Japanese Office Spaces

In the movie Tron, there's a great scene where you see this sea of cubicles going on forever, an extremely prescient visual for 1982. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't look at that part of the film and say, "Wow, that'd be a great place to work!" but in Japan, that might not be the case. Japanese offices are nearly always open, with desks lined up in rows or facing each other so that the only privacy workers have at their desks is whatever reference books they can manage to stack around themselves. Before starting J-List I worked in the local City Office as a "Coordinator of Internationalization," helping to provide various services to foreigners in our city, and it was a rather unnerving experience, working in a room where 30+ people had a direct line of sight to me at any moment. Larger organizations use the open floor office model, too. Once I visited one of our distributors (Tohan) and was surprised to see the entire company working in one cavernous space with rows of desks and hundreds of people buzzing about, without so much as a cubicle wall to hang a Dilbert strip on. One interesting aspect of this open approach to workspace-building is that the bosses are in the same space as their employees, although usually with their desks set in a special location so they can oversee the employees attached to them. At least, working in this way adds a layer of transparency and democratization to the company as a whole, even if it wouldn't be much fun to work in.

The Power of Voice in Japan

The Japanese are masters of influencing emotions using voice, and I'm often amazed at the eerie beauty of the voices that enter my ear here. If you watch anime in Japanese, of course, you know how talented the Japanese voice actresses are, and their ability to bring to life a character that would otherwise be (literally) two-dimensional and inert is one of the major attractions of the genre. One of the most popular voice actresses in Japan today is Aya Hirano, who provides the voices for Haruhi Suzumiya, Konata from Lucky Star and Misa from Death Note, and she can do the most amazing things with a character. But the strangely compelling beauty of Japanese voices isn't limited to anime: you can find females who are specially trained to speak in a uniquely soft way in various professions, too, such as female bus guides, who entertain passengers on long sightseeing trips; ground hostesses, those airport employees who call out your flight number in the most delightful sing-song tones; and Japan's legendary elevator girls, the uniformed women who stand in the elevator and announce each floor for you (although they've almost completely disappeared). It's hard to describe the quality of these sweet voices, which are made possible by weeks or months of vocal training -- there's something about the way they dip down and back up again at the end of a sentence that casts a spell over me. But speaking in a cute voice isn't just for a few professions with high customer visibility. I'll never forget the time I called NTT, Japan's sprawling telephone and Internet provider, to get help with some computer hardware I was having problems with. The voice on the other end belonged to an extremely kawaii-sounding female NTT employee, and bastard that I am, I actually expected her to take down my information and then transfer me to some male technician who would tell me how to fix my problem. I was quite surprised when the cute voice quickly proceeded to help me debug my router and fix the TCP/IP problem I'd been having, solving it in no time. I had to hang my head in shame for a while after that.

Understanding Katakana English

I wrote last time that one of the challenges of living in Japan is getting accustomed to Japanese-accented English, sometimes called katakana English because of the way it's filtered through the syllable-based phonetic structure of Japanese. Back in high school, I listened to the old-school Macross song "0-G Love" for more than a year before it it dawned on me that the phrase was English -- the unfamilar pronunciation confused me enough that I wasn't even able to identify it as my own language. Of course, everyone has an accent when speaking another language, including me, and I might have similar challenges understanding the local English whether I was in Japan or China or Jamaica. Part of the probem is, the special nature of Japanese phonology makes words that are a single syllable to us (like "truck") into three when spoken by a Japanese person (torakku, pronounced to-RAH-kkoo). Some other vocal concepts we take for granted need to be remapped into sounds that exist in Japanese, which is why "where" sounds like "oo-eh-AH" and "twins" comes out like "tsoo-EE-nzoo," which can take a while to get used to. Then there are words that are used differently here, even though they're ostensibly English, like VIP and UFO, which are pronounced as "veep" and "you-fo."

Ah, Mari Iijima, you still got it...

Hot Japanese Female Politicians, Lack of Children

Taro Aso is getting down to business as the 92nd Prime Minister of Japan, forming his cabinet quickly after his landslide election. One of his first moves has been to appoint Yuko Obuchi, the 34-year-old daughter of the former Prime Minister who sadly died in office, as a new Special Minister in Charge of Measures Dealing with the Falling Birth Rate. Obuchi, who happens to hail from J-List's home prefecture of Gunma, might be the perfect person to serve as poster child for the issue, since she's got a lot of visibility as a young female lawmaker (following recent political trends, she's quite the hottie), and she has a one-year old baby, too. The problem of shoshika, literally "fewer children-ization" or the increasing dearth of children in Japan, has got a lot of people worried as its effects start to be felt in earnest, and Japan's population is projected to drop from 130 to 100 million by the middle of the century if things don't improve. Already Japanese cities are being forced to close some elementary schools, tearing them down or re-purposing them for use as general municipal buildings. There are many reasons why Japanese women are waiting longer to start having children and are having fewer when they do, with everything from the high cost of raising a child to changing social roles to a general lack of patriotic spirit among Japanese suggested. Prime Minister Aso will likely face more debate on the issue if an election is called in the next few months, as is expected, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has been floating a plan to pay each household $250 per month for every child they have. Personally, I'd feel better about bringing children into a world where the government is solvent and not wasting its money in silly ideas, but that's just me.
(This is a chart of the Japanese birth rate, going form 4.5 children per female in 1947 to 1.4 today. The dip you see in the middle is the year of Hinouema, the Year of the Fire Horse, 1966. According to superstition, girls born in this year are supposedly very headstrong, and parents avoid having children in this year to avoid having daughters that can't find husbands.)

Announcing the Beginning of Pocky Season

Chocolate Season has Begun! J-List is happy to announce the return of chocolate snacks to our website, now that it's cooled down here. We're busting out all the new flavors of Pocky for the 2008-2009 chocolate season, with an excellent new Crush Pocky in an extra large package and two new flavors of Dessert Pocky, the richest and most delicious stick snack ever. In addition, we've classics like Original Pocky and Men's Pocky back on the site. As usual, you can buy individual boxes or opt for shrinkwrapped cases at a special discount price.

Japan's New Otaku Prime Minister

Japan's next Prime Minister has been decided, and as expected, it's to be Taro Aso, who received more than 95% of the votes by his ruling Liberal Democrat Party. One of the few really interesting Japanese politicians, he worked his way through college at Stanford before his parents called him home to keep him from becoming too "Americanized," so he went to England to complete his studies instead. He mined diamonds in Sierra Leone, represented Japan in the Olympics in 1976 at Clay Pigeon Shooting, and he's quite technically minded, having assembled his own PCs from the motherboard up for the past ten years. When discussing Japanese politicians, the word "thoughorbred" often comes up, and this term applies to Aso-san as well: his father was a former cabinet member, his grandfather a former Prime Minister, and he's the great great grandson of Toshimichi Okubo, one of the most important reformers of the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It's well know that Aso-san is a fan of Japan's manga and anime culture, which has helped him attain popularity among younger Japanese, especially among 2channelers and the English anime-related blogosphere. He supposedly reads three volumes of manga a day, sometimes on the Diet floor, and much of the recent recognition of the importance of Japanese popular culture have come from Aso-san, who has said he would like to create an international "Nobel Prize" for manga. His interest in comics -- for example, he promoted education about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima using the famous manga story Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) -- has caused the term "Manga Diplomacy" to be coined, and it will be interesting to see how his ability to name all the Lucky Star characters will color his leadership. One of the most refreshing things about Japan is their ability to have elections without contemplating the religion of the candidates in question in the slightest. When I mentioned to my wife that Aso-san happened to be a devout Roman Catholic, a rarity in a Buddhist country like Japan, my wife was surprised to hear it. At no time had the issue even been brought up by the Japanese news media.

This is the picture that "outed" Aso-san as an otaku and won him millions of fans on the Internets. They call him Rozen Aso now.

Wisdom on Living in Japan

When foreigners come to live in Japan, there are certain skills they will need to acquire. When I first arrived in Japan back in 1991, I was surprised to see that almost none of the roads in Japanese cities had names, which made it extremely difficult to learn my way around. I had to get good at visualizing routes inside my brain and learn how to refer to roads in vague terms ("the road with the beauty shop and the convenience store") when asking for directions. Another skill is getting accustomed to the accents of Japanese people you'll be interacting with, which can be quite a challenge, as your brain doesn't immediately understand that someone asking for uu-OH-tah wants a glass of water. When speaking Japanese with people, you'll need to get good at identifying the subjects of sentences since they're often left off when the meaning is otherwise clear from the context, or at least faking understanding in certain situations, such as the time I was picked to stand up and conduct the Maebashi Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. Afterwards, the MC asked me something that I didn't catch, and rather than embarrass myself on the stage with hundreds of people watching me, I replied with the non sequitur so desu ne, which should mean "yes, that's so" but in effect doesn't mean anything.

