a lot of Japanese are now claiming is not really Japanese.
One time, late at night, I was walking along a rail line through a small patch of farm land outside of Yokohama when I came across one of these vans. I decided it was a safe bet to take the long way home.
The camo paint scheme speakes to a military fetish, so what's with the peace sign?
I see the shit show continues inside.
I'm pretty sure that step is being used as an aerodynamic element to increase downforce. They wouldn't just throw in something like that for the hell of it.
I like the photo for #5. Miatas doing NASCAR. It's kind of cute.
You're going to need the extra room if you expect to have relations.
I actually played that damn game as a kid on my parent's PCjr.
It's not surprising. A lot of people who exercise intensely pretty much are addicted to it. I've known people who've had their significant others leave them because of it.
It's not really all that hard for a halfway decent looking girl to garner a little bit of fame in Asia:
1) Make sure you have a few friends in the entertainment industry.
2) Bare a bit of skin.
2.b) Bonus points for pandering to whatever it is guys like to do.
4) PROFIT
1) Make sure you have a few friends in the entertainment industry.
2) Bare a bit of skin.
2.b) Bonus points for pandering to whatever it is guys like to do.
4) PROFIT
I can't count the number of total untalented non-entities out there I've seen who have managed have a following. Kind of like that half-Japanese hack, Makiyo, who just recently helped beat up a taxi driver in Taiwan.
Very enjoyable... Unfortunately, there are a lot of assholes out there who think this is the way to impress a girl. If anything, in most cases this is a surefire way to not get laid.
I designed these and have a stack in my car.
It actually worked once. This guy liked to park his SUV across two spots and after I left the note he stopped doing it.
Then there was the guy with the Aston Martin Vantage V8 who always did the same thing. I also left that on his windshield. This guy actually got pissed enough that he nailed a note to the tree in front of where he had parked. He went on about assholes like me parking too close to his car and how he just got it back from the shop specifically to repair door dings.
If he's that worried about it perhaps he shouldn't drive his car. There are a lot of inconsiderate idiots out there who just fling their door open but that's not a justification to park like a dick. Park in the corner of the lot, like I do. And just accept that shit happens. If you can afford a $200k car you can afford to deal with door dings.
I think a video of the Audi R18 would probably be more effective.
Ahh... Taiwan. That explains why the girls were so cute, albeit a bit too thin.
The is a good game, I just wish they had put a bit more effort into improving the graphics for the iPad. They obviously just resized the DS graphics. It's a bit jarring to have clean cutscene graphics and then the in-game graphics look so badly pixelated.
That first photo made me think I was looking at a Mini. But it is a very cool-looking car. The Koreans are dead set on overtaking the Japanese. It goes to show what a bit of national pride will do for you.
The funny thing is that where Kia's styling is full of win, Hyundai's is currently non-stop fail. But at least I'll give them credit for trying really hard.
Americans will never embrace Formula 1 for two reasons. The first has to do with how Americans enjoy sports and the second has to do with advertisers.
Americans love deliberate, plodding sports where there is time to review and analyze. There's a frantic spurt of action, then gameplay stops as players reset. In the meantime commentators analyze what just happened in unnecessarily excruciating detail, routinely stating the obvious. Granted basketball and hockey buck that trend to a limited extent with more flowing gameplay. But even those sports are chopped up into digestible chunks.
NASCAR follows the same vein in that it's very easy to follow the action. And when there's a caution, which happens routinely, commentators are free to beat to death the last few laps, or big crashes.
This brings me to the second aspect of NASCAR and American sports. American sports are very easy to chop up in a manner that is extremely convenient for advertisers. When cars are speeding around a track, turning in the same direction, lap after lap, the chances of missing something important during a commercial break is slim. Especially, during a caution. The second aspect that appeals to advertisers is that those stock cars are pretty much static billboards as the camera is tracking them. It's great, persistent advertising real estate.
Formula 1, kind of like soccer, is frenetic. Sure, there are long dry stretches, but their unpredictable nature makes the chances of something crucial happening during a break quite high. I've seen races and games numerous times where the commentators had to recap something that happened during a break.
The American commercial model just doesn't fit with something like Formula 1. They'd have to be willing to squeeze all their commercials into far fewer breaks, and mostly before or after the event. That is unlikely to go over well as it makes it easy for a view to tune it out.
The second problem is that those cars are too damn fast, and constantly shifting around the screen. Not really the most reliable place to run advertising, at least not compared to Nascar.
I do think there's a big enough market for Formula 1 in the states to make it viable. Especially if it were promoted as strongly as any of the other sports. But then corporations keep presenting it as something foreign and unapproachable and decidedly un-American. It's not surprisingly, they're not going to push something that doesn't give them the biggest bang for the buck.
I also think American sports tend to allow for a lot more showboating, but that might just be me.
