More on the concept of "senpai" including "gaijin seniority," and the cutting edge of the female pachinko market

I talked last time about the invisible lines drawn between the three social groups in a Japanese school or organization, senpai (upperclassmen, seniors), persons who are on the same level as you seniority- or age-wise, and kohai (lowerclassmen, juniors), three concepts which can be tricky for non-Japanese to grasp. Social rules require that you speak with (slightly) polite language when addressing a senpai, whereas you can speak informally with people on the same or lower level. While we use the word "friend" in a wide range of situations in English, the corresponding Japanese word tomodachi is generally reserved for people who are the same age as you, while the terms senpai/kohai are used to refer to older/younger friends, even if you hang out with them all the time. Since the bursting of Japan's bubble economy in 1989, the vaunted lifetime employment system has all but disappeared, and it's quite common for a person to change jobs 2-3 times in his adult life. This causes a bit of a challenge to the Japanese system of seniority -- if a man in his 50s goes to work at a company with a boss in his 20s, which is the senior? The answer is, the employee with more seniority in the new company, which means that the tidy system of politeness based on age starts to look pretty strange in the Japan of today. It's an interesting example of social forces bringing about changes in language, right before our eyes.

Foreigners in Japan unconsciously pick up on the senior/junior system, too, and when I used to meet new English teachers while drinking at the local bar "AIUEO" (what a great name), we'd ask each other how long we'd been in Japan to establish the proper invisible order of "gaijin seniority." Of course, to be a senpai to someone doesn't just mean a one-way ticket to getting respect from them. You've got to earn it by providing help and guidance to your kohai, doing things like picking up the tab at restaurants and generally assisting them in their jobs. Just as various kind souls helped me get my "Japan legs" when I first arrived here, it was my responsibility to help out newer foreign teachers I encountered, and I did my best to fulfill this responsibility. In our town there's a guy who had everyone beat when it came to gaijin seniority, an American who came to Japan during the Vietnam War and stayed ever since. He writes articles for the Japanese newspaper about how the country has changed since he arrived, and has a kind of mythical status a "First Foreigner" in our prefecture.

The national past time of the Japanese isn't singing karaoke, or writing haiku poems, or taking in the beauty of Mt. Fuji while the cherry blossoms fall all around. For many, it's playing pachinko, essentially a vertically oriented pinball machine which you shoot metal balls into, hoping that enough balls happen to fall into one of the special holes in the machine so that more balls are released, eventually giving you more than you started out with. Although generally viewed as a hobby of middle-aged men, many women play the game, too, and since women have more money (they traditionally control the family finances in Japan), pachinko parlor operators are scrambling to attract this more profitable market segment. The newest theme in pachinko is machines that feature The Rose of Versailles, an anime series about the French Revolution that millions of females in Japan have fallen in love with over the last four decades. While you play, various scenes from the show are displayed on the LCD screen, with updated animation so it looks really nice. If you play well, you get to view special scenes with Oscar and young Marie Antoinette. Other recent pachinko trends include machines centered around enka singer Hibari Misora, and good old Yon-sama, aka South Korean heart-throb Bae Yong Joon, much beloved by middle-aged Japanese women.

Reasons why we hate living next to North Korea, all about the word 'kawaii' and a complex social concept

Japan is buzzing about North Korea's reported underground nuclear test, which took place a few hours ago. The news comes just as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Seoul for his first meeting with South Korean President Moo-hyun to begin work on some of the problems that stand between the two countries, including Yasukuni Shrine and Takeshima, an island that both sides are claiming as theirs. As if we needed another reason to dislike living next to one of the world's scariest nations, now we've got confirmed nukes within range of Tokyo, with my home prefecture right in the line of fire. Um, would any country out there be willing to trade places with Japan and live next to North Korea? We'd really appreciate it.

One Japanese concept that was quite hard for me to get down was aisatsu (AI-sa-tsoo), which means "greetings" and is quite a multifaceted idea. Before I started J-List, I worked at our local City Office as an "Officer of Inter- nationalization," doing things like helping other gaijin who didn't speak Japanese when they had problems or needed to use city services. The world of Japanese public employees is a very formal one, and greeting everyone with "ohayo gozaimasu" in the mornings was a strict requirement. Children are raised to greet others too, especially their teachers and upperclassmen, and this symbolic showing of respect is an important part of Japan's "vertically oriented" social system which draws lines between seniors in a school or organization (senpai), students in the same level as you (dokyusei) and juniors/lowerclassmen (kohai). One concern that many of the parents at my son's special elementary school have is, because the students are in the first graduating class of the school, there are no senpai for them to interact with, which some fear would handicap them socially when they get out in the real world. The word aisatsu is applied to some other situations, too, such as when you move into a new apartment and give a small towel to your neighbors as a way of introducing yourself, or the long, drawn out speeches given by the head of any organization at any formal event, like a wedding. The other day, a neighbor brought us a package of manju cakes (rice cakes with sweet beans inside, which I've lived in Japan long enough to love). He was about to start construction on a new house, and had brought us the gift to apologize in advance for the inconvenience and noise that the construction would cause.

One word that has fast becoming a part of English seems to be kawaii (ka-wah-EE, 可愛い written properly), the Japanese term that corresponds to the word "cute" as applied to puppies, kittens, anime characters and most Japanese girls. Grammatically, it's an "i-adjective," like the words oishii (delicious、 美味しい) or takai (tall, expensive、高い), meaning that it ends in a hiragana 'i' (い) sound. Some similar words are kirei (pretty in an elegant way; can also mean clean、奇麗) and utsukushii (beautiful、美しい), and my wife and I have long debates about whether a given actress on TV is cute, pretty or beautiful. Some examples of expressing 'cute':

Kawaii!
[That is] cute!
(the subject is usually omitted, it's whatever you've just been talking about)

Kawaiku nai
[That is] not cute
'i' changes to 'ku' + nai for negative, used in anime a lot

Kawaiku naru
to become cute
'ku' functions as 'ly' in English, changing adjective to advert

Bonus point! Can you extrapolate how to say "not delicious" or "not expensive"
in Japanese? If so, you'll have taken your first step into a larger world.

Staying healthy with "Ningen Dock," being tormented by images of Kyoto, and the Japan-Helen Keller connection

Yesterday was time for my annual top-to-bottom physical, called Ningen Dock, a name that implies a human (ningen) "drydock" where you get checked from head to toe for potential problems. The check-up was quite thorough, including blood and related tests, tests for vision, hearing and lung problems, an ultrasound check of internal organs, and the always fun barium X-ray machine, which tilts your body at different angles while internal pictures are taken, a common test done here due to the high percentage of stomach and esophageal problems among Japanese. The hospital the tests were done at is quite an interesting place, dedicated entirely to efficient testing for problems, from the standard one that I had done to a "Brain Dock" test that checks your brain for possible problems, and important regular tests for women. There are many reasons why the Japanese enjoy the longest lifespans in the world on average, including diets with lots of fish and soy products, smaller food portions and maintaining healthy lifelong relationships, but without a doubt a big factor is a medical system that promotes regular, prophylactic check-ups like the Ningen Dock.

It's interesting to see the myriad of ways that Japan has had an effect on the the West over the years. Charlie Chaplin's manager for two decades was a Japanese man named Kono Totaichi, and Chaplin came to Japan several times, gleaning some aspects of his unique acting style from watching Kabuki performances here. Vincent van Gogh went through a period where he was fascinated with the ukiyo-e paintings from Japan, and made imitations of different works. Albert Einstein spent several months in Japan in the 1920s, giving lectures on his theories and doing things any tourist in Japan would do, including the hot springs circuit (I can picture him trying on a yukata). If you've ever seen an Akita dog, it might have been descended through one given by the Japanese government to Helen Keller, who visited Akita Prefecture (near the northern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu) and showed an interest in Hachiko, the loyal dog who waited patiently for his deceased master to come home for ten years. Of course, Akira Kurosawa's films have had a huge influence on many directors, not least being George Lucas. Whole sections of the Star Wars films, from the bushido-influenced Jedi to the drunk comic relief samurai character (Jar Jar) are taken from Japan's films and culture. The bottom line? If you're as fascinated with Japan as I've been all my life, you've in good company.

It's autumn, and that means that everyone living in Japan must endure a very subtle form of torture. I'm talking, of course, about TV commercials by JR (Japan Railroad) tempting us with fabulous scenes of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and bidding us to drop everything and head down there on the next Shinkansen. "I know what we should do! Let's go to Kyoto" (そうだ！京都へ行こう） the slogan goes, and they always employ a variation on the "My Favorite Things" song that never fails to fill you with desire to visit the city as soon as possible. Fall is an especially fine time to be in Kyoto, as the leaves look beautiful in shades of red and yellow and brown, the season called Koyo ("crimson leaves") in Japanese. Unfortunately, it costs about the same for us to go to Kyoto as it does to fly to Rome, so it's not something we get to do very often.

We have yet another wacky Japanese T-shirt for you: a new "warning" shirt to go with our "Death from Overwork" and "No Foreigners Allowed" shirts, this time featuring a message that might serve a few college students out there. "Warning: Extremely Hung Over Now," our newest T-shirt proclaims, showing the image of a person having an out-of-stomach experience at the porcelain altar. Our unique Japanese T-shirts are a fun way to add a little kanji in your daily life, and maybe start up a conversation or two with any Japanese people you run into on the street. All our kanji shirts are printed in San Diego and all sizes are full U.S. standard sizes.

