Gaijin World Problems

While it's generally fun to be a foreigner living in Japan -- the people are nice, the sushi is cheap and vending machines thank you politely after dispensing your can of hot corn coup -- there are of course certain unique challenges that we gaijin face. So in the tradition of the #FirstWorldProblems Internet meme, here are some #GaijinWorldProblems for you.

• Slippers are half the size of your feet, but your guest offered them to you, so you have to wear them.
• Search engines default to Japanese language on new computers, making you spend several minutes figuring out how to force the browser to search in English.
• Can't go skiing or bowling, the shoes they rent out are way too small for big gaijin feet.
• Bumps head all the time, needs surgery for loose cataract every few years.
• Takes a shot at using keigo (formal polite Japanese), gets exalting and humble verbs reversed.
• Is slightly above average weight, so Japanese assume he's a famous Pro Wrestler and ask for his autograph.
• The girl handing out pocket tissues advertising high-interest credit card loans has been told not to bother handing tissues to foreigners.
• Someone compliments your Japanese ability, you feel insulted all day.
• Can't find the "open" and "close" buttons inside the elevator because they're written in English.
• Spends several months with no English speakers around except ESL students, now talks like Forrest Gump.
• Too tall to fit in a kigurimi full-body costume.
• Policeman asks to see your gaijin ID card, turns out he just wants to practice his English with you.
• Enjoys motsu nabe until he learns what motsu means (beef tripe, e.g. beef intestines).
• Goes for all-you-can-eat pizza at Shakey's, the only pizza they have out is corn and mayonnaise.

Another minor challenge for foreigners is learning to sit on the floor. While Western-style furniture like comfortable sofas and chairs are common in Japan, most homes have one or more washitsu (Japanese style rooms) complete with tatami mats and little cushions to sit on called called zabuton (literally, "sitting futon"). In my house, we often eat with my wife's parents, with everyone sitting around the kotatsu heater grabbing from a large pot of food boiling away in the center (naturally not motsu nabe). Even after living for so long in Japan, an hour or so of sitting on the floor starts to get uncomfortable, and I'll usually switch to a nearby chair when no one is looking. I remember when I met my future mother-in-law for the first time: she took me out to experience a really traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which requires that you sit in seiza ("correct sitting") position with your entire body's weight resting on your knees and feet for about 10,000 hours. Japanese always expect that foreigners won't be able to sit for long in that position, so of course I had to prove her wrong, gritting my teeth as the blood stopped flowing through my legs. I guess I made a good impression since she let me marry her daughter.

Sitting seiza style is not easy for foreigners.

J-List's Official New Year Party is Tonight

Today is the day of J-List's official New Year Party, and when we're done with work we'll all gather at an izakaya (traditional Japanese bar-restaurant) to officially mark the start of another year for our company. I write a lot about how you can understand Japan through kata, a word that can mean shape or mold but in this case refers to pre-defined social forms that everyone adheres to, and formal get-togethers like this are definitely important in Japanese organizations. While most companies might prefer to hold a Year-End Party in December as a way of saying otsukaresama deshita ("thank you for your hard work") to employees over the past year, J-List is too always too busy filling hundreds of orders per day (thank you!) to do this. Instead we have our annual get-together in January as a New Year Party, when things have calmed down a bit. After we re-dedicate ourselves to covering the world with Japanese Kit Kat and ridiculously cute cat products from Japan, we'll probably go out for a few hours of karaoke.

A scene from the 2013 J-List New Year Party (artist's conception).

Good News from J-List: Lower Shipping Rates!

J-List has some good news that customers will be happy to hear: we've lowered our shipping rates for products shipping from Japan, so you can now order all the awesome anime artbooks and cosplay products and delicious Japanese snacks you want from Japan and pay less for them. All rates have been reduced, from the speedy and fully trackable EMS, the affordable first-class airmail, economy airmail (SAL) and so on.

