The first ever Japanese friend I made was from Fukuoka. We both love anime and games so we hit it off and I remember talking about so many things. He told me about karashi mentaiko (spicy pollack roe) and where Hakata ramen, a popular dish in Hong Kong too, was originally from. This was at the moment where Hong Kong's collective attention had turned from Japan as a country to the individual regions of Japan. I had already been to Tokyo and Osaka so Fukuoka was next up. I started gathering information. That's when I found asianbeat.

It had info on games and anime of course, but also recent Japanese culture so I just lost track of time reading it. I especially liked the “Robin's Hong Kong Report” that introduced aspects of Hong Kong. I thought maybe if a person from Hong Kong who could speak Japanese produced one for Japanese people we'd know each other better.

As Japanese people well know, there are currently large scale protests for democracy taking place in Hong Kong. At the protest sites there are many political slogans and posters hung in the area but alongside this there are also many parodies of Japanese anime and comic books. Young people in Hong Kong have taken on Japanese pop culture and assimilated it with expressive aspects by means of craft, society and art. Japanese pop culture doesn't stop at merely “watching”, “listening” or “taking part” as a form of entertainment. It extends around the world as a shared building block for others.

This fact owes a lot to asianbeat and other global tools that allowed the trend of sending and sharing information around the world to happen. I hope asianbeat can be the spring that gives rise to a wave of communication and action between Japan and asia.