Farewell to Blogger

I've been blogging about Japan since 1998 -- actually a bit before then, but I officially trace my start as a blogger to the release of the American Godzilla film in Japan, which is when I realized that writing about the stuff I saw here was actually more important than selling bento boxes and Totoro plush toys through J-List, though those things are fun, too. I moved to Blogger around 2003, and have enjoyed the platform overall: an easy place to archive the J-List posts that I write so they can be a reference to me and to others. Although the "age of blogs" is clearly past (Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Pinterist are far more important to us), I've enjoyed having Blgoger there as a "no-brainer" way to publish.

This good opinion changed last week when then the company unceremoneously deleted this blog for spam via an automated script. The Blogger help board was filled with people who had had their sites deleted, and they had to go through the same obstacle course I had to go through to get the site restored. I had backups, but they were mostly text based, which would have been very hard to rebuild manually. Happily the staff restored the site and apologized (again, via an automated script).

But the damage is done, and I can't trust a platform that's so hostile to some of their users, so I am bidding the Blogger platfrom adieu. This blog will be back soon, upgraded and renovated, on a self-hosted WordPress site. Until then we recommend you follow our Tumblr instead. Thanks for reading and supporting J-List, and see you soon!

A Blogger graduation! Omedetou!

J-List Update January 31. 2014

The decades after WWII have seen some successful American businesses establish themselves in Japan, including Coca-Cola, Toys R Us and the Aflac duck. Another big success story has been McDonald's, which launched in 1971 to bring that company's brand of simulated quasi-food to the Japanese, and currently has more than 3000 restaurants here. Over the past few years, McDonald's and "Donald McDonald" (which is Ronald's name here) have brought us much entertainment in the form of Internet memes (Ran Ran Roo〜!) and bizarre fanart from Pixiv. McDonald's Japan won big when the yen crashed during the 2008 recession, allowing them to import tons of cheap beef from the U.S. and Australia and lower their prices, but when Prime Minister Shinzo "The Man Who Makes Our Anime Cheaper" Abe came to power a year ago, the yen returned to more normal territory which forced the company to raise its prices. To help re-invent itself, McDonald's has been offering "American Vintage" hamburgers, including 50s diner-style classic burgers and chili fries and now 70s-themed meals complete with people dancing disco style in the TV commercials.

McDonald's is selling "American Vintage" burgers.

There are quite a few differences between people in the U.S. and Japan, and one of them is, ah, body size. Japanese can seem impossibly thin to Americans, with an average height and weight of 171 cm/68 kg (5'7"/149 lbs) for men and 159 cm/51 kg (5'2"/114 lbs) for women, at the age of 30. In the early days of J-List we brought a 23-year-old female Japanese employee of ours to the U.S. to help work the San Diego Comic-Con, and she literally had to go to Gap Kids to find clothes that were small enough for her to buy. That said, there are actually some overweight Japanese, and the other day I watched an interesting show called Beauty Colosseum in which various "talents" (a catch-all word meaning actresses, comedians and singers) who had gained unwanted weight go on a big diet while the TV cameras record their weekly progress. Various diet methods were discussed during the show, like the kuromame diet consisting mainly of Japanese black beans, or the "hot yogurt diet" in which you eat a cup of yogurt that's been microwaved before each meal, to provide more calcium to your body, or something like that.

There are actually some overweight Japanese.

The Japanese are fond of designating certain days as special. May 4th is Ramune Day, commemorating the launch of the now-iconic Japanese soft drink all the way back in 1872, while August 2nd is パンツの日 pantsu no hi or "pantsu day," a day for celebrating everything that's wonderful about shimapan and other kinds of underwear. This Sunday (February 2nd) has been designated as "Twintail Day" by the Japan Twintail Association (which is a thing), and it's a great excuse to contemplate the awesomeness of "twintails" hair style, which are apparently called "pigtails" in English, though I've lived in Japan long enough that I needed to look that up. Many of the most popular anime characters have "twintail" hair, including Azusa from K-On!, Hatsune Miku, Kuroko from A Certain Scientific Railgun and of course Sailor Moon. Like "softcream" (what the Japanese call soft-serve ice cream), "virgin road" (a wedding aisle) and "guts pose" (someone pretending to show off their strength), twintails is a cute example of 和製英語 wasei-eigo or "made-in-Japan English."

Who's your favorite "twintail" character?

Today is a big day for PS Vita fans, with some great titles being released today, including the "definitive version" of the romance game Amagami, Disgaea 4, a Dragon Ball Z fighting game and deluxe edition of Rozen Maiden which comes with the actual watch from the series. We love all Sony's game platforms -- PSP, PS3, PSVita, and the soon-to-be-released-in-Japan PS4 -- because the games are all region-free, meaning otakus all around the world can play these great anime games, learn Japanese using them, and so on. Browse the new PSVita and other anime games now!

J-List Update January 27, 2014

Every once in a while Japan does something that makes you stop and say, "wait, what?" Like when they advertised the latest Ring horror film by dressing up 50 women as Sadako coming out of a TV and walked them around Shibuya, scaring people. Or when you're in the men's onsen bath and a cleaning lady comes in, ignoring our nakedness as she tidies up the buckets and shampoo bottles. (Some of the stranger Japanese snacks that we sell on J-List probably make our customers say "what?" too.) The other day I stopped of at a convenience store to pick up some onigiri when I saw a rare thing: a gorgeous Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG, one of the most excellent cars I can think of, with the key in the ignition and the engine running while the owner went in to make a purchase. Now, Japan is a country blessed with low crime, and it's not uncommon to see trusting souls keep their car running while they go buy some canned coffee or the newest issue of Shonen Jump, secure in the knowledge that no stranger would impolite enough to take their car for a joyride. But this was a car that costs more than a house in many U.S. states, sitting with its engine idling, free for the taking. All I could do was stare with my mouth hanging open at the sight of it.

