A Trip to Tokyo Big Sifght

Yesterday several J-List staff members and I went to Tokyo Big Sight to check out the International Gift Show, a large convention where manufacturers and distributors show off various products. It was quite pleasant walking around the convention center with a mere 20,000 people around me instead of the 500,000+ otakus present during the Comiket doujinshi convention, and we had fun scouting for interesting products for the site. I found myself reflecting on how things had changed since I started J-List back in the stone age, when people still used modems and instead of "Googling" we all used Yahoo or (shudder) Hotbot. I decided to see if anyone on my Twitter feed had any questions for me, and a few did.

What inspired you to start J-List in the first place? How well did you know the market when you started?

I started J-List in 1996 after sensing that the time had come to do something interesting with the Internet. I'd laid some of the groundwork by bringing stock to sell at anime conventions in the early 90s, and had run a side business offering JPOP CDs on Usenet. (The name "J-List" refers to the giant list of products I had in an Excel spreadsheet back then.)

How does a Westerner start his own business in Japan?

There were no special barriers to starting a business here, although as with any business you need to understand the language and culture. We learned early on that distributors would only work with corporations they could build trust relationships with, so we made sure to shape our company into the form these distributors expected. My wife is the president of the company, which is good since doing accounting in Japanese would probably break my brain.

Have you faced any problems being non-Japanese? i.e., "we're not doing business with a foreigner"?

There may have been a time when toy distributors would have preferred to avoid the hassle of dealing with foreigners buying toys and figures due to linguistic problems, but by the time J-List was launched they'd really come to appreciate our business, going out of our way to help us since we represented an important source of revenue for them. I realized that whenever the Japanese economy experienced a downturn it would actually open doors for J-List, as companies were forced to think about the outside world if they wanted to survive.

What kind of relationship do you have with post office?

They love us, since we send hundreds of packages a day. They gave us an award thanking us, presented by the Japanese Postmaster General.

What was your biggest challenge?

Perhaps learning to say "no" to carrying new products on the site, which is why we carry everything from cookbooks and bento books to shimapan to Death Star ice makers for your bourbon. There's just too much cool stuff in Japan...

The J-List staff made a trip to Tokyo Big Sight.

Traditional Products from Japan

J-List is much more than an anime shop, and we like to carry products that capture the aesthetic and or kawaii sensibilities from Japan as much as possible. Whether you want to drink tea our of our Lucky Cat tea cups, explore the cuteness of Pandas, or sample traditional candies from Kyoto, we've got lots of fun stuff to browse. Start by checking the most "wishlisted" traditional and home products from Japan!

The Scale of Looking at Japan

One of the most fascinating things about the world is the way our perceptions change as the scale we're observing changes. Something "small" in human scale, like a grain of rice, is huge compared with the next level down (complex living cells), which are far larger than the next level down (say, viruses), going right down to molecules and atoms. Looking at other countries can be very similar. Seen from the U.S., especially away from the two coasts, the various cultures of Asia can tend to blend together, and the average person in Minnesota has little individual awareness about how customs and culture differ between Japan, South Korea and China. (In San Diego I was once asked if I could speak Vietnamese, the idea being that Vietnam and Japan are both in Asia, so...) As you learn more about the countries, of course, things come into better focus.

Then we realize that looking at one country as a unit might not be enough. In Japan, the two most famous regions are Kanto, where Tokyo, Yokohama and J-List's home prefecture of Gunma are (though people from Tokyo invariably think we're part of the northern Tohoku region), and Kansai, home of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. Naturally, there's a world of subtle differences between these two regions in terms of dialect, food and customs -- supposedly Osakans are similar to Americans in that they show their emotions right away rather than hiding them like Tokyo-ites, and unlike people from Tokyo, Osakans are less likely to pretend they don't want to eat the last piece of pizza out of politeness. But viewing Japan has Tokyo-vs-Osaka might not be enough detail, and you can always delve more deeply and discover another level. Last week J-List had our "New Year Party" at an izakaya which promised to provide authentic "Kagoshima style cuisine." I've never been to the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu, where the city Kagoshima is, so I had no idea how authentic their claim was, but it certainly was fun to experience a new level of Japan.

Some interesting differences between Tokyo and Osaka.

Ramune's 140 Year History

I'm a fan of Strike Witches, a fun anime that blends cute moe girls with World War II-style mecha and, er, pantsu, though naturally I only watch it for the animation and story. In the new Strike Witches movie there's a scene in which a sailor on a Japanese aircraft carrier tosses Yoshika an ice cold bottle of Ramune, so I thought I'd write about that today. Ramune is a lemon-lime flavored Japanese soft drink (the name comes from the English word "lemonade") first bottled in Kobe in 1872, making it older than Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper. It made use of the then-newfangled Codd-necked bottle design that placed a glass ball inside the bottle to create an airtight seal, requiring the purchaser to carefully push the ball down then hold the bottle at a level angle while drinking. Because Japanese Imperial Navy ships carried equipment for making carbon dioxide, Ramune was a popular on-board drink since the sailors could manufacture it themselves while at sea. The sight of a Ramune bottle is sure to cause Japanese to exclaim natsukashii (nots-ka-SHEE), meaning "that makes me feel so nostalgic I could die," and virtually all Japanese claim to remember growing up playing with the glass Ramune marbles. The Ramune brand isn't owned by any one company but (like the Kewpie Doll) is generic, manufactured by several different bottlers throughout Japan. If you're interested in trying some authentic Ramune soda, we've got several awesome flavors in stock in San Diego.

