Pitt student 2nd-best Yu-Gi-Oh player in the world.

Pitt student David Keener placed 2nd in the World Yu-Gi-Oh Game Championships in August. The final match is available on YouTube:

Chinese grandparent bobbleheads and maneki neko in Greenfield.

Asian knick-knacks at Beautiful World Variety Store in Greenfield, in Squirrel Hill Plaza at the corner of Murray and Hazelwood Aves (map). It's worth a visit if you're in the area, and has a mix of household stuff and Asian accessories, like those pictured, though it's the kind of place where you'll find neat, random stuff but probably won't fare well with a shopping list.

Documentary Somewhere Between at Pitt, September 16.

The documentary Somewhere Between, about Chinese adoptees in the United States, is finally coming to Pittsburgh with a September 16th screening at the University of Pittsburgh. Roger Ebert gave an overview of themes in a January 2013 review:

Four girls: each abandoned, each eventually adopted by an American family. Now they are teenagers in American suburbs, a world of minivans and school activities. Each is clearly confident enough to navigate her local terrain. Each is introspective about her roots, curious about her origins, though perhaps not so confident about meeting her birth family, should that possibility arise.

The movie explores the psychology of being immigrant in American society. The young women have that consciousness that minority status in America forces. Immigrants are simultaneously insiders and outsiders, always conscious of our identities. The sense of exile from all lands, living somewhere between this and that, is the norm. Many immigrants respond by trying to surrender everything that would be deemed “exotic,” whether it means overcompensation with language, makeup, or even surgery. These girls, however, seem exceptionally comfortable in their own skins. I suspect much of that has to do with the fact that their experience is an exponentially exaggerated version of the common immigrant experience. But, I suspect that just as much results from their adoptive parents' concerns in raising them. One mother learned Chinese, while all the parents seem to take their adoptive daughters back to China, almost annually.

Somewhere Between will be shown at 7:30 pm, September 16, in 1500 Posvar Hall (map) on the University of Pittsburgh campus. It's free, and include discussion from three speakers. See the flyer above for more on the screening, and the movie's official website for more on the documentary.

For a limited time, get 25% of Jeff Guerrero Ceramics offerings with the promo code 25OFF.



Stoneware mug.

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.