Japan can occasionally make us say, "what?"

Last year I took a trip to Hakone, the "holy land" for Evangelion fans, and visited all the places seen in the series, even trekking through the brush with my phone in GPS mode for a half hour looking for Misato's apartment building before realizing it hadn't been built yet. Later I got the urge to re-watch the original series, since I hadn't seen it properly in years. I had a great time, enjoying the retro 90s freshness along with the longer and more developed stories that were possible across 26 episodes, compared with the contraints of the three Eva films. I also enjoyed the "analog-ness" of the series, since it pre-dated fancy CG animation which all too often negatively impacts our enjoyment of what is still a fundamentally "2D" art form (I'm looking at you, Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio). While the last two episodes of Eva are famous for being rather horrible, sort of the 90s version of the Haruhi "Endless Eight" episodes, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know my old friend again after all these years.

I finished my re-watching of the original Eva.

Japan is unique among modern industrial nations because of its rapidly aging population, which is the result of a birthrate of just 1.39 per female coupled with a very low rate of immigration from the outside. The country got some bad news when it was announced that 2013 saw a record population drop of 244,000, as deaths outpaced births at a faster rate than ever before, a news story that's likely to be repeated every year for the foreseeable future. Other countries have issues with low fertility rates -- Spain and Germany are about the same as Japan, and South Korea, always competitive where Japan is concerned, "wins" with just 1.22 babies born per female -- but in Japan's case there's effectively zero net immigration, which means Japan will eventually have difficulty finding workers to keep its economy going. The married staff of J-List, at least, is doing our part to help raise Japan's population, and most of us have two or three kids, which is above the average for Japan. Our French web designer's Japanese wife gave birth to a wonderful baby boy last year, and our DVD buyer Tomo's second child is on the way.

Japan's population is slated to fall greatly this century.

J-List is loaded with awesome Sailor Moon products from Japan, from the kawaii "Swing Figure" sets official Sailor Moon bento boxes and cups and more. Sailor Moon is really exploding around the world right now, and as you've noticed by the large number of products that have sold out and been removed permanently from the site, it's a good idea to preorder the items you want lest they go away forever. Click to browse the top Sailor Moon products, as ranked by our customers!

J-List Update January 24, 2014

It's fun to examine some of broader categories of anime that exist. There are harem anime like Infinite Stratos and Maken-Ki!, mecha-based shows like Evangelion or Gundam, slice-of-life comedy series based on 4-koma (four-panel) manga like Kin'iro Mosaic, which are referred to as "Nichijou-kei" by fans in Japan, plus the popular trend in music/idol related anime like K-On!, IdolMaster, Love Live! and Wake Up Girls! Another category that's gotten really popular lately is 妹系 imouto-kei series which center around a male main character's younger sister (either actual sister or unrelated by blood), which usually includes some gimmick, like the sister is into otaku culture and eroge, etc. The latest entry into this category is 最近、妹のようすがちょっとおかしいんだが Saikin, Imouto no Yousu ga Chotto Okashiinda ga ("Recently, My Sister is Unusual"), or ImoCho for short. It's the story of a boy named Yuya who gets a new stepsister named Mitsuki when his father gets remarried. When his new sister is possessed by a yuri-loving ghost named Hiyori who's got a bit of a "brother complex" as well as a supernatural chastity belt, much sexy comedy ensues. Like Kiss x Sis, ImoCho isn't exactly subtle, but you're looking for a new "guilty pleasure" anime to watch, you might enjoy it.

The latest imouto anime is ImoCho. Are you watching?

When you start to watch anime, you're likely to come into contact with some Japanese cultural concepts you're not familiar with. Like the first time you encounter the system of senpai/kohai, seniors or juniors in a school or organization, which is quite different from the way we do things in the U.S. Or working out how the name suffixes like -san, -chan and -kun work. Or, what's up with those "cousins with benefits" in Sailor Moon? Or in episode 1 of K-On!, why does Tsumugi add her french fries to a pile that Mio and Ritsu are eating from rather than just eating from her own tray? (It was to reinforce her new place as an official member of the light music club.) One image that confused me was 相合い傘 ai-ai-gasa, roughly translatable as "together under the umbrella of love." The Japanese consider two people walking under an umbrella together to be very romantic, and children will sometimes draw an umbrella on the chalkboard with two people's names written under it, the equivalent of "Hanako and Taro, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G..." This visual image is completely alien to us, the first time we see it.

Actually, these little cultural points of confusion are often interesting to the Japanese, and I've come across blogs discussing concepts like ai-ai-gasa and what we foreigners think of them when we first encounter them. Though some Japanese net users can seem grumpy at Western fans for adopting "their" popular culture as our own, as a group Japanese are very flattered that people around the world know so much about their country. It's not uncommon to find websites offering Japanese translations of 4chan threads or reviews of anime written by users on My Anime List, or translating especially bad English subtitles in fansubs back to Japanese for a good laugh.

It's easy to encounter confusing Japan-related cultural elements in anime.

Valentine's Day is not far off now, and J-List is loaded with unique Japanese chocolates, from Evangelion to Hello Kitty and awesome Japanese Kit Kat. Whether you're a female giving chocolate to the special boyfriend/husband/father etc. in your life (which is the custom in Japan) or are going the other way around, the gift chocolates we've got in stock right now are great!