Thoughts on biculturalism and Halloween, types of ramen you should try, and my fascination with Japanese females

Happy Halloween from J-List. Halloween is one of those "American" holidays (although originally Irish and Scottish) that has a way of working its way around the world, and although Japan doesn't exactly need an excuse to engage in cosplay, what with their strong tradition of dressing in anime costumes and all, awareness of October 31st grows here year by year. Raising kids who are part of two countries has always been a challenge for my wife and I since we want them to really be a part of both, which means (on the American side, at least) having a cultural awareness of things like trick-or-treating and Scooby Doo and being able to sing the School House Rock songs (they can). So we've gone out of our way to make trips to the U.S. for Halloween and Thanksgiving, not on our regular travel schedule, although it was a lot easier to do when the kids were small and didn't have the pressure of school to deal with. This year we decided to be traditional, and carved a (fairly ugly-looking) Jack-o'-lantern. We had a bit of culture shock when I asked my mother-in-law for a candle to put inside the pumpkin: the only ones she had in the house were the long candles for lighting at the family's Buddhist altar in remembrance of the dead...which is actually closer to Halloween's original meaning, if you think about it.

Ramen is one of the most famous "Japanese" foods around, although its history in Japan isn't very long, having been imported from China in the Meiji Era. While instant ramen has proven to be a revolutionary product, allowing the cost of a meal to brought way down in price, readers who have never enjoyed "real" ramen in a good restaurant are missing out. The basic type of ramen familiar to most people is shoyu, made with a soy sauce-based soup, although there are other varieties, including "salt" (a clear soup sold under the tastier-sounding "chicken" moniker in the West) , "tonkotsu" (white "pork bone" broth), and sura-tanmen (think "sweet n' sour ramen"). Another popular type of ramen is miso, the delicious soy bean curd that my mother thought was peanut butter when she saw it, which is one of the "meibutsu (famous things) of Sapporo in Hokkaido. Right now, the Sapporo Ramen Company is running a commercial featuring a beauty pageant in which different brands of ramen compete in for the title of "Miso Universe," a great tribute to the current Japanese Miss Universe.

One constant source of fascination and confusion for me since coming to Japan has been trying to understand Japanese women. Like the country itself, they're incredibly complex, and can just as easily delight you as leave you scratching his head in confusion. First, Japanese females generally tend to be calm, cool and good at planning ahead. Sometimes (from the standpoint of my over-exuberant American self) they can seem rather emotionless, and the thought has occurred to me that I know what it's like to be married to a Vulcan from Star Trek. "Lack of spontaneity" is another label you could apply to most Japanese females I've known: when I went to Europe I brought a backpack, a Lonely Planet book and a credit card and played everything else by ear, which shocked my wife, who so loves to plan every minute detail of a vacation ahead of time. I've mentioned before that Japanese females often seem to have problems with constipation, which no doubt arises from eating rice three meals a day. Japanese females also seem to be subject to chills, and the Totoro Lap Blankets made by Sun Arrow are no doubt used by more than a few OLs ("office ladies," i.e. female company employees) trying to stay warm with the air conditioning on around them. Japanese females often seem to have some rather strange and inexplicable fetishes. For example, several women I've known have loved pulling my chin hairs out by the roots, and have begged me to not shave for a few days so that they could rip my hairs out with tweezers -- totally bizarre. Although they can be confusing to men, learning a little about the care and feeding of Japanese females can certainly have its rewards.

NOVA goes "nova," the latest trends in women dressed up as men, and little "incompatibilities" between Japan and the U.S.

Well, what everyone feared has come to pass: the chain of English schools called NOVA has gone, well, nova, officially filing for bankruptcy protection. While I'm happy to get that damned pun off my chest, it is unfortunately a dark day for English teachers everywhere. Nova is (has been) the largest of Japan's "big four" McEnglish conversation schools, with a staggering 4000 native English teachers in its employ, and most of these teachers are now in the market for other jobs. Sadly, they haven't been paid for a month or more, and the status of their back pay is up in the air thanks to the bankruptcy. Nova brought these troubles on themselves through massively bad management, preferring to railroad students with "discounts" that involved multi-year contracts -- and you thought the U.S. cell phone industry was bad -- rather than satisfy their customers by teaching them well. Now, its the poor eikaiwa teachers and former students who end up paying the price. Having worked for a failing ESL school in the past, I do feel the teachers' pain, and I hope they'll all be okay. The president of the company, Nozomu Sahashi, has done what many Japanese company presidents do when things get rocky by going missing, and if I'm right he'll mysteriously take ill and have to be checked into a hospital soon, as a way of staying away from the news cameras.

The only constant in life is change, and in that tradition Japan's otaku world is always coming up with something new for us. Everyone knows about Maid Cafes, where beautiful Japanese women dressed in exotic maid uniforms pour coffee for their (usually male) customers, whom they address as "Master." Now women who are interested in yaoi comics, anime and PC gaming culture can enjoy Japan's first "BL Cafe." In Tokyo's bustling commercial district known as Ikebukuro there's a street called Otome Road (Maiden Road), fast becoming the yaoi answer to the more traditional otaku culture found in Akihabara. On that street is a restaurant called Lily Rose, staffed with incredibly attractive men who look like they stepped out of a BL comic. Oops, scratch that -- the staff is actually all women who are dressed as yaoi-esque males, complete with male names like Keisuke-kun. The employees of the restaurant are known as gyaru-son, which combines the word "gal" (i.e. hip young Tokyo girl) with "son" to make garcon, a really fabulous joke. Why would women want to eat in a restaurant staffed by women dressed as effeminate men? One patron said: "Because the staff are really women, I can eat without fear of a man trying to pick me up, allowing me to take in the beauty of the 'men' around me as I enjoy my food."

Japan is a great place, and I do love living here. That's not to say that things aren't plenty of large and small "incompatibilities" that foreigners need to get used to when coming here. First of all, the Japanese use the metric system, so if you're from the U.S. you'll find yourself learning to think in meters, kilograms and degrees centigrade, to the great annoyance of friends back home, and before you know it you'll be like me, unable to remember your weight or shoe size under the American system. In lieu of paper sizes like "letter," the Japanese use the A4 stanard, which takes time to get used to but is very logical -- A4 is similar in size to letter, A3 is twice that size making it similar to tabloid, and so on. Japanese plugs are the same shape and voltage as used in the U.S., but they nearly never have the third prong for a ground (or "ass" as they say in Japanese, the local pronunciation of "earth"), and this causes you to get pretty savvy about carrying a plug adapter with you in your laptop bag. DVD regions are different, of course, with most discs sold in Japan encoded as region '2,' although we've got our region free DVD player at home to take care of that for us. The air nozzle for bicycle tires is a special type used in Japan (and France), so if you bring a bicycle from the U.S. like me, prepare to be unable to add air to your tires. Finally, there's probably nothing taken for granted less than paper coffee filters, but they're quite important to us: the large filters are not available in Japan, with its tiny "girly man" coffee makers, so if we want to have our morning coffee we need to plan ahead.

All about the Japanese and shoes, the benefits of living in another time zone, and understanding the world through its taxis...?

You probably know that the Japanese take their shoes off when they enter a house. Shoes are considered to be extremely dirty objects which must never be brought inside unless they're thoroughly cleaned first, and my wife keeps our old washing machine outside our house specifically for shoes, since washing them in our normal machine would be unthinkable. I once had the gaul to stand on a bench with my shoes on and got yelled at by my students for causing inconvenience to the next person who wanted to sit there, something that had never entered my mine before that point. Shoes are always left in the "genkan," a recessed area by the front door which is officially considered part of the outside of the house (in the old days, the genkan was much larger and animals were kept there). One staple of TV dramas and boy-meets-girl anime involves a girl who comes to her boyfriend's apartment only to see another female pair of shoes already there, an interesting dramatic twist that would be difficult to translate culturally to the West. The other day, my daughter came out to carry some bags from the car without putting her shoes on, which caused me to realize what a gaijin my little girl was. Because the soto (outside) of a house is so much dirtier than the uchi (inside), it's all but unheard of for Japanese children to walk around outdoors barefoot.

You can view the world in many ways, from the standpoint of history, politics, the arts, or if you're like me, comparative popular culture. Or if you like, you could focus on taxi cabs. Although we all take taxis for granted, they're often an interesting symbol of each respective country, from the iconic Black Taxis of London to the multi-cultural mish-mash that are taxis in New York City. When my son went to Malaysia he was fascinated to see that all the taxis there were vehicles made in that country, apparently required by law, which caused us to start paying attention to taxis whenever we went somewhere new. If you ever come to Japan, be sure and take a lot of taxi rides, as it's a real treat. Just as taxis in Germany are usually well-apportioned Mercedes Benz vehicles, 90% of Japanese taxis are the Toyota Comfort, made by Japan's most famous automobile company specifically for the industry. Japanese taxis are extremely clean, and when they're not driving someone to a new location, taxi drivers are usually lavishing care on their vehicles to keep them spotless. The most interesting aspect of Japanese taxis for foreigners are the passenger side doors that open and close automatically, using a hydraulic mechanism the driver can control. It's the ultimate in convenience.

