As several of our devoted readers pointed out on my facebook page recently, the LA Dodgers are making a much-anticipated trip to Taiwan to play an exhibition series against the CPBL’s finest.

There has been speculation as to which members of the Dodgers will come exactly.  Many out here are skeptical that they’ll bring their A-team. And with good reason:  It’s a long, arduous trip over, at least 18 hours door to door.  People eat weird stuff here, like sow’s ear, innards, fish eyes.  Language difficulties.

But fear not Dodgers:  There are western restaurants everywhere in Taiwan, top notch quality service at world class hotels, and a feature of Taiwan that should be the kicker:  KTV girls.

So here’s my plea to Manny, Kemp, Torre and company:  Before you scoff at heading over to Formosa, take a look at what you’ll miss out on after you drub a team you should beat even with severe jetlag play your well-contested match against Taiwan’s few remaining greatest non-suspended pros. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I have a VIP pass to the event.  Honest.

But the fact that it’s coming to Korea seems a little noteworthy and interesting. Seems like something Korean guys would dig. I’m sure they’ll be some racing model girls on hand if they aren’t busy playing pool.

It’s happening in Yeongam, which is in South Jeolla province, where Mayor Brian lives. On the surface one wouldn’t think Formula One would appeal to collectivist thinking, but like they say…you have to break a few Formula One cars to make an omelet. Or something like that.

A brief break from baseball news to bring you an art history moment: Japanese Shunga are erotic ukiyo e paintings, usually found in woodblock format. Inspired by Chinese medical manuals, Japanese Shunga date back to the Heian period (794-1185) but had their artistic apex during the Edo period (1603 – 1867). The later Meiji period brought Westerners to Japan, and with them the camera, leading to higher quality erotic images that shunga just couldn’t compete with (NSFW).

For more info, keep reading here. For a gallery, go here. Two NFSW examples after the jump.

This reminds me of one of my all time favorite EWC posts about Jose Lima secretly perving out on some Kia cheerleaders as they dance atop the dugout. Karim Garcia isn’t being so discreet as he ogles at some ceremonial bat girls in Busan, but this is nearly as funny.

You can find the entire photo essay here, but I’m attaching a couple of my favorites below, one of which isn’t entirely SFW.

And once it’s all over, all you’re left with is…

One of the great joys when the international scouting directors come into town are the inevitable trips to TGI Fridays–the scouting mecca in Asia–for some shop talk over a three-for-all and a mocha mud pie. And as a recent “article” in Korea’s Naver shows us, Friday’s mania has now extended into Korea.

Looks like our lovely cheerleader after the jump just may have had a sumptuous Roasted Red Pepper Sausage Penne or two too many during her baseball career. And the photo after that shows us that Friday’s is great not just for Tigers, but for Lions as well. Samsung Lions, that is. (NOT safe for work).

How does a Jack Daniels Burger sound right about now? Grrrrrrrreat!!!!

Friday’s…….Outrageous!!!!

Ok, I have to admit — the 2ne1 (pronounced “twenty one”) group I bagged on a week or so ago is starting to get into my head a little. I was at a Wa Bar with my wife the other night and I did one of those –hey, this is kind of good…who is this?– deals where you vaguely recognize a song, kind of like it, and then turn to find it’s something you’ve already trashed on your Asian baseball blog? Damn. 

I think once you do that, once your heart tells you a song is pretty good, it’s a little false to turn back on that. I’m trapped. I like the song, ok? I even considered asking my wife to help me download it for my ring tone. Damn.

Funny though, at the War Bar they played the video for Fire, the song in question. I remembered reading and seeing some photos from a while back that a Korean girl group had ripped off some images from a M.I.A.’s “Jimmy” video. I dunno, what do you think?

That would be M.I.A., who is Sri Lankan, at bottom. Still, I doubt M.I.A. and 2ne1 are the first artists to put a Hindu goddess in their video. Although…. check out the photos at the bottom of this reel. I won’t try to defend that one. 

The group apparently got a write up on Prez Hilton, who I think Jackson mentioned as a big blogging influence at one point or another, and have released both Street and Space versions of the song. Trip out. P.S.: the Space version is the video that rips off M.I.A.

Personally, I’m most interested in the story of member Sandra Park, who has her own Wikipedia page. Apparently she’s from Busan, but her family moved to the Philippines when she was young. She became a minor TV star there, and even appeared on a show where she pretends to be married to someone (note: while that sounds dumb and weird, this format is currently very popular in Asia). That’s stirred up a little controversy in Korea due to some photos of her in bed with a Filipino guy. Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as this photo layout she did for Uno, which looks to be a kind of Filipino version of FHM. Word. Again, and I feel I always have to say this with Korean female pop stars — here’s to hoping she’s not getting whored out to CEOs, their sons, entertainment managers, and other rich guys all over Korea.

Fire is currently No. 3 on the Korean pop charts, behind 2 a.m.’s ” A Friend’s Confession” and 2 p.m.’s “Again and Again.” So the chart looks something like this:

1. 2 p.m.

