Of Beef Bowls and "Factions"

Before the new year arrived, I went to Yoshinoya for lunch for my official "last beef bowl of 2012," and decided to post a picture of my meal to my Twitter and Facebook feeds. As usual, food in Japan can be confusing and/or difficult to identify to people not familiar with it, and I got several questions about what I was eating. Several people commented on the raw egg sitting in a bowl, and I answered that that I was going to add a dollop of soy sauce to the egg, mix it up then pour it over the beef bowl, pushing the egg inside with my chopsticks so the heat from the rice could cook the egg. I'm what's known as 卵派 tamago-ha or "raw egg faction," the name for people who think beef bowl is better with raw egg mixed in, while people who eat it without the egg are そのまま派, sonomama-ha or "just-as-it-is faction." This tendency to break people into groups using the 派 (meaning faction, denomination or school, as in two opposing schools of thought) kanji is quite common in Japan. For example, there's an ongoing debate raging in my family about whether fried eggs are better with soy sauce or that heavenly Bull-Dog Sauce. While I'm usually 醤油派 shoyu-ha or "soy sauce faction," I switch to the ソース派 so-su ha or "sauce faction" if the fried egg in question will be part of a sandwich or otherwise eaten with bread. You can use the 派 kanji for just about anything you want to debate, e.g. Kirino-ha or Kuroneko-ha, etc.

My Last Beef Bowl of 2012

Delicious New Year's Foods from Japan

There are many traditional foods enjoyed on New Year's Day. The most famous is called osechi-ryori and is essentially an extravagant bento box containing various foods designed to keep for several days, traditionally made to give the women of the house a break from cooking so they can relax in the new year. As with most traditions in Japan, osechi ryori is incredibly old, dating back to the Nara Period 710-794 A.D. The Japanese eat other foods too, including scrambled egg sushi, various traditional beans I don't know the names of plus Mugi's eyebrows, also known as pickled daikon radish. My favorite New Year's food is without a doubt mochi (rice cake), a square of extremely dense rice that's been pressed into a solid shape. Cook it over a flame or in a microwave and it will turn soft and chewy, and it's delicious with soy sauce and nori. Much as I love the stuff, I can only eat it once a year since it's very high in calories. Mochi is also one of the most dangerous foods in Japan because it's extremely chewy and easy to choke on, and every year a few elderly Japanese and even children choke to death on it.

Mochi is a delicious but dangerous food.

Happy New Year 2013!

2013 has officially arrived, and we wish everyone a peaceful and happy year. We hope that J-List will be able to bring you a little closer to Japan all year long. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

We had a pretty normal start to the new year, which included sleeping late then lazing around in the family kotatsu, watching the New Year's marathon on TV while checking to see what New Year's cards had arrived. (If you want to see the New Year's card we sent out this year, here it is.) We then went to our local Shinto shrine to pray for good luck and business success in the new year, both for J-List and for the liquor shop my wife's parents run, which involves buying abura-age (fried tofu) from a stand and laying it at the feet of statues of fox deities, since everyone knows that foxes love fried tofu. We then visited various relatives, catching up with what they'd been doing over the past year. You might imagine that my son and daughter, aged 17 and 16, would rather stay home and surf the Internet rather than be dragged to relatives' houses, but they were more than happy to come along. The reason was the Japanese tradition of otoshi-dama or money children receive from relatives on New Year's Day. They each pulled in about $200 from various relatives, which meant they were more than happy to sit and talk politely for one evening.

(If you want to know what New Year's is like in Japan, watch episode 20 of Hyouka, which accurately captures the solemn spirit of greeting your friends for the first time in the new year then praying for happiness at the Shinto shrine…it's a great episode.)

New Year's Day is the most festive in Japan.

2012 was a great year for J-List, and we're primed and ready to make this year an even better one. We plan on bringing you even more random and wacky products from Japan this year, from cute Panda-shaped sandwich makers to epic 2D glossy artbooks to our amazing traditional Neri Ame candy you knead with chopsticks before eating plus awesome cosplay products. Thanks for being a part of our wonky little company, and here's to a great 2013 together!

