Learning Japanese can be easy. No, really!

With a sentence structure and grammar unlike anything used in the West along with three different writing systems, learning the Japanese language can certainly be challenging. Then again, there are times when Japanese learners get off easy. First, there are whole swaths of words that are simple to learn, thanks to the way kanji words can be appended to the ends of other words. If you need to specify a language, just add the kanji for language (go) the end of a country name, resulting in France-go, Russia-go and so on. Similarly, nationality can be specified by sticking the character for "person" (jin, pronounced "jean") on the end of a country name, for example America-jin, Nihon-jin. When the Japanese adopted the Western calendar during the Meiji Era, they wisely named January ichi-gatsu (1-month), February ni-gatsu (2-month) and so on -- much easier than using the old esoteric names from the Edo Period. One of the most difficult areas of English for Japanese to learn are verb tenses like past perfect and present progressive, but I'm happy to report that none of these structures exist in Japanese, something bilingual foreigners are thankful for every day. Similarly, Japanese is not a tonal language like Chinese or Vietnamese, making it much easier for English speakers to pronounce. There are some difficult patches in the language, of course, including concepts like "sister" which get split into two, oneesan (older sister) and imouto (younger sister). When I'm talking about something my friend's sister did, my brain isn't used to filing away the age of the girl relative to her male sibling, and it can be difficult to pull that information out on the fly while speaking quickly.

The truth behind "Omiai" (Arranged Marriages)

When I was growing up, I remember thinking that they had arranged marriages in Japan, probably something I got from watching the episode of Happy Days where Arnold gets married in a traditional Shinto ceremony. In reality, the Japanese custom of omiai (easily remembered as "oh, me eye!") is more like an "arranged meeting," a kind of formal get-together between prospective partners, usually organized by busybody aunts who can't stand the thought of their being any single people around them. Omiai can take place with all family members in attendance, or just the prospective couple. Interestingly, you're supposed to bring a Japanese resume form on which you can record your school and work background as well as interests (horseback riding and tea ceremony are recommended hobbies for prospective brides), just like applying for a job, which strikes me as a little odd. If the young people hit it off, they'll go out on more conventional dates to see where things lead. Before my wife met me, she had had omiai with a few men, including the son of a sake distributor that her parents have a business relationship with, hence she couldn't refuse. Fortunately for me, all of the men were quite bowled over by her extensive travels and ability to speak English, and she was still available when I came along.

Learning about the subtleties of Japan through children's programming

Living in Japan can bring you into contact with concepts that may be difficult to wrap your mind around. While Sesame Street has been shown here for years, it really never got that much traction; a much more popular childrens show is the NHK program Okaasan to Issho ("With Mother"), which has been broadcast non-stop since 1959. The show is divided into sections that feature different songs for kids to sing, presumably with their mother, although I would join in despite the title of the show. One song teaches kids "AIUEO" and the beginnings of the hiragana sound system, while another is the Pajama Song, which celebrates toddlers being able to put their pajamas on all by themselves, quite an achievement when you're that small. I've found it interesting to observe the little cultural differences between the show, which is watched by practically every child age 0-5 in Japan, and what I remember watching from my own youth. The show is always hosted by a Singing Older Sister and Singing Older Brother, who lead the kids through the various songs in each section. One day I noticed that the Older Brother host always spoke informal Japanese (早くなるぞ！） while the Older Sister spoke politely　（早くなりますよ！）, a bit of subtle role model-building for the kids to watch and imitate. When I asked my wife about it, I got a blank stare -- apparently no Japanese person could have noticed such a tiny cultural difference.

This video is the Dango Sankyodai, or the Three Dango Brothers, the story of three little dumplings who live on a stick that was shown on the With Mother show and became a national obsession a few years ago. At the top is the Oldest Son, on the bottom is the Third Son, in the middle is the Second Son, Dango Sankyodai. Dango, dango, dango, dango, danso sankyodai. Warning: this song WILL invade your brain and never leave!

The latest cool thing in Japan -- Hot Beer?

Japan is a country that likes to embrace new things, and whatever new and bizarre trend comes along, J-List will be there to report it to you. The latest cool thing in Japan might just be hot, as Kirin introduces its new "Hot Beer" that's consumed in a steaming cup like coffee. Based on the company's Ichiban Shibori Stout dark beer, the drink is served with a stick of cinnamon and sugar cubes on the side. The heat of the beer is supposed to bring out flavors not present when served cold, including a deep aroma not unlike that of coffee. The beer is being test-marketed at the Kirin factory in Yokohama, but the company suggests that curious beer aficionados can try it by microwaving beer to about 120 degrees Farenheit (50 degrees Celsius) and stirring it rapidly to give the beer a Cuppochino-like foamy head on top. It's supposedly good poured over vanilla ice cream, too.

Gaijin to get Language Requirement to Live in Japan?

There was a minor dust-up on the Internets in Japan this week after the government suggested that it might add a Japanese language requirement for long-term foreigners living here. Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura suggested that requiring foreigners renewing multi-year visas or applying for permanent residency status (which generally means foreigners who have been in Japan for 5+ years at least) to meet minimal linguistic requirements would help encourage the foreign population better fit in and be good for Japan's society overall. Some bloggers and others are crying foul at the suggestion, though, saying that it shows a xenophobic side to Japan's government, but I support the idea 100%. It goes without saying that someone trying to live in Japan will get a lot more out of their time here if they can communicate with people, and if the government can find a way to encourage foreigners to study the language, it can only lead to more understanding between gaijin and nihonjin. (Note that normal visas for jobs such as English teachers, which are issued on a year-to-year basis normally, would not be affected by this plan.) A lot of the comments I saw online had to do with whether or not getting foreigners to learn Japanese would lead to them actually being "assimilated" into Japan's society. That's a difficult question, since I know that even after seventeen years of living here, I could commit seppuku in front of the Imperial Palace and still not be considered Japanese, and I'm okay with that -- I'm just an American who happens to like living in Japan. For myself, I know that you can't learn a language without internalizing the values held by that linguistic group, and and the more foreigners take an interest in learning Japanese, the happier everyone will be together.

Karaoke Update: The Age of the Singing Otaku

The J-List staff had fun at our New Year's Party on Friday, and afterwards we engaged in that famous Japanese past time, karaoke. While most people outside of Japan might imagine getting up and singing in front of a lot of strangers on "Karaoke Night" at a bar, in Japan people usually go to a karaoke box with individual rooms so groups can sing together privately, which mitigates a lot of the embarrassment of belting out songs in front of others. Karaoke uses extremely advanced technology in Japan, with a networked system that streams the songs and video to the machine you're singing with from a central location, which allows the most popular songs to be accessible to everyone immediately after a song's release. Looking at the selection of songs available, I was amazed at how much Japan had changed since my arrival back during the first Bush Presidency. Back then, there was a tiny section of "Anime & Hero" theme songs towards the back of the song book, but with the mainstreaming of anime and video game culture over the past decade, the number of anime-related songs available to sing has exploded. In addition to the main book of Japanese songs and a second book that listed offerings in English, Korean, Chinese and Tagalog (pretty international for Japan), the karaoke box we were at had a third book filled with songs from anime and video games. No matter what minor or esoteric song we searched for, from all the Final Fantasy themes to Dance Dance Revolution tracks and even some songs from the dating-sim games we publish in English, we found them all in the song book. Clearly, the age of the singing otaku is here.

Pictures from the J-List New Year's Party, If You Want Them

Okay, since I managed to get back earlier than I thought, here are some pictures. The izakaya was a place called Hokkatei, combining the first two characters of Hokkaido with Tei, meaning stop or in this case restaurant. Good seafood, considering we're as far from the sea as you can get.

Since Forget-the-year and New Year's Parties are quite common in Japan, restaurants like this have pre-set menus ready for us. We got the sashimi and nabe set, which was lots of fish (which you really appreciate when you come to live in Japan), and three big pots of kim-chee soup. Yum.

A rare glimpse of the J-List crew. Hilariously, the girls all sit on one side, and the guys on another side, no matter what we do. It's like we're all in Elementary School. This is us about to do the clap I wrote about in today's update. 

This is atsukan, hot sake. It warmed us nicely.

The nabe was delicious, too. This is kind of like sukiyaki, but deeper, and with different ingredients, including kim-chee, tofu, vegetables and meat. When we'd eaten it all, they put rice and crab meat in and stewed it some more and it was heavenly.

Later it was off to the karaoke box. They actually have disco balls in them, isn't that cool? Do they have disco balls in the U.S. at all? I've been gone way too long to know the answer to that.