One issue of living in Japan and running an international company like J-List is dealing with the time difference between here and the rest of the world. Japan is 16 hours ahead of California, which means that when people on the West Coast of the U.S. are sitting down to dinner, we're all just starting our morning the next day. Being ahead of everyone else has several benefits, including the ability to forget birthdays or Mother's Day without penalty, since you can be a day late but still be in the zone. It's a benefit for Mac users, too: I got to get Leopard, Apple's new OS, 16 hours ahead of most of the world. Although people grumble about having to remember to set their clocks for Daylight Savings Time, it's not a problem here since Japan never adopted the system. While not having to spring forward or fall back is nice, having it get dark at around 4 pm then going to bed while the morning sun peers through my window is kind of lame.

Thoughts on innovation and cameras in cell phones, the "next" Brad Pitt as an Otaku, and update on all those lovely fires...

Is teen heart-throb Zac Efron, the so-called "next Brad Pitt," an otaku? That's the question asked in a Japanese magazine I happened to come across the other day. Zac is getting a lot of press in Japan because of the popularity of the High School Musical films which made quite a splash here, and he's accumulated a sizeable base of screaming female fans. The article was especially interested in whether or not Zac's love of anime like Dragonball Z, Death Note and Evangelion qualified him as a bona fide otaku or not. Zac is quite taken with Japan, and whenever he's here he reportedly heads to Akihabara for some serious shopping. In a way I guess it's no mystery that Zac's name goes hand-in-hand with anime in the minds of Japanese fans, since he's named after one of the most famous mecha from the Gundam universe, the MS-05J Zaku, the backbone of the Principality of Zeon. The Japanese certainly are no strangers to cute male idols. Between the constant flow of new "boy talents" from the Johnny's Entertainment management agency and the current crop of South Korean male idols hoping to make it on Japan's lucrative idol circuit, Japanese fans have a place in their hearts prepared for Zac.

As in most other parts of the world, the cellular phone has taken root in Japan in a big way, and a lot of the innovations we now take for granted came about as a result of the stiff competition in the "keitai" (portable phone) market here. Take the humble in-phone digital camera, a feature that just about every unit sports nowadays. The first phone to feature a built-in camera was the Sanyo J-SH04, released back in 2000 by J-Phone, formerly Vodafone and now part of Yahoo Japan mogul Masayoshi Son's Softbank empire. This feature started the era of "Sha-Mail" (picture mail), allowing people to email 80x160 pixel postage stamp-sized pics to each other, surely a landmark in the progress of mankind. Which brings me to one more big difference between Japan and the U.S. -- patents and how they're used. While all modern countries allow for new ideas to be patented for a period of time so that the owners can realize benefit from their inventions, I've seen some pretty bizarre patent claims over the years, including individuals asserting "ownership" of the concept of the mouse click, a virtual shopping cart, and the hierarchial menu. Somehow, the Japanese manage to get by without these kinds of "patent wars," and it's very rare that the subject comes up at all. When Nissan comes up with a nifty new way to add storage space to a sedan, they don't try to patent it to keep Toyota from copying it, and when the first camera was put inside a phone, no company tried to get a own the concept of "A method for mounting a CCD censor in a communications device." Yet somehow, the Japanese economy seems to move along pretty well, with competition making sure the best products are chosen most often by consumers. I wonder what it is the Japanese are doing differently when it comes to patents?

Although my adopted country is always fun, I still have love my real home town of San Diego -- the beautiful weather, the laid-back attitude, being able to go to the beach in January. Unfortunately the warm Santa Ana winds that make California such a nice place most of the time to be are causing absolute havoc right now, as fires engulf hundreds of thousands of acres. San Diego has several fires still burning, and winds are still whipping the flames to incredible temperatures, causing tragedy for many and forcing a mind-blowing 300,000 people to be evacuated. Our thoughts are with everyone caught up in these events, and we hope things will start to turn around soon. While J-List's San Diego office isn't in danger, several of our employees are affected by the flames, including two who can't get to work because of closed roads. We're striving to make sure any delays in shipping products are minimal while firefighters get the flames under control, and we thank everyone for your understanding in advance.

Little differences between Japan and America like sandwiches, crime and honesty in Japan, and vending machine costumes?

Sometimes it's fun to notice the little differences between Japan and the U.S., like the way packaging of products is much sturdier here, with two or three layers between you and that Kit Kat bar and drinks in steel cans thick enough to stop bullets. Another difference I came across recently involved the preparation and consumption of sandwiches. Last night I decided to make grilled cheese for dinner, something I don't usually do since the only sliced cheese available here is a bland-tasting Mozzarella called "melty cheese." I asked my wife and daughter how they'd like their sandwiches cut, launching into a slightly obsessive explanation of the many ways to approach the cutting of bread, and how I personally preferred a single diagonal cut from corner to corner, or in the case of grilled cheese cut into four triangles so you can see the melted cheese as it slowly cools. My family stared at me with blank expressions, though, and it dawned on me that the Japanese, who eat rice far more often than bread, have less "sandwich culture" than us. That's not to say sandwiches don't exist at all here -- popular varieties include ham, egg salad, whipped cream and strawberry, cucumber and mayonnaise, and one of my favorites, Katsu-Sand, or a fried pork cutlet with that heavenly sauce called "sauce" on it inside bread. In keeping with the Japanese traditional of ensuring that all females are constipated all the time, sandwiches are usually served with the crusts completely cut off (to avoid roughage).

If you checked the Internet over the weekend, you may have caught one of the dozen or so blogs that linked to a wacky image of a person dressed as a Coca-Cola vending machine, from a piece last week in the New York Times. The article stated with a straight face that fear of being assaulted while walking down the street was causing Japanese females to disguise themselves as vending machines to feel safe, which immediately compelled me to check my calendar to see that I hadn't somehow time-slipped to April 1st. For the record, the Times reporter got this one wrong, taking a parody creation intended as social commentary for a product people would actually use. It is, of course, easy to get the wrong idea about Japan, a country that seems at times to be specially created to perplex Westerners. I remember as a child hearing about the paper walls in Japan and wondering how they kept rain and wind out -- but of course, shoji doors are only used inside, and there are sturdy walls of wood and concrete between you and the elements. Before I came to Japan, I got some advice from an older gentleman in a barber shop to "Stay away from those geisha! They'll get ya!" I've yet to find anything resembling real geisha in modern Japan, although I drank beer with a Shinto shrine maiden once. And those weird Japanese inventions you may have seen, like tiny umbrellas for your shoes or a small electric fan you attach to your chopsticks to cool your noodles as you eat them? They're a long-running gag called "chindougu," or "useless Japanese inventions" and they don't exist, although we always get a few requests for them at J-List.

For the record, Japan is statistically quite a safe country when it comes to crime, and visitors here probably have nothing to fear (as long as you watch out for those geisha). Murders are so rare in Japan that when one occurs, it's often discussed for days, and the idea of a murder not being reported in the news because it was "too normal" is unheard of. Japan has been rumored to be a country so honest that you could forget an expensive camera on a park bench and go back for it the next day to find it still there, and this has proven to be true for me on several occasions -- also, a gaijin friend of mine managed to lose his wallet in three different parts of Japan yet it was returned to him through the police all three times. It doesn't always work that way of course -- I once managed to have an expensive Zero Haliburton case taken off a train in "safe" Japan, then a week later in the U.S. my wife lost her purse with $800 in cash inside (silly Japanese females, will they never learn?), yet it was returned to her with all the cash inside. If you're planning a trip to Japan, you should have nothing to fear as long as you take certain precautions. Avoid bringing too much cash, of course, and keep valuables close to you, and if a place looks seedy and dangerous, it may well be -- use common sense and try to go with a local friend as a guide if possible.

J-List specializes in Japan's excellent PC dating-sim games, which feature intricate stories and beautiful anime-style characters you can interact with in many ways. One of our favorite titles is also one of the most unique: Casual Romance Club, a game that was released in English and the only game in which the girls will chat with you in beautiful (Japanese accented) English as an option. It's one of the most realistic "dating-sim" games ever conceived of, since that's what you do, interact with the girls in the "dating club" and find out what makes each girl tick, then ask them out for a date -- but watch out, since the girls can be quite jealous of each other, just like in real life. For a limited time, you can get this game sent to you with free shipping, quite a savings since it ships from Japan in a large heavy box with the most beautiful computer manual you'll ever see in a PC game.

