Anime Expo update, advice on traveling in Japan, on the idea of Japan as "#81" and two words every pop Japanologist must know

We're still here at Anime Expo in Long Beach, and it's been a real blast. Monday is the last day of the show, so if you'll be around, come on by! Just look for the really big banners featuring our official mascot, whose name is Megumi-chan, in case you were curious.

Japan is an expensive place, and travelling here can quickly add up to a lot of money. I once took my family to Kyoto for a few days and managed to spend enough for all of us to fly to Europe instead -- ouch. However, there are still plenty of ways to make a trip to Japan affordable. First of all, be sure to make use of the Japan Rail Pass discount tickets, which let you go anywhere on Japan's speedy bullet trains for a very affordable fee. (Poor Japan-bound gaijin like me don't get to buy these, as they're only for visitors from outside the country.) All Japanese cities have affordable youth hostels where you can stay for around $30 a night, more or less. You also might try what I've done in the past, staying in capsule hotels -- you're sure to have an unforgettable experience, sleeping in those tiny cubbyholes. Guidebooks like Lonely Planet are useful, but a word of warning: if you locate accommodations using these books, be prepared to find yourself staying at a traditional ryokan filled with other foreign tourists, all clutching copies of the same guidebook. Avoid this by trying a Japanese minshuku, a kind of Japanese-style bed-and-breakfast where you can enjoy the hospitality of the owner and meet locals also traveling on the cheap.

Everyone naturally views the world from the viewpoint of their own culture, and many people consider their country to be "best," at least on some level. But while many Japanese view the world from the standpoint of their own culture, I don't think I've met one who thinks that Japan is "#1" in the world. "Everyone knows that America is number one," a guy drinking next to me once said. "Japan is number 81." While he was making a joke about the international code used to call Japan, I think that certain Japanese, especially members of the older generation who experienced defeat by the Allies and the kids raised by them, have a bit of a complex about the U.S. and Europe, and naturally assume that their own culture is inferior to the greatness of the West. This is part of the reason why Japan's government is happy to take its cues mostly from the U.S. and Britain, to introduce their own "Big Bang" banking reform program only after the U.K. rolled out their own program, or to name the retirement investment system used in Japan "the Japan 401(k)." Just once, it'd be interesting to see a major idea put forth by Japan's government, which would be studied and adopted by the West, instead of the other way around.

I'd be remiss in my discussions about Japan if I didn't bring up two core concepts any pop Japanoligist needs to know: tatemae and honne (TAH-tay- MAH-ae and HON-neh), two concepts which are woven into the fabric of Japan as a nation. Tatemae could be translated as the ideas expressed in public, or the way we pretend society is, while honne is the way we really feel, or the way the world really is. Often tatemae are the things you say to people in certain social situations, even though you don't feel that way inside. When I see my English-bilingual wife talking with the other mothers at my daughter's school, I can see some this idea in action: she has to hold her own opinions back much of the time and pretend to agree with the other mothers who have never been outside of Japan, lest she stand out too much. Tatemae can also exist in the society at large. For example, gambling is illegal in Japan, so you win "prizes" at Pachinko parlors, which you "sell" for money at small shops located conveniently next door. Prostitution is also illegal, yet there are "soaplands" where a beautiful girl will give you a full body wash in a bath (including one in Shibuya, located right behind a police station). And on Tokyo's busy Kan-Nana Bypass, the speed limit is a meager 40 kph (24 mph), but anyone actually going that speed would surely cause an accident -- so everyone speeds along at 90 kph (55 mph). Tatemae are the little white lies we live with every day, and honne are what is really in our hearts. Do you have tatemae and honne in your life?

Various images from the con, since you've all been so patient. (I get a little busy at these things.)

It's always cool to see our customers wearing our shirts. This is our popular "Baka Gaijin" shirt design.

Eva cosplay was quite popular. Is she doing Mikuru Beam?

Another cosplayer, very cute.

Maruchan ramen??

The big highlight was ducking out to wait in line (and wait) for the Haruhi voice actress concert. Seeing Aya Hirano up close and personal was great. She's so cute she should be an anime voice actress or something. To see what she looks like, click here.

Getting ready for Anime Expo, all about Japanese name endings, tips on gift-giving, and thoughts on Japan and the iPhone

Most people know that the Japanese put the ending -san on the end of names for politeness. There are quite a lot of similar name ending suffixes, including -kun (usually used for males who you're friends with, or all male children), or -sensei (used for teachers, doctors or anyone else you want to show respect for, including politicians). One of the more common name endings is -chan, an extremely cute suffix that gets added to girls' names, especially children or females you have a close relationship with, or sometimes boy children who are especially young and cute. But linguistic rules were made to be broken, and it's common for this suffix to be used in some of the most likely places, such as Shuwa-chan, the universal nickname for Arnold Schwarzenegger in Japan.

If you ever visit Japan, it's good manners to bring a gift, called "omiyage" (oh-mee-YAH-gay) to Japanese you will be visiting or who you might encounter. Some items, like boxes of chocolates, beef jerky, and macadamia nuts from Hawaii are so famous that they're almost cliched, but will still be appreciated by anyone who receives them from you. Yasu recommends you bring some items that Americans take for granted but which Japanese might find quite unique, like A-1 Steak Sauce, candy like jellybeans or gummy bears, tortilla chips and salsa, or "that Tabasco sauce that isn't Tabasco" (we're pretty sure he means Cholula pepper sauce, which isn't sold in Japan and is thus very exotic). I think anything from your part of the world would make a good gift, and if your city or state is famous for something, a gift along those lines is a good idea. If the people you'll be visiting like coffee, you might consider a large bag of Starbucks beans, since it's quite expensive to buy here. Finally, most people don't consider cigarettes as good for gift-giving, but Yasu says that Japanese who smoke would love a carton of Newport, which aren't sold in Japan. One word of warning: giving gifts can expose you to a "gift war" in which you end up getting many more gifts than you can need, as Japanese are very serious about o-kaeshi, or giving a return gift when they receive one. The best advice is to position your own present as a return gift for something others have done for you, which will avoid a return gift on the return gift.

Friday is the "iDay," when Apple's iPhone is finally released, so I thought I'd talk about some differences between cell phones in the U.S. an Japan. Japan's cellular industry is dominated by NTT's behemoth Docomo, followed closely by "au by KDDI" and Softbank, the company owned by Yahoo Japan mogul Masayoshi Son, formerly the failed Vodafone. As the various cell phone companies jockey to bring the best products and services to their customers, they experiment with different phone concepts, but never sell a phone that any other company sells, thus each phone model is always "exclusive" to that provider. 3G is the rule in Japan, and speedy internet access through your phone is a great boon -- I like to connect to the net on my MacBook while speeding through the countryside on a bullet train, just because I can. Somehow Japan managed to build a competitive cell phone industry that never thought of requiring two year contracts, and these almost never exist (although changing your phone model within one year can cost you slightly more than if you do it less often). Also, receiving a call doesn't cost you minutes as it does in the U.S., which translates to lower costs for the user.

Well, we're here in Long Beach, all set up to start day one of Anime Expo. The show is looking to be a great festival of all things related to anime and Japanese pop culture, and we hope you'll be there to say hello. We're in booths 852, 854 and 856, near the back of the dealers' room -- come and visit us! Also, we've got a panel on the future of English bishoujo games Friday night at 7:30. Drop by for a free gift! Just in case you're not able to make it to the show, we've go a gift for you: free shipping on all bishoujo games this weekend only. This makes it a great time to pick up a great PC dating-sim game or four.

On watching Shrek 2 in Osaka Dialect, frustration at the correct way to pronounce "Appatomatox" and thoughts on returning home

The other day I went into the living room to see my kids glued to the TV even though it was thirty minutes past their bedtime. They were watching Shrek 2 on Japanese television, which surprised me because like most kids aged 12 and 10, they'd seen the movie on DVD about a jillion times. "But this is in Japanese!" my daughter said. "It's so funny -- Shrek is speaking Osaka-ben!" This is the dialect of Osaka, about as different-sounding to the ear from "standard" Tokyo speech as New York or Massachusetts English sounds compared to standard American English, defined as whatever the newscasters speak, since we don't officially tie our language standard to a physical location like many other countries. Osaka-ben (or more accurately, Kansai-ben) is the dialect of laughter, and it seems that virtually all comedians in Japan are fluent in it; Tokyo's dialect is much less colorful, more "we're not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe." The added flavor of the Osaka dialect added humor to Shrek's jokes and made the film more interesting for Japanese viewers.

How you pronounce Appatomatox, the town where the American Civil War officially ended? Or Diplodocus, one of the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth? These two words are among hundreds of others that are nearly impossible to say correctly until you've heard them spoken by others. "Pneumonia" was another hard one for me, and for some reason, it took me eighteen years to learn that you don't pronounce the "p." Although there are plenty of pronunciation issues in Japanese -- it can be very difficult to read certain kanji characters, unique names of people or place names from Northern Japan, which usually derive from the Ainu language -- at least words written in katakana can always be pronounced more-or-less spot-on because the system is syllable-based. I've heard many anime fans pronounce Evangelion with a soft "g" as in "angel." While this is understandable given the abundance of angels in the series, the katakana doesn't lie: the correct pronunciation is evan-GELL-ee-on, with a hard "g."