There sure was a lot of anime and even video game music to choose from, testimony to the rise of otaku culture in Japan. Here you can see the full selection of songs from Air, one of the PC dating-sim games that was so popular they made a mainstream anime out of it.

I've posted before about how good karaoke is for learning Japanese. The only problem I had with it was, it's so effective at teaching you how to read and pronounce kanji properly, you outgrow it quickly.

Just what we all need, a medley of songs from Macross 7. Well, that was our fun little party. Hope you are going to have some fun this weekend, too. And of course, kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimas, which essentially means thanks for your past support, and we hope you'll continue to help us out in the future.

Off to the J-List New Year's Party now

I'm rushing to finish this update a little early since tonight we're having the J-List Shin-nen Kai, or New Year's Party. Similar to the Bo-nen Kai or "Forget the Year Party" held at the end of the year, a Japanese-style New Year's Party is an opportunity for companies or other groups to officially mark the start of a new year, and be brought closer in the process. We've reserved a room at a local izakaya, a traditional bar-restaurant that serves delicious food in addition to frosty mugs of beer and bottles of hot sake (got to have the hot sake!). J-List isn't a very formal company, and we're all pretty relaxed while we go about our business of bringing Japanese pop culture to the world, but I'm always surprised how ceremonial these company get-togethers automatically become. Once everyone is present, the organizer of the party (Yasu does it every year) will stand up and formally announce that the party has begun. After short speeches from Tomo or myself, we'll have the kanpai (cheers) and start eating and drinking. When the beer is gone we'll gather again and Yasu will announce that the party has come to an end, upon which everyone will clap their hands together loudly once, which symbolically ends the event until next year.

Observations on Japanese education, and "No Media Day"

The other day I came home from work to spend some time with the kids, and I suggested popping a DVD in and watching it. "I can't," my daughter told me. "Today is 'No Media Day.'" This is an interesting idea that Japanese public schools have started to combat the glut of TV and video games in our modern society, and we had a fine time playing a few rounds of Uno instead. I've noticed some other interesting mechanisms that Japanese educators use to help bring students and their parents together. Recently my 12-year-old son made dinner for us, which was part of his Home Economics homework (he made a meat-and-potatoes dish called niku-jaga, an odd name because it sounds like Mick Jagger), designed to help the kids understand how hard it is for Mom to cook for everyone all the time. Then there was the time my daughter was assigned homework to help her mother around the house, which for some reason included making sure the shoes in the genkan (the foyer where people leave their shoes before entering the house) were all lined up neatly, not scattered like they usually are at our house. Compared with my own experiences in the U.S., I've noticed a lot more involvement by parents in the education of their children here, from frequent Parent Days in which mothers and fathers can sit in on classes to a system that places pressure on parents to spend at least one year in the leadership of their school's local PTA.

Juken season in Japan -- time to eat your Kit Kat!

Right now it's juken (test) season in Japan, when hundreds of thousands of high school students take the university entrance exams they've prepared for over the past three years. The tests that each student must take differ depending on what school they're shooting for. Students trying to get into a national university like Tokyo or Kyoto University -- which are the most affordable, which makes them the most popular, which creates academic competition to get in, which increases the academic stature of the schools -- must take two, a standardized test called the Center Test, then the individual test for their school of choice. Because the Center Test is so important to the futures of so many young people, the subjects that appear on it help determine the educational direction of the country. One reason the Japanese aren't generally proficient at using English despite six years of study is that the Center Test requires only knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and the ability to puzzle out listening comprehension questions; since using English to communicate in any way isn't on the test, it's completely ignored by students. Due to a happy linguistic accident, the name Kit Kat sounds similar to kitto katsu ("you will surely win"), which has made it the official snack mothers give to their kids to munch on while taking their tests. To commemorate the season, Nestle has just released the new Sakura Kit Kat for 2008, which we've got on the site now.

The rivalry of Universities: Keio vs. Waseda

Have you ever noticed that when two groups occupy a similar space, rivalries emerge? Whether you're talking about Mac vs PC, Coke vs Pepsi, or the national rugby teams of Australia and New Zealand, each party will try as hard as they can to win against their hated rivals. The top two private universities in Japan are Waseda and Keio, and like Harvard and Yale, the schools have a rivalry that goes back to their founding a century ago. Keio University was founded in 1858 by Yukichi Fukuzawa, a visionary who travelled to the U.S. to study education at Brown University; he also promoted public education of all children and launched an influential early newspaper. Waseda was launched in 1882 by a former samurai named Shigenobu Okuma who had been taught English by a missionary in Nagasaki using the Bible and the Declaration of Independence as his study guides. Today the rivalry between the two schools is fierce, with Keio students mocking the name of Waseda for containing the characters for "rice field" and laughing at the many used book stores that can be found around the campus, implying that the students are too poor to buy new books, while Waseda-ites dislike the snobbery of Keio's wealthier students. Everything comes to a head twice a year with the So-Kei (Waseda and Keio) baseball match, which is watched by so many students that classes at both schools have to be cancelled. The rivalry between Waseda and Keio extends far beyond the current generation of students, since many members of the government are alums of the two schools. When Japan moved to update the faces appearing on its currency a few years ago, Prime Minister Koizumi (a Keio alum) made darn sure that no one removed Mr. Fukuzawa from the 10,000 note, which was the only bill that didn't get refreshed.

Japan's Wonderful TV "Talents"

Spend a little time in front of a TV in Japan and you'll see more than a few interesting "talents" (tarento), which is a generic word for any comedian, actor or other famous person who appears on TV regularly. These TV stars come in all shapes and sizes, from super cute models like Aki Hoshino and Yuko Ogura, to Speedo-wearing comedian Yoshi Kojima whose signature joke (shouting sonna no kankei ne! or "But that doesn't matter right now!" as often as possible) became a national past-time, to exotic gaijin talents like Bobby Ologon from Nigeria. One star who's been seen on J-TV quite a bit lately is Natsuko "Gal" Sone (SOH-neh), a 5'4" Japanese girl who could probably eat more than you or I could in a dozen meals. A professional "gluttonous eater" who has competed in several competitive eating contests in Japan as well as Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, she has a seemingly endless ability to wolf down sushi, ramen, or mayonnaise pizza (her favorite food). You can usually find her appearing on one of Japan's many variety shows, chatting with the hosts while casually shoveling more food down her gullet. Usually when I watch Japanese TV, I'm on the lookout for yarase, or faked content designed to make for interesting viewing at the expense of honesty, but Gal Sone seems to be the real deal since she eats everything in full view of the cameras. Despite her huge appetite, she weighs only 95 lbs (43 kg).

The uncanny ability of the Japanese to deal with crowded spaces

It's natural for the Japanese to be more skilled at some things than folks in the U.S. or Europe. For example, the Japanese are certainly better at performing detailed, meticulous tasks such as designing small machines or perfectly painting Gundam models, and are also very creative when it comes to making new English words (Meltykiss, yum). Similarly, the Japanese seem to have an aesthetic sense that I think most Westerners lack, an ability to arrange something as mundane as food in a way that brings out its bi (beauty, pronoucned like "bee"), as you can see with bento and other types of Japanese cuisine. Another area the Japanese definitely excel at is dealing with the cramped and crowded spaces that are all too common here. At the Comic Market, the doujin convention held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight, around a half million people need to make their way into the halls and find the artist circles whose books they want to pick up. Buying comics from popular circles means standing in line, which is extremely difficult to do when there are thousands of people milling all around you. Somehow, though, a line manages to form despite all the chaos, with the last person in line politely holding a sign that indicates that this is the place for new people to line up. One of the most important virtues for a Japanese person to have is gaman, the ability to endure an unpleasant situation, and you can really appreciate a society in which everyone understands the importance of being polite to others when there are that many people around you.

How to make a fool of yourself in front of a famous Japanese artist

One of the defining features of the Japanese as a people is that they are generally kenson (KEN-son), that is, humble and not boastful. If you've ever tried to compliment a Japanese person on something such as their English ability or how smart their kids are, you may have experienced a strong denial that can be confusing to Westerners. I was reminded of this during the San Diego Comicon a couple of years ago. While setting up our booth I happened to see a Japanese-looking girl with a badge that read Junko Mizuno. Being a complete idiot, I didn't realize it was the artist herself, and I actually said, "Oh, you have the same name as that famous artist, how interesting." The girl, who is so small-bodied she could have passed for a sixth grader, blushed red that anyone would think her famous, despite her many published works all around the world. One word the Japanese use when receiving some kind of compliment is okage-sama de (oh-KAG-geh sah-mah deh), a phrase which literally means "thanks to you," which is a little weird since the person doing the complimenting probably had nothing to do with the acquisition of the skill in question. Often when you say something nice to a Japanese person, they'll turn the kindness back onto you with this phrase.