Ramune has an amazing 140 year history.

Awesome Hatsune Miku Products

We love Hatsune Miku, the super-cute twin-tailed Japanese singing sensation who has become a worldwide sensation. We carry tons of products featuring Miku-chan, from figures to plush "leek" toys to her authentic shimapan, and also the popular PSP and PS Vita dancing games that everyone should try. Click to see the top Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid products from Japan!

Remember: Our Chocolate + Tenga Sale!

February is here, and that's a great excuse to grab some awesome chocolate from Japan, whether you're buying it for that special guy or girl or just like chocolate, and this month we're having a great 2x J-List Points Sale on all chocolate products, from the newest flavors of Pocky and Kit Kat to the new Evangelion and Hello Kitty gift chocolates we've got in stock. We've got more good news, though: we're also having a great sale on all stress toys, including TENGA, anime-themed parody toys, massagers and lotion. So everyone will be happy this month! Don't forget to take advantage of our new lower shipping rates, too!

The Japanese, English and Katakana

It's quite well known that, despite six or more years of studying English, Japanese people aren't always great at communicating with the language, and there are several reasons why this is so. Japan is an island nation where English is almost never used outside tourist-ey areas like Kyoto, and English is usually studied for the sake of passing university entrance exams then forgotten by most people. Another problem is katakana, the writing system that allows words like "illustrator" or "political manifesto" or "image change" to be used in Japanese directly, which is very convenient. Because you can only access a limited number of sounds with the system, however, expressing English this way results in a thick "katakana accent." In the same way that Japanese people shouldn't study English through katakana, non-Japanese should avoid studying Japanese using "Romanized" Japanese (written with the English alphabet), as your brain will always try to mistakenly apply the wrong rules of pronunciation to what it sees. The word for "10,000" in Japanese is 一万 ichi man (lit. one unit of 10,000), and when I meet a new foreigner in Japan, I can tell if he or she has studied Japanese properly by the way they pronounce this word. If they pronounce 万 as the English word "man" (with a short "a" sound), I know they learned the word written in the English alphabet, but if they pronounce it mahn (with a long vowel) I know they probably learned Japanese after starting with hiragana first.

(Remember that J-List stocks lots of Japanese study products, whether you want to just learn the basics or go on to study more. We recommend the Genki textbook series and White Rabbit flashcards as a good place to get started with a study program.)

Matsumoto Leiji, Space Opera Master

One of the greatest names in the history of anime and manga is Matsumoto Leiji, creator of classic space operas like Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock. Matsumoto Leiji was born in 1938, the son of a military test pilot who later trained tokkou butai ("special attack squadron") pilots, more commonly known as kamikaze to you and me, and this likely colored Leiji's later works. Leiji was a struggling creator of girls' manga when his wife, also a shoujo manga-ka, found commercial success when she was asked by the Takara toy company to design their new fashion doll Licca-chan; this enabled her husband to pursue his true love, creating science fiction stories. I'm very much in debt to Mr. Matsumoto, whose works introduced me not only to animated stories that had proper beginnings and endings with characters who fell in love and died in dramatic ways, but to the great romance that was possible through the limitless medium of animation. Mr. Matsumoto is in France now, celebrating an amazing 60 years as a creator of manga and anime while surrounded by his many adoring fans.

The works of Matsumoto Leiji have had a big effect on my life.

Made in Japan in Trouble?

Although Japan's economy is limping along with little if any real growth, its official unemployment rate is an enviably low 4.2%. Even accounting for some differences in the way the data is calculated (supposedly it'd be about a percentage point higher if the same method as the U.S. were used), that's still lower than many other countries. But the actual job situation in Japan is far from rosy, of course. Because there's been essentially no inflation over the past 20 years (about the only thing that got more expensive since I came here was Coca-Cola, which went from 100 yen to 120 yen in 1993), wages have also not grown much during that time. Also, five years of an incredibly strong currency have caused many of Japan's most illustrious brands to move jobs to other countries in order to stay competitive. Recently a report was released showing the number of Japanese employed in manufacturing was under 10 million, the lowest number since 1961, and this has really come as a shock to people here. In some ways it's an unavoidable step in the evolution of an industrial economy -- when I was taking economics courses in university in the late 80s the topic of how the U.S. had "lost the manufacturing war" to Japan was hotly discussed, and now the same thing is happening to Japan. All is not lost, of course: Japan's engineering skills are incredibly high, and there are many options open to the country as it tries to find the best path going forward.

Japan's manufacturing jobs are in peril.

Don't Forget J-List's February Chocolate + Tenga Sale

February is here, and that's a great excuse to grab some awesome chocolate from Japan, whether you're buying it for that special guy or girl or just like chocolate, and this month we're having a great 2x J-List Points Sale on all chocolate products, from the newest flavors of Pocky and Kit Kat to the new Evangelion and Hello Kitty gift chocolates we've got in stock. We've got more good news, though: we're also having a great sale on all stress toys, including TENGA, anime-themed parody toys, massagers and lotion. So everyone will be happy this month! Don't forget to take advantage of our new lower shipping rates, too!