The cute anime girl you see above isn’t a new fan service character from Adult Swim’s next late night acquisition — she’s a logo for rice domestically grown in Japan.

As anyone who’s had any sort of contact with Japanese food knows, sticky rice is to Far East cuisine what deep frying is to English food. Eating anything without the stuff would be un-Japanese, or so says my grandmother.

The best rice, apparently, comes from the Niigata prefecture, and restaurants make a point to mention that what they serve comes from the area. Blogger, man about Japan and J-List.com owner Peter Payne points out that the latest fad among rice manufacturers is to print cute anime girls — like the one above — to boost sales.

Proof that T and A goes with anything, even rice.

Translated literally, the Japanese word hote-toru translates to hotel turkey, with the words borrowing from their phonetic English equivalents. While images of turkeys being led to rooms by bellboys comes to mind, the reality is anything but.

Lost in translation is the concept of the Japanese love hotel, where men and women go to have sex, and turkish baths, where people in general go to have sex.

In this case, it’s Japanese tabloids reporting that foreign ladies are stopping into Japan for short visits, expressly for the purpose of working in the country’s brothels and bath houses (the toru and the hote of the word). It’s a far cry from turkeys getting room service, and in the case of a blog about sex in Asia, much more interesting.

Tora! Tora! Tora! attack at the Taito hote-toru

Basing your decisions as to which women are hot and not from a ladmag makes about as much sense as determining what car to drive from the same magazine — but any list that includes Gong Li can’t be wrong.

In fact, Gong (who is as much a serious actress as she is smoking hot) was on the top of the heap despite the flap over her renouncing her Chinese citizenship for Singaporean citizenship.

Also of note on the list is Shu Qi, No. 4 and previously a porn star but better known as that chick in Jason Statham’s trunk in The Transporter. There’s some kind of joke here about anal sex to be had, but it’s Monday and it’s not coming to me.

Nine hottest Chinese women, courtesy of Complex magazine