New Anime Report: Kiniro Mosaic

I was hearing good things about the new anime Kiniro Mosaic (Gold Colored Mosaic), so I thought I'd give it a try. It's the story of Shinobu, a Japanese girl who travels to the U.K. to do a "homestay" at the home of a British girl named Alice, who's as fascinated with Japan as Shinobu is with England. Back in Japan, Shinobu is surprised to find that a new student has transferred into her class...and it's Alice, who has learned Japanese and come to attend high school in Japan. Once the initial story is set up, Kiniro Mosaic becomes what's known as a "Nichijou-kei" series because of its light situational humor and 4-koma (4-panel) comic origin, ala Nichijou. I love the show because it's the cutest thing ever, and also because it accurately captures the confusion that's created when Japanese and Westerners come into contact with each other. I loved Alice's frustration when she asks Shinobu to play the traditional card game Hanafuda but Shinobu doesn't know the rules despite being Japanese, or the irony that ensues when Shinobu realizes that Alice is better at using chopsticks than she is. Shinobu is absolutely fascinated with blonde hair, and this made me recall my days as an ESL teacher, when the kids I was teaching would discover the golden hairs on my arms and spend the entire class pulling on them.

I addition to the doll-like Alice, there's another girl with beautiful golden hair in Kiniro Mosaic, Alice's friend Karen, a blonde-haired haafu (half-British, half-Japanese) girl who comes to Japan to study, too. To be of mixed Western and Japanese ancestry in Japan is often seen as the pinnacle of human evolution in Japan, combining Japanese sensibilities with beautiful European features like a 高い鼻 takai hana (a "high nose") or 二重 futae (literally "eyes large enough for there two be two creases in the eyelid when the eyes are open"), both of which look very Western to the Japanese. The problem with Karen is that, while she speaks basic Japanese, she isn't good at reading subtle social situations, making her KY, a Japanese word meaning someone who is 空気読めない kuuki-yomenai, lit. "cannot read the air around them." A lot of the show's humor stems from the many ways that Karen fails to understand what's going on around her, and this is a feeling every foreigner who has lived in Japan can understand, since we're usually KY too.

I'm a fan of the new Kiniro Mosaic.

My Trip to a Japanese Onsen

Last weekend I was casting around for something to do, so I decided to hit an onsen (pronounced "own-sen"), the volcanically heated baths that are so popular in Japan. I'd chosen one of the "faux" hot springs you see in Japanese cities, with traditional style baths that are actually heated with normal boilers rather than from natural volcanic springs in the ground, though there are one or two located on the premises to avoid claims of false advertising. In addition to about a dozen baths and three saunas, the site offered Korean-style akasuri, which is where a swimsuit-clad woman will wash your body completely then rub off dead skin cells with rough gloves. (Don't worry, it's not naughty at all.) I decided to give this a try and poked my head in to ask the lady if there were any available time slots, but something funny happened: she had trouble understanding me, and had to ask several times what I wanted. It was natural, I guess, since the lady was Korean and was not used to Americans speaking Japanese with gaijin accents. I had a better time understanding her, since I'm a card-carrying aficianado of Korean singers and actresses who appear on TV here and speak with those cute sing-song Korean/Japanese accents.

Any excuse to visit an onsen is good enough for me

The Start of 2014 Japanese Calendar Season!!

Announcing the start of 2014 Calendar Season! Every year about this time, J-List starts taking preorders for the outstanding calendars from Japan, which are printed exclusively for the Japanese market. While we already posted some excellent calendars by Japan's top moe artists, today we put up the popular traditional, cultural, art and photo calendars that bring out the beauty of Japan. (In a couple weeks there'll be another big volley of calendars as the main anime and idol calendars are announced, so stay tuned.) Browse the amazing calendars we've got on the site for you now!