Once again I've made the very long jump between Japan and the U.S., and have had to force myself to switch gears from "Japan" to "America" mode. I've flitted between the two countries so often that it becomes second nature, although driving on the other side of the street always takes some care -- remember, always make sure you, the driver, are nearer to the center of the road than your passenger, no matter what country you're in. Right now I'm attempting an experiment involving massive jet lag, a bottle of Bass Ale and some interesting color hallucinations. I'm in the U.S., of course, for the upcoming Anime Expo event June 29-July 2 in Long Beach, which is going to be a huge party. We hope you'll be at the show, and look forward to seeing you there! If you can't make it, remember that J-List is always online, operating 24/7 to make sure you never want for anything wacky or cool from Japan.

Japan's latest "boom" is Tae Bo, all about the Three Great Unifiers of Japan, and managing by studying Japanese history

Japan is the land of the boom, and you never know what will be popular next. Right now the country is experiencing a "Tae Bo Boom" as Billy Blanks makes a visit to the country to promote his line of "tae kwon-do + boxing" workout videos. There's something about Japan that makes them go especially ga-ga when foreign celebrities visit, and Billy was getting star treatment as he made an appearance on a TBS morning "wide show" that's roughly a local version of Good Morning America. Showing off for the camera, he modified his training workout so that instead of lifting weights, he was lifting the tiny body of the female Japanese announcer who was interviewing him.

The Japanese like to quantify things with numbers, and you often hear about things like the "three most beautiful views of Japan" or "the three famous tea gardens of Japan." Similarly, when you study Japanese history you come across the "three unifiers" of the country. During the Sengoku (Warring States) Period of the 16th Century, Japan was a patchwork of separate domains of feudal lords fighting against each other for power, with the ultimate goal of forcing the Emperor to name them Shogun or "supreme military general" over the whole nation. The first unifier was Nobunaga Oda, who conquered the provinces starting with the Nagoya area until a third of the country was controlled by him; he also supported the arts, and was a fan of sumo wrestling tournaments. Then came Hideyoshi Toyotomi, unique in Japanese history because he started out as a peasant, rising in Nobunaga's army to become the most powerful man in Japan, although his reign ended with just one generation. Finally there was Ieyasu Tokugawa, who founded a 15-generation dynasty of shoguns that brought 250 years of peace and unique cultural growth known as the Edo Period.

Just as you can buy books that tell you how to manage your company using the Captain Piccard "Make It So" Method or live your life by the Tao of Pooh, these three unifiers of Japanese history have inspired many ideas on business and personal philosophy over the years. Nobunaga was famous for being calculating in everything he did, and if you manage yourself using the Nobunaga Method you divorce yourself from emotion and calmly do what needs to be done in any situation. Hideyoshi was a very social person, able to "grind the sesame seeds of" (i.e., flatter) anyone, so if you live your life by the Hideyoshi Principle you maintain close relationships with those around you for everyone's mutual benefit. Hideyoshi was pragmatic, too: although he managed to climb to the top of Japan's ruling class from poverty, he established the four-class social system (samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants) that effectively kept anyone from the lower classes from following in his footsteps. Finally, if you subscribe to the Ieyasu Way, you probably balance boldness with caution, and work to build a big tent, as Ieyasu did when he allowed his former enemies to keep their fiefs after he defeated them at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600). You probably stress long-term planning for the future, too. Soon after Ieyasu was named Shogun, he abdicated to his son in order to help him lay the groundwork for the future success of the family. When he established his city in Edo (Tokyo), he supposedly did so because it lied in a "lucky" direction in relation to the capital of Kyoto according to a feng shui-like belief system popular in Japan. Some believe that Tokyo's circular Yama-no-te train line and the Chuo line that curves through it (both based on old road systems dating back several centuries) crate a yin-yang symbol, with Tokyo's administrative offices and the Imperial Castle forming the dots, to increase the fortunes of the nation..

Every year J-List is fortunate to be able to participate in some of the best anime conventions in the U.S., and we'll be at the upcoming Anime Expo (June 29-July 2), greeting our customers and showing our many fun and wacky products from Japan. This show is really the seminal annual event for fans of animation and Japanese pop culture, and this year is going to be a blast, with dozens of guests from Japan including Gackt, the Haruhi voice actresses and many more. If you'll be at the show, please come by booths 852, 854 and 856 and say hello! (And don't forget our dating-sim game panel on the first evening of the show, we'll have some great news for you there.)

Our plan to "reform" our home in Japan, the joys of getting citizenship, and times when Japan just throws you for a loop

Our plan to "reform" (remodel) our house in Japan is continuing apace, as we prepare to redo our bath area, enlarge our living room slightly and make the downstairs more "barrier free" for my wife's elderly parents. As is the practice here, we made sure to start the bath part of the construction on one of the "lucky days" according to a Buddhist calendar designated for this purpose. This is especially important because mizu-mawari (parts of the house related to water) have a lot to do with a family's good luck, for reasons that are beyond this poor gaijin's ability to comprehend. The construction is being done by Japanese carpenters who are coincidentally called "dykes" (daiku). One of the rules about getting any kind of contracting work in Japan done is, you're supposed to bring the workers drinks and cakes at 10 am and 3 pm, which helps to help ensure they do a good job on our house.

There's no doubt about it: sometimes Japan can really throw you for a loop. Like the occasional intersection that will show drivers a red light along along with green arrows pointing left, right and up, guaranteeing confusion for everyone. Then there's this Japanese friend of mine who loves old American World War II movies set in the Pacific theatre, despite the presumably negative light these films put the Japanese in -- and ditto for fans of Breakfast at Tiffany's, which features an embarrassingly stereotyped Japanese character played by Mickey Rooney. Japanese sometimes choose names that we'd never consider using in the West, like the rock band Yellow Monkey or the popular talent agency Yellow Cab. The Japanese are a very polite people, and it's actually possible to hear a fight between an older person (senpai) and his underling (kohai) in which the younger person is using polite speech even while he yells at the top of his lungs. Finally, one of the oddest things I've seen all week: Astro Boy's Japanese name is Tetsuwan Atom, literally "Iron-Armed Atom" (which I knew), but it turns out his sister Astro Girl's name in Japanese is Uran, which means "uranium." When I heard this it seemed like some kind of twisted, black joke, coming just seven years after the bombing of Hiroshima, but if the Japanese are okay with the names, I guess it's okay with me.

Taking citizenship of another country is a very special thing -- it means that you've accepted the language, history, culture and values of your adopted nation and are willing to be counted as one of their number for the rest of your life. Although it's one of the most homogeneous places on Earth, foreigners may take Japanese nationality if they meet certain reasonable requirements, including having lived in Japan continuously for five years and having at least basic ability in the language. Athletes often take Japanese citizenship for one reason or another, such as the Hawaiian or Mongolian sumo wrestlers or Brazilian soccer player Alessandro Santos, and the richest man in Japan is a naturalized citizen, too, Yahoo Japan mogul Masayoshi Son, of Korean descent. I'm often asked by J-List customers if I've gotten my Japanese citizenship yet, and I tell them no, I'm quite happy with the permanent residence status I've got now. I'd like to extend congratulations to Carlos, the hardworking J-List employee in our San Diego office who hand prints our cool Japanese T-shirts and hoodies. He's worked very hard to get his U.S. citizenship over the past five years, and today he officially becomes an American citizen.

Dire straights for the Nova Bunny, Japanese test culture and manga artists, and all about Japanese democracy

The teaching of eikaiwa, or English conversation, is quite an industry in Japan, and there are many schools where people of all ages can learn the language, usually for around $100 a month for four weekly lessons. Although there are many small schools offering ESL, usually also operating after-hours tutoring schools (juku) on the side, the market tends to be dominated by the chains of English schools like Aeon, Geos, ECC, and the largest, Nova. These large schools promise "a study-abroad experience right in front of your local train station," a tempting proposition for the estimated 1 million Japanese wanting to practice speaking English with a native speaker. Although I've had teacher friends who had good experiences working for companies like Nova, when J-List readers have asked for information on teaching in Japan I've generally steered them away from these "McEnglish" chains. The business practices of the schools often leave a lot to be desired, including overworking teachers and keeping them on short-term contracts unnecessarily, and structuring "discounts" for students that result in them signing unbreakable contracts for 2-3 years of lessons. Now it seems the bad karma of the school is coming back to bite it on its pink rabbit ears, as the government has ordered them to stop signing up new customers for six months as penalty for their past misdeeds. (Of course, I have an only slightly outdated guide for anyone wanting to know more about teaching here.)