Remember that J-List carries tons of wacky Japanese T-shirts, with designers that use the aesthetic beauty of kanji to create a great original look for you. Whether you're looking for wacky messages like "Support the Emperor and Expel the Foreign Barbarians" (a popular 19th century political slogan), subtle messages like "Warning: Rated H" or are more interested in shirts with cultural appeal, we've got plenty of designs for you, with both standard men's shirts as well as stylish fitted T-shirts for girls from American Apparel. Also, now that it's starting to get cooler, we humbly suggest you check out our line of extremely warm hoodies, which are made using the best quality 80/20 cotton blends available for years of softness.

By request, I present pictures of our "reform" (remodeling), at least as far as my wife will let me take pictures of, since the house is dirty and all that. We mainly did two things, replace the "unit bath" and tore out the ceiling in our living room, leaving a big space and making a little guest room up there.

This is the tatami room, which we retooled to use square "Ryukyu-datami" Okinawa-style tatami which we like better because we just gotta be us. Our builder cleverly wrapped natural wood pillars around the old ugly ones, making everything look cool. My wife insisted on a big red wall in the background, to break up our otherwise colorless home.

Since shoji doors came up today, here are ours. They're much more functional, since they slide into the side parts so they're completely out of the way. The bottom rails where the doors slide on is also "barrier free" so you won't stub your toe on them.

Close-up of the Okinawa-style tatatmi mats.

The little room upstairs is quite unused right now. We call it the Uno room since that's all we do up there, play Uno, but we'll get some kind of chairs up there later.

Thoughts on how English loan words are used in Japanese, public affection in the English classroom, and the "V" sign

Sometimes it can seem that the Japanese use of creative English is totally random. I mean, how can you quantify the giant sign near J-List that says "SPLUSH IS NOT ONLY THE PROBLEM OF AGE"? But there do seem to be subtle rules for what words get brought in, if you pay attention. Obviously, words for modern technology tend to get imported a lot, and you'd be hard pressed to talk about routers, servers or internet packets without using loan words. Another use of English is to capture a particular emotion, which you see with words like like skinship (スキンシップ, the feeling of a mother or father holding their baby in the bath), love-love (らぶらぶ, a mushy word for being in love) or my-home (マイホーム, a person fulfilling the dream of building their own home). One thing I've noticed is that "positive" words tend to get borrowed more often than negative ones, which goes hand-in-hand with the idea that English is the language for optimistic people, an opinion I've heard expressed here several times over the years. This positive thinking can be seen in product and company names like Cook-Do, a line of easy-to-prepare Chinese food for housewives; "I'll," a travel company who's name makes you think of all the wonderful things you'll do when you reach your destination; Power Up Coming Life, the slogan of a computer store chain; and Try, a school that sends tutors to your home to teach your children. Let's all level up our happiness with English!

My wife continues her volunteer work at our daughter's elementary school, despite her misgivings about having the regular Japanese homeroom teachers being involved in teaching English when they often have no skills in that area. (The other day a boy got barked at for saying "How are you?" to my wife before she said it to him, as if there were a set rule that you could only greet others when greeted first.) Yesterday my wife was invited to eat lunch with the 5th graders, so she got to sit and have her first kyushoku (Japanese school lunch) in twenty years -- they served gratin, curry and minestrone soup. When it was time for her to go, my daughter gave her a big hug, which caused everyone in the room to stare in silence. The Japanese are not really into public displays of affection, and it was quite shocking for them to see. I'm sure it will give the kids the impression that Americans are all wildly emotional people who hug each other all the time.

Have you ever noticed the "peace sign" (aka the victory or V-sign) that Japanese people make with their fingers whenever they're having their photographs taken? It's almost the Japanese National Gesture, and quite puzzling to foreigners who wonder why every single Japanese seems to make this sign in every photograph, especially cute girls. While the origins of this strange pose are not known, I would guess that U.S. soldiers probably made the sign (originally popularized by Winston Churchill) while posing for photographs during Japan's occupation, and it entered the Japanese mind set at that time. When you say "peace" your face naturally smiles, the same as saying "cheese." Another way the Japanese get you to smile for a photograph is asking, "What's one plus one?" (in Japanese, Ichi tasu ichi wa?). The answer of course is ni (two), another word that naturally makes your face smile for the camera.

Japan's otaku culture continues to spread around the world, and the latest boom is called dakimakura (dah-kee MAH-koo-rah), also known as "hug pillows" or "body pillows." Essentially life-sized long pillows around which a beautiful printed pillow case is wrapped, these large pillows are the ultimate otaku decoration for your room, great to lay around with while watching TV. J-List now carries the popular hug pillow covers from Machi Chara and others, and we've posted the first great dakimakura for you, with your very own life-sized version of Choco from Chocotto Sister and Louise and Siesta from the anime Zero no Tsukaima. See them on the site now!

Remember that there's still time to get that special wacky item delivered by Halloween, thanks to speedy yet affordable EMS shipping method. Whether you want to decorate your door with the Hello Kitty Jack-o-Lantern items we have or you're trying to score one of those killer Anbu masks we just got back in stock, we'll rush your order out to you. Since we've got the best selection of Japanese snacks outside of the Land of the Rising Sun, you can also give something really special to the kids this year!

On the evolution of language into new forms, thoughts on internationally famous Japanese, and my connection with New Zealand

Every language is constantly evolving, and while the English major in me isn't always happy about the LOLification of my own native tongue or seeing teenagers going weeks without typing an upper case letter or using punctation, I know that it's natural for language to be pulled in different directions by its various speakers. It's normal for words to be borrowed from other languages and adjusted for meaning to fit new situations, too, and fully half of all English words come from French -- for example, words like beef, pork and poultry came to indicate the meat of cows, pigs and chickens through the interaction between French-speaking landowners (who ate the meat) and their English-speaking hired help (who tended the animals). The Japanese borrow words from other languages too, and not just silly phrases like SUPER HAPPY LUCKY. While most foreign loan words are 20th Century imports, quite a few came into use in the Edo Period and before, including tempura (from the Portuguese word for spice), garasu (window glass), ko-hi (coffee), and kirishitan (Christian). In fact, these words have been in use for so long they have kanji assigned to them, which violates the rule that katakana be used to write foreign-based words. Since these kanji words have old-world charm associated with them that's not unlike archaic spellings of words in English ("Ye Olde"), it's common to see these kanji words used to create a unique atmosphere in coffee shops, etc.

I talk a lot about the special status assigned to any Japanese person who becomes internationally famous. Raising the stature of Japan in the eyes of the world gives those individuals an incredible boost in popularity at home, and names like Shirow Masamune, Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa are treated with almost god-like reverence because they're so well-known outside of Japan. The current issue of Newsweek Japan presents 100 Japanese who are distinguishing themselves in their respective careers around the world, with musicians, architects, horse jockeys and even a wine sommelier introduced. Among the more well-known names in the list were the beautiful Miss Universe Riyo Mori and animation director Mamoru Oshii, the mind behind the Ghost in the Shell films. Shigeru Miyamoto, the genius who brought us Super Mario Bros., the Legend of Zelda and the Wii, also got a big mention, which was long overdue since he's almost totally unknown in his own country (poor guy). Another interesting name on the list was none other than Domo-kun, the spokesmonster of NHK, Japan's public broadcasting network. The Japanese are tickled that this cute brown monster has found so many fans around the world.

I've always had a special connection with New Zealand, it seems, beyond that of any normal fan of Tolkien and Star Wars. (The Lord of the Rings films were all filmed in the country, and Tem Moirrison, the actor who plays bounty hunter Jango Fett and all the clone troopers comes from there.) When I was six, my family moved to New Zealand for a year, allowing me to get my first experience living in a country other than the USA. I was young and it was confusing for me -- why was everyone pronouncing the letter "zee" like "zed"? -- and they only had one TV channel back then. But I have a lot of good memories of the place, from Big Ben's Meat Pies to Farmers Department Store in Aukland, and the experience probably prepared me for my current expat existence. Today my son is off to New Zealand for a month long homestay in the country, where he'll study with the other students from his experimental English elementary school. I wanted to make sure he paid attention to everything around him, so I gave him a list of 100 things I want him to take pictures of, from New Zealand school uniforms to convenience stores to what power lines were like in the country. (Japan has laws against burying phone lines to protect the telephone pole industry, which make Japanese streets look quite ugly.) I'm a firm believe that every young person should be made to live outside of his home country for a time, if nothing else than to teach them him how good they have it back at home, and if you've got a child who could use improved perspective in life, consider shipping them off somewhere for a few months.

