Asian Sweetheart 2.0

“The photographers pose them in all sorts of awkward positions with their arms and legs bent in unattractive directions and tasteless low-angle shots.”

But doesn’t that make it artistic?

“The photographers pose them in all sorts of awkward positions with their arms and legs bent in unattractive directions and tasteless low-angle shots.”

Sounds like you saw the wrong pics, AS. The “tasteless low-angle shots” usually came from amateur photographers, or few professional photographers who dedicated their work to ERO contents (or erotic-related, but not porn). The famous models (similar to hi-so in Thai, like Aum) don’t do such pose and don’t involve in ERO projects. Also, the idea of the bent poses were probably came from the fact that some of Japanese models actually have quite flexible bodies. Many Japanese consider this trait to be unique and they like it, and usually exploit it for positive reasons.

“Then there are all those poses and videos where the ladies act childish and try to be cute”

This is some sort of culture, where the (Japanese) women are actually trying to look younger. During my time in Japan, I “interviewed” some of those women, and they confessed that they did that to give the feeling to themselves – and more importantly, to others – that they’re still young. You won’t believe that actually most Japanese women are older or much older than they look. I was suprised some of these women revealed that they’re actually in earlier 30, despite their 20-something look.

“Erica Sawagiri”

It’s Sawajiri Erika actually, with Sawajiri being the family name. It is written ?????, and I read it as Sawajiri Erika. I don’t know how the “Sawagiri” and the “Erica” part got thrown into the mix though. Maybe Westerners spell Japanese names differently. I was glad I’ve been in Japan for a long time so I know the exact spelling.

Yeah, the blog database needs to be converted to show non-English characters. I was going to do that but the last time I ran some plugin to modify database it messed everything up so I am afraid to try again. I want to type Thai sometimes but cannot.

The spelling of her name came from romanizing how it was spelled in Thai. So probably pretty messed up after going from Japanese to Thai to English. But it seems like a lot of people use that spelling because many searches turn up for it.

Family name goes first, but its not wrong to say it the other way around in a public forum, or blog like this one.

Especially where english is mostly spoken in. I doubt Japanese people are here reading this.

@Al

You misunderstood. I didn’t mention that it was wrong. In Western culture one’s name is written first name-surname, not otherwise, so for Western people it is not wrong to write it as “Erika Sawajiri”. But what I meant was the name is written surname-first name in Japanese (that’s why I tried to write it in Japanese, to show it so everyone can see, providing everyone understands Japanese, but unfortunately the characters didn’t show up correctly in AS’ blog).

What I was “talking” about was the pronounciation of her name. I just wanted to show that the name “Sawagiri” was probably came from English pronounciation of Japanese names. Westerners without Japanese skill probably think that “Ji” in Japanese names is written as “Gi”, as in “G.I. Joe” or “Gianna” which, in Japanese pronounciation, read as “Ji-Ai-Jo” and “Jiana”, respectively. I stated it as “incorrectly” because the actual spelling was “Sawajiri”, not “Sawagiri”, since it is important that the name “Sawajiri” is not to be confused with “Sawagiri”. Like I explained before, in many countries it’s probably not a big issue, since most people still think that “Sawagiri” and “Sawajiri” are the same name because they can’t read Japanese, or they probably think that “Gi” in Japanese is the same as “Ji”. But in Japanese, the character “Gi” and “Ji” are different. But as AS stated, even an incorrectly-spelled name could lead users to the real person, although you probably won’t have the same results if you’re trying to search it in Japanese websites. XD

It is very common for Asian names to be pronounced or written incorrectly in English, if the names are using non-Latin characters, like Japanese, Chinese or Thai. To avoid this, many Asians simply adopt English names, or “simplify” their name to something Western tongue can spell, although many Westernized Asian names have typos or are written incorrectly. XD

This is the same reason why a famous Korean actress Jeon Ji-Hyeon decided to change her name to “Gianna Jun”, a name she uses in Western entertainment industry, because Westerners will have troubles pronouncing or writing her actual Korean name which will result in people write her name incorrectly.

I wrote about this so that if others want to find Sawajiri Erika using Japanese, they know what to type (in Japanese, providing they understand it). I didn’t want to lecture anyone, just wanted to share what I’ve “got” during my time in Japan.

It’s like Chinese or Thai name, you know. Google-ing May or Pang or the famous Aum in English won’t shows results as many as if you type the name in Thai. But incorrectly typing the name in Thai might give you the wrong result. Who knows if you’ll get a pic of male Pang or Aum with moustache or beard instead of the scantily-clad female one… XD