On the inability of people living in Japan to fix their own cars, and days of the week in Japanese

For some reason, living in Japan robs a person of the ability to open the hood of their car. When I lived in the U.S., I was quite comfortable giving my car a tune-up, changing spark plugs and so on, but since coming to Japan I find I haven't touched my car's engine in over a decade. My wife is indicative of most Japanese on the subject of auto maintenance -- she recently said to me, "I opened my hood once, but I didn't know which one was the engine." This is partially due to excellent Japanese service -- a helpful uniformed employee will cheerfully check your oil and air when you buy a tank of gas -- but another reason is "sha-ken," a government-mandated automobile maintenance check-up you have to get every two years. Since sha-ken is expensive, costing $800 or more, which includes various road taxes, foreigners generally hate it, but the upside is that cars are safer and you get your regular maintenance done for you as part of the deal. The sha-ken check-ups have a somewhat cynical purpose too: since new cars get three years without having to get the check-up, it provides a useful excuse for Japanese to buy a new car sooner than they otherwise would, and no doubt contributes millions to car manufacturers' bottom lines. Motorcycles also have sha-ken, although those with 250 cc and smaller engines don't, which creates more demand for small-engine motorcycles than would exist in other countries.

One of the most respected positions in Japanese life is that of shacho 社長, or company president, and like some other terms such as sensei 先生 (which literally means "the one who was born before me" and is said to teachers, doctors and politicians), it indicates a high level of respect. As in America, business leaders are looked up to, and the news media regularly reports on leaders like Goshn-shacho (the man who turned Nissan around), the hardworking Masayoshi Son-shacho of Sofbank, and of course charismatic Livedoor president Takafumi Horie, who recently tried to win his first seat in the Japanese Diet but failed in the last election. The term shacho is sometimes thrown around with little care for its actual meaning. If you go into a Japanese bar, the lady who pours your drink will likely call you shacho to make you feel good.

Memorizing the names of the months in English must be difficult for Japanese, but it's easy going the other way -- the months in Japanese are all just numbers followed by the kanji for month (e.g. ichi-gatsu 一月　is January, ni-gatsu 二月 is February, etc.). They get their revenge, though: although the days of the month in Japanese are expressed with numbers, just like in English, there are special names for the first ten days of the month, which must be memorized, always a chore for gaijin learning Japanese. The days of the week are interesting, too -- each is associated with a kanji that represents the original European origin. The days of the week are getsu-yobi (月曜日, lit. "moon day"), ka-yobi (火曜日, "fire day" since the first character for Mars is "fire"), sui-yobi (水曜日, "water day," from the Japanese name for the planet Mercury), moku-yobi (木曜日, "wood day," from the name for Jupiter), kin-yobi (金曜日, "gold day," from Venus), do-yobi (土曜日, "earth day," from Saturn), and nichi-yobi (日曜日, "sun day," from good old Sol).

Scenes from a Japanese convenience store. This is the famous aloe yogurt, yogurt made with the fully edible plant aloe. It's nice, not to sweet, and prevents dryness and cracking in the stomach lining.

Another fave of mine, Nata de Coco yogurt, made with bits of nata de coco, a firm geletin-like food from the Phillippines. It's so much fun to chew on the bits as you eat the yogurt.

Lest you think aloe is just a fluke, here's another company's brand of aloe yogurt.

Yogurt with...marshmallows? I thought the Japanese were supposed to eat healthy food?

Japan's latest boom: Akiba-kei, Otaku Culture and "Densha Otoko"

Japan is the land of the "boom" and every year something new seems to come out of left field and become really popular here. One of the keywords for 2005 so far has been Akiba-kei, which literally means "related to Akihabara" and refers to Tokyo's mecca for electronics and, increasingly, for general otaku culture. "Otaku" are people who love anime and manga, can appreciate beauty in a bishoujo game character (the dating-sims that J-List sells), and may know something about the subtleties of maid uniforms. As Akihabara has lost its importance as the place to buy electronics in Tokyo, it's been morphing into a haven for fans of doujinshi (Japan's famous amateur comics), high-end anime shops and maid cafes, where beautiful girls in Gothic maid costumes will bring you coffee. It seems everywhere you turn these days, people in Japan are talking about good, wholesome geek culture.

Part of the reason for this new interest in otaku-dom is the hit drama Densha Otoko, or Train Man, the story of an introverted man who loves anime and video games. When he saves a beautiful woman from a drunkard on a train, she shows her thanks by giving him an expensive Hermes tea set. He's smitten by her beauty, but too shy to do anything about it, so he goes online and asks for help on a popular Internet BBS. Before long, their budding love is being followed by a million otaku throughout Japan who take part in the discussions about their relationship. The drama, which is a few episodes from its end, is based on a true story -- a real member of the popular Japanese BBS 2ch did find love by getting help from thousands of otaku. The show is incredibly popular, commanding upwards of 20% of viewers here.

Otaku culture has also made its mark on a popular Japanese television show, TV Champion, which normally challenges teams of artists to create amazing works out of trash, or design sprawling creations using legos, or bake cakes in the shape of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. This week's episode was Akiba-kei all the way, though, with geeky contestants doing things like listening to clips from anime and identifying who the voice actor/actress was, answering obscure trivia about anime, and dressing normal Tokyo girls up like their favorite anime characters. In the end, the contestant with the most votes was awarded the title "King of Otaku."

We've got a new announcement for fans of our English-translated PC dating-sim games: many titles are now available via Internet download! Now you have a choice when you purchase selected G-Collections games, ordering them on CD-ROM as you've always done, or downloading the new Download Editions. As always, CD-ROM versions will be standard packaged games that you can install in your PC normally. The Download Editions make use of Virtual Mate 2.0, which is an updated activation system that requires an Internet connection when you load the game. G-Collections has worked hard to improve V-Mate with the new version -- you get a license to install on up to five computers, with the ability to manually "de-register" a machine, for when you upgrade to a new computer. Best of all, V-Mate is optional, since you can opt to buy the full CD-ROM version instead which has no internet connection requirement. There are currently fourteen games available for download.

The availability of the new download versions means that several of the popular games we've been out of stock of for a while are available again, including The Sagara Family, Come See Me Tonight, and Do You Like Bunnies? 2. All are on the site and available for immediate purchase as download versions (and the Virtual Mate-free CD-ROMs will be posted as soon as they're back from the duplicators).

Time for lunch. There's nothing really good to eat in Akiba -- you'd think they'd have at least a Starbucks with all the google-eyed foreigners who go there. I went for beef bowl. Here it is before I poured raw egg all over it...

Back on my way to the embassy. This is some Japan Foundation official logo, which seemed incredibly cute to me.

Advertisement for promoting awareness of Heat Island Syndrome, a big problem in over-urbanized Tokyo in which all the asphalt and all the air conditioners cause a much higher temperature than would have occurred normally. Does anyone else think she looks like Aoi Sora? Maybe I've been doing this too long...

Finally, another ad I caught going for my train, featuring Chiaki Kuriyama. Man I love her, and am happy that she's been rewarded for her fame overseas with promotion deals. The girl next to her is Ryoko Shinohara, a former singer in the Komuro Family who sang the opening theme song to the Street Fighter II movie, which really ruled (I once rode my bicycle to no less than 11 shops to track that single down).

The Fall season in Japan, touching Japanese TV commercials, and a cosmic rule about pickles

Hello again from Japan. We're very sorry with the problems with the site after the last update -- we had reset the products on the server, but many of them had images that were missing throughout the site, causing them to fail to appear. Also, T-shirt sizes weren't being displayed, which caused some confusion. We're happy to report that everything's working again now.

Fall is coming to Japan, my favorite time of the year hands-down. Before long, the leaves will start to change to beautiful shades of red, yellow and brown in a beautiful display of colors second only to the cherry blossoms in April. The most popular tree in the autumn is the momiji-no-ki (紅葉の木）, or Japanese maple, with small, delicate leaves that are really beautiful. The changing of the leaves is called koyo (紅葉), and it's especially nice to head up to the mountains to enjoy the colors up close -- we often have barbeques up there with friends in October. The coming of Autumn is a chance for advertisers to sell products themed for the season, such as Kirin's season-limited Aki-Aji ("Taste of Autumn") beer, which is best enjoyed during an evening of tsukimi or moon-viewing. Autumn is also the season for school sports festivals, held from one end of Japan to the other. Kids run relays, perform synchronized dances, and generally celebrate sports while their parents look on with pride. Makers of home electronics don't miss the opportunity to sell sell video cameras to mothers and fathers who want to record these events for posterity. This year's Panasonic TV commercial is especially nice, capturing a bittersweet moment. See it here (Flash required).

While living in Japan is fun, there are an awful lot of things you have to learn to do without. The local version of peanut butter here is nothing like what's sold in the U.S., so when I run out of Skippy or Peter Pan at home, I have to learn to eat something else on my bread. Tortillas are very hard to find in Japan, and the closest thing to a burrito here are the Twisters at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which are actually not that bad as a substitute if you bring your own hot sauce. Other staples like Campbell's soup, macaroni and cheese and root beer are absent from an expat's life in Japan. For some cosmic reason, living in another country seems to make people yearn for the traditional pickles of their homeland. Although the Japanese have a long tradition of pickling vegetables (including making kim-chee, delicious Korean spicy pickles), they're not just a replacement for good, crunchy Vlassics that I am used to from home. Likewise, J-List's Daisuke (the guy who keeps us stocked with Domo-kun toys) tells me that when he was living in Chicago he yearned for various pickled Japanese foods, including ume-boshi, Japan's tart pickled plums. We've got some ume related products on the site for you if you want to try some.