New Years in Japan 2012

Today is New Year's Eve, a day to do any last-minute "big cleaning," including getting the car washed, since no one wants to start a new year with a dirty car. December 31st is the day to eat Japanese soba (buckwheat noodles), which supposedly helps everyone enjoy long lives because the noodles are long, and December 31st is the busiest day for restaurants that serve noodles. Another big activity for the last day of the year is watching Kohaku, the "Red and White Song Battle," a live show put on by NHK every year since 1951 in which female singers (the red team) battle male singers (the white team) to see which side can put on the most extravagant performances. Kohaku is the most important music event of the year, and virtually every top star will be there, from the venerable Saburo Kitajima to AKB48 to the up-and-coming Momoiro Clover Z and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. (Fans of J-List's prepaid iTunes Japan cards can browse this year's Kohaku music on iTunes if they like.) After the Kohaku show ends at 11:45 pm, NHK broadcasts 行く年、来る年 Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming,) showing solemn images of people making pilgrimages to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do 初詣 hatsu-moh-de, the first prayer for good luck and happiness of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell that chimes 108 times, a Buddhist tradition tied to the 108 sins that mankind is subject to. Then, the TV display flashes "0:00," letting you know the New Year has silently arrived.

Then comes Oshogatsu, New Year's Day, the most important day of the year in Japan. On that day we'll all sit around the house relaxing, eating mikan oranges and mochi rice cakes with our legs in the kotatsu heater table and watching the big New Year's Marathon that's held every year in our prefecture, which is broadcast nationally on TV, since sitting around watching people run in the cold is apparently a good way to start the year. It's important to relax as much as possible on New Year's Day because if you're busy on that day, it's said you'll be busy all year. Just as kids rush downstairs to see what presents Santa brought them in the U.S., Japanese children hurry to get the mail so they can see who sent them a nengajo or New Year's Card, a huge custom in Japan.

By the way, the way to wish someone a Happy New Year while it's still December is よいお年を yoi o-toshi o, literally meaning "[please have a] good New Year." After January 1st has arrived, you say 明けましておめでとう akemashite omedetou (ah-kay-ma-shtay oh-meh-deh-toh), literally "congratulations on entering the New Year."

This is how Jedi celebrate New Year's in Japan. 

A.D. 2012, So Long.

Well, we've come to the end of another year. 2012 was a great year for us at J-List, with lots of growth for us as a company as we sold fun products like soft Totoro blankets and "shimapan" and cute bear-themed Japanese fashions while giving you slice-of-life updates from Japan three times a week. We released some outstanding English-language visual novels and eroge, too, including the legendary School Days -- thanks to everyone for supporting our efforts to license and translate these unique games from Japan. It was an enjoyable year for me personally, with plenty of travel -- I managed to visit Taiwan, Australia, tour Sapporo and Northern Japan by train, plus hit Washington D.C., New York and Boston over the summer...and we leave for a short vacation in Malaysia early in the new year. While the past year was not a great one for Japan, with its flagging economy and territorial disputes with China and South Korea which undid a decade of goodwill in Asia, at least things are ending on a positive note, with new leadership and hopefully some better news coming next year.

There are few J-List posts I can say I've waited years to write. One was my post on the election of Naoto Kan as Prime Minister in 2010. I'd literally had my eye on him for more than a decade, hoping he'd become Prime Minister someday mainly so I could make Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn jokes (warning, sound will play). I was apparently the only blogger to mark the 10th anniversary of the "All Your Base" meme, which I'd waited patiently for several years to write. Then there's the original Super Dimensional Fortress Macross anime, the popular 1982 series which, along with Urusei Yatsura and Akira, had a huge effect on Japan's popular culture that reverberated around the world during the 1980s, laying the groundwork for all that would follow. The last frame seen in the series shows a photo album being closed, with some enigmatic words on the cover -- "A.D. 2012. So long." -- which have stuck in my brain since I first saw them. So I was pretty much destined to write this post and include the image, ever since I started blogging in 1998.

Back in 1985, the year 2012 seemed like such a far-off time. Anyway, "A.D. 2012, so long!"

Thanks for Making 2012 a Great Year for J-List!!

2012 is done, and we'd like to say thanks to you, our awesome customers, for making this our best year yet. We love to be a bridge between Japan and the rest of the world, offering fun anime magazines, random fashion items, bento and kitchen products plus strange Japanese versions of your favorite brands, and we'll keep doing in the new year! Until we meet again, please have an awesome (and safe) New Year's celebration, and yoi o-toshi o!

Last Chance to Use J-List's December Sale

Christmas is over, but our special sale continues through the end of December! Through the end of 2012, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts: buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us. All sales end January 1st.