Speed Racer Service Centers

Would you get your car serviced at a Speed Racer Service Center? I sure would. It's an interesting gimmick by entrepreneur and former Super GT race driver Tetsuji Tamanaka, who licensed the characters from Tatsunoko Production's venerable "Mach GoGoGo" to create a chain of Speed Racer-branded service centers, gas stations and used-car dealerships designed to bring a well-known face to the "total carlife support" they offer their customers. The familiarity of the character Go Mifune (as Speed is called in Japanese) combined with the current income level of the generation that grew up watching the original show has proven to be a big win for the company, which is opening franchise shops throughout Japan that do everything from buying used cars for sale through its national network to auto painting and that annoying sha-ken car inspection that drivers of older cars must pay $1500 for every two years. This isn't the only company that ties anime to car culture: there's also a chain of car repair shops that uses the famous Space Battleship Yamato logo and characters to promote themselves. These businesses are somewhat unique though: while anime is enjoyed by literally everyone at some point in their lives here, it's not usually something you see while driving down Main Street very often. Like Cowboy Bebop and Akira, Mach GoGoGo is one of those shows that became far more popular internationally than it ever was inside of Japan, and I for one am glad to see that Speed Racer hasn't been forgotten in the country of his birth.

Of course, they also have their own sexy Race Queens:

Trying to Get Into the BBC

I got a good laugh the other day while watching an episode of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. During the "Moments of Zen" compilation of coverage of the two political conventions, British comedian John Oliver tried to walk into the BBC's preparation room, despite not having an official pass. "I'm British," he said, with his proper accent, "and you don't need a credential to be British. My voice is my credential." It was extra amusing to me because I'd done a very similar thing in Japan. A decade or so ago, they held an international speed-skating competition in my prefecture, so I decided to go check it out. As I went to find my seats in the bleachers, I happened to notice a door for coaches and other VIPs, most of whom were from the U.S. or Europe, and on a hunch I wondered if I could get into that room just by being American. The Japanese person watching the door didn't want to let me in at first, but the right mixture of appearing to be in a hurry and speaking English at him rapidly got the job done, and I got to enjoy the skating competition while helping myself to beers and munchies. It wasn't very nice of me, of course, but it was an experiment I felt had to be made at the time.

(The BBC bit starts around 3:10 or so)

Wacky English T-Shirts!

During the Sports Festival, I engaged in a little hobby of mine: hunting for bizarre English T-shirts. For some reason, the parents who attend these sporting events often choose to wear T-shirts with the most interesting English phrases on them, so every year I walk around with my camera and see what I can see. My search got off on the right foot when I came across a young woman whose shirt said, "Gluttons: Smile Positive and Good Heart," followed by a man whose shirt proclaimed "Make Up Foundation For This World." Some of the slogans I saw seemed quite deep ("Music: Make a Recording, Life 83% Full"), while others were more perplexing ("Sense of Pitch 1962, Rosegirl"). Sometimes the messages were silly ("You're my Hearo [sic], Fashion Icon!!") while others tried to offer insight into that elusive concept of "freedom" which Japanese often associate with the USA ("Liberty Bell is Prime Wish -- I Love Me"). Of course, no one gives a second thought about what their T-shirts have printed on them in Japan, since for most people, English is primarily a decoration that's considered kakko ii (cool) and not something actually used for communication, which is why there's no problem with displaying a message like, "Definite Difference: That Oneself Cannot Be Ruled Is Not Free." Of course, we've been known to sell a wacky T-shirt or two here at J-List, but in Japanese rather than English. If you like the idea of having a wacky shirt with aesthetically beautiful kanji that no one around you can read, why not browse our lineup now?

Here are some of the pictures I took:

Autumn in Japan: School Sports Festivals!

Autumn is upon us, and in Japan that means one thing: School Sports Festival, a special event held at all elementary schools where kids run relays, do tug-of war, have egg toss competitions, perform dances that they've been practicing for months, and so on. Known as undo-kai in Japanese, pronounced "OON-doh-kai" and having nothing to do with the undo feature on your computer, the Japanese tradition of a special day when kids can show off their athletic abilities to their parents began in 1874 when an English teacher named Frederick William Strange organized the first "outdoor games" as a way for Japanese to learn about Western sports. Today, Sports Festivals are held across Japan, which turns out to be quite profitable for companies like Panasonic and Sony, who are all too happy to sell this year's hot new video cameras to all the oya-baka ("parent-fool"), the word for parents who go ga-ga filming their own kids. Saturday was my daughter's last Sports Festival of elementary school, and we dutifully gathered to cheer her on during the various events she was in. It's an annual tradition at the school that the sixth graders treat everyone to a brass band performance of the theme to Space Battleship Yamato, aka Star Blazers, and everyone did a great job.

Cash Society Japan

I remember my first payday after coming to work as a teacher in Japan, being handed an envelope containing my entire month's salary in cash, which was quite a surprise to me. Japan has always been a very cash-oriented society, with no equivalent to personal checks or money orders, and when making purchases most people will pay in 10,000 yen bills. Credit cards exist here of course, but they're much less common than in the U.S., and to get one you need to pass a strict credit check and have been employed at the same company for at least a year -- a far cry from the pre-approved credit cards I'd get in my mailbox back in college. A few years ago, we bought the plot of land behind our home, I remember going to pay for it in cash, counting out the bills for the previous owner as we finalized the contract. Of course, the only thing constant in the world is change, and Japanese are slowly adopting alternate ways of paying for products, such as Suica, a rechargeable contractless smart card that can be used to pay for train tickets, food purchases and so on. One of the most innovative ideas I've seen in a long time are the cell phone with Suica cards built into them, so all you need is your phone and you can pay for just about anything.

Of course, if you want cash we've got both yen and dollars on J-List.

Food Fraud

Each year the organization that publishes the Standardized Kanji Test announces the "kanji of the year," the character that best sums up the events of the past twelve months. Previous characters have included inochi (life) in 2005 to mark the terrible young lives lost in suicides that year, tora (tiger) due to the historic Hanshin Tigers' victory in the Japan pennant, and ikusa (war) in 2001, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. The kanji of the year for 2007 was nise (nii-SAY), meaning "fake" or "fraud," due to the large number of food-related scandals that became news, including a famous restaurant caught labeling normal meat as high-grade Kobe beef and serving leftovers to customers, a confectionery company that sprayed water on stale slices of cake so they'd look fresh enough to sell, and Hokkaido-based "Meat Hope," which despite its awesome name got in trouble for intentionally mis-labeling its products. So far, 2008 has been more of the same as food scandals continue. The most egregious one so far has been a company called Mikasa Foods, which bought inedible rice that had been contaminated with pesticides and seawater (it said) for use in glue production. In reality, it relabeled the rice and sold it to more than 370 companies, which used it to manufacture everything from food to sake to beer and more -- bleah.

Fall Traffic Safety Week

It's time for Traffic Safety Week in Japan, when awareness of various automotive safety issues is raised throughout the country. Originally begun in 1948 in response to the increase in motor traffic in regional Japanese cities, the government officially adopted a twice-annual Traffic Safety Week system in 1962, designating April 6-15 in the spring and September 21-30 in the fall as special periods to promote "safety driving" (as the Japanese invariably call it). Everywhere you go for the next ten days, signs and flags will remind drivers to slow down, and there'll be plenty of police checkpoints looking for drunk drivers, people not using their seatbelts, and so on. Since Japan is crisscrossed by so many railroads there's a big problem with drivers trying to run train crossings as they close, and during this week groups like the Lion's Club will stand at train crossings wearing Haruhi Suzumiya-like "traffic safety officer" armbands to make sure drivers stop at the train crossings properly. The Japanese care a great deal about traffic safety, and often carry Shinto good luck charms specifically made for that purpose.
Yes, nothing gets the chicks like traffic safety awareness.

Ne-ver Ending Japanese Grammar Lesson

If you've paid attention while watching Japanese anime or, ahem, other videos in Japanese, you've might have noticed the word ne. This is an interesting Japanese grammatical particle that usually goes on the ends of sentences and serves several purposes, mostly related to asking for confirmation of information or agreement with an opinion. Here are two examples:

アイスコーヒー二つですね？ Aisu kohii futatsu desu ne?
You'd like two glasses of iced coffee, is that right?

