Developing 信頼 (Trust) in Japan

One concept that's very important in Japan is 信頼 shinrai (SHEEN-rye), meaning "trust." There are many situations when you see trust in action in Japan, for example the way Japanese bars will display dozens of bottles with customers' names written on the side. This is called "bottle keep," and the bottles have been purchased by customers who drink from them whenever they come in, trusting the establishment not to steal sips from their Yamazaki 18 Year. If it starts to rain while you're at the post office, they've got a rack of umbrellas you're free to borrow, and if you should ever lose your wallet while in Japan, just go to the nearest police station and the police will loan you train fare to get home. Once I was building a wooden deck on my house and needed a way to get the lumber from the home center to my house; happily, the store had a truck that they loan out for free, even to foreigners like me. Japanese can sometimes trust too much. Once I went to make a purchase in an electronics store but didn't have enough cash with me; the clerk actually offered to loan me the money I needed, even though she didn't know me at all. I don't know about you, but I find that being in a society where trustworthiness is valued is great, and I'm always careful to make sure I don't betray trust that anyone puts in me.

Trust is an important aspect to life in Japan. And Hibiki.

Confusing Words in Japanese: Kowai and Kawaii

When dealing with other languages there's plenty of potential for words that are similar in sound to become confused in the brain despite being totally unrelated, for example the word 盆栽 bonsai (a miniature tree) is often confused with banzai (a Japanese word roughly meaning "may the Emperor live for 10,000 years," essentially a translation of the British "God save the King"). Other words that can be confused easily are 奇麗 kirei (meaning clean or pretty, depending on the context) and 嫌い kirai (hateful); 可愛い kawaii (cute) and 怖い kowai (scary); or いっぱい ippai (to be full) and おっぱい oppai (er, boobs). Sometimes words can sound "different" when they're really the same, like Nippon and Nihon, two valid ways to say the name of Japan in Japanese (the first one sounds a little more formal/patriotic and is what's always used on NHK news broadcasts), or 腹切 harakiri and 切腹 seppuku, two words for Japanese ritual disembowelment but with the kanji in different order (the first uses the Japanese reading for the characters, the second the Chinese one). Word confusion can happen going the other direction, too, like the many Lord of the Rings fans here who believe the title is Road of the Ring (e.g. the road the ring takes to get to Mordor), or the way 99.9% of Japanese believe Pizza Hut is really Pizza Hat (the red roof even like a hat).

Is it kawaii or kowai? Or sometimes both.

Technology as Seen in Anime

One cool aspect of animation is how it can express any idea without limitation, since anything that can be drawn on paper of can be animated. This extends to technology, and it's quite common for anime to show us fanciful glimpses of possible futures, like the Fyu-Neru robot from Guilty Crown, with both legs and wheels so it can roll anywhere yet climb stairs or furniture, a great design we might actually have in our homes someday. Often the technology shown in anime becomes another "character" in the story, like the Cyberpunk tech and Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell or the important role of cell phones in Steins;Gate or School Days. I've recently been watching the new Nitroplus series Robotics;Notes, about a school robotics club that sets out to build an actual giant robot. The series is highly influenced by iPad-like tablet computing, and shows us a future in which everyone carries these tablets for gaming, communication and interaction with "augmented reality" virtual idols.

Robotics;Notes shows us the glorious future of tablet computing and robots.

J-List is Having a Fashion + Cosplay Sale

Announcing the J-List Spring Fashion + Cosplay sale! Since we have so many fun Japanese fashion products + accessories plus cosplay products and anime t-shirts, we decided to have a sale on these items for you this month. Through the end of March, get 2x J-List points on all these excellent products! Click to see the most popular Japanese apparel and cosplay products, as ranked by our customers!

Japanese Grammar and Taxes

Language reflects the character of the people who use it, and this is definitely true of Japanese. One of the first bits of Japanese grammar students of the language learn is the verb ending ~masho, which corresponds to "let's...," as in 食べましょう tabemasho ("let's eat"), or 行きましょう ikimasho ("let's go") or タバコをやめましょう tabako wo yamemasho ("let's not smoke"). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (e.g. do not smoke, do not ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, essentially placing a social expectation on individuals that they'll alter their behavior for the good of the larger group. Some examples of this might include, "let's put our telephones into vibration mode when riding on the train" (maanaa modo ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). Another situation when this fuzzy "let's all cooperate" type of language is used is tax season, when the Japanese Tax Office sponsors commercials featuring TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms while saying, "Let's all fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly."

Speaking of taxes, they have them here in Japan, of course, and they work pretty much the same in Japan as they probably do with your country. There's a National Tax Office with local offices in every city for collection of taxes, which are distributed to the various regions of Japan so they can function. (This year a new Tohoku Reconstruction Tax kicked in, to help fund the rebuilding of Northern Japan.) While most tax and accounting concepts present in the West exist here, there are a few fundamental differences. There's no concept of joint ownership of homes or bank accounts by married couples in Japan, with the odd result that the house we live in is owned by my father-in-law, but the land is owned by his wife. While the U.S. government creates programs like 401(k) and IRAs to encourage people to save for the future, Japanese actually save too much, so the government tries to erect penalties to discourage this. Finally, some common concepts in the U.S. like property being held in a living trust are totally alien here in Japan, which can cause confusion when you live with one foot in each country like I do.