J-List carries a lot of fun products from Japan, one of our favorite categories are the 2008 calendars we've got in stock right now. Printed for the domestic Japanese market, these calendars feature large, glossy pages with beautiful printing that will look great on your wall, or the walls of the lucky people you give them to. Best of all, the art and photographs from the calendars are original and made just for this year's calendars, allowing you to enjoy beautiful images of your favorite anime characters, never published before. Remember that calendars are a very seasonal item and within a couple of weeks we won't be able to order any more of them, so don't delay ordering the cool calendars you want.

Having fun with perceptions, all about Japanese steak, and my trip to a Caribbean Beach

Perceptions are funny things, and it's surprising how easily they can be wrong. One day a student of mine asked me with a straight face, "Do they have McDonald's in America?" Like most Japanese, the student had grown up with "Makudonarudo" around her all her life and had naturally assumed it was a Japanese chain. Another student of mine was sure that Sony was an American company, since it wrote its name in katakana, and was quite surprised when he learned the truth. In Japanese, the word for detective is keiji (刑事), which has the same pronunciation of Nicholas Cage's last name, prompting my son to become confused about why the actor only made police drama stories (he thought each movie was part of a series called the Detective Nicholas series). Compared to Japan with its strict social rules, America can seem like a very "free" place, and a lot of times Japanese who study English get carried away with this, saying whatever comes to mind because they're sure that's what Americans are doing all the time...

Before I came to live in Japan, I didn't expect to find much in the way of steak, since (I was sure) beef would be so expensive that a person would have to sell one of their kidneys in order to afford it. In reality, the Japanese eat quite a lot of beef in many forms, from gyudon (beef bowl) to yakiniku (Korean BBQ) to sukiyaki to high-end Kobe Beef that costs $50 per plate. While the most common form of beef consumption in the U.S. is probably the All-American hamburger, in Japan it would most likely be the "hamburg steak," a steak made from ground beef, which costs around $6-10 for a complete meal. (Quick quiz: a hamburger is to a frankfurter as a hamburg is to a ____________?) Our our favorite chain of steak restaurants offers many varieties of hamburg steak, with the most popular variety being a steak served on a sizzling plate with sauce made from grated daikon radish poured over the top. Steak is always served with a side of steaming white rice, and because meat is considered "Western" food you always call the rice by its English name (raisu) rather than Japanese (gohan) for some odd reason. To the Japanese, a really good steak means fattier fare, and the best meat is ripped throughout with fat to make it succulent -- although it can be a bit too rich for my palette. When our family makes our weekend trips to the mountains, we often eat Korean BBQ, which is essentially pieces of marinated beef cooked over a fire and eaten on rice, and we've learned that the cheapest type of meat suits us the best since it's the leanest.

Over the weekend I took my kids to Caribbean Beach, a wave pool that lets us experience a visit to the beach in the middle of landlocked Gunma Prefecture. It's quite an ingenious system, with all energy for the pool being provided by a massive 10-story trash incinerator next door, which converts everyone's "burnable trash" into heat and captures nearly all the smoke. Like many aspects of modern Japanese life, it was built by our local city with tax dollars rather than as a private enterprise, and the cost of going to the pool is partially subsidized by the fact that we've already paid taxes. While the pool is a an example of a well-conceived service, there are plenty of instances where the Japanese government has thrown money away on facilities no one has asked for and few will use. The biggest bank in the world isn't Citibank, or Chase Manhattan or Bank of America: as determined by deposits, it's the Japanese Postal Savings Accounts, which hold a staggering $2 trillion in cash. Unable to resist this low-hanging fruit, Japanese politicians have allowed some of it to be used for construction of a chain of large resort hotels throughout the country, which never seem to have many guests. With the privitization of the Japanese Post Office, most of these facilities are to be decommissioned, (hopefully) sold to private companies or just demolished. It's hard to be happy about having the facilities be closed, but since they're all operated in the red anyway I guess it's for the best.

2008 Japanese Calendar Season is in full swing, and we currently have stock of tons of great anime, Japanese idol, sports, kanji and other 2008 calendars for you. We've also posted stock of a dozen or so calendars to the site today, with a focus on traditional photographic and art calendars, including Heart of Garden (beautiful images of Japanese gardens), Love Nature Bonsai, Four Seasons of Japan, Utamaro (traditional art of the Edo Period), and more. Browse our great selection of calendars now!

More pictures from my trip to Asakusa. For lunch, I stopped at this place, since the name was just too cool.

This is of course one of the most famous places in Japan, the Kaminari Gate at Sensoji.

I was having fun looking through all the shops. Some sell cool souvenir items you might want to buy. Others sell stupid stuff, like this "oppai pudding in a cup".

This is always a shocker. Of course, the swastika's arms are going the other way from the Nazi one, and it's an ancient mark used for thousands of years.

This kid was really surprised when I translated his T-shirt for him.

I discovered place where famous people had put their hand prints. This is film director Takeshi Kitano...

...who has the same size hand as me.

(The answer to the above quiz is, a frankfurt, which is what a frankfurter with no bun around it is called.)

Nuances of how you call people in Japanese, writing systems in Japanese and how they've changed, and gaijin fingerprinting

First, we apologize for an outage on the J-List and JBOX.com websites, which was caused by a bad router at our ISP. During part of the problem, the J-List site was functional but search and shopping cart functions were broken (ouch). The issue has been fixed and the site is up and ready for you right now.

One interesting aspect of Japanese relationships are the invisible rules that govern what you should call others, which can be very complex can nuance-filled. A man named Taro Yamada might be called "Yamada-san" by his co-workers (polite), "Yamada" by his boss at work or his male friends, and "Taro" by his family or his girlfriend. What you call someone is important, since it defines your perception of your relationship with the other person, and choosing the "wrong" thing to call them might lead to misunderstandings or bad feelings. In an episode of an anime I'm watching now, a girl and boy who've started dating struggle to get past calling each other by their family names, which places a distance between them that neither wants. When the girl's younger sister asks why the boyfriend calls her sister by her last name, the two turn red-faced as they struggle to get used to using each other's first names so their relationship can progress. What's interesting to me is that this is such a conscious, out-in-the-open thing that everyone is aware of, not under the surface at all. As usual, my impressions of Japan are filtered through my experiences as an American, and I often get the sense that some of the customs that seem odd to me might not feel so strange to someone from the U.K. -- in the Narnia books, for example, I've noticed dialogue between characters that seemed to follow these Japanese-style naming rules even though it was in English. It wouldn't be the first time I was confused by someone I encountered in Japan only to have it turn out to be somehow related to England instead.

You may know that there there are a total of four writing systems used in Japan: hiragana, a syllable-based script for writing basic Japanese words and grammatical particles; katakana, a mirror of hiragana that's used to express foreign loan words and names; kanji, the Chinese writing system used for more complex verbs, nouns and adjectives; and unofficially, the Roman alphabet romaji, for expressing concepts like FOR RESTROOMS, GO BACK TOWARDS YOUR BEHIND. While constantly mixing multiple writing systems sounds like a confusing mess, learning to read Japanese effectively isn't nearly as difficult as you may think -- it's a logical framework that you can approach in a methodical fashion. Reading Japanese from a different era, however, can be quite a challenge, and even Japanese written around World War II can be quite hard to read, between archaic versions of kanji and hiragana (like the always fun ゐ or ゑ）, writing that sometimes went left-to-right and other times right-to-left, and decidedly odd ways of writing kana resulting in something about as strange to my eye as Shakespere must look to Japanese readers. It turns out that after the war ended, there was a movement to standardize and modernize the Japanese language, which eliminated a lot of weird and unused characters, resulting in a much more approachable language overall. I'd like to say, on behalf of gaijin everywhere, thanks to whoever was in charge of this.

The next time you come to Japan, you will probably be fingerprinted and photographed in accordance with a new program about to be put in motion by the Japanese government. It's not that big a deal, of course -- every foreign visitor to the U.S. has been going through the same process for years, smiling for the camera and presenting their right forefinger. While part of the impetus for the move is embarrassment that a member of Al Qaeda managed to enter Japan in 2004, I know the move for what it really is: the latest example of Japan following the lead of West, in this case specifically the U.S. In many areas, Japan as a nation seems content to follow behind the United States and Europe, taking cues on everything from its laws on seku-hara (sexual harassment in the workplace) to how much money you can bring into the country in cash (US$10,000), and the fingerprinting of incoming foreigners (Japan-born Koreans are exempt) is just another way of imitating America. Another factor is probably Japan's desire to feel that it's a part of the global "war on terror" despite the fact that Japan is a pretty peaceful place that's not generally hated by most of the world -- Japan clearly wants to be nakama-iri (part of the same in-group) as the U.S. and Europe. Considering that all terrorist attacks in Japan have come from domestic elements like the Aum religious cult and the Japanese Red Army, I predict the whole finferprinting project will be a big boondoggle that does nothing but create a database of information that no one will ever look at.

