Japan Olympic Update

Well, the Olympics are here, and Japan is buzzing with sports fever, hoping that their athletes will do well at the games. Ryoko "Yawara-chan" Tani, the darling of the the women's Judo world, was hoping to win her third consecutive gold medal -- her slogan was "Mama demo kin!" ("Even though I'm married and am a mother now, I'm going to bring home the gold!") -- but unfortunately she came away with only a bronze this time. Other athletes hoping to shine include the super-cute "table tennis idol" Ai Fukuhara, women's freestyle wrestling champions Chiharu and Kaori Icho (who are sisters), and the badminton doubles team of Kumiko Ogura and Reiko Shiota, nicknamed "Ogushio" by fans. Japan already has two gold medals, Masato Uchishiba in men's judo and Kosuke Kitajima in the 100m breaststroke, and they're hoping to add to that tally in the next few days. We wish them luck!

Smack that ball, Ai-chan!

The Ogushio girls playing badminton. It's very intense to watch ^_^ Since they work for / are sponsored by Sanyo, they train here in Gunma Prefecture.

Chiharu Icho is the on the left. She could probably kick my butt in no time.

Ryoko Tani, whose name was Tamura before she got married, is probably the single most famous Japanese athlete, who's been a judoka since the age of five or something, kicking and throwing girls much older than her. Bummer that she didn't get her third gold.

This is Yawara!, where Ryoko gets her nickname from. I put thepic here because I like Fashionable Judo Girls.

Types of Friends in Japan

It's funny how how tenuous the meanings of seemingly basic words can be. In English, the word "friend" is pretty straightforward, meaning someone you are somewhat well acquainted or friendly with. Most of my English-speaking "friends" are close in age to me, but I certainly could have a friend who was 25, or 45, or 75 if I wanted to. It's not uncommon for someone who is only a passing acquaintance to be labeled "friend," too, for the sake of convenience or to avoid being rude. In Japanese, however, the word tomodachi (which literally means "those who you go with") and it has a more "close" feel to it than the English word friend. Tomodachi in school years are almost always the same age; otherwise you'd use the term senpai (for upperclassman) or kouhai (for underclassman), which are quite different concepts in Japan's vertically-oriented society. Once, my son was playing dodgeball with a boy he'd known since preschool -- they've played together for years. I talked about the boy with my wife, using the word tomodachi to refer to my son's friend. My wife corrected me, saying the boys weren't friends in that sense, but were instead osana-najimi (o-SAH-NAH NAH-jee-mee), translatable as "childhood friend," a concept that comes up in anime and bishoujo games quite a lot, referring to someone you've been very close to since childhood, and it seems to be both more and less than the English word friend. "An osana-najimi is different from tomodachi," my wife explained to me. "They're always there, and you don't even notice them after a while. You get so used to being with each other, it's like air."

In anime and the games we publish, of course, osana-najimi are all over the place. The standard pattern is the girl who comes to wake you up every morning because you are too much of a sleepyhead to get up yourself.

Bring on the Foreign Babies

I write a lot about how Japan is a homogenous place where everyone considers themselves as having come from the same genetic stock, which can be a useful vehicle for creating a more harmonious society despite the fact that there's actually quite a lot of variation in the local genetic make-up, with plenty of Korean, Mongolian, Russian, Ainu and other DNA hiding under the surface (including some I've contributed). The famous Japanese uniformity might be changing in the near future, though. A new statistic was recently released showing that one in 30 babies born in Japan had at least one foreign-born parent, reflecting both imigration as well as the popularity of kokusai kekkon (international marriage), currently 6.6% of all registered marriages. Japan is a fabulous country, but I for one would love to see some alternate cultural influences here, whether from Korea, Brazil, America or wherever, and an increase in foreigners settling here and raising families would help a lot. My half-Japanese daughter regularly has issues with the other kids who can't seem to understand why she's not completely in sync with them, but if each class had more students who were haafu or who came from other cultures outright, it'd be more acceptable to stand out. Remember my crazy theory that Japanese/foreign couples are less likely to fall into the same "sexless" rut that Japanese couples sometimes get mired in, and thus by intermingling with Japanese, we foreigners can do our part to help repopulate Japan.

I Left My Heart in Kamakura

If you ever come to Japan, be sure and visit Kamakura, a charming city located about 50 km south of the Tokyo-Yokohama sprawl, which makes a really nice day trip. A picturesque city by the sea with a very long history, it hosts many temples and shrines, the most famous being the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, founded in 1063. Old stuff like this always floors me as an American, since nothing any ancestor of mine is half that old. Kamakura is most famous for the giant bronze statue of Buddha, the second largest in Japan, and this alone would make the city worth a trip even if it weren't one of the prettiest places in Japan. Kamakura is also home to one of the most famous train lines in Japan, the Enoshima Electric Railway (nicknamed Enoden throughout Japan), which has been in operation since 1900 and which is beloved by Japan's many train otaku, who come from miles away ride on it.

