Study English with Obama-sensei!

Today saw the inauguration of Barack Obama, an event which was watched closely from Japan along with the rest of the world. I caught the ceremony on NHK, listening to the Japanese commentators giving their interpretation of the speeches, explaining unfamiliar terms to viewers, and so on. The Japanese have a good opinion of Mr. Obama, and everyone is hopeful that he will bring some much-needed change for the better to the world. One book publisher here had the good idea of selling a book of Mr. Obama's speeches to help Japanese students of English study in a fresh new way, and this series has turned into a runaway hit in bookstores throughout the country. One of the biggest differences between Japan and America is patriotism, and while the average Japanese person is certainly happy to be living in Japan, love of country just isn't expressed in the same way as in the U.S. Concepts Americans take for granted, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, getting misty-eyed when visiting Arlington National Cemetery or being addressed with the phrase "my fellow Americans" in a moving speech by one's president are completely missing from life here. Patriotism is an incredible source of power to a nation, and it's interesting to see that some Japanese, at least, are borrowing it from the United States by studying Mr. Obama's uplifting words.

You can study English with Obama-sensei

Japan's Untouchables: the Burakumin

I caught an article on the New York Times website the other day about Japan's little secret, the class of "untouchables" that lived at the bottom of Japanese society for centuries. Known as burakumin, which oddly enough can be translated as "village people," they historically did jobs such as tanning, undertaking and the slaughtering of animals, considered "unclean" in both Buddhism and Shinto. While there had been a lower class of people serving this role from antiquity, burakumin didn't become defined as a specific class until Toyotomi Hideyoshi came along. He was a peasant who managed to work his way up in the ranks until he was the most powerful man in Japan, shogun in all but name, and one of the first things he did was change the rules so that no one else could follow in his footsteps. He created the four-caste system (called shino-kosho), which re-aligned society into four groups, with samurai warriors at the top, followed by the peasants who grew the rice everyone ate, the artisans who made swords and other products, and finally the merchants. The fact that the burakumin aren't officially included in any of these castes highlights their status as "non-humans" -- they weren't even worthy of mention. The official status of the burakumin continued until 1871 when they were freed, but discrimination continues to this day. The extent of this discrimination and what form it takes is difficult for me to actually report on -- the issue of burakumin is so taboo that it's almost impossible to get anyone to talk about it. I can say that the Japanese are extremely conscious of how terrible it is to treat a person differently just because of what job his great-great-grandfather happened to do, and it's illegal to consider burakumin status in employment or other areas of society. I've never heard the subject of someone's burakumin history brought up in any form, and the fact that I've lived here for 18 years without, say, hearing a slang word referring to the group says to me that Japan has done a pretty good job of expunging this aspect of discrimination from its society.

Social organization of the Edo Period

Japanese Film, Onigiri and Finland

Japanese films (houga) are a unique genre of cinema that I'm fascinated with, and whenever I watch one I'm captivated by how there's usually no structure, unlike Hollywood films which are generally formed in three acts for maximum emotional involvement by the audience. Instead, the story in a Japanese film meanders here and there until it reaches whatever conclusion is coming, which is not unlike life, when you think about it. I recently watched an interesting film called Kamemo Shokudo (Kamemo Dining Hall), about a Japanese woman and two friends who run a Japanese restaurant in Helsinki, Finland, specializing in onigiri, the "soul food of Japan." At first their only customer is a Finnish manga otaku who shows up wearing a different kanji T-shirt every day, and the restaurant has trouble attracting other customers, who don't know what to make of the new restaurant. They experiment with local foods, making rice balls with reindeer meat inside, and have many adventures as they're slowly accepted by the residents of the city.

Making onigiri in Finland at Ruokala Lokki (aka Kamome Shokudo)

Joe Hisaishi

My favorite Japanese musician is Joe Hisaishi, the talented composer who created the music for Hayao Miyazaki's most memorable films, including My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and the latest Studio Ghibli work, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. Born in Nagano Prefecture as Mamoru Fujisawa, he discovered his love of music at the age of 5 when he started taking violin lessons. After graduating from music college in 1969, he began his career as a composer, taking advantage of the international attention being paid to Japanese musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra. As his career started to take off, Mamoru decided to take a new name based on an American musician he respected a lot, Quincy Jones, using an alternative reading for kanji characters he assigned to represent the singer's name to come up with Joe Hisaishi. (I swear, I am not making this up.) In addition to his worldwide fame as the composer of the Studio Ghibli music, Joe Hisaishi is constantly in demand by movie directors like Beat Takeshi who want him to make soundtracks for them. His piano music is used in TV commercials (iTunes link) quite often, too, and he's the composer of the official Toyota Corolla theme. He's released dozens of albums featuring his healing piano music compositions, which you can browse and buy with the iTunes Japan prepaid cards J-List offers. Browse all his music via this link.