Interested in learning some Japanese? Whether you'd like to just learn the basics of hiragana and katakana, learn some fun phrases that can make you the life of the party or make an organized plan to master the entire language, J-List offers a wide range of textbooks, kanji study cards, workbooks, electronic dictionaries and other useful tools that can really help you reach your goal. Why not browse our lineup of study related items now?

Here are some pictures, if you want them. I took a trip to Tokyo on the Shinkansen on Thursday. Snapping random shots out the window, I just happened to catch this love hotel.

Our destination was Asakusa, a popular tourist spot since they have a famous temple there, and a lot of shops. This is the famous "Unko Building" (it's an Asahi Beer creation that looks like golden poop to everyone) with one of the famous Rick-Shaws (which is 人力車 in Japanese in case you were wondering).

We were walking and happened to bump into the headquarters of Bandai.

Ultraman, Doraemon, all the cool characters were out to play.

Passed by a really old used book store that had to have been there since the Taisho Era. This old-style sign is mighty cool, I thought.

Internalizing a foreign culture through gestures, the current state of English conversation in Japan, and guess what day to day is?

Living in a foreign country means more than just learning that country's language. It also means subtly taking the local culture inside you, something that can really sneak up on a person -- one day you're shunning natto and forgetting to take your shoes off when you enter a house, and the next you're serving "coffee jelly" to foreign guests for dessert. An interesting yardstick for how much of this culture a person has internalized are the gestures that we all use every day, since unlike spoken language, gestures are something we don't consciously think about. A big part of body language in Japan involves bowing, and Japanese are known to bow out of reflex even when talking on the phone -- nothing is funnier than seeing a gaijin do this too. Another famous gesture is "tegatana," meaning hand-katana, made as you move throw a crowd while simultaneously bowing and cutting an invisible path with your hand, karate-style. You can communicate some complex concepts using a simple gesture; for example, one salaryman might pantomime throwing back a sake glass to his friend ("Do you want to stop for drinks on the way home?"), while his friend might make little demon's horns with his forefingers and shake his head ("I can't, my wife would be really angry").

The word eikaiwa means "English Conversation," and this is probably one of the first Japanese words a person interested in teaching ESL in Japan encounters. The market for helping Japanese people learn English quite large, and is mainly dominated by the four chain schools ECC, AEON, GEOS, and the largest school, Nova. Unfortunately for the 5000+ native English speakers who work in Nova's "study abroad in front of your local train station" schools, the company is currently going through a rough period that might result in its total meltdown. When most foreigners have experience with Nova it's usually as a teacher -- there are plenty who will give you an earful of the various abuses of the company -- but in my own case I actually considered having my daughter study English there, a considerably rare thing for an American living in Japan to do. It soon became apparent that the company was really interested in signing us up for a 5 year contract in which we were required to pay, even if our situation changed or teachers that we liked at our local school left, with no refunds, either. Turns out, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled this practice illegal, and Nova was ordered to suspend part of its business for six months as penalty. Now it seems that the company is having trouble paying its foreign staff as it tries to keep out of bankruptcy. Incidentally, I generally advise anyone interested in coming to Japan to teach English to steer clear of these large chain schools if you can, since based on my own experience you'll be happier at a smaller school that will provide a more personal approach to teaching English.

I've written before about how the Japanese like to commemorate interesting days. June 4th is Mushi no Hi (Bug Day), when we should all appreciate the things that the insect world does for us, while March 11 is Panda Day, the date when the first panda bears were discovered by a French missionary in China in 1869, and who could forget Fried Chicken Day on November 21st, the date the first KFC opened in Japan back in 1970. October 10 is is Moé no Hi, the day to celebrate the Japanese concept of moé (pronounced mo-EH), which is a slang term that essentially describes the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when looking at your favorite anime or dating-sim game character, although the character itself just means "bud" or "sprout." The reason today is Moé Day is rather silly -- it's the 10th day of the 10th month, and when you line up the kanji for 'ten' above the characters for 'day' and 'month' you get a large version of the moé kanji. If you like the look of this kanji character, we've got a really cool moé calligraphy T-shirt, available on the site now.

There's been lots of news for fans of Japan's PC dating-sim games recently, including the recent announcement that the upcoming game Bazooka Cafe had gone "golden master" and would be shipping in a couple of weeks -- can't wait for that. We've also got a new game coming from the creator of Bible Black, called Discipline, which features an amazing game story and huge lineup of memorable characters that will quite blow your mind. Preorder this great game now!

J-List sells many T-shirts that use kanji, hiragana and katakana to creat fun and wacky designs that are fun to wear. This month's "Wacky Japanese T-Shirt of the Month" is our famous "It Is Forbidden To Urinate Here" design, which is -- incredibly -- a sign you can see quite often in Japan. It seems that Japanese males aren't shy about taking a leak in rice fields, by the side of the road, or sometimes near people's houses, and so you can see these signs forbidding tachishon, that is, outdoor urinating. Our T-shirt features a great symbol of a torii, a traditional Japanese arch, since one place these signs are common are near Shinto shrines (don't want to offend the gods by peeing near them). This shirt is available at a special price this month only!

Learning about Japan through first- and second-person pronouns, the relationship of Japan and Hawaii, and more fun with Japanese superstitions

Strangely enough, you can learn a lot about Japan through its first and second person pronouns: there are several of each for use by different individuals depending on the "TPO," or time, place, and occasion. For the pronoun "I" you could choose from watashi (私, formal, used more often by women, also read わたくし), boku (僕, semi-polite, usually used by younger males), and ore (俺、OH-reh, mainly used by "manly" men); and words for "you" include anata (あなた、formal, used by women more often than men); kimi (君、familiar, used by guys to their girlfriends or by anyone talking to a younger person, and just because the character also means "Emperor" don't think it's okay to use this word with him); and omae (お前, oh-MAH-eh, again, a "macho" sounding word generally used by guys). This last word is especially interesting since it basically asserts the superiority of the speaker over the person he's speaking to, a concept that doesn't exist in English, at least openly. When a man uses the word omae to a female he's got a relationship with, the implication is that the girl "belongs to" him in a romantic sense. This generally will make some girls swoon with affection, while others -- those who speak more English and have lived outside of Japan -- may be offended by being thought of as an object to be possessed. I once got in quite a bit of trouble when I accidentally used this word with a friend's girlfriend soon after arriving in Japan. Who would have thought that words like "I" or "you" could be so complex?

J-List's manga and photobook meister Yasu just got back from a trip to Hawaii, where he spent a week with his wife and two daughters. Hawaii is, of course, a major destination for Japanese travellers, and the monthly number of tourists from Japan is tracked as if it were an economic indicator like the Consumer Price Index. In a way, Hawaii is perfect for Japanese tourists because it's a part of the U.S. without being all the way across the Pacific, so it's a lot more accessible. Also, the high amount of Japanese fluency at hotels and other places frequented by tourists makes the place a lot less threatening for travelers who might otherwise be overwhelmed. The most popular island with Japanese tourists is Oahu, which has plenty of beaches for fun seaside activities, and during peak times of year the place is fairly brimming with J-tourists. The history of Japan and Hawaii have been intertwined for a long time, starting with waves of immigration of Japanese workers at sugar plantations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now, there are more than a few actors and singers active in Japan who grew up in the Japanese communities that comprise 16% of the local population of the state. I guess being a Japanese raised in Hawaii adds an "exotic" flavor, and being fluent in English can't hurt a person's career, either.

I've talked before about how the Japanese can be quite superstitious at times. Don't cut your fingernails at night, or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die. If you see a hearse, you should hide your thumbs inside your fists, or the same thing will happen (this is due to the fact that the word for thumb in Japanese means "parent finger"). Don't whistle at night, or snakes will come an get you. When you sneeze twice, it means someone is gossiping about you, a joke that pops up in anime quite a lot. If you see a spider in the morning, it's good luck, so don't kill it. Don't sleep with your head facing north, as only dead people do this, and never pass food from chopsticks to chopsticks. If you want to check the weather tomorrow, throw your shoe as far as you can; if it lands sole down, it will be sunny, but if it's on its side, it will rain. Here's another superstition for you: supposedly, it's good luck for a man to carry a hair from his girlfriend's, er, nether region in his wallet when playing sports or gambling. We're not so sure about that one, but anything is possible with the Japanese.