In Japan, they do like to take tests, and you can find standardized exam- inations for just about everything, including English, Kanji, using an abacus, entering prices in a cash register in a supermarket, and even for using the Internet, a test called ".Com Master." The Japanese use these tests to improve themselves and pad their resumes, and for the most part I've seen that Japan's test culture has had a good effect on people overall, although my son quit our city's skiing club because he got tired of their incessant focus on preparing for the next level of the National Skiing Skill Examination, which has something like 11 levels to it. As the Japanese government comes to the realization that manga and anime are perhaps the country's greatest cultural export, there's been more focus on nurturing the artists that create the works that interest so many around the world. To that end, there's now an official Manga Creators Ability Test, which covers creation of characters, stories and skills as an assistant to a professional artist, at several different levels. Last week six hundred would-be manga-ka (comic artists) took the test for the first time, pitting their skills against each other while professional artists judged. I wonder if a future CLAMP or Rumiko Takahashi was among the test-takers?

Japan is a Parliamentary Democracy that takes its structure mostly from that other famous island nation, Great Britain. The national legislature of Japan is called the Diet, which is why Japanese people are so thin (ha-ha), and it's lead by a Prime Minister elected by the party or parties in power, currently a coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito. If you want to know a fun Japanese joke that will probably surprise the heck out of any Japanese who hear it, here it is: the word for Prime Minister is souri (pronounced "SOH-ree"), which sounds like the English word "sorry" to the Japanese. Sori, a similar-sounding word but with a shorter vowel at the front, means "razor." Japanese kids have a stupid saying that has endured for decades: "I'm sorry, hige sori [beard shaver], jori jori [the sound of rough, unshaven whiskers]." If you're ever talking to a Japanese person, and they apologize to you for something, come back at them with "I'm sorry, hige sori, jori jori!" [HEE-gay SOH-ree, JOE-ree JOE-ree] and watch the look of shock on their faces that anyone outside of Japan would know this.

The only country where eating quietly is strange, how ethanol can affect the price of soy sauce, and gaijin drinking rules

First of all, we had a problem with checkout on the J-List and JBOX.com websites that caused orders to not function for a few hours on Saturday. The error has been fixed, and anything saved in your shopping cart should still be there -- apologies on the problem. A related speed issue with the site (caused by some websites in China hotlinking to our images) has been fixed as well. It's amazing how easy it is to redirect those hotlinks to show some of the Internet's grossest images instead. ^_^

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way of eating Japanese and Chinese noodles like ramen, udon and soba is to slurp them while holding your face near the bowl, sucking in the soup along with the noodles to make both taste delicious. There's no upper ceiling to how loud you're allowed to slurp, and making these noises is one way of letting whoever prepared the noodles for you know that you think they're good. When foreigners come to Japan, they usually eat their noodles without making these noises, prompting Japanese to say "Shizuka desu ne" (you eat very quietly). There are some other areas where table manners differ between the Japan and the West. Here, it's perfectly okay to pick up your ramen bowl and drink the soup from it directly, although drinking out of a bowl might get a child smacked back home. It's okay to slurp noodles, but spaghetti is another matter, and the image of an old Japanese man loudly vacuuming his pasta off the plate is very unsophisticated. Some table manner no-no's are related to Buddhism, including the tabboo against sticking chopsticks straight up in rice or handing food to someone else chopsticks-to- chopsticks (both of which are part of funeral ceremonies here).

The world economy is complex, and just like the butterfly that flaps its wings which causes a hurricane on the other side of the world, you can't change one part of it without potentially messing up things elsewhere. As the cost of oil rises, there's been lots of interest in using ethanol from corn or sugar as an alternate fuel, and the trend of farmers switching to producing these crops has had the unfortunate effect of causing the price of soybeans, so important for Japanese foods like miso soup, tofu and natto, to rise. As with Europe, Japanese consumers are very wary of genetically modified foods of any kind, which puts additional pressure on one of Japan's primary staple foods, raising the price even further.

Whenever foreigners living in Japan go drinking, they must make a decision: will they pour drinks for each other in Japanese style, or will everyone pour their own drinks like the folks back home do? Drinking is a very social activity in Japan, and there are many customs about pouring beer for each other, starting with the highest ranking member of the group (the senpai, the boss, etc.). Pouring drinks for each other helps increase the fuzzy feeling you get when drinking with friends, and it brings down the barriers that exist between coworkers, too, enabling them to communicate openly in ways that could never be possible otherwise. If one of your group isn't keeping up with the others, you can keep refilling his glass until he's nicely buzzed; in the event that he doesn't want to drink any more, he can just keep the glass full as a signal that he's not drinking right now. It's considered bad form to pour one's own beer, called "tejaku," the sign of someone who is lonely or possibly drinking more than he should.

Remember that J-List stocks hundreds of fun toys sold in the domestic Japanese market, including "Gashapon" or "capsule toys" that come in plastic eggs or similar packaging. These fun toys are great because they're inexpensive, and come in many great styles, from super-detailed minature trading figures (Bleach, Evangelion, Macross) to miniaturized Japanese food or household items (those amazing toys by Re-Ment) to the downright bizarre (miniature packages of Natto and Tofu, "trading torso" figures) and more. J-List goes the extra mile for our customers by offering both full set and random individual items so you can get exactly what you want.

All about "castle towns," the use of euphsmisms in daily life in Japan, and funny English you can try at home

As with Europe, Japan has had a long history which has left its mark on cities and towns today. Most of Japan's cities started out as castle towns, built up around the castle of the local samurai lord during Japan's feudal period, which ended only 140 years ago. Virtually all the cities around J-List -- Gunma prefectural capital Maebashi, commercialized Takasaki with its coveted Bullet Train line, and our own Isesaki -- originated as castle towns, and have curvy, narrow, inconvenient roads to prove it. Most of the beautiful castles in Japan are long gone, some lost to floods or general disuse and others destroyed during World War II, and their ruins are usually transformed into parks or other open spaces where people can come and commune with their history or have a picnic. Now only a dozen of the original large castles remain, with the most beautiful generally considered to be Himeji Castle near Kobe, a massive towering white structure that dates back to before the age of Columbus. (Click here for a really big picture of this castle.)

I talked before about euphemisms the Japanese use in their daily lives. Substituting beautified words or phrases for potentially embarrassing ones that we don't want to utter directly is something we all do, but Japan seems to have raised it to an art form. The subject of death is a primary candidate for the use of these substitute phrases, and some polite ways of referring to death include takai ("went to the other world") or gorin-juu ("arriving at the final stage of life"). An average of three times a month, some depressed Japanese person decides to end it all by jumping in front of a train on Tokyo's busy Chuo Line, and whenever there's an announcement of a delay due to "an accident involving physical injury" everyone knows what is really meant. From time to time, a man may purchase various services from a woman, and that practice is prettied up as enjo kosai" ("paid dates) or fashionable words like "delivery health" or "pink salon." Virtually all Japanese females seem to suffer from chronic constipation, which is caused from eating rice three times a day, and there are many alternative ways to refer to this state, including otsuji ga warui (traffic isn't passing through properly). Female menstruation is another big area for finding other words to describe a thing, with the most common way to refer to this is seiri, literally meaning "biology," although there are many other alternate names, like Anne's Day (a bizarre reference to Anne Frank) or "Japanese Flag Day." Finally, perhaps the most famous euphemism used in Japanese is the English letter "H," usually pronounced "ecchi," which stands for anything to do with sex (i.e. a person who thinks about sex to much is "ecchi," to have sex is "ecchi suru" and so on).

Japanese students study a total of six years of English, even more if they go on to college, and even though most people don't attain real conversational fluency, English does seep into the culture here in many interesting ways. The Japanese use thousands of foreign-loan words in their daily lives, mostly from English, but sometimes the meanings get changed a little. In Japanese usage, "milk" (miruku) always refers to powdered creamer for your coffee, and some words for makeup are shifted in meaning, too: "rouge" means lipstick and "manicure" means nail polish, although a "hair manicure" means getting your hair dyed a different color. Sometimes the Japanese will use words from languages other than English for style or phonetic reasons. For example, to avoid problems with similar words such as "crown" and "clown," they turn to French for the latter term: pierrot. Of course, language is all about communication, and there's no such thing as "wrong" language if it does it job, but it can be a challenge to keep from judging the Japanese for using "mistaken" English like referring to the thing you look through in a camera as the "finder." It's an even bigger challenge keeping from embarrassing myself by using these colorful English phrases with my family and friends when I go back to the States.

Japan dealing with counterfeit products from China, understand society and economics through Bull-Dog Sauce, and

Like other developed nations, many of the products the Japanese use every day are manufactured in China, and recently the problem of counterfeit goods has been getting more attention in Japan. Right now, factories are churning out fake versions of everything from designer bags to Puma shoes to -- I am not kidding -- Mitsubishi elevators, but when you're buying brake pads for your Toyota Camry you want to know that they were made according to the specs of the manufacturer and will work when you need them. Then there's the state-run fake version of Disneyland in Beijing, with all your favorites including Mickey, Minnie and Donald as well as scary versions of Hello Kitty and Doraemon. Recently, Yamaha won a suit with a Chinese manufacturer who was making fake "Japan Yamaha Inc." motorcycles with 100% counterfeit parts and selling them as the real McCoy. In the landmark case, they'll receive $1 million and an apology.

