The Most "Japanese" Image In The World

Hello from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! J-List is in full Christmas mode, packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day. Note that we recommend you order by Friday the 13th in order to ensure you get your packages in time for Christmas. What awesome products can J-List send you today during our big EMS shipping sale?

I like to post random things to the J-List Facebook page, from various anime-related pictures I've come across on Pixiv to occasional Sailor Moon yuri. Once I posted a picture I'd found that, to me, represented Japan more than any I'd ever seen, with the image of Mt. Fuji viewed behind sakura trees with a five-story pagoda off to the side. When I asked readers to post pictures that represented their own countries, the responses included this iconic image of Italy, a lovely castle in Germany, this extremely British image, an example of archeology in Canada, a "nice boat" from Norway, plus a something for Americans to smile about. A few replies were snarky, like one reader showing us what it's like using the Internet from Australia. It's fun to analyze how our impressions of our own countries are affected by interacting with foreigners, and learning how they view us. When Japanese staff first start working at J-List, they probably think they understand that gaijin love things like Mt. Fuji and Kyoto. But when they actually start working with our customers, who often possess incredible passion for subjects like Japanese history and samurai swords and extremely esoteric pop culture from Japan, they're filled with pride and come to see their own country in a new way.

What image would represent your country? Hopefully not "People of Wal-Mart."

Kanji of the Year 2013

Today (December 12) is 漢字の日 kanji no hi or Kanji Day, a day for appreciating the role of Chinese characters in modern Japanese society. It's also the day the Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society announces the "kanji of the year," the single character that best sums up the events of the past twelve months, which is done at a ceremony at the beautiful Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto. The character for 2013 has been announced, and it's....輪, meaning circle, hoop or ring, clearly a reference to Japan's winning of the 2020 Olympics, which are called 五輪 gorin ("five rings") in Japanese. The character is pronounced wa when used by itself or in certain words like 輪ゴム wa-gomu, a rubber band, and rin (reen) when forming more advanced words like 一輪車 ichi rin-sha, a unicycle, or 輪廻 rin-ne, the Buddhist concept of death and rebirth (samsara). Perhaps the most common use of 輪 (wa) is to describe your circle of friends (友達の輪 tomodachi no wa). Previous kanji of the year have included 命 inochi (life) in 2006, a year marked by a record number of suicides; 変 hen (change) in 2008, a year of change for Japan as well as the world; and 絆 kizuna (bond, as in the bonds that tie us to one another) after the terrible trials of the earthquakes and tsunamis of 2011.

The Kanji of the Year for 2013 is 輪。

Happy Friday the 13th From Japan

I've talked before about how the Japanese can be quite superstitious at times, and since today is Friday the 13th, I thought I'd revisit some of the more interesting folk beliefs here, such as, don't urinate on a worm, or he'll get revenge by making your private parts swell up. Don't whistle at night or a snake will come, and don't play with fire or you'll wet the bed. When you sneeze twice, it means someone is gossiping about you, a joke that pops up in anime quite a lot. If you see a spider in the morning, it's good luck, so don't kill it. If you want to check the weather tomorrow, throw your shoe as far as you can; if it lands sole down, it will be sunny, but if upside down, it will rain. Being such a death-oriented place, there are a lot of superstitions related to death. When you attend a funeral you'll be given a packet of salt by the funeral home, and you must throw the salt over your body to cleanse it before crossing the threshold into your house or the spirits of the dead will move in to your house. Don't cut your fingernails at night, or you won't be able to be with your parents on their deathbed. Finally, if you see a hearse, you should hide your thumbs inside your fists, or one of your parents will die -- this is due to the fact that the word for thumb (親指 oya-yubi) literally means "parent finger." The Japanese know about the Western superstition of Friday the 13th mainly thanks to a movie about a guy in a hockey mask, and they usually expect good things to happen on that day instead of bad things, which is a pretty good outlook to have.

Happy Friday the 13th from J-List. Hope something good happens today!