J-List carries thousands of amazing and rare products from Japan, including a lot of cool traditional Japanese items that are hard to find outside of Japan. We've added a huge stock of our popular Japanese sandals, including "tatami" sandals (called zori in Japan) of various sizes, including our largest sandals for the guys. Come browse our great Japanese traditional footwear!

My trip to Tokyo. I had to go to Tokyo to get something stamped in my passport. It was raining, since a typhoono (not named Katrina) was coming to the Kanto area for a visit. This is Akihabara, Japan's electronics mecca.

As a Mac user, I'm mildly insulted that Laoxx's old Mac-kan (Mac only store) has given way to a NTT DoCoMo store selling cell phones (and this is a 7 storey building selling nothing but phone stuff, wow.) Now the only place to buy Macs and get a good selection is Sofmap's store, located farther from the station (and thus, having lower status).

However, they had a big poster of the beautiful Chiaki Kuriyama, aka GoGo Yubari, so it was okay.

I'm sure an Apple store is coming to Akiba soon, but in the meantime, there's a Bose store that seems to be cut from the same cloth.

Japanese postal politics, all about Japanese political parties, and stupid jokes in Japanese

Hello again from J-List, your friend in Japan!

Well, the Japanese election is behind us, and it was a landslide for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister Koizumi, who successfully chased the anti-reform Diet members from his party and got a mandate for change from the voters. It was a very interesting election in that it was a lot more "American" than those of the past -- the heads of each Japanese party campaigned directly to the people, presenting their ideas on the main issue at hand, the privatization of the Japanese post office along the lines of Japan's privatizing of the old national railroad system during the 1980s (which became the current six Japan Railroad companies). Japan is a parliamentary democracy based on the government of the U.K., with a Prime Minister elected by the party that holds the most seats in the Diet. Since the leaders are not chosen directly by the people, as in countries with presidential elections, it creates a different dynamic between the voters and the head honcho. This time around, there was the sense that people were voting for the leader directly, rather than just casting votes for their local representative in the Diet.

Now that the LDP has gotten the go-ahead, they'll be putting their plan to reform Japan's massive postal apparatus into action. The problem with Japan Post isn't how they deliver the mail, of course -- they're extremely polite and hardworking, and J-List wouldn't be able to function without the efforts of several post offices in our area. (J-List sends so many packages, we once received a special thank-you plaque presented by the director of the postal service.) The biggest problems with the post office are the convenient but unnecessary Kampo life insurance and postal savings accounts, which operate under different rules than private insurance companies and banks in Japan and which effectively keep the private sector on an inferior level compared to these government-backed enterprises. Japan could also afford to shed a few thousand of the 24,000 post offices that dot the country -- it'd ridiculous how many I pass when driving around my town. Maybe they can combine some of them and put some real parking lots in?

Japanese humor can be quite interesting, and watching anime can teach you some words and phrases that are fun to know. At the age of 37, I'm passed the oniisan phase and am well on my way to being a true ojisan (two words which mean older brother and uncle, respectively, but in more general context refer to young-ish men in their 20s and men starting their silver years). For whatever reason, middle-aged men in Japan make the stupidest puns, which are called dajare (dah-JAH-rey), but when I make puns my kids use the word dadajare, combining "dada" (Daddy) with dajare, which is rather deep as that's a dajare right there. Here are some stupid Japanese phrases you can use if you know any Japanese people. One comes from a commercial for Listerine which combined the English words "bye bye" with the word for bacteria (baikin) to make bye bye-kin (bai bai-KEEN) which caught on and was said by everyone for a while. Another involves a phrase you might have heard in anime, sonna bakana, which means "what a stupid..." and is said to express shock, but if you change it to sonna banana ("what a banana!") it's mildly amusing. (The word "banana" is pronounced in Japanese with the stress on the first syllable, e.g. BAH-na-na.)

Humility in Japan, the many faces of apologies, and Japanese calendars

Hello again from J-List. We're a day late with the update because of some database related problems, but the update is finally ready. And what an update it is...

One of the more interesting aspects of Japanese is their strong tendency to be humble, being polite by putting one's self down in order to raise others up. If you've ever complimented a Japanese person on their English only to have them deny your compliment strongly, you've experienced what Japanese call kenson (ken-SON, which means humility). You can see this at work in Japan's group culture -- each member of a group of people trying to decide which restaurant they all want to eat at will gently probe and test the other members before putting forth a suggestion. Successful learners of a language inevitably go beyond mere grammar and vocabulary, actually internalizing the values of the group you're interacting with. When I'm in Japan I find my "Japanese" personality is much more low-key and humble than my outgoing American self.

Another side of Japan's famous humility can be seen in the times and places where apologies are used, often in situations that English speakers would have trouble comprehending. When I first got to Japan, some friends took me to a sento, a public bath with a sauna. It was late, near closing time, and we were a little slow getting out of the bath, which caused inconvenience for the staff who were trying to clean up so they could go home. I thanked the lady at the counter as I left, using the Japanese phrase "arigatou gozaimashita." But my Japanese friends corrected me, saying I should apologize instead, using the word "sumimasen deshita." I was confused -- why apologize when I'm trying to thank the lady for letting us stay past closing time? "Thank you sounds cheap," I was told. "In this case it's better to use words of apology." As I was shaving this morning I watched a news report about executives of the Fuji Television Network issuing a formal apology over an incident involving camera crews who used eyewitness reports that had been faked in order to make them sound more dramatic (which is called yarase, ya-RAH-say, a common problem with television here). Since the news station I was watching was on the Fuji network, the newscaster bowed his head low to the camera and apologized again, right in the middle of reading the news.

Today's a big day at J-List, because we've posted our popular Japanese calendars! Every year in the fall hundreds of large-format glossy calendars are released in the Japanese market, and once again J-List is making them available to fans all over the world. If you've never seen these Japanese calendars, they're really amazing -- huge poster-sized sheets of thick stock paper, with beautiful printing and photography and art that will really make your year special. This year's calendars are extra nice, with many items that we think will be very popular, including anime, JPOP, sexy idol, and more -- there's even a Domo-kun calendar this year! Ayumi Hamasaki finally broke her 4-year record of claiming the coveted "CL1" spot, losing out to the super-cute Aya Ueto, the cheerful idol and actress.

The calendars we've got for you are preorder, so it's best if you can order with credit card, so we can hold the order until it's ready to be shipped to to you (but this is not a requirement). Rolled calendars require a mailing tube, which is $2 and one tube can hold two calendars. As in previous years, if you buy 4 or more calendars you'll get 15% off, and get your mailing tubes for free! As usual, we don't have the calendars in stock yet, so we had to scan the small sample image so you can see what the calendar covers are like. To help you make a decision about which calendars you want, we've posted sample images from last year's calendars for most items. Enjoy browsing our great Japanese calendars, and remember, they make great Christmas gifts for that otaku on your list!

Japan's addiction to construction, and why this sometimes is a Good Thing

Japan is a highly developed nation, almost a case study in what happens when industrialization is taken too far. Asphalt and concrete about in Japan, and I can't remember when I last saw a non-paved road here. Even up in the mountains you can see plenty of concrete, as engineers cover mountainsides with cement to keep falling rocks at bay. Basically, Japan's penchant for durable materials is a side effect of its reliance on -- you could say addiction to -- construction is the backbone of its economy. A sizeable part of the American economy is made up of defense contractors who create the tools the military needs to do its job. In place of these companies, Japan has gargantuan construction interests who lobby for constant building of everything from roads to bridges to subsidized local projects like a space museum celebrating Japanese astronaut Chiaki Mukai, located in her hometown near us. Japan's government is quite good at building things that no one needs, such as the $7 billion Aqua-line, a massive bridge-and-tunnel that cuts across Tokyo Bay to Chiba (Night City if you're a William Gibson fan), or the 13.7 km Great Seto Bridge that connects Japan's main island of Honshu with fourth-largest island of Shikoku, both of which cost so much in tolls that most drivers don't bother.

Even though I dislike wasteful construction projects, I will admit that Japan is safer from natural disasters than it would otherwise be without the Japanese tendency to overbuild. From Earthquakes to tsunamis to typhoons, there are plenty of hazards in Japan, but by and large plans are in place to deal with them. Most every river in Japan has a high, sloped levee made of reinforced concrete to guard against flooding, and large concrete breakwaters surround much of Japan's coastline, lessening the impact of a big wave. Every community in Japan has a designated "evacuation area," a place where you're supposed to go in the event of a natural disaster. And in the event that homes are destroyed, people here know that temporary housing units that can be erected quickly will be provided by the government, as happened after the earthquakes in Kobe and Niigata. Perhaps in the future America can take some pointers from Japan in this area (and a few others I could point out).

There is one corner of Japan that isn't overdeveloped: the northernmost island of Hokkaido. A very cold place in the winter, Hokkaido is the "bread basket" of Japan, and companies use the image of the island to sell everything from milk to butter to corn. Because the island was for the most part settled after Japan began to modernize in the 1870s, cities in Hokkaido often feel quite different from the rest of the country, from the rolling hills and beautiful Catholic Church of Hakodate in the south to the quaint canals of the port city of Otaru. Sapporo is a bustling modern city that was designed by American urban planners, and it's also the home of the Sapporo Brewing Company, Japan's oldest. Every August thousands of Japanese from the Tokyo area go to Hokkaido to escape the heat. It large natural areas and open roads make it popular with motorcycle aficionados from all over Japan, too.