In Japan, there are two types of people, those who like soy sauce dolloped over their fried eggs, and those who prefer the Bull-Dog sauce that's known as "sauce" (ソース） in Japanese. I'm a soy sauce man myself, unless we're talking about a fried egg sandwich, since soy sauce and bread don't mix that well, but I do recognize the superiority of "sauce" in just about every other food category, especially fried croquettes. That self-same Japanese condiment is under attack from an American foreign investment fund called Steel Partners, which is seeking to purchase controlling interest in the Bull-Dog sauce company in a leveraged buyout, a concept that's still quite foreign in this country where businessmen are usually polite to each other. Bull-Dog is taking some "poison pill" steps to ward off the buyout, including allowing shareholders other than Steel Partners to buy additional stock. As a general rule, companies attempting unwanted takeovers face an uphill battle in Japan and get plenty of negative press, despite the fact that takeovers are all part of how owning stock in corporations works (you know, stockowners being the owners of the company and not management, all that stuff).

As you know, Japan is a rather unique place, and sometimes it seems there's almost no aspect of the country that can't surprise you. As with other parts of the world, goods are transported from place to place by trucks, and truckers ply the open highways as they shuttle their cargo around the country, listening to the local version of country music, called enka. Many truckers spice up their time on the road by decking their wheels out with blinking lights, outrageously gaudy side mirrors and huge panels of traditional Japanese art, a practice called dekotora or "decoration truck." The whole business of driving around in a truck decked out with blinking lights began in the early 1970s with truckers who hauled fish to market attaching stainless steel fairings to their vehicles to keep corrosion due to the salty air at bay. The boom in decoration trucks was helped along by a Toho movie series called Truck Yarou (Truckers) which brought the hobby to a national level. Dekotora are usually named by their owners, with names usually ending in kanko (sightseeing), since the original truck modifiers had to scavenge for lights from old sightseeing busses, or maru (circle), often used in ship names (think Kobayashi-maru, Star Trek fans). There are many varieties of these colorful trucks, including designs that resemble colored floats from the Nebuta Festival in Aomori Prefecture or shrines to right-wing Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima or Amuro Rei from Mobile Suit Gundam. Today we happen to have gotten in some cool made-in-Japan T-shirts featuring the logo from the Truck Yarou film, a killer item for anyone who loves a truck, or who just digs the way the kanji and katakana look on the shirt.

The Japanese fascination with movies about New York and Audrey Hepburn, thoughts on home-owning in Japan, and the Japanese take on "Kamikaze"

The Japanese are fascinated with the enigma of New York City, and there are hundreds of books written about the city from the standpoint of Japanese living there. They also love movies, and the other day I caught an interesting show on NHK featuring a circle of Japanese guests (as well as the token Japanese-fluent foreigner) discussing their favorite movies that were set in New York, from Taxi Driver to The Godfather to An Affair to Remember. They talked about how easy it was to obtain permission for making films in the city compared to Tokyo (shooting Lost in Translation was only possible thanks to Mayor Shintaro "The Japan Who Can Say No" Ishihara getting personally involved and saying yes). The favorite New York-based film of everyone at the table was Breakfast at Tiffany's, especially popular in Japan because of its demure star Audrey Hepburn, who managed to become famous all over the world despite her small bust, a fact which caused female Japanese fans to identify with her.

One of the big differences between Japan and the U.S. is how a home is viewed. In the States, homes generally go up in value over time, and if you spend money renovating bathrooms or adding rooms you're likely to be rewarded with a higher value next time you get the house appraised. This isn't the case in Japan, where living in a "used" house is all but unthinkable, and anyone buying an existing home will tear it down and build a new one in its place. No, in Japan, land is what's considered valuable, not any building sitting on it, so any improvements to your home that you make are for your family's use and enjoyment and no other reason. While is kind of nice, actually -- not having to be concerned with what modifications you make to your home will do to its value is kind of refreshing. When we added a Japanese-style genkan (a recessed area near the front door for guests to take their shoes off) and bath in our house in San Diego we had to make sure we weren't doing anything to the home that would cause problems for us later.

It's funny how a word can mean one thing to one group of people and something else to another. When Americans hear the word kamikaze (kah-MEE-kah-ZEH), meaning "divine wind," they naturally recall the images of desperate Japanese pilots diving their planes into ships in the last months of the War in the Pacific. Japanese people, instead, bring up images of the historical typhoons that destroyed two invading Mongol fleets in 1274 and 1281, which kept Japan free from invasion by the much more technologically advanced Mongols, as important an event to Japan's history as the Norman Conquest was to England. For the record, the wartime suicide attacks, which were are generally known as tokko or "special attack" missions, an example of the Japanese penchant for using polite euphemisms for just about any word you can think of.

If you've ever been to Japan, you might have been impressed by the super-realistic wax replicas of menu items on display in a glass case in front of restaurant windows. Creation of replica food that looks so delicious customers will want to come in and eat is an art form, and popular artists who can create delicious-looking fake food are quite in demand. This fascination with realistic looking food can be enjoyed in the super-detailed miniature toys of Re-Ment, the company known for making everything from sushi to cakes to the every day meals served in Japanese kitchens, and packaged supermarket foods, too. Since Re-Ment toys are all scaled the same, you can mix and match the many delightful miniature toys in any way you like. Many of our customers who collect dolls buy Re-Ment toys to provide an extra layer of realism to any display, or else just have fun lining up the miniature toys on your TV. Nearly all our Re-Ment toys are available as full sets of random individual boxes. Check them out now!

The challenge of raising kids in a foreign country, more on the shrine China and Korea love to hate, and a Shinto ceremony in my living room

First of all, a minor computer problem here in Japan caused some delays in processing orders on Friday. We're very sorry for the problem -- all is working again now!

Sometimes it can be a challenge raising bilingual kids in a foreign country. While I'm more than capable of looking over my son's English assignments and diary entries and help my daughter with finding information on the Internet, I'm not exactly equipped to help them with their kanji, especially as they get older. My son is currently struggling with Classical Japanese History right now, and I'm not able to help him -- I don't have much of a sense for the nuances between the Kamakura and Ashikaga Bakufu periods of the post-Yoritomo era. Japan is a very test-oriented society, and one of the skills students pick up is getting very good at how to study for tests, something I see in my son as he prepares for the next level of the Step Test, a standardized English test that's popular here. My son is twelve and will be a teenager soon. I know this because he recently asked me what the words BRB, LOL, and ROTFL meant.

Yasukuni Shrine, the shrine in Tokyo that honors Japan's war dead, is controversial because the bones of Japan's former military leaders are also interred there, including the head honcho himself, wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. For years no one thought anything about the shrine, until the 1980s when China and South Korea started objecting to Japan's prime ministers making official visits there, partially (some might argue) to reap the political benefits gained from stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment at home. Yesterday former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui made a visit to the shrine. He stressed that the visit, which was to honor his older brother who died in the war, was as a private individual, but the image of a former leader of an Asian country going to Yasukuni was too much for Beijing to take without voicing strong protest.

I'm sure you've all had the experience of being called home on short notice to participate in a Shinto ceremony in your living room. This happened to me yesterday -- we're about to start some remodelling in our house, redoing our bathrooms and replacing our older, allergy-unfriendly tatami mats with Okinawa-style square mats, and as is the custom here, we called our neighborhood Shinto priest out to bless the house before starting the construction. Since I am the "big black pillar" (daikoku-bashira) of the family, my wife wanted me to attend the ceremony. The priest had spread out an offering consisting of several icons of the Shinto religion, including fish, rice, clean water, oranges, a daikon radish and sake, and proceeded to bless the house and its inhabitants. Shinto is the original religion of Japan, which reveres the spirits (kami) in mountains, rivers and trees, and as a general rule, ceremonies related to life, such as baby naming or weddings, are derived from it, while Buddhism is reserved for death-related events. The Shinto priest who performed the home-blessing ceremony was the same one who did the ground-breaking ceremony when we started construction of the J-List office a decade ago. and he was fascinated with how far our little company had come, bringing Japanese products to people all around the world. (I told him we were lucky to have great customers.)

YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream is the newest English-translated dating-sim game from Peach Princess, and an outstanding game it is, with rich and complex characters like the grown-up class president Mizuki, slightly spaced out transfer student Aeka, and the mysterious cat girl Nekoko. If you've been sitting on the fence about this beautiful game, we're happy announce a great new playable demo that lets you interact with the world and its characters before deciding if this title is for you. The demo is "all ages" and can be freely distributed. If you've always wondered what all the fuss about Japan's dating-sim games was, this is a great opportunity for you!

More ways that Japanese group dynamics operate, linguistic land mines, and how to really appreciate Pop Tarts and Peanut Butter

I talked last time about some of the mechanisms that are in place to keep Japan's group-oriented society running smoothly, and I've witnessed various forms of "wa maintenance" as an English teacher. Now, Japanese who go all-out to master English can sometimes be a little odd, and we had one very smart student at our school named K who was sure the best approach to learning the language was to memorize the dictionary page by page. When she got a wrong answer in class she would slap herself loudly, and then there was her unfortunate habit of trimming her nails by peeling them by hand, sometimes until they were bloody. I watched for months as the other members of the class took great pains to make K feel like part of the group, eating lunch with her and looking the other way when she did something strange. One day she made an especially embarrassing goof then made it worse by slapping herself repeatedly, which looked so ridiculous that the other students couldn't stand it any more and burst out laughing. I could tell they'd tried hard to keep the poor girl from feeling bad, but we all have our limits. Actually everyone seemed to be better friends after the incident.