Joe Hisaishi plays the piano while simultaneously conducting an orchestra (the guy is a stud)

Would You Put Socks on a Dining Table?

If you want to learn about the cultural differences between East and West, I recommend marry a Japanese woman. The other day I happened to place a (clean) pair of socks on the dining table as I was getting dressed, which resulted in a hailstorm of shock from my wife, who had never seen anything so scandalous. One of the most important concepts in understanding Japanese people is joshiki, or "common sense," the body of knowledge that everyone here magically seem to possess, except foreigners like me. In this system, things associated with the floor or the feet are intrinsically dirty and thus should never be brought into contact with clean things. If I spilled some milk on the floor, I'd probably reach for a rag to wipe it up then return the rag to the sink, but this would get me in hot water again: in the mind-set here, there must be different "levels" of rags for cleaning different things, with the cleanest reserved for wiping the dishes we'll eat off of, another for wiping things like the dinner table, and a third for cleaning dirty things like the floor. Some other things gaijin do that violate the joshiki system include washing shoes in the same washing machine you clean your clothes in, carrying paper money loose in the pocket rather than in a wallet, going skiing without buying $2000 of professional-grade equipment first and flying a kite at any time of the year other than New Year's Day.

An example of not using common sense. The joke is that the word for Emergency Exit is 非常口 which looks like it means "abnormal mouth" or in this case, abnormal knowledge, or lack of common sense. Which is what it would take for a guy to run into the girl's public bath dressing room.

Obama Hitchhikes to Obama

A major category within the world of Japanese comedy is mono-mane (moh-noh MAH-neh), or comedians doing impersonations of famous people, and there are even two-hour TV shows where look-alikes will do their best impressions of actors and singers in a "Super Impersonation Battle," often while the real stars look on laughing. While Americans might think of Elvis when they think of impressions, in Japan the most popular targets of mono-mane include director Beat Takeshi, professional wrestler Antonio Inoki or baseball legend Shigeo Nagashima. These days a Japanese comedian named Nocchi is using his resemblance to Barack Obama to score some laughs on Japanese TV. In one segment I caught, the TV network sent him on a mission to Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, which famously has the same name as the PEOTUS. The catch was that he had to hitch-hike there while wearing his Presidential suit, and camera crews followed him as he approached people at freeway rest stops to ask if they could take him in the direction he wanted to go. Whenever he got his next ride he'd turn to the camera and declare, "Yes, we can!"

Commedian Nocchi as Obama

Japanese, Language and Particle Physics

Nihongo, also known as Japanese, is the language spoken in the nation of Japan, as well as Hawaii (ha-ha). Its origin is somewhat unclear, with no agreed-on linguistic connection to other language groups except for Okinawa, although evidence sometimes crops up suggesting an ancient link to Turkish, Hungarian or Basque. Among the many unique aspects of Japanese is the way its based on syllables rather than individual sounds, meaning you can express ka, ki, ku, ke and ko but not "k" by itself. In addition to contributing to the thick accents Japanese speakers of English sometimes have, this strange "poverty" of sounds means there's a higher instance of unrelated words having the same pronunciation (homonyms), which can sometimes get in the way of communication. For example, the words for "public" and "private" schools in Japanese have the same pronunciation (shiritsu meaning public and private) despite their opposite meanings, forcing people to invent linguistic workarounds to avoid being unclear. The words for "science" and "chemistry" are also the same, so when you hear kagaku spoken you're never 100% sure if it's 'science' or 'chemistry'. My 13-year-old son is currently interested in how atoms work and is reading many books on the subject, which puts me in the rather precarious situation of needing to learn the basic terminology of particle physics in Japanese if I want to talk with him about it. (It's hard to explain, but a bilingual brain abhors not having words in both languages properly stored and cross-referenced.) I was surprised to find another confusing accident of phonetics: the word for the nucleus of an atom and the shell that the electrons travel around are both called kaku, a linguistic accident that has probably tripped up more than a few students at test-time.