今日は、暑いですね。Kyou wa atsui desu ne.
It's hot today, isn't it?

Other functions of the all-purpose Japanese particle ne include softening a sentence so its meaning it less harsh (Chotto furorimashita ne. You've gained a little weight, haven't you?); emphasizing what you want to say (Kondo chanto kiite kudasai, ne. Please listen closely next time, alright?); working as a pause in sentences, like "um" in English; and to get the attention of the listener before speaking. Girls use ne more often than men and with a higher intonation, so males should use the word with caution lest they appear effeminate, although guys speaking Japanese will mess this up all the time (it's part of our charm). Even if you don't speak any Japanese at all, just memorize the phrase ne! and pull it out whenever a Japanese person says something you want to agree with, and watch the look of surprise on their face.

Kawaii, ne?

All About Older Japanese

Most Western nations are facing the problem of ageing populations, but Japan is really leading the pack, with its combination of a very low birth rate, healthier diet and a good medical system. Japanese older people are just like elderly from any other part of the world, sometimes friendly and interesting to talk to, and other times unwilling to take crap from anyone as they dive for the last pair of shoes at a department store bargain sale. As an American living in Japan, it's can be interesting to strike up conversations with older Japanese, who will often talk about what the war years were like for them, or the time they saw General MacArthur, and there's an unspoken acknowledgement of all that's changed in the past 60 years. Since it's generally expected that the oldest son or daughter will take over the family house and care for the parents in their silver years, elderly folks generally have the benefit of lots of family around them, at least in the semi-rural prefecture where I live. Partially because of this system, and also (I've been told) because Japanese rarely leave the area where their family grave is located, you don't see people migrating to a different part of the country when they retire as is the case with Florida. The main social activity of Japanese retired people seems to be going to the doctor's office every day to sit and chat with friends while they wait to be seen by the doctor for some (usually imagined) pain, and if you ever get sick in Japan you'd better have a strategy for getting to the doctor's office early. While most of the older people living in my neighborhood are very genki (healthy, full of energy), there's one poor woman whose back is stuck at a 90 degree angle, making her unable to stand up at all. I'd always assumed this problem came a lifetime of planting rice by hand, but supposedly it's caused by a chronic vitamin B1 deficiency that was a chronic problem in the first few decades of the 20th century.

Social Security Hotel

I went to Tokyo to meet a friend yesterday. He's working for the prestigious Tokyo University, the top ranked school in Japan, and it was interesting to take in a part of the city I'd not seen much of before. The hotel we stayed at was called Eminasu, and I was surprised to see a large sign stating proudly that the hotel had been built with money from the National Pension System, the equivalent to Social Security in Japan. Yes, there's so much money sloshing around in funds like the pension system and Japan Post deposit accounts that legislators are quite unable to keep their paws off it, and regularly launch grand hakomono (lit. "box-thing") construction projects to foster economic development, provide services for citizens and (of course) secure lucrative employment for the former government employees who were directly involved with said projects when they retire. (This is known as amakudari or "descent from heaven.") Sometimes the system works okay, as in the case of the hotel we stayed at, providing a good room at a slightly subsidized rate since the government-operated hotel didn't need to generate a profit. But there are plenty of horror stories of massively wasteful construction projects made with taxpayer funds, like a sprawling resort hotel at the top of a mountain that no one ever stayed at and a now-bankrupt theme park designed as a replica of a Turkish village, complete with a full-sized Trojan horse. How fitting.

They have these hotels all over. You can stay at this one in Kyoto if you like.My hotel room was $80 per night, so I presume the ones in Kyoto will likely be the same.

The rooms certainly look nice!

Japan's Internet is #1 in the World

Japan has the best Internet connectivity in the world, according to a newly released study which compared actual data-transfer rates and overall customer satisfaction by Internet users around the world. Sweden came in second, followed by the Netherlands (#3), South Korea (#5), Germany (#9), France (#12), the U.S. (#16) and the U.K. (#24). The results were interesting to me because Japan lagged behind the rest of the world in adopting the Internet throughout the 1990s, with significantly higher prices and lower connection speeds. A lot of the slow Internet development was due to NTT, the 800 lb gorilla of the telecommunications world here, a former government-run monopoly that owned all the lines ISPs needed to lease in order to do business, and which generally kept a lot of competition out of the marketplace by functioning as the country's largest ISP directly. It turns out that having a less competition might have been a good thing in the case of Japan, since NTT and its subsidiary companies were able to execute technology roll-outs more efficiently than if it'd been up to a hodge-podge of companies, as is the case with the U.S. J-List connects to the net through hikari fiber or an optical fiber line, although it was a long wait to get our office wired for the fast connection. We actually had to make a formal request to the mayor's office (my wife happens to have the same last name as him, so we let the staff think we were related), and they passed along our request to NTT, who made sure J-List was the first customer connected in our city. Having fast, efficient Internet despite the lack of competitive pressures might seem puzzling, but it's quite common for Japan to seemingly violate the rules of Capitalism yet have things turn out okay in the end.

Wither Morality in Japan?

"Children who are able to greet others properly won't be steered wrong in life." This is one of the many tidbits of wisdom hung on metal signs put up by our local PTA, and every time I drive down a street I haven't been on before I'm strangely compelled to keep my eyes open for new signs. "People who don't show respect to their parents won't receive it from their own children." Japan is a unique industrialized nation in that its ideas on morality were never based on the Bible, unlike Western countries, and I've always been interested in how the Japanese define the concept. All elementary school kids have a class called dotoku (morality) in which they learn about various (of course secular) issues, such as how recognize and stop ijime, how to be thankful to others, and so on. "Weak-minded children are caused by over-protective parents." Yes, pinning down the basis of Japan's thinking on morality is a challenge. Is it based on Buddhism? I haven't been able to identify any active lessons that Japanese Buddhism imparts to its followers other than to be respectful of your family members, especially those who have gone on to the next world. It's a question I hope to find the answer to some day.

This one says, "Parents show their loving concern for their children when they offer advice to them." Sounds lame in English but better in Japanese.

A Taco Revolution in Japan?

"How many Taco Bell sauce packets do you have in your glove compartment?" I've got a lot, and whenever I go to the U.S. I make sure to bring back more, since they're awfully convenient and taste good, too. We had soft tacos for dinner the other day, and it was a reverent experience, with everyone making each taco with care and eating it slowly, savoring each bite. Unlike Hong Kong with its mish-mash of food cultures, with all manner of cuisine from Asia, Europe and everywhere else mixed together, Japan can be rather closed-minded about what it eats, which makes it hard to find some of my favorite items. The amazing thing about the tortillas we ate this time, though, was that they were bought here -- I kept re-reading the Japanese text on the package, unable to believe my eyes. Could this be the beginning of a renaissance of culinary internationalization in Japan? My fingers are so crossed.

Site Back UP

J-List, this site, and JAST USA / Peach Princess were all offline for a couple of hours due to a blown router with our ISP. Back up now. Whew ^_^;;

Is Japan Behind the U.S. and Europe?

I write often about how Japanese consider themselves to be a decade or so "behind" the U.S. and Europe, and almost take it for granted that their country is less advanced than the West. For example, I've heard people here remark that no one from Japan could have created a company like YouTube, capable of serving videos to every point on the globe, because no one here could think on such a nakedly large scale. Although it's all too easy to judge Japan from my American point of view, there are some core areas that could be improved, starting with thinking about the web. Yahoo Japan's video site would like to be #1 here, but it not only requires Windows 2000/XP/Vista to work, but you have to be using Internet Explorer, which is a real bummer for Linux, Mac and all Firefox users. Japanese web companies don't seem terribly interested in the outside world, either: Mixi.jp, the leading Facebook-like site in Japan, requires an email address with a Japanese ending (yahoo.co.jp as opposed to yahoo.com) to sign up. Banks can be frustrating, too. Back in my single days, I went hitchhiking up to Hokkaido, being sure to bring my bank card so I could get money from the "cash corner" (ATM) when I needed it. Unfortunately, banks and their ATMs were closed for the Golden Week holidays back then, so I wasn't able to get any cash out all week. (Banks have gotten better, but are still frustrating -- it still costs $6 to send $50 to someone's bank account, as there are no personal checks in Japan.) In the past, many of the most innovative ideas have flowed from Japan, like the Sony Walkman or the idea of putting a camera in a cell phone, but I don't think something like Skype could ever have been invented here.