2. 2 a.m.

3. 2ne1

That’s some sick shit. Word.

Guess what? It worked!

I happened to walk into the room as my wife was watching this next one — a very pro-wrestling style introduction of a new group called 2NE1. When I saw this I couldn’t help just bursting into laughter. I realize this is Korean pop music and shouldn’t be judged too harshly for what is. But then again, I’m not judging it. I just thought it was hilarious. Hopefully these girls aren’t already being whored out to CEOs and government officials — because this ride won’t last past July. 

The real fun starts at 0:14.

Both via PopSeoul.

While Naked News plans its inaugural Naked News Awards for later this month, the company is quietly gearing up to roll out a South Korean version of its program.

Friends of mine in the states don’t believe me when I tell them porn is illegal in South Korea. Especially given the fact that you can go to the barber shop down the street and get a hand job. No, Naked News(link NSFW) isn’t really porn, but it’s still surprising. Naked News doesn’t really appeal to me outside of the naked part. News doesn’t strike me as erotic. Still, for $10 a month…hmm.

Naked News, which launched in 1999 and includes all-nude news, sports and entertainment, is available on the web and on mobile devices, as well as in North American via iNDEMAND, TVN, Bell ExpressVu. Daily programming on the web starts at $9.95 a month.

The company already has versions in Spain, Italy and Japan.

May I suggest Song Jung-min? She’s a newsy type in need of a job.

I know that if you’re like me, today after watching your roto team sink to abysmal new depths, you were thinking “I wonder who the most beautiful Taiwanese celebrities in the world are”.  Well, lucky for us a blogger named Fiji has provided us with a post entitled “Top Most Beautiful Taiwanese Girls“.  [Warning: link contains photos of females and too many superlative adjectives].

I’ll bet none of you have ever met a woman named ‘Deserts’ before.  Well, now you’ve seen one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrwE1a-Hfrw

Oh, fecundity.

The tabloid applies the term “camp followers” to predatory women who travel to the southern chain of islands for the purpose of seducing pro baseball players. They are apparently not ravishing beauties, but rather fairly ordinary types who at first glance appear to be vacationing office ladies.

What, Japanese office ladies can’t be ravishing beauties?

Hanging out at a roadside snack establishments that can be commonly found in Okinawa’s rural towns, they spot players and set themselves up for seduction. One dependable technique is to reach over and grope the man’s groin while the two share a taxi.

Once the player falls into their trap, they will approach a team representative and demand several million yen to keep the scandal out of the sports tabloids. In many cases though, they are persuaded to settle for half a million yen in hush money.

Hopefully no one from SK got caught up in this during their training in Okinawa. In fact, if I’m not mistaken a couple of the Korean high school teams had winter camp down there. I’d hate to see a redux of what happened in China. 

From The Tokyo Reporter. Thanks to Cyrus, my friend and future cousin by marriage for passing this along.

Ok, evidence. Pushing Chinese officials to the edge of their patience (and chairs) are a round of photos featuring Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and her fiancé Vivi Nevo on a beach. Ziyi is famous for her roles in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Rush Hour 2 and Memoirs of a Geisha, and was just recently named Most Beautiful Person in China for 2008 by the Bejing News.

Now, if you’re one of these people in a NSFW predicament and were offended by Jackson’s recent New Year’s Day blessing, please, don’t even click over to the next page. Just get up, go to the break room, get yourself your cool drink of choice and stare out the window for 5 or 10 minutes. 

Why? Because if you were offended by that you might be offended by this photo of Ziyi in a bikini on the beach. And if that kind of thing bothers you, then you definitely won’t want to see the photo of her top coming off, or the topless photo of her getting ready to stretch on her beach towel, the photo of her fiance sliding his hand down the back of her pants, the photo of him burying his nose in her buttocks, or the photo of her sunning on her back once they’re done.

These photos are disappearing off Chinese message boards faster than you can say 100 Flowers. Go to Danwei for what I’m sure will be some very legit coverage of what could become a firestorm. 

Thanks to SeoulSteves for linking to this in his google reader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApuszuPBKwo

I can’t believe it took me 33 years to catch on to this, but this weekend I was in a hotel with the fam and we stumbled across Japanese Women’s Extreme Pro wrestling on TV. This is more or less a must see if you haven’t seen it before.

Another facet of Japanese TV life that I discovered, completely and totally by accident, was “Japan Cosplay Wrestling“, which is something that no self-respecting person should watch. Especially those who work or live in environments where it’s frowned upon to watch women wearing schoolgirl costumes pummeling the daylights out of each other.

I don’t know about you, but Yu Darvish’s life is just like mine.  Rock star looks, stretch Hummer limos, a signature line of cologne, being trailed daily by insatiable mobs of young female fans.  For those of you with too much free time on your hands today who want to peer just a little bit deeper into the charmed life of Darvish, here’s his wife Saeko’s blog, sent in by a reader.  It goes well with his own personal blog.

Aaron swears he sees an Outback Steakhouse in the background of one of those photos.   You be the judge.

