Greetings from Anime Expo 2013!

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Abe-san's Erection Success

Japan's upper house election concluded safely last week, and it resulted in a strong win for prime minister Shinzo Abe and his pro-business, conservative and ironically-named Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), an outcome that was being hailed as a good move for for political stability and the continuation of the LDP's "Abenomics" reforms. While Japan is a modern democracy that functions well in general, there are certain challenges that seem unique to the country. One big problem is the plethora of political parties, a total of 12 large and small parties which must by law be granted equal time for debating national issues. Most positions are widely duplicated among the various minor parties, like the Social Democratic Party or the People's Life Party of parties like Green Wind, yet they almost never combine forces to try to push a policy through. Another problem is that there are actually too many elections in Japan, and it seems that 2-3 times a year everyone is stopping what they're doing to campaign, which means driving around in an annoying loudspeaker car asking for everyone's support. Hopefully the strong win by Mr. Abe means he has a free hand to bring real reforms to Japan.

Abe's mentor is Taro Aso, the former otaku Prime Minister. Which makes us happy.

Japanese People I Have Met

I went to Japan in 1991, happy to finally put all the Japanese I'd studied at SDSU to some use and sure I'd be there "about a year or so" (ha-ha). While running J-List since 1996 has been an amazing experience, I also enjoyed the years before that when I was a simple ESL teacher. One good thing about teaching English is, you tend to meet a lot of different people each year, and I taught everyone, from children who were learning how to introduce themselves in English (and moreover, how to not fear the language) to a few outstanding high school age students who I was able to steer to more serious study in university, and even some interesting elderly students, like the wife of the former president of the Sapporo Ramen Company, who lived in a house nicer than a temple in Kyoto. Then there was this cool old barber who used to cut my hair. He was 85 years old, and liked to tell me stories of the "old days" during the Allied Occupation of Japan, when kids would run up to GIs and ask for chocolate and chewing gum. He loved talking to me, no doubt because no one else wanted to hear about life back then.

I had a cool old guy as my barber who told me about the old days.

Buddhist Altars and Grave Sales in Japan

Last time I talked about some of the more famous superstitions one encounters in Japan. Quite a few of these are related to funerals, for example, don't sleep with your head pointed north (called 北枕 kita-makura or "north pillow") as this is done with bodies the night before cremation, don't pass food from chopstick to chopstick (known as 渡り箸 watari-bashi), as the final stage of a funeral is when family members remove the bones of their loved ones and pass them to each other with large chopstick-like tongs, and so on. It's not uncommon for the first impression of foreigners who have just arrived in Japan to be about "death," and this is reinforced when you go for a drive through any Japanese city and come across a 仏壇屋 butsudan-ya or a shop selling Buddhist altars and gravestones. (One toy store I used to frequent went out of business and was taken over by a grave-and-Buddhist-altar store, which seemed quite ominous to me.) One of the most ironic things about living in Japan, from my point of view as an outside observer, is opening the newspaper and finding a large glossy insert advertising a big sale on these products. "It's the Buddhist altar and gravestone sales event of the season this weekend -- everything must go!"

One of the most bizarre sights, a "sale" on gravestones.

Yumina the Ethereal has Golden Master!

J-List has been involved with licensing and translated great eroge and visual novels as well as full RPGs. One game we've been hard at work on for several years is Yumina the Ethereal, one of the most involved and fantastic RPGs ever released in English. Created by the staff that created Aselia the Eternal, the quality is incredibly high. We're happy to report that the game has gone "Master Up" (e.g. Golden Master), and should be shipping within a few weeks. Preorder now if you haven't yet!

New Anime Glasses from J-List!

Then we've got more great news: new J-List Anime Glasses designs for 2013, which are free with any purchase! When we brought out the first set of fun cardboard glasses two years ago, our customers loved them, and now we've got a whole new set of glasses for you with awesome new designs. You'll receive one random set of anime glasses with each order (either shipping from the U.S. or Japan), while supplies last of course. (We'll also give you a free pair with any purchase at Anime Expo.)

* Do not pilot giant robots while wearing J-List anime glasses.

J-List is Going to Anime Expo!!