J-List sells many fun and unique T-shirts that make use of Japanese kanji, hiragana and katakana in their designs. We've always been fascinated by how the Japanese adapt their 3000+ writing system to a standard computer keyboard. We love the way Japanese keyboards look, with the kana characters printed on each key, and decided to make a T-shirt featuring this cool design. Shirts for guys and girls are both posted on the site right now.

Questions about ice cream in Japan, on Japanese students who use their dictionaries too much, and funny corporate slogans in English

I was once asked if the Japanese eat any flavors of ice cream other than Green Tea. The answer, of course, is a resounding yes -- they're quite into various types of ice cream, from standard flavors that everyone knows to some unique varieties that may seem a little odd to you or me. Take a trip to a Japanese ice cream shop and you'll see plenty of familiar flavors, like vanilla and chocolate and sakura (cherry), as well as some flavors that might be new to you, like ume (Japanese plum), sweet potato or traditional sweet azuki beans. Often, ice cream makers base new flavors on food trends, like rose flavored ice cream to make your body smell nice from the inside out, healthy "black sesame" ice cream, or this year's big boom, mango. Every once in a while I run across articles about really rare flavors of ice cream in Japan, like crab, octopus, beer or wasabi. While these products do exist, they're not generally eaten by the average Japanese person, and usually represent some region of the country's efforts to define themselves as the "squid ink flavored ice cream capital of Japan" or something. Since the Japanese like to pretend they're culturally closer to Europe than to Asia, ice cream is often consumed in the form of gelato, although "soft cream" (what soft-serve ice cream is called here) is also popular. One of our family's favorite treats is to take standard vanilla ice cream and sprinkle matcha powder over the top, which is great when it all starts to melt together. By happy coincidence, we just happen to have gotten some matcha powder in stock today.

Yes, Virginia, there really is squid ink ice cream...

One thing that always frustrated me as an ESL teacher was my students' over-reliance on dictionaries. Language is about communication, and as a general rule conversations stop when one party puts their nose in a dictionary to look up a word. It's therefore important to learn how to get around difficult words that would otherwise create a linguistic roadblock, to be able to explain a concept in a different way. I once went hitchhiking up to Northern Japan, and during my trip I decided I wanted to buy a flashlight so I could read in dark places. Trouble was, I didn't know the word for flashlight in Japanese, so I had to describe what I meant in other ways until I want I wanted -- it was surprisingly challenging. In ESL class I'd split my students up into groups and have them describe various words to each other, to help them get used to communicating ideas indirectly. This is extremely important when, say, talking about Japan to people form other countries. Let's say a Japanese person wanted to describe a kotatsu -- a low table with a heater inside and a blanket over the top, which is used in the winter to warm your legs -- to someone from another country. No dictionary will help since the concept is totally foreign, and it's important for them to learn how to find other words for what they want to say.

"Netz. Make the style." This is the official slogan of Toyota's "Nets" showrooms in Japan, used in most of their TV commercials. I'm not quite sure why virtually every Japanese company has to have a slogan in English -- perhaps it's tied to my theory that use of English allows advertisers to access emotions in viewers that couldn't be reached any other way -- but nearly every company has one. They're designed to give you a positive image of the company in encapsulated form, such as small-car maker Daihatsu's "We Do Compact" or UCC Coffee's "Good Smile Coffee." The Meiji chocolate company's slogan is "Delicious...open!" which brings to mind opening one of their packages to find something good inside. When Mitsubishi started having problems with its vehicles, it quietly changed its official slogan from "Heart-Beat Motors" to "Changes for the Better" to show that they were working to fix their products, although I'm sure no one noticed by us gaijin. One of my favorites company slogans belongs to Hitachi, creator of many products from electronics to the bullet trains. Their slogan is "Inspire the Next," and they use it both in and outside of Japan, despite its slightly wonky sound -- good for them. It's not hard to find odd-sounding company slogans. For example, my wife shops at a drug store that declares itself the "Wellness Business for National Confidence." Pretty good for a small chain of drug stores located in one city in Japan!

Linguistic foibles in Japanese, "made-in-Japan" English words for people who like mayonnaise, and questions about inflation

The other day my wife asked me what a "window-breaker" was. I assumed she was asking about a type of jacket designed to protect you from the wind, but she just might have been talking about a person whose occupation it was to break windows. The problem is that Japanese is a syllable-based language, and generally not blessed in terms of the range of sounds you can produce with it. Foreign words like "wind" are written with the katakana writing system, but because you can only produce the sounds da, di, du, de or do but never "d" all by itself, the word "wind" always comes out a bit like "window," something that takes getting used to. There are other phonetic rough spots built into the language, too. When Lord of the Rings (ロード・オブ・ザ・リング) was released here, a lot of fans thought it was Road of the Rings, due to the lack of differentiated L and R (ロード could also be "load"). Another problem area is that the sound "si" is pronounced as "shi" in Japanese, which means that a simple word like "sit" can be extremely embarrassing -- and don't even consider trying to use the English word "pushy" here, it will not mean what you think it will mean. Some other words that can't be accurately rendered in Japanese are "love" and "rub," which effectively become the same word; "curb" and "curve," which also get reduced to a single concept; "cone" and "corn," prompting millions to assume that the thing that ice cream sits on is made of corn; and the extremely hard-to-pronounce trio of "clash" "crash" and "crush."

The Japanese are well known for using the grammatical rules of English to create new words, which are called wasei eigo or "Made in Japan English." One of the most famous examples of these is "nighter," which is what a night game of baseball is called here. Adding this "-er" suffix to words is a popular way to create new words, and there's an extensive body of slang that makes use of this mechanism. For example, the word for "part time job" in Japanese is arubaito, borrowed from the German word arbeit, so naturally a person working such a job is an arubaitaa (arubeiter), also known as a freeter (for "free-lance albeiter"). Often these new words are invented to define a sub-group of society, for example people who love mayonnaise are widely referred to as mayoraa (mayo-ers), while people who love to collect Hello Kitty products are defined as Kitty-raa (Kittylers). There seems to be a connection to general otaku culture, too. It's possible to extend the ending vowel of the word Akihabara to produce something like Akihaballer (egads, that's hard to transliterate), which means otaku who spend lots of time in Tokyo's electronics and anime hub. Of course, these silly words come and go all the time, so don't expect to find them in a dictionary.

I saw a news report the other day that a major producer of instant noodles in Japan will be raising prices by 10-20 yen soon in response to the rising costs of raw materials to make their products. It seemed interesting to me that this was even news, since in the U.S. at least, most people take the slow creeping of inflation for granted, assuming that most things will be more expensive next year than they were a year ago. But for some odd reason, this rule doesn't generally apply to Japan, where the inflation rate always seems to be low. Except for one hike in train fares a few years ago, I'd be hard pressed to name many prices that have gone up appreciably over the past decade -- and in fact, some of prices have fallen, like when Yoshinoya lowered the price of their trademark Beef Bowl. Recently, however, the rising cost of oil has started to put real inflationary pressure on the country, with a liter of gasoline going for around $1.25, which works out to $4.50 a gallon. My wife is also mad because these useful plastic drawers we use to organize our house have shot way up in price.

You've been in Japan too long when you 'teach' someone your phone number, all about the history of Panasonic, and fun with English phrases in Japan

"You've been in Japan too long when you 'teach' someone your phone number." Of course, we all use different words for different functions, and even within dialects of a single language words are "mapped" quite differently -- for example, if you're in North America, do you consider a carbonated beverage to be 'soda,' 'pop,' 'coke' or a 'soft drink'? It varies linguistically by region. In Japanese, certain words are used in situations that seem odd to English speakers at first. For example, when you ask someone to tell you their phone number, you'd use the word oshiete, which means "please teach me," which takes some getting used to. Similarly, in my dialect of English I "buy" (kau) gas for my car, but in Japan you always use the verb "put in" (ireru) instead, and my Japanese friends kept correcting me when I'd use the wrong word. The strange word mapping goes the other way, too. In Japanese the concept of "good" taste (oishii) and "good" quality (ii, pronounced like "ee") are completely separate, so there's a tendency for Japanese to not like using the word "good" about how food tastes -- their brain rebels against the violation of its internal rules, which is why you may notice that Japanese people sometimes over-use the word 'delicious' when they speak English, such as "Don't eat that, it's not delicious."