More Pictures from Japan

More pictures I had in my camera. Enjoy!

So nice to be back in Japan. I get to eat really good Indo again! In our prefecture the best Indian food can be found at a restaurant called Mahatma New Dehli, but we managed to find a place that's actually better.

Shot of where the warehouse will be. That's our house in the background, which is both 40 years old and very new since we've been adding onto it and "reforming" it so much.

It'll be nice having space to expand our stock once again.

More pictures of cell phones from Japan, since I had to go to au to cancel my old phone. This is a line of Color Therapy phones.

Follow up to Casio's popular "toughened" phone, which was one of the few keitai phones sold in Japan that was also available in the U.S. I have *no* idea why some of these Japanese phone makers aren't even trying to bring their phones out in the U.S. as well. It's bizarre, maybe it's not profitable for them for some reason?

Reason #722 to love Japan. Just sitting at the onsen and there's a variety show on anime theme songs, featuring the guy who sang the original Yamato theme.

It's funny how much cred these old guys have in Japan. My wife will regularly point out an actor or singer and tell me what anime history they have. Like Masato Ibu, the voice actor for Desler/Desslock from Yamato, or Narumi Yasuda, the actress who got her start singing the "Kaze no Tani Nausicaa" song. And this from a woman who doesn't have an otaku bone in her body -- it's just part of the cultural background here.

Fish, Japan and Me

When I was a boy, I had some issues when it came to fish. I lived on the East Coast of the U.S., and for some reason, going to the beach in the spring in Maryland meant seeing (and smelling) hundreds of dead fish that would wash up on shore, not really something the Beach Boys would be likely to sing about. Never one to give up easily, I remember going out into the water to try to swim, and feeling all those dead fish bumping against my body as I moved through the water, a trauma that pretty much turned me off of eating fish for the next twenty years. Happily, I came to Japan, a country that takes a lot of good things from the sea, and was able to develop a real appreciation for all types of fish, from sushi and sashimi to the many kinds of broiled fish eaten as part of Japanese cuisine. When going drinking with friends, I'm apt to pick an izakaya that offers really fresh fish -- there's nothing like everyone gathering around a delicious hokke (which the Internet tells me is atka mackerel - I can never remember its name in English) and grabbing the soy sauce-dabbed fish with chopsticks. To me, the pinnacle of fish enjoyment is a sushi restaurant called Edokko, located in Narita City, near the airport. If you've ever got a layover there and want to try the freshest fish in Japan, with neta (the fish part of sushi) that's so big it falls off the rice, head to Narita Station and ask any taxi driver where Edokko sushi is. We were there last weekend and I can still taste it.

I just love izakaya food.

Japanese Names

Japanese names are generally written in kanji, the Chinese characters introduced to Japan around the 6th century A.D. Family names, which are written before given names rendering the terms "first name" and "last name" fairless useless here, usually contain two kanji characters; as with English last names such as Smith, Japanese family names like Tanaka ("in the rice field"), Yamada ("the rice field on the mountain") and Ishii ("the stone well") seem to indicate humble origins, despite the insistence by every Japanese that their ancestors were samurai warriors. Until January of this year, women had been required to take their husband's family name when they got married, but the law was recently changed to allow for married couples with differing family names. When it comes to deciding on a name for a new baby, there are many choices available to parents: even for a simple name like Yuko, there are a half-dozen or so common kanji to choose from, or they can opt for no kanji at all, writing the name instead in hiragana for stylistic reasons. Because there are so many ways to write a particular name in kanji, it's quite common for people to have no idea how to read someone's name properly, and when two people meet for the first time, there'll often be small talk about what characters they write their name with.

This is Yamada Taro, the most common name in Japan, or rather, the name that everyone thinks is very common but is actually very rare, like John Smith in English or Ivan Ivanovich in Russian (don't ask me why I happen to know that).

iPhone vs the Giant Cell Phone Robot

I got my Japanese iPhone 3G, and am currently experiencing that state of gadget-derived bliss known as "Nerdvanna." While I was waiting for them to process my phone, I wandered around the Softbank store to check out what other models they were selling, so I could do my semi-regular "State of the Cell Phone in Japan" post and also see what kind of competition the iPhone was up against. There was quite a lineup: a water-resistent phone that can be submerged for three minutes without damage (great for people who check their mail in the bath, I guess), a very thin cell phone with a 5.2 megapixel camera, and models made specifically for young children or the elderly. The company's "Premium" line of phones that come with leather or wood-grain exteriors was very stylish, as was the vibrant series that offered a phone in any of the Pantone colors -- wow. Japan is very big on Wanseg, a sub-set (i.e. "one segment") of the digital TV spectrum that lets you watch fairly passable TV on your phone, and many models trumpeted this feature, even offering slidable screens so you could watch widescreen TV without turning your phone. This being Japan, there was even a phone that could transform into a robot, based on a popular drama called Keitai Investigator 7. Still, while the slender and stylish phone offerings were nice, I've been extremely happy with my iPhone. The ability to use the web and email almost as easily as I do at J-List, and extend the functionality of the phone with a killer new third-party app or three each week, have been a big win for me.

