J-List is at AWA, Hope to See You Here!

I've made the long hop from Japan to the U.S., this time to Atlanta, Georgia, where I'll be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta. If you'll be at the show we hope you'll come by our humble J-List/JAST USA booth (#100, very easy to remember) and say hello, and check out the English eroge and visual novels we have for you. (We've got far less stock than at our normal shows since we flew in directly from Japan, so if you're looking for J-List T-shirts, cosplay products or snacks from Japan, it's best to get them from the site directly.) We also have an awesome panel on Saturday night at 8 pm, which we hope to see you at!

We're getting ready to party in Atlanta, CNN style, but without Georgia Coffee.

This is my first time in The Peach State, except for domestic transfers through Atlanta. I already took my employee Yasu to Varsity, a drive-in restaurant that's been around since 1928, and after the show we plan to visit some of the highlights of the city, including CNN and the Coca-Cola headquarters. Without a doubt the most famous image of Georgia to the Japanese is one that doesn't actually exist here: Coca-Cola's long-selling brand of canned coffee called Georgia Coffee, which it started marketing in 1975. (Back in the early 90s there was a cool line of Twin Peaks advertisements for Georgia Coffee, and one of my first business ventures on the early Internet was, ah, "liberating" these posters and selling them on USENET.) Georgia is also famous in my family because a friend of my son's couldn't pronounce the word properly, despite attending an immersion school for learning English. He pronounced it "Ji-ro-gia," so that naturally became his nickname until the end of time.

We're happy to be working with NitroPlus in releasing Steins;Gate to the world in English, something we feel is an important event for the genre of visual novels and unique games from Japan. Steins;Gate is a hardcore SF story about an amateur science lab that inadvertently creates a machine to "time leap" into the past, which naturally causes a large number of problems with an evil organization called SERN that could destroy the future. We're happy to report that the official U.S. site is up, filled with information on the story and characters of steins. The URL is http://www.steins-gate.us, we hope you'll browse it and preorder the upcoming limited edition. (If the site doesn't come up for you it means DNS is still propagating, try again in a couple hours.) 

We have lots of awesome new and restocked J-List products on the site, from "moe" anime magazines to artbooks to wonderful Japanese snacks and of course plenty of "naughty" products. Visit J-List or JBOX.com to browse these great items now!

Japan Loves American Stuff

One of the amusing things about living in Japan is seeing what can only be described as "American branding," selling a product by draping it in red, white and blue and associating it as closely as possible with the USA. Japanese generally see America as kakko ii -- literally "good style" or cool -- and love owning items like Zippo lighters, Coleman outdoor cooking gear and clothes from L.L. Bean. Branding your product as American can often bring a boost in sales, which is why the American restaurant chain Coco's adds "The California Restaurant" to their signs here, and why Jack Daniels and KFC wrap their advertising messages in images of old Tennessee or Kentucky. Levi Strauss stumbled trying to build a name for themselves in Japan during the 1970s, until they hit on the idea of using iconic Hollywood stars like James Dean, John Wayne and even Marilyn Monroe to advertise their jeans (they came cheap, since they were dead), which has to have been one of the most successful advertising decisions ever.

Who doesn't have a full set of Coleman outdoor gear?

Random Observations by my J-Wife

When you're married to a Japanese woman you should be prepared to hear some surprising observations every once in a while. The other day I was watching a TV show about Soichiro Honda, the enigmatic founder of the Honda Motor Company, on his meinichi (the anniversary of his death). Suddenly my wife said, "Look at those ears of his. No wonder he became rich, with ears like that. Money couldn't help but fall into them." Yes, Japanese commonly believe large ears (or to be more specific, large ear lobes) are found in people who will be financially successful, so if you've got big ears, lucky you! My wife is also thankful to our two dogs and two cats, since "pets die in place of family members in order to protect them." This comes from Buddhist concept called 身代わり migawari meaning to sacrafice one's self in order to save the life of another, and whenever a pet of ours passes away the family is saddened, but also thankful just in case. My wife also likes wondering aloud why there are no elderly people anywhere in CSI: Miami ("it's very different from what I saw when I visited there") and also telling the kids to finish their rice, "because there are 88 gods in each grain, and they'll be mad if you caused them to die in vain."

Behold the glorious ears of Soichiro Honda.

Memes in Japan and the West

I write a lot about memes because they're an interesting form of communication in the 21st century. Memes, of course, are "units of human knowledge and culture" that move through society, changing and evolving the way organisms do. Just the progress of animal genes will be corralled by physical barriers like a mountain range or an inland sea, memes are often grouped by geography and language, with only a few -- Maru the Cat, the cardboard box Gundam cosplay guy, the awesomeness of Bob Ross -- able to make the jump from one area to another. While users of the English-speaking Internet might be sharing Come At Me, Bro! or Overly Attached Girlfriend JPEGs, Japanese would likely be using memes from Japan's 2ch BBS like 日本語でおk [sic] nihongo de ok ("please say that again, in simple Japanese this time"), or quoting that most memorable line from Mobile Suit Gundam "You hit me! Not even my own father hit me!" which is likely not so memorable to gaijin fans. The English translation of Steins;Gate poses some unique challenges in this area, since several characters speak in Japanese "netspeak" and use verbal memes that would be unfamiliar to non-Japanese fans, many of them obscure references from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Happily the game has a useful on-screen "tips" feature which explains these references as well as the many scientific terms found in the game.

Some memes manage to cross from East to West, but not many.