Lessons we could learn from Japan about "safety driving," pointing with the middle finger, and trivia on Japanese toilets

I've often thought that there are some really good ideas in Japan that the rest of the world could learn from. Right now it's the Autumn Traffic Safety Week, a special time when different groups come together to promote traffic safety, like the Lions Club gathering in front of shopping centers to hand out leaflets reminding drivers to buckle up and put kids in child safety seats (still somewhat rare in Japan). The police have an increased presence during this season, and do spot inspections of drivers on major roads. Drunk driving has become a big topic this year due to a tragic spike in alcohol-related deaths, and authorities are doing their best to combat the problem -- they even caught an off-duty police officer who had been drinking. Other ways of getting the message out to drivers include posting slogans like "Giving the right-of-way to others is a pillar of safe driving" and dressing up famous idols like Yuko Ogura in a police woman's uniform to bring attention to their cause. Using a bit of marketing dazzle to get people to think about "safety driving" (as its invariably called here) is something I'd love to see carried to an international level. Considering that 40,000+ people are killed annually in auto accidents in the U.S. alone, even making a small difference could save a lot of lives. Heck, we could un-do the 9-11 deaths by doing just a few things right on the traffic safety front!

No matter how long I live in Japan, there are some things I can't quite get used to. When Japanese point at something, they will often use their middle finger rather than their forefinger, since the middle finger has no particular meaning here, but it always feels odd. Having a Japanese person apologize for not being able to speak English even though I'm talking to them normally in Japanese is hard to get used to, as is having a vending machine bow to me to thank me for my purchase, by way of a little LCD screen (I try to avoid bowing back). The are many other odd things, too. Men in tailored suits riding a bicycle in the rain while holding an umbrella with one hand. Buying a six-pack of beer for 6x the price of a single can, or picking up a loaf of bread that has all of three slices in the package. Yes, one thing you can say for sure is that living in Japan is never the same old thing.

One of the great mysteries of living in Japan, as any gaijin will tell you, is those kanji for "small" and "big" (小 and 大, pronounced sho and dai) written on most toilet flush handles. Japan is incredibly wasteful of its natural resources, for example plastering the sides of mountains with concrete to guard against rockslides, but it also has a green side, taxing less efficient car engines at a higher rate, recycling many types of paper products, selling refill versions of products to cut down on trash volume and promoting low-energy lighting in homes and businesses. Japanese toilets are set up to conserve resources, too: you can turn the handle to the right to perform a normal flush ("big"), or hold it to the left for a few seconds to just let out a little bit of water ("small"). It took me a few years to make the connection, but of course the "small" character stands for shoben (小便, meaning number 1, literally translated as "small convenience"), while the other turn of the handle stands for daiben (大便、number 2, or "big convenience"). Apologies to Britain's most famous clock, whose sounds rather funny to the Japanese.

We've got some news for fans of our here
2007 calendars today: a huge volley of calendars have come in and are being posted to the site right now. The newly posted calendars include beautiful views of Japan in all four seasons, visually pleasing sushi, lovely idols like Jun Natsukawa and Aki Hoshino, cool calendars for students of kanji, the fantastic art works of Haruyo Morita, Japanese girls in traditional "onsen" hot springs, and more. Browse all our new calendars now!

This month's "Dating-Sim Games of the Month" are I'm Gonna Nurse You 1 & 2, two outstanding PC dating-sim games from Trabulance that blend cute female characters, nurse uniforms, hilarious stories and plenty of good, clean fun in a school for nurses-in-training. Special pricing on both titles this month, above and beyond Monday's price drop in our dating-sim games.

Returning to my Otaku roots, my adventures in a "capsule hotel," and what the Japanese really eat

Time was, people would go to the Akihabara (ah-ki-HAH-bah-rah, meaning "field of autumn leaves") area of Tokyo to buy some cool electronics, browse a wide selection of computers, or maybe hunt for vintage console game software. Today, "Electric Town" is still the single best place to find cool gadgetry in Japan -- although the Internet probably fills this need for a lot more customers than in the past -- but the region is also becoming a "Mecca" of otaku culture for everything from anime figures to doujinshi to cosplay pubs and more. Over the weekend I spent a day rediscovering my own otaku roots, waiting in line with a thousand or so fans of Gainax's "Aim for the Top" series, trying to get tickets to a special mash-up of the original Gunbuster and the new FLCL-ified sequel, complete with the voice actors from both series at the showing. I didn't get in to see the show, so I drowned my sorrows at a maid cafe and headed home.

While in Tokyo, I enjoyed the uniquely Japanese experience of staying in a "capsule hotel," one of the most affordable ways of staying in a crowded Japanese city you can find. Instead of a normal hotel room, you sleep in a "capsule," a closet-sized bed that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie set in deep space. Inside your capsule is everything you need: a small TV, clock radio, pillow and blanket, and a plug for charging your tech stuff. Before retiring to your capsule for the night, you can get clean in the large bath and sauna, great for removing the day's sweat and stress. When it's time to sleep you crawl into your personal capsule, pull the curtain down and start snoring. It's quite fun, and allows you to stay in hip parts of Tokyo like Shibuya for $30 a night, compared with $150-250 for a normal hotel room. On the other hand, it is a tight squeeze in there, and even though I'm just 5'9" (175 cm) I sometimes have to sleep at an angle inside the capsule to create enough space. Back during my bachelor days I went on an extended Capsule Hotel Tour of Japan, riding the cheapest trains and staying in capsule hotels to save money. It was a lot of fun.

I've heard that it's impossible to live in a country unless you truly enjoy the food there, and it's certainly true in my case -- I couldn't be happy in Japan if I didn't love eating here. Although most people probably imagine that the Japanese eat, well, Japanese food all the time, in reality the diet here is quite varied. Some popular dishes aren't very Japanese at all, like the honorary national food of Japan, curry rice, a thick curry stew eaten over steamed rice that was introduced by the British around 1860. Many foods that we consider "Chinese," like chow mein or fried rice, have intertwined with Japanese dishes for so long that the two are almost impossible to separate, but some foods do maintain a separate Chinese feel to them, such as gyoza ("pot stickers"). Various forms of American food exist here, from fast food chains to "fami-res" outfits like Denny's and Coco's, and although you can't find a really outstanding example of the archetypal hot dog or hamburger, at least they have "American Dogs" (what a corndog is called). Popular foods that the Japanese each every day include sushi and sashimi (the latter is raw fish without the rice part), or rice bowl meals like beef bowl or "Parent-and-Child Bowl" (chicken and scrambled egg cooked and served over rice). Noodle-based dishes, from ramen to cold soba noodles or satisfying udon, are also quite common. One of my favorite dishes is Katsudon, a fried pork cutlet ("katsu") served over a bowl of rice ("don"). Because "katsu" also means "to win" in Japanese, it's common for parents to serve this to their kids before a big test or sporting event. Tomorrow my son is representing his school in the city marathon, and so we're off to eat Katsudon tonight, to help him "win."

This month marks a very special time for J-List: our tenth anniversary! It October of 1996 when I officially retired as an ESL teacher to start J-List, which we envisioned would be a kind of "magical toybox from Japan" that anyone could visit, thanks to the mystery of the World Wide Web. We've had an incredibly wild ride over the past ten years, and have loved nearly every minute of it. More than anything, we've been blessed with a broad base of great customers who are genuinely interested in learning more about Japan, and we're very happy to serve you. Thanks for ten great years, and please look forward to ten more!

To commemorate the past ten years and to thank everyone for their support we've got an announcement: we're permanently dropping the prices of nearly all English-translated PC dating-sim games from G-Collections and Peach Princess, bringing the price to many games down to just $29.95 for most CD-ROM versions, or $24.95 for download versions (which require Virtual Mate 2.0), or more. We think these PC dating-sim games, which blend beautiful characters and dramatic interactive stories, including some that can make you cry, are one of funnest ways you can interface with Japan interactively, and we've got big plans for these games in the future. We hope fans will take advantage of the new lower prices and show their support for PC dating-sim games from Japan!

Here's the World Famous Otaku lining up for the Gunbuster event. He woke up at 7 am, he's there fairly early, right? And look, there are only 40 or so people in front of him.

But no! There is another pocket of 500 or so otakus in another part of the building, there to cause me much trouble. Shields failing...hull breach, imminent...

We moved forward to get these little papers with numbers on them, which was the lottery.

In an hour or so, it was time to go see if we were chosen, but my number was not on the list. I felt like an anime character, checking to see if he'd passed the college entrance exam. While I edged forward, I peered out the window to see Yuko Ogura, apparently having been selected as the current "be careful of fire" girl from the post office.

ごめん、紀美子。もう、会えない！ (I'm sorry, Kimoko, I'll never see you again!) Part of my anguish is that Noriko Hidaka, the voice of Noriko, is also the voice of Minami Asakura of Touch fame, who was "moe" before they had a term for it (hell, before the word otaku had been coined, back in 1986 when Komiket only only up to 22 or so). Man, I would have loved to been in her presence even though she's a 60 year old woman who can play 15 year old girl roles. But it was not to be...