Various challenges the iPhone faces in other language markets, including Japanese

When I was in the U.S. I played with Apple's new iPhone in an Apple Store and immediately knew I had to have one. (It's funny how my business trips to the U.S. just happen to coincide with Star Wars movie releases, major U.S. product launches, and so on -- please don't tell my wife.) The iPhone is great, and even in Japan, where its phone functions don't work, it's quite useful as a WiFi device that allows me to do my mail, check websites, and enjoy music and videos. One of the big benefits of Apple's OS X operating system is that there's only one worldwide version, with everything international users need included on the install DVD -- this is a huge improvement over the days when the Japanese version of the latest OS would take a year to show up. While the iPhone does support many non-English languages, including the ability to display (but not input) Japanese and Chinese, it seems to me that Apple will have some challenges making the device work for users around the world.

I remember a trip I made to a MacWorld Expo back in the 1990s. Apple was working on a Japanese version of the venerable Newton, and asked me if I'd write some kanji characters with the software they were testing. If you've ever thought that the Newton was hard to use with the standard Roman alphabet, it was even more difficult getting it to recognize my handwriting in Japanese, and the device was eventually "Steved" (cancelled, to use the terminology of the day) not too long after. Happily, the iPhone has an on-screen keyboard for you to type on, which works in tandem with an internal dictionary that corrects errors you make while typing, and it learns too, so that it eventually stops trying to tell me that my website is "joist.com." Getting this dictionary just right for users in other countries will be extremely important for Apple, since no one would want their phone suggesting incorrect spellings to them as they type. Inputting complex languages like Japanese will be a bit more difficult, and it will call for a "front end" input manager as seen in the built-in Kotoeri for Mac and Japanese IME for Windows. The way it works is, you select Japanese as the current input method, then type a word like "nihongo" and press the space bar. The front end program then guesses what kanji it thinks you want, and you keep typing or choose another character if it guessed wrong. This is usually fairly straightforward, but there are some words that have many possible kanji, like kousei (koh-SEI) which could mean structure (構成), justice (公正), public health (厚生), or fixed star (恒星), depending on which characters you choose. One issue that might miff would-be iPhone buyers in Japan is, there are several front-end kanji input programs on the market, like EGBridge and ATOK, which offer more accurate guesses about what kanji you want to enter. If Apple requires Japanese users to use, say, the default Kotoeri input method, some of them will pass on the phone for that reason alone.

Back when I was single, I did a fair bit of traveling around Japan, including hitchhiking, which wasn't always easy since the Japanese don't have a custom of giving rides to strangers at all (let alone big hairy barbarian gaijin). I had my best success by dressing nicely and putting on a tie then going to the freeway I.C. ("interchange," i.e. the on-ramp) and standing with a clearly written sign featuring where I wanted to go. I also brought some kind of gift for people who gave me a ride, like cigarettes from the U.S., since gift giving really oils those squeaky wheels here. Once I was trapped at a truck stop at midnight in cold part of northern Japan, and a man appeared offering to let me come stay at his house for the night. Normally I wouldn't consider going off with a stranger, but one of the really good things about Japan is how helpful people are to okyakusan (visitors, guests), and the man was just happy to be able to show a foreigner some hospitality. I've always like enka, the sad traditional music of Japan that's roughly equivalent to American country music and which got its start from fishermen trawling the lonely seas. Just as the "soul" of country music is more or less based on Nashville, Tennessee, the eerie sounds of enka eminate from northern Japan, especially chilly Aomori Prefecture, at the top of the main Japanese island. I have fond memories of hitchhiking all around that lonely part of Japan, smelling the salty air of the Straits of Tsugaru, which bridge Honshu and Hokkaido and of which many enka songs are sung. Ah, those days were a lot of fun...

Learning about Japan through late-night TV, update on international marriage in Japan, and learning Chinese as a "free bonus"

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Negative Experiences in Japan