1984: Do You Remember English?

I'm quite an old school anime fan, having gotten into it in the early 80s. Back then, there was precious little anime in English, and if you could come away understanding even 10-15% of what you were watching it was a good day indeed. The idea that anime could be watched with dubbed English voices or English subtitles was a long way off, and so fans got very good at figuring out the story with nothing more than a few lines of synopsis someone who didn't understand Japanese either had written up and xeroxed for you. So whenever some English popped up in the background of an anime series I was watching, it was really something special, and I remember getting quite obsessive about catching every bit of English I could find using the frame-by-frame feature on my VCR. In the classic Macross: Love Do You Remember? film, there's a frame where Minmei is reading an English translation of the final song from the film, which provided a wealth of information in a time when my comprehension of the language was near zero. Then there was that silly English on a computer screen in the original Macross series, which read, "If mice could swim, they would float with the tide and play with the fish down by the seaside. The cats on the shore would quickly agree." While it's certainly nice to see so much anime available in English these days, I'm often concerned that it might be harder for people to teach themselves Japanese.

Fun With Japanese Kanji: "Ki"

Sometimes part of the fun of studying a language like Japanese is "surfing" the linguistic elements that are totally different from anything found in one's own native language. One of the most common kanji characters is ki, a rather all-purpose kanji for expressing abstract ideas, read chi in Chinese. Translatable as spirit, soul, nature, heart, mood, feeling, or atmosphere, it generally deals with concepts related to the air, invisible forms of energy, or a person's awareness. The ki character is found in some of the first words a student of Japanese encounters, like genki (happy, energetic), tenki (weather) and kuuki (air). The word can express intention (shinu ki = the intention to die) as well as a person's feelings or emotions (kimochi ii = that feels good, honki = serious intention). The concept is also used in martial arts and yoga, which seek to focus the mind's ki in beneficial ways. It pops up in words like kiai, the verbal yell you release when focusing your strength in martial arts, and the weird energy that emanates from an anime character when he fights is called touki, "fighting energy." The word can be found in several Japanese idioms that are used quite often, such as ki wo tsukete (be careful; literally "fix your body's energy and attention on the task at hand"), or ki wo tsukau (to be considerate of; literally "to use your ki on behalf of another person"). As a Star Wars fan, I have a fantasy that George Lucas was taking a Japanese 101 course at USC back in the 60s, where he encountered this mysterious character, and it planted the idea for The Force in his mind.

Dual Citizenship

Japan is currently engaged in a debate that I'm quite interested in: the subject of dual nationality. Currently, when a child is born with parents from Japan and the U.S. they get citizenship in both countries until the age of 22, at which time they must choose between the two. Since both Japan and the U.S. are a part of my kids, I'd love it if they could enjoy the benefits of citizenship in both countries all their lives rather than having to give one or the other up. The United States has no problem with allowing dual citizenship -- Governor "Shuwa-chan" retains his Austrian citizenship, for example -- but the problem is good old xenophobic Japan, which officially refuses to recognize more than one nationality at a time. Happily, this rule seems to be a good example of tatemae (ta-teh-MAH-eh), something we pretend is true even though we know it's not, rather than honne (HON-neh), the truth or the way things really are. In other words, holders of dual nationality are required to choose one by the age of 22 and surrunder the other country's passport, but if you don't, make sure you don't tell the Japanese government about it. Japan is exceedingly good about vague stuff like that.