What they teach in a Japanese "morals" class, smart tricks for studying a foreign language, and Japan's newest otaku boom

It's always interesting to observe the large and small differences between schools here and back in the States. Both my daughter's Japanese public school and my son's semi-private English school have regular classes called "morals" (in Japanese, 道徳 which signaled to me a Taoist origin, as that's the characte for Tao), which aim to make kids better people. Because I'd never attended a class on moral education in my own years in school, I've always paid close attention to the lessons whenever Parents' Day rolls around. Each lesson features a different topic related to moral education, of course presented in a totally secular fashion, designed to make kids think about issues and be kinder to others. In one lesson I sat in on, the teacher told a story about a boy who asked his mother for money whenever he did something around the house. He got a big shock when his mother presented him with an itemized bill for everything she did for him, from cooking and cleaning to making his bento lunch and kissing him goodnight -- which made him realize he'd been taking his mother for granted. One big topic the lessons cover is ijime, or bullying, which is an especially dire problem in Japan and one reason for a high rate of young suicides. Japan's society is fortunate because it has a large pool of "common sense" (in Japanese, joshiki, as in the line from the famous song Odoru Pompokorin, "Edison was a great man, oh, everyone knows that...") that all Japanese can draw from, and much of what is taught in morals class are things that everyone would agree with (and hopefully, always act on) such as, if you find a wallet full of money you should turn it in to the police department, or, always give you seat to an elderly person when riding on a crowded train.

I talked last time about one way I'd come up with to study English with my son, by seeing what vocabulary words we could plug into the Star Wars universe together. Really, being inventive and coming up with effective ways to study is something that students of any subject should strive to do. One good method I found while on my Japanese literature kick was "read while listening" -- reading Dazai Osamu's "Run, Melos!" while listening to the audio book was much easier than doing just one or the other. It can be difficult to memorize new vocabulary words, so give your brain a hand by coming up with mnemonic hooks, such as learning the word shinu (shee-nu, "to die") by memorizing the phrase "she knew he was going to die." Back when I was studying, I made heavy use of Nihongo Journal, a monthly Japanese study magazine that we're fortunate to be able to offer now, and I found that covering the English translations in the book with duct tape was a good way of keeping my eyes from wandering away from the section I was working on. I learned some interesting memory tricks too, such as memorizing JPOP songs which allowed me to recall words later by singing the song in my head, or staring at a page in my textbook until I could bring it up in my mind during tests.

It's hard to keep up with anime trends in Japan, since they're always in motion. The newest boom in otaku culture seems to be tsundere (ツンデレ, TSOON-deh-reh), a word that describes girls who are cranky and quick to anger (in Japanese, tsun-tsun) on the surface, yet loving and vulnerable when it suits them (known as dere-dere, pronounced deh-reh deh-reh). A staple in anime and PC dating-sim games, some famous tsundere characters include Asuka from Evangelion, Akane from Ranma 1/2, Sanae from The Sagara Family (who has a tendency to punch the main character violently at any provocation), and if you ponder it long enough, Princess Leia from Empire (go on, think about it for a while). Like cat girls, waitress uniforms and French Maid costumes, tsundere is closely tied to the Cult of Akihabara and moe (mo-EH) culture that has become such a big part of modern Japanese life. Now instead of passively watching your favorite rough-around- the-edges character in anime, you can experience her in the flesh at a new "Tsun-Cafe" which features beautiful waitresses who insult customers, acting frustrated when they take too long to order and yelling things like, "Here's your coffee. Drink it quickly and get out of here, will you?" But when it's time to leave, the girls look sad, and say, "Oniichan, I'm sorry I said those awful things to you. You will come again, right?" Here's the video:

Language learning and the "Han Solo Factor," example of silly English in product names, and more

As a student of a foreign language, I know that there's no "magic" way to learn, and even if you live in a country where the target language is spoken, you need to work hard in order to master it. My son is one of the only kids at his special English school who are haafu (half), and since he has a native English speaker for a father, some of his classmates assume that he magically absorbs English through my DNA. The truth is that we use what I call the Corellian Approach to Communication, after Han Solo's homeworld in Star Wars: I speak English to him (like Han) and he speaks Japanese back to me (like Chewbacca's growling). The problem is that I'm "defined" as a Japanese-speaking person in his mind, and it's very hard to change a linguistic relationship once it's established. He's been preparing to take level 2 of Japan's infamous "Eiken" test, since it's always nice to have something to shoot for when studying, but there's a problem: not only are the English words on the high school-level test quite difficult, he hasn't learned the kanji used in the textbooks yet. To keep him from getting frustrated, I came up with a game to fit the vocabulary words he was memorizing into the Star Wars movies, which he's quite familiar with. The word "compensate" is a hard word for an 11-year-old boy to learn, but when you can tie it to a scene with Boba Fett ("What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me." "The Empire will compensate you if he dies."), it becomes much easier.

Duck! Oh! That's! These are examples of some of the more bizarre English that we see daily in Japan, printed on the sides of trucks, plastered on jackets, painted carefully on automobiles. Since all Japanese study six years of English in school (or up to ten years if they take it it in college), most people have a basic working knowledge of English, even if they can't always communicate fluently. One aspect of the Japanese I learned pretty quickly upon coming here was that they don't think too deeply about the English used around them, and so it's not at all rare to find a person wearing a T-shirt that has meaningless English like "the situation is not favorable in for us against" or "Splush! is not only the problem of age" on it. In part because English has an air of mystery to the Japanese, a certain je ne sais quoi, it can be useful for companies trying to sell products. Some of the more interesting English product names I've come across include Oh, Hot! (spicy miso paste for ramen), Clean Up! (a line of kitchen appliances), Perky Bit (chicken nuggets), and Pocari Sweat (the venerable Japanese sports drink). Some products, such as cars, are always named in English or English-sounding words, like Corolla, Camry, Cephiro, Fairlady Z and Bongo Friendee. A car with a Japanese name would sound as strange to people here as Mitsubishi Thanks Chariot Super Saloon does to you and me.

J-List loves the genre known as PC dating-sim games, and we think they're a satisfying way to interface with Japan on a new level. We carry virtually every English-translated story-based "H" game available, and there are titles for every taste, no matter what characters, stories or themes you're interested in. This year has also seen the release of the first yaoi PC game, a great new genre for fans to try. We're happy to announce that our newest yaoi title, Absolute Obedience, has gone "golden master" and will be shipping soon. In this innovative new game, you play one of two roles, the dashing and refined Louise Hardwich or his rough partner Kia WelBehenna, playing a dozen unique game missions, each with multiple endings. With fantastic art and stories, we hope that all fans of "BL" games will support our efforts to grow this genre by getting the game. You can still preorder it and get free shipping when it ships!

Now that it's cooled off, we've started selling chocolate items again, such as Pocky, famous all around the world as an icon of Japan. The 2006 Fall Season includes some great new varieties, including today's Black Sesame Seed and Five Fruits Pocky and Decorer Pocky (short for "decoration cake") in Apple Cream Custard and Grape Mild Chocolate. We're happy to announce the return of another rare product for Japanese snack fans: Green Tea Kit Kat, the supremely delicious Nestle Kit Kat made with flavorful green tea from Uji, Japan (near Kyoto). Available in deluxe bags that are brimming with individual wrapped "two finger" packages, we've got limited stock of this delicious treat (less than 200), so we recommend that Kit Kat aficionados pick some up soon, before it all goes.

In other news: we've gotten the first batch of 2007 calendars in stock early, with several dozen large-format anime, JPOP, sexy idol and other unique calendars on the site and ready for immediate purchase. These calendars, which are made exclusively for the Japanese domestic market, are a great way to make your year a really special one -- they make great gifts, too. Newly in stock include Mihiro, Aoi Miyazaki, Shinkansen, Naruto, Totoro, Chisato Morishita, and many more. As we get the actual calendars in stock, we'll be adding photographs showing the internal pages, so you can see how nice the photos are. Browse our stock of calendars now!

Peter tastes local politics, the Joba horse-riding machine, and more info on blood types

Today I took a couple of hours off work to participate in local politics, heading down to sit in on a session of the Prefectural Assembly about my son's special English school. Although the lawmakers have voted to financially support the school, which teaches the standard Japanese curriculum but with all classes except for Japanese and social studies taught in English, there's an impasse due to opposition by the Prefectural Governor. At the most recent debate on the issue, a few dozen parents gathered to show their support for the school, and I brought a little "gaijin power" to the mix, since having an American in a group will get attention -- the local TV station was there and kept zooming in on me during the debate. It was my first time to see the law-making process in Japan up close, and although it was like watching C-Span dubbed in a foreign language without the ability to change the channel for 90 minutes, it was educational, too. I certainly learned that my prefecture has plenty of money in its budget for beautiful facilities for its legislators to work in, although the educational budget is stretched to the limit...

All companies must come up with fresh and interesting products to interest their customers. When National (as Panasonic is known inside Japan) announced their horse-riding exercise machine, there was a lot of snickering on the Internet. But the company has turned this wonky product idea into quite a profitable category, selling 120,000 of them so far. The Joba ("horse-riding") device, which looks like a scaled-down bucking bronco machine, simulates riding a horse and tones muscles as the user struggles to keep balance on top of the machine. We broke down and bought one of these last week, and have been putting it through its paces. It's nice and low-impact, and it's a fun way to pass thirty minutes. Supposedly they're selling it in the U.S. now, under the name "Core Trainer."