Confucius Say: Take a Test, Young Man

The Japanese like tests, and there are a mind-boggling number of them offered to people of all ages, from the most popular English test (the Step Test, called Eiken here) to tests for penmanship and kanji writing ability, knowledge of world historical sites, the ability to memorize train schedules and even use of a kendama. Japan's culture of bettering yourself through study and competitive testing was imported from China, where the idea of awarding government jobs based on academic ability rather than, say, giving them to the sons of current officials, emanated from the teachings of Confucius. When I first arrived in Japan, I wanted a way to make myself study Japanese harder, and I found the perfect goal: the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), held every December. The test is set up in four levels, with level 4 being the easiest (hiragana, katakana and a limited number of kanji) and level 1 being required for entrance into a Japanese university, which worked out great because it's not hard to raise yourself up one level with each year of study. The deadline for applying for the test this year is coming up on Sept. 20, so if you'd like to give the test a try, see this site for more information. Remember that J-List genuinely loves Japan and wants to promote the study of the language, and we've got tons of Japanese study books in stock, including JLPT-specific study aids.

In other words, the idea is to use these:

and get one of these:

You Are Already Married!

Happy Wedding! To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Fist of the North Star, the popular manga and anime set in a post-Apocalyptic future in which everyone looks strangely like extras from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the publishers are holding an actual wedding ceremony for the two main characters, Kenshiro and the woman he spent years battling for, Yuria. On Saturday, 777 lucky fans who won invitations to the event will dress up in their best formal suits to attend the special wedding, which is being put on by the famous "charisma wedding planner" Akemi Ariga. The event will be similar to the fake "funeral" for Kenshiro's brother, the warlord Raoh, and should be widely attended by the media. You can always tell someone who's on his way back from a wedding in Japan, because he's carrying a large bag of gifts he received from the new couple containing things like katsuobushi (dried bonito fish), sekihan (red-colored rice with beans) and manju cakes. Tomorrow there will be 777 Fist of the North Star fans carrying some serious otaku cred home with them on the train. Although they're fictional characters, we certainly wish Ken and Yuria lots of happiness. You are already married!

Hey! Let's go to Kyoto!

Every visitor to Japan develops, I think, a special relationship with Kyoto, the beautiful city that was capital of Japan for most of the country's history. Founded in 794 as Heian-Kyo, it was made in imitation of the great Chinese cities of the era, sporting a Manhattan-style grid pattern with wide, straight roads that are actually named, quite convenient as streets are generally not named in Japan. Of course, everyone loves the beautiful old temples, and whenever I'm in the city I've got a mental list of must-see sites that are among my favorites, from the bamboo forest at Arashiyama to Nijo Castle with its anti-ninja squeaking floors to Kiyomizu-dera, nearly destroyed in Godzilla vs. Mothra. History can be found at every corner, for example on the Gojo Bridge, the scene of a famous sword battle between the 7-foot tall warrior monk Benkei and the charismatic Yoshitsune more than 1000 years ago. When you go to Kyoto, you suddenly become linked with every other foreigner who's ever visited the cty. Even Albert Einstein, who spent several months lecturing in Japan, loved the city. As fall approaches, we'll be under attack from TV commercials reminding us of how beautiful the city is this time of year, with the slogan, "I've got an idea! Let's go to Kyoto!"

Here's the Kiyomizu-Dera commercial for Kyoto. Warning: it will give you Kyoto-lust!

And the commercial advertising my favoritest place of all, Sanjusangendo (the Hall of 33 Bays).

 

All About the Word "Anime"

Although anime has become a part of our world culture, watched by fans from all over the globe, the word anime has some interesting history to it. From the early years of the industry, the most common term for animation in Japan was doga, meaning "moving pictures," but when the groundbreaking Tetsuwan Atom (Atom Boy) aired in 1957, it was marketed as "TV manga," starting the early trend of referring to animation with the same word that's used for comic books, manga. The first known example of the word anime being used as an abbreviation for "animation" was in 1965, in an industry magazine for independent film directors, and the word started to spread out to fans from this point. By the time the popular World Masterpiece Anime Theatre series began in 1975, bringing classic works of children's literature like Heidi, Girl of the Alps and A Dog of Flanders to viewers, the word anime was universally used to refer to the genre. One of the biggest events for anime fandom as a whole was Tokuma Shoten's launching of popular anime magazine Animage in 1978, which went on to define many of the concepts of the genre that we take for granted now, bringing all fans together under the same big tent. Although the word anime is often used in the west to mean the opposite of traditional Western animation, Japanese will readily refer to Disney films using the term.

Kamakura Confidence

My daughter's been quite happy in school recently, after a trip she took with her class a few weeks ago to Kamakura, the historic town known for its many beautiful temples. As part of her Ministry of Education-mandated English class (they recently decided that Japanese were never going to get good at English unless they started studying the language earlier), the sixth graders had a special assignment: they were to approach the foreign tourists and ask them some questions that had been prepared, like where they were from and what they liked about Japan. It was quite a challenging task, since the students had taken their English lessons from their normal Japanese homeroom teacher who doesn't actually speak the language at all, and most of the kids weren't able to make themselves understood by the foreign tourists. It was the perfect moment for my daughter, who came to everyone's rescue and engaged the gaijin visitors, getting them to come and answer everyone's questions while she translated. After that, the other kids in my daughter's class had a bit more respect for her.

2009 Japanese Calendars!

It's time for J-List to role out our big volley of 2009 preorder calendars, as we make hundreds of gorgeous anime, character, JPOP, Japanese sexy idol, traditional and other calendars to our customers around the world. If you've never had one of these giant poster-sized Japanese calendars on your wall, we hope you'll consider getting one or more this year, since they really are something special, with the highest quality printing imaginable, gorgeous glossy coated sheets, and all original art, which will be treasured by you all year long. Every year it's fun to see which Japanese star will claim the coveted "CL1" spot, indicating that they are the most famous person in Japan, and this year the top spot goes to super-cute idol, singer and voice actress Yui Aragaki from Okinawa. We've posted dozens of these great 2009 calendars for preorder -- browse them all now!

Gotta Get Me Some Creamed Corn Soup

If you love "corn potage," then get to Japan as fast as you can, since people here just can't get enough of creamed corn soup. Most every famires (family restaurant) sports a Drink Bar where you can help yourself to as many glasses of iced coffee or melon soda as you'd like for 200 yen or so, and nearby, there's usually a Soup Bar with a big pot of delicious creamed corn soup -- mmm. As an American, when I think of soup I think of the Campbell's classics like chicken noodle, tomato, and vegetable beef, but these are as alien here in Japan as Green Tea Butterscotch and Rose Flavored Gum are in most parts of the world. Other types of soup the Japanese like include creamed pumpkin or carrot soups, healthy wakame (seaweed) or miso soup, or if at an Italian restaurant, perhaps some minestrone. When you get sick in the U.S., most people think of eating chicken soup, but in Japan the most common remedies are drinking a tea with ginger in it or swallowing down a raw egg in sake -- yum.

(They even have it canned.)

The Goal of Education in Japan

I remember back in the 1980s, when Japan's educational system was held up as a success story for other nations to follow. While there certainly are some good elements the country's approach to education -- like the idea of using competition to get students to become goal-oriented and apply themselves in ways I could never have dreamed of when I was that age -- not every aspect of schools here would be appreciated in other countries. The primary goal of education in Japan seems to be to help create happy members of society through inclusion in groups, and there are several mechanisms for promoting this appreciation of your own place as a member of the larger group, for example the complex system of sports and other character-building clubs that students are compelled to join in Junior High School. Whereas American Junior High and High School kids will each have random schedules, Japanese classes are fixed, with all 40 students of class 3-A staying in the same classroom for every hour of every day, as different teachers come and go depending on what the next subject is. One side effect of this is that all classes in Elementary and Junior High learn the exact same material, no matter what their individual level might be. My daughter was taking some lessons with a private tutor in the U.S. over the summer, and I was discussing the possibility that she might be borderline dyslexic with her teacher, since I am myself. The tutor asked me, "Well, if that's the case, they must have some kind of special class for her in Japan, right?" The answer is no -- unless a child is so different they're not able to go to their normal school, everyone will be treated exactly the same no matter what, the better for the harmony of the group.