Exceptions in the Japanese Language

When you study Japanese, you have to come to grips with the fact that, while the rules that govern how the grammar and writing system work are surprisingly straightforward and logical, there are also lots of exceptions to these rules. Japanese sentences are marked with easy-to-understand "particles" that denote the subject, object, predicate and so on, which is all very nice…except for that fact that many of these words are omitted in actual use since they're clear from the context. If you watch anime in Japanese you'll quickly learn that -chan is a name suffix for girls and -kun is for boys...and yet, when Sugo chains Asuna in the second arc of Sword Art Online he calls her "Asuna-kun," which probably confused some viewers. (The -kun name suffix is gender-neutral in certain settings, including formal, military etc.) While the standard way to write Japanese is to use hiragana for basic words (grammatical particles, etc.), kanji for more complex words, and katakana for foreign loan words like "anti-aging" (a health-related term that's been repurposed to describe Japan's efforts to update its aging infrastructure). However, there are some English words that have been in use in Japan for so long, they've gone and gotten kanji assigned to them, in violation of those neat-and-clean rules. Three examples of these somewhat archaic words are 珈琲 koh-hii for coffee, 煙草 tabako for tobacco/cigarettes, and 倶楽部 kurabu for club.

Writing "coffee" in outdated kanji gives shops a "ye old shoppe" old timey feel.

Peter's Unified Theory of Japan, Part 33

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that the Japanese greatly desire to be seen in a favorable light by other nations, especially the countries of the West. A lot of what the Japanese do, such as the creation of Japan's high-speed Shinkansen train system in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics or the massive renovation of Narita Airport right before the 2002 World Cup, were largely done so foreigners who visit the country would oo and ah about how advanced Japan is. There is no higher honor for Japan than to have one of its own attain fame around the world, and various men such as writers Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki and illustrator Shirow Masamune have become legendary inside Japan in part for attaining fame in the world stage. The Japanese are also fascinated with the interest foreigners take in their culture, and it's common to see TV shows featuring gaijin who know more about certain subjects, say history or anime, than Japanese people do themselves. France has really embraced Japan's culture of bento, and the other day I caught a show detailing the popularity Japanese boxed lunches have found in Paris, with customers ordering them in Japanese restaurants, making beautiful works of bento art and so on.

The Japanese are tickled when foreigners embrace their culture.

Popular Varieties of Green Tea in Japan

Before coming to Japan, I knew the Japanese drank "green tea," but naturally it was destined to be more complicated than that. It turns out that there are a dozen or more varieties of Asian and Western teas the Japanese consume, and during my time here I've worked hard to embrace them all. The most general word for green tea is お茶 o-cha, the o being the "honorific particle" that's placed before words that have extra respect in Japanese society, and the type of tea most familiar to us would be 煎茶 sen-cha, a weak green tea that's good for casual drinking hot or cold. Some other major varieties of tea include ほうじ茶 houji-cha, a delicious green tea that's been roasted, 玄米茶 genmai-cha, roasted green tea that contains unpolished rice, 麦茶 mugi-cha, delicious cold barley tea for the summer months and 抹茶 matcha, the dark green tea made from matcha powder, used in tea ceremony. This covers most of the major types of tea that are considered "Japanese," but Chinese teas are also popular here, especially oolong and jasmine. Of course the Japanese love Western black tea (called 紅茶 koh-cha, lit. "red tea"), and you can find all the major varieties here. Tea is nearly always drunk without sugar, and when Japanese go to Chinese-speaking countries like Taiwan or Malaysia, they're flabbergasted to see bottled oolong tea with added sugar in it. J-List stocks some great types of Japanese tea and related products, if you want to browse.

Tea is king in Japan.

Japan Loves Tea

J-List has lots of interesting tea-related products on the site for you, whether you'd like to sample popular varieties of Japanese tea, view traditional products related to tea ceremony etc., or browse our selection of interesting tea cups from Japan. What interesting things can J-List show you today?