Every language has certain built-in traps which will invariably be stepped on by learners coming in from other languages. Tomo told me once he's terrified of using a perfectly good word for "cat" because of his fear that it will be confused with an anatomically descriptive slang word, and when Yasu was studying in Philadelphia, he tried to use the word "Bro" with his friends, but they mis-heard this as "bra." Another famous problem area are the L/R pronunciation issues, since the two sounds aren't differentiated in Japanese, and I've known people who avoid talking about politics so they wouldn't have to try to pronounce the word "election." But gaijin aren't immune to these linguistic land mines just because the tables are turned. The word seiko can mean many things depending what kanji you write it with. The most common meaning is "to succeed" (成功） or in the case of the famous watch company, "minute engineering" (精工), but one kanji combination results in an academic-sounding word for copulation (性行), and for years I was scared to utter the word "succeed" in Japanese because I thought I might be mis-understood. In Japanese, the only "bad" word (as in, so bad you'd get in trouble of you used it on TV) is similar to the word "mango" but with a "k" replacing the "g," and it's the rare foreigner who can avoid making a Freudian slip when ordering mango juice from a pretty waitress. It's easy enough avoid using the word, of course, but sometimes it pops up at you unexpectedly. The number 10,000 is "mahn" and the counter for small or round objects is "ko," so if you find plan on talking about, say, 10,000 gumballs in Japanese you might want to be careful.

If you really want to value the things you have, try going to a place where they don't exist. I love living in Japan and everyday is fun, but there are many things you just can't find here, from "real" Peanut Butter to Pop Tarts to fat-free Triscuit crackers to any type of bread other than "white." When I'm in the U.S., I go out of my way to enjoy these things, and I've been known to choose lowly Miller Lite over more exotic choices mainly because of the natsukashii (NOTS-ka-SHEE, nostalgia) factor. During the Star Wars convention we went for some cheeseburgers at our hotel, and the menu offered many exotic types of cheese for my burger, from Gouda to Provolone to Havarti. But all I really wanted was good old American cheese, all but impossible to find in Japan, which prefers sliced white mozzarella (zzzzz). I'm a big proponent of the idea of sending all college-age people to another country to live for a year. If nothing else, they'll realize how good they've got it at home.

Remember that J-List carries over 4000 unique products from Japan, from the traditional to the curious to the just plain weird. Since J-List is located in Japan, we've always got lots of authentic items that will amaze you, and probably teach you about Japan just a little, too. There are several ways to view the products J-List offers, including browsing categories, searching for keywords, viewing products updated in the past three days, viewing all products in order of last updating, or using our handy text-tree view. You can also use our newly-revamed RSS feeds to watch J-List for the new information using services like Newsgator or Google Reader -- see http://feeds.jlist.com for a complete listing of RSS feeds

Understanding group culture through photography, all about Social Security in Japan, and would you like "lice" with your bento?

The Japanese are a very group-oriented people, and one of the worst things a person can be is nakama-hazure (nah-kah-mah HAH-zoo-reh), meaning "being left out of the group," i.e. an outsider. It's funny to see some of the social mechanisms that are in place to keep groups of people functioning happily. For example, if you watch Japanese taking group photographs, they'll usually take two, so that the person holding the camera the first time can get in the second picture, and no one feels left out of the group by not being in every shot. This little ceremony is very important -- if, say, the owner of the camera were to suggest that the second picture wasn't necessary, perhaps to save film, he'd basically be putting the circle of friends at risk by allowing the implication that every member of the group wasn't as important as all the others to stand, a psychological dynamic that certainly would be rare to see in the U.S. Although you don't think of a family as an in-group, it's certainly possible to be nakama-hazure even with people you share the same home with, something my Japanese wife has learned as she watches our kids get better and better at English. Sometimes we play cruel tricks on her at the dinner table, asking if she'd like more "lice" and smirking when she says yes.

Most industrialized countries are struggling with the aging of their societies, and with its very low birth rate, Japan generally leads the pack. There are two systems that provide health insurance and retirement income in Japan, the Social Insurance System (available to any employee of a medium-sized or larger company, and their families) and the National Insurance System (available to everyone else, including self-employed). Both systems work fairy well, covering 70% of medical costs and providing a basis for Japanese retirees to live. Oddly, although everyone is ostensibly required to pay into the local version of Social Security, there are no penalties for not doing so, and many Japanese don't bother with the system at all. This includes some politicians, which caused a scandal that ended several careers a few years ago. Currently Japan's Social Security system is in hot water after losing data on up to 50 million citizens who paid into the system over the past twenty years, including that of yours truly -- we recently asked for a report on the payments I'd made when I was teaching ESL and were told they didn't have me in their computer. It turns out that a change in the number used to track these payments caused information on millions to disappear, causing extra retirement headaches for many.

Bento, Japan's visually beautiful boxed lunch, has become a famous image of the country throughout the world, and very popular with J-List customers, too. The Japanese have a tradition called shoku no bi, or "the beauty of food," and many dishes are aesthetically pleasing to look at as well as being delicious. In keeping with this great concept, bento becomes much more than something you eat at lunchtime. It can be an art form, as wives and mothers show their creativity each day with fun and delicious new ways of cutting sausages into little flowers or crabs or octopi. Eating a boxed lunch that your wife or mother has put a lot of effort into can really make a person try extra hard at work or school, and it's not uncommon for bento to include the word GANBATTE! (gahn-BAH-teh, meaning "Please work hard!") spelled out in cut nori seaweed. Ultimately, bento can be an expression of love in a country where married couples might spend their entire lives together without ever saying "I love you" to each other, and the image of a young salaryman eating his aisai bento (or "loving wife bento") is extremely romantic.

Back in Japan again, thoughts on social uses of alcohol in Japan (and "nomunication"), and all about sumo wrestling

Hello again from J-List. Once again I've made the journey from California to Japan and am back home with the staff here, ready for another update of Japanese goodness for you. As usual after returning to Japan, I was up at the crack of dawn, my body refusing to sleep past what it was sure was the middle of the day. I got up and took a brisk walk, enjoying the hours before the day's humidity began, but in the later afternoon I'll pay for rising early as jet lag starts to set in. I hope I don't fall asleep in the middle of today's update...

There's no way around it: alcohol is often an important part of social life in Japan, and there's even a word for the special kind of interchange of ideas that occurs over beers after work: nomunication, combining the Japanese word for drink (nomu) with "communication." Along with the naughty words (which aren't nearly as colorful in Japanese as they are in English, usually being translatable as "fool" or "slow-witted" and not anatomical in nature at all), foreigners coming to Japan usually pick up vocabulary related to drinking fairly quickly. One of the first phrases I learned after arriving in Japan was toriaezu biiru (toh-ree-AH-eh-zu BII-ru), meaning "Let's start with some beer," a good way to order while letting your server know you'll be adding some food items to the order presently. You quickly learn words like "bin biiru" (beer in a bottle, good for pouring drinks for each other in a group) and "nama biiru" (draft beer in a big mug). Any food that you munch on with your beer is called otsumami (oh-tsu-mah-mii), and the Japanese love to eat things like asparagus wrapped in bacon, oil-fried tofu and a fish called hokke (HOK-keh), which the Internet tells me is called Atka Mackerel although I never knew what it was called in English until today. Of course, beer isn't the only beverage consumed, although it's the most popular: sake (pronounced SAH-keh, never "saki") is also popular. Known by its formal name nihonshu, one of the most popular ways to drink it is hot, which is called atsukan (AHTS-kahn). If you have a few drinks you might find yourself pleasantly buzzed, which is horo-yoi, but don't drink too much or you'll feel terrible in the morning. Once while looking up words in my Canon Wordtank over several beers I came across a Japanese word mukae-zake (mu-kah-eh-ZAH-keh, "going to meet sake with more sake"), which my electronic dictionary faithfully translated as "the hair of the dog that bit one." I'd never encountered that term before coming to Japan, so living here has taught me some of my native language as well!

Sumo wrestling, the official national sport of Japan, is incredibly old -- it's mentioned in one of the first written histories of Japan, the Kojiki, which dates from A.D. 712. In sumo, two opponents must push each other out of a ring or into the ground, but this is easier said than done when your opponent weighs 300-400 pounds. There are six 15-day sumo tournaments held during the year, three in Tokyo and one each in Nagoya, Osaka and Kyushu. The bouts are broadcast daily on NHK, with the highest ranking (and thus the most famous) wrestlers competing at the end of the day's bouts, so if you catch the last 30 minutes of the day's broadcast you can get to see all the best matches. There are officially 48 different methods for defeating your opponent in sumo, called the "48-hands." These include yorikiri (pushing your opponent out of the ring while you grip his belt), oshidashi (pushing him out without holding his belt), uwatenage (throwing your opponent down in a quick motion), and hatakikomi (changing directions suddenly so that your opponent loses balance and falls). Sumo is so popular with foreigners in Japan that the matches are broadcast in English as well as the local language. As the years pass and different sumo wrestlers retire, often moving on to manage sumo stables, there have been times when the top spots are dominated by Hawaiian wrestlers, and even a period when there were no Yokozuna (Grand Champions) at all. Right now, the sumo world is being dominated by Asashoryu, a Mongolain wresltler who regularly mops up the dohyo with the other wrestlers. (If you like sumo wrestling, we highly recommend our wacky "Yokozuna" T-shirt, it's really a great joke.)