Japan is a great country, with a lot to offer both short-term visitors and tourists as well as people like me, who like the place so much we put down permanent roots. But still, Japan is far from perfect, and there are various sources of stress for gaijin living here, for example (if your language skills are still improving) not being able to talk freely to people or even to read what's written on some signs, not being able to understand local customs that might be taken for granted by everyone but you, or (if you live in a rural city like I do) having kids occasionally stare at you because you're different. (I just say hello to them in English.) I've lived in Japan for 17 years and have traveled quite extensively throughout most of the country, meeting a lot of people along the way. It has happened, so infrequently it's almost statistically insignificant, that not every experience I had here was a good one, and not every person I met was 100% happy to be dealing with an overly-exuberant American like myself. Like an old farmer who, when in his cups, asked me why "big America" had to beat up on "little Japan" during the war, or the scary yakuza gangsters I found myself surrounded by when I stupidly stayed at a 24-hour sauna in Kyoto, or the one time I tried to enter a bar in Roppongi and was told politely that they didn't accept foreign customers. (I should have worn our "No Gaijin" T-shirt.) Whenever I encounter some minor inconvenience I shrug and move on, reciting that useful Japanese mantra shikata ga nai (or more colloquially, sho ga nai), which means "it can't be helped," the main way the Japanese maintain their happy, largely confrontation-free society. I know that everyone is human, and for every minor negative experience I may encounter here in Japan, there are a few hundred positive ones. (Thoughts of girls' phone numbers scrawled onto chopsticks wrappers come to mind, but we don't go there.) ^_^

Strange Japanese Customs When Raising a Child in Japan

I've spent more than 20 years as an observer of the Japanese people and their traditions, and it's been a very interesting time for me. While most local customs -- removing shoes before entering a home, bowing to others, chopstick etiquette and so on -- weren't that challenging to pick up, when my children were born I suddenly found myself exposed to a strange new world of Japanese traditions I'd never encountered. After a baby is born, the new mother is not allowed to wash her hair for a week, and the baby's grandmother will usually move in to do dishes and laundry as it's bad luck for a mother to do water-related household chores for 30 days after giving birth. The baby's umbilical cord is dried and stored in a box made of paulownia wood and becomes one of the parents' treasures. There were some other fun child-related customs that confused me at times. On a baby's first birthday there's a ceremony called isshou-mochi in which heavy mochi rice cakes are tied to the baby's body, so it's hard for him to walk. You then place a writing brush, an abacus (or a calculator) and money near the child and see which one he picks up first, which determines if he'll be a writer, a merchant or a rich man in the future. When an American child loses a tooth they put it under their pillow so the tooth fairy can exchange it for money, but in Japan parents throw their child's baby teeth up onto the roof (if the tooth was a lower one) or under the house (if it was an upper tooth), to bring health and good luck to the child.

Japan's special customs about a baby's umbilicle cord show up in Mirai Nikki.

August is Koshien Baseball Season

August is the hottest month in Japan, a great time to enjoy shave ice and watermelon and maybe some ice cold Ramune. It's also time for the Koshien High School Baseball championship held near Osaka, a huge event in which the teams from Japan's 47 prefectures battle it out to win the national prize. To go to Koshien is the dream of every high school baseball player, and millions watch the televised games to root for their prefecture, vicariously reliving their own youthful days through the players. There are many anime series that capture the romance of the high school baseball championship which have become as big a part of Japanese pop culture as Star Wars is in the U.S. This most famous of these is Touch, the story of twins Kazuya and Tatsuya, who both love a girl named Minami; when Kazuya is killed in a car accident, Tatsuya must take his school's team to Koshien in his brother's place. This year J-List's home prefecture of Gunma is kicking some serious butt, making it all the way to the final championship game tomorrow. I hope we win!

Summer is time for high school basebal.l

Powerful Emotions in Anime

One reason anime is interesting as a genre is because of the strong emotions it lets fans access. Whether it's glorious stories of love found or of bittersweet break-up, of sadness due to loss or defeat in a heroic battle, it's common for the stories in anime (and visual novels) to deeply affect fans in ways that mainstream Hollywood could never do. Yesterday I found myself re-watching the ending to Oreimo, especially a certain highly emotional scene with Kuroneko. I made a post to J-List's Facebook page asking people to list their favorite emotional "crying porn" scenes (e.g. moving scenes that make us cry), and everyone had some great ones. Taiga realizing she really loved Ryuji in Toradora and running out into the street calling his name, the scene during the tennis game in Clannad when Kyou and her sister realize that Tomoya has chosen someone other than them then break down in tears, and the episode in which Madoka tearfully asks Homura to use her time-traveling powers to change her fate. Thinking back, it was the strong story and emotions seen in Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers) that first called me to anime back in the late 70s...I was amazed that characters could fall in love or die dramatically, which wasn't supposed to be allowed in animation.