An Update on the English Version of Steins;Gate

As you know, we've licensed the excellent science fiction adventure game Steins;Gate for release in English, and here's an update on our progress. The metal Future Gadget Laboratory pins have been manufacturered and are in San Diego now, and we've started printing the packages at a large facility in Japan. (The limited edition packaging and artbook are being printed in Japan so we can get the maximum quality, matching the Japanese version of the game.). The game master is also being worked on at a feverish pace, and we're on target for an early 2014 release as planned. Make sure you've got your preorder for the limited edition of the English version of the game! It comes with two "lab member" pins in a case, a glossy artbook with original content, the game on DVD-ROM plus a download code for the game so you can play it the day it's released!

Our EMS Sale is Still Going On

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The History of Cosplay in Japan

Hello from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! J-List is in full Christmas mode, packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day. Note that we recommend you order by Friday the 13th in order to ensure you get your packages in time for Christmas. What awesome products can J-List send you today during our big EMS shipping sale?

One of my favorite aspects of fandom is cosplay, the act of transforming yourself into your favorite anime character through costume and make-up skills, something that started to get popular in the 1970s as a result of Japan's contact with the costuming culture of Worldcon. The word is an example of 和製英語 wasei eigo or "made-in-Japan English," and it was coined in the June 1983 issue of My Anime magazine, which included a special feature on "hero costume play" that had to be shortened to "cosplay" on one page to fit into the layout. The first anime cosplay is said to have taken place at a science fiction convention in Yokohama in 1978, when a judge mistook a fan cosplaying a character from the cover of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel as being from an anime called Triton of the Sea; the error was never corrected, and suddenly fans got the idea of bringing 2D characters from anime into the 3D world. These days it's not hard to find "cosplay idols" like Kipi or Necoco who create the most amazing costumes for us to enjoy, capturing every minute detail of the characters with remarkable skill. If you like random pictures of cosplay, I recommend J-List's popular Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter feeds, since I've always got something interesting being posted there for fans to check out and comment on.

Some background on the history of cosplay.

Shoes In the Genkan

It's fun to try to understand Japan by thinking about its culture from new directions, for example through the aesthetic concepts of 侘び wabi and 寂び sabi, translatable as "sober refinement and austere serenity," which in practice mean appreciating things that are old and imperfect, like a well-used green tea cup or the sad loneliness of a rural train station in Hokkaido. You can even seek to understand Japan from the bottom up, so to speak, by thinking about shoes. The Japanese famously remove their shoes at a lowered area called a 玄関 genkan before entering a home (or businesses like J-List), which keeps most of the outside dirt from coming in. Shoes are always considered 汚い kitanai (dirty), and if I were to ever wash dirty shoes our family's washing machine I'd be buying my wife a new washing machine in a hurry. Because shoes are always left near the front door, you can tell if a boy has female company over by checking his shoe area. This happened in a recent episode of Kyoukai no Kanata/Beyond the Boundary, when Mirai visited Akihito and noticed a mysterious pair of girl's shoes in his genkan, which led to a very cute misunderstanding.

Shoes in a genkan can give away your secrets.

Before You Get a Kanji Tattoo...

Westerners seem hopelessly taken with the mysteries of kanji characters, often choosing to get exotic tattoos with Chinese characters on their bodies. This is a cool thing to do, though occasionally they find out that a character is printed upside-down or that the characters mean something different than what they intended. Recently one customer asked our native Japanese staff to "translate" something he wanted to get as a tattoo, which was "never forget, never bow, never give up." The translation came out as 忘れず、媚びず、諦めず wasurezu, wabuzi, akiramezu, which is an accurate translation but one that doesn't work well because it lacks any context, e.g. no one ever says these words in this way in Japanese. Another idea was changing the message to 決して諦めない kesshite akiramenai, which has much better balance and sound, meaning "never give up [no matter what happens]." Finally the staff settled on 不屈の精神 fukutsu no seishin, a very beautiful phrase that literally means "indomitable and unyielding spirit," which we felt was going to work much better for the person than trying to force a translation directly from English. If you're interested in kanji but want to think twice before getting any permanent tattoos, why not consider our custom hanko name stamps which allow you to make name stamps with your name in kanji, or our custom Japanese calligraphy message board, with any Japanese phrase you like written for you. Because our staff are native Japanese speakers, there's no worry you'll end up with something embarrassing like "raging diarrhea."