We at EWC would like to wish a happy Thanksgiving to all of our stateside readers and your families.

In the spirit of the holiday, I think it’s only right that we list the things we’re thankful for. I’ll go first: My lovely wife and daughter, working for the Twins, Obama, family and friends, Reon Kadena (NSFW), living in Asia, Vietnamese food, EWC, not having my organs harvested, the Twins having a bad-ass rotation going into ‘09, the community of readers at EWC we’ve built up, sashimi and beer.

Ok, who’s next…

Lee Hyo-ri is so overexposed in Korea right now…I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m almost tired of looking at her. Others living here are already to this point. On any typical weekend you’ll find two or three different shows — simply featuring her traipsing around the countryside…going to great lengths to show that she’s real, to such an extent that I’m absolutely certain she is not.

But put her in London and do a fashion photo shoot? I’m disarmed. I have no ability to withstand, even at the risk of bumming out both the peeps looking for baseball info AND everyone in Korea. Combine this with the fact I downloaded and have been listening to The Smiths this week. I know, folks. This is ugly. I can’t help it. If you don’t like it just turn down your speakers, turn your head away and don’t judge EWC too harshly.

It’s unknown around here, but I lived/stayed in London for about six months back in the early part of the decade. My friend Kim moved there after grad school and I’d been doing my best to find a place in Europe to crash land after quitting my job at the newspaper I worked for. The timing was right so I helped find Kim a place to live, found a nice corner of the dirty floor of her flat near Finsbury Park Station, and then tried my best not to spend money. P.S. That’s kind of hard to do in London.

Soundtrack

It turns out the flat wasn’t far from the North London Central Mosque, which is where Al Qaeda operatives including “shoebomber” Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui attended service. In 2002 it was reported that AK-47 training had taken place inside the building, probably while I lived around there. I remember a couple bomb threats at the Finsbury Park Station, but I had no idea what Al Qaeda was at the time (this is around Feb. 2001). I believe I thought the mosque was a church.

Anyway…not sure how I ended up talking about Al Qaeda while writing a post about Lee Hyo-ri doing a fashion shoot in London. Don’t invite me to your next cocktail party. This next photo isn’t great, but I like the shopping cart (I believe that’s from Sainsbury, kind of a British Safeway) with the little boom box. 

I’m not a big fan of Hyori’s music, but she’s got a great smile and has really managed to qualify as sexy (by Korean standards), but also has an image grandparents can enjoy. That’s a very thin line to walk in Korea, but Hyori manages to do it. Thanks to PopSeoul for the photos.

We’ve been at this EWC thing for a year and change now. and it’s been a gleeful ride so far.   Aside from a few near mind bending homicidal spats minor disagreements, Aaron and I have gotten along famously, and we’ve been slowly moving towards finding our own voice/niche/stride/[insert synonym here] as writers and editors.

However, on this grand day of exercising the greatest democratic freedom in the U.S.,   we’ve decided to turn the floor over to you, our great readers, to see how we at EWC can better suit your internet reading needs.   We’re asking readers to weigh in with some suggestions about our site.   What works?   What would you like to see more of?   What improvements can be made?   Format? Content?

Or, put another way, we’d like to one day like to make a grand living at this, and we’re trying to best understand how to make our site grow so that we can bring you, our valued readers, the highest quality in EWC content while we hang out in VIP rooms sipping Moet with supermodels.

Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section, or if you wish to suggest something privately (no more of these stupid $%&^#*$ polls, for example), feel free to email it to eastwindupchronicle@gmail.com.

New evidence of match fixing has emerged in the latest CPBL scandal, as 14 players–including six foreigners–have now been implicated. (The link for some reason only bothered to mention the foreigners involved).

The scandal has already caused one of the leagues six teams–the now defunct D Media T-Rex–to fold, and now involves Chinatrust Whales players as well.

In other news, the wheel is round, water is wet, Bai Xin Hui isn’t all that bad looking, and this guy Yu Darvish is supposedly pretty good.

Fret not Aaron, there’s always Reon Kadena bouncing up and down gleefully on a giant rubber ball (NSFW).

I guess this sort of controversy is nothing new in the silly world  of beauty pageants, but I found the news that Miss Korea runner-up (Kim Hee-kyeong) had her status stripped due to her having posed in lingerie and semi-nude poses prior to the competition, a little surprising.

The crazy thing is, it’s being reported that the judges knew of the photos prior to the pageant judges making her “runner up.” Huh?

For as long as I could stand it, I watched the pageant with my wife. About 10 minutes. But the finalists were, frankly, not worthy of being called the most beautiful women in Korea.  Of course there’s more to it than being beautiful, and in a society as self-conscious and beauty obsessed as Korea, I’m sure there’s some straight up weirdness that goes into  the judging. But really….check out the winner.

Anyway, this decision to strip the runner up of her prestigious status is very questionable. I think a full examination of the risque photos is in order. Here’s a video report on the controversy and here are several other examples 1, 2, 3, and 4