Divorce and Japan

There's a sad statistic that's on the rise in Japan these days: divorce. The combination of the country's rapidly aging society, high stress levels and a new law that enables a woman to claim up to half of her husband's company pension is causing the number of older couples getting a "vintage year divorce" to rise. When I was an English teacher, I taught a wide range of students, including a fair number of housewives, and I remember being surprised by the venom some of the women were capable of spitting when discussing their husbands. I didn't understand at the time that at least some of this husband-bashing was part of a Japanese social custom you might call "out-humbling each other," as women try to show that they have the most worthless, lazy husband in the room. (Japanese mothers and grandmothers will do the same thing when discussing their own children with others, having competitions to see whose kids were the most baka, and I've had to expressly forbid this kind of talk in my own home.) The divorce rate in Japan is still comparatively low -- currently around 2.2 per 1000 people per year, compared with 4 in the U.S. and 2.6 in the U.K. -- but finding someone who is batsu-ichi (lit. "one strike out") is a lot more common than it has been in the past. Coupled with the trend of women either marrying much later or not at all, it Japan has some tough issues to face as the 21st century progresses.

They look so happy as they stamp that divorce document.

The Best Time to Come to Japan

One of the cardinal rules for gaijin coming to Japan is, try your best to make it over here as a university student. College life in Japan is a kind of magical time between childhood and adulthood, mercifully free of the stress that normally comes with studying at university, where you can make lifelong friends and see Japan from a viewpoint you won't ever get to enjoy again. I was too poor to come to Japan when I was in college, so I had to come here as a shakai-jin, a "society person" or full-time worker, which colored my experiences in a different way, but I'd have given anything to be able to visit Japan during school. Many universities offer study abroad programs that allow students to spend a semester or a year living in Japan, so if you or a Japan-focused young person you know would like to come to Japan for a year, start looking into what's available. Remember my theory that every young American should be made to live for a year outside their home country, which would do wonders for the way we view our own country and the rest of the world.

If you are lucky enough to come here during your college years, this is what you get to look forward to:

Fun with Japanese Company Names

For some reason, studying the etymologies of Japanese company names is fascinating to me. Like how the founder of Canon got the name for his company from the Bodhisattva Kannon, a kind of Goddess of Mercy revered by Japanese Buddhists, or how the name Epson was formed from "Son of Electric Printer." When you study Japanese, you start to see these famous brands in a new light, for example watchmaker Seiko is written with characters meaning "delicate and minute engineering," while Nikon is an abbreviation of Nihon Kogaku ("Japan Optical"). Yakult got their name from the Esperanto word for yogurt, which was suggested by a Polish researcher working with the company at the time, and Subaru is the local name for the Pleiades star cluster, deemed fitting as the company was formed by merging six smaller companies together. Bandai's name is rather complex: it comes from Bandai Fueki, one of the books in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and the phrase means "forever unchanging," since children's toys should be something that are constant throughout the ages. A lot of Japanese company names have the word ya at the end, such as toy maker Kotobukiya or the bookstore chain Kinokuniya. This is a character meaning "roof" which is used to denote a shop, like hana-ya (a flower shop) or ramen-ya (a ramen shop) in addition to being part of various proper names. There's a new sporting goods store that just opened in our city called Himaraya, which is great since it fits the standard Japanese naming practice yet makes you think of the mighty Himalayas. Their official company slogan is pretty cool, by the way: "We have a fine dream."

And in case you don't know what a Bodhisattva Kannon is, our neighboring city of Takasaki just happens to have a giant (as in 5-story) statue of the goddess, which I'll show you.

4000 Years of Chinese Traditional Medicine

Don't tell anyone, but I'm on a diet. You could call it the "iPhone diet" because I'm using one of the many applications (iTunes link) for my iPhone to track daily calorie intake. My plan is to eat whatever I want while accurately recording everything, which will help me identify the stuff I've been eating that's the most harmful. To help me out, my wife bought some bad-tasting medicine, saying, "Now, this is kampo, so it will definitely work." A word that literally means "Chinese way," kampo refers to the traditional herbal medicine of China, and it occupies an almost mythical place in the minds of the Japanese, in effect being a complete class of medical science that's separate from Western medicine. Many products, from energy drinks to various "enhancers" to Yomeshu (a kind of medicinal sake loaded with Chinese herbs) advertise themselves as making use of the magical power of kampo to relieve symptoms. Many kampo medicines have the full backing of the medical community here, and health insurance even covers them. In the U.S., however, traditional Chinese medicines are completely ignored by almost every major company. It'd be interesting if there were some really effective drugs sitting right under our noses that have been in use in China for thousands of years.

Wither Gaijin?

The most common word for "foreigner" in Japanese is gaijin, written using the characters for "outside" and "person." While ostensibly referring to any non-Japanese person, the term is most often used to mean American and European foreigners, and never to, say, Chinese or Koreans, who are referred to by their own specific nationality (e.g. chugoku-jin, kankoku-jin). Depending on who uses it and in what way, the word gaijin can sound derogatory to some, which is why TV newscasters will always use the more polite gaikokujin or "outside-country-person" instead. Recently there's been some discussion on various blogs about how bad the term gaijin really is, and weather we should be trying to stop its use. My own take is that it's just a word, and no worse than the term "alien," which sounds a little strange when you've grown up watching sci-fi films then realize it can refer to people from other countries, too. The reality is that the majority of the "discrimination" many foreigners get in Japan is positive -- people offering to pay you $40 an hour to speak your native language with their kids, pressing gifts into your hands, and girls writing their phone numbers on the back of chopstick wrappers. Personally, I think that if someone you don't know starts buying you beers in a bar and inadvertantly calls you gaijin, as has happened to me, it's best to not be too quick to take offense -- you are enjoying their beer, after all. Of course, Japan is by no means perfect, and improvements should be made. Still, when I compare my own experiences here with what the reverse situation might be, I really can't find reason to complain.

The Cup Ramen Museum in Osaka

Next time you're in Osaka, consider visiting the Monofuku Ando Memorial Ramen Museum, a sprawling facility commemorating the achievements of the Taiwan-born Japanese inventor of instant ramen. In the postwar years, Japanese were eating bread made with wheat flower brought in by the occupying U.S. military, and Momofuku (then operating a small business extracting salt from seawater) wondered why they didn't eat noodles instead, which were more familiar to the Japanese people. In 1957, a bank he was director of went under, taking his personal finances down along with it. In order to get out of debt, he returned to his idea about noodles, trying to find a more convenient way to prepare them. The result was Chikin [sic] Ramen, a delicious chicken flavored raman that's still being sold after fifty years. (I had some for lunch today.) At the museum, you can see different varieties of Cup Ramen from around the world, like broccoli ramen from Germany or curry flavored noodles from India, which are made without the soup base so that the noodles can be eaten with the hands, as is the custom in that country. Cup Ramen in all Western countries have noodles that are shorter than in Japan, to make them easier to eat with a fork. The museum sports a virtual reality room showing what happens as ramen is made, from the viewpoint of the raman itself, and afterwards you can mosey up to the Instant Ramen Bar and order some ramen with custom toppings that you can specify. (One of the most popular flavors is Seafood Milk, ugh...)

Prime Minister "Baton Touch"

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda surprised everyone by suddenly announcing his resignation on Monday. He's stepping down, he says, to take responsibility over the political stalemate that's grown between his ruling Liberty Democratic Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which has control of half the Japanese legislature and which is stubbornly resisting working with the LDP to resolve various issues. Incredibly, this is the 10th leadership change since I came to Japan in 1991, compared with only three in the U.S. and Britain during the same period, which illustrates a real problem with Japan: the near total lack of long-term quality leadership. Of all the recent head honchos in Japan, only the popular Junichi Koizumi was able to overcome the strange phenomenon of Japanese politicians withholding their support for their own leaders the minute they try to lead long enough to enact any reforms -- I really have to feel sorry for Fukuda-san, who was never given a break by anyone. The anime-watching world is all aflutter with the hopes that Fukuda's second-in-command Taro Aso will become the next PM. Aso-san is famous for being an otaku, known for carrying volumes of manga with him onto the Diet floor and calling for the government to support artists and companies exporting manga and anime to the world. In addition to his appreciation for Japan's popular culture, Aso-san is a maverick in other ways, being Roman Catholic in a very Buddhist nation, and fluent in English after studying at Stanford and the London School of Economics as well as spending two years mining for diamonds in Africa.