Fun Japanese Words to Learn

Life is a little more fun when you know Japanese, whether it's to communicate with nihonjin who can't use English or to catch the attention of cute Japanese coeds on campus. One word you can get quite a lot of mileage from is sugoi (sue-GO-ee), which means "amazing" or "incredible" and which can be used just about any time you need to praise someone. See a Japanese man who's adept at playing the Super Mario theme on an accordion? Just tell him sugoi! and your meaning will be instantly communicated. Then there's daijobu (die-JOE-boo), which means "okay" or "alright" and is generally one of the first words a person learns after coming here (well, one of the first anyway). Want to ask if someone is alright with your menu selection at a restaurant, or if they're okay after bumping into that drunk salaryman just now? Just say Daijobu? and they can reply, Daijobu (Sure, I'm fine). Finally, another fun short word you can find some interesting uses for is zan-nen (ZAHN-nen), which means "what a shame!" or "how unfortunate!" If someone misses the answer to a question or otherwise fails at something, you can pull this word out and get some laughs from them. It's used a lot by Japanese game show hosts when a guest makes a wrong answer and misses out on the $100,000 prize.

Familiar Things in San Diego

Hello from Japan, where the pound key on a phone (#) is called "sharp" (as in a musical note) and where screwdrivers come in "plus" and "minus" varieties.

Whenever I'm in the U.S., I like to "surf" the culture shock I naturally experience as a result of having lived for so long in Japan; it's fun to observe the differences between the two countries, from the size of a "small" drink to foods that really don't need to exist, like Chocolate Marshmallows. During my last trip, though, I was actually surprised at how many things I saw in San Diego that were quite familiar to me. First there was Book Off, a used book store chain serving the Japanese community of San Diego, which took me by surprise since they're all over the place here in Japan. Later I saw a sign advertising Gulliver, a Japanese company that buys used cars and resells them through its own network of dealers, a business model that makes sense in Japan, where there is no tradition of selling your own car through the Auto Trader. My wife and I went to the store to buy milk and found Yakult, the popular Japanese yogurt drink that's such an institution, they have their own baseball team (the Yakult Swallows), and in a movie theatre, we observed that they'd started showing commercials before films, another import from Japan (there's nothing like watching a commercial for Parliament cigarettes before a movie). But one of the biggest surprises came when we went to our local Costco. One of the employees heard us speaking Japanese, so he approached us and started reciting the prayer to Buddha, namyo horen gekyo, and told us that he was a member of Sokka Gakkai, the evangelical Japanese Buddhist religion which was founded in 1930 and which now has a presence all around the world. We came away from Costco with edamame beans and mikan (those little Japanese oranges), so we were feeling quite at home by the end of the day.

Yubikiri Genman, or the Pinky Promise

Do you know the Japanese Pinky Promise? It's a similar to the "Make a promise/Hope to die/Stick a needle in your eye" song I learned while growing up. Hook your pinky with someone else's and chant the song, which goes, "Pinky Promise, if you lie, I will make you swallow 1000 needles." (If you want it in Japanese, it's Yubikiri genman, uso tsuitara hari senbon nomasu.) You then say "Yubi kitta!" (I break the pinky connection!) as you pull your fingers apart, and you've made the most excellent promise you can make in Japan, at least if you're in elementary school. The Pinky Promise shows up quite a lot in anime, often to show a promise made between characters while they were younger, although the origin of the custom is somewhat less innocent. Supposedly, the Pinky Promise began back in the Edo Period as a gesture of devotion that prostitutes would make with their favorite customers. The "cutting" of the pinky signified the women severing her own finger as a sign of eternal affection for her partner, essentially saying that she loves him enough to commit shinju, or ritual lovers' suicide with him. Kind of adds a new dimension to watching your favorite cute anime series, doesn't it?

The Japanese Study Japanese, Too

I wrote recently about how Japanese ESL students were sometimes surprised that Americans have a subject in school called English, and wondered what on Earth we could possibly be studying there, since we obviously all know the language automatically just by being born. For the record, the Japanese study "Japanese" in school, too, although the subject is called kokugo, (国語) literally "national language." In this class, Japanese children start the task of learning to read and write their language properly, jumping right in with the first 80 or so kanji characters in first grade and completing the 1006 joyo or "common use" characters by the end of the sixth grade. In addition to Chinese characters, of course, Japanese read a lot, and develop their cultural identity in part through such classics of Japanese literature as "Run, Melos!" by Osamu Dazai (the story of a man in ancient Greece who has just three days to attend his sister's wedding then run back in time to save his friend), or the poem by Kenji Miyazawa "Not losing to the rain/Not losing to the wind" that's about as famous as "And miles to go before I sleep" in the U.S. Just as I had to read hard-to-understand works like Beowulf and Chaucer, the Japanese are required to slough through classics like the Tale of Genji, the story of a fictional Japanese Emperor in the Heian Period that has more than 400 characters in its dramatis personae. The Japanese know that their educational system stresses rote memorization too much, for example tying the date of the Kamakura Shoganate (1192) to the phrase "let's build a good country" (ii kuni o tsukurou) rather than understanding the event critically, and increasingly there's been a trend towards having students write more essays and do class presentations to show that they really understand the material in question.