Like most people, the Japanese have a lot of respect for the business leaders who have created enduring organizations, with Thomas Edison very near to the top of the list. Another man who is well respected in Japan is Konosuke Matsushita. Very poor as a child, he was forced to leave school in the 4th grade and start working to help support the family. Trained as an electrician's assistant, he soon got an idea for a new kind of electric socket, and in 1918 he founded a company to manufacture it with his wife and brother-in-law. This was the beginning of the Matsushita Electronics Company, more famous under its other name of Panasonic, which managed to grow from a tiny shop in Osaka into the largest electronics maker in Japan. That's not bad for a guy with no education or capital doing business in a country that lacks an American-style "two guys named Steve in a garage" type of entrepreneurial tradition. Like all Japanese companies, Matsushita is into a few businesses that might surprise you, including racing bicycles, home construction (as "Panahome"), and elevators. After he retired, Konosuke went on to write books on his approach to business, and founded a Dale Carnagie type management school. He's said that the man he respects the most is Hideyoshi Toyotomi, one of the three "unifiers" of Japan who started out as a peasant but managed to work his way up to the position of de facto shogun of Japan. Like Hideyoshi, Konosuke said he never shied away from any job that was assigned to him, no matter how menial or dirty it was, which was one secret of his success.

For one reason or another, there are certain phrases in English have burned themselves on the collective consciousness of the Japanese, and are quite famous here. When an American named Dr. Clark (universally known as "Clark-hakase") went to Sapporo to help establish what would become Hokkaido University, he left the following advice to his Japanese hosts: "Boys, be ambitious!" (i.e., strive to dream large in all that you do). These three words managed to become extremely famous, and there isn't a Japanese person who doesn't know them. Song lyrics and famous movie lines also provide a bridge to the English language, and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln ("Government for the people, by the people, and of the people") are studied in school the same way we studied Shakespeare in the U.S., too.

Great news for fans of our 2008 Japanese calendars: the first batch of calendars have come in, and are being posted to the site right now. We've currently got lots of stock of such great calendars as My Neighbor Totoro and the oh-so-nice Studio Ghibli calendar, with all new art from the Hayao Miyazaki films; other popular TV anime (Naruto, Bleach, Katekyo Hitman Reborn); beautiful Japanese idols like Yoko Kumada, Misako Yasuda and Yuko Ogura; JPOP stars like Kumi Koda and Morning Musume; and much more. These calendars are in stock and ready for your immediate order, so check them out!

Some pictures of my daughter's sports day of a week ago. Here are some kids running a race.

As usual, I had great fun scoping out funny English on people's T-shirts. This woman apparently has many amorous stories for us.

This guy had on an anime T-shirt, of all things. That's rare has heck in Japan.

Decision shaking, appear & existence."

Criminal?

Nice to know there's a difference.

This is the marching band, playing the Yamato theme song like they do every year (it's a local tradition). It was so hot I was happy to stand out in the middle of the ground with my mother-in-law's frilly lace parasol, just to keep out of the direct sun.

There's some strange connection between the Japanese and Cream Soda, because I had a friend who lived in an apartment called Apartment Cream Soda.

Thoughts on how the Japanese define "family," confusion over English lyrics in Japanese songs, and how to tell a Korean from a Japanese

We've got a bit of a running joke in our family. South Korean television dramas are popular in Japan, and whenever my kids and I catch one on TV we call out to my wife to let her know that "her TV show is on." It seems that for some reason, my Japanese wife seems to be mistaken for a Korean whenever she sets foot outside of her native country. For example, when we fly to the U.S., we sometimes take Korean Airlines since the bibimbap is good, and when the flight attendants get to my wife's seat to ask her if she'd like more tea, they always switch from Japanese to Korean. While this often reaps various benefits -- retailers in Hawaii will give her better discounts if they can't tell she's from Japan -- we always wonder what mechanism is at work. Of course, it's neigh on impossible to tell what nationality a person is just by looking at them, although that doesn't stop Japanese from assuming that every Caucasian must be from the U.S. or Canada.

What is exactly is a "family"? Different people might have different uses for the word, describing members of the same household, or perhaps including a wider range of relatives. In Japan there's no vagueness at all, as the concept of "family" is set by the koseki, or the official family register that's maintained in every Japanese city. An extremely old system -- the first family register dates back to the year 645, although the system in use today was begun in 1872 -- the koseki is a complete record of the lives of every Japanese citizen, including every major event that happens to them, with western ideas such as birth or death certificates and marriage licenses all working through the koseki registry. When a baby is born, he's added to the the family's registry entry, and when a woman gets married she's removed from her father's registry and added to her husband's. Gaijin living in Japan aren't always happy with the family registry system, though. Since we're not citizens, foreigners aren't allowed to be listed officially in the family register except in the comments section. As a result, it looks on paper like my wife is a single mother of two kids, and we've had visits from social workers in our city to check up on the poor woman who has no husband.

When dealing with Japan, it's natural to encounter some "WTF" moments, like seeing a strawberry & whipped cream sandwich for sale in a convenience store for the first time; that first encounter with an ita-sha, a car decked out as a mobile shrine to an anime character; or being asked if having blue eyes meant I saw the world through a blue tint. I remember being confused by the tendency of Japanese songwriters to put seemingly random English phrases in Japanese songs. Reading through my old CDs, I'd see bizarre phrases like HEART CHECK or BLUE RAY, LEMON or GET CHANCE AND LUCK or FAD, FAD, WITH SOMETHING COOL, LIKE A HIDDEN LUMINARY. After a while I came to appreciate that to the Japanese, English represents an emotional investment of (usually) six years of hard work spent memorizing grammar and vocabulary, and songwriters can use English to bring out feelings in listeners that couldn't be accessed otherwise. Plus, English is just so darned kakko ii (cool), so adding a splash of OH PLEASE BE FREEDOM into the middle of a song gives it a special mystique. Another theory might be that the Japanese songwriters are putting bizarre English phrases into their songs to mess with the minds of foreigners who try to comprehend their language, a thought that occurred to me when watching the original Macross movie the other day, with the line "[Small white dragon]...is a very messiah." Is that some obscure Dragonriders of Pern reference? I just can't figure it out...

2008 calendars season is in full swing, and now is the perfect time to browse our extensive selection of over 200 large-format poster-sized calendars that are normally only available to people living inside Japan. From all the hottest anime to gorgeous Japanese actresses and swimsuit idols to kanji and art and traditional images of Japan, I really believe there's something that everyone will love in our great lineup. Personally I recommend the Studio Ghibli calendars, which are a treat every year. The large Ghibli calendar is especially nice because it features all-new and original images from the films of Hayao Miyazaki, including insight into the movies that can't be gleaned from any other source -- for example, through the calendars you can learn what happens several years after the My Neighbor Totoro movie ends. Remember that are great calendars are the perfect gift for anyone who's fascinated with Japan this Christmas season.

The mechanisms of Japan's group structures, big differences in education between Japan and the U.S., and some useful Japanese words

The Japanese, as I've written many times, are quite group oriented, and it's interesting to observe some of the actual mechanisms that support this aspect of society. In virtually my entire education from the 7th grade on, I've had mixed schedules -- math in second period with Mr. Johnson, English in third period with Mr. Mihalka and so on, with different students around me each hour. In Japan, the system is quite different: students are are assigned to a class that they stay in all year long, with teachers coming and going each hour. Being with the same students all day for a year often has the effect of bringing them closer together, and it's probably more common for Japanese to maintain those connections throughout their lives than for Americans. Japanese usually get two sets of these special school groups: those they attended Elementary and Junior High School with, usually kids from the same neighborhood; and friends from High School, which is not part of compulsory education, thus students are free to choose which school they want to go to based on their study goals. My son commutes to school with several boys, a group that calls themselves Hosoya-gumi since they get off the train at Hosoya Station. It wouldn't surprise me if they maintained their friendship throughout their lives.

One aspect of this group-centered approach to education is, what do you when students who must study together are at different levels? When I took Spanish in High School, there were students of all ages in the class with me, since we were all at the same level Espanolically speaking. But in Japan, with its stricter senpai-kohai relationships, it's inconceivable that students of different school years would study together for any reason. If there are students who have trouble keeping up in a certain subject, they are required to take extra lessons and do more homework, since everyone must progress through the same material together. The concepts of a very smart student skipping a grade or a slower student being held back a year are rare here, part of the reason why parents of extremely gifted children often move to the U.S. or Europe, where special talents can be treated as a positive thing. When my daughter gets to Junior High School she's going to have a big shock, since she'll be taking English along with the other kids and learning phrases like "this is a pen" or "I am a boy" despite the fact that she's bilingual already.