Anime fans know that a written profile of an anime character is likely to include their name, place of birth, interests, "three sizes," and usually, their blood type. The Japanese believe some interesting things about a person's blood type, mainly that there's a correlation between blood type and a person's personality. Supposedly, type A are straight-laced, serious about everything, very organized, and make good accountants; type B are "my pace" (e.g. they go at their own pace, live in their own world), quickly get bored with things that don't interest them, and speak their minds to a fault; type O are bold, hate to lose and have good leadership skills; and AB people are supposedly so smart they look strange to everyone else. This fascination with blood types is the subject of semi-regular TV specials, which investigate which blood types are most common among famous athletes, politicians, actors, business leaders and so on. In one experiment they separated kids by blood type and asked them to move water from one aquarium to another one, them filmed the results. The type A kids used small spoons to carefully move the water from one tank to the other, while the type B children tried to come up with a good way to move the water, but got bored and gave up in the middle. The type O kids lifted the first tank and poured the water into the second tank, not caring how much water they spilled on the floor in the process, and the type AB kids got smart and moved the two tanks around, so that it appeared that they'd moved the water when they hadn't actually done so. One possible explanation about why the Japanese are so concerned with blood type is, it adds a dash of individuality in a country that's otherwise very homogeneous, not unlike an American taking pride in the various countries that make up his ancestry. My son is a very organized, meticulous kid, and my wife had always assumed he was blood type A. We had him checked the other day, and darned if he isn't AB instead, which caused her blood type-influenced world view to come crashing down.

We've got two new wacky shirts up on the site for you. Starting off is the first-ever shirt by Dan Kim, the extremely talented artist of the Clone Army web comics, including Nana's Everyday Life, Penny Tribute and Kanami, as well as the new "H.H. - The H-Game Webcomic." The shirt features the deliciously bizarre (and gory) art from one of our favorite comics, Tomoyo42's Room, which parodies the relationship of Sakura and Tomoyo from Card Captor Sakura. It will be produced in 1-2 weeks, but we're posting it for preorder now. Then, everyone knows that the Japanese take their shoes off before entering a house, which helps separate the "uchi" (inside) from the "soto" (outside) and of course keeps your house clean. In some homes or businesses there are signs that specifically ask you to remove your shoes. It occurred to us that a wacky T-shirt incorporating these signs would be great for our customers, and hence our new "No Shoes Allowed" shirt was born, which sports a bizarre warning message that "It is forbidden to wear shoes indoors." Totally cool!

Broken stereotypes of the Japanese, Japan's love affair with "overseas dramas," and Autumn, season of healthy appetites

Stereotypes are really not good, since they cause us to make assumptions about people from other countries before we've gotten to know them. When I taught English as a Second Language, I used to do a lot of part-time work, going to people's homes to teach their kids once a week, and I was able to come into contact with a lot of people this way. One family I taught seemed to be a pretty average Japanese family on the surface: bustling mother overly concerned about her kids' education; bright daughter; younger son who loved Pokemon and "UFO Catcher" (crane game) machines; and a salaryman father who often worked late. The father surprised me one day by showing me pictures of his journey from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Siberian Railroad, which had been a lifelong dream of his, and I was immediately sorry I'd assumed he was such an average Joe who lives only for his company. The leader of my daughter's Girl Scout troop is another such person. At first glance, she's an average middle-aged Japanese woman, worrying over how to make her daughter study more and tending a small dairy farm. Turns out, she's also a published author of children's books, and quite well known in her field, which I never suspected, looking at her. I wonder if the Japanese I meet here have stereotyped ideas about what I'm like before they get to know me? They're only human, so I'm sure they do.

Japan continues its love affair with kaigai dorama, or "overseas dramas," with shows like Prison Break, Lost and of course '24' scoring big with viewers here. U.S. networks like Fox have built a very successful business for themselves, offering TV series in DVD rental stores for 300 yen per disc, then showing them on late-night television when the next season approaches to pick up more viewers. I'm bowled over with how innovative the American companies are at marketing these shows to viewers. For example, subscribers to the Japanese version of Newsweek got a free DVD loaded with the first episodes of several different series, and as a result my wife and I are now hooked on The Dead Zone. Even older series are popular right now, and NHK is broadcasting many classics in the wee hours of the morning. It's funny to see what shows are defined as a "drama" to the Japanese -- the list includes some old shows that were big here like Combat, "Mystery Zone" (The Twilight Zone) and The Fugitive, but also some shows that aren't very dramatic, like Bewitched and "Special Bastard Squad A-Team."

If you've found your appetite increasing of late, it might be what the Japanese call shoku-yoku no aki, meaning "Autumn, the season of healthy appetites," named for the natural tendency for people to get hungrier at this time of year. For those who fall into that category, J-List brings you hundreds of delicious treats direct from Japan, including both well-known snacks as well as items you never knew existed. We've a great announcement for hungry customers, too: the return of Pocky to our site! Every summer we are forced to remove chocolate products from our website due to the heat and humidity which turns our Pocky into so much Melty Kiss, but now that things are cooling off, we're happy to announce our the beginning of our Fall 2006 Pocky lineup! In addition to the original classic and Men's Pocky, we've added the deluxe new Cookie Crush and Almond Crush Pocky, which come in deluxe packages with a whopping 7 packs of Pocky (so you can eat them one at a time without the others going stale).

Politicial life after Koizumi, being at peace with taking your shoes off, and why Taro can't code

The post-Koizumi era will soon be on us, now that Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has officially been elected leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democrat Party. Although Mr. Abe's name might remind some of another famous politician, it's pronounced "AH-beh," not like the nickname of Mr. Lincoln. At 51, he'll be the youngest Prime Minister since the end of World War II, and he has promised to continue his predecessor's reform policies, which included making Japan's sprawling postal system more efficient and cutting those silly public works projects like bridges and roads that no one is using. One big issue he must wrestle with is a revision to the Japanese Constitution regarding the military, which exists in a kind of extra-Constituional no-man's land, as Article Nine specifically states that Japan will never have a standing military force. He'll also have to worry about how to stimulate the economy even as Japan's population dips, with a national debt that stands at 170% of its GDP. I'm personally hoping he'll work to find a lasting resolution to the ongoing Yasukuni Shrine problem, which honors the nation's war dead (good) but also the men who were most responsible for starting the war (bad). Following the popular Prime Minister Koizumi -- a hip unmarried politician who liked rock n' roll and who looked like George Washington -- will be a hard act to follow, but we wish him all the best.

Japan is ahead of the U.S. in some important areas, like tiny electronics, animation, cute character toys and fuel efficient cars, but they lag behind in the equally important areas of micro-brewed beers and availability of breakfast cereals and Mexican food. Unfortunately Japan seems hopelessly behind the U.S. and Europe when it comes to advanced technical knowledge of computers, including programming languages, Unix, and the like. The average Japanese just doesn't seem that interested in exploring the inner working of their PC, and as people come to think of email as "something you do on your phone" rather than "something you do on a computer," the trend seems to be continuing. The other day my wife mentioned to me that she'd taken quite a few computer courses at her high school, a "commercial" school that aimed to teach real-world skills over academic subjects needed for university entrance exams. It turned out that she'd been learning material that was a generation or more behind what I knew in the same era (1986), learning COBOL and LISP, making flow charts, and learning to touch-type on a now-archaic kana-layout keyboard. She even had to use a stack of punch cards to save her programs, which I vaguely remember from my days as a boy playing Original Adventure at my mother's office on Saturdays. A big part of the problem seems to have been the incredibly closed nature of Japan's computer industry, which saw several Japan-only platforms like NEC's PC98 which seemed to be designed to shut out third party software developers, as well as the popularity of stand-alone "wa-pro" word processing machines that used proprietary software in ROM. (Apologies to anyone who is going to flame me saying that COBOL and LISP are still taught and/or used somewhere in the world today...)

One rule about living in Japan: be at peace with taking your shoes off several times a day. Since shoes are considered "dirty" (on the same level as livestock), they're left in the genkan, a lowered section near the front door built into every home and many businesses (including J-List). Japanese know that Americans leave their shoes on inside the house from watching American television, and it looks very funny to them. While watching Shrek with my kids, they commented on the fact that Princess Fiona was in bed with her shoes on, something unthinkable in Japan. Inside the house, Japanese usually wear slippers, and if a gaijin goes to a Japanese person's house, the Japanese person will give him slippers to wear, even if they're much too small for his feet (they always are). Although we try to "live like Americans" when we go to the U.S., most of my Japanese family (including myself) quietly leave our shoes near the front door when back home -- it just feels to odd to walk on carpet with shoes.

J-List sells dozens of anime, manga, JPOP, fashion and "H" magazines from Japan via our "reserve subscription" service, which allows you to get the most recent issues sent to you automatically as they appear on newsstands here. It's a revolving service, so you pay for each issue as they come in, never needing to pay in advance, and you can switch subscriptions or cancel at any time. We have a new mag for everyone today, Myojo, great for fans of "bishonen" or really beautiful guys, like the actors and "talents" affiliated with the Johnny's Entertainment talent agency (you know the type). Each issues is filled with pictures and information on the hottest male heart-throbs in Japan as well as hip hair and fashion culture for guys and girls.

J-List has always pioneered cool stuff from Japan, like OH! Mikey, the parody of Americans living in Tokyo that's acted out by outrageous mannequins. Today we've got a treat on the site for you: Vermilion Pleasure Night, the wholly wacky late-night TV series that spawned OH! Mikey and which features many other wacky SNL-like skits for you. Translated into English through subtitles or dubbed tracks (depending on the skit), this is a great way to enjoy some of the most talented and avante-garde short films made in Japan in years.