Hope this image below isn't offensive. It's one of the examples good old Debito Arudo, the defender of gaijin's rights, lists as something that foreigners should be upset about, despite the fact that it's, well, quite an accurate portrayal of what we foreigners look like when we walk abound like fools, unable to communicate. I guess we should all be as sensitive as possible...)

Summer Trends in Japan 2008

You never know what the next "boom" of the summer will be in Japan. One year it might be a trend towards girls making their own jewelry, the next they'll be wearing sneakers with ridiculous 10-inch high soles. This year fashionable clothing maker Uniquo, often thought of as the "Gap" of Japan, has scored big with a line of tank tops for women that feature bra cups built into them, allowing women to feel completely free as they go around town this summer. Other fashion trends you see this year are extra-colorful skirts and tops known as "Brazil-kei" which represent Japanese copying the stylish Brazilian-Japanese population living here, and "gladiator sandals," which go all the way up the leg like something the ancient Romans might have worn (they really look quite silly). Remember that J-List offers monthly subscriptions to some awfully cool fashion magazines, if you want to keep up with what's going on in the fashion world in Japan.

 

SDCC Pictures 2008

Here are some pics from the San Diego Comicon I had in my camera. Enjoy!

But first, some images of San Diego. We have basically the best weather in the world, generally a balmy 70 degrees while the rest of the country is -20 in the winter. It's nice when we're not burning down with wildfires anyway.

This is our historic roller coaste, which is a lot of fun to ride.

I am often surprised by things I see in my home country, like Deep Fried Twinkes or this. I know America is all about "freedom" and all, but still... Shouldn't there at least be some kind of tax on stuff we really shouldn't be eating as a people?

Setting up for the con now. People regularly come and ask us to sell them our little Japanese flags, and we always decline politely.

Some of the nice things we were selling. Smart customers know that we often have stuff at the cons that we've sold out of on the site, and come to check if the item they missed buying before happens to be in stock. This is because we ship the items over in February so items can subsequently sell out in Japan but still be available in the U.S.

It's so funny to see the ultra-pretentious bars in the Gaslamp District beggar themselves to the geek crowd during con, happy to seat Stormtroopers and Klingons in their normally too-hip spaces. Comicon is totally the final victory of the nerds of the world over all else.

We got a bunny girl at our table. She did leekspin for us!

On Saturday night, I had to go to a Midnight Madness at Toys R Us to get that really nice Millennium Falcon. I thought, ha, how many people can there be in line? There were hundreds, many of whom were dressed in costume. Here's a rebel soldier with a remote control "mouse droid."

The best Boba Fett I've ever seen, too. He friggin' had his laser blaster with a computer read-out displaying Imperial letters.

Almost there... Almost there...

It's away! At around 2 am I got inside and got my Falcon(s). I would be tempted at the AT-TE if I'd been a kid, but my lack of space to store these things is already chronic.

Back at the show. The Han Solo across the row from us kept taunting me all convention long. If this were just a little cheaper...

Vocaloid cosplayers. They were being interviewed by a camera crew that just did not know what they were talking about, so I had to let them know what the whole Vocaloid/Leek Spin thing was all about.

This looks nice. I am a huge fan of this book by Stephen King, the best he's ever written.

Dude dressed up as a Myspace page. Funny, but when you're causing a massive traffic jam in the most crowded room anyone there had ever been in, it's not cool.

Show's over, time to leave.

So, while we're waiting for the forklifts to bring us out, I happen to be standing right there when one of them drops a big glass case full of stuff. It shattered quite musically.

Funny ad. I had to LOL.

Okay, back to Japan for me. You know, theose ziplock baggies they give you put stuff in at the airport checkpoint are awfully nice? I helped myself to a few, they don't have cool baggies like this in Japan.

Banzai, $1 Coins!

Because I only visit the U.S. once or twice a year, I'm always noticing things I might not otherwise. It's a big surprise to me whenever they change the U.S. money, for example redesigning the bills to add anti-counterfeiting features. This time I started receiving those new $1 coins, which feature different presidents printed on them and which have a nice gold color that makes you want to go out and buy a pirate's chest. Although most Americans no doubt like having the $1 unit in paper form, the fact is that governments spend millions to print these bills only to have them wear out in a few years, and it makes sense for the U.S. to follow Europe, Canada and Japan in retiring its lower-denomonation bills in favor of coins. Japan gave up its 100 and 500 yen paper notes long ago, with the main result being that if you have a pocketful of change you can probably buy half a tank of gas, and once you get used to the new money, it's not a nuisance at all. So I say, bring on the $1 (and eventually, $5) coins!