Barrier to white people learning Japanese: Kanji

Without a doubt, one of the big barriers to learning Japanese are the kanji, the Chinese characters that communicate meaning in written Japanese. Elementary school students start learning kanji in the first grade, starting with the simplest character there is (ichi, the number one, written 一) and going all the way up to the last character of the sixth grade (hai, meaning ash, written 灰). Although many might blanch at the idea of mastering the entire list of 1945 joyo or "general use" kanji, what you need to be considered literate in the language, it's really not that bad if you take it a step at a time. In recent years, the rise of waapro (word processing) and computers has brought a real change in how people work with their writing system. Since characters are written by hand less often, instead increasingly typed using a computer keyboard or cell phone's keypad with the correct character picked from a list, many Japanese (and gaijin, like yours truly) lose much of their ability to write the characters, although the ability to read them is usually not affected. The problem is pretty widespread, with Japanese people from all walks of life generally less able to write kanji than the previous generation. The other day I caught a TV show called Neptune League in which teams of famous people -- say, female TV announcers, who are all supposed to be very well educated -- ride in a train traveling through a computer-generated mine shaft. Words fly out at them, and they must correctly write the kanji characters on the screen or the CG car will be sent crashing to the bottom of the shaft. It's quite an interesting show -- everyone in our family gets quite excited as they try to write the correct answers before the timer runs out.

Eating "ekiben" (train station bento) on the Shinkansen

On Sunday I took my son into Tokyo to check out an exhibition on robots at the National Science Museum, where we got to see the famous robot Asimo that can climb stairs and play soccer. We took the opportunity to ride the shinkansen, Japan's famous bullet trains that zip along special elevated rails, which is my all-time favorite way to travel. My son told me he wanted to eat ekiben, the traditional bento boxed lunches that are only sold at train stations. Each Japanese city makes its own unique train station bento lunches, like Masu no Sushi (a round disc of rice with salmon on top that you eat like a pizza) from Toyama on the Sea of Japan, or the famous Kanimeshi (crab meat bento) from Hakodate, Hokkaido. The symbol of the city of Takasaki (where we catch the train) is the Daruma, those round red figures that are displayed in homes and businesses to bring good luck, which are representations of Bodhidharma, a historical figure from India in the 6th century who founded the predecessors to Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu, and who attained his unique round shape by fasting and meditating for so long that his arms and legs disappeared. When it came time to choose which lunch we wanted to eat, we naturally picked Daruma Bento, and ate it in the train as the countryside sped by.

Making some changes to the blog

Just a heads up, I'm going to be making some changes to the way I do the blog posts. Instead of one "super" post with several subjects and today's newly posted items, I'm going to start doing smaller, more conventional posts in a more conventional format. I'm doing this for several reasons, but one of them is so that someone who wants to link to a point I make from another website doesn't necessarily have to be pointing to a post with Zenra Ice Skating, or whatever the latest wacky product is. Feedback on this is greatly appreciated. 

Thinking about elections in Japan vs. the USA, a mechanism for sexual equality, and information you can get from the Japanese news

There are two things that are really strange to watch in Japanese: sportscasters giving the play-by-play of an American football game and news reporting on American politics. With the U.S. presidential race officially underway, everyone is watching the caucuses to see which candidates will look the most "presidential" by the time they're done. The Japanese masukomi -- what the news media is called here, from "mass communications" -- is no exception, following candidates around with cameras and explaining to viewers in extra detail just what is going on, since the American political process is about as confusing to the Japanese as, well, the rules of American football. Japan's political structure is quite different, a British-style parliamentary democracy in which two major and three minor parties compete for seats in the country's two legislative houses, with the party or coalition of parties in power electing the Prime Minister. Because the people don't choose their leader directly as with Presidential elections, there's a lot less dialogue between the Prime Minister and the people when it comes to the issues. The Japanese are often fascinated with the gap between flamboyant American presidents with their positive speeches that start with "My fellow Americans" and the more subdued politicians found in Japan, a country in which building consensus with other lawmakers is valued more highly than individual leadership skills. 

  

I talked last time about how many Japanese women don't seem to set the same goals for themselves as women from the West, in many cases actively wanting to get married and become full-time housewives. Not everyone is this way of course: the more urban the area you're in, the more likely you are to find educated women with good careers they wouldn't give up for anything. But by and large, the majority of females live by the motto that "marriage equals quitting your job." Since Japanese law requires that companies provide equal opportunity to both men and women, companies have evolved a two-track system that lets employees choose whether they want to be on a "career" path or the less-demanding "office work" path. At the bank we use in Japan, there are two kinds of employees: tellers who wear bank uniforms while they help customers, and the managers wearing normal business suits, who are responsible for making decisions and bringing new business into the bank. "Career" employees of either gender have to take qualification tests, move around the company more frequently to expose themselves to all its operations and have their performance measured, but they receive higher pay and promotions; "office" path employees, on the other hand, earn less but have fewer responsibilities. While it's probably not perfect, this system seems to work pretty well. Employees who want to pursue a career in banking can opt for the more challenging path, while those who don't want the added work (or who want the option of being able to quit at any time, say to get married) aren't asked to be more career-minded than they want to be.

Tragedy struck the other day when a man got caught in the doors of a gondola at a ski resort in our prefecture, falling to his death, and I happened to note that the news report stated that he was a "part time employee" of the ski resort. A person's status as defined by how they're employed seems to be somehow more important in Japan than it is in the U.S., and news reports regularly inform viewers of whether the person being talked about is a kaisha-in (full-time company employee), arubaito (part-time employee, from the German word for "work"), komu-in (public employee) and so on. It can be odd to hear this information provided so meticulously, especially when the employment status of the person being reported on has nothing to do with the event in question. One of the most common "people categorizing words" you hear is mushoku, or unemployed, so often tied to reports of crimes in the news. It's not stated overtly, but it seems like the inclusion of a persons employment status in news reports helps viewers know how they're supposed to feel, with the assumption that something that happenes to a homeless man or a "member of a violent gang organization" (the polite way to say a Yakuza gangster) is fundamentally different from a white-collar salaryman.

Thoughts on men and women and marriage, things that surprise foreigners in Japan, and how we sound to the Japanese

Yesterday my wife and I went to our favorite restaurant and noticed that the girl who had been working there was gone, replaced by a young man who was waiting the tables instead. I guessed why the girl wasn't around -- "I'll bet she quit to get married" -- and when we asked the owner, that was indeed the reason. When it comes to men and women there's definitely a different mind set at work over here, with a high number of women actively yearning for kekkon taishoku (leaving employment due to marriage) so they can become housewives, at least until the kids are old enough for them to return to work. While I personally believe women can do anything they set their minds to, the goals that many women in Japan set for themselves can be quite different from what's considered the norm back home. During my career as a teacher I had one student who had really dedicated herself to learning English, studying in the UK and working hard to achieve her goal of becoming a "ground hostess" for JAL, one of the most sought-after careers here. Naturally she threw all this away when a coworker proposed marriage to her, quitting her job and becoming the only perfectly bilingual homemaker in the neighborhood. The challenge for me as an outsider is to keep from judging things like this from my own local world-view, since Japan isn't the U.S. and the U.S. isn't Japan, but sometimes it can be a challenge. 

I talk a lot about how difficult it is for Japanese people to learn English, with its complex grammar and pronunciation rules. But what about the reverse -- how badly to foreigners mangle Japanese when we speak it? First of all, Japanese is just a language, and it's not harder or easier than any other -- actually, the lack of equivelents for some of the complex grammar in English ("she would have been able to go...") is downright wonderful. Of course, foreigners speak Japanese with accents, and these depend on the speaker's native language -- an American speaking Japanese will sound very different from a person from China or Korea. Languages like English use intonation to stress meaning, and it's common for foreigners to accidentally apply these rules to their new language, resulting in speech that goes up and down like a roller coaster compared to Japanese, which is rather flat in intonation. (Remember my theory that Japanese people come from the planet Vulcan.) There are a lot of English words in daily use in Japan, like "weekend" or "elevator," and English speakers tend to say these words with their native pronunciations, not the (correct, in this case) more challenging oo-ee-koo-EN-doh or eh-reh-BEH-tah. Some foreigners supposedly speak Japanese too quickly: when the news program World Business Satellite comes on, I know my wife will make fun of the gaijin commentator from Morgan Stanley as he gives his rambling assessment of the latest economic numbers, somehow moving his head up and down like a chicken. 