Japan's Entertainment World

Japan's entertainment world, which encompasses all actors, singers, anime voice actors, bikini idols and everyone else in the public eye, is large and complex and unlike anything seen in the U.S. First and foremost, Japan's show business industry is extremely professional, with virtually every aspect of a given star's career carefully managed by talent agencies with names like Big Apple, Keep Smiling, Queen's Factory and Abiru Agency, including what stars will appear on which TV shows, what "guarantee" will be paid, and even what kind of bento they'll be served while working. There are similar model agencies and management companies in the U.S., of course, but one big difference is that here, everyone is quite aware that the irresistibly cute model Yoko Kumada works with Artist House Pyramid while this year's red-hot "talent" Suzanne is managed by K-Dash Stage. I've even seen game shows where popular idols were divided into teams according to their management companies and asked to answer trivia questions in competition with each other. It's common for stars associated with the same company to sometimes appear together. For example, director/comedian Takeshi Kitano runs a successful talent agency called Office Kitano which discovers and manages young comedians and other "talents," and any show he produces will often feature members of his "Takeshi family" of performers. Japan's talent management companies often become so influential they can leave a lasting impression on popular culture. For example, the Yellow Cab Agency created a boom in busty swimsuit idols which defined the early part of this decade. And the current popularity of ikemen (extremely cute guys) in dramas, music and variety shows is all made possible by Johnny's Entertainment, which has been setting the standard for boy-idols for decades. I've known a lot of Americans who were turned off by the apparent "fakeness" of Japan's entertainment industry, but personally I think having everything out in the open, including which companies are managing which stars, is actually refreshingly honest.

Happy Monday!

It seems there's no aspect of Japan that can't be made more kawaii. Whether it's a big, faceless bank adopting a little chipmunk as its official character or the post office using an anthropologic mailbox to promote its services, Japan's culture of cuteness is everywhere. It just seems to come naturally to the Japanese, and when you've been in here a few years, you don't think twice about Sukiya using little beef bowl characters to illustrate its lineup of products to customers. Cuteness is often used to break up something that would otherwise be monotonous, and the user's manual for most any home electronics product sold here will probably show a manga version of the product smiling if it's working correctly, and groaning with pain to indicate a problem. The Japanese government is no stranger to using cuteness to make its programs more acceptable to citizens. If you're looking for a job, you'll need to visit your city's local Hello Work, which is what the local employment office is called. (Their website features a computer reading through a book of job listings, with a Japanese headband on to show us how serious he is about finding a job.) Similarly, when the Japanese government wanted to promote a more leisurely lifestyle among families it adopted a system whereby holidays that formerly fell on weekends or in the middle of the week would be moved to the nearest Monday, allowing more three-day weekends. The official name for this new policy is the "Happy Monday."

Speaking of Happy Monday, today is a holiday in Japan, Seijin-no-hi or Coming of Age Day. Venture into any Japanese city today and you'll see hundreds of 20-year-olds decked out in the finest kimonos and sparkling new suits, greeting each other and taking group photos together. In Japan, the official age of adulthood is 20 (as commemorated in our wacky "you must be 20 years old to purchase tobacco and alcohol" T-shirts), and today is a special day to mark their official debut as shakai-jin (lit. "society-person"), or full-fledged members of society. Today, 20-year-olds throughout the country will endure long speeches by elderly community leaders, have lunch with friends, then go drinking in the evenings to enjoy their new freedom. For parents it's a proud day too, and doting fathers are all too happy to plunk down $5000 for a gorgeous kimono that their daughters will in all likelihood wear only once.

Learning Japanese Culture Through Anime

It's interesting to see what kinds of cultural issues you can learn about from anime. I'm currently hooked on Toradora, a series about a short, fierce girl named Taiga Aisaka who's a classic tsundere character, angry on the outside but sweet and vulnerable on the inside. In the story, the main character Ryuji loves a girl named Minori, while Taiga is in love with Ryuji's best friend Yusaku. When Ryuji agrees to help Taiga win his friend's heart, the two become so close that they start calling each other by their first names, something rarely done by high school kids in Japan, who usually address a classmate using their last name (e.g. "Aisaka" instead of "Taiga"). Using first names with each other sends the signal to the other students that they're dating, which causes all kinds of confusion for everyone. In the PC dating-sim games that we translate and sell, we face some of these cultural issues too, for example how to deal with the name suffixes like -san, used to maintain a degree of formality between people; -chan, usually used with females who are younger than you, or with whom you're close friends with; or labels like -senpai, senior in a class or organization. In our games, we've got the cultural context that allows us to preserve these Japanese structures so we can keep the "feel" of the game as accurate as possible, but I'm sure that in dubbed animation intended for broadcast on TV it's much more difficult to maintain the spirit of the original.