Types of Anime Characters

As a long-time anime fan, it's been interesting to see how the characters in anime and dating-sim games change and grow. Over the past decade or so there's been a huge increase in the genre known as moé (mo-EH), which is written with the kanji character for "sprout" and which could be translated as "the woozy, happy feeling you get when contemplating your favorite female anime character." It also seems that every character can be categorized neatly into one archetype or another, no matter how original the character might seem. Some of the most common types of anime/game characters include meganekko (meh-gan-NEH-ko), or Girl With Glasses, the often related dojikko (doh-JI-ko), or Clumsy-in-a-Cute-Way Girl, and osana-najimi (oh-sa-na na-ji-mee), the Childhood Friend that comes to wake you up every morning and who is secretly in love with you. One of the most common recent genres of anime characters is tsundere (TSOON-deh-reh), which comes from tsun tsun (angry) and dere dere (soft and tender) and which describes characters that give everyone the cold shoulder yet are actually very vulnerable inside (like Haruhi or Shana). There's just no end to these cute character categories. Some others include Rich Girl who is the Daughter of a Wealthy Zaibatsu Family; Girl Who Talks in the Third Person; Girl Who Works at her Family's Shinto Shrine as a Shrine Maiden, and a recent trend, Girl Who Is So Jealous She'd Kill Her Boyfriend Rather Than Let Him Go With Someone Else (known as yandere). Which anime character type is your favorite?
(I'm fond of the Class Representative myself -- they're so organized, so concerned about everyone else, I just love them.)

Taking Charge in America

Every summer, we arrange to have our kids spend some time in the U.S. to help them learn English and generally get some "fun time" in, since America is a very fun place to them, with Disneyland and Girl Scout Camp and other enjoyable things to do. Making the plans is always a challenge, since their summer vacation is only around five weeks long, compared to three months in the U.S. My daughter arrived in San Diego a few days before I left for Japan, and in no time she had been transformed into a giggling American girl, watching Hannah Montana and SpongeBob Squarepants. Before I left, I took her aside and reminded her of something we'd discussed before: that America is a country where you have to take charge of things for yourself. In Japan, it's pretty much a given that parents will pamper their children, putting breakfast in front of them without even being asked, or noticing when they're hungry and making a snack, but you have to take more responsibility for yourself in the States. When my son was six or seven he went to a day camp in San Diego, and when it came time to eat lunch he didn't know where his had been put. Instead of speaking up and asking for help, he quietly waited for someone to notice his distress, but no one did, and he went hungry all afternoon. It was a valuable lesson for us about about being assertive and taking responsibility for one's self, like Americans do -- or at least that's the way things loook from the viewpoint of Japan.

Strangeness Back in Japan

Well, I'm back in Japan, having journeyed halfway around the world for the nth time. Even while still at the airport, I was subjected to little culture shocks at being back here, like a cleaning lady patiently tidying the men's bathroom while men did their business a few feet away, or that bizarre statue of an "American" hot dog covering himself in ketchup and mustard, located in the arrival lobby of Terminal 1. When traveling from Japan to the U.S., I get a day "free" thanks to the International Date Line, but coming back, I had to surrender it, so that both Monday and Tuesday were completely used up traveling. Well, it's nice to be back, and I hope to be over my jet lag soon!

The Famous Narita Hot Dog Guy

Perceiving English

Back when I was teaching English, I found it interesting to observe how my students perceived my own native language. As rule, Japanese ESL students tend to treat English as an exact science, with absolute "right" or "wrong" answers, and whenever I'd give a vague reply about a certain word being correct in some situations but not in others they seemed disappointed, like I'd divided by zero or something. Many of my students were amazed that Americans have a subject called "English" in our schools, and they seem to imagine that we all automatically know every aspect of the language just by being born in an English-speaking country, so why would we ever need to study it? Everyone makes occasional mistakes with spelling or grammar, but if you're an English teacher in Japan, you'd better watch yourself, since students aren't equipped to comprehend the idea that their sensei might not know everything about English like the back of their hand. I had one student who told me she was able to understand English perfectly once she mastered the compound verbs which are quite common in English, like take on, take off, take over, take in; the rest, she told me, was just mastering vocabulary.

What is a Daruma?