When foreigners first come to Japan, there are many things that stand out as odd to them. Using coins for the equivalent of $1 and $5 bills, which Americans aren't used to. Having 50 or more vending machines all without immediate walking distance of wherever you are, and sliding a $100 bill into one to buy a drink. Manhole covers decorated with culturally significant images from each region of the country. Getting a hot meal at a convenience store. Horizontally oriented stoplights, except in Northern Japan, where they hang them vertically due to the heavy snowfall. Stores which let you know they're about to close by playing Auld Lang Syne through store speakers. Drinks with names like Pocari Sweat, Calpis or Volume Up Water. It's all very odd, but that's the fun of going to another country, seeing what it has to offer and comparing it with what you know back home.

As promised, here are a few pictures. Been so busy... :(

This is the pen he got from Prime Minister Hashimoto, if anyone remembers him.

Game with a letter, and is stamped with "Prime Minister of Japan" on it, which made our uncle very proud.

This was the watch he got last year. A gold plated pocketwatch, really nice.

This was the thing though, a beautiful silver cup (like the cups the fliers drank sake out of right before they went off on their kamikaze missions). Stamped with the symbol of the Prime Minister.

And here's the letter from the PM, in extra large letters. Essentially thanking him for fighting for his country so long ago. 

A useful word of Japanese, Japan's seasonal nature, and how to teach an 80 year old Japanese war veteran about the Internet

I've got a bit of a problem. On January 1st we did what we always do, visiting my wife's family, including making our annual trip to her 80-year-old uncle's house. He fought during World War II on the Ise, essentially a battleship on the front and a flight deck on the back which could launch a squadron of fighters. We like to listen to his war stories -- he talks about how he got the scar on his face from shrapnel from an American bomb, and how the only reason he survived the war is because they took the fuel from his ship and gave it to the Yamato for its final sortie. I like my kids to talk with him as much as possible, since it's hard to get the kind of insight he can offer us about the past. Anyway, he's decided he wants to learn how to use the Internet, and is hoping we can help him get online. Now, it can be a challenge for any older person to learn something that complex, but it's doubly hard for him. When he was growing up, it was considered "unpatriotic" to use foreign loan words from English, which resulted in words like "curry" being translated into kanji meaning "yellow sauce with meat on rice" (黄色肉入り汁かけご飯）for the duration of the war, and as a result, people from his generation understandably know almost zero English. Yet here I am trying to explain alien terms like "mouse" "browser" and "window," words that can't be translated into Japanese since they're exclusively used in English. It sure is a challenge. 

One of the more useful words of Japanese you might want to learn is nani, which essentially means "what," and is one of the first words that old-school anime fans from the 1980s like me learned -- we didn't have any of these newfangled "subtitles" or "English dubbed tracks" you kids have nowadays. While you can occasionally hear nani?! (what?!) when watching anime or dramas in Japanese, the word usually takes a more polite form in everyday use. The most common usage would be nan desu ka? (nahn dess kah), which is just "What [is it]?" with an implied subject that's usually clear from the context. If you want to ask what a specific object is, point to it and say kore wa nan desu ka? (ko-REH wa nan dess ka), which is "What is this?" In Japanese, there are "counters," words you use to count different types of items, like mai (for counting flat objects, like sheets of paper or coins) or hon (for counting cylindrical objects like umbrellas). You can combine these counters with nani to ask thing like "how many playing cards?" or "how many pencils?" which would be nanmai? or nanbon? respectively. Put this kanji together with the character for "hour" and you get nanji, what hour, e.g what time is it now. Since this word has the same pronunciation as that dreamy bread served in Indian restaurants (naan), all foreigners are required to make the same corny joke, holding up the bread and asking kore wa nan desu ka? (which would mean either "what is this?" or "is this naan bread?"). 

One thing I've noticed about Japan: it's a very seasonal place. Spring is beautiful with its short-lived cherry blossoms, summer is hot and humid with many festivals, fall is filled with crisp brown leaves, and winter is cold and frosty. I've met Japanese who tell me with great pride that, unlike America, Japan has four distinct seasons, and they enjoy every one of them -- apparently these people haven't ventured outside of Southern California. Japanese people try to avoid being kisetsu-hazure (ki-SET-tsu HA-zoo-ray), which means doing the wrong things for the wrong season, and foreigners regular receive comments like "What's wrong? Aren't you cold?" for wearing short sleeved shirts on warm days in October -- we're too dumb to know that long sleeves should be worn after October 1 regardless of the actual temperature. Once, I was teaching a lesson using an ESL textbook with my students which featured a picture of a boy flying a kite in summer. My students were amazed that anyone would do this -- it turns out in Japan, flying kites (called tako) is something you do on New Year's Day, and almost no one would think of flying kites during any other season. Our lesson turned into quite an interesting cultural discussion.

Learning about trust in a drinking establishment in Japan, why Japanese kids love New Year's Day, and what is a "tish"?

When a person goes to live in a foreign country, it's natural that he encounter some words and concepts that are strange to him, and I was certainly no exception. One of my first huh? moments upon arriving in Japan being taken to a snack, which is a small drinking establishment where you can get drinks poured for you by a pretty woman, belt out a few tunes at the karaoke machine, and get something to eat, which is where the snack part comes in, I guess. I learned something about Japan during my first visit to one of these places: there's a lot more trust here than there is back home. Behind the bar at any snack you can see dozens of bottles of whisky with people's names written on them. This is called "bottle keep," where a customer will buy a bottle for his own personal use and drop by any time to drink from it, and it struck me as amazing that he need not fear that anyone would steal from his $100 bottle. There are other examples of trust in Japan's society. For example, there are umbrellas at our local post office with a sign that says, "If anyone needs an umbrella, please use one of these and bring it back later." Anyone can borrow $20 from a police box for train fare home if they lose their wallet, which should be repaid at the police box nearest your house. They'll take down your information, but since you probably have no ID (having lost your wallet) in such a situation, it's essentially done via the honor system. Finally, if you're making a large purchase of lumber from Cainz Home, the local home center, they'll be happy to loan you one of their small trucks to get it home, free of charge -- even to a gaijin like me. I don't know about you, but I find that being in a society where the trustworthiness of people is assumed naturally is just wonderful, and I'm always careful to make sure I don't betray trust that anyone puts in me. 

New Year's Day is known as oshogatsu, written with the characters for "correct" and "moon," no doubt a holdover from the days when Japan followed the Chinese lunar calendar. It's the favorite day of kids throughout the country because of otoshidama, cash gifts that they receive from their relatives. The amount each child gets depends on the age of the child and of the relationship involved -- kids get more from grandparents than from an uncle they rarely see, for example. My kids both made out like bandits this year, getting around $200 each, although my son got slightly more since he's older, and the oldest son in our household, which carries special status. There are two benefits from this New Year's money gift tradition that I can see. First, knowing that relatives will be handing out envelopes of cash makes kids complain a lot less than visiting family, and this brings everyone together just a little bit. Also, parents use this custom to teach the value of saving money, and the idea of a child blowing all his New Year's money the next day at the toy store is almost unheard of. My son is especially good at saving, and has managed to get more than $1000 in the bank from hoarding his New Year's money over the years. I don't think I ever had that much in a bank account before the age of 25. 

Back during my days as a teacher, one of my more advanced students turned to me and said, "Peter, do you have a tish?" I wasn't sure what a "tish" was, but he made a nose-blowing gesture and I realized he was asking me for a tissue. Because Japanese is a syllable-based language in which you can express, say, the sounds ra, ri, ru, re and ro but not an "r" by itself, pronouncing English words properly can be a challenge. In addition to words like "flat" having three syllables instead of one, due to being forced through the strange filter of the katakana pronunciation system, many words end up with vowel sounds on the end, such as job (JO-bu), big (BI-gu) or end (EN-doh). My student was aware of this fact -- kind of like-ah how Mario-ah speaks-ah -- and tried to truncate any vowels at the ends of English words to make them sound more natural, which is where "tish" came from. 

J-List is coming out swinging in the new year, ready to bring you thousands of great new products from Japan. From exciting toys and anime figures to fun J-Snacks to unique traditional or just plain "wacky" things you never thought you'd come across, J-List promises to make 2008 a great year for everyone with a fascination for Japan. Let us know what we can do for you this year!

