Apud Dale Walker <dale@sorted.org> (sci.lang.japan) hoc legimus:

>In the UK, 'Asian' is reserved for south asian peoples like those from
>India and the other more easterly asians are all more often than not
>called 'oriental' unless they're often mistakenly just called
>'Chinese' which from my experience significantly pisses off more non
>chinese asians than anythnig else I can think of.

I was chatting (in Tokyo) with a visiting Pommgolian academic about their
odd use of the term "Asian", when to us Asia means China, Japan, etc.
"Well, why don't you call it `The Far East' like we do?" he asked. I
did a ritual ROTFL, and explained that it's a tad difficult to call a 
place that is actually North-West of you "the Far East". He seemed
surprised we didn't use Europe as a reference point for our placing
things.

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Computer Science & Software Engineering,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学