No Smorking From April

I often write about how Japan seems to be following behind the U.S. and Europe by about 10-15 years, a belief that's quite common among the Japanese themselves, who perceive that their country is less "advanced," only making major social changes after the ideas have become well-rooted in the West. It was recently announced that a starting in April, smoking will be completely banned in most JR stations in the Tokyo area, good news to those who dislike smelling others' cigarettes but a blow to Joe Salaryman who just wants a quick puff before getting on the train for home. Looking back, it was right about a decade or so ago that smoking bans really came into their own in the States with California's widespread limits on smoking in many public places in 1998, so the timing seems to be holding up pretty well. Incidentally, if you're wondering why everything "official" like government-run programs or the Japanese school year always seem to start in April, the answer is cultural. To the Japanese mind-set, spring represents a new beginning, and it's natural that important changes be timed to start in the season of renewal.

Electronic Toll Gates and Inefficnency in Japan

I finally broke down and got one of those ETC terminals for my car, which lets me get on and off Japanese "freeways" (which aren't exactly free) by driving through the special electronic gate rather than stopping to pay the toll in cash. Naturally, part of the reason I sprang for the system was my desire to feel kakko ii (cool) as I zipped through the toll gate rather than lining up behind other cars to pay the $7 it costs to travel to the next city, or $28 if I'm going the 100 km to Tokyo. But my real reason for getting ETC was that the East Japan Highway Company, which operates the freeways in this part of Japan, was kind enough to put a freeway on-ramp right near my house, saving me a lot of driving in the wrong direction when I want to go somewhere. Since the on-ramp is "ETC only" with no manned toll booth, I counted it as a rare instance of Japan becoming more efficient, an infrequent occurrence in this country that measures the volume of traffic on roads by hiring people to sit for hours and manually count cars with hand clickers as they drive by. Imagine my surprise when I saw that both of the "unmanned" ETC gates had small administrative buildings with 2-3 employees sitting inside, no doubt drinking green tea and watching the latest sumo tournament on TV while cars zip on and off the expressway. I know that Americans might be viewed as often overly concerned with efficiency at the expense of other important factors, but I have to say that if Japan is to flourish in the challenges that lie ahead, it needs to change the way it thinks just a little.

Anime Songs from iTunes Japan

J-List carries the awesome iTunes Japan prepaid cards, which allow you to buy great music from Japan for your iPod, iPhone or Mac/PC, including many great anime themes and related songs. Since there's no cental page for anime-related music on iTunes it can be a bit challenging to find the anime soundtracks you want, but a good place to start is by searching for "anime" in Japanese or English (note, all links open iTunes). Another suggestion we have is searching for songs published by Lantis, the record label that releases many of the best anime soundtracks -- click here for some nice ones. Checking out sets of songs created by users is also fun, like this link featuring the most popular tunes from popular Japanese video site Nico Nico Dougu. Some other suggestions: fans of Shana of the Blazing Eyes should check this out, that dreamy Wolf and Spice OP theme is here, there are plenty of great songs by the red-hot Kotoko here, and a really cool "Heavy Metal Anime Remix" album can be seen here. Our prepaid iTunes Cards are available in 1500 and 3000 yen versions.

A Discovery in the Village of the World! Japanese Living in a Place Like This

One thing I like about TV in Japan is the variety of shows they broadcast. From popular dramas to educational quiz shows to something called World's Greatest TV in which stories from around the world are shown, like a turtle enthusiast who recreates famous scenes from Hollywood movies using turtles, there's always something interesting on to watch. One show I like is called Sekai no Shaso Kara, or From The Train Window of the World, which sends camera crews to places like Norway, the Czech Republic, the U.S. and China to document the beautiful sights seen from trains. I caught an interesting program recently called "A Discovery in the Village of the World! Japanese Living in a Place Like This," which was about Japanese people who happen to live in unique places. First there was the story of a Japanese girl who had fallen in love with a student from Sweden and married him, and they were living in Iceland, about as far from Japan as you can get in the world. Then there was another Japanese girl who'd decided to put down roots in a village along the Amazon river in Bolivia, an unexpected place to find a nihonjin. Although these Japanese people were far from home, you could feel the cultural connection they still felt with their home country.