J-List carries the hard-to-find UMD movies for PSP (yes, the naughty kind), a great new way to enjoy Sony's new handheld. While several of the UMD titles have been released as region free, most of the recent releases have been zoned for region 2. This is bad news for owners of PSPs bought in the U.S., but if you're in Europe, where the PSP has just been officially released, it's good news, since both Europe and Japan are region 2!

Pictures walking around Baltimore. It really was a beautiful city, and I liked it a lot. They have a thing for crabs there, as you can see by this beautifully decorated crab near a restaurant that sells crab soup.

At fan-dubbers night, watching the excellent Evangelion ReDeath by Studio Sokodei, a parody redub that I'd seen before, but enjoyed anyway (Oh baby...). Since I was involved with Seishun Shitemasu -- a bunch of guys with a VCR, I felt rather proud.

Then it was time to get ready to return to Japan. But wait, I had an empty suitcase -- what was I going to do? Fill it was cool food from the U.S., that's what. You don't think of things like Shreaded Wheat, tortillas, pretzels and salsa as being that big a deal, but try living in a country where they have none of this stuff. And to top it off, it was a Giant on the East Coase, so we got to find lots of things we don't have in California like Utz potato chips.

Hate to say it guys, but it's a trend. Once again, I got on the flight, this time being one of the first on the plane. No magazines, not even Black Golf-Playing Entrepreneur. Only the Good Book. I have nothing against the Book, but I can't help thinking it's yet another symbol of some unhealthy changes that have happened to my beloved America since its citizens decided it would be a good idea to give one party control of both the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Kind of like women not being able to get prescriptions for birth control pills because pharmacists don't think they should be using birth control or having sex. It's somewhat alarming. This was United by the way, again.

Lexus is coming to Japan, the concept of Idioms in Japanese, and more about OH! Mikey

A new car company is coming to Japan, but Japanese consumers are already quite familiar with their products. After years of speculation, Toyota is finally bringing their Lexus brand of luxury automobiles to the domestic market, opening a nationwide network of dealerships here in an attempt at stealing some of the thunder from BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The funny thing is, the cars sold under the Lexus moniker have always been available in Japan, with names like Windom (ES330, advertised on television with the slogan "Are you Windom?"), Soarer (SC430, "Soarer for mind cruising") and Harrier (RX300, "Stylish, but formal"). A lot of people are wondering if Toyota can build a successful brand identity for Lexus here, when the newly introduced vehicles will mainly be spruced up versions of already available cars, but with fatter price tags. Unlike in much of the world, where the name Toyota originally meant small, fuel efficient cars, Japanese have never had a problem buying a large range of vehicles under the name Toyota.

We never think about idioms in our own language, but to non-native speakers such as the Japanese, learning the meanings of phrases like to leave no stone unturned or to stick your neck out for someone is a challenge. There are idioms in Japanese, too, including many that make use of parts of the body in different ways. The phrase koshi ga hikui (lit. "one's lower back is low, near to the ground") means a person who is very humble and always apologizing (a good thing in the context of Japan), but shiri ga aoi ("one's rear end is blue") means they're too young or lack experience, since babies born in Asia have a blue spot on their rear ends until the age of two or so. If someone can't keep a secret, they are kuchi ga karui ("their mouth is too light"), but if they are kuchi ga umai ("their mouth is skilled") then they're good at making jokes or getting others to agree with them. The eyes in Japanese are called me (pronounced "meh"), and some idioms that make use of eyes include me ga takai (lit. "your eyes are high"), meaning someone who can recognize quality when they see it, and me ga ten ni natta ("my eyes became little black dots"), meaning, I was so surprised, my face looked like a character out of a manga.

J-List carries dozens of English-translated dating-sim games from Japan, which let you interact with pretty girls and try to win their hearts. Now for fans of yaoi, we've got a great announcement: the first two English-translated "BL" games, which let fans of yaoi in on the fun, too. There are two titles we're posting for preorder now, the first being Enzai - Falsely Accused, a story of betrayal set in Napoleonic Europe in which you play the part of Guys, a youth sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Next is Perfect Obedience - Zettai Fukuju Meirei, a game combining a complex game system and cool-looking military uniforms (can't go wrong, there).

For all fans of the wacky OH! Mikey, the popular Japanese drama about an American family living in Japan that uses mannequins as actors, we've got a treat: OH! Mikey Hard Core, a brand new DVD that's loaded with great stories, and features both subtitles on the Japanese episodes and some English-dubbed episodes, too! It's the best Mikey ever! (region 2)

Okay, the last of the Otakon pics, then I'll move on to something else. This lady was lovely so I snapped her picture.

We had a belly laugh over this -- Lava Berry Explosion Pop Tarts. Here, Anakin, have some lava, it's good. Watch out, it's hot.

What would a convention be without a giant Domo-kun?

Back in Japan, in the place where all gaijin go to die, Akihabara. Here a gothic lolita girl hands out tissues or something (I couldn't pay attention to what she was hawking since she was so cute).

My wife and I are on a major 24 kick, as in, watching 6 hours or so a night because the show is so addictive. I've even started to drink Calorie Mate Jelly.

About Japanese hot springs, shoes and the Japanese concept of cleanliness

Hello again from Japan. First, sorry for some confusion over the iTunes Music Cards we posted last time -- due to an error they weren't appearing on the JBOX.com site, so some customers were unable to find them. They're on both sites now, though. We've been very happy with the response from the prepaid cards, which are the only way for customers outside of Japan to buy through the iTunes Music Store Japan. The cards are proving so popular, we've already had to restock our supply of the cards!

All of Japan is watching the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in horror. Located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is no stranger to disasters -- my mother came to visit us from the U.S. once, and she managed to experience typhoons, earthquakes and a nearby volcanic eruption during the short time she was here. However, we've never seen anything on the scale of the current tragedy, ever. All of us pray for the safety of everyone affected by these terrible, terrible events.

I'm a big fan of onsen (OWN-sen), or Japanese hot springs, and whenever we're trying to decide where to take the kids on the weekend, I'm always ready to suggest going for a hot bath up in the mountains. I also like onsen hotels, the large resort hotels that pamper you with delicious food, a soothing volcanic bath, and maybe some late-night ramen or karaoke before going to sleep in on a traditional futon. These hot springs hotels are located in every corner of Japan, and there seem to be certain universal constants about them. For example, the hotels will always have a dilapidated game center filled with arcade games manufactured before 1993, and you can find a ping pong table and vending machines selling Haagen Daaz ice cream, too. The staff will never fail to try to speak to you in halting English even though you're speaking fluent Japanese at them. Tokimeki Check in!, one of our most popular PC love-sim games, is based in a traditional hot springs hotel, and many of the elements you see in a real hotel can be found in the game.

When it comes to cleanliness in Japan, there's one rule -- anything having to do with the feet is kitanai, or dirty. Japanese homes (and some offices, such as 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 in Japan for a while, the idea of wearing shoes on hardwood floors or on plush carpeting becomes really strange. Because you have to take your shoes off a dozen times a day in Japan, you tend to get very good at choosing shoes that can be put on easily -- high-top basketball shoes or boots are not very popular here. When I was a boy, I used to spend virtually the entire summer barefoot, as I roamed the neighborhood playing, but I realized that my own kids never get to experience this joy, since the idea of going outside hadashi (barefoot) is not really accepted here.

How a Japanese computer works, all about Japanese abbreviations, and iTunes Music Cards from J-List

I remember when I first started learning Japanese, I wondered how Japanese text entry could work on a computer. I pictured some horrible keyboard with hundreds of keys, but in reality, Japanese computers use the same QWERTY keyboards as everyone else. Japanese input is accomplished through a front-end processor, basically a program that ships with Japanese Windows and all copies of Mac OS X that handles converting your text into the correct mix of hiragana, katakana and kanji before it's pasted into your document. With Japanese text input selected, you type some text with the keyboard -- for example, aoi sora (青い空） which means "blue sky." Hit the space bar, and the computer will convert the text you've just typed into the kanji/kana combination it thinks you want, although sometimes problems can occur here, as there are often alternate or archaic kanji in the computer's dictionaries (e.g. 蒼い, or names like 葵). When you get used to the system, you can enter Japanese text quite quickly, although there's a downside -- entering Japanese into a computer becomes so easy that it's easy to forget how to write kanji manually. As with operating systems, there are various kanji entry systems on the market, and users will rally around one product or the other -- users of EG Bridge might flame fans of ATOK, with both camps expressing their disgust for Kotoeri. Although the Japanese enter words in romaji these days, i.e. normal alphabetical order, there is an alternate kana layout for keyboards that some still use (which is why there are kana characters printed on the USB keyboards that we sell).

The Japanese love to abbreviate long, hard to pronounce words. Whether its lopping off some kanji to change Tokyo Daigaku (東京大学） (Tokyo University) into the more manageable Todai (東大）, or coining new terms by combining kanji into words like Hanshin (阪神） which uses characters from Osaka （大阪） and Kobe （神戸) to refer to the general area of both cities, the Japanese are efficient speakers. They also use many of the common abbreviations found in English, but sometimes they can sound a little odd to English ears. The Japanese find it easier to pronounce some acronyms such as JAL (Japan Air Lines), ANA (All Nippon Airways), LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and even VIP as if they were normal words (e.g. "jal" "ana" "lax" and "vip") rather than as a series of letters. Believe me, the word VIP sounds very odd when you hear it pronounced as a word rather than spelled out.

