New list of songs for Oakland's K-Box.

K-Box, Pittsburgh's only Asian-style KTV / karaoke / カラオケ / 노래방 / singing room, released its updated song database, which now includes: 70,000 Chinese songs; 26,000 Japanese songs; 13,000 English songs; and 8,000 Korean songs. K-Box is located at 214 S. Craig Street (map) in Oakland, and hours and rates are listed online.

One big complaint when it opened was the limited selection of non-Chinese songs, but it added 8,000 Korean songs in May and in July asked its customers to suggest the Japanese songs that would be included in its library.

Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster (一代宗師) at the Waterfront from August 30.

Wong Kar Wai's latest film The Grandmaster (一代宗師) opens nationwide throughout the US tomorrow, August 30, and will play locally at the AMC Loews in the Waterfront (map). Starring Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi, the New York Times wrote last week it's

a hypnotically beautiful dream from the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, opens with curls of smoke, eddies of water and men soaring and flying across the frame as effortlessly as silk ribbons. The men are warriors, street fighters with furious fists and winged feet, who have massed together on a dark, rainy night to take on Ip Man (Tony Leung), a still figure in a long coat and an elegant white hat. Even amid the violent whirlpools of rain and bodies, that hat never leaves his head. It’s as unyielding as its owner.

Tony Normon writes today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Zhang Ziyi's performance was "so luminous that I considered myself lucky to be alive to enjoy [it]."

Showtimes for Friday are ‎1:30,‎ ‎4:45,‎ ‎7:45‎, and ‎10:45pm‎. An earlier version of this post said the nearest The Grandmaster would come to Pittsburgh was Cleveland Heights, because as of Thursday afternoon the Waterfront's theater information was not updated and instead linked to an Indian movie called "Grand Master".

Blurriecon, an "anime, gaming, new media, and Japanese culture con" in Erie, September 20 - 22.

The Erie Anime Experience shares information about Blurriecon,

an anime, gaming, new media, and Japanese culture con taking place in Erie, Pennsylvania on September 20, 21, and 22, 2013. The location is the Reed Student Union of Behrend College, 4701 College Drive, Erie, Pennsylvania, 16563. Events include live music by the Waddledees, video gaming of all eras, an anime dance party, cosplay masquerade, geekpop karaoke, drawing, crafting, fan-run panels and more! Our focus is on creativity and participation. Passes are available at the door...$10 per day ($5 with Behrend student ID), $20 all weekend ($10 with Behrend ID).

Mooncakes at Squirrel Hill's Dobra Tea.

Dobra Tea in Squirrel Hill (map) will offer mooncakes in September, the month of the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated in China and elsewhere in Asia.

Jero's Pittsburgh hat.

Found while looking for something else, here's a hat sold in Japan a few years ago and modeled by Jero, the Pittsburgh native and 2003 Pitt graduate who has found fame as an enka singer. A limited selection of sizes is available from Cap Collector for a day's pay.

Pitt had as many Japanese as New Yorkers in 1896.

The University of Pittsburgh kindly scanned millions of pages worth of old documents and made the available online at Documenting Pitt. Flipping through them is a great way to spend a few months some time and learn a little about the international students at Pitt in the 19th and early-20th centuries.

The earliest record available of a Japanese student at what was then Western University of Pennsylvania is of two Japanese engineering students in 1893, Wahei Matsura and Saki Murayama. (The same year the school graduated its first African-American student, William Hunter Dammond.) There isn't a list of students by state and country of origin until the 1896 Catalogue of the Western University of Pennsylvania, which shows that one out of the 583 enrolled students was from Japan (the same as from Kentucky, New York, Germany, and Italy):



In 1916 an alumni directory was published, which lists alumni in alphabetical order and sorts them by country in another list. It includes 10 graduates from China, three from Japan, and one from Korea. Or, rather, one in Korea, as it's F.S. [Frederick Scheibler] Miller, a notable missionary and teacher there in the early-20th century.

Another collection shows that the early Western University of Pennsylvania yearbooks are a little bit like the ones of today: padded in the back with shoutouts and inside jokes. A nicer example from 1921's The Owl:

Otakichi Tanaka
Nagasaki, Japan
One of our neighbors from across "the way." Doesn't say much, but is always listening and when you can get him to talk, he's the most entertaining boy around. Persevering, you ask? You'd think he was if you knew he attends both day and evening school, wouldn't you? Well, he does, and is just as big a booster for the Evening School as any member of it. We're proud to have him with us and happy that he picked Pitt to come to.

Chiharu Shiota at Mattress Factory satellite gallery from September 12.

"Stairway", from Chiharu Shiota's official website.

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota will have an exhibition at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory satellite gallery on Sampsonia Way from September 12 through July 31, 2014. The museum's website summarizes Shiota and "Traces of Memory":

Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood and dealing with anxiety. Shiota explores the relationship between waking life and memories through hauntingly beautiful installations that incorporate everyday objects like shoes, pianos and hospital beds encased in webs of yarn. Stretched in multi-layers in a gallery space, Shiota weaves disorienting cocoons of black yarn that reflect the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’.

The site-specific installation of new works by Shiota will fill the eight rooms in the building at 516 Sampsonia Way—a 19th-century row home with a storied past—which is suited to the artist’s work. Its interior is cosmetically untouched; the raw condition of the building lends itself well to reflections on the past and the conjuring of memories.

Pop City adds more:

Shiota, who has worked out of Berlin since 1996, came to Pittsburgh at the beginning of August and has been covering the interior of the building with more than a million feet of yarn.

“She’d never had that big of a space to work with before,” Vanim says. “It’s nice to work in a space that has a little more character and a little more history to it. She’s used to working with plain, white gallery space.”

The opening reception is on the 12th from 7 to 9 pm. The new gallery is located at 516 Sampsonia Way (map), a few houses down from the museum's main building and down the street from the City of Asylum.

Enter the Dragon in Oakmont, August 24 and 25.

Oakmont's The Oaks Theater (map) will show Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee's final movie, on August 24 and 25. The 1973 film is highly regarded and was added to the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2004.

Two dollars from every ticket sold on the 24th go to the Warrior Mike Project to provide financial assistance to a local man injured in swimming accident.

Conflict Kitchen is hiring.

Conflict Kitchen, the Oakland foodstand that serves food from nations with which the United States is in conflict, is hiring. From the website:

Employees need to be capable of both working in the kitchen as well as interacting with our customers on topics related to our focus country in the sales window and at our dinners. Employees must bring a keen interest in international politics and cultural relations. Our employees are the face of Conflict Kitchen, and their conversations with our guests are at the core of our mission. We expect our employees to be expert conversationalists, deeply versed in the culture and politics within our focus county. We also expect our employees to learn how to produce our cuisine in an efficient, consistent, and professional manner.

Those interested may submit a resume via the restaurant's website. It's currently serving Cuban food, and will debut its North Korean menu in October.

Dazzle Vision has Live from Pittsburgh CD.

Via the Dazzle Vision Facebook page.

Pretty old news by our standards, but Japanese metal band Dazzle Vision released Live from Pittsburgh on July 5, recorded in front of 1,100 at Pittsburgh's Tekkoshocon in April. It's $20 from JRockShop or $25 from YesAsia (which kicks back a little to this site). Video available for free on YouTube.


Display at Tower Records, via Dazzle Vision's blog.