More fun at Star Wars Celebration IV, all about Japanese bathing, and some interesting ways you can study Japanese (or anything)

The Star Wars Celebration IV convention continues, and we're having lots of fun. Highlights have included Carrie Fisher coming by our booth and fawning over our "beware perverts" T-shirt, talking about the intricacies of Japanese dating-sim games with Jedi Master Kit Fisto, and seeing a fun Boba Fett dressed as a clown, along with an entire legion of other cosplayers. The Opening Ceremonies were great too, featuring the official unveiling of the new Star Wars stamps by the U.S. Postal Service, a professional belly-dancing Metal Bikini Leia and a Star Wars birthday cake, complete with cake for all the fans, too. This con is quite a rare event, and there are visitors from all over the world here. It's especially fun to see the "Stormtrooper Nationalism," with costumers tweaking their uniforms to match their nation of origin, like berets on the French 501st and a sombrero-sporting Stormtrooper from Mexico. As always, we're having fun meeting customers and selling the "Japanese Chewbacca" (as many fans say when they see our Domo-kun plush toys). If you're able to be at the show on Monday, come say hit to us in booth 924!

The Japanese are great lovers of all forms of bathing, and many onsen (OWN-sen, volcanic hot spring baths) have been in use in Japan for over a thousand years. The Japanese are also fans of thinking of long lists of ailments that a given hot spring will supposedly cure, and part of the challenge for an onsen-loving gaijin is learning enough kanji to be able to read these various medical ailments, which include chills, arthritis/rheumatism, muscle cramps, piles, heat rash, "feminine" health conditions, and nerve issues. The Japanese tendency for assigning various healing properties to things can cause problems sometimes, especially with Japanese TV shows that love to get creative with the facts (known as yarase or "faking it") in the interest of higher ratings. When a TV station in Osaka showed a documentary citing American research that indicated dozens of health benefits of eating natto, Japan's famous fermented soybeans, they caused a national run on the food, making it impossible to find in stores for days. The trouble is, the evidence was almost completely fabricated, which caused a huge scandal for the station.

When you start to learn a foreign language, it's important to be flexible and come up with strategies for learning that fit you. These can take many forms -- in the beginning I treated Japanese sentences as if they were mathematical equations, which allowed me to swap out the object, subject and verbs like changing variables. I later embraced karaoke as a study aid, transcribing Japanese songs to help me remember the lyrics. To practice his English spelling, my son pronounces words as they're written, for example saying the "gh" in "enough" until he's internalized the spelling properly. The Japanese are good at coming up with interesting ways of studying, since they're arguably the most studious people on Earth. One method I thought was cool is the "Zebra Check Set" that lets you highlight the information you're trying to memorize with a special pen then place a plastic sheet over the page causing that part of the page to disappear, allowing you to quiz yourself until you have the information down.

Remember, you can get your favorite anime, JPOP/JROCK, manga, Tokyo fashion, cosplay and other magazines sent to you every month through J-List's popular "reserve subscription" system. Here's how it works: order the subscription item and we'll hold it in the system for you, and send each issue of the magazine you want to you until you ask us to stop. You never have to pay in advance, and you can stop or change subscriptions at any time. All magazines are chosen for their great content and color pictures, so you can enjoy them even if you can't read the Japanese. Browse our subscription mags now!

Some pics from the Opening Ceremonies, which were pretty fun. A major geekout, to say the least.

There were some cool moments, like when all the celebs got on stage, and seeing the new Star Wars stamps. Then there were some shaky parts, like having Captain Typho sing "Celebration" at us.

They did a moving piece on people of the Star Wars world that are no longer with us, including Alec Guiness and Peter "Charming, to the last" Cushing. It was somewhat amusing, in a black sort of way, to see the parade of no-longer-living actors as they were being killed on-screen, as poor Admiral Ozzel was.

George Lucas had a live feed during the show, too.

Star Wars cake. Yum. Actually it was made with lard, which made me picture Jabba for some reason.

The finale of the event came when a real Boba Fett did a jet pack flight.

Some more pics from the floor, since I'm sure you want to see them. This girl had a great idea.

Fabulous concept, with the little lit-up Emperor on his hand.

Then again, not all of the ideas were fabulous.

There was a google of bikini Leias running around the show.

You know, it's amazing how far modern digital cameras can zoom up.

I might be going by here tomorrow to pick up a Star Wars poker and card set. Very tempting.

These guys should have worked out some Three Stooges routines.

We take our Matsukameya high school uniforms (girl and guy) to these shows so customers can see how amazingly well made they are. This girl preferred the guy's uniform.

In closing (so I can get to sleep), here is the aforementioned Boba Fett Clown. Goodnight.

Star Wars group geekout update, the linguistic roots of Japanese, and psychology through TV commercials

The Star Wars Celebration IV convention is in full swing, and here in Los Angeles tens of thousands of fans are having a group geekout as the film hits its 30th anniversary today. I got to talk with the actor who plans Jango Fett and all the Clone Troopers and impress him with my knowledge of the New Zealand national anthem (I lived there for a year as a kid), got to thank Admiral Piett for being such a great villain, and gave free Pocky to the black chick who plays the green chick that Jabba the Hut dumps into the Rancor pit. Best of all, a Japanese VIP was having trouble communicating with Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) and I got to come to her rescue -- that was cool. As usual, it's great to be in a place where we can meet and greet our wonderful customers, and if you have plans to be at the show, which runs through Monday, please visit us in booth 924 and say hi! (See this page for info on the show.)

I talked last time about Japanese being related to Basque, Turkish, and Hungarian. This was a joke, although it does share certain linguistic features with these languages (also Finnish and some Native American tongues), mainly in that it's an "agglutinating" language, which just means it puts a lot of information in the verb conjugation rather than with helping verbs. Some information that can be contained in the verb form include passive voice, causality, negatives, if constructions and so on, and a single conjugated verb could, if you need it to, communicate something like "if I hadn't been made to work, (I wouldn't have missed my favorite TV show)..." While most languages are grouped into families, the most massive being the Indo-European that spans India and Europe, Japanese is possibly in a class by itself, having no generally accepted link to another language (other than Okinawan). Various theories are discussed, including that Japanese is related to Korean based on grammatical similarities between the two languages (this is usually denied by both Japanese and Koreans, to general amusement); that Japanese is related to a theoretical language group called Altaic that directly links, say, Hungarian and Japanese through a distant linguistic ancestor; and so on. Or maybe the Japanese do descend from the Sun Goddess after all, as their myths suggest?

Psychology is a complex subject, and no matter what culture you're from, there are certain emotional buttons that, say, TV advertisers can use to change the way you feel about their product. One button used in Japan is that of the "worried child" when mothers or fathers are made to buy some product because of the concern their daughter is showing over their health -- parents are saps for kids who are worried about them. The Japanese aren't long on nationalism, perhaps understandable given their past, but during the 1990s a health drink (Regain) gained popularity positioning itself as helping Japanese businessmen do business all over the world, with a theme song to match. One of the most pathetic commercial messages I've seen here is "if you use this product, foreigners will respect you." This was the message Cabin cigarettes sent in a commercial I saw soon after arriving in Japan, shown in movie theaters (yes, they had tobacco commercials, and yes, they showed commercials before a movie started in a theatre, although both are very rare now) which featured a Japanese man riding a train in Europe. As he smoked the company's product, the Europeans were listening attentively as he spoke, hanging on his every witty comment.

This certainly is a fun con to be at. Although it's different from anime shows in general, we're fitting right in despite our focus on Japan. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure you're going to see this Death Star floating above the San Diego Comicon in a few weeks.

Lots of fun fans.

This is General Veers in case you aren't up on your Imperial armor.

Hopefully not traumatized little girl.

This is Oola. Is this woman not hot as hell, or what?

One of the many fun things we're denied because we're working. Oh well.

This dude has such a good idea!

The married couple that makes pajamas out of Star Wars bedsheets together, stays together. Now I want to get them to pose in American Gothic style.

Prelude to the cool "Princess Leia bitchslap" followed by one Leia shouting "You don't even have a uterus!" to a (male) Leia standing there.