One of the coolest images of Japan, to me, are the Daruma, the unique red, roundish dolls that are quite visible in Japan around this time of year. (The word is also written Dharma, for all you Lost fans out there.) A Daruma is a representation of Bodhidharma, a historical figure from India who founded Zen Buddhism and what would become Kung Fu, and who attained his unique shape by fasting and meditating for so long that his arms and legs disappeared -- although I just know that if I were to ask my Japanese wife about this she'd throw up her hands and tell me she has no idea what I'm talking about, since Japanese frequently don't know anything about. Like Japan's Lucky Cat, which beckons good fortune (especially in business or money) into your home, a Daruma is an object that promises to bring you good luck. The doll originally comes with no eyes drawn in, and when you make a wish for the New Year, you blacken one of the eyes with ink. If your wish comes true during the year, you color the other eye, and a Daruma displayed in a home or business with both eyes colored in is a statement of having attained success. While the Daruma is ostensibly a Buddhist icon, it's become associated with Shinto rites such as New Year's Day, and has kind of "jumped" from one Japanese tradition to the other. Every city in Japan stakes out a meibutsu or "famous thing," some object or food that it is famous for, and Takasaki, our neighboring city, just happens to be famous for these beautiful Daruma Dolls. Their official train station bento lunch is Daruma Bento, too, which is well-known throughout Japan.

The Japan Communist Party

One of the more unexpected aspects of living in Japan as an American is the presence of political posters for candidates in the Japan Communist Party. I'm pretty sure most people don't think of the words "Japanese" and "Communist" together very often, but the surprising fact is that the JCP is Japan's second largest minority party, with 400,000 members. Because the Parliamentary system in Japan makes it possible for small political parties to win some representation, there are currently 16 national Diet members who are affiliated with the JCP, something that wouldn't be possible in the U.S. with our two-party system. The Japan Communist Party isn't pushing for the kind of Soviet-era ideas Americans usually associate with Communism -- the Japanese are far too conservative politically for that -- but they do oppose the special military relationship Japan has with the U.S., as well as any cooperation by Japan's military with foreign wars, even in a support capacity, as going against Japan's Constitution. Supposedly a 1929 novel called Kanikousen (Crab-Canning Ship), which portrays the hard life of workers on a ship at sea, is experiencing a boom among younger readers, which is causing conjecture that larger numbers of young people will consider joining the JCP. On the other hand, this could just be the summer's short-lived "My Boom," as something that's popular with an individual for a short time is called.

Comicon Finished

Well, the party's over, and the San Diego Comicon is finished for another year. We had a huge amount of fun, meeting and greeting about 125,000 fans, handing out our trademark Japanese pocket tissue and shaking many hands. If you stopped by to say hi to us, thanks! I'm now on my way back to Japan, which will be a welcome thing after a month of busy conventions. So, like, I'm flying to Japan while you're all reading this. Cool.

Here at the Con

We're deep in it at the San Diego Comicon ('scuze me, Comic-Con International, whatever) in our booth (#129), meeting and greeting thousands of fans and customers who are dropping by to say hello and pick up some great Japanese T-shirts, manga, anime figures and that delightful Black Black caffeine gum. If you're going to be at the show, by all means come by and say hello, and get the great free stuff we're giving out with any purchase. If you won't be able to attend, you can still celebrate with free shipping (or half price for international) on all PC dating-sim games, this weekend only!

By the way, if you've ever seen the movie Demolition Man, the "space age" city where the Taco Bell was located was filmed here at the convention center, since it fit so well with the futuristic motif.

Old and New Brands in Japan and America

It's always interesting to compare the differences between Japan and the U.S. In America, many products like Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Wrigley's gum and Tootsie Rolls have been around for over a century, some since the Civil War, and they continue to dominate in their respective categories. Japanese consumers, however, seem to favor new products when they shop, forcing manufacturers to come up with fresh ideas at a faster pace. While there are some solid Japanese standbys that never change -- Kompeito, or Peko-chan Milk Candy -- any visit to a Japanese conbini (convenience store) is sure you bring you into contact with a dozen or so products you've never seen before. The red-hot Japanese beer industry is an example of this: even in the small-town liquor store that my wife's parents operate, I constantly see new twists on Japanese beer, like beer formulated for ladies, or beer with dietary fiber added, or beer that tries to recreate the beers brewed in the Meiji era. I've been told that this is because the Japanese themselves have short attention spans, and move onto the next big thing rather quickly. While it's always nice to find a new flavor of Pretz or a new blend of green tea on store shelves, it's also good to have a core of old favorites that never change.

All About Osaka

Osaka is Japan's second largest city, with 17 million people living in the greater metropolitan Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe area. The city is a sprawling concrete jungle, with tall buildings, deep subways, and lots of bustling people. In general, Osaka seems to be the New York of Japan, while Tokyo is more like Los Angeles, with a much shorter history and a culture that can feel more bland and standardized at times. Osaka is a funny place, and it's almost a given that successful comedians will speak Osaka-ben (Osaka dialect), which is much more entertaining to listen to than standard Japanese, in a somewhat Eddie Murphy/Jerry Seinfeld kind of way. Like Tokyo, Osaka is so big it has to be governed like a prefecture, with 24 districts (ku) that function like individual cities. Some areas foreigners might like to visit include the electronics region named Den Den Town and a nightlife/drinking district called Doutonburi, where you can see Japan's most famous neon sign, the Glico Man. Osaka has always been a commercial city where business comes first, and a popular greeting among people above a certain age is moukarimakka? (moh-kah-ree-MAH-KAH?), literally meaning, "Are you making a lot of profit lately?" (The standard reply is bochi bochi den-NAH, "Yes, a little.") An interesting tidbit about the city: when using escalators, Tokyo-ites who want to ride up keep to the left, leaving the right side for people in a hurry to walk up, but in Osaka this is reversed. Thus, whenever Tokyo-ites visit Osaka they stand on the wrong side, causing confusion and exposing themselves to embarrassment. Something to keep in mind on your next visit to Osaka.