We're big fans of Japanese pop music, and love to promote interest in it wherever we can -- for example, in the fall J-List carries hundreds of amazing large-format calendars printed exclusively for the Japanese market. JPOP fans all over the world were excited when Apple launched their iTunes Music Store here, but unfortunately the store requires that buyers have a credit card issued in Japan in order to make purchases. Happily, there's another way for fans to buy Japanese music through the iTMS -- iTunes Music Cards, which are available through J-List now! These prepaid cards are available in increments of 2500, 5000 or 10,000 yen, and all music is fully compatible with your iPod and iTunes for Mac or PC.

"Suddenly, without warning, love takes you by surprise..." J-List sells the unique PC dating-sims from Japan, called ren'ai ("love") or bishoujo ("pretty girl") games here. One of our favorites is a title that was released in Japan in English called Casual Romance Club. In the game you interact with a host of incredibly cute girls, chatting on your cell phone and going on dates before you decide if you want to go further. In addition to being a great game, it comes with a fabulous full color artbook, the most amazing game manual you'll ever see. We're happy to announce we've lowered the price of this exceptional title to just $49.95. Enjoy this classic dating-sim at its new lower price.

A small Okinawa town in Bolivia, Tomo gets a new car, and thoughts on luck in Japan

Hello from Japan. We've been having some off-and-on problems with the J-List server, which we've gotten under control again, we think. As before, if you ever experience slowness with the site, please try again shortly and it should work for you. We'll get this permanently fixed soon!

Okinawa is the southernmost prefecture in Japan, a volcanic atoll of small islands that fell under Japanese control in 1609 and became a modern prefecture in 1879. Although Okinawa is part of Japan today, it has a unique language and culture that's very different from the rest of the country. Surprisingly, Okinawa is also the name of a town in Bolivia, which was founded by 278 Okinawans who migrated there in the aftermath of World War II. The Okinawan islands were devastated during the war, and without prospects for work, many locals were forced to leave their homes forever and start new lives in South America. The original immigrants who founded the colony in Bolivia had to cut their way through dense jungle, and many died from local diseases, but they eventually prospered. Tens of thousands of Japanese made their way to countries like Bolivia, Peru and Brazil at different times during the 20th century, and there are sizable minority populations of nikkei (Japanese-descended) people throughout South and Central America. Japanese immigration law grants special visa status to people with Japanese ancestry who want to come work in Japan.

Tomo is a happy man today -- he'll finally get the Mazda RX-8 he ordered a month ago. The way new cars are sold in Japan is quite different from the U.S.: instead of going through third party dealers, most every new car is sold through a showroom operated by each auto manufacturer, such as Toyota's Netz and Nissan's Blue Stage showrooms, located in each city. If you've ever bought a Saturn, all of this might sound familiar to you, since GM based the brand directly on this Japanese model. In Japan, rather than choose a car from the dealer's stock, you order your car new, and they make it in the factory and deliver it to you in a month or so. This insures that you get exactly the car you want, and you also get to enjoy the anticipation of waiting for your car to come, which really is fun. Like most Japanese, Tomo went out of his way to ensure that he received his car on a lucky day. The old lunar calendar used by Japan featured weeks with six days, and the Japanese believe that some days are inherently lucky or unlucky. The six days are Taian (the luckiest day, most weddings and construction groundbreaking ceremonies are held on this day), Butsumetsu ("Day of Buddha's Death," very unlucky), Senpu (the afternoon is lucky), Tomobiki (never have a funeral on this day, or it will cause bad luck for everyone who attends), Sensho (a good day to do something on the spur of the moment), and Shakko (an all-around unlucky day, except for an hour around lunchtime).

Halloween is coming, and J-List always has lots of amazing and unique items to make your cosplay complete this year. In addition to some new costume and masks we're posting today, we've got fresh stock of other great items, like our Hello Kitty kigurumi (full head) mask, our silly Hello Kitty bonnet and more.

Typhoon update, life in Gunma Prefecture, and ways that the Japanese walk to their own beat

Florida is getting pummeled by Hurricane Katrina, but Japan just got walloped by Typhoon No. 11, which dumped tons of water on the country before heading out to sea this morning. I was in Tokyo for the day but decided to cut my trip short and head home, lest the rain and high winds cause Japan's train system to shut down, stranding me. As summer winds down, Japan will enter its typhoon season proper, and we can expect to see one or two every week (shudder).

J-List is based in Gunma, located in the center of Japan's main island of Honshu, about 100 km from Tokyo. It's small -- just a little larger than Delaware -- but has more than 2 million residents, mostly spread throughout the major cities of Maebashi, Takasaki, Isesaki and Ota. I like my prefecture a lot -- we have access to Tokyo via normal train and Shinkansen, yet we don't have to endure the pressures of usagi-goya (rabbit hutch) living in Japan's capital, and mountains and skiing are just a short drive away. Currently, Gunma is enjoying center stage on NHK, Japan's public television network. In addition to creating such varied works as samurai dramas (Yoshitsune, Shinsengumi), anime series (Cardcaptor Sakura, Nadia) and cute characters (Domo-kun), NHK broadcasts a popular daily drama for 15 minutes each day. The current 15-minute drama is called Fight!, the story of a headstrong girl (Yu-chan) and the troubles her family endures when her father's company goes bankrupt. Since the drama is based in Gunma, people here are bursting with pride at being seen from all over the nation.

Japan is a unique country, truly an island nation among the other nations of the world. Often, the joshiki (joh-SHKI, meaning "common sense") that operates in the U.S. and Europe just doesn't function the same way here. First of all, the way products are priced in stores defies my humble gaijin's logic -- when you see a can of beer on sale for 200 yen, you know instinctively that a six pack of the same beer will cost you 1200 yen, with no discount for buying bulk. Sometimes two sizes of canned coffee are sold in the same vending machine, for the same price, and many Japanese choose the smaller can. Because products such as books and CDs are sold at list price, the laws of supply and demand are often stifled as the prices of products that are less popular can't fall below list price to meet the matching level of demand. Finally, it's a given that many industries will function with very low efficiency here, even in this modern Internet-enabled world we live in. I'm currently reading the weekly re-issue of manga classics Touch and Miyuki, and when I missed buying an issue in the stores, I called the company's back issue hotline to find out how to get the one I missed. It turns out that I have to go through a laborious method of wiring money to them through a bank, since they have no website and don't accept credit cards.

Japan's population peaks, immigration, and all about Japanese car names

Hello again from Japan. I've made the 6760 miles (10,879 km) hop from Baltimore to Japan, and have slipped into my "Japan mode" once again. As always, going from one side of the world to the other brings with it some head spinning, no matter how many times I do it, and I spend a few surreal hours re-adjusting to my new surroundings. I wasn't the only one to return to Japan yesterday -- my kids also arrived at the airport, having flown by themselves for the first time. We'd sent them to the U.S. so they could be immersed in English, and as usual, they soaked up an amazing amount. To celebrate being back together as a family, we went out to eat at our favorite ramen restaurant.

Japan has one of the lowest birth rates among developed countries, with just 1.38 children born per woman, compared with 2.08, 1.66, 1.37 and 1.26 for the U.S., England, Germany and Spain. The difference between Japan and other countries is that Japan is an island nation with a very low level of immigration to pick up the slack, which is causing depopulation at an alarming rate. And now it's looking like Japan's population is going to peak, either this year or next, at around 127.74 million, before starting a long decline as more people die than are born each year. Since fixing the problems of a low birth rate are beyond the capabilities of any government, Japan needs to do something about opening its doors to foreigners who want to come here to work and build lives, as I have done, if its wants to keep vitality in its society. It's a difficult question, both politically and socially, but it must be faced sooner or later. At Otakon, there was a booth sponsored by the Japanese government with a banner that read Yokoso! Japan ("Welcome to Japan"), trying to get the fans at the show to consider taking a trip to Japan to see its many beautiful sights. I think they need to go a step further, and start encouraging people to consider making a permanent move here.

The science of Japanese car names is always interesting to study. Above all, car names must sound kakko ii (cool, stylish), and since nothing sounds cooler to the Japanese ear than English, most cars here get their names from English words -- like Honda Life and Subaru Legend, or Nissan's Sunny and March. But many other names come from slightly altered English, so that they cause the same emotional response while remaining unique. Words like Corolla or Tercel or Sylphy or Premacy sound like English, but car companies can still "own" the original names. In recent years, Japanese car companies have started mining Spanish as a source for car names, resulting in cars like Daihatsu's little van Vamos (I love that name), Nissan's El Grand, Toyota's Carina and Familia, and Mitsubishi's Diamante and Viento, and the oddly named Pajero (which means something strange in Spanish). Japanese cars must never, ever have Japanese names, since that would be kakko warui (un-cool, bad style) -- Japanese are always amused to learn that the Suzuki Jiminy was sold as Suzuki Samurai in the U.S. However, there are some cars whose names started out as Japanese words before being "English-ified." Toyota Camry, for example, gets its name from "kanmuri," which means crown in Japanese -- which is funny, since Toyota sells a higher-priced sedan here called Toyota Crown, and in the past as sold the Toyota Corona, which means crown in Spanish.

Otakon and comparisons to Woodstock, all about Japanese politics, and Buddhism

Hello again from J-List. Well, Otakon is over, the 20,000+ anime fans have gone home, and I'm headed back to Japan today. It's been great seeing all the fans with their cosplay, brimming with the vibrant energy of the Anime Generation. The only thing I can compare a convention like this to is Woodstock, back in my parents' day, but luckily for us, great anime events like this happen every year.