J-List Will Be at Anime Weekend Atlanta

Remember, J-List will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta from Sept 27-29. I'll be there too, or that's the plan anyway: if I'm late it means that Typhoon Pabuk's untimely arrival off the coast of Japan caused the flight to be canceled. We hope you'll come by our booth (#100) and say hi, and also attend our panel on Saturday night, where we'll give information on all the great English-translated visual novels we've got coming. We'll have limited stock of our dating-sim games in the dealers' room at AWA but no other stock, so if you were looking to get T-shirts, cosplay items and so on, grab them from the site instead.

Steins;Gate is Up for Preorder!

Remember our good news: preorders for the English version of Steins;Gate are up now! After we announced that the game was coming at the summer anime conventions, so many fans asked us to do a Japan-style limited edition release as we did with School Days, we couldn't help but say yes. The limited edition of Steins;Gate will be our best ever, with metal "lab member" pins and a plastic case to display them in, plus a gorgeous original artbook. Plus when you preorder, you'll get the download version of the game on day 1 when the game is released, with no delay, as a bonus. So order the Steins;Gate Limited Edition now, or preorder the Download Edition if you like. 

You've Been in Japan Too Long When...

Living in a foreign country changes you, a fact I learned when, after just a year living in New Zealand as a boy, I came back with a Kiwi accent. Back in the early days of the Internet gaijin living in Japan would get together on Usenet and create "You've been in Japan too long when..." lists. Here are some of my favorites.

You've been in Japan too long when...

• ...you bow to the person on the other end of a phone conversation.
• ...you no longer remember the English names of fish. ("Spanish mackerel? Never heard of it, but try this delicious saba sashimi.")
• ...you've mastered the art of sleeping while riding in a train...standing up.
• ...you kill time waiting for the bus by practicing your golf swing with an umbrella.
• ...while stopped at a stoplight, you turn off your car's headlights to avoid blinding the person across the intersection from you.
• ...you know the size of every room in your house in 畳 (jo), or standard sized tatami mats.
• ...you've forgotten your weight, height and shoe size in the units of your home country.
• ...if you have mastered that squeezing a lemon slice with the chopsticks thing so that you don't get lemon juice on your fingers.
• ...if you confuse concepts like "stepmother" and "mother-in-law" because they're both covered by the same word, giri-no-haha or "mother-of-obligation," in Japanese.
• ...if you're okay with strawberry and whipped cream as a sandwich filling.
• ...if you order "American coffee" when home for a visit. ("American coffee" is a kind of weaker coffee blend served in Japanese coffee shops.)
• ...if the letter "W" carries the concept of "double" (as in, double the savings, double the benefits) as it does for Japanese.
  
  Mmm, I could do with a strawberry and whipped cream sandwich right about now.

Capsule Hotels in Tokyo

I had some trouble finding a hotel to stay at after the NitroPlus event, so I decided to stay in a capsule hotel, where you get a cozy, clean space to sleep in complete with TV, electric socket for charging your electronics and an alarm clock. Based on a "capsule home of the future" concept unveiled at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair, the first capsule hotel opened in 1979, allowing a high density of guests to sleep in a small space and making it possible to stay in the heart of a Japanese city for around $40. While some -- including someone on our Facebook page -- may feel capsule hotels are like sleeping in a morgue, I find them to be fun and convenient, and certainly an experience worth trying if you visit Japan. The capsule hotel concept seems to be growing in popularity, and you can find variations on them in Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and even Moscow.

The cheap way to stay in Tokyo.

NitroPlus 2013 Super Sonico Live Event Report

Over the weekend I went down to Tokyo to attend a musical event put on by NitroPlus. It was a blast: a 5-hour live performance by 15+ artists that make the music for the company's amazing games, from Demonbane to Saya no Uta and of course Steins;Gate, as well as anime series the company helped create, like Psycho-Pass, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Fate/Zero and Madoka Magica. The company's official mascot Super Sonico also made an appearance, performing while being projected on a thin curtain in front of the stage. The event was really an amazing thing to see: the sprawling Tokyo International Forum filled with dedicated fans of a company famous for awesome games and visual novels, most of the eroge variety. The idea of a live concert for music from computer games makes sense considering their popularity in our culture, but to see it on such a massive scale was really something else. We've been working with NitroPlus for four years by now, and I've been incredibly impressed with their dedication to the quality of every aspect of their games, including visual elements, game music and BGM. Now we're hard at work on the English release of Steins;Gate, designing the artbook and package and producing the metal "lab member" pins that come in the limited edition set, for release in early 2014. Did you order your copy yet?

We had a blast at the NitroPlus x Super Sonico live event.

Steins;Gate Is Up for Preorder!

Remember our good news: preorders for the English version of Steins;Gate are up now! After we announced that the game was coming at the summer anime conventions, so many fans asked us to do a Japan-style limited edition release as we did with School Days, we couldn't help but say yes. The limited edition of Steins;Gate will be our best ever, with metal "lab member" pins and a plastic case to display them in, plus a gorgeous original artbook. Plus when you preorder, you'll get the download version of the game on day 1 when the game is released, with no delay, as a bonus. So order the Steins;Gate Limited Edition now, or preorder the Download Edition if you like. The game is scheduled for release in winter 2014.

J-List Will Be At Anime Weekend Atlanta, Will You?

Remember, J-List will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta from Sept 27-29, including me, so if you'll be at the show, please come and say hi, or come to our panel on Saturday night! We'll have limited stock of our dating-sim games in the dealers' room at AWA but no other stock, so if you were looking to get T-shirts, cosplay items and so on, grab them from the site instead.