Global Voices Online

At E.L.H. Electric Lover Hinagiku, blogger y_arim reacts to a news article [ja] in Yomiuri shimbun reporting that popularity of the elderly in Japan is on the rise among young people [ja], writing that he's rarely seen news so gross. “At the heart of the grossness is the fact that this is spoken about just like any other trend,” he writes. “In other words, for young people ‘the elderly' are the same as tiramisu, tamagochi, and Yumi Adachi — [people] make a big deal about them and they have a boom for a little while, but they essentially end up being something completely trivial.”

Leocardo [pt] describes how the melamine crisis has changed some of the consumer habits in Macau. He inquired the owner of the family owned supermarket next to his home if she had noticed any differences. “She told she had, and some Portuguese products had registered a vertiginous rise in sales… Talking about prices, a package of Compal passion fruit juice cost 9.90 patacas before the “crisis”, and now costs 13.50. It is very natural.”

GV author Caroline blogs about her bike trip in Laos