What a difference an elongated vowel makes, Jamestown vs. Sekigahara, and other cultural observations from a cunning linguist

What a difference an elongated vowel can make. Japanese is quite different from English, having had a totally unique developmental history -- it's supposedly related to Mongolian, Basque, Turkish and possibly Hungarian, don't ask me how -- and it sports concepts we couldn't even conceive of in the language of Shakespere. One is a strong differentiation between short vowels (like the o in ocha) and long vowels (the first syllable of Tofu, the second syllable of Shirow's name). If you've ever wondered why someone whose last name is Sato writes it as Satoh or Satou, it's because he's trying to express the longer second syllable as accurately as he can, even though it makes no difference when pronounced in English. Sometimes these vowels can cause transliteration issues. For example, shoujo (with a long vowel) means "girl," while shojo (short vowel) means, er, a female who is pure as newly fallen snow, i.e. a baajin (a virgin). While the former spelling is more common in fannish circles, the latter isn't really wrong, since the two terms are identical in pronunciation in English. U.S. shoujo manga magazine ShojoBeat uses the latter, more simplified spelling, presumably without a lot of confusion by readers thinking that it's focusing on hip, well-drawn virgins. Accuracy can only be taken so far -- otherwise we'd be wearing Doumo-kun T-shirts, cheering baseball star Ichirou, and listing Japan's capital as "Toukyou."

This difference in perception of long and short vowels cropped up back in my ESL teaching days in an amusing way. I had a student named "Yoko Ohno" (long vowel, meaning "big field"), so naturally I made the obvious joke about what a thrill it was to have a famous person in my class and consoled her on the loss of her husband John. She had no idea what I was talking about, though. It turns out that the more famous Yoko Ono's last name was a short vowel (meaning "small field") and this slight difference meant that my student had gone through her life never realizing her name was similar to the woman J-List's own Tomo (a serious Beatles fan) refers to as "Bitch and Witch!" Another time, I was walking with a Japanese friend in a toy shop and we came across a large plush toy of Jiji, the black cat from Hayao Miyazaki's classic film Kiki's Delivery Service. I told my (non-otaku) friend the cat's name, but she refused to believe me. It turned out she was mis-hearing my pronunciation, thinking that the cat's name was jijii (with a longer vowel at the end), which is a very rude word for an old man. (The female version is babaa, similar enough to Babaar that they had to tweak the famous elephant's name for the Japanese versions of his books.) Issues like this are part of the reason why I always recommend that anyone interested in learning Japanese make sure they're using a textbook that exclusively uses hiragana, katakana and kanji rather than romanized Japanese, like the Genki series.

If you don't have a subscription, I recommend you pick up the current issue of National Geographic, which has a great article on the Jamestown settlement of 1607 and the changes that it heralded for the "new" continent as Europeans (and their worms, introduced to North America for the first time in mud brought over as ship ballast) started moving in. It's interesting, because it's very near to the year of the Battle of Sekigahara in Japan (1600), so you can compare the changes in the two places side-by-side. In the last four centuries, Japan has moved from its "Warring States" period when every powerful lord and his brother was trying to become the military master of all Japan, known as Shogun; through the forced peace of the Edo Period, 250 years of separation from the rest of the world, which allowed Japan's culture to mature untouched by outside influences but also stagnate technologically; and through the Meiji Period, bringing rapid modernization and a general wish that Japan was part of Europe, which is why both share DVD region code '2' now. During the same period, one country was transformed several times, while another was built, totally from scratch.

We're off to Los Angles tomorrow to get set up for the Star Wars Celebration IV convention, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, May 24-28. We'll be selling lots of good things, from cool toys from Japan to our "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" T-shirts and watching Stormtroopers in their native habitat, as opposed to anime conventions where we usually see them. If you'll be at the show, we'd love to have you to drop by booth 924 and say hi. We hope to see you at the show!

Remember that J-List has reworked the RSS feeds on our site, making it easy to use an RSS-aware browser like Apple's Safari, Firefox or IE7, a dedicated feed reader, or a service like Google Reader to watch for new products on J-List. It's really quite ingenious: you register the "feed" you want to watch and when it's updated, your RSS-reader will display the new products for you automatically. You can watch specific J-List product pages for new or restocked products, watch for all new J-List products as they're posted, or create a feed for a specific keyword, say, one that lets you know when new Pinky Street products are added to J-List, or when any new product that has the keyword "study Japanese" appears on the site. One of the coolest feeds lets you see what people are adding to their publicly-shared wish lists, and read their comments. Feed are available for both the J-List and JBOX.com (general product) domains, too. See all the RSS feeds that are available here.

Remember that J-List carries dozens of amazing Domo-kun products for you, more than any other company in the world, we're pretty sure. Domo-kun is the ultra-cute spokesmonster for the "BS" (broadcast satellite) TV network operated by NHK, the BBC of Japan, and he's as cute a monster as you could ever hope to see. Our products include the Domo-kun Pen, the Domo-kun Plush Keychain, Domo-kun straps for your phone, and of course the Domo-kun plush that was seen in the "Whenever I ... God kills a kitten" graphic. We've also got the dynamite Domo-kun T-shirt and Hoodies that are great fun to wear!

Weird new products in the U.S., getting Japanese onomatopoeia on the brain, and what to the Japanese think of us?

Whenever I come back to the U.S., I like to cruise the grocery stores to see what new products have been introduced since I was "in country" last. I know that companies usually can't resist pushing their brands in new directions, which is called "line extension" in marketingspeak -- anyone remember the summer when everyone was wearing Cola-Cola branded clothes back in the 80s? One year I'll find bizarre new concoctions like Yogurt Burst Cheerios, or horrible new shapes and colors added to the Lucky Charms marshmallow pantheon, or Trix brand fruit-flavored yogurt, ugh. This trip I noticed they'd invented beef jerky with A1 steak sauce pre-soaked into it. What will they think of next, Sprite Cola?

One question I'm asked a lot is, what impression do Japanese have of Americans? The answers are always varied, of course, but include that we greet people we've just met as if we've known them for years, we're often not on time, we can be rather "about" (meaning vague or loose about rules), and we often laugh too loudly in public. Another thing I've been told repeatedly is that Americans are "optimistic" and can find something positive in just about any situation. This tendency towards positive thinking was especially important in the years after World War II, when the constructive attitudes of the American and British occupiers became infectious and spread to the Japanese, reassuring them that "everything will be alright." Recently I was talking with some friends about China and what the future might hold with regards to Japan. "It's a foregone conclusion," said one friend, "that Japan will lose to China." Another friend shared this opinion that in future decades, China's population and industrial growth would somehow "defeat" Japan, presumably removing the economic gains Japan has won for itself. This struck me as interesting, since I'm definitely optimistic about the future -- although the country will continue to grow in economic stature, I'm sure America will never "lose" to China. Another friend was sure that China was following Japan's disastrous bubble economy and would self-destruct on its own, so Japan had nothing to fear economically.

Onomatopoeia are words that are based on sounds, although there can be quite a wide range between perceptions. For example, we Americans are convinced dogs make sounds like "bark bark!" or "woof woof!" while to the Japanese they sound like "wan wan!" (a big dog) and "kyan kyan!" (a small dog like a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua). When you've been around the Japanese language as much as I have, the local perceptions of sounds tend to seep into your skull, and I have no problem describing the slamming of a door as "batan!" or the sound of being dripping wet as "bisho bisho" or the sound of a Pocky stick breaking in two as "poki!" (which is where it gets its name). Because the Japanese are extremely creative, they have sound words for concepts we'd never think of assigning words to, and my brain sometimes picks up on those, too. For example, when I make a joke but no one laughs, I mentally think to myself "shiiiiin!" ("sheen"), which is the sound of total, deafening silence in the Japanese language.

J-List has been involved with promoting Japan's amazing PC dating-sim games from the beginning, and we offer virtually every English-translated "H" game available, from great companies like G-Collections, JAST USA, Peach Princess and Kitty Media. We're happy to announce that there's a new blog where you can follow the development of your favorite titles, the official JAST USA side blog at Otakuism.com. We'll be posting news and updates of interest to bishoujo gaming fans as well as occasional hints at future titles, so check back often!

Remember that the "dating-sim of the month" right now is Critical Point, the outstanding sci-fi game created by one of the original writers of Mobile Suit Gundam, Bubblegum Crisis and Macross, which brings an authentic pedigree and classic anime feel to it. Featuring a great mystery set on a distant moon base which you must unravel, and more than 20 endings, it's one game we can really recommend to many fans of Japan's PC dating-sims. And this month it's available for a special price, so get your copy now (the month is almost over...)!

Quickie pics of Vegas, in case you wanted to see.

It was our first time at the Bellagio. Very nice hotel, we were happy with everything except the difficulty at winning a the tables. The water show was great, and I sprung for the extra expensive rooms that overlooked the water.

This was breathtaking, going up in the Stratosphere. I mean, you expect Vegas to look good fro 1000 feet up, but we couldn't believe how nice it was. Getting toshed at the bar up there was even more fun.

Hey! They have crepes in America!

All about the Japanese attention to "kakko" (style), feelings about Japanese who make the country look good (and bad), and "Vegas, baby, Vegas."

Hello again from J-List. This time I've hopped over to sunny Las Vegas for a few days of much-needed relaxation and fun. My wife insisted we stay at the Bellagio, which I assume is so she can act out some George Cloony/Brad Pitt fantasy, but I'm okay with that. Right now I'm enjoying a frozen margarita by the poolside and wondering at that most amazing of inventions, the open wireless Internet connection.

