What Color Are Your Eyes?

Quick, what color are your eyes? You may have answered blue or hazel or brown, but if you were Japanese, you'd likely have replied, "black." Like all East Asians, Japanese are all born with brown eyes, but for incomprehensible cultural reasons they'll always tell you that their eyes are "black" if asked because they think you're asking about the pupil and not the iris. Eye color is something the Japanese are quite fascinated with when it comes to gaijin, and I've had many students who wanted to talk about my eyes, ask what color my parents' eyes were or see if I perceived the world through a blue tint. I personally have hazel-blue eyes that change color depending on what I'm wearing, and whenever I told my Japanese students this they were shocked and refused to believe me. Maybe the "black" eyes of Japanese people explains why they use the word 青 ao meaning blue to describe a "green" traffic light. I'll have to ponder that one a bit...

The twins with blue yes, from Please Twins.

How Do Japanese Feel About the USA?

When studying a language, it's not uncommon to encounter a word that that's difficult to translate on a 1-to-1 basis. One word that took me a while to pin down was 憧れる akogareru, a verb which means to respect or admire (say, a talented colleague);  to be attracted to (a nervous girl preparing to confess her love to her senpai); as well as to long for or to yearn after (for example, to yearn to visit Rome in the fall). This third definition sums up how many Japanese feel about the U.S., which seems to hold a special place in their hearts as a sprawling land of freedom which they describe with the word 格好いい kakko ii, meaning "cool" or "good style." I talked about this with Yasu while we were driving from Atlanta to Savannah, and he said, "I was personally attracted to America through its cool street culture, which was really big when I first came here. Now I feel I've come to the 'real America' and it's really great for me." Japanese aren't the only ones with romantic feelings for the U.S., of course, and in my own travels while back home I've encountered families from Europe and elsewhere making RV trips to the various beautiful sights America has to offer, and a gang of 20 cool old dudes from Switzerland fulfilling their dream of crossing America on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The word akogareru also describes how a lot of us feel about Japan, about making that first visit to the otaku "holy land" Akihabara or walking through the shrines and temples of Kyoto. It's a good word, I think.

Japanese are drawn to the U.S. just as we are to Japan.

The End of Space Battleship Yamato 2199

A new anime season is upon us, and as usual I'm still rushing to finish last season's shows, like Attack on Titan, the second season of Bakemonogatari/Monogatari and the realistic otaku girl anime WataMote. The most important show to me in recent months has been Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the re-make of the 1974 space opera about the WWII battleship Yamato, transformed into a spaceship capable of traveling 148,000 to the planet Iscandar to bring back equipment that can heal the Earth of radiation poisoning. It's not every day one's childhood walks through the door to greet you warmly, and director Yutaka Izubuchi and his production staff have done a fantastic job of updating the classic story for modern audiences and adding new twists in the plot, several based on episodes written for the original series but never produced. It's fun to see some of the story adaptions they've made: for example, there are now "blue" Gamilas aliens as well as a "white" sub-race that's part of the empire, a nod to President Desler's original white coloring in the 1974 series, which was changed to blue ten episodes in after some criticism. I've been savoring the last few episodes of the new series, unable to bring myself to pull the trigger and actually watch the end, though I'll probably give into temptation this weekend. If you're interested in one of the greatest space opera stories ever told, I recommend this show a lot, and happily, the Yamato 2199 Blu-rays are fully region free and subtitled in English! (And no, it's not necessary to watch the original first.)

I'm enjoying the Yamato re-make.

The Great Sailor Moon Boom of 2013

Time seems to be flowing backwards in the anime world these days, with classic old shows like Space Battleship Yamato coming back from the grave. Another show that's rising fast is Sailor Moon, thanks to the new series that will be airing in 2014. We've been adding great Sailor Moon products over the past few months, and today we have a huge volley of new items, including Sailor Moon figures, "transforming" pens and pointers, stationery and notebooks, and the cutest Luna/Artemis reversible pouch. We'll be putting our order in with the distributors in for these items next week, so if at all possible we'd love it if fans could preorder the items they want ahead of time. You aren't charged until the items come in stock if you pay with a credit card, and this helps us know how many products to order (so we don't sell out before you get yours).

Japan Consumption Tax Goes Up

In 1989 Japan enacted its first consumption tax (e.g. VAT or sales tax), forcing a 3% tax on purchases on a loudly complaining populace, and in 1997 the rate was raised to 5%. Now after years of wrangling by Japanese politicians, the tax is slated to be raised to 8% next April, which will likely cause more wringing of hands by consumers here. (Depending on where you live in the world, you might feel it's "quaint" to get upset over an 8% VAT, of course.) While there's a long list of products exempted from California's sales tax (essentials such as food, medicine, etc.), Japan's consumption tax is charged to nearly everything, all food, educational materials, even land and home purchases, which means there's always a big rush to finalize real estate purchases before a tax increase, followed by a big drop afterwards. The tax rate is scheduled to go up to 10% in another two years, too, though hopefully the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will wait for a rise in wages before they follow through with that.