Large and Small Frustrations of Living in Japan

I like living in Japan, really I do, but there are some frustrations a poor gaijin must endure. Things you have to do without, like a real selection of types of bread or cheese, which are nearly always rather boring. Having low ceilings and cars that remind you of the last time you flew in a cramped airplane, or slippers that only come in Ewok sizes. Or everyday inconveniences, like Japan still lacking 24-hour automatic cash machines or banks that can easily interface with international banking systems, despite Japan's famous image as a high-tech superpower. Another is waiting for things you want to be released, which is never fun. Folks in the States can go see the new Batman movie anytime, but it won't start in Japan for another couple of weeks, and often movies take months to make it to Japanese theaters. Amazingly, it took the Japanese publishers of the Harry Potter books a whole year to translate the final book, which is just now being released in Japanese bookstores, to the great joy of Japanese fans who are lined up to buy Harry Potter and the Secret Treasure of Death (the Japanese title) this weekend.

Livin' la Vida Breakfast Cereal

In my American kitchen right now I've got no less than seven boxes of cereal sitting on top of the fridge. This happens every time I'm home: I can't resist the urge to buy all the breakfast cereals that make me natsukashii (nostalgic) for when I was a kid, eating cereal and toast while watching Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings. The cereal I've got right now are Raisin Bran (I've always Kellogg's was far superior to Post), Cinnamon Life (one of the best spin-off flavors of a cereal ever, in my opinion), both Cocoa Pebbles and Cocoa Puffs, Kix, which I've always had an odd attraction to, Golden Grahams, and the most excellent breakfast cereal known to man, Corn Pops, which they used to call Sugar Corn Pops back in the day. (I bought Pop Tarts too, but they're packed now, ready to go back home.) No matter how long I live in Japan and consider it my home, there's nothing like getting your hands on something familiar that brings back the warmth you knew from another time. Of course I can't possibly eat all of this cereal in the next week, so I'll be leaving most of it behind, but in the meantime I'm living the springtime of my youth with American breakfast cereal culture.

Do they still give free crap in cereal? I can't see anything interesting on the boxes I bought. 

Is Speedo a Japanese Company?

Back when I was learning Japanese, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that the Speedo swimsuit company had to be Japanese. The reason for this was the way all Japanese sounds are based on syllables -- for example, you can have sa, shi, su, se and so but never s by itself -- which plays some tricks with English names when rendered into Japanese. Since all syllables end in vowel sounds (except for n, the only consonant that can come at the end of words), English words get a bit of unwanted vowel at the end, which changes a word like "meet" into something like "meet-oh" and the word "friend" into "friend-oh." The English word "speed" similarly becomes "speed-oh," which is where my confusion came from. The Japanese know that they often have thick accents when speaking English, and sometimes try to snip this final vowel sound in order to sound more natural. Sometimes they clip too much, though. Once a student of mine asked me for a "tish," and it took me several minutes to realize he was trying to get me to give him a tissue.

Big Changes for Japan's Educational System

Big changes are in store for Japan's schools: the end of yutori kyoiku, translatable as "easy-does-it education," when Japan's Ministry of Education tried to reduce the amount of stress students were subjected to by lowering academic goals and ending the half day of school kids had to attend on Saturday. (Yes, poor Japanese kids had to go to school six days a week.) It turns out that reducing the number of hours of instruction has a negative impact on academic performance, though, and Japan is now behind nearly all other Asian nations in math and science scores, which has policy-makers rather freaked out and wanting to try to reverse the trend. Japan can make quick changes to it's national curriculum due to it's tradition of top-down administration which allows a plan to be carried out on a national level as directed by Tokyo (for better or worse). This system is quite different from the U.S., where each state is a soverign entity and school districts have more power to decide things. The problem for us is that this revised education plan takes effect in 2012, the year after both my kids are out of the Japanese school system, so they'll miss out on any benefit there may have been from it. It doesn't matter though: virtually all parents who are concerned about their children's education make supplemental plans, whether it's juku (an evening school that helps kids study or prepare for entrance exams), a focused study program like the Kumon system (which they have all over the world now), or an in-home tutor to help students keep up with their studies.

Note that while I know nothing of Kumon, I can say that it has a great reputation in Japan, and some of the kids in my son's class are incredibly smart due to being "Kumon kids." So if you are interested in bringing some Japanese education ideas to your kids, I recommend you check into it. 