Typhoons and destruction in Japan, Respect for the Aged Day, and a death sentence for Japan's scariest cult leader

Typhoon season has arrived in Japan, with Typhoon No. 13 (named "Shanshan" by the American weather service, although no one uses storm names here) washing away homes, roads and power lines in Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu. Sadly, nine lives have been claimed from such accidents as a train that was derailed by 144 kph winds which killed three passengers, a ferry boat that overturned killing a crew member, and one person whose car was washed away by a storm-engorged river. Typhoon season is always a trying time in Japan, and last year was especially bad, with extensive damage done to many parts of the country, including the 1500-year-old shrine at Miyajima. Incidentally, typhoon is the official term for a high-wind cyclone in the Northwest Pacific; in the Atlantic they're called hurricanes. Between typhoons, volcanoes and earthquakes, living in Japan is seldom boring.

Today is a holiday in Japan, Respect for the Aged Day, which has been a time to show respect for the older members of society and thank them for their years of hard work since it was officially enacted in 1966. It's also a time to take stock of how the face of Japan's population is changing. According to a report recently released by the Japanese government, 20.7% of Japan are now aged 65 or older, compared with just 12% in the U.S. The number of centenarians in Japan is way up too, reaching a whopping 28,395 -- wow. Everywhere you look in Japan, you see signs that older Japanese are becoming a larger part of society, whether it's the toy store near our house that went out of business to be replaced by a store that sells Buddhist altars and gravestones, or television commercials for products like Depends or hair coverings for women. While the number of elderly Japanese living in nursing homes and similar facilities is increasing, it's still much more common for them to live at home with their oldest son or daughter, who by tradition remain at home and take over the land and family business, if applicable. (We live with my wife's parents in a situation similar to this, since she's their only daughter.) One of the trends in Japan today is "reforming" (remodeling) your home to make it "barrier-free," so that elderly parents can get around the house safely.

The death penalty for Shoko Asahara, former leader of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, has been upheld by a court in Japan, paving the way for his sentence to be carried out sometime in the future. One of the most terrifying groups in recent Japanese history, the "Supreme Truth" cult is a mishmash of Buddhist and Hindu imagery centered around the charismatic (?) leader. The crimes committed by the group are many, including the brutal murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his wife and baby son for trying to bring attention to the misdeeds of the group. Their activities culminated in a Tokyo subway attack using sarin nerve gas which left 12 people dead and 54 seriously injured (including many who will never wake up from comas). The group fancied itself the "true" government of Japan, and doled out lofty titles to their members like Head of Ministry of Science and Technology or Secretary of State, and the sarin gas attack was an attempt at knocking the current government out of power so they could take over, bringing on the Rapture, or some such nonsense. I think the whole situation showed how ineffective Japan's government and police system can be when they put their minds to it. The Aum group had motive in the murders of Mr. Sakamoto and his family, yet they were not properly investigated at the time; instead the police spent years accusing Yoshiyuki Kono, who happened to live next to an Aum compound where sarin was released and whose wife is still in a sarin-induced coma because of the attack. They suspected him because he happened to have photographic chemicals in his home, and didn't investigate other possibilities.

J-List continues our spin up for Halloween, offering unique costumes and other products that are popular in Japan -- great for anyone looking for something special to wear this October 31st. Today on the site we've added a Sumo mawashi (the special belt that sumo wrestlers wear), a cool rubber wig that makes you look like a samurai, and something really esoteric, a wig and glasses set that will make you look like Yon-Sama, aka Bae Yong Joon, the South Korean hunk who starred in the drama Winter Sonata. A great costume if you have any Korean or Japanese friends!

Thuoghts on "car culture" in Japan, the basics of how kanji work, and autumn = school sports day

Although Japan is a lot smaller than the U.S. -- it's about the same land area as Nebraska, but spread over an area larger than California -- cars are just as important to most people, especially outside of larger cities with their convenient trains. Roads in Japan are understandably more narrow than in countries with more space, and one aspect of driving here I still can't get used to is looking in the large mirrors positioned at blind intersections to see if cars are coming -- I usually just inch my car out to see oncoming traffic instead. While there are some small cars on the roads here, including a class of 1000 cc-and-smaller engine vehicles called "K" cars ("kei" is one pronounciation for the kanji for "lightweight"), there are plenty of big vehicles, too, such as the giant Toyota Land Rover, the Ford Expedition even a huge Cadillac Escalade I saw the other day. Although there is a network of freeways in Japan which are extremely clean and well-engineered, the fact that there's seldom one going where you want to go means that driving in Japan usually involves lots of surface streets and stoplights. Freeways aren't "free" either -- it costs me around $6 to go to the next city over, or $25 if I take the freeway all the way into Tokyo.

I've always been fascinated with kanji, the Chinese characters that Japan adopted around the 6th century. Essentially a pictographic writing system that was layered over the existing Japanese language, which had no written form up to that time, there are generally two pronunciations for any given character: the original Japanese word (for a word like water, mizu, 水), and the Chinese reading (sui). The basic rule is, a kanji all by itself (water) will be read using the Japanese reading, while compound words that happen to use the character as part of it (seawater, watercolor paint, hydrogen、海水、水彩, 水素 respectively) get read using the Chinese reading. Although I can't speak Chinese or Koran worth a damn, some of the more complex words in Japanese, like "cell phone" "air current" or "a delicate love triangle" (don't ask me why I know this, but it's quite well known here, 微妙な三角関係, bimyo na sankaku kankei) come out sounding the same, not unlike the way that many English vocabulary words are shared with French.

Autumn is upon us in Japan, and that means one thing: School Sports Day, a special event held at all elementary schools where kids run relays, do tug-of war, have egg toss competitions, perform dances or brass band numbers that they've been practicing for months, and so on. Tomorrow is our turn to "oo" and "ah" as our kids celebrate youth and sports at their school sports day, and we've got everything ready, from folding chairs to cameras to bento. In accordance with Article 17 of the Japanese Constitution, I've purchased a new video camera so we can record these special memories for posterity (our old one conveniently broke on us).

Our new embroidered Japanese hats are proving to be quite a hit with J-List customers, and we think they're a great way to add something unique to your personal fashion space. Today we've got two killer new hats for you, baseball cap versions of our "Cheshire Totoro" parody anime T-shirts which come in grey or blue. These very-soft Vintage Chino Twill Cap by Alternative Apparel are the best hats you can buy, with brass clasps for stylish size adjustment to fit any head (even mine). The new Totoro caps look great -- check out both colors on the site!

We've posted the rest of the 2007 calendars today, and there are now more outstanding large-format calendars from Japan for you than ever. All these preorder calendars are printed on the most beautiful paper you can imagine, and will become a special part of any room they hang in. We now have over 250 only-available-from-Japan calendars available for preorder, from beautiful images of Japan to rare JPOP to the hottest anime and more. Browse our 2007 calendar lineup now!

Just a reminder about email: it isn't what it used to be, and J-List often has problems with our emails getting through to customers, and vice-versa. We've noticed that Yahoo and Hotmail are two of the mail services most likely to delete mails from J-List without reason, with AOL coming in a close third. We recommend Google's Gmail service much more, and use it ourselves quite a lot (in fact we're updating the J-List contact form to use these email addresses). If you'd like to make the switch to Gmail but need someone to send you an "invite" email, just give us a shout and we'll get one to you right away. If you ever have problems getting a speedy email reply from us, please make sure you use the contact form on the site, which allows you to immediately reach all J-List employees.

A new social problem for Japanese, famous English phrases including "Boys, Be Ambitious," and the Japanese obsession with design

Among the many problems modern Japan faces is katsuji-banare (ka-TSU-jee bah-NAH-ray), or a growing detachment from printed characters. Japan publishes more books and magazines than any other country -- a whopping six billion individual books and magazines in one recent year. But at least 40% of that figure is represented by manga, Japan's world-famous comics, and as the percentage of visual manga increases, people are getting worried that Japan is moving away from its traditional writing system and culture. In our neighbood we have a bookstore called Family Book, and there are rows and rows of manga of all kinds there, taking up about the same floor space as novels and non-fiction books. How will this store look a decade from now, I wonder? Computers exacerbate the problem of moving away from the printed word, of course, since you essentially don't need writing skills to create a message -- just type your sentence into your computer and hit the space bar until the kanji you want pops up automatically. It makes for lazy brains, unfortunately.

Words become famous for various reasons. In English, a lot of well-known words and phrases come from Shakespere, and every time you say "there is method to my madness" or "that's greek to me," you're actually quoting the Bard. Japanese lock on to certain English phrases, too, often as a by-product of the six years of English language that most take in school. Some of the most well-known English phrases are those used in the classroom, like "this is a pen" or "How are you? Fine, thank you, and you?" or famous speeches from history (I have a dream, four score and seven years ago, that sort of thing). Many Japanese learn English through music, and J-List's Tomo was very familiar with lyrics from Beatles and Led Zeppelin songs at an early age. Every few years some TV commercial will use an English phrase that will imprint itself on the Japanese mind a little, like the Kanebo commercials that use "for beautiful human life" as a slogan. During the war, Japanese kids would go up to GI's and say "Give me chocolate!" and the Japanese staff reports that this is still a well-known phrase by their generation, sixty years later. One of my favorite English expressions is "Boys, Be Ambitious," spoken by Professor Clark, an American educator who taught at what would become Sapporo University around 1877. The words were for his students, eager to begin the work of modernizing Japan's government and other institutions in the Meiji Era, but they could be used to inspire just about anyone who needs a reason to aim for a higher goal. One of my favorite manga series is Boy's Be..., a collection of boy-meets-girl stories told from the point of view of boys trying to find true love. I once took a 14 hour train ride with nothing but Boys Be manga to entertain myself -- it was pretty cool, since the stories are so interesting. (Small plug, we have the Boys Be anime in stock now if you want to give it a spin.)

