How Kanji Works

Kanji, of course, are the characters that communicate meaning in written Japanese, imported from China around the 4th Century A.D. They look like random chicken scratches if you're not familiar with them, but there's actually a lot of logic built into them. For example, the character for "woman" is 女 (read onna on Japanese), which is incorporated into characters with related meanings, like 姉 (ane, older sister), 妹 (imouto, younger sister), 姫 (hime, princess) or 結婚 (kekkon, marriage). There are many situations in which you can guess what a character means based on what elements -- called "radicals" -- it contains. While mastering kanji is a big challenge to Western students of Japanese, I found the best approach was to embrace the difficulty, jumping in despite how hard it can look at first, starting with easier manga and singing songs at karaoke. Also, focusing on reading skills and worrying less about learning to write kanji is a good idea, since in the age of computers and cell phones almost no one hand-writes kanji any more, even Japanese people. If you're interested in learning kanji (either a little or a lot), J-List just happens to have a great selection of textbooks, study notebooks, flashcards, and so on.

Biting social commentary from Ouran High School.

The Japanese, Soy Beans and Devils

Everyone knows that rice is the staple food of the Japanese, and it really is -- most people in Japan eat a big bowl or plate of rice with nearly every meal, and they pretty sure that Westerners always have a big basket of bread beside their plate when we eat. The "other" staple food in Japan would have to be soybeans, which are the source of a great variety of Japanese foods. Miso soup, a hot soup made from fermented miso paste, is an extremely healthy dish that's enjoyed with every traditional Japanese breakfast, and served with other meals. Tofu is another popular food, used in many Japanese and Chinese recipes, or good served chilled on a hot afternoon with soy sauce poured over it. Natto are the famous fermented soybeans that are popular in much of the country, although less so in the Kansai/Osaka area, to say nothing of my mouth. My kids eat it all the time, and when they want to tease me they come up to me and breathe Natto breath on me -- ugh. Japan couldn't get through a day without soy sauce, the single most common condiment in Japanese kitchens, even more than salt and pepper. Finally, soybeans play an important cultural role each February on Setsubun, the traditional end of the year according to the old lunar calendar, which is this Sunday. On that day, children will throw dried soybeans at an oni (devil), usually the father of the house wearing a scary paper mask, and shout 鬼は外！福はうち！oni wa soto! fuku wa uchi! ("In with happiness! Out with devils!"). As with most Japanese customs, it's quite old, dating back to the Muromachi Period (1337-1573).

Setsubun is a day for throwing soybeans at ogres.

The Japanese Love Crooked Teeth

An important aspect of the Japanese concept of 萌え (moe, pronounced mo-EH) is extreme cuteness through endearing physical and/or character defects, which serve to make that character more charming to fans. Some of these defects include clumsiness, bad vision requiring glasses, extreme shyness, being terrible at cooking, a strand of hair that refuses to be combed down (ahoge), and so on. (Hmm, now that I think about it, I think my wife married me because of various defects in my personality that she wanted to "fix"...I wonder if there's any kind of connection here.) Another big moe element is crooked teeth, called 八重歯 (yaeba, pronounced yah-eh-ba), which are popular both in meatspace (AKB48's Tomomi Itano is probably the most famous yaeba idol currently) as well as the 2D world of anime and video games, where crooked teeth are represented by a single fang in the mouth. Yaeba are so popular that you can now have them artificially added to your teeth, by visiting a dental clinic and asking for tsuke-yaebe, fake caps that sit on top of your real teeth to give you that cute "imperfect beauty" look. What do you think?

The popularity of yaeba fangs is going strong.

J-List's Chocolate + Tenga Sale is Back!

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!

Shoes On your Bed

When foreigners come to Japan, one of the first cultural differences they run into is the custom of taking shoes off before going into a house. Japanese homes (and some offices, including J-List) have a lowered area at the front door called a genkan where you leave your shoes before going inside. After you've lived here a little while, it becomes second nature to open the door, kick off your shoes (or if you're the obsessive type, neatly line them up), and go inside. To the Japanese sense of cleanliness, anything having to do with your feet is dirty under any circumstances -- actually, the genkan area is essentially considered "outside" the house. Recently my family has been hooked on the Paranormal Activity movie series, a quasi-realistic ghost story told through video and security camera. In one scene, a character sits on her bed while still wearing her shoes, something that'd be completely unthinkable in Japan.

This looks really strange to the Japanese.

All About the Japanese Yen

The currency of Japan is the yen, a word that means "circle." (The Chinese yuan and Korean won both mean the same thing, with all three names having the same etymology.) While there are many different denominations of paper bills used in the U.S., Japan has just three in circulation, for 1000, 5000 and 10,000 yen. The current face on the 1000 yen note is Hideyo Noguchi, a famous researcher who helped isolate yellow fever before, er, dying of yellow fever, while the 5000 yen note carries the face of Ichiyo Higuchi, a female novelist from the Meiji Era. (The faces on the previous versions of the currency were a bit more interesting, featuring novelist Natsume Souseki and Inazo Nitobe, a Japanese who converted to Quakerism and wrote the first book on bushido, The Way of the Samurai.) The all-important 10,000 yen note, the symbol of Japan's economic power in the world, is reserved for Yukichi Fukuzawa, one of the "Founding Fathers" of modern Japan. He was one of the first Japanese to travel to America and Europe, and he wrote the first books explaining Western institutions to Japanese before founding Keio University, more or less the Yale of Japan.