Japan's Prince of Tennis

Japan has a new Prince of Tennis, by the name of Kei Nishikori, who is kicking butt in the U.S. open right now after his big win against David Ferrer over the weekend, making him the first Japanese tennis player to advance to the 4th round since 1937. Born in in rural Shimane Prefecture in 1989, he took up a racket at the age of five and would hit balls against the side of his house for many hours, showing a remarkable aptitude for the sport. He took the incredible step of leaving Japan behind, crossing over to the U.S. at the age of 13 to be trained at the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, which caused quite a lot of buzz at the time. As usual, Japanese who compete in the world stage and raise the image of Japan in the eyes of foreigners become overnight sensations in here, and suddenly his name is on everyone's lips. I certainly hope that Nishikori-kun can follow stars like Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and soccer player Hidetoshi Nakata in redefining the international image of Japan through sports. Ganbatte, Nishikori!

Understanding Star Wars through Anime

I finally got to see the new Clone Wars computer animated film, which just opened here. One of the minor agonies of being a Star Wars fan in Japan is having to wait an extra long time for films to open, because George Lucas likes Japan and always wants to personally be here for any of his film releases. Whenever a new Star Wars film comes out, my son and I pick through it to see what character names were obviously inspired by Japanese words, like Count Dooku's name from doku meaning poison, or the obi in Obi-Wan meaning a kimono belt. The new character in this film was Anakin's padawan Asohka, which seems like it can only have come from the phrase ah, so ka? meaning, "Oh, is that so?" The new film was obviously inspired by Japanese animation to a certain degree, and I noticed the animators even followed the recent convention of including an okama or gay character, in the form of the makeup-wearing Ziro the Hutt, nephew to Jabba. It's quite common for recent anime series to feature one effeminate male character, called okama kyara in Japanese, to provide comic relief and act as a foil for the main characters. Some examples of these fabulous characters include Leeron, the capable and flamboyant engineer from Gurren Lagann, and Bobby Margot, the helmsmen of the Macross Quarter from Macross Frontier, so manly and yet so girlish. Heck, Gonzo's gorgeous Romeo x Juliet anime remix even featured an okama character: it was William Shakespeare himself, repurposed as a mentor to the starcross'd lovers.

As for the Clone Wars film, hrrm, it was a nice extension of the Clone Wars animated shorts, that's for sure. As long as you hypnotize yourself into pretending you're a 12 year old boy again, it was great.

Things a Japanese City Will Definitely Have: Hanabi Taikai

There are certain things that every self-respecting Japanese city will be sure to have. For example, a large central Culture Hall, or bunka kaikan, to hold important events like concerts, piano recitals and taiko drum performances put on for parents by the local kindergarten kids. In April, Japan's cherry blossoms explode with color, and virtually every Japanese city has an established park or two lined with cherry trees for their citizens to sit under, as they try pretend that their city alone is famous for sakura. If a city has more than a million residents, it starts to pine for a large tower in the center of town, and almost every major city from Tokyo to Kyoto to Fukuoka sports a tall Space Needle-like tower. Then there are big fireworks festivals, large displays of color put on for everyone's enjoyment on a specified day during the summer. Our city's fireworks festival was on Sunday, and the entire city oo'd and ah'd as the sky was lit up with beautiful "fire flowers," as they're called in Japanese. Fireworks, of course, go back a long way in Japanese history, and you have to wonder what it was like seeing a fireworks display back in the Edo Period.

Thoughts on Reading Kanji

When you can't read or write kanji, the idea of being able to recognize hundreds or thousands of the symbols probably seems daunting, but as with most things in life, it's not as difficult as it first looks. Kanji characters are built quite logically, with different quadrants of many characters organized around the meanings for that character. For example, the kanji for words like to speak, to read and to translate all feature the same left section, a radical which happens to look like a stack of books on a shelf, which is the character for "to say" (iu), indicating that all these characters are related to communication in some way. While Chinese might need around 3500 characters to read and write their language properly, Japanese is a bit more manageable, with 1006 characters taught in Elementary School and another 939 in Junior High, which are collectively known as the joyo kanji or "general use" characters. One of the most interesting thing that happens when you learn a language that's as different from English as Japanese is the moment you find yourself "reading" normally, without subvocalizing or translating into English -- nothing but your eyes, passing over the page and reading in the chunks of kanji, hiragana and katakana directly. The brain is amazing, really -- it can do anything.

Small "K" Cars in Japan: J-List's New Suzuki Every Wagon

Our new warehouse construction is nearly done, and we hope to be able to move in soon. To help us transport all the cool products that J-List is going to be bringing you, we bought a new company van yesterday. The one we got is an Every Wagon by Suzuki, and no, I didn't choose the car because of the wacky English name, although that was an added bonus. With its small 660 cc engine, the car belongs in a class of Japanese vehicles known as kei cars and trucks, meaning "light weight," identifiable by a special yellow license plate. These "K" vehicles are great for Japan -- inexpensive, easy to drive cars with small engines that are able to do just about anything a larger one can do, even drive on the freeway, although it takes a while to get up to full speed. Our van gets great gas mileage, too, around 16 kpl / 39 mpg, and because there are no newfangled hybrid features involved, it was very inexpensive to buy. With gas prices hitting the equivalent of $6.80 a gallon here, these small cars are more popular than ever, even without the tax benefits the Japanese government gives for owning more efficient cars. For some reason, these small "K" cars seem to feature names that are extra strange, like the Suzuki Carry, the Honda Acty, the Mazda Scrum, the Toyota Deliboy and the Daihatsu Applause. Sadly, these ultra-small cars are not generally sold in the U.S., although they're legal for non-freeway use in some more rural states and for specialized uses, like on college campuses.

Rain, Rain, Rain in Japan

Rain, rain, rain: this has been the wettest summer I can recall in Japan, and we've had wet weather off and on for weeks. The especially heavy rains this week brought Japan's famous Shinkansen trains to a stop, stranding thousands, and an evacuation warning was issued for the entire city of Okazaki, near Nagoya, as rivers that ran through the city overflowed, killing at least one. It was even more tragic in July, when rain-fed flash floods whipped through a riverside play area the city of Kobe had constructed to give children a place to play in the water, washing away a mother and three children. Summer in Japan brings thunderstorms almost daily, and last week lightning started a fire that damaged the Daigoji Temple in Kyoto. We're especially nervous about lightning around here -- twice J-List's building has been struck, killing our main air conditioning unit and causing us to go a week in the sweltering heat as we waited for it to be repaired. The extra wet summer is all the more puzzling because typhoon season isn't supposed to start until September -- which means we might have another month or so of pummeling and rain to look forward to.

The Japanese Mess Up English

What kind of juice would you like, cola or tea? The Japanese sometimes take liberties with words when they import them from English, adjusting their meanings to suit their needs. In Japan the word "juice" （ジュース）is often casually used to mean any canned or bottled beverage, and it's common for the term be applied to things like a can of iced tea or a carbonated drink, although we wouldn't think of these things as juice in English. Some other words the Japanese use with slightly altered meanings include "rouge" for lipstick, "manicure" for nail polish, "hair manicure" for hair coloring, and "milk" for powdered creamer to put in your coffee. If your house gets cold in the winter, you can turn on a "stove" (a kerosene heater), and if you want to check your weight, just step onto the "health meter" in your bathroom. The large number of differences between the meanings of "English" words as the Japanese use them and what they mean to native speakers can certainly get confusing: I remember a conversation I was having with a student about a shortcut I'd found while exploring the city that day, but she thought I was complimenting her on a short haircut she'd recently gotten.

Mmm, look at all that delicious juice.

Gunma History Lesson from Iwajuku

J-List's home prefecture of Gunma isn't as famous as Kyoto or Nara, but it can hold its own when it comes to ancient history. For example, there are more than 8000 burial mounds from the Kofun Period (250-538 A.D.), indicating a high level of civilization in the past, even though Tokyoites consider us to be a quaint place only useful for hot springs and skiing. But our prefecture's history goes a lot farther back. By an amazing coincidence, J-List is located only a few kilometers from the Iwajuku Archeological Dig, which happens to contain the oldest record of human habitation in all Japan. In 1949, an archeology enthusiast named Aizawa Tadahiro was digging for pottery shardswhen he hit on something much older: hand-made tools of obsidian and flint. At first, Mr. Tadahiro's discovery was mocked by the establishment, but his findings were verified, essentially pushing the timeline of humans living in the Japanese islands from 10,000 years ago to more than 30,000. Sadly, almost nothing else is known about the previous residents of Iwajuku, due to the fact that the area lies at the foot of Mt. Akagi, an active volcano that spits out highly acidic ash, but it's interesting that such a famous place is only a stone hammer's throw away from us. By another amazing coincidence (there are a lot of them in Japan for some reason), when J-List's own Tomo was in the 4th grade, he was in the hospital getting his tonsils out, and the man in the next bed over was Tadahiro-sensei himself. So Tomo got to hear all about the discovery at Iwajuku first-hand.