One thing I've always liked about Japan was the obsession with good design here. With a few rare exceptions -- schools and other public facilities are still often built in the Late Contemporary Chernobyl style -- most products here, from cell phones to cars to umbrellas to fax machines called "Fappy, the Fax that Makes you Happy," exhibit a strong sense of design. Japanese designers always strive to create products that will be judged kakko ii by consumers, which literally means "good style" and can be translated as cool, stylish or good-looking. (The opposite word is kakko warui, meaning dorky, ugly, uncool.) This approach to design even extends to something as simple as notebooks and stationery, as in the "64 degrees Fahrenheit" notebooks we've just posted to the site, which combine excellent design, beautiful quality paper and somewhat meaningless English (gotta love that).

Want to plug into some cool music from Japan? J-List sells Apple's iTunes Japan Music Cards, which happen to be the only way to buy songs from the iTunes Store in Japan unless you have a credit card with a billing address here (and even I don't have one of those). The Japan iTunes Store is chock full of great J-POP and other music, with songs priced at only 150 or 200 yen per track. The cards come in 2500, 5000 and 10,000 yen varieties, can be used with the iTunes you've already got installed on your Mac or PC, and music purchased is compatible with all iPods, including the new ones Apple just announced.

For fans of our 2007 calendars, it may surprise you that we have ... more calendars! Our staff has been hard at work releasing the rest of the fantastic large-format calendars that are printed exclusively for the Japanese market. Today we've posted some great new items for preorder, including popular anime calendars (Rozen Maiden, the new Kanon anime, Aria The Natural), oh-so-cute idols (Sayaka Ando, Kana Tsugihara, Momoko Komachi), fun calendars for kids, and even some sizzling calendars that will keep you warm this winter. Why not browse our extensive selection of 2007 calendar preorder items right now?

More ways we foreigners can save Japan, all about "Nihonjinron" and superstitions about death

Last time I put forth the idea that perhaps one solution to Japan's birth rate woes might lie in international marriage, that encouraging Japanese of both genders to consider marrying people from other countries might add something to Japan's somewhat homogeneous society and reverse the population decline. Gaijin males do have a reputation for being a lot more romantic than their Japanese counterparts, and a certain segment of female society seems to yearn for these qualities in a partner, sometimes desperately. Back when I was teaching ESL, it was my job to work with graduating high school students who were going off to study in the U.S. One of my female students had a hilarious book on how to avoid being mislead by blue-eyed, smooth-talking Americans who were likely to compliment a girl on how pretty she was (which is never done here), causing her to melt into his potentially less-than-virtuous arms like so much butter. Just as gaijin-husband Japanese-wife couples are known for being more "love-love," meaning more romantic, I'm pretty sure that couples with Japanese husbands and foreign wives tend to have the same altered dynamic. There's a weekly show on called My Wife is a Foreigner, which follows the lives of married couples in which the wife is from outside Japan. (Like many aspects of contemporary Japanese life, the show is heavily influenced by the American sitcom classic Bewitched, go figure.) In one episode, a Japanese man had married a Ukrainian woman, and the show explored how they raised their kids with both languages, how their meals differed from the average Japanese family's, and how the couple got along with each other when the kids were in bed and the wine was chilled.

One concept you eventually bump into when studying about Japan is "Nihonjinron" (nee-HONE-JEEN-rone), a word which literally means "theories on Japan." A collection of ideas that grew out of Japan's postwar period, the Nihonjinron concepts generally have to do with describing Japan as a unique country, totally unlike the nations of Asia or the West, with a linguistic and developmental history unlike that of any other nation. Part of this is the belief, held by almost all Japanese, that their language is one of the most difficult in the world, with its mixture of Japanese words and grammar overlaid by Chinese characters with readings that shift by context and region, with a heavy borrowing of foreign loan words for good measure. Another part of the reason Japanese is so hard, supposedly, is that it is so subtle, with so many shades of grey and information that's implied rather than being specifically stated. Although some of the ideas seem like they could possibly be valid, there's a high amount of voodoo in most Nihonjinron thinking, and overall it seems to be nothing more than coming up with ways to feel good about your own country, since everyone feels that their country is special.

Depending on how you look at things, the Japanese can appear quite superstitious. Certainly, there are many superstitions here that seem odd to foreigners, such as, don't cut your fingernails at night or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, don't whistle at night or snakes will come and get you, don't give gifts in sets of four since four means "death" in Japanese, and so on. Many of these beliefs come from Japan's death-oriented Buddhism -- it's bad luck to sleep with your head to the north (kita makura), as dead people about to be cremated are laid with their heads to the north. Similar to this, there's a complex system of lucky and unlucky days according to a Buddhist calendar, with six different days that cycle throughout the month. It's good luck to get married or start construction on your home on the luckiest day (Taian), but if you were to get married on the unlucky day (Butsumetsu, the Dying Day of Buddha), you'd probably end up divorced and unhappy. Virtually all Japanese want to get married on Taian, and wedding halls are packed to the gills on these lucky days. When buying a car, it's also customary to take delivery of it on one of these lucky days, to avoid traffic accidents.

We love to bring you rare products from Japan, and today we've got some great items for fans of Nintendo's DS, which is incredibly popular all around the world. In addition to our recently posted DS pencil case, we've added pencils in DS colors, multicolored little DS erasers that open up, and a pad of paper that imitates the shape of a DS. A cool line of unique products only available from Japan!

Hot on the tail of the 75+ anime, JPOP, sexy idol and other 2007 calendars posted on Friday, we've got...a whole bunch more! We've got dozens of new anime calendars (Gintama, Gundam, Kiki's Delivery Service, the new Ghibli movie Tales of Earthsea, Fate/Stay Night), great new cute idol calendars (Mayuko Iwasa, Mayumi Ono, and more), JPOP calendars (Maki Gotoh and other Morning Musume members, and more), some old standbys (Audrey Hepburn, Hibari Misora), and some very steamy calendars (Yinling of Joytoy, and many more). Our large-format glossy Japanese calendars are a fantastic way to spend a year with your favorite images of Japan. Why not browse our 2007 calendar pages now?

Seeing Japan through iced coffee goggles, relieving stress through coloring books, and how we gaijin can save Japan from its falling birthrate!

Whenever my wife and I try a new restaurant we order aisu kohi, which we use to judge the dedication of the staff and owner to the customers. Are they using bottled iced coffee, or brewing it themselves every morning? What quality of beans are they using? As true aficionados, we've been doing this for a while, and we've mapped most of the eating establishments in our city based on the quality of their iced coffee. The other day we went to Silk Road, a local pasta restaurant which scores a strong 8.4 on our iced coffee chart. It has something else to recommend it, too: extremely gorgeous waitresses, with bright eyes and beautiful faces and stunning Morning Musume-esqe smiles. My wife turned to me and said, "The owner of this restaurant must be a real face-eater." She wasn't making an obscure Dr. Who reference -- the word menkui (men-KOO-ee、面食い), literally meaning face-eater, refers to someone who loves extremely attractive members of the opposite gender. There are quite a few of these interesting words or idioms in Japan that might confuse you, even if you knew what the words themselves meant. A person who talks too much and can't keep a secret has a "light mouth" (kuchi ga karui), while someone with a "wide face" (kao ga hiroi) is well-known in the community. If you're "good head" (atama ga ii) it just means you're smart, and a person who is somewhat uninspiring romantically, more or less lying there like a piece of maguro (tuna) sushi is called, well, maguro.

Japan is facing a serious population problem, with its birthrate of just 1.25 children per woman culminating in the first shrinkage of the national population last year. The reasons so few babies are being born are many. Part of the problem is over-urbanization and concrete sprawl -- if you lived in one of the massive "rabbit hutch" apartment buildings in Tokyo that strongly resemble Borg Cubes, you wouldn't want to have eight kids either. Changing social patterns is another part of the equation, as women become empowered and learn to say no to marriages in which communication with their husbands involves little more than meshi! furo! neru! (dinner! bath! sleep!). The other day I was bouncing around some blogs written by foreigners living in Japan, and I noticed something: a high number of them were written by proud gaijin men or women who had found a Japanese spouse and were beaming with joy over their newborn children. A high number of these couples seemed to have two or three kids, too, which is more than the average Japanese couple (usually just one). Maybe, I thought, the answer to Japan's quandary is for Japanese to embrace kokusai kekkon, or international marriage, promoting marriage between Japanese and people from other countries. Maybe the addition of "ingredient X" that people not born in Japan would bring to relationships would stimulate a "renaissance of love" of some kind in Japanese society. Foreigners like you and me might just hold the key to saving Japan! J-List is doing our part to bring Japanese and gaijin around the world together, of course, with our "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend/Boyfriend" and "Kiss Me I'm Gaijin" T-shirts, and our newest "eye chart" shirt that might just serve as a conversation starter for that someone special.