While I've been away, Japan has been embroiled in debate about the upcoming election, when voters will shake up the allotment of seats to Japan's various political parties in an effort to determine the future of Prime Minister Koizumi's plan to privatize postal services. Japan's system of political parties is quite different from the U.S., and politics in general can be a challenge for gaijin like me to follow. First, there's the mighty Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled almost uninterrupted since it was formed in 1955. Opposition parties include the Democratic Party of Japan (the strongest alternate party, which hopes for big gains this election), the New Komeito (the unofficial political party of the Sokka Gakkai conservative Buddhist movement, although they won't admit to this publically), the Japan Communist Party and so on. But since the LDP is so large and strong, often the real battles take place between the various factions inside the party, which are basically parties within the larger group. The Mori faction (which Mr. Koizumi belongs to) is backing reforming the postal services, while many members of the Hashimoto faction (famously tied to pork-barrel construction projects, which are legion in Japan) are opposing the privatization, even to the point of quitting the LDP and making a new party, the Kokumin Shinto or New People's Party. Incidentally, the word for faction (habatsu) is often shortened to just ha when denoting this or that group. So if you're a Mac user, then you're Mac-ha (pronounced Makku-ha); if you prefer soba noodles over udon, you are soba-ha, and so on. Just a little tidbit of Japanese language for you ^_^

Although the people regularly mix themes from other religions as if they were fashions (Christian weddings, Shinto prayers for good luck on the New Year, and so on), by and large Japan is a Buddhist nation. In many homes, you can find a butsudan, or a Buddhist altar, basically a place where you go to say prayers and revere family members who have passed on (since Buddhism in Japan, at least in the Nichirenshu sect that my wife's family practices, is all about remembering one's ancestors). Once, my kids got into a fight over something, and to change the subject I asked my daughter (who is quite a spiritual girl) to show me how to pray properly at the butsudan, something she does every morning before she goes off to school. I thought, light some incense, how hard can that be? My daughter surprised me by bringing out some small prayer books (she found an easy-to-read one for me since I'm American) and reciting a long prayer to Buddha, which she was very familiar with. I think my eyes had turned into little black manga points as I watched that, but it was really interesting, too

Notes from Otakon in Baltimore, diappearing Japanese buildings, and more on bilingualism

Well, we're here at Otakon in Baltimore, and we're having a great time, surrounded by America's most vibrant young people, all filled with love of Japan and most decked out in amazing anime costumes. If you're at the show, we hope you'll come by booth 509 and say hello to us! (If you are planning on coming to the show but haven't registered yet, do check the convention website here, as at-the-door registration is probably closed already.)

You've been in Japan too long when you walk through your neighborhood, and a house that was there yesterday is gone without a trace, and you don't blink. Yes, among the things the Japanese are especially good at, making buildings disappear almost overnight seems to be one of them. The other day I was driving by our favorite sento (public bath), which had unfortunately gone out of business a couple of months before. The building had disappeared, as if it had never stood, replaced by a perfectly flat empty lot that will hopefully not become yet another pachinko parlor (we've got plenty of those in our city already). Another time a Seven Eleven that had been located up against a large road was suddenly moved back 40 feet or so. The company had apparently bought the parcel of land behind their store and somehow moved the entire convenience store back to leave more room for parking in the front -- it was kind of scary, actually.

When you are fluent in two languages, there are some interesting things that happen to your speech. First, bilinguals will generally engage in what's called code-switching when speaking to other bilingual people, mixing both languages sometimes randomly, or sometimes using words from whichever language seem to fit that situation better. This can lead to another phenomenon, linguistically known as interference, when grammar or pronunciation from one language interfere with the operation of the other. My wife often peppers her Japanese with English words, throwing in terms like arrange and organize and situation instead of the corresponding Japanese words, which causes confusion by her Japanese friends, who aren't always sure what she's trying to say. Her English vocabulary invades the Japanese side of her brain, creating minor confusion.

The Japanese have an interesting sense of things sometimes, which never fails to impress me. A balding man with a comb-over and lines of hair on the top of his said is said to have "bar code hair," which is certainly an interesting way to look at things. On one Japanese TV show I caught, they touched a bar code reader to men's hair to see what amount came up on the register, then they gave that amount of money to each man.

Peter on the other side of the world, uses for the word "kokoro," and Japanese who can't read their own language

I never cease to be amazed at the Internet, which enables a small company like J-List bring so many interesting and wacky products to Japanophiles in every corner of the world, along with our "postcard from Japan" emails. I regularly hop between Japan and San Diego, but now I've gone even further, to Maryland to visit family before attending Otakon this weekend. Right now I'm sitting on a balcony watching the waterbugs zip over the Severn River that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, while the full moon looks down at me. If you'll be at Otakon, we'll see you there! (For info on the show, see this page.)

One Japanese word I like a lot is kokoro, which can be a little difficult to translate into English. Basically, kokoro means the heart, but the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of it -- it's often translated into English as as soul, spirit and mind. Kokoro is your inner self, similar to your soul, although there's a more complex word for that particular idea (tamashii). The kokoro is thought to reside in the chest, in contrast to most Westerners, who would probably put the mind's physical location as being inside the head. The concept of reading one's mind is expressed in Japanese as kokoro o yomu (to read one's heart), and if something really hurt you you might say kokoro ga itamu (my heart hurts). There are other words in Japanese that correspond to other meanings of the English word heart, such as shinzo (the heart that's beating in your chest right now) and haato (the English word rendered with a Japanese accent, which describes the classic heart shape). Learning a language is fun because it makes you realize that complex ideas can't be simply brought over on a 1-to-1 basis all the time, which makes you reflect more on what language is all about.

A strange aspect of written Japanese is that many people cannot read their own language. While the vast majority of Japanese can read the 1900+ joyo kanji (the so-called "general use" characters that all Japanese must learn by the time they graduate from high school), there are many very difficult characters that fall outside of the "official" lists, and thus, people aren't sure how to pronounce them. I was reminded of this fact when we told my daughter to write a postcard to her Japanese teacher, but my wife didn't know how to read her teacher's name -- names of people are some of the hardest kanji to read, since there are so many ways to write them, just as there are many alternate spellings for names in the West. Place names are also difficult, unless you happened to grow up in that area. All the place names in Northern Japan, which was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people for thousands of years, have odd names can't be written with standard characters -- and as a result, most Japanese often can't read the names.

Remember that Halloween is coming soon. J-List offers many fun items that can make for a unique costume, from the amazing high school uniforms from Matsukameya to great cosplay reference books like Layers and Cosmode. Plan your Halloween surprise and order early at J-List -- we're ready for your order!

Anniversary of the end of the war, the holiest of Japanese holidays, and all about babies in Japan

Today is the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender, ending the terror that was the War in the Pacific, as it's usually called here. During my fourteen years in Japan, I've travelled quite extensively and have talked with many people here about the war, whenever I could do so tactfully. Almost all Japanese I've talked with are glad that Japan lost the war, since it paved the way for equalization of Japanese society and real democracy. My mother-in-law especially reveres General MacArthur for his efforts to equalize Japan, taking land away from large estates and zaibatsu business cartels and distributing it to those who had no land. Sometimes these conversations can get a little weird -- in rural Toyama Prefecture, I was eating with the family of a friend when their (somewhat inebriated) uncle started sobbing, "Why did giant America bring war to little Japan?" The question of why a country with the land area of Nebraska and no meaningful natural resources thought they could take on the world and somehow win is a complex one -- what was Japan thinking? I think part of the answer lies in what's known as seiyo suhai shugi (西洋崇拝主義, literally meaning "worship of the West-ism"). Ever since Japan began modernizing in the 1870s, it's looked with great respect at the powers of Europe and America, especially the grand British Empire, another tiny island nation that managed to exert influence over the entire world. Japan wanted more than anything to become a country that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those great nations, and I believe its terrible march to war and imperialism was a case of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" taken to its most horrific extreme.

We're in the middle of the Japanese Obon ("oh bone") holidays, something similar to Thanksgiving in the U.S., a time when millions of people return home to their inaka (ee-NAH-KAH, their rural hometowns) to see loved ones and pay visits to the graves of family members who have passed away. Tokyo becomes a ghost town during this season, with almost every company closed for business. Unfortunately, anyone trying to use the roads during this special holiday season has to plan around the massive "U-turn," when everyone turns around to head back into Tokyo. Already there are traffic jams of up to 40 km snaking back to the capital, and today is only the second to last day of Obon -- it will be three times as bad tomorrow.

We've got more happy news around here: Yasu's daughter was born this morning, a strong and healthy baby girl named Riko-chan. In Japan, babies are usually born in small "maternity hospitals" that only deliver babies, rather than maternity wards of large hospitals. There are several of these clinics in each city, and competition between them can be quite fierce -- the place where our children were born lured us with full-course French cuisine for my wife while she was recuperating, and a complimentary video featuring Ultrasound footage of each of our kids as they grew in utero, and of us holding them after they were born. Japan has a lot of strong beliefs about childbirth -- I might use the word "superstitions" but my wife would get mad at me. For example, for the first week after giving birth a woman is not allowed to touch water at all or it will make her blood boil (or something like that). I remember my mother-in-law bustling around the house making sure the dishes and laundry were done so my wife didn't have to worry herself with it.