Useful Skills to Bring to Japan

If you want to live in Japan, there are certain skills you'll need to acquire. For example, you should be okay with popping something in your mouth without stopping to ask what it is, as food that's placed in front of you won't always be something you can identify. ("That can't really be a baby octopus, can it? OM NOM NOM.") If you're taller than 5'9" (175 cm) or so, you'll probably need to learn to duck or else bang your head in doorways a lot. There might also come a time when you want to let your friend know he should check out the pretty Japanese girl standing nearby, but do it in a way that the girl can't understand. This is where speaking extremely difficult English comes in handy, since most Japanese won't be able to pick up on intentionally complex words, like, "Hey John, I recommend that you examine the specimen of the opposite gender standing off your starboard bow. A delightful and tantalizing example of the human form, wouldn't you say?" I've had extensive conversations in front of members of the opposite sex, cloaking my conversation in this way, although the longer you live in Japan, the harder it becomes to recall really difficult words. Another suggestion is to use Pig Latin, a great way to obfuscate anything you want to say, since Japanese people don't know what it is. "Ook-lay at-tay at-thay ueaituful-bay irl-gay!" You never know what skills you'll need in Japan.

More Fun With Chopsticks

It's known that the Japanese eat with chopsticks with almost every meal, deftly picking up even the tiniest morsels of food without a second thought. There are some important of chopstick manners that are practiced here, which you should be aware of if you ever find yourself eating with Japanese people. First, as you may know if you've seen our famous Japanese Manners T-shirt, you should never stick chopsticks standing up in rice, since this is done only at funerals as an offering of "last rice" for the dead. Similarly, don't hand food to someone else's chopsticks using your own -- always put the food down on a plate or something first for the other person to take. Finally, when sharing food with others, it's nice to turn your chopsticks around, using the back of your chopsticks to eat from a dish that others are also going to eat from, which keeps germs away from them. Using chopsticks isn't hard at all by the way, and J-List offers a wide range of authentic chopsticks from Japan with handy features for gaijin like us, such as rough patches at the tips to make it easier to grasp that last grain of rice, or training chopsticks that are great for starting out with. Why not browse J-List's chopstick, bento and other items now?

Learning About Keigo (Polite Japanese) and Anime

Each language is special, with its own set of interesting features. Romance languages, for example, have nouns that come in male and female genders, which can be difficult for native English speakers to pick up -- why is a pen la puma but a pencil is el lapiz? In Japanese, there are some interesting features, too. As I often point out here, the subject and object are sometimes left off of sentences if the speakers know what is meant. Thus a girl might say to her friend "Iku?" which literally means "Go?" Who is going, and where are they going, and when are they going, are all implied (let's head out to lunch now). Another interesting aspect of the language is keigo, or formal polite language, which splits some verbs into "exhaulting," for use when referring to someone you want to show respect to such as an honored guest or your boss, and "humble," used to lower yourself or your organization, thus raising the person you're being polite too even higher. This polite form of Japanese can be quite removed from everyday life here, and when Japanese go to university or a trade school, part of their education will include training in how to use this higher level of polite language, so they don't embarrass themselves when they enter the workforce. One thing I've found interesting is how a Japanese person can angrily berate someone even while they maintain this careful keigo language mode. In the anime Gurren Lagann, there's a scene in which Nia, princess and daughter of Lord Genome, demands to know why her father has been forcing humanity to live underground. She's extremely angry as she speaks, yet her Japanese is polite the whole time. This is probably something that'd be impossible to recreate accurately in English.

Kandora: Korean Dramas in Japan

My wife is hooked on Kandora, short for Kankoku dorama or South Korean soap operas, and it seems every time I walk through the living room she's got another one on the TV. When I ask her what's so interesting about the shows, she gets very animated. "Oh, they're nothing like Japanese dramas," she says. "They're more intense, and the stories are much more involved and interesting. The characters really change and grow." It struck me that she sounded like me back in the 80s, describing why Japanese animation was so superior to whatever else was on TV back then for people to watch (I actually can't remember at this point). It seems to me that the human brain is wired to appreciate things that are fresh and new, and when a concept comes along that is totally unique, people are drawn to it irresistibly, which goes a long way towards explaining the revolution that Japanese animation has brought to the world over the past 20 years. My wife is finding that Korean series like Time Between Dog and Wolf, Spring Waltz and Something Happened in Bali are offering her a higher level of drama and depth, sometimes moving her to tears with their (often sad) stories. The Japanese soaps, with their lighter and more formulaic stories that you can usually guess ahead of time, don't seem to be doing it for her.

This is a magazine for fans of Korean dramas living in Japan. Yes, there are kandora otaku here too, mostly women in their 40s so it's kind of scary.

Thoughts on Japanese Food

It's funny how so many of the foods eaten by the Japanese on a daily basis aren't very Japanese at all. Sure, people here eat plenty of things that are associated closely with Japan, like soba and udon noodles, sushi and sashimi, or donburi ("big bowl") dishes like gyudon (beef bowl) or oyakodon, the "parent and child" rice bowl consisting of chicken and egg cooked together and put over rice, but there are many non-Japanese foods consumed here, too. Of course, there are many dishes that have been imported from China, like gyoza (pot stickers) or ramen, although the Japanese don't consider the stir-fried yakisoba noodles to be Chinese in origin, much as they look like chow mein to me. The Japanese have internalized foods from many other countries, including Italian spaghetti, French croquetes (which go so well with that Japanese Tonkatsu sauce) or American "hamburg steak" (steak made from ground beef). The single most popular food in Japan might just be that ubiquitous curry rice, the thick curry sauce served over steaming rice, which was imported from India via Britain during the Meiji Era. We probably eat it 4-5 times a week at our house.

Jiko Shokai: Japanese Self Introductions

One interesting concept I learned about soon after coming to Japan was jiko shokai, which just means "self introduction" but which seems to have a special cultural significance here. In almost any situation where people will be interacting, be it a classroom, a part-time job or the local PTA board, a new member will always stand and make a formal self introduction, telling the others their name (including how to write it in kanji), where they're from, what their hobbies are, and so on. Giving this information to the other members of the group allows everyone to categorize the newcomer properly, and afterwards the others will do their own jiko shokai in turn. These self introductions are also heavily used in ESL teaching, too, since formal self introductions are seen as the "most basic" form of human communication in Japan. Back when I was an ESL teacher, I taught children a lot, and I made sure to spend a lot of time teaching self-introductions, since I knew that the parents of my students expected that their kids have this ability before anything else and would complain if their kids couldn't recite basic information about themselves to others.

Dokdo or Takeshima?

They're known as Takeshima in Japan, Dokdo in Korea, and internationally as the Lincourt Rocks: two ridiculously small volcanic islands located between Japan and South Korea, which were mapped by the French whaling ship Lincourt in 1849 and which both neighbors are claiming ownership of today. The Japanese side of the argument seems to be that they annexed the two uninhabited islands in 1905, which were officially entered into the books as Japanese territory. After World War II the status of the islands was not specifically addressed in the postwar treaties, which is where most of the current problem flows from. There's plenty of evidence to support each side, for example an 1880 German map showing the rocks as belonging to Japan (hence the world powers of the era considered the islands to be Japanese), a passage in a 1714 historical document in Korea that expressed worry about "Japanese territory" (the Lincourt Rocks) being so close to Korea's, and the fact that Korea doesn't seem to have ever named the islands in antiquity or mapped them clearly. On the other side of the argument, there are documents that show that the government of Japan considered the islands as belonging to Korea from the 1870s, and the Korean government did make an official survey of the islands in 1900, five years before Japan's annexation. The bottom line is that neither side has an iron-clad claim, and each only seemed to start caring about the islands when the other party showed interest, making the whole thing rather like two children fighting over a toy. I predict that South Korea will win the struggle in the end, because a) they have possessed the islands de facto for 50 years now, b) Dokdo/Takeshima are slightly closer to Korea than to Japan, and c) the Koreans are smart enough to make YouTube videos featuring foreigners from around the world holding signs that say "Dokdo belongs to Korea" -- if that doesn't clinch it, nothing will. Even the Korean branch of Dunkin' Doughnuts got into the fray recently with a line of "Do you know Dokdo?" T-shirts promoting Korea's claim to the islands. Um, whatevs.