Happy New Year from J-List, observations on culture and gaijin, a dearth of new adults in Japan, and Japan as "supplier heaven"

Akemashite omedetou to all J-List readers! We had a nice, quiet New Year's Day, relaxing in the morning and watching Ratatouille with the kids, since 2008 is the Year of the Rat according to the Chinese Zodiac. After that we did what we do just about every year, going to our local Shinto shrine to pray for good luck in the new year. When we were done we wandered around the grounds, buying new omamori good luck charms for all family members and browsing the stalls that sold everything from chocolate covered bananas to takoyaki (batter balls with bits of octopus meat inside, yum). As is often the case, I found myself the only foreigner standing in a long line of thousands of people, which takes a little getting used to: the knowledge that everyone around me is pretending not to bend their ear to listen to what this American who is speaking Japanese is saying while kids stare at me like I've just arrived in Admiral Perry's Black Ships, can be disconcerting. 3% of the population of our small city is made up of foreigners, mostly from countries like Brazil, Peru and Iran, yet as usual I couldn't find a single non-Japanese on the grounds of the Shrine, preparing to partake in this fun bit of Japanese culture. I don't believe the lack of other gaijin at the shrine has to do with differing ideas on religion, as the traditional first prayer of the New Year is cultural, not religious. Instead, I think it has to do with the foreign population not wanting to accept the Japanese culture that's all around them, and the xenophobic Japanese being perfectly happy to go along with this arrangement. This is something that local governments in Japan should try to change: there should be a lot more cultural mingling between foreigners who live in Japan and their Japanese hosts, with ideas traded both ways. Well, that's my own little wish for 2008. 

In Japan, a person is legally considered to be an adult at the age of twenty, and in January towns across the country hold ceremonies celebrating the coming of age of their young people, who gather at the local Culture Hall to pose for pictures in their smart-looking new suits and colorful kimonos before enduring boring speeches from the mayor and city councilmen. This year brings a reminder of Japan's population problems, however, with official numbers published by the government setting the number of new seijin (legal adults, individuals born in 1987) this January at just 1.35 million, a 1.08% drop from last year. Notably, the number of new adults this year is even lower than the last Hinoeuma year, 1966, when millions of Japanese couples avoided having children due to a widely-held superstition that girls born in the fifth cycle of the Year of the Horse will be too strong-willed to find happiness or husbands, which yielded just 1.36 million new adults when they came of age in 1986. Many other countries have issues with declining birth rates, but in Japan, an island nation with only a small amount of immigration, the problems are magnified. 

I've written before about Japan being a "supplier heaven," for companies that manufacture products and provide services. In general, sellers of products benefit from stricter pricing models and are able to capture a greater percent of the final purchase price than in any other country. Products like beer or cigarettes sold at the rural liquor store my wife's parents run yield less a mere 5% profit for them, and many other products, from books to CDs to makeup, are generally sold with a fixed pricing structures that would be unthinkable in the U.S. today. One of the first shocks a foreigner coming to live in Japan gets is "key money" that must be paid before moving into an apartment, totalling six times one month's rent, which covers things like a deposit, a fee to the agent who found the apartment for you, and "thanks money" paid to the owner for graciously allowing you to live there. Another unique practice in Japan is hotels that charge per-person, requiring you to pay, say, $150 for one person to stay or $300 for two. Surprisingly, it's been the arrival of large American companies like the major Hollywood studios or Western hotel chains to the Japanese market that's brought about the most change in recent years, as they import more customer-friendly business and pricing models and force less efficient Japanese companies to follow or get left behind.

J-List site is temporarily down

Sorry for any inconvenience. The J-List site is currently down and images on jbox.com are not working. It's a DNS issue and we're hard at work on it. Sorry to anyone trying to use the site right now. 

[Edit]  Oh, that was fast. Okay, site should be back up now!

Back in Japan and getting ready for New Year's, my respect for hard work, and a great way to get money in 2008!

Hello again from J-List. Once again we've made the hop from San Diego to Japan, traveling the 5443 miles (8759 km) from our American home to our Japanese one. The flight was fine, although bumpier than normal due to the extra turbulence in the skies in winter. 

We've returned just in time for our favorite time of year, oshogatsu, or the New Year's Day holidays. Unlike the happy, boisterous fun that is New Year's in the U.S. and elsewhere, Jan. 1 is a very solemn day in Japan. Today is New Year's Eve, and everyone is rushing around doing everything they need to get done before the holidays, like finishing up their o-soji ("big cleaning") so they can face the new year with a clean house, and readying various decorations for the home. It's customary to eat Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles on the last day of the year, which supposedly helps everyone enjoy long lives, and December 31st is the busiest day for restaurants that serve noodles. But the most important activity that takes place on New Year's Eve is watching Kohaku, the Red and White Song Battle, an annual live show put that's been put on by NHK every year since 1951 in which female singers (the red team) battle male singers (the white team) to see which side can put on the most extravagant performances. The Kohaku show is "the" music event of the year, comparable to the Academy Awards in the U.S., and virtually every top star will be there, from Leah Dizon to Gackt to the singers in Hello! Project and enka greats Saburo Kitajima and Sayuri Ishikawa. After the Kohaku show ends at 11:45 pm, NHK broadcasts Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming) showing solemn images of people making their way to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do hatsu-mode (ha-tsu MOH-day), the first prayer for good luck and happiness of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell that chimes 108 times. Then, the TV display flashes "0:00," letting you know the New Year has silently arrived. 

Japan is nothing if not the land of the "boom," and you never know what will become popular next. Right now, thousands of cell phone users are displaying an image of the enigmatic Yoshihiro Miwa as their screen wallpaper, which is rumored to increase a person's luck with regards to money, what with yellow being the feng shui color for wealth and all. A survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing who went to Tokyo to become a famous cabaret singer, Miwa was very close to writer Yukio Mishima, the guy who tried to bring about a pro-Emperor coup by the military then committed seppuku when the soldiers laughed at him. Author of 20 books and an accomplished stage performer and director, Miwa-san may be most famous internationally as the voices of the wolf goddess Moro and the Witch of the Waste in Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle. If you're curious to see if this Japanese superstition is correct, try setting your cell phone's wallpaper to this picture and see if you get more money in 2008! 

One thing I really like about the Japanese is the tradition of kinben (KEEN-ben), or diligence and hard work, as an ideal for people to aspire to, essentially the local version of the Protestant Work Ethic. By and large, this diligence is usually measured in terms of time rather than raw effort, and doing an hour or two of overtime each day is probably the norm for most Japanese companies, allowing employees show their hard work to their colleagues in a unit that everyone can easily recognize, time. The highest expression of kinben is the tetsuya, the all-nighter, working so hard that you work all night long to finish your important project. If an employee in Japan works all night on a project, he will probably gain a lot of respect from his boss and coworkers (the term also applies to studying all night for a test). Recently I asked my wife what the "worst" job in Japan was considered to be, the one parents tell their kids they'll end up doing if they don't study hard (when I was a boy it was "ditch digger" but it may have changed since then). She told me that Japanese don't usually speak ill of a profession like that, since someone has to do it after all, and in fact, many of the jobs some might consider to be "bad" such as road construction or the guys that empty the BOT-ton toilets in older homes that don't have pluming yet, are actually good in a way, since they pay much higher due to the fact that few people are willing to do them. 

J-List would like to wish everyone a safe, warm and wonderful New Year's holiday tomorrow. Within the month of December, you wish someone a Happy New Year by saying yoi o-toshi o (YO-ee oh-TOH-shi oh), which literally means "[have a] good year." After January 1st arrives, you switch to akemashite omedeto (ah-keh-MASH-tay oh-meh-deh-TOH), literally "congratulations on opening the New Year." It's polite to use this second greeting the first time you see a Japanese person after the new year arrives. Well, until next time, yoi o-toshi o, everyone!

Comparing my kids Japanese and American personalities, more on what makes Japanese people tick, and all about sitting on the floor in Japan

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday, wherever you are in the world. We had a great day, complete with turkey, lots of champagne and authentic Yorkshire Pudding.
It's interesting, being in the U.S. with my Japanese family and observing how my kids are taken over by their "American personalities" the longer they stay here. The Japanese have a saying to the effect that boys will take after their mother and girls will be like their father, an idea which I'd poo-poo'ed as a superstition until our kids were born. Our son is very Japanese, and although he has a lot of knowledge of English to draw on, he's often so shy about making mistakes that he'll refuse to open his mouth at all, a lot like his Japanese mother. My daughter takes after me, though: she seems very American in all that she does, and she's never shy about opening her mouth to speak English. While my son gets along quite well in Japan, my daughter's "American-ness" sometimes causes minor problems for her in her school, with the many meaningless rules she has to follow getting her down at times. All of these problems go out the window here in America, where (as seen from our Japanese life, at least), anything goes -- a person can do anything and be anything they want, and our daughter is positively glowing here in the States. One of the biggest rules in Japan is "act your age" (ii toshi shite), and generally speaking, people do what's expected of them according to their age group, which usually doesn't involve collecting Star Wars toys into their thirties. When my mother bought me a cool remote controlled R2-D2 toy for Christmas, my wife commented that it'd be very rare to find a Japanese man my age receiving a gift like that.