Our newest region-free DVD player, the AMW M-280 which features a 7" screen for viewing DVDs anywhere you like, is a smash hit. The fully region-free player features long playing time on battery, and includes such extras as 32X rewind and fast forward, full remote with all controls replicated on the player itself (in case you don't have the remote handy), the ability to output to a TV and also accept video input from another video source and display it on the screen (mobile PS2 anyone?), and more. I've updated the description to reflect one feature I forgot to list on Friday, a "disc memory" function that plays the disc from the last position you were watching when you turned the player off (a feature I am personally quite fond of).

The latest crime wave in Japan, wholesome words by concerned Japanese parents, and beer made specially for kids

There's a minor crime wave going on in Japan right now: serial petnapping. Japan has been in the midst of a huge "Chihuahua boom" for the past few years, thanks in part to a popular TV commercial for high-interest loans about a man who had to borrow money so he could buy a tiny dog tuxedo for his Chihuahua to be by his side at his daughters wedding. With the little dogs fetching $3000 and up these days, they've become targets of thieves who steal them and resell them on the Internet. Dogs are extremely pampered in Japan, and are treated like a member of the family in many homes, especially in Tokyo, where having a small furry companion can make existing in the concrete jungle just a little easier.

One thing I've noticed about Japanese parents: they are usually quite concerned about the well-being of their kids, and many involve themselves with their children's education more than I've seen in the U.S. Whenever I drive somewhere in my city I pass many signs that have been put up by the local junior high school PTA, which basically encapsulate a lot of the joshiki (universal common sense) that Japanese usually share on subjects like how to raise kids right. The slogans are usually general statements like "overprotective parents are the cause of weak children" and "those who don't show respect to their own mother and father won't receive it from their children." Recently I came across another interesting slogan, which used the four syllables of the English word "OASIS" (pronounced oh-AH-shi-su in Japanese) to remind readers of four phrases children should always be taught to say. They are ohayo gozaimasu ("good morning," as it's always important to greet others cheerfully in Japanese society), arigato gozaimasu ("thank you very much"), shitsurei shimashita ("excuse me," said when leaving a teacher's room as a sign of respect) and sumimasen deshita ("I'm sorry," said in apology when you've done something wrong). One of my life's goals is to drive down every street in my city and make notes on all these PTA signs, and compile them for the web, but I can't seem to find the time.

It seems Japan can always surprise you. Now a small brewery in Tokyo has created a non-achoholic beer for kids, called Kodomo no Beer, so kids can enjoy the fun of drinking a frosty one with Dad after a dip in the hot springs. See it here.

New election and the hullabuloo over the Japanese post office, and the "joy of satori"

It's once again that time most feared by foreigners living in Japan: election season, when white-gloved Japanese politicians drive around in trucks with loudspeakers mounted on top, shouting their name and saying things like "I will work hard for you!" and "Thank you for your support on election day!" When Prime Minister Koizumi lost an important vote on his administration's goal of privatizing Japan's sprawling postal system on Monday, he disbanded the Diet and called for new elections, which will be held on September 11. Until then, we'll have to put up with lots of noisy politicians shouting at us through our windows, speaking through bullhorns in front of train stations in Tokyo, and so on.

The issue at hand is the privatization of Japan's postal apparatus, which would basically create four mostly-private corporations to manage the various postal activities more efficiently than they are at present. Japan's post office does much more than just deliver the mail in rain or sleet or snow: it's also the world's largest savings bank, holding a vast amount of money in deposits by Japanese households, and it also operates a life insurance business, too. These two businesses hold a mind-boggling $3 trillion in cash reserves, which is far too much money for politicians to resist touching, so they use it for various "economic revitalization" projects, such as a government-subsidized hot springs hotel near Nikko, with a massive indoor pool complex next to it that no one uses. The post office is Japan's largest employer, with 24,000 post offices, frankly far more than it needs for a country that's about the same size as Italy or California. Opponents of the privatization plan warn that if Japan Post starts actually seeking profits, it will close down thousands of these smaller post offices, leaving rural areas with less convenience, and this is a sensitive issue here in Japan, not unlike base closings in the U.S. Another issue is, will a privatized Japan Post be on the same playing field (or as they say in Japanese, in the same sumo ring) as Japan's private delivery companies like Yamato and Sawaga, or will receive a lot of winks and special treatment like NTT (which started out as a government-run utility before being privatized in 1985). Considering that it costs 75 cents to send a first-class letter inside Japan, about twice the rate of the U.S., I'd say there's room for more efficiency in Japan's postal system.

One of the things I've liked about my years of learning Japanese is what I've come to call the "joy of satori," a sort of thrill that jumps through your brain when you make a difficult connection, solve a puzzling kanji problem, or intuit a correct answer without really knowing why. Satori means understanding or comprehension, or written with another kanji, enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and I believe our brains are hard-wired to feel joy when a difficult solution is finally comprehended. You can't learn a foreign language without getting lots of input in that language, and I went out of my way to read plenty of manga to learn kanji and vocabulary words, one of them being the Rumiko Takahashi classic Maison Ikkoku, the story of a man living in an apartment who's in love with his apartment manager, the widowed Kyoko. There's a secret code embedded in the series, a number system based on the names of the characters and the ten apartments in the apartment building: for example, the main character is Godai and he lives in room number 5 since go is 5 in Japanese; his neighbor Yotsuya lives in room 4 since yotsu represents that number; and so on, with Kyoko being zero, since her last name contains the character nashi (meaning "nil"). I'll never forget how I felt when I puzzled this system out for the first time -- it was a small piece of enlightenment, but it was my own.

Japanese summer festivals, the drama of high school baseball, and update on Hiroshima

It's August in Japan, and to millions of Japanese sports fans that means -- high school baseball! High school baseball is really big in Japan, and teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures try all season long to win the right to go to Koshien (koh-SHE-en) Stadium near Osaka, where the national championships are being held right now. To go to Koshien is the dream of every young ball player, and it has a positive effect on the future careers of thousands of young men every year, whether they go on to play professional baseball or not. The drama of a Koshien race is captured in manga and anime such as the classic Touch, a comic I used to study Japanese with while at college. By an amazing coincidence, J-List is based in the city where Touch creator Mitsuru Adachi was born, and this year our prefecture is represented at Koshien by Maebashi Commercial High School, Mr. Adachi's old alma mater (and also the school that our own Yasu graduated from). We'll be rooting for them this year!

August is also the season of matsuri, or festivals, and each town in Japan hosts at least one wild festival, closing off streets to allow its citizens to dance through the town in celebration of summer. I went down to check out our city's festival, which was on last night, and had a great time. There were a dozen floats filled with children playing taiko drums and banging on gongs, and groups of men carrying omikoshi, which are portable Shinto shrines that you parade around on your shoulders while shouting washoi, washoi, washoi. All around us were young people wearing new yukata, cotton kimonos for summer, while they enjoyed the chaos all around them. Beer flows quite freely at these festivals, and more than once we were approached by inebriated Japanese men who wanted to practice their English with us. Although I could do without the heat, I sure like summer in Japan because of the festivals.

On a sadder note, Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a very solemn ceremony was held in the city to honor those killed on August 6, 1945. In April, I took my mother and kids to Hiroshima to see the city and experience the Peace Park, the area above ground zero that has been converted into a beautiful place to reflect on the past. The museum was especially moving, filled with displays of objects recovered after the blast, such as melted glass bottles, children's tricycles, and the famous Hiroshima Watch, stopped forever at 8:15 am. Since my children are part of both Japan and America, I wanted them to see the images or Hiroshima and know how different things had been during that terrible time. Despite being completely destroyed, the city of Hiroshima has been rebuilt into an amazing and vibrant city that all Japan can be proud of.

J-List carries hundreds of hard to find items from Japan, including cool accessories for your iPod made by Elecom, a popular maker of computer peripherals. From cool cases with carabiner clips to interesting headphones and speakers, if you've got an iPod or similar music player, there are some really unique products on our site for you. See the newly created iPod products page (under Computer Peripherals)

The Otaku Standardized Test and origin of the word, Japan's hot summer, and aloe flavored yogurt

Hello again from Japan, and a special weekend update to J-List!

I've written before about how the Japanese like to take tests, and there are national qualification exams for just about everything, from English to kanji to using an abacus to preparing sashimi, and even a test for people who like to memorize train schedules. Getting these qualifications is one way to get ahead in Japan, and having a lot of them under your belt can help you get a better job. Now several companies in Akihabara have gotten together to create the first Otaku Standardized Test, which allows fans of anime and manga to test their knowledge and see if they make the grade as uber-fans. The test is hard -- with questions like, of the following anime shows of the 1960s and 1970s, which was not directed by Tetsuo Imazawa? -- and is of course only in Japanese. The official page of the Otaken can be found at http://www.otaken.jp. The word otaku originally is a polite term for "you" or "your family" but has come to stand for anyone with a strong interest in anime, manga, model trains, or any other aspect of Japan's popular sub-culture. There are several theories about how this everyday Japanese word attained this unique alternate meaning. According to one, the fact that "otaku" was spoken frequently by characters in the original Macross series caused fans to start using it, creating the beginnings of the otaku movement. Alternately, many of the employees of General Products, the model company that would go on to become the mighty Gainax, hail from Tottori Prefecture (the only part of Japan to sport its own mini-desert), and in the local dialect, "otaku" is the most commonly used second-person pronoun.