This lovely Japanese tattoo says...tomato?

Make New Year's Cards with your "Sumaho" (Smartphone)

Hello from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! J-List is in full Christmas mode, packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day. Note that we recommend you order by Friday the 13th in order to ensure you get your packages in time for Christmas. What awesome products can J-List send you today during our big EMS shipping sale?

December is a very busy time in Japan, what with buying Christmas presents and other year-end gifts, planning that special romantic date on Christmas Eve and preparing for 大掃除 oh-souji, the year-end "big cleaning" that everyone does here. It's also time to make 年賀状 nengajo, or New Year's greeting cards, which are mailed during December and delivered to everyone on January 1st. While you can have nengajo printed professionally, it's much more fun to make them yourself, and over the years the du joir method for doing this has evolved greatly, from wood blocks and rubber stamps to computer software that lets you choose from various clip art on CD-ROM. Now with the rise of スマホ sumaho (smartphones) you can create nengajo cards using apps on your iPhone or Android phone, which you can then print yourself or have printed professionally by companies like Fuji Film. 2014 is the Year of the Horse according to the Chinese zodiac, and if you want to celebrate it in classic style we've got some fun products you should look at.

Make new year's cards with your smartphone.

Japanese Cuisine Wins UNESCO Recognition

The Japanese like nothing more than to be recognized internationally for their achievements, which is why the popularity of anime/manga creators like Hayao Miyazaki or Shirow Masamune soar in Japan when their works achieve acclaim abroad. One of the highlights of 2013 was when Mt. Fuji was officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which caused all Japan to swell with pride. Now another institution has received special recognition: 和食 washoku, or traditional Japanese cuisine, known for its beautiful presentation as much for its delicious taste. One problem facing modern Japan today is how to maintain interest in traditional food culture in a world where the "mind-share" of Japanese food is shrinking due to globalization and the rise of convenient alternatives. Consumption of fish and rice, two staples of the country for centuries, has fallen by half since the 1960s, and today the most popular foods among children are curry rice, spaghetti and "hamburg" (Salisbury) steak, none of which are Japanese. Hopefully the official UNESCO recognition will cause more people to turn to traditional dishes in the future.

Japanese cuisine receives recognition by UNESCO.

Japan's New Secrecy Law

Japan is buzzing over the enactment of a new Secrets Protection Act which threatens prison terms for government employees or journalists who divulge information the government deems secret. The law is clearly intended to prevent any local Edward Snowdens from cropping up, but it's worrisome because of the way in which anything can arbitrarily be named a state secret by the government. While there's been much hand-wringing over the new law, I find I'm pretty mellow towards it. First, while Japan ostensibly has a "free press," it's actually pretty dysfunctional, happily censoring itself on topics such as the Japanese Emperor or Google's accidental publishing of historical maps that show where the buraku-min (Japan's version of India's untouchables) lived during the Edo Period, all while proactively protecting the "privacy" of individuals caught in scandals if they happen to be affiliated with AKB48 or the Johnny's Jimusho talent agency, though no one else is afforded such consideration. As a result, net-savvy Japanese increasingly turn to Western news sources like Yahoo or MSNBC, which (being foreign-based) presumably have a more Western-style approach to reporting what the public needs to know. Then there's the grand tradition of 建前 tatemae (ta-tay-mah-eh), lit. "facade," which means the way we pretend things are even though we know it's not the truth; and 本音 honne (hon-neh), lit. "true sound," which means the way things really are, the truth, the actual situation. Whenever a law banning this or that is made in Japan, I know that it will mostly be smoke and mirrors, created for the purpose of projecting an image or enacting an official stance, with very real action taken.

There have been protests against the new secrecy law in Tokyo.

Cool Products Monday, December 9, 2013

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