One aspect of living in Japan every foreigner must come to terms with is sitting on the floor. The Japanese do a lot of floor sitting, and even the most modern Western-style house will probably have at least one traditional Japanese-style room with tatami mats. One of my favorite things in Japan is the kotatsu, a low table with a heater inside and a blanket between the frame and the tabletop, which lets you get warm by sticking your legs inside. Since Japanese homes lack central heating, and it'd be far too expensive to heat the whole house anyway, kotatsu are very economical, as you're only heating a small space used by several people at once. They're also great for improving family life, since everyone will jam their legs inside and have a conversation rather than scattering around the house to do their own thing. The only negative to kotatsu? When Jiichan (grandfather) has flatulence inside the blanket part, causing a huge problem for everyone.

Each country in the world has what the Japanese call kokumin-sei, a kind of "national personality" or a list of traits that most people from that country tend to share. For example, Americans are seen by the Japanese as being optimistic almost to fault, believing that virtually any problem can be solved. We're also extremely friendly, even with people we don't know well, which can be hard for them to understand. The Japanese kokumin-sei is quite unique, too. In general, Japanese tend to be very peaceful, and go out of their way to avoid conflict with others. They're concerned with the image Japan presents to the world, and some major construction projects such as Japan's first bullet trains were done partially to make foreigners oo and ah when they came for the 1968 Tokyo Olympics. Also, most Japanese tend to be extremely modest, and it can be surprising when Westerners compliment a Japanese on their English ability, only to have them vehemently deny the remark. In my single days, I traveled all around Japan, hitchhiking or riding trains (there's a cool ticket called "Youth 18" which lets you ride as far as you want for $24, a bargain as long as you don't mind riding the slow local trains for 16 hours a day). Once, I encountered a boy and his mother while traveling near Hiroshima, and as we talked, the boy was going on and on about how baka (stupid) he was, so stupid that he'd never amount to anything at all. It surprised me to hear anyone talk like this about himself, much less an educated youth from one of the world's richest countries, but I realized later it was a kind of polite self-effacing that didn't mean much.

Thoughts on Christmas in Japan vs. America, my surprising first Christmas in Japan, and Japanese food for poor single men

Well, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and we're all getting ready for a wonderful Christmas around here. My family got in from Japan a few days ago, and the kids are fully into "American Christmas mode," shaking all the presents to try to guess what's inside. The holiday is a relatively recent cultural import to Japan, and Christmas there can be a little different from what you may be used to. To the Japanese, Christmas is usually more of an excuse to have a fun party than a solemn time for family, or more recently, an extra reason for parents and grandparents to spoil the kids by getting them something from Toys "R" Us. Christmas Eve is also a day for lovers to go on that special date, generally considered more important than Valentine's Day, and if you want to take your sweetheart out to a nice restaurant you might have to plan ahead a few months. 

I'll never forget my first Christmas in Japan. I'd not expected the Japanese to be very religious, so after arriving in my city I was surprised to find myself surrounded by a kind community of Japanese Baptists who ran a friendly church complete with a kindergarten for the local children. I enjoyed observing my new friends and seeing how similar they were to folks in the U.S. -- there seemed to be no differences at all, other than the language. In the grand tradition of Americans living in Japan, I was asked to play "Santa-san" for the kids, and I had great fun ho-ho-ho'ing as I handed out presents, as always being careful to speak only English, since that's what language Santa Claus presumably speaks. (I've since donned Santa suits dozens of times -- there must be something especially Christmassy about my personality as seen from the Japanese point of view.) I was of course surprised to find that Dec. 25th wasn't even a holiday in Japan, and driving in a traffic jam on that particular day takes some getting used to, I can tell you. One unfortunate aspect of Christmas for foreigners who haven't been "in country" too long is homesickness, since Dec. 25th is always a hard day to be away from family, no matter where you are in the world. Bottom line, Japan is a nice place, but the best place to enjoy Christmas is home with the people you love. All of us at J-List sincerely wish you and your loved ones a wonderful and warm Christmas holiday this year! 

I'll never forget my single days back in college, surviving on foods like frozen waffles, Campbell's soup, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and that great friend to the pool college student, Top Ramen, which could be had for 3 for $1 back in the day. Japan has its own varieties of "bachelor food" too, so easy to make that even a single guy could handle it. First and foremost is the category known as "cup ramen," which seems to be as close to the hearts of Japanese consumers as cold cereal is to Americans. There are hundreds of varieties, from cheap noodles in a styrofoam bowl to the high-end "nama type" noodles which are fresh, not dehydrated, for a more authentic ramen experience. Next comes Bon Curry, boil-in-bag curry that allows you single men who can't prepare Japan's staple dish from scratch to enjoy it nonetheless. Poor men living alone love to eat "sea chicken" (tuna fish) mixed with mayonnaise spread over rice with a dollop of soy sauce, too. Japan is a country that puts great store in doing things the "proper" way, and when it comes to a single man (or woman) living alone, this is defined by cooking rice using a rice cooker on a daily basis. When I was living alone, everyone I knew would ask me "Are you cooking rice for yourself everyday, as you should?" almost as a greeting, not unlike "How are you?" They were invariably amazed that a foreigner could wash and prepare rice for himself without help.

Some thoughts on the series "Lost," how to brighten a Japanese salaryman's day, and how learning Japanese can get you fewer dates

I've caught the "Lost" bug, and am enjoying watching the series on DVD here in San Diego. One interesting aspect of the show are the sub-plots involving Jin and Sun, a Korean couple who are marooned on the island. Since the husband doesn't speak English, there are large swaths of dialogue in Koran, which makes me think I'm back in Japan with my wife watching Hanryu Dorama or the South Korean soap operas that are so popular these days. Although Japanese and Korean have a similar grammatical structure, with "particles" that mark the subject and object of a sentence, and similar word order, the two languages are quite different. The only words I can pick out of Korean are Chinese-derived words, like "promise" "goal" "air current" and so on -- not nearly the level of ability to read Chinese that I get for "free" by leaning Japanese (about 20%).

When I came to Japan in 1991, I was extremely motivated to learn Japanese, which was a good thing since the idea that you can learn a language through osmosis just by living in that country is flat wrong. I took advantage of every opportunity to advance my studies, listening to JPOP music and watching anime and Japanese dramas, which helped me get lots of vocabulary input. When I encountered a Japanese person, I'd engage in a brief "language battle" with them to determine which of us had the higher language skills, and thus which language I'd speak with that person -- and I hated to lose. Then one day I was in Tokyo, looking for a coin locker to put my bags in, and a middle-aged salaryman who was clearing his out said "Please use this one" to me in English. I thanked him in fluent Japanese, but after that I realized that I'd done him a real disservice. This man would probably have only have a few chances to use his English each year, and yet I had stubbornly refused to oblige him. Since that day, I've resolved to speak English to Japanese people more, which usually causes their face to brighten just a little. And if you really want to make a Japanese person's day? Compliment them on their English and ask if they've studied in the U.S. or England. It's usually pure B.S., but they'll be happy all day long.

One thing gaijin who attain fluency in Japanese can attest to, though, is that the more you learn Japanese, the more some doors close. Japanese often think of foreigners as fun to be around, and part of that fun flows from both sides not being able to understand each other perfectly, which somehow makes us more "exotic." If you go out to karaoke with Japanese, they'll enjoy themselves more if you sing a ridiculous version of "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire than if you're able to belt out the latest enka hit by Daisuke Kitagawa. At bars and clubs, too, foreigners who don't speak much Japanese can find themselves more popular with Japanese girls than gaijin who can read all 1945 characters of the joyo kanji (the characters designated for "general use" by Japan's Ministry of Education, which defines what it is to be literate in the language). Foreigners who learn too much Japanese might find the dating scene to be somewhat different, too, as some girls who might be interested in the exotic feel of a "real" gaijin might be turned off by our extensive knowledge of the late Edo and Meiji Restoration Periods (stuff that the average Japanese never cares about). Of course, I wouldn't want to go out with a girl who was turned off by me having too much interest in her country and language, and all people are different -- my wife was interested in me specifically because of my fondness for memorizing odd Japanese proverbs.