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Japanese Superstitions and "Youkai" Magical Creatures

One thing you learn about the Japanese people pretty quickly is that they can be quite superstitious, believing that if you cut your fingernails at night you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, or that if you sneeze twice, it means someone is gossiping about you, or that you should never write a person's name in red ink or they'll die, etc. Even after 20+ years in Japan, I still run into this in my daily life: if I should happen to whistle in the evening my wife will plead with me to stop, lest I summon snakes into the house. While sprinkling salt over your body when returning from a funeral, lest the spirits of the dead enter your home and dwell there, is all very harmless, there are a few "really big" Japanese superstitions. One is yakudoshi, the "unlucky year" that's said to be the age of 33 for women and 42 for men, and nearly all Japanese will avoid doing things like getting married or starting construction on a house during these years lest disaster strike. Another big one is Hinoeuma, an odd belief that girls born in the Year of the Fire Horse (the last one was in 1966, and the next one is 2026) will be headstrong and unable to find husbands, and the Japanese birth rate always takes a big dive during these years.

One fun aspect of Japan's tradition of superstition are 妖怪 youkai (yoh-kai), a pantheon of traditional Japanese "folk spirits," some of which have existed since the Edo Period. I say "spirits," though ghosts, demons, monsters and fairies might be just as accurate a translation, as the term is rather fluid. Here are some of the more famous youkai creatures:

• テケテケ Teke Teke, the horrific upper torso of a girl whose body was cut in two, who roams the Japanese countryside cutting people in half to get revenge.
• 雪女 Yuki Onna, a female ghost who appears in snowstorms to freeze travelers as she searches for her lover.
• トイレの花子さん Toire no Hanako-san or Hanako of the Toilet, said to be the ghost of a girl who died because she didn't hear the air raid sirens during a bombing in WWII. If you knock three times on the farthest door of the girl's bathroom on the third floor of any school and ask, "Hanako-san, are you there?" she will answer you.
• 口避け女 Kuchi-sake Onna, the monstrous spirit of a woman whose mouth was cut from ear-to-ear. Also the universal nickname of Julia Roberts in Japan.

Many of these spirits clearly came about from parents wanting to scare children into being good, like 亜要 Akaname, a foul monster who comes to lick bathtubs that haven't been scrubbed properly, or 九十九神 Tsukumogami, good spirits which reside in any object that has been used for 100 years, which teaches children to value their possessions. These youkai folk spirits are popular in Japanese pop culture and crop up all the time in anime and games, including Touhou, Inu x Boku and GeGeGe no Kitaro.

(If you want to learn more about these magical Japanese creatures, we've got the Youkai Encyclopedias in stock now.)

Youkai, the magical "folk spirits" of ancient Japan.

Toshiba "Gaijin" Commercial

Well, my trip to the middle of America and back is finally done. I managed to put 3200 miles (5150 km) on my 2002 Miata, the distance from San Diego to Maine, and I got to see some of the most beautiful parts of the U.S. Now that I've rested, I'm fully ready for all the fun we're going to have at Anime Expo this week!

Toshiba got some unwanted buzz this weekend when a commercial for its SuiPanDa, a home bakery machine that can bake both traditional bread from flour as well as "rice bread" using white rice, caught the eye of bloggers. The commercial was interesting because it featured a Japanese woman in a blonde wig with a fake nose (the Japanese perceive the noses of foreigners to be especially large, even when they're not) speaking outrageously accented Japanese. While some are calling the commercial racist (and Toshiba has removed the video from its website and YouTube), occasional TV commercials poking harmless fun at Westerners are just another aspect of living in Japan, and I rather like them because of what they teach us about the Japanese. In this commercial, the cultural connection of "foreigners = bread" is an interesting concept, and many Japanese do imagine that Westerners eat a big basket of bread with every meal, as the Japanese do with white rice. The girl speaks in a hilarious "gaijin" accent, essentially using the overly-emotional inflection of English while speaking Japanese, and saying phrases like "Oh no!" which foreigners are famous for. While people who want to be offended by this will be, it's also true that the performance was spot-on -- we really do talk like that. So, what do you think about Japan's stereotypes of foreigners?

An amusing look at Westerners through the Japanese.