Anime is best when it's filled with strong emotions.

Cool Anime Games for PSP etc.

If an anime you like has an ending you're not thrilled by, there's something you can do about it: play the PSP/PSVita game versions, which are loaded with fun original content not in the anime series, including proper romantic endings with all your favorite characters. Are you a fan of Ayase or Kuroneko or even Saori? Well then pick up the newly released 2-in-1 Oreimo game for the PSP and play each girl's proper route. Do you love Toradora, or Sword Art Online, or Senran Kagura? We've got great titles for you as well. All PSP/PS3/PSVita titles are fully region free, and many games have great ecchi content you can't find outside Japan, like the Hatsune Miku pantsu simulators and the always-fun Galgun. Why not browse our selection of import anime games now?

The End of Oreimo: Long Live the Imouto

Over the weekend I caught the last three episodes of Ore no Imouto ga Konna Kawaii Wake Ga Nai, aka Oreimo, aka There's No Way My Sister Is This Cute. It's the story of a mild-mannered Japanese high school boy named Kyousuke whose younger sister Kirino has a secret: she's a closet otaku who loves eroge, that is, naughty visual novels. Before he knows what's happening, Kyousuke is pulled into a bizarre world of anime and 2D culture and surrounded by a harem of otaku and/or yandere girls, all of whom have feelings for him. Because of its solid grounding in contemporary Japanese subculture, the series is on par with seminal works such as Otaku no Video, Welcome to the N.H.K. and Genshiken. I thought the last three episodes were great, with lots of strong emotions for hardcore fans to eat up, though there'll probably be some gnashing of teeth, too.

One thing I like about watching anime is the random things it can teach you about Japanese customs and society. In one scene in the last episode of Oreimo, Kyousuke graduates from high school and is leaving the school building for the last time when he finds Kirino waiting for him. She gets a mischievous look on her face then suddenly pulls off a button from his uniform jacket, saying, "And so, I've taken your 'second button!'" This is a custom known as 第二ボタン daini-botan in which girls will ask a boy they like (or who they dated but are breaking up with, now that school is ending) for the second button from his school uniform, and keep it forever as a memento. If a boy is popular, girls might ask for his second button weeks in advance, or might settle for his third or fourth button if another girl got there first -- so the true sign of a popular boy is one who walks out of his school with all his uniform buttons removed. Since graduation nearly always means parting from your former schoolmates, the custom of daini-botan is a bittersweet one, described by the Japanese word 切ない setsunai, translatable into contemporary English as "laden with feels."

The Oreimo series comes to an end.

Chips and Salsa in Japan

There's nothing like living as an expat to make you appreciate the things that were available in your home country but aren't anymore, and I feel strongly that all college students should study abroad for a year if only so that they'll appreciate how good they have things back in their home countries. When I first came to Japan I had to get used to living in a country in which many of the things I'd taken for granted all my life were suddenly exotic and difficult to obtain. There are no Pop Tarts in Japan, no Lucky Charms, no amazing craft beers which are all the rage in San Diego right now, and no Mexican food either -- the closest thing is the Twister Wraps from KFC, which taste almost like chicken burritos if you close your eyes. Whenever I return to Japan from the U.S., I bring various foods back with me, including a bag of tortilla chips and salsa. Last night my son and I went to eat some but found only tortilla chip dust at the bottom of the bag...so we got creative and mixed the dust with the last of our salsa and ate it with spoons, to avoid wasting any of the precious stuff. It was delicious.

(Yes, you can get chips and salsa here, but the chips are like Doritos if you're lucky, e.g. pre-salted and pre-flavored, and the salsa is always closer to spaghetti sauce than what we expect it to be.)

Living in Japan will make you appreciate chips and salsa.

Free J-List Pocket Tissues and Anime Glasses with Every Order

When you order from J-List, you get a lot more than awesome bento boxes, anime figures, Japanese snacks and shimapan. You also get free Japanese pocket tissues included with each order, along with fun anime eyeglasses that transform you into your favorite anime character. (Note that pocket tissues and anime glasses are subject to availability, and wouldn't be included with some orders if they might damage your items, such as including pocket tissue in a package with thin doujinshi.) Why not browse J-List and make an order now?