The interesting status of voice actors in Japan, shortening foreign words in English and Japanese, and ways that the Japanese aren't so polite

Anime has really gotten big in the U.S. in recent years, changing the face of popular culture as people are more in sync with the anime world. This isn't a new phenomenon in Japan, of course, where animation has been a part of everyone's lives since the old days of Mighty Atom, Giants no Hoshi and the original Gegege no Kitaro. One thing I've often noticed is that the voice actors -- seiyu in Japanese -- in anime are often extremely famous in Japan, with many of the top stars essentially becoming household names. When legendary voice actor Yasuo Yamada, who provided the voice of Lupin III, died in 1995, it was a national tragedy, and everyone grieved to lose the original voice of Lupin. (He was replaced by a comedian who did Lupin III impersonations on variety shows.) Some other voice actors who are well-known to the average Japanese person include Akira Kamiya, voice of Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star, the muscular Kinniku Man, and Ryo from City Hunter, and of course Tohru Furuya, who's played Amuro Rei from the iconic Mobile Suit Gundam along with a host of other roles. Perhaps the most famous voice actor of all is Nobuyo Oyama, the voice of the lovable robot cat from the future, Doraemon. When she retired in 2005, my kids stopped watching the show entirely, since they couldn't accept Doraemon with any voice other than the original. My wife watches lots of American TV dubbed into Japanese, and it's quite fun to play "pick the anime voice actor" while watching an episode of CSI: Miami with her. Oh, that's Inspector Zenigata!

One thing I've noticed is that people from all countries will reduce complex words into smaller chunks to make them easier to work with. In Japanese, it's common for various words to be abbreviated and reduced, to make them easier to say, especially English words which can be cumbersome when rendered into the Japanese phonetic system. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System was sold here as the Famicom, short for Family Computer; similarly, if you want to go out to eat at a restaurant like Denny's or Coco's, just ask for the nearest famires (family restaurant). Words that are hip with young people tend to get abbreviated the most -- such as diji-kame (digital camera), ge-sen (game center) and sutaba (Starbuck's). Often companies will go out of their way to get people to think of their products in these abbreviated versions, advertising names as Pure-ste (Playstation) or Dora-Kue (Dragon Quest) to make them more familiar to customers.

The Japanese are famous for being polite, even when visiting Presidents throw up in the lap of the country's Prime Minister, as Bush I did on a visit here. It's quite silly, but when I first game to Japan, one small bit of culture shock for me was feeling that stop signs were "rude," because they used the informal command verb tomare ("Stop!") rather than some longer, more polite form. Although the Japanese generally are considerate, there are times when foreigners like me might consider what they do to be rude. First of all, the Japanese love to read over a person's shoulder, and if you're typing something in Japanese on a laptop, well, don't be surprise if a crowd gathers behind you. My mother taught me not to reach over people's plates when eating dinner together, but to ask for someone to pass the item to me; apparently the Japanese didn't get that memo, as it's common here to reach across the table to get what you need while eating. Similarly, Americans don't usually drink soup out of bowls, however it's almost a requirement that you do so here, since there are no spoons. Oh, and while eating any noodle dish like ramen or soba (not spaghetti!), you're expected to slurp your noodles as loudly as possible, and not doing so will likely elicit comments about how quietly you eat.

We've got some good news for fans of PC dating-sim games: the newest title from G-Collections, Snow Sakura, is in stock and shipping now. A super game that will appeal to a wide range of gamers, Snow Sakura puts you into the role of Yuuji, an average Japanese youth surrounded by a circle of beautiful girls (lucky guy). Although you grew up with your energetic cousin Saki, why Kozue, enigmatic senpai Rei, ditzy Misaki and your clumsy teacher Misato, for some reason you can't remember much about those days, only that you made a promise to one of the girls under the magical Snow Sakura tree, which somehow blooms year-round, even in the dead of winter. A great game in the tradition of the best interactive visual novels from Japan (*cough* Kanon *cough*), that we recommend for its great story and characters. Best of all, we've decided to give everyone a little present, and have lopped $5 off the price of the game for all new orders as well as existing preorders. This super game is now it's in stock -- make your order now!

Needing a sixth sense to communicate with people from other countries, this year's kanji, and all about "smorking"

Talking with people from other cultures often requires a sense for words that's quite unrelated to speaking a foreign language. Sometimes, someone says something to you that just makes no sense at all, and it's up to the deep part of your brain responsible for language processing to make the connection. Before I started studying the language, we had a Japanese foreign exchange student who stayed at my house. Once she praised me for something by telling me I was "good head." After more than a little confusion, I figured out that she was telling me I was smart, and this is indeed how you express this concept in Japanese (atama ga ii, lit. "good head"). Soon after arriving in Japan, I had a conversation with a student who was trying to tell me how good Mitsubishi vehicles were. "They are very good. They make...army's car. You know, boom!" My cranial density kept me scratching my head, until I realized he meant tanks. Whenever my wife comes to San Diego she has varying degrees of success communicating with my American family, who can't always figure out that when she says something about "the glass" being green all year round she's really talking about grass.

"I hate it when someone smorks in my face." For whatever reason, the English word "smoke" is often rendered as "smork" in Japan. The issue is how the Japanese perceive certain sounds, especially the "r" phoneme that's not familiar to them. Because Japanese is a syllable-based language in which you can express sounds like ka, ki, ku, ke or ko, but not the consonant "k" by itself, English words like "hello" "goodbye" or "beer, please" must be forced through this rather alien phonetic system, resulting in haroh (the final "h" representing an elongating of the previous vowel), guddobai and biiru puriizu. The very first fast food I ate in Japan was a McDonald's clone called First Kitchen (home of the world famous scrambled egg burger, yech), and I remember some confusion as to whether the company was First Kitchen or Fast Kitchen. Without the full repertoire of English sounds, the Japanese render the latter as fasuto and the former as fahsuto, with the longer middle vowel serving the role of the "r" in "first." This rule gets over-generalized in some words, which is why the long middle sound of the word sumo-ku (smoke) ends up as "smork."

Every year a single kanji character is designated by the Kanji Examination Association which represents the events of that year, and this year the character is...itsuwari, which translates as falsity, lies or deceit. It was a big year for being lied to in Japan, with many scandals in the headlines. First, the problems with missing Social Security payments, which meant that thousands of workers wouldn't get credit for money they paid into the system decades ago. Learning that the freshness date on the food they order may not be accurate also shook the trust of consumers in Japan -- McDonald's got caught changing the dates on salads so leftovers could be sold the following day, and they'd been doing it for years. The scandal at the Ministry of Defense, in which Deputy Defense Minister Yoko Yamada demanded various perks in exchange for the awarding of lucrative contracts, resulted in a raid on the Japanese version of the Pentagon by prosecutors. Today there was an official ceremony at beautiful Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in which a famous Buddhist priest wrote the character with a large calligraphy brush while hundreds looked on. The kanji for previous years have included inochi (life) in 2006, during which so many young people committed suicide; ai (love), after the birth of Princess Masako's daughter Ai in 2005; sai (disaster), in tragedy-laden 2004; and tora (tiger), celebrating the Hanshin Tigers victory in the Japan Series in 2003.

And still, the crack team of J-List employees is churning out packages left and right, making sure that orders both in Japan and San Diego go out in a timely manner. J-List's unique position, actually being based in Japan, really allows us to bring you a huge selection of mind-blowingly unique products from Japan, like our good luck Poop Hat, or those cool Santa Lucky Cat display items, or the cool Christmas ornaments we have on the site now. You can browse all new items using this link. Having trouble making up your mind what to give? We've got a few ideas for you.

Goodbye to New York, examining Japan's Buddhism and Shinto religions, Buddhist Altars, and fun linguistic coincidences

Well, our fun time in New York is at an end, and now it's time to head back to San Diego, which is a far less Christmassy place to be, all things considered. I have many memories of this convention, although my favorite was no doubt being surrounded by Domo-kun booth babes. It was a lot of fun, spending so much time in this amazing city, and I'll never look at New York quite the same way after this trip...

Japan is a mix of traditions taken in from different periods of time, and you can see this when studying the religions of the country. The original religion of Japan is Shinto, written with the characters kami (gods or spirits) and way or road, making it similar to other "the way of" words like shodo (writing + way = calligraphy), sado (tea + way = tea ceremony) or the martial art judo (flexibility + way). Shinto essentially finds kami, or spirits, in things like mountains, trees and rocks, making it seem very much to me like a Native American belief with its strong basis in nature. In the sixth century Buddhism was introduced into the country, and amazingly the two religions generally learned to treat each as an aspect of the other, allowing for much less conflict than you'd expect. Now, the various sects of Buddhism (which are as confusing to me as understanding the nuances of the Protestant churches are for my wife) are by far the most important religious tradition in Japan, and most families will surround themselves with Buddhist traditions even as they visit Shinto shrines on January 1st to pray for good luck in the New Year, or get married in Western weddings in beautiful churches.