For (way) more information on this topic, I recommend Occidentalism.org or Dokdo-or-Takeshima, two outstanding resources.

So You Want to Teach English in Japan?

I get rather a lot of questions from readers interested in working in Japan as a teacher, and I do my best to guide them to useful information, although I haven't been working in the field myself for more than a decade. Teaching ESL is a potentially fun option for people wanting to work for a few years in Japan, as long as you have realistic goals and know what you're getting into. Teaching English in Japan might not be the best long-term career choice, due to ongoing problems with the industry in general, which took a big hit when the large eikaiwa chain Nova imploded last year. One of the most popular choices for teaching in Japan is the Japan English Teacher (JET) program, operated by the government to get native English speakers into the country to teach and also facilitate "grass roots Internationalization" of Japan, and judging from the capacity crowd at the JET panel at Anime Expo, there is a lot of interest among anime fans. Unfortunately, getting accepted into the JET system can be a challenge since there are so many applicants each year, but I'll be happy to give the very few points of advice I can offer. First, there are two types of JET jobs, Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) who do the actual teaching, and Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs), who help guide the program and who need a minimum amount of Japanese. As a rule, I generally recommend people with a deeper interest in Japan to consider trying for the latter job, which will probably contribute more to your understanding of Japan overall, and could help you build kone (KOH-neh, or connections) for the future. There are plenty of alternatives to JET, too: for example, most cities have "sister cities" in Japan, for example our city of Isesaki is has a relationship with Springfield, Missouri, and often there are ALT jobs or exchange study opportunities open through these connections. Increasingly, Japanese school districts will rely on outside companies that take the teacher hiring responsibilities out of the hands of the city, so finding these companies is a good idea to consider for anyone seeking these jobs. Note that there are alternatives to full-fledged teaching in Japan -- for example, the Lion's Club has an International Camp and Youth Exchange Program, which (I hear) often don't have enough applicants. Bottom line, if you want to come to Japan, there is probably a way!

One of my Favorite Words: Kokoro

One Japanese word I like a lot is kokoro, which can be a little difficult to translate into English, which makes it all the more mysterious. Basically, kokoro means the heart, but the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of it -- it's often translated into English as as soul, spirit and mind. Kokoro is your inner self, similar to your soul, although there's a more complex word for that particular concept (which is tamashii). The kokoro is thought to reside in the chest, in contrast to most Westerners, who would probably put the mind's physical location as being inside the head. The concept of reading one's mind is expressed in Japanese as kokoro o yomu (to read one's heart), and if something really hurt you you might say kokoro ga itamu (my heart hurts). There are other words in Japanese that correspond to other meanings of the English word heart, such as shinzo (the heart that's hopefully beating in your chest right now) and haato (the English word rendered with a Japanese accent, which describes the classic heart shape). Learning a language is fun because it makes you realize that complex ideas can't be simply brought over on a 1-to-1 basis all the time, which makes you reflect more on what language is all about.

I Don't Know My Own Kids

I have a rather strange problem: I don't know my own kids. Or rather, I know the half that speaks Japanese, that works diligently on homework and reads books or plays video games in Japanese. The English-speaking side of my children is something I'm less familiar with, for the main reason that my kids are unable to function naturally in English when my Japanese wife or I am around. One thing I've learned from becoming bilingual is that once you have a certain "language relationship" with someone, it's almost impossible to change later on. I speak Japanese to my wife but English to my kids, however everyone speaks Japanese back to me, and no amount of pretending to not understand will get my kids to switch to English -- kind of like Han Solo and Chewbacca, conversing in two different languages at once. That's why we send our kids to the U.S. every summer, so they can get a good dose of fun American culture and speak lots of English. I hear reports from my family about how open and outgoing my kids are, using English just as naturally as if they'd been born in the States, but I never get to see it for myself since if I am around, everything reverts to Japanese. Since a person's personality in one language can be quite different in another, I feel as if there's a big part of my own children I'm unable to know.

By the way, aren't these cool? I guffawed at first when this line came out, but they're so fun when you get past the weirdness of transforming Star Wars.

How Many Peopple have Loved You?

Oops, forgot to post this pic after all that. The girl was like 15 years old, so it added a layer of bizarreness to the whole experience. The caption below says "We are the world" (naturally).

This reminded me of my past trip to the U.S. and a girl was getting on the plane with a shirt that had the F-word on it as large as could be. Going to the U.S. I couldn't resist taking her aside and giving her some clothing advice...

Confused Gaijin in Japan

I write a lot about how one of the challenging aspects of leaning Japanese is getting in tune with what isn't being overtly stated, learning to pick up meaning from situations or from the air around you. This is called mugon ryokai or "understanding without saying," and it presents special challenges people coming over from English, a language in which the subject and object of sentences are always stated. Once I got a call from my wife, asking if I would drive down to the station where she was waiting. She was sure I would understand that she was with her mother and that I should come pick up both of them in our normal car, yet she left this part out, in essence, saying, "Would you come pick [omitted] up." Of course I assumed she was alone, so I drove my Mazda Roadster (aka Miata) down to pick her up, which caused all kinds of problems since three people can't fit inside. The inability of non-native Japanese speakers to completely master the built-in vagueness of the language has the effect of turning even the smartest and most intelligent foreigner into a buffoon who doesn't know what is going on around him, at least some of the time. When you watch anime series that have a gaijin kyara or a foreign character, they often fit this mold: kind and well-meaning, but bumbling linguistically and generally causing problems for the Japanese around by always misunderstanding the situation.

From a popular book about a Japanese woman married to a foreigner, Darling ha Gaikokujin. Oops, I mean wa, sorry.

Getting Out of Tokyo: The U-Turn

Imagine if 25% of all Americans lived around the Washington DC area? It would be pretty crowded, and not very fun to get in and out of around holidays. That's exactly the case with Japan, though, where one in four people live in the sprawling Greater Tokyo Area, and as you can imagine, holidays like the just-ended Obon break end with incredibly long trails of cars as people hurry to get back home in time for work on Monday. While most of Tokyo's residents seem quite happy living in an area with a population density north of 5500 people per square kilometer, some decide they'd rather leave the crowded metropolis behind forever. Japanese who came to Tokyo from a more rural part of the country and decide to return home make what's called a U-Turn in Japanese, in essence giving up their life in Tokyo to return to their hometown to live. Perhaps the area of Japan they originally came from is a little too rural for them, and they'd prefer to live in a city near their home town instead: this is known as a J-Turn, essentially a "partial" U-Turn, since a J looks like half of a U, or something like that. Finally, Tokyo-ites who just want to get the heck out of the city and live a simpler life in a less populated part of thr country make what's known as an I-Turn, from the word inaka, meaning "the boonies." I've got a (gaijin) friend who did this: he worked in Tokyo, saving money while searching for a suitable plot of land to buy in Nagano Prefecture, where the Olympics were held in 1998. Now he's enjoying life away from the bustle of Tokyo, able to do the same work he did before thanks to the Internet. I wonder if the same dynamic is at work in New York or Los Angeles, with cities that get so big they start pushing people out?

Here's a picture of the kisei rush or return-to-Tokyo rush. Would you like to sit in a car for 10 hours on the last day of your vacation?

Funny and Creative English in Japan

It never fails: you're going about our business in Japan, when suddenly you come face to face with some really bizarre English. Like a guy with a hat proclaiming, "Hey bad boy!" or a pretty girl wearing a provocative shirt that asks, "How many people have loved you?" or an air cleaner called "Clean Poo." Often the funny English takes the form of advertising, as companies make use of the kakko ii (cool) status of the English language to evoke emotional responses in customers which may lead to them making purchases, since printing something like "canned beverage makes you refresh" on a can of juice can give an otherwise hum-drum product a real "image up." Similarly, most every can of beer you will find in Japan features an extensive statement of quality, like, "Sapporo beer is made from the finest hops for a delicious taste and refinement," although I've never known anyone's purchase choices to be influenced by the English on the can. Some of my most enjoyable moments as an ESL teacher involved seeing how creative my students could be, like when one wrote that, "Humans cannot travel to Antarctica now, because it is under penguin rule." Although many foreigners in Japan love to find every bit of hidden English around them they can, I find that after being here so long, I almost don't notice it -- it's part of the general background noise of Japan.

Wow, that's a pretty cool T-shirt