Japan is the land of the boom, as they say, and you never know what will end up being popular. Japan can be a stressful place, and this year people have hit on a unique way to relieve that stress: coloring in coloring books! A whole line of popular books which let you recreate famous works of art with a variety of materials -- from crayons to professional colored pencils to paints -- while developing your own style and relaxing at the same time. We've got some of these on the site now, so if you're looking for a unique way to remove your daily stress, a high quality coloring book that lets you recreate the world's best art might be just the ticket!

The new 2007 calendars are here! Every year J-List carries hundreds of Japanese anime, JPOP/JROCK, gorgeous idol and other calendars from Japan, and we're happy to announce the the main volley of our calendars have arrived and are posted to the site. These extra-large glossy calendars are the most beautiful you will ever see, printed on thick poster-size paper stock that will look great all year and beyond. These are preorder calendars: make your order and we'll hold it until the items you ordered come in, which should be in October or November. We've got about 75 new calendars posted for preorder now, with many outstanding calendars for 2007, including the Studio Ghibli calendar (with all new art); calendars by virtually every gorgeous Japanese model you could name, from Yuko Ogura to Aki Hoshino to Yua Aida; fantastic calendars for popular anime like Bleach, Naruto, and Full Metal Alchemist; the most popular male stars in Japan like Gackt; and much more. This year the coveted "CL1" top spot goes to the gorgeous Kumi Koda, the stylish JPOP star who has had a fabulous year, and we've got her dynamite calendar, too. Because these calendars aren't sold outside of the domestic market, they're a really special way to bring a piece of Japan home with you all throughout 2007.

Remember that J-List has the most excellent selection of Domo-kun products from Japan you can ever find. Domo-kun is the official mascot of NHK, Japan's public broadcasting network, and he's become a cult favorite all around the world. Many of the items we have are of limited availability and will never be available again. Do you like the cute Domo-kun plush toys wearing samurai costume? Perhaps some of the cool Domo-kun straps that go on your phone, camera or keys look pretty cool? How about our really, really bg Domo-kun plush toys? All are among the Domo products that are nearly out of stock, and once they're gone, they'll be gone forever. Why not browse our Domo-kun product pages today?

More pictures from while we were in the U.S. My son and I got homesick for some sushi, so we headed to the Korean sushi restaurant. (There 's, um, a lot of Korean culture growing in San Diego.)

So far so good. The sushi guide looks the same.

Of course, you would never get kimchee with your sushi in Japan. Trust me on this one.

But ah, nothing goes so good with sushi as Asahi beer.... All in all the meal was good, if about 2x more expensive than in Japan. Turns out the lady was even Japanese, not Korean, but she had been so sure this gaijin buying sushi couldn't possibly speak Japanese, that we spoke only English until it was time to pay the bill. Silly.

A happy day in Japan, forgetting which kind of English you speak, and feeling "natsukashii" with my old Japanese textbook

It's a boy! All Japan is currently cheering the news that Princess Kiko has given birth to a boy. The new royal son -- the first male heir to be born in four decades -- is third in line to succeed the current Emperor, Akihito, known in Japan as the Heisei Emperor, since that's the name of the current era. The birth of a male heir ends the long controversy over whether Naruhito's daughter Aiko would be allowed to fill the role as Empress. Japan has had eight females in that position in its long history, but none since the Meiji Restoration, in which Japan "restored" the role of the Emperor after 1300 years of being little more than a political figurehead. The new birth takes the pressure off poor Masako-sama, wife of the Crown Prince, who had fallen into depression over pressure from the Imperial Household Agency to get pregnant with a male heir.

I've got a Yankee friend who lives in Tokyo, and the other day he asked an odd question. "I forget, do Americans stand in a line, or in a queue?" Forgetting your own dialect of English might sound like a strange thing to have happen, but in a place like Japan where foreigners of all nationalities are grouped together into one big gaijin melting pot, little things like vocabulary and grammar can seem pretty unimportant. It's quite common for gaijin to hang out with foreigners from other parts of the world, and I've been known to throw back a beer or two with friends from other countries -- it's fun to debate American politics with Canadians or Australians or Brits, since they're emotionally divorced from the day-to-day political issues in the U.S. One word I accidentally picked up was "uni" (you-NEE), slang from down under that means university, but none of my friends back home knew what I was talking about when I used it. Part of the issue is the lack of native speakers around -- it's incredible how your own language changes when the social group around you changes. I suspect this phenomenon is not unrelated to how a person's written grammar and punctuation goes to hell from hanging out in Internet chatrooms too long.

Recently, I went on eBay and found a copy of my very first Japanese textbook, Foundations of Japanese Language by Soga. Reading through this old book, which has been surpassed by much better works nowadays, left me totally natsukashii (NATS-ka-SHEE, translatable as "so nostalgic I look like one of those manga characters with a tear rolling out of my eye"). Looking back, I realize I went through several stages as I struggled to learn this wonderful, difficult language. First, I worked to master hiragana, the syllable-based writing system that looked like so many snakes squirming there on the page (snakes! on a page!). I went through a phase where I reduced sentences into mathematical equations, which allowed me to swap out elements to say what I wanted to say, and after that, a period of growing my vocabulary by reading manga and transcribing song lyrics for karaoke. After coming to Japan, I buckled down for more serious study, including the subtle art of keigo, the special subset of language used in polite situations. Invited to a Japanese friend's house, I dediced to try my polite language with my host, but I messed it up so bad that he didn't even understand what I said. I'd taken my shot and messed it up terribly, although I certainly learned from the experience. (Aside: I once saw a news conference where this happened to a foreign correspondent who had asked the Emperor a question...Akihito didn't understand what he was asking, and I felt so bad for that poor reporter.)

In Japanese, the word nampa means to flirt with members of the opposite sex and try to take them home (apologies to our customers in Nampa, Idaho). Our newest wacky Japanese T-shirt aims to help break the ice between you and potential Japanese females by displaying a standard "eye chart" (as soon at doctor's offices everywhere in Japan) that's specially designed to help your nampa skills. The text on the eye chart essentially says "Hey, how are you doing? You look pretty good. Are you doing anything right now? If not, let's go have some coffee together..." Since potential Japanese girls have to get up close and personal to read the small text, it's an interesting secret weapon that can break down the barriers between you. This might lead to a beautiful relationship! Printed with high quality silkscreening for long life, on an 6.1 lb 100% cotton shirt (orange). Sizes S-XL are available.

Remember that J-List is your source for getting Japan's best anime, manga, JPOP/JROCK, gothic fashion and other magazine, direct from Japan through our "reserve subscription" system. All magazines are chosen for high numbers of pictures and other visual elements, so even if you don't read the language, there's plenty of great information in each issue, with lots of cool color pictures and other stuff. In case you ever wondered, the top-selling magazines (based on current subscribers) are, Megami Magazine (great bishoujo girls and loads of posters); Goth-Loli Bible (the voice of gothic cosplay culture in the world); FRUiTs (Tokyo street fashion); Hiragana Times (with articles in both English and Japanese); Newtype Japan; Kera (gothic and "punk" fashion), SHOXX (J-Rock in the extreme); Cosmode (anime cosplay); Nihongo Journal (for learning Japanese); and Comic AG (our best-selling "H" manga). You never need to pay in advance and you can cancel your revolving subscription at any time. By the way, if there's a magazine you'd love for us to carry, please suggest it to us!

Time for more pictures from our trip along Historic Route 66. Hope the pictures are intereting.

My updates during the trip were brought to you by KOA, which is Kampgrounds of America (clever spelling), which usually had Internet access for us.

Ever wondered what people in Nevada do when it's hot? They find a river and pretend it's a beach.

Complete with boats and a jet-ski!

We discovered another important past-time during our trip, too.

Japan's most famous businessmen, when not to laugh at your students, and all about our prefecture

Japan's fascination with businessman Takafumi Horie (whose nickname is "Horiemon" because someone thought he looks like the character Doraemon) continues today, as the famous founder of Yahoo-wannabe Livedoor -- and the company that publishes the Japanese version of Eudora, if you want a bit of trivia -- enters his "not guilty" plea in court. He's accused of violating a slew of stock-manipulation laws, including "announcing" mergers for companies he'd already secretly purchased the stock for then profiting when the shares went up. Perhaps Japan's most recognizable businessman until his arrest in January, he was in the headlines daily. He never wore suits, preferring dark T-shirts, even when meeting with very high-ranking businessmen, and had the audacity to acquire other companies through hostile takeovers, something that just isn't done in "harmonious" Japan.

All things considered, laughter only belongs in a foreign language classroom if it builds confidence or friendship among students, and if you're an ESL teacher, it's probably best not to throw your head back and laugh openly when your students make an error. That being said, there have been times during my career as a teacher when it was very difficult not to keep the giggles away. One older student was describing a scene about skyscrapers in New York, but she kept saying "skycrapper" instead, which had me twisting this way and that as I tried to avoid laughing while I imagined some kind of divine lavatory in the sky. Another time a student told me how he fixed his car radio over the weekend, only he didn't say "fixed," but another word entirely which starts with the same letter, and I struggled to keep from laughing out loud at this. We were talking about careers once, and one student who planned to take the test to enter the National Postal Service told me his dream was to become a "post officer," which struck me as amusing, even though it's a logical mistake when you stop and think about it. I feel bad about these lapses, although I know that I've given as good as I got, providing my Japanese hosts with many hours of amusement thanks to my own language slip-ups over the years, like the time I tried to order some mango juice, and, er, nevermind, it's a long story.