One of the most famous everyday symbols of Buddhism in Japan is the butsudan, or household Buddhist Altar, which nearly every head-of-family household will maintain, unless they specifically identify with another religion. As far as I've been able to tell, Japanese Buddhism is primarily about respecting and remembering your ancestors, since (as my wife has told me), without your ancestors, you certainly wouldn't be here. Every morning my mother-in-law wakes up and makes an offering to her mother and father, by ringing a bell and burning a stick of incense for them. I've always thought that the absolute knowledge that you'll be remembered and loved by those you leave behind is one of the most comforting aspects of Japanese-style Buddhism. A butsudan is only maintained by the head of a household, the father or oldest son in a family, and if, say, a family has five children who move into homes of their own, they won't keep one but will return to their parents home on special events like the O-Bon holidays in the summer. A Buddhist altar is quite complex, filled with tablets on which are inscribed the names of your ancestors and an image of Buddha meditating, along with various other symbolic images. If you asked me what the most bizarre thing I've seen since coming to Japan is, I'd have to answer opening the newspaper and seeing an ad from a Buddhist altar store advertising a big sale on all the latest butsudan and grave stones. Wacky!

It's always fun to see what natural coincidences occur between languages. A Swedish friend of mine who's married to an Indian woman mentioned that the word for "no" in both Swedish and Hindi happened to be the exact same. This happens between Japanese and English, for example in the word "so" which has the exact same meaning in both languages (so desu ka? = is that so?). You probably known that "thank you" in Japanese is arigato, which sounds suspiciously like the same word in Portuguese, obrigado, although the Japanese word was in use before the Portuguese came to the country, making them unrelated. Most adjectives in Japanese end in an -i ("ee") sound, such as takai (high, expensive), yasui (cheap) or tsuyoi (strong), which is odd since many adjectives in English end in the same sound, like friendly, early or heavy. For the linguistically minded out there, these are known as false cognates, an accidental matching up of languages which seems related but which are totally separate in background.

My hop to New York, narrowly dodging staying in the city's worst hotel, and comparing it to the Star Wars Cantina

I've made the long hop from Japan to New York, and I'm now enjoying the 19 degree (with wind chill) temperatures. We're here to attend the New York Anime Festival, Dec 7-9, and can be found either at booth #408 or #340, with our great Domo-kun T-shirts, hoodies and hats as well as manga, PC dating-sim games and more. This show is going to be a really excellent one, with thousands of fans of many great companies all coming together, and we hope to see you there! Update: if for no other reason, come for the Domo-kun booth babes!!!!!

Its fun to "surf the culture shock" wave when in a new city, and New York has been a great place for this so far. I've stood on freezing subway platforms that look like they came out of a level of the game Max Payne (no relation, by the way), done power-shopping at the multi-story Toys "R" Us in Times Square, and narrowly avoided staying in New York's worst hotel. It's been extremely exciting, and we haven't even gotten started with the convention yet. Everyone knows that New York is an extremely international city, but the Star Wars Cantina-esque variety of cultures and languages around me has really been a surprise. I've gotten into a political discussion over delicious pasta with a family from India, debated similar issues with a taxi driver from Pakistan, and gotten into interesting conversations with people from the top of the world (Sweden) and the bottom (Australia). I'm staying in a very Jewish neighborhood, so I'm getting to see what a real Hanukkah celebration is like, too. It struck me that New York must be the perfect opposite of clean, homogenized Japan, where even speaking your a regional dialect of the language is frowned upon, at least in Tokyo.

Transliteration is the act of transcribing from one writing system into another, for example from Japanese to the Roman alphabet, and it's not an exact science, which is why we have alternate spellings for words and names in other languages, like good old Muamar Gaddaffi/Khadafi/Quadhafi, Mao Tse-Tung/Zedong, or Hanukkah/Chanuka for that matter. There are several aspects of Japanese that make writing Japanese words in English an inherently vague and challenging process. For example, there are long vowels in Japanese that are meaningless when written out in English since they don't change how foreigners pronounce the words. The correct way to write "pretty girl" in Japanese is "bishoujo" with the extra 'u' in the middle, and yet it's often shortened to "bishojo" for brevity's sake. Is it better to leave the long vowels in the word, although it complicates pronunciation and makes the words harder to remember, or should they be omitted? There's no simple answer -- although writing long vowel words with the shorter spelling is "wrong," it's no worse than the way meanings and pronunciations changed when French melded with English after 1066. Famous place names like Tokyo and Osaka also have long vowels that are cut to avoid making the name needlessly long -- since no one wants to write Toukyou and Oosaka. Another area where there is vagueness about how to write Japanese words or names in English is L and R. Actress and Tokyo University graduate Rei Kikukawa's first name could be transliterated as Lei without it being wrong, so is it okay to do this? There's often little agreement and so both names might be used sometimes -- there's no "right" way to write it. It can be very confusing, especially to search engines that can't tell that two similar words are the same.

One of the amusing things about living in Japan is seeing what can only be described as "American branding," selling a product by draping it in red, white and blue and associating it as closely as possible with the USA. Japanese generally have the impression that America is kakko ii -- literally "good style" or cool -- and are often open to owning items like Zippo lighters, a set of Coleman outdoor cooking gear and clothes from L.L. Bean. Branding your product as American can often bring a boost in sales, which is why the American restaurant chain Coco's adds "The California Restaurant" to their signs here, and why when companies like Jack Daniels or KFC communicate their advertising messages to their customers, they wrap themselves in images of old Tennessee or Kentucky. Levi Strauss stumbled trying to build a name for themselves in Japan during the 1970s, until they hit on the of using iconic Hollywood stars like James Dean, John Wayne and even Marilyn Monroe to advertise their jeans (they came cheap, since they were dead), which has to have been one of the most successful advertising decisions ever. The other day I happened on a store called Way Out! American Spirit that offered a variety of interesting and somewhat mundane things from the U.S., including thick Charmin paper towels, BIC pens, hard-to-find-in-Japan delicacies like chips and salsa and Swiss Miss Cocoa, and T-shirts with the Union 76 logo on them. It was quite interesting to stand there and watch what American products the Japanese shoppers were picking up.

The Japanese only started accepting Western culture only relatively recently, with the ending of the Edo Period and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the Emperor was theoretically "restored" to power after centuries of having things run by the Shoguns. One thing I've always found interesting is the number of words in daily use here that remind you of the differences between what is Western and what is Japanese, many of which employ the kanji yoh, meaning "Western." When you get up in the morning, you probably put on some clothes, but in Japan, you put on yoh-fuku, or "Western clothes," the word used to separate the shirts, trousers and other things you wear from wa-fuku, or Japanese style clothes like kimono or yukata. If you go to a restaurant that serves spaghetti and "hamburg steak," you're eating yoh-shoku, or Western-style food, which is treated as a separate category entirely from the various types of Japanese or Chinese dishes eaten here. Japanese film aficionados break into two groups, those who enjoy yoh-ga or films from American and Europe, and fans of hoh-ga, or Japanese film. And while I've become quite accustomed to living in Japan, I still prefer the good old yoh-shiki toilet with a seat I can sit on to the seatless wa-shiki toilets, which require just a little too much dexterity to use sometimes.

Before I started selling Hello Kitty ice cube trays and Totoro bento boxes, I was an teacher of ESL, or English as a Second Language. I taught English to students from the age of three all the way up to an elderly woman whose family business was running the local Buddhist temple, which was always an interesting conversation topic. During my years as a teacher I accumulated quite a collection of English textbooks, vocabulary cards, and various games I would play in class. One such game was "English baseball" in which teams of students would get "hits" if they answered questions using English, which I passed many a lesson with. Another is the popular Japanese game "fruits basket" in which you put, say, ten chairs in a circle and put one child in each chair, with one more standing in the center. This child must ask a question like "Do you like bananas?" and all kids who like bananas must change seats as quickly as they can. The one left in the center is "it" and must ask the next question to the group. Another fun game is the classic Simon Says, which is good because it allows kids to listen and react without actually having to produce any speech, which mimcs how children acquire language. I'd have to prepare my students for a shock, though, whenever I told them, "Simon says...touch your chin," since chin (or more accurate, chin chin) is a common word for a boy's private parts used by children. Which makes that line in the Three Little Pigs just a little too embarrassing...