Japan's oh-so-hot summer continues, with temperatures hovering around 35 degrees (95 Farenheit, although I had to look that up, since I've lived in Japan so long). It's so hot that the plastic in my Star Wars figures starts to get soft, which makes them fall over easily. As bad as it is out here in Gunma (about 100 km northwest of Tokyo), it's much worse in Japan's capital, thanks to the "heat island" effect. With all those people running their air conditioners, and all that black asphalt and reflective glass, Tokyo is often 3-4 degrees Celsius hotter than other parts of the country. It's hotter at night, too, since the heat is stored in the concrete and can't be radiated away because of all the other buildings. The average temperature in the capital has gone up a full 3 degrees Celsius over the past century, a pace far higher than global warming, mainly due to the heat island effect. Which is just one more reason why I'm glad I don't live in Tokyo.

Our English-translated PC dating-sim games are a fun way to interact with Japan on a new level. Several of our games are backordered right now while we reprint them, but we've gotten two titles back in stock today, Chain and Tsuki - Possession. Also, we've posted our popular "Special Set" of G-Collections games (DOR plus any 2 or 3 games) to the site, by customer request. We did have a problem with two titles recently reprinted titles, Come See Me Tonight and Crescendo. If you bought these games but had issues installing them, please contact us and we'll make arrangements for replacement discs to be sent to you right away.

iTunes Music Store comes to Japan, on Japanese drinking culture, and some happy news at J-List

After a long wait, Apple's iTunes Japan music store has finally opened, allowing customers here to download Japanese and international music for around $1.75 per song. Despite the large number of digital-savvy users in Japan, it's not at all surprising to me that it took so long for Apple to get the iTunes store up and running. Japan can be a very conservative place, and to big companies with established businesses, nothing is more terrifying than change, any change at all. Apple has had to navigate between greedy record companies who have kept the prices of CDs at the artificially high price of $30 for decades, and industry groups like the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and the Recording Industry of Japan (RIAJ), who have closed ranks against any kind of digital distribution of music that doesn't guarantee more profits for them than conventional CDs. A big problem was JASRAC's insistence that Apple follow "Japan's rules" when it came to selling music online, which apparently meant that the industry group was to receive 7.7% of every song sold in addition to what the actual copyright holders receive. It's all very silly when you think about the fact that in Japan, you can go into any one of thousands of CD rental shops and rent a whole album for $3 or less. Sadly, Japan's copyright-happy record industry lacked the vision to allow Apple to sell Japanese music to customers outside of Japan, so worldwide fans of JPOP are shut out from participating in the Japan iTMS. Apple isn't the first company that's had to endure pressure from the establishment in Japan: Amazon was blocked from selling products below list price on their site here, since price fixing is still allowed for some products, like books and CDs. If there's one good thing that's come from the past decade of recession in Japan, it's that many of Japan's closed economic doors have been forced open, letting the light of competition and common sense flood in. If you want to see a hilarious commercial that marries the iPod with Sazae-san, one the most popular anime in Japan's history, check this out (Quicktime required).

The Japanese do drink a lot, from beer to sake to harder stuff. Letting alcohol act as a lubricant in human relationships is a time-honored social practice in Japan, and one of the first words I learned when I came here in 1991 was nomunication, a word that combines nomu (to drink) with the English word communication. Japanese drinking establishments differ somewhat from those in the U.S., of course, with different mixes of atmosphere and menu. One of the most popular places to throw some back with friends at are izakaya (ee-ZA-ka-ka, roughly meaning "a place to sit and drink in"), comfortable Japanese-style restaurants that serve beer in large glasses along with various Japanese meals, from sashimi to squid pizza to yakitori. Back in the old days I used to frequent small bars called "snacks" (an odd word which came from the fact that they sell light meals along with alcohol), where you can sing karaoke and get a "bottle keep" (i.e. your own private bottle) for drinking with friends. There are also places that pattern themselves after American and European models, which use English words like "bar" or "pub" to describe themselves. Last week I was in Tokyo with friends, and we found the cutest Irish pub in Shibuya that served a good range of beers we can't usually find in Japan. Japanese usually learn to drink in college, where in the past they would be cheered on by friends while they chugged a huge class of beer. This practice, called ikki nomi (beer chugging) became a problem when a college freshman drank too much too fast and died. Now saying ikki! ikki! ikki! while someone drinks is quite taboo.

Congratulations to J-List's own Daisuke, who's baby boy was born yesterday. We're having quite a population explosion around here -- Yasu's wife is pregnant with their second daughter and is ready to pop any day now, Jun's wife has their first bun in the oven, and Dawn in San Diego (whose important job it is to cut the paychecks) also has a little bundle of joy coming too. If you want to see what we look like, check the About J-List page.

Are you in or near Louisiana and looking for an anime convention to go to? If so, then we recommend Mechacon, held on Aug 26-28. We won't be at the show, but some friends of our will, so please go and say hello to them.

Lightning strikes, space-faring Japanese astronauts, and interesting tips on learning kanji

Lightning strikes! Twice before the J-List office has had the bad luck of being struck by lightning, frying our main air conditioning unit and causing us to spend a week or so sweltering in the heat and humidity of Japan's high summer. Well, it's happened again, and currently the J-List staff is trying to work in near-sauna conditions. Fortunately the lightning also knocked out the ice cream freezer at my parents' liquor shop, so we had an excuse to eat all the ice cream before it melted.

One thing I've learned about the Japanese: nothing makes them more pleased than when one of their own attains international recognition, and writers like Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, and athletes like Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki all occupy a special place in the hearts of their fans at home for this reason. So you can imagine that Japan is pretty proud of its latest hero, astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who went up in the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery. Every time I turn on the television I see footage of Noguchi-san, making jokes while floating in zero-g or talking to his fans on the ground. As a former English teacher, I'm happy to see men like him become the new heroes to kids in Japan, and I hope it encourages more young Japanese to try harder to master English. Yesterday morning the crew of the shuttle was awakened with a broadcast of Japanese children singing the theme song to My Neighbor Totoro ("Let's Take a Walk") because it was the day of his first spacewalk outside the ship. Urayamashii! (OO-ra-ya-ma-SHE, which means "[I am] so envious [of him]!")

There's no doubt about it: the most complex part of learning Japanese is kanji, unless you're fortunate enough to already be fluent in Chinese. An educated Japanese person generally uses around 2000 kanji, compared with 3500-5000 for the same person in China. Because the Chinese writing system was basically grafted onto the existing Japanese language in the 5th century, there are fundamentally two ways to read any character, the on (rhymes with bone) or Chinese reading, and the kun (rhymes with spoon) or Japanese reading, the latter being an existing Japanese word that's been assigned to a kanji based on the character's meaning. As a general rule, you use the Chinese reading for compound words made up of two kanji (for example, the word for hibernation, toumin, written with the characters for winter + sleep), and there are quite a few Chinese and Korean words that are the same in Japanese for this reason. The Japanese reading is usually used for kanji words that appear by themselves (e.g. the character for winter written all by itself, fuyu), or in special cases like names of people or places. It's hard to believe, but it's easier to memorize Japanese vocabulary words through kanji than, say, learning from a book which prints Japanese in romaji (the Roman alphabet) For example, the kanji for "most" can be combined with a variety of other kanji to describe ideas like tallest, shortest, etc. Examples above are, from left, saikou (most + high = highest, also meaning the best), saitei (most + bottom = the lowest, meaning a real jerk when applied to a person), saisho (most + begin = the first), saigo (most + after = the last), and saishin (most + new = the newest). The rightmost example is the above mentioned kanji for hibernation. Memorizing these words in kanji only takes two "bytes" of your brain's memory once you've gotten used to the characters themselves, but memorizing the words in the Roman alphabet would be harder since they're just a jumble of letters.

J-List loves DVDs, and we sell hundreds of unique DVDs from Japan. While most of our titles are region free, so you can play them on any standard DVD player, Japanese anime, specialized "indies" and some other discs are published as region 2, meaning you need a special player to play them. We've got two great region-free DVD players from Lasonic, the karaoke-enabled DVD7880K and the amazing DVD7050, which plays DIVX movies burned onto DVD-R, DVD-RW, you name it. We've lowered our prices on these players to just $78 and $98, so why not pick one up today?

Japanese food for the summer including delicious eel, and a little on the nature of fame in Japan

The Japanese can be very seasonal people, going out of their way to enjoy each season for what it has to offer. Food is the same, with different meals eaten at different times of the year. Japan's summer is hot and humid, so people naturally like to eat things that keep them cool, like cold soba (buckwheat noodles) and soumen (angel hair noodles dipped in sauce and eaten). A favorite of ours is hiyashi chuka, a popular dish that's basically cold ramen noodles served in a plate of tangy sauce, with various ingredients piled on to taste, and many restaurants serve this dish in the hot summer months. Another famous food eaten in the summer is unagi, or Japanese eels, which are cooked over an open flame, painted with teriyaki sauce and served on rice. Eating eel in the summer is thought to help give you stamina to deal with the heat, and this practice has been around for a while -- summer unagi is mentioned in the Manyoshu, a collection of poems dating back to the 8th century. The traditional day for eating unagi was yesterday, and all through Japan restaurants prepared hundreds of servings of the popular dish.