Some information about Japan money, if you want it.

The Japanese Love Insurance

There are certain things that the Japanese love, including cat ears, mayonnaise, and green tea Kit Kat. They also love...insurance? Yes, it's true: despite having only 2% of the word's population, the nation of Japan pays 18% of global insurance premiums. My Japanese wife loves to buy insurance, making sure we're protected from just about everything imaginable -- she even has "golf insurance" that covers injury to herself or others while on the golf course and gives an instant $10,000 bonus should she ever get a verified hole-in-one. While many names of insurance companies in Japan will probably sound familiar to you -- there's MetLife Japan, Mitsui-Sumitomo Life, the Aflac duck of course -- some might come as a surprise. Sony's insurance arm is one of the fastest growing companies in Japan, selling auto, cancer and health insurance for pets. The biggest insurance company in Japan (and in fact, the world) is one you probably don't think of often: it's the Japanese postal system, which offers banking and insurance services in addition to picking up J-List packages for delivery every morning. The postal insurance arm has a staggering $1.3 trillion in assets.

Japanese people love to buy insurance.

Remember, Lower Shipping Rates at J-List!

Remember our good news: 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.

We Love Hello Kitty Stuff

One of our favorite hobbies is trawling Japanese shops to find fun and interesting Hello Kitty products from Japan to delight you with, and I think we do a pretty good job. If you browse the most "wishlisted" Sanrio products on the site today, you'll see lots of fun products, like the Hello Kitty Bilingual Guide to Japan, lots of kawaii chocolate for Valentine's Day, random ways to keep warm with Hello Kitty and more.

Johnny Kitagawa: Idolmaster

One of the most enigmatic people in Japan is Johnny Kitagawa, founder of Johnny & Associates (or "Johnny's Jimusho" in Japanese). This is the talent agency that's been responsible for virtually every popular Japanese boy band from SMAP to Tokio to Arashi and Hey! Say! JUMP. Born in Los Angeles in 1931 to Japanese parents, Johnny spent several years in an internment camp during World War II according to the Japanese Wikipedia entry. After the war, he joined the U.S. military as a Japanese language interpreter and was sent to work in the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. This is when (according to legend) he befriended some teenage boys he met in Yoyogi Park and organized them into a singing group called The Johnny's, launching his career as a band manager. Over the next twenty years he tweaked his formula, borrowing from the business model of the Monkees as a way of tailor-making talent to appeal to certain fans, until his bands started taking over the pop culture world during the late 80s. Although he's one of the most influential men in the entertainment industry, he makes Truman Capote look like an extrovert, shunning all media contact. Until yesterday, that is, when he made his first-ever TV interview, appearing in a segment for NHK's world news, though his face was not shown directly in the program.

While the star-making success of Johnny's & Associates (J&E) has been phenomenal, there've been some serious issues too, including accusations of improper contact between Mr. Kitagawa and some of his talent over the years. (In 2002, the talent agency sued weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun over these accusations and was awarded $80,000 in damages, though this amount was reduced on appeal.) The funny thing is, almost none of this negative news is ever reported in the Japanese press, and it's a given that, should any serious scandal involving a Johnny's-kei performer emerge, it will be ignored by the mainstream press. This is due to the great influence J&E holds over the media, since TV networks know that if they report news negative to the talent agency they'll be blackballed and won't get any stars for their TV programs. This problem is only limited to Johnny's performers -- when the mother of AKB48 member Minami Takahashi was caught in a relationship with a minor, every news source ignored the story, citing "privacy concerns for those involved" that no one else would be entitled to. This willingness of Japan's masukomi (from "mass communications," e.g. the news media) to censor itself at various times is definitely one of my least favorite aspects of Japan.

Johnny's-kei units rule the boy band market in Japan.

Early Retirement Boom in Japan

Japan is currently experiencing a wave early retirements as dozens of teachers, police officers and other public servants move their scheduled retirements up several months. The reason is a coming reduction in the amount of "retirement bonus" public employees will receive, a change that takes effect in April. In Japan there's a huge class of komuin ("koh-mu-een," civil servants), a permanent bureaucracy modeled after Her Majesty's Civil Service in England that includes all teachers, police officers, firefighters and administrative employees in Japan. When a Japanese civil servant retires, he receives a one-time "retirement bonus" of around $300,000 in addition to his normal pension, and this bonus amount is scheduled to be reduced by $15,000 for people retiring after April. While no one cares if the guy who stamps your passport retires two months early, many teachers have been retiring in the middle of the school year, which means they can't be with their students when they graduate in March. This is viewed as a serious breach of responsibility in Japan.

Japanese public servants are rushing to retire early.

Remember, J-List Has 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.

Keep Warm in Winter, Japan Style

There are some interesting and unique ways of keeping warm, Japan style. First we've got our super warm "kairo" heating pads, which I couldn't survive without, plus those fizzing bath tablets that send bubbles up your bath, and more. The other day I mentioned haramaki, clothes that you wrap around your mid-section while sleeping, and several customers asked us to get some of these for the site...and here they are.