Outage

(Note: we had a bit of an outage which caused the J-List and JBOX.com product images to stop loading for a couple of hours on Sunday. The problem was corrected and all is well with the servers -- very sorry if you were inconvenienced while trying to view the site.)

Imagine that, S3 had an outage at the same time we did. What a coincidence...

Being Green in Japan with a "Green Curtain"

Like most countries, Japan is struggling with the desire to be more "green" in order to reduce pollution and the urge to escape rising energy costs. While embracing concepts like cool biz -- which means allowing politicians and businessmen to dress more casually so they'll be more comfortable with the air conditioning set at a higher temperature -- are one possible answer, the extreme heat and humidity of Japan makes this less than a perfect solution. One answer the Japanese have evolved is called midori no kaaten, or a "Green Curtain" of plants that grows on the outside of buildings, providing cooling shade as well as more oxygen for the air and the general feeling of well-being that comes from having living plants around you. The way it works is this: you take a pre-made wire frame and plant vines that will crawl up the frame until you have a wall of greenery shading your windows from the sun. They're popping up all over Japan this summer, and it sounds like a great idea to me.

All About The Japanese Word "Desu"

If you've listened to spoken Japanese at all you've probably heard the word desu, often pronounced with the last syllable reduced so that it sounds like "dess." Linguistically speaking, this word is known as the copula, because it makes the noun and the verb in a sentence, er, want to have a romantic evening together or something; in more useful terms, it fulfills the role of "to be." It's really simple to use: if you want to say "I am John" just say John desu; if you want to state your nationality, just say America-jin desu or Canada-jin desu or whatever. The subjects of sentences are usually left off if the meaning is clear from the context, but if you wanted to clarify that you're talking about yourself and not, say, Michelangelo, you could say watashi wa John desu (As for me, I'm John). If someone pointed to an apple on a table and asked you what it was, you could say ringo desu, which would also be an appropriate answer if someone asked you who your favorite Beatle was and the answer was Ringo Starr. The desu sentence ending is a formal word, useful for making a good impression on Japanese you might try talking to; every Japanese verb comes in formal and informal versions, and the informal of desu is da, allowing you to say Eigo no sensei da "I'm an English teacher" if you were talking to a person below your station, like a teacher addressing his students or to a child or a dog. (As always, stay formal until you understand the nuances of informal Japanese, lest you offend your in-laws as Luicille Ball did to Ricky's parents all those times.) 

Since the word "death" sounds very close to desu when rendered into katakana (actually it's usually written デッス instead of デス), there is a world of puns that can be made about Japanese sentences ending in death. In Dragonball, there's a reace of Chinese space aliens (if memory services) who speak in kanji, and the kanji for です they use is 死 (death). Er, maybe you had to be there.

If you want to see something really different, here's a bizarre movie someone made on Youtube mixing Sazae-san (the longest running show on Japanese TV, going something like 42 years now) with Death Note and Yu-Gi-Oh. The story is that the smallest kid, Tara-chan, gets a copy of the Death Note and kills his family, and then, oh, nevermind, it's too silly. My kids happen to watch it several times a day, is why I am bothering showing y'all. Note that at no time did I imply this was interesting. 

 

Lawyers in Japan

I mentioned last time that Japan has very few lawyers. It's true -- there's just one lawyer for every 7325 people in Japan, compared with one per 288 individuals in the United States and, for comparison, one for every 1634 in France. For various reasons, likely related to Japan becoming a modern Westernized nation only 130 years ago or so ago, the country has evolved a legal structure that's largely based on common sense, or at least that's how it appears to my unfamiliar gaijin eyes. There's almost no tradition of litigatating civil disputes in Japan, a phenomenon which is assisted by the Japanese tendency to prefer being harmonious rather than confrontational, and I can't think of a single instance where a Japanese person I knew was involved in any kind of lawsuit. Another contributing factor to this might be the fact that lawyers seem to earn only $50 per hour -- I wonder how that would fly in the U.S.? When my wife was here in San Diego, one of the things on our list to do was meet with my lawyer and go over my will and living trust, which covers what should happen to the house I own in the event of my demise. American ideas of "Death planning" are totally alien in Japan, since when a man dies, his possessions naturally should go to his wife and kids with no questions asked, and it's actually quite taboo to bring the subject up, as I've discovered to my cost. Because these concepts are so different from Japan, I thought my wife was going to be confused during our meeting with the lawyer, but fortunately she'd seen enough episodes of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives to grasp the issues right away.

This image is from a show that put four lawyers on a game show (well, a variety show) and various legal issues would be put to the four who would give their opinions. One example I remember was, a woman bought a mansion (an apartment that's owned) in which the previous owner had committed suicide, so was there a duty for the real estate agent who sold the property to pay damages for failing to make this clear ahead of time. One of the four lawyers on the show, the handsome Hashimoto-bengoshi (kind of the Brad Pitt of the law world in Japan) got so popular that he won the election for Mayor of Osaka.