It's funny how sometimes a single word of Japanese can carry so much meaning, and there's a group of especially descriptive three-syllable words that can be quite challenging for foreigners to learn. One of word you run across a lot is sokkuri (so-KU-ri), meaning "almost exactly the same as," so if you had a friend who looked like a guy named John, you'd say say "John ni sokkuri desu" (you are the spitting image of John). The Japanese like to do things the proper way, which is expressed in the word shikkari (shi-KAI-ri, proper, correct), and just about the kindest praise you can heap on someone is that they're shikkari shiteiru (they are upstanding and proper in all ways). Another word from this group is "sappari" (sa-PAH-ree, fresh, clean), as in the phrase "sappari shita!" (I feel so refreshed!), said after you get out of a hot bath. Other words from this group include gakkari (gah-KAH-ree), the feeling of being let down or disappointed; kossori (koh-SOH-ree), doing something secretly; and pittari (pi-TAH-ree), describing a perfect fit. Since one valid approach to learning a foreign language is "memorize whatever phrases will make cute female speakers of that language squeal with amusement," consider memorizing some of these words and pulling them out at the right moment to see what happens.

Well, darned if we don't have even more 2008 calendars posted for preorder today. There are lots of nice new calendars up on the site, including the gorgeous upcoming calendar for the all-new Evangelion movies, new Hello Kitty offerings, kanji calendars to learn Japanese with, cute idols like more of the popular "Hao Hao Baby Panda" calendars, several new anime calendars, and a great "Doraemon's Go-Anywhere Door" offering for 2008.

The next Prime Minister of Japan is decided, more thoughts on how the Japanese keep their politics peaceful, and things to do in Tokyo

Well, the race for the leadership of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is over, and the calm, moderate Yasuo Fukuda has emerged victorious. Japanese leaders need to be consensus-builders, and when LDP politicians compared the calm, steady Mr. Fukuda (71) to his younger, more fiery colleague Taro Aso (66), it didn't take long for them to decide which was the safer choice, even if Fukuda does look like a parody of a Japanese salaryman complete with "bar code hair." While I was hoping for avid anime and manga fan Aso to be chosen -- I can just see the cabinet appointments he'd have made, with Rumiko Takahashi and Katsuhiro Otomo heading up the various government ministries -- I guess I can't fault the lawmakers' logic. Mr. Fukuda happens to be from J-List's home prefecture of Gunma, the fourth Japanese leader to emerge from our sort-of rural, sort-of urban part of the country, and it's no small point of pride here to have so many Prime Ministers springing from this humble land. Mr. Fukuda has promised to continue to support the U.S. in its current operations and work for better ties with China and South Korea. To that end, he's agreed to refrain from visiting Yasukuni Shrine, a private Buddhist temple in Tokyo where thousands of Japanese soldiers are interred, including some of the primary war criminals. That alone will be a refreshing change.

The new Prime Minister is famous for cracking jokes

It was interesting to compare the process by which Japan's next leader was chosen with the way that parties pick candidates back home. There can be a lot of political blood shed between candidates vying for a nomination in the States, yet the two hopefuls for the top LDP job avoided any negativism whatsoever in their statements, speaking nothing but words of praise and respect for each other as they slowly worked to win the trust of their party. One impression I had was that very few people seemed to be involved in the process, with most discussions going on behind closed doors -- which is one of those sho ga nai (it can't be helped) areas of Japanese politics, I guess. One of the words batted around this time was "thoroughbred" (the Japanese sounds funny, サローブレッド, "saro-breddo"), indicating the long history both Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Aso have had in politics, being the son and grandson of former Prime Ministers, respectively. This mattered enormously to the political establishment in this country where true outsiders and political mavericks are few and far between.

I often get asked by readers who are coming to Tokyo for a visit what they should do while here. While the Kanto region of Japan pales in cultural significance to the greatness of cities like Kyoto, Nara, and Himeji about 400 km down the Shinkansen line, there is plenty to see and do here. Tokyo has a lot of beauty to be found, and shrines like Asakusa and Meiji are popular with foreign visitors, or else take a stroll through Ueno Park and check out the many museums found inside. Shopping is always a fun activity, and there's plenty of good things to buy here, from high-end department stores all the way down to the shopping streets of Ameyoko, which grew out of a black market during the occupation of Japan. There are some good short day trips out of the Tokyo region, including the lovely town of Kamakura, home of the second largest Buddha statue in the country; and Nikko, a breathtaking collection of temples and shrines and a 5-story pagoda. Being from San Diego, I've always felt an affinity for our sister city of Yokohama, and that city is definitely great for doing some sightseeing, especially the Chinatown area. Part of the fun of visiting Japan can be going to places you've seen in movies, manga or anime, such as the Shibuya 109 building, or the inverted pyramid of Tokyo Big Sight, or Tokyo Tower, the scale replica of the Eifel Tower featured in dozens of anime series. If you're ever looking for a hotel in Tokyo, I always recommend the Mets Hotel Chain operated by JR, a convenient and modern chain of hotels built into major train stations for extra convenience.

Good news for fans of our large-format 2008 Japanese calendars: we've posted *even more* amazing anime, JPOP and sexy idol calendars to the site, allowing you to browse what we have and put your preorder in now. Japanese calendars are extra-special because the printing is so large and beautiful, and since the calendars are not generally available outside of Japan, they're a unique way to bring a slice of Japan to your life all year long. Today's calendars include the relaxing Rilakkuma ("Relax Bear"), beautiful women like Shoko Hamada and Yuka Kosaka and and China Fukunaga; anime series like Xenoglossia, a great sci-fi series using characters from the IdolMasters universe; a calendar of baby pandas, a calendar that teaches you Japanese, and much more! Browse our 2008 calendars now!

More about the "second childhood" you get when learning a language, my daughter's Sports Day, and all about the Toyoya Prius and Tezuka Osamu

Last time I mentioned the "second childhood" I'd enjoyed as a student of Japanese. It's true -- learning a foreign language as an adult is not so different from a child acquiring his first language, and there are many similarities between the two. For example, there's word play, joining this word and that to see what happens as you explore the boundaries of grammar and vocabulary. While native speakers of a given language are shackled by social rules and expectations, new learners are free to be creative since they don't yet know what can't be said. This is where we get phrases like "happiness blows on me" (a shampoo marketing tag line) and "Happy Ice Cream!" (what a kid says when they accidentally say the same thing as their friend) and sports drink named Pocari Sweat. Back when I was an ESL teacher, I had a lot of evening classes teaching English to elementary school kids, and many of the silly jokes they would come up were very amusing to the as-yet unsophisticated Japanese part of my brain. One such joke is Inochi kakeru? (EE-no-chi ka-KEH-roo? 命かける？), which means "Would you bet your life on that?" Since the word kakeru could also mean "to be able to write," the phrase could be alternately taken to mean "Can you write the kanji for 'life'?" (命書ける？) which the other person must promptly demonstrate. I had never heard this joke and laughed heartily at it, although it's about as funny as a screen door on a submarine to Japanese who grew up here. Learning a foreign language is fun because it's one of the few situations where you can act like a child without being self-conscious about it.

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. (The band at my daughter's school plays the Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers theme every year without fail.) Tomorrow is our turn to "oo" and "ah" at our daughter's school as the kids celebrate youth and sports, and we've got everything ready, from folding chairs to cameras to bento. Companies know that parents are really "oya-baka" ("parent-fools" who go ga-ga over their own kids), and target them with new devices that will allow them to record their children for posterity. The newest offering from Panasonic promises to put "full hi-vision into Mama's hand" with a small video camera that records 1920x1080 resolution video on SD cards. I'm not sure if smaller electronics are considered a feature for mothers rather than fathers, or if Panasonic is being smart by aiming at the person who controls the household's purse strings (as women usually do in Japan), but it's a darned nice video camera, anyway. (Click here to see this year's commercial. Flash required.)

Recently the Toyota Prius had its 10th anniversary as a shipping product, and to celebrate, Toyota licensed the characters of Osamu Tezuka to promote the successful car. As the creator of many of the early smash hits in manga and animation, Tezuka holds a special place in Japan today as the"God of Manga." He created his first manga at the age of nine, and went on to pen over 150,000 pages during his lifetime. He's credited with inventing the famous large eyes seen in Japanese animation, although he was just imitating Walt Disney and Betty Boop, and he was the first person to successfully bring animation of manga-style images to the television screen. The list of his contributions to Japan's manga and anime world are long, including Jungle Emperor Leo (aka Kimba the White Lion), Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), Hi no Tori (the Phoenix, one of my all-time favorites), biographical stories about the lives of Buddha and Beethoven, and the long-running Black Jack. Stanley Kubrick was a fan of Tezuka and wanted him on the design staff for 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the artist couldn't take the time away from his comics drawing.