I know Hollywood is supposed to be the entertainment capital of the world and all, but I never realized exactly how accurate that is until I started trying to learn about pop culture from other places. Try asking your average Japanese person about their favorite stars. No, don't bother. I already asked a bunch of people, and I'll tell you what they said: Cameron Diaz and Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant.

But when I tried asking them about any Japanese stars I got a lot of blank stares. Now, I know that names and faces are difficult to remember. But I couldn't even get people to recall that The Ring used to be a Japanese horror film. Sometimes you can get an older person to remember something by Kurosawa, but in general everyone seems to be stuffed to the eyeballs with Charlies Angels 2, Terminator 3 and 2Fast 2Furious.

Does it seem right to you that I can name more living, frequently working, non-porn Japanese movie actors than 90% of my students?

Even 13 hours in the future, American Pop Culture is still oozing all over everything.