"You've been in Japan too long when you appear for your first skiing lesson with brand new Rossignol high performance racing skis and an aerodynamic racing suit with color matched goggles...and then snowplow down." One thing I've learned about the Japanese is, they often care a great deal about how they appear to others. One of the reasons why Japan seems to be such a "proper" place, with most members of society doing what they're supposed to be doing more or less, is the mechanism known as hito no me (hee-toh no meh), or "the eyes of others." If you're outside the line of what those around you perceive as "normal," the weight of their gaze will slowly pressure you into getting back in line. When a Japanese goes skiing he or she usually approaches it from the standpoint of kakko (style), and starts with a "proper" set of expensive skiing equipment -- a lot different from the jeans and garbage bag I've worn in the past.

As a country, too, the Japanese are concerned with how they look to outsiders, and whenever an international event like the Olympics or the World Cup rolls around, I know there'll be a flurry of construction at airports and major train stations so that visitors from foreign countries will "oo" and "ah" at the technological achievements the Japanese have attained. The Japanese love for any of their number to get international recognition, and Japanese who raise the status of the nation, like writers Kawabata and Mishima and directors Kurosawa and Miyazaki, enjoy a near God-like status because they improved the image of Japan in the eyes of the world. Similarly, Japanese who made their country look bad internationally become pariahs in Japan. Yoko Ono, the woman who broke up the Beatles? It's like she doesn't exist here. Baseball player Hideki Irabu was a slob who brought embarrassment to Japan, and they've all but written him out of the history of Japanese in the MLB. Issei Sagawa is a Japanese man who killed and ate a women in France in the early 1980, which earned him the emnity of his people even though he has some success writing restaurant reviews now.

It's often said that Japanese society is 10-25 years behind the U.S., and that changes in the U.S. will filter over to Japan 10-25 years after they've happened in America. Sometimes this seems true -- it took Japan until 1999 to get its first law requiring car seats for children, and laws against things like sexual harassment in the workplace similarly followed U.S. laws about a decade later. Also, Japan only recently released that "skin color" wasn't really an appropriate name for a crayon and changed it. When I first came to Japan, it was common for newspaper job listings to be divided among "men" and "women" with many listings stating that only people aged 30 and under would be considered. Over the past few years, laws have been passed that forbid this practice. Companies get around this new rule by using graphics in their classified ads -- for example, a picture of a young, pretty OL (that's Japanese for "office lady" or female office worker) sends a signal that the company is looking for younger females to fill a certain position, and not males, and thus, more females will apply for that job.

Thinking about "conformity" some more, making English easier for students to learn, and the Brazil you can visit from Tokyo for 1000 yen

I've written about conformity in one form or another a lot recently. The word isn't one that Americans probably have a very good impression of, although if you stop and think about it, society functions only because all of us are conforming in one way or another -- for example, I'm wearing pants right now, as you probably are, too. Still, I know that the Japanese carry the concept of "harmony" and working together farther than most countries might. I had a British friend who went back to the U.K. because he couldn't stand the image of his son wearing a yellow hat and walking in a line with other kindergarten kids, looking like little ducklings following behind the mother duck. When Japanese seem to rebel against society at large by dressing up in outrageous "goth-loli" costumes in Harajuku on Sundays or driving motorcycles modified to be extra-loud through the city, in a way they're just jumping from one group to another, conforming in a non-standard way, but conforming nevertheless. Back in the early 1980s when anime was a really "underground" thing to be into, my friends and I fancied ourselves quite the rebels, too. Living in a country like Japan is great because it makes you reflect on your own society, too, and cause you to wonder what is truly original, and what is inspired by outside influences?

"You've been in Japan too long if you have, at any time, been engrossed in an 'easy reader' novel or other work intended for ESL learners." English is a difficult language, of course, with thousands upon thousands of vocabulary words for students to muck through. To help them out, there are "reduced vocabulary" books published which have a lower level of vocabulary, like the 1500-word version of Love Story that I couldn't put down. Once I got the bright idea to teach a class using a Magic 8-Ball, which would give my students practice with asking yes/no questions like, "Will Keiko be a flight attendant someday?" or "Will Peter give us a test tomorrow?" Sadly, almost all the answers provided by the traditional 8-Ball ("signs point to yes," "my sources say no" etc.) seemed custom-crafted to cause confusion among learners of English -- too bad no one ever made an "easy" version of the Magic 8-Ball for ESL use. Incidentally, I noticed the other day that they've made a "simple English" version of Wikipedia. Too bad they didn't have that available back when I was teaching!

Brazil may be on the other side of the world from Japan, but it's just a short drive away from our house in Japan. The town of Oizumi (oh-EE-zoo-mee), about 30 minutes from the J-List office, is known as "the Brazil you can visit from Tokyo for just 1000 yen." With an official population of 10% hailing from Brazil (but, wink wink, the unofficial count may be more than twice that number, wink wink), it's a sprawling center of Brazilian language and culture. Just as in the U.S., the high number of foreigners can cause friction with the local residents, despite the fact that many factories and businesses in the area depend on the pool of Brazilian labor, and when the annual Carnival festival got too rowdy a few years ago, the mayor of the town pulled the plug. Many of the residents of the town are of Japanese descent, the products of various diasporas of Japanese to South America during the early 20th century, and these immigrants get special status when it comes to getting work visas, etc. One major complaint I have about the situation with Brazilians in Japan is the recent trend towards constructing schools to education Brazilian children in their native language, which only erects barriers between them and the larger Japanese society, and makes it difficult for them to ever consider themselves a part of the whole, as I do myself. A much better solution would be to have school with some classes taught in Portuguese but with a time-limit that forced the students to learn Japanese, perhaps with a special Portuguese-only track for kids who know they'll be returning home in a short time.

Jet Lagging in the USA, ways that Japanese reflect total social harmony, and would you save your baby's umbilical cord?

Well, once again I've made the hop from Japan to San Diego, which takes about 24 hours from door to door -- not too bad, considering I've travelled halfway across the globe. International travel can be a hassle, but at least it's just one long flight compared with making several different connections, as you often have when flying inside the U.S., and alcohol on international flights is always free. I'm currently going through my brief period of "reverse culture shock" in which everything in the U.S. looks kind of funny to me, from the sizes of "small" drinks at restaurants to cars careening down the wrong side of the road and so on. The colors that enter my eye actually seem to be different, but that might be the jet lag I'm feeling right now, or perhaps the leftover effects of all that free alcohol on the plane.

The Japanese can be a harmonious group of people, able to move in tandem in ways that hodge-podge Americans might have trouble conceiving of. One interesting concept is koromo-gae (koh-roh-moh GAH-eh), the official changing from summer to winter clothes, or vice versa. Since Japanese all change from their winter to their summer school uniforms on June 1, and back to winter uniforms on October 1, warm weather often spills over requiring students to swelter in the heat for a few weeks on each end. Although it might be very hot outside, virtually all students make the switch on the same day, so that one day you're seeing dark blue winter uniforms and the next day they're replaced by white-topped sailor suits, as if by magic. We got a lesson on how important not standing out can be to students the other day. During some extra-hot weather last week, we suggested to our son that he switch to his summer uniform early, since it eas plenty warm to warrant wearing the short-sleeve outfit. It'll be some time before I can forget the look of utter shock he gave us as we suggested that he be the only boy in the entire school to switch to his summer uniform early just because it was uncomfortablly warm. Sometimes confirmity can be important, I guess.

You never know when Japanese customs will catch you off guard. When our kids were born, I insisted on being in the operating room during the birth so I could be the one to cut the umbillicle cords and help bring them into the world. This was rare enough that I got some surprised comments from the doctor and nurses, who were impressed with my dedication. I was talking about this event with my wife the other day, and she told me "Oh yes, and I still have those umbicle cords saved in a drawer." Supposedly, it's considered a requirement for parents to save that all-important memento of their children when they're born, to dry it and put it in a specially decorated box and keep it safe. Another interesting child-related custom is that of throwing teeth that fall out on the roof or under the house, depending on whether the tooth that came out was on the bottom or the top of the mouth, respectively. This ensures that strong teeth will grow in the future.

On the heels of our great permanent price reduction on a dozen or so of our English-translated PC dating-sim games, we've got great news for you: the next two games we're posting for pre-orders! The first title is Snow Sakura, an outstanding game by D.O. in which you play Yuuji Tachibana, who has moved to a cold part of Japan, surprised to find himself surrounded by beautiful girls who love him. Can he discover the mystery of the strange cherry blossoms that bloom in the cold of winter? Then enjoy the upcoming Lightning Knight Raidy, the popular fantasy "monster combat RPG" from Zyx in which you must prowl through virtual dungeous and do battle with beautiful female monsters. Both games are in pre-production now and will be released in the coming months. You can preorder now and get free shipping when they come in!

For the new update, the J-List staff has prepared lots of new and back-in-stock goodies for you, including ear cleaners shaped like samurai swords, our fun electric eraser shaped like a banana, good luck charms for 'safety driving,' restocked snacks (Black Sugar Caramels, Black Black Tablet Strong Type, Shigekix Cola), restocked toys (Totoro Alarm Clock, Bible Black figure, Hello Kitty Play Refrigerator), and much more. For our 18 plus customers, enjoy many great items too. Click here to see all the newly updated items.