More than the increase in consumption tax to 8% is the nervousness the move is making people feel about the future. Japan is unique among industrialized nations in that there's very little permanent immigration from the outside compared with the U.S. and Europe. Coupled with the low birth rate of just 1.39 children per female, this means Japan has greater financial challenges thanks to fewer young people supporting a rapidly aging society. (Japan is quite envious of the U.S., with its near-2.0 births per female and plenty of incoming immigration.) Internationally famous director and comedian Beat Takeshi hosted an interesting TV show in which politicians and scholars were given the opportunity to suggest strategies to tackle Japan's growing public debt. One suggestion was a "death consumption tax," with the reasoning being that if a person uses money during his life he's paying taxes and contributing to society, but if he saves his money without spending it society isn't benefited, so upon his death let's take a portion of that as consumption tax. While the aging of Japan is a big issue, another part of the problem is Japan's worthless leadership Japan over the years, with politicians addicted to building Shinkansen lines to Hokkaido and a "tunnel to nowhere" across Tokyo bay for no reason other than economic stimulus. Over the summer Japan's national debt passed 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen (one quadrillion yen, around $10 trillion), which is twice Japan's current GDP. When Google Calculator translates your country's national debt into scientific notation, things can't be good.

There's concern over the coming rise in consumption tax.

Autumn in Japan 2013

Fall is here in Japan, without a doubt my favorite time of the year since the weather is mild and the country becomes more beautiful. Just as spring is marked by 花見 hanami or cherry blossom viewing, the Japanese enjoy taking in the vibrant colors of fall, especially もみじ momiji or Japanese maple trees, and there's nothing like having a barbecue in the mountains of Gunma with family and friends with the leaves showing their colors all around. Autumn is the season for being assaulted by ads for "limited" products like Kirin's Aki-Aji ("Taste of Autumn") beer, as well as TV commercials inviting us to get on a train and go to Kyoto, which is breathtakingly beautiful as the leaves turn. It's hard to resist jumping out of my chair and heading there right now.

Autumn is my favorite season in Japan.

Yumina the Etheral, a Great Ero RPG in English!

J-List has worked for many years to help build a market for the amazing eroge and visual novels in Japan, and one game we're very proud of is the recently released Yumina the Ethereal, a great game with strong battle and RPG elements by the staff that brought us Aselia the Eternal. The main heroine -- named Yumina, surprisingly enough -- is a student whose grades are so bad she's doomed to be held back a year, unless she can get voted student council president. Can you master the battle system and help Yumina achieve her goal? Visit the official Yumina site which has a fully playable demo, or go order the game from J-List in shrinkwrapped package or Internet download form now!

Exploring the Limits of Bilingualism

After 4 years of language study at SDSU and nearly 23 years of living in Japan, I'm as bilingual as I'd ever need to be. Actually I'm less bilingual than I've been in the past in one regard, that of writing kanji, since in our modern era almost no one writes kanji characters by hand anymore, instead using pasocon and keitai (personal computers and cell phones). This leads to the loss of kanji writing ability, a problem that affects Japanese people, too, though happily reading of kanji is not affected. While I'm able to work with the Japanese staff, translate eroge and even manage contracts in Japanese, it can be surprisingly easy for me to find myself outside of my linguistic "comfort zone." The other day my wife was telling me about the history of the area around J-List, saying that there used to be many 鍛冶屋 kajiya in the area. This word was unfamiliar to me, and it turned out to be "blacksmith," a word I'd never happened to come across. I also had trouble when I went to the eye doctor a few weeks ago and found myself assaulted with vocabulary words for potential eye-related issues I'd never heard of in Japanese or in English.

I didn't know the word "blacksmith" in Japanese.

Moe-Tastic Visual Memes in Anime

Anime is filled with fun tropes and memes. One that comes up in romantic comedy series is the 間接キス kansetsu kiss or "indirect kiss," which is what happens when you drink from a can or straw after the person you're in love with has put their lips on it. It's something only elementary school kids would be silly enough to talk about in real life, yet the meme pops up in anime quite often. The Japanese way to find out if someone is running a fever is to touch foreheads with them (called odeko-touch), which is also seen in anime from time to time, usually with moe-tastic results. Sometimes the meaning of these jokes can be difficult for us to understand culturally, like the tendency for a sleeping character to be drawn with a snot bubble growing out of their nose. One decades-old visual gag in anime and manga is to draw a character with a flower growing out of their head, which represents aho (ah-ho), Osaka-ben for "stupid" -- essentially, the character is so dumb their brain is made of dirt, hence a flower can grow there. The bird often seen on Yuko's head in Nichijou is a variation of this joke.

Odeko-touch is how you check for a fever in Japan.

We Will Never Forget Georgia...Coffee

I'm safely back in Japan after a longer-than-usual flight, since it was from the East Coast instead of California, where I normally am coming from. It's certainly nice to be back "home" in my adopted country.

Yasu and I certainly had a good time in the U.S. We saw the best parts of Savannah and Macon and Athens, visited the Georgia Guide Stones (a kind of modern Stonehenge an anonymous individual erected), and explored some cool old houses and museums. In proper Japanese tradition, we visited a Target and loaded up on things we needed, like sportswear and vitamins and cold medicine, which are either hard to get in Japan, or just much more expensive here. We also bought plenty of omiyage, souvenirs for the J-List staff back in Japan. Since it's October, I figured several types of Halloween candy would make a fun gift for the staff, and I also scored some boxes of Count Chocula cereal, which the gaijin staff will hopefully appreciate, since it's certainly not something you can find in Japan.

When the Japanese think of Georgia, this is what they picture.

Cosplay and Eroge Sale at J-List Now!

October is the perfect time to think about cosplay, and J-List is having a big 2x J-List Points sale on all cosplay related products you might want to snap up, from sexy Japanese over-knee socks to Attack on Titan masks and much more. We're also having a sale on all English-translated eroge and visual novels, making it the perfect time to snap up some great titles, like the Cthulhu horror love story Saya no Uta (by the creator of Madoka Magica) and the new Moero Downhill Night game trio set.