"Let's file our taxes accurately, everyone!"

Cool Products Wednesday, February 27, 2013

In addition to updating this site with slice-of-life news from Japan three times a week, I have a popular Twitter feed and Facebook page where I post random anime images and links to updated J-List products. It's fun to watch and see what J-List products people are most amazed by, for example there's that Death Star ice ball maker that gets a lot of attention, or the Horse Head mask that's great for making Internet memes. Our customers squee'ed with happiness when we posted the new Japanese Green Tea Kit Kats for 2013, and so many people have tweeted about the awesome Totoro Plush Chair we can't keep them in stock.

Earthquakes and Japan

There are a few unpleasant things about living in Japan, like riding packed trains in Tokyo at rush hour, or accidentally overfilling the kerosene for your heater, spilling smelly fuel all over your family's shoes. Another aspect of living in Japan I could do without is earthquakes. While things have definitely quieted down since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, we do still get one or two quakes large enough to notice each week. The other day the J-List staff was happily doing our work when everyone's cell phones started making a loud chirping sound none of us had heard before, and about two seconds later things started to shake. It wasn't that big a quake -- a 6.2 magnitude centered in Ibaragi Prefecture, about 75 km away -- but the unexpected alarm from our phones (which are part of Japan's new early warning system) made us think that the Big One had arrived.

Being ready for earthquakes is important in Japan.

School Backpack and Study Desk Season

In addition to hay fever season in Japan, it's also time to prepare for the start of the new school year, which begins in April. Education is taken very seriously here, and in the case of new first graders, families will go all-out to make sure the child gets off on the right foot. First, every student must have a desk to do his or her homework at, and there's a huge industry of companies selling stylish and functional study desks for kids with features such as a plastic sheet with images from the latest popular anime series that can be removed later when the child is older. Another important choice is what kind of school backpack to buy. School backpacks are called randoseru, from the Dutch word ranzel, and they're extremely well made hard leather backpacks designed to hold everything the student needs over six years of elementary school. Right now Japanese TV is being bombarded with commercials for these school backpacks and study desks, which can be quite expensive, no doubt because retailers know that well-off doting grandparents are usually the ones picking up the tab.

Poor Miku-chan forgot her school backpack was open before she bowed.

Appreciating Humility in Japan

One aspect of the Japanese I'm a fan of is their humility, the general tendency to be self-effacing and avoid boastfulness when dealing with others. This humility takes many forms, for example most Japanese will vehemently deny a compliment paid to them, or may deflect the compliment back to you with the phrase おかげさまで okage-sama de, which literally means "it's all thanks to you," said even if you just met the person in question and they had nothing to do with helping you attain whatever skill or ability you've just been praised for. Humility is baked into the language, for example when speaking formal business Japanese there are different verbs for "to go" or "to see" depending on whether you're referring to the (glorious) client you're trying to win a contract with or your own (worthless) organization. The Japanese also express humility by bowing in various situations, with the deepest type of bow known as dogeza, when you lower yourself to the floor in front of the person, something my wife's mother did the first time she met my American mother, begging us to "take care of her selfish daughter." Another symbol of Japan's humility, I've always thought, was the way schools and companies (including J-List) do their own cleaning rather than hiring staff to do it. They apparently have a similar policy at the gym I go to, requiring all employees to do the most unpleasant job in the company, cleaning the sweaty mats the customers use to sit on while in the sauna, in rotation.

Humility is an important trait to have in Japan.

Haru Ichiban, the First Wind of Spring

Right now it's extremely windy in Japan, with strong gusts fierce enough to rock our house and make us think we're having an earthquake. It's known as haru ichiban or the First Wind of Spring, and it acts as a sort of herald for the end of winter here in Japan. While I'm all for saying goodbye to cold weather, the strong winds in the spring aren't always welcome because they also bring massive waves of pollen which cause suffering for the 30% of Japan's population with allergies. The reason hay fever is so bad in Japan goes back to the postwar years when the Japanese government, wanting to streamline its forestry industry, decided to standardize on sugi (Japanese cedar) for the vast majority of its trees. When they all start pollinating at the same time it overwhelms the immunities of poor Japanese, who are unable to do anything but put on one of those health masks and suffer until the air clears.

Haru ichiban winds bring spring, but also pollen.

Have you ordered our new "Trap" Game?

We're big fans of Japanese visual novels, aka eroge or H-Games (depending on the content), since the genre offers so much variety. Just after shipping the extremely fun card battle game with the not-too-subtle title of Boob Wars, we've got more good news for our customers: a limited package release version of Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling For Me! is coming in March. This is a very popular "trap" game in which you play a male attending an all-girl's school, which naturally leads to some interesting situations when the girls find out your secret. So it's basically a "trap" game that's all hetero. Preorder it now!

Japanese Snacks Stocked in San Diego

In addition to hundreds of snack and drink items stocked in Japan, J-List stocks some great products in our office in San Diego for your ordering convenience, from authentic Ramune drinks with the glass ball to energy drinks featuring your favorite video game characters plus Tentacle Grape, the fun carbonated grape soda. Click here to view all San Diego-based Japanese snacks, as ranked by our customers.