J-List is based in Gunma Prefecture, a crane-shaped piece of land that's located right in the center of Japan -- the heso (belly button) of the country, as the Japanese like to say. Situated right on the edge of the Kanto Plain, where Tokyo and Yokohama are, the primary cities in Gunma are Maebashi (the Prefectural capital, once famous for its silk industry); Takasaki (a vibrant commercial city, although because it was never bombed during World War II, the roads are noticeably narrower than in other cities); Ota (home of the Subaru corporation, and the old Nakajima Air Works, where Japanese Zeros were built); and our own Isesaki. Virtually all the cities in Gunma are former castle towns, and almost without exception, the City Offices are built on the grounds of the former castle ruins, which fills some kind of continuity with the past that I as an American can't quite fathom. Like all corners of Japan, Gunma is famous for many things, including konnyaku (a gelatinous food made from potatoes that's so firm that several elderly people a year choke on it and die), karakaze (the biting wind that blows over the mountains in the winter) and kakaa-denka, extremely strong-willed women (like my wife). If you want to buy some land in a place like Tokyo or Nagoya you need to work really hard to achieve your goal, but in Gunma there's plenty of land for the population of 2 million. Thus, people in Gunma are famous for having a poor work ethic, and being somewhat lazy.

J-List's wacky Japanese hats are off to a great start, with many customers picking up our fun embroidered hats that feature slogans like "I'm looking for a Japanese girlfriend" or our parody Otaku logo. Our hats are extremely well made, using Vintage Chino Twill Caps Alternative Apparel, and they're fully size adjustable (one size fits all, guys or girls). We're posting our newest original hat offering today, based on our best-selling "Ecchi" parody of the Ecko logo, which features two rhinoceroses engaged in some interesting social activities. Check out our newest wacky Japanese hat today!

We've got another new product category for you too: posters featuring the amazing artwork of Dan Kim, creator of the Clone Army manga series (and the creator of the JAST USA H-game webcomic, H.H.). These limited edition posters are 11x17 in size and would look great on any wall. Browse our new poster selection now!

This month's "Game of the Month" is Private Nurse, a great 2-CD release from G-Collections in which you play Hiroki. You've been sick all your life, but one day your mother tells you that she's hired a private nurse to take care of you. The next thing you know, you've got your very own private nurse, Maria, who is totally dedicated to curing you. Maria is going to be much more than a nurse to you: she'll be your teacher, too. But what about Ayano-chan, who you've known since childhood, and who is secretly in love with you? A fabulous game of love and "H" and healing from G-Collections. Special pricing this month!

The hierarchy of language in Japan, trouble for "unhurried education" and, is my wife a Desperate Housewife?

Hello again from Japan, where, when two people say the same thing at the same time, they're then supposed to shout "Happy ice cream!"

There's no doubt about it: Japan has had a fascination with the West ever since the appearance of Admiral Perry's "Black Ships" in 1852, and that enigma continues to be a part of the Japanese psyche to this day. But while Japan has often had a uniquely close relationship with the United States, either through trade or as a result of the Occupation, the continent of Europe seems to carry a bit more mystique. You can see this at work when you take a look at the world of Japanese tarento or "talents," a catch-all word for actors, comedians and other famous TV-types. While television personalities like Hikaru Utada or Yu Hayami who can speak English fluently get a lot of "wow points" with fans, there seems to be a hierarchy at work, with Japanese bilingual in languages other than English getting more respect. When actress Kumiko Goto married French F1 racer Jean Alesi, people expected her career to fade, but she's more popular than ever, appearing occasionally in commercials or variety shows speaking French (oo la la). Recently retired soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata was known for wowing fans by appearing on Italian TV and speaking the language fluently, which immediately put him at the top of the worldwide pantheon of Japanese athletes. Sometimes linguistic bridges of understanding are built closer to home, as when Tsuyoshi Kusanagi of the long-running SMAP comedy/ singing group learned Korean and built a comedy career for himself on the other side of the Sea of Japan.

American television studios have found a great market for their products in Japan, with hit shows like 24, Prison Break and CSI: Miami scoring big with viewers, who watch them on pay satellite channels or NHK, or rent them one disc at a time at the local rental shop. My wife seems to be leading the charge, watching virtually every show that's released here, coming back from the rental shop with 5-6 discs every time I turn around. Sometimes I watch along with her, giving silent thanks for the Japanese subtitles on the screen, which keep me from having to try to explain difficult words to her in Japanese. The shows are popular, but just as with fans around the world watching animation from Japan, there are cultural issues raised. For example, in my wife's current favorite, Desperate Housewives, the subject of marriage councilors come up quite a bit, but Japan is a country where the concept of telling your problems to a therapist is an alien one, and I'm sure there's more than a little viewer confusion at times.

For the past few years, Japan has been engaged in an experiment to take some of the pressure out of its famed educational system, switching to what is called yutori kyoiku or "unhurried education." The idea has been to ratchet back Japan's achievement-focused educational system and provide a broader, less stressed experience for children. Some of the reforms are being rolled back, however, as Japan falls further and further behind other nations in areas of education where it once reigned supreme. Whereas Japan used to be ranked near the top in math and science, it's now somewhere around 18th place, being easily bested by countries like South Korea and India. That's why my daughter's summer vacation ended a week earlier than normal, because school officials are reacting to the poor educational performance of students by increasing the time spent in school. I certainly hope that the recent trends can be reversed.

J-List makes dozens of anime, manga, cosplay, fashion, toy and other magazines available to you through our popular "reserve subscription" system. Just sign up, and we'll send you the new issue of the magazine(s) you want, until you tell us to stop, and credit card, check or money order or Paypal are accepted. Today we've added a new reserve magazine, Tokyo Journal, a great quarterly that brings you hard-hitting stories about life, culture and politics in Japan's largest city. I distinctly remember reading about Aum Shinrikyo and other topical events of the day back in the old days of 1995, so it's cool that I be able to bring this magazine to people outside of Japan.

Stereotypes of foreigners by Japanese including Girls from Ipanema, Japan's "other" staple food, and more

Living outside my home country as I do, the subject of stereotypes has always interested me. Everyone has certain preconceived notions about people from other countries, some of which are based on real observations, while others come from erroneously overgeneralizing. 1.27% of the population of Japan is made up of gaijin, and while this is nothing compared to some countries -- almost 10% of people in Germany hail from elsewhere -- it's natural that Japanese here will develop stereotypes of foreigners living in their midst.

First of all, some Japanese have a tendency to think of all foreigners as being either Americans or Europeans, even though those groups make up a tiny sliver of the population here -- people from Brazil, Peru, and Pakistan are far more common in my city. They think that all foreigners are tall, and if I get into a Japanese person's car they are likely to apologize for it being so cramped, even though I am actually of average height. The Brazilian women here tend to wear Ipanema-style bikinis that are far more daring than Japanese women could ever wear to the local pool, and one J-List staff member says they remember thinking that all women from other countries must be that bold, including Americans. Unfortunately, foreigners are sometimes either ignorant of, or care less about, some common aspects of politeness here, and one impression Japanese have of some gaijin is ki ni shinai -- they don't worry about anything, even apologizing for something when they make a mistake. The Japanese spend a lot of time with no shoes on, and once a man told me he was sure that a Westerner could never pick a pencil up off the floor with his toes, since we wore shoes all the time (I promptly proved him wrong). Finally, as an American, I've naturally been asked numerous times in classrooms if I owned a gun when I lived in the States, or how many guns, or had I ever shot anyone. The sad truth is that some Japanese, especially younger students who have never come into contact with the U.S., have the mistaken image that all Americans sleep with guns under their pillows. Naturally, this is something I've worked hard to change in my years here in Japan.

Everyone knows that rice is the staple food of the Japanese, eaten with almost every meal. The "other" staple food in Japan would have to be soybeans, which are the source of a great variety of Japanese foods. Miso soup, a hot soup made from fermented miso paste, is an extremely healthy dish that's enjoyed with every traditional Japanese breakfast, and served with other meals. Tofu is another popular food, used in many Japanese and Chinese recipes, or good served chilled on a hot afternoon with soy sauce poured over it. Natto is the famous fermented soybeans that are popular in much of the country, although less so in the Kansai/Osaka area, to say nothing of my mouth. My kids eat it all the time, and when they want to tease me they come up to me and breathe Natto breath on me -- ugh. Japan couldn't get through a day without soy sauce, of course, the single most common condiment in Japanese kitchens, even more than salt and pepper. Finally, soybeans play a important cultural role each February on Setsubun, the traditional end of the year according to the old lunar calendar, when you throw them at imaginery devils to chase away evil and bring happiness into the home. (By the way, we've got lots of miso soup on the site now...)

Among the other cool things that J-List carries, we've got authentic "loose socks," those baggy, oversized socks that Japanese high school girls wear. We have two sizes to choose from, the standard 70 cm and the "super" 120 cm, which provide extra sock length to allow you to bunch it up around your ankles just so. If you find that the weight of the socks causes them to fall down we've got real "socks glue" to glue them to your leg so they'll stay looking great.

Remember that J-List is hiring right now. We're looking for someone for our San Diego office with experience in the U.S. anime industry who can help us grow our unique brand of Japanese pop culture. If you're interested in learning more, please see this page for more information