One of the more interesting aspects of Japan are the geinojin (entertainers), a sprawling class of actors, singers, comedians, swimsuit idols, talk show hosts, and anyone else who appears on TV for one reason or another. Everyone wants to be in the public eye, and there are many schools set up around Japan to train young people so they can have a chance at making it big someday. As with most other aspects of Japanese life, there is a strict system of senpai (senior) and kouhai (junior), with stars who have been in the business longer having a higher status than the newer members, although this system breaks down somewhat when a given person's popularity starts to wane. Sometimes it seems that, as long as you have a genuinely original angle that no one has thought of before, just about anyone can end up on Japanese TV. Bobby is a man from Nigeria who's turned into quite a popular tarento ("talent") on Japanese television these days, popping up on various variety, comedy and even cooking shows. He's not very good at Japanese, and always seems to mess up in funny ways, although I think he's doing it on purpose.

Because I'm American and my wife is Japanese, we want our kids to grow up bilingual, but it can sure be a challenge. To help them learn more English, we send them to the U.S. every summer, where they go to various summer camps and interact with our family over there. For the next two weeks I'll be on my own, as my wife and kids will all be in the U.S. I'll have fun, driving around our prefecture in my Miata, taking myself out to Japanese onsen (hot springs), playing video games in my underwear, and running the air conditioner on full blast.

J-List is honored to be able to sell Domo-kun, the lovable brown monster that is the official spokesmonster of NHK, Japan's version of the BBC. We've got dozens and dozens of really cool Domo-kun items, from plush toys to pens to keychains and more, including the "really big Domo-kun" stuffed toys for your room. Browse our excellent selection of Domo-kun products today! "Domo" is a useful Japanese phrase that can mean almost anything, from thank you to excuse me.

Ways to learn a foreign language, and on receiving complements about your use of chopsticks

Attempting to master a foreign language is a big undertaking, and if you want to become fluent someday you need to jump in with both feet. Nearly all Japanese I've met who have learned English really well were able to do so because they embraced not just the language itself, but the culture behind it, from music to movies to sports and more. When I was studying Japanese at SDSU, I went out of my way to use the language as much as I could, finding activities that helped make my studies more fun. I read a lot of manga, which are much easier to read than normal books and which provide lots of input of spoken Japanese, since comic books contain lots of dialogue between characters. I also learned about Japan through its popular music, listening to tapes my Japanese friends made for me and learning to sing Japanese songs at karaoke bars in San Diego. I probably overdid it a little -- when I was dating my wife in the early 90s, she was amazed that there could be an American who hadn't heard of singer Michael Bolton (who was at the top of his career at the time). I had listened to so much Japanese music I had missed him entirely.

Although Japanese kitchens are well stocked with spoons, forks and knives, most meals in Japan are eaten with chopsticks. Children usually learn to use chopsticks around the age of 4, when they start attending preschool, and this is quite possibly the first of many adjustments to the larger Japanese group that children have in their school lives. Every foreigner living in Japan knows the anguish of being told by a Japanese person hashi ga jozu ("you use chopsticks very well"). While one popular response is to compliment the speaker on their use of a knife and fork, I've found you can have more fun telling them okagesama de (oh-KA-gay sah-mah deh). This is a complex phrase which literally means "Yes, thanks to you," almost as if you had leaned how to use chopsticks from the person, even though you've never met them before. The phrase is a useful way of showing Japanese-style humility whenever someone compliments you on something, and since few would expect a gaijin to know it, it's fun to see their surprised expressions.

J-List offers many cool magazines from Japan via our revolving reserve subscription service, making it easy to get the newest anime, manga, JPOP, toy, and mature magazines sent to you every month. Some of the most popular monthlies are fashion magazines that let you keep your finger on contemporary Tokyo style, like FRUiTs (Harajuku street fashion), Kera (urban + gothic), Egg ("kogal" fashions for free-spirited Tokyo girls), and Super Cawaii (the newest fashion trends, worn by Japan's top models). Men in Tokyo can be quite fashionable too, and for guys who want to be in sync with Japan's trends we recommend the newly-posted Men's Egg, which reports on what's hot and what's cool in Japan. All magazines we offer via our direct subscription service are loaded with beautiful color photographs, so you can enjoy them even if you don't read Japanese.

J-List also sells many unique items from Japan that are great for the upcoming "back to school" season, including Japanese pencil cases with interesting characters, notebooks with funny English on them, study tools for getting better grades, and pens, pencils and other stationery items from Japan, always a pleasure to use. We're adding more and more of these items to the site this month, for anyone looking to have something unique in school this fall, either for themselves or their kids. We also humbly recommend our wacky Japanese T-shirts and hoodies for the coming fall.

Peter's new cell phone, and the roles of men and women in Japan

One of the benefits from living in Japan is having access to cool keitai denwa, cellular phones. The three main providors of cell phone service in Japan are giant NTT Docomo, KDDI's stylish au, and European-owned Vodafone, and they duke it out in the marketplace trying to provide the best service area, phones and features. NTT is the Microsoft of Japan, and their phones are all top of the line, however you pay for the privilege of using them. I much prefer the stylish phones that au makes, and recently upgraded my phone to the brand-new W31T, a slim phone which sports Bluetooth, 2.4 Mbps remote web surfing, support for Qualcomm's Brew applications, a camera so good I've thrown away my digital camera forever, and a web browser that can display normal websites. Although it's only been 8 months since I've upgraded, I was floored by all the new features that hadn't been in existence when I checked last time, including a phone with a TV receiver on it, a "tough phone" with stylish plastic guards that you can submerge in water without problem, a phone with stero surround sound speakers, and more. And of course they all play music like the iPod.

One could write a book on the subject of women in Japan, and quite a few have, I'm sure. As with many aspects of Japan, it's common for Westerners to see the country as being "behind" America and Europe with regard to social equality between men and women, but I'm not sure that this is really the case. Oh, it's true that the roles of women in Japan seems to be somewhat below that of men, and there are fewer well-known female business and political leaders in the public eye. In nearly all households, the majority of income is brought in by the husband, who is the daikoku bashira or the "big, black pillar" that supports the family, while the household and its finances are managed expertly by the wife (as it is in my household). There are women with careers to be sure, but it's more common for women to concern themselves with the household and children more and with work less, at least until the kids are grown. It might be incomprehensible to many, but by and large Japanese females seem to prefer things the way they are -- so rather than being behind the West, I like to think that Japan is just "striking a different balance" between men and women that suits the way its people are.

We love to bring you interesting things from Japan that you never knew exited, a concept which is pretty much embodied in the OH! Mikey series, a bizarre but hilarious comedy show about the Fuccon family, who moved from America to Japan . The show is acted out with mannequins who never change their poses at all, and it will have you in stitches all the way through. In addition to the latest OH! Mikey release (disc 7), we're happy to have the original volumes back on the site, including vol. 1-3 which had gone out of print temporarily. The discs are all fully subtitled in English, however since they're region 2 discs you'll need a region free player to view them on (we humbly recommend the two excellent Lasonic players we stock).

We also feel it's part of J-List's mission to promote the study of Japanese, and we sell many items that help you learn the language. We've got a great new item for you today: the Best of YesJapan, a DVD with over 4 hours of the best episodes of YesJapan's originally produced TV show George & Keiko, which helps you not only learn Japanese but pick up fun information about the country and language. The DVD includes some of the best episodes, including "Tricks to sound good in Japanese," "Techniques to impress your Japanese friends," and the infamous "Date with Keiko" episodes. See this item, and all items in fact, on the J-List or JBOX.com sites.

My return to Japan, and little things that bothered me along the way

Hello again from J-List! I've made the hop from California back to Japan, and have once again slipped into my "Japan self." As usual, there was a day or so of culture shock as I got used to being in Japan again -- at Narita I found myself staring at the tiny rear ends of the stylish Tokyo girls walking in front of me, wondering how they could sit on something so small. Yep, I'm back in Japan now!

I've lived in Japan since 1991, a very long time indeed. After you've lived here a certain number of years it's possible for foreigners to apply for permanent residence status (the equivalent of a green card), which I obtained in 2001. Some gaijin who love living in Japan opt to go all the way and apply for Japanese citizenship, but I've decided that this path isn't for me -- it's more fun being an American who can speak Japanese than to be a blonde Japanese who talks kind of funny. Every time I go to through Narita I encounter two of my pet peeves, though. The first is the little card visa holders have to fill out when going through immigration: "Reason for returning to Japan?" Since I consider Japan to be my true home, having to write a "reason" is always annoying, and I leave it blank on purpose every time. The second minor annoyance are the Japanese signs that say Okarinasai (oh-KA-eh-ree-na-SAI), which means "welcome home," next to English signs that say "Welcome to Japan." The unwritten implication is that only Japanese people live in Japan, whereas anyone who speaks English as his native language is just visiting here, which is always mildly offensive to me.

While going through the airport I was reminded again of how much Japan takes its cues from the United States. When going through customs, you're required to declare any cash amount over US$10,000, just as when entering the U.S., and the amounts of how much wine, tobacco and coffee you can bring in without paying duties are also very close to the rules that apply in America. Compared to Japan, it seems that Europe is a lot more comfortable with breaking with the U.S., as seen in the recent "no" vote on software patents (which I cheered).

I'm happy to be back in Japan, but I'm happy for another reason as well: today is "D Day" for our hikari fiber (fiber optic) Internet line, which was installed this morning. It's taken us five years of hard lobbying including involving our city's mayor, but we finally have a decent Internet connection at J-List, with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps. J-List is located in a small city that's not exactly known for its tech companies, and what's worse, we're in the middle of the agricultural part of town (our office is surrounded by rice paddies), so it's been a lot of work getting NTT to bring fast internet to us. But our patience has finally paid off, and things are much faster now!