Japan Thinks of the Children

I recently saw that Japan had topped Save the Children's annual Child Development Index, which ranks nations on how well they care for their children. I wasn't surprised in the least: I've seen first-hand how good the country is at providing care for its kids, from offering free health care to children under 6 (costs for doctor visits and medicines are covered entirely by the health insurance system) to a structured schedule of vaccinations provided free by each city, which has helped Japan attain one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world (Japan was #3, America was...#180). Care for a child starts with the first visit to an obstetrician, where the new mother-to-be is issued a boshi techo, or "Mother-and-Child Notebook" in which everything about the child will be recorded: size and estimated weight during each stage of gestation, the results of various tests at birth, the complete history of all vaccinations, development of speech and motor skills, and so on. Japan's desire to care for its children well shows in education, too, with a much higher level of participation by parents in PTA-like organizations than I've seen in the U.S. I've never heard of school budgets being cut, either, and the subject of education seems pretty sacrosanct among Japanese politicians. As Japan tries to battle its "famine" of children brought on by the country's low birth rate, it's good to see that each child is being cared for well.

This game appears to be a DS title developed to teach new mothers the things they need to do when their babies, arrive, e.g. how to put them in the bath, etc.

Hidden Gems in Anime

Japanese animation is fun for people from all over the world because the stories appeal to us even though we may not have the same cultural background as Japanese viewers. While anime is usually bouncy and fun, it's amazing how often you can find depth in unexpected places when you dig beneath the surface. One of the students at the school for magic in Zero no Tsukaima is named Tabitha, a cool meta reference to the daughter of Samantha from Bewitched, one of the original inspirations for the "magical girl" genre of anime. The infamous Dirty Pair, known to blow up a planet or two in the course of fulfilling an assignment, turns out to be an obscure (to gaijin) reference to the 1970s-era pro wrestling team Beauty Pair...and celebrated manga-ka Beauty Hair gets his name from the same source. American science fiction crops up in anime from time to time. In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki gives a book to Kyon which (if you freeze the frame at the right moment) can be seen to be The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, which provided some of the inspiration for the time-travel parts of the story. Similarly, the Gainax classic Aim For the Top: Gunbuster borrows heavily from two of my favorite SF novels, Ender's Game (kids being trained for interstellar combat with space bugs) and The Forever War (the drama created when people are separated by relativistic time dilation). Even the saucier side of the genre has its deep areas. H-game artist Seishojo is most famous for creating the Bible Black franchise, but did you know that every one of his game titles is actually a reference to the British progressive rock band Crimson King, whose albums include Starless and Bible Black and Discipline? Well, now you do.

2009 Japanese Calendar Sale!

Since J-List is physically located here in Japan, we're able to offer all kinds of items that'd be hard to find outside the country, including all the gorgeous Japanese anime, music, swimsuit idol, men's and traditional photo calendars that are sold here. We're having a special sale to move our stock of calendars out, so it's a great time for you to browse our selection and see what awesome calendars you want. Every year we get emails from customers who waited too long to get a certain calendar, so we advise you to check our calendar selection early. Buy 3 or more calendars and get an additional discount!

Trillions and Trillions of Yen

I see that Prime Minister Aso is set to release a 23 trillion yen stimulus package to help deal with the economic downturn in Japan's export-dependent economy. If you have no idea how much 23 trillion yen is, join the club, since I don't either. Because the individual value of the yen is so low against most other currencies, requiring 120 yen for a can of Coke, 80,000 yen to rent a small apartment or 2,500,000 yen to buy an average car, living in Japan means getting used to dealing with very high numbers. Values beyond ten million yen or so start to get really fuzzy in my mind, so when the government kicks around numbers involving trillions of yen, they might as well call it "infinity+1" as far as I'm concerned. The only hope I have of understanding large numbers is thinking about them in Japanese, thanks to the odd phenomenon that makes numbers at least comprehensible when thought of in kanji units, e.g. man (mahn) for 10,000, oku for 100 million, cho for 10 billion, and so on. For the record, 23 trillion yen is around USD$250 billion.

Interesting 4-Character Kanji Words: Yuju Fudan

There's an interesting category of vocabulary words made up of four kanji characters, which probably represents a grammatical construction left over from the distant past when Japan was still adapting the Chinese writing system for its own use. They're fun to study since the meaning of the compound words often goes far beyond the actual characters themselves. One such word that anime fans may be familiar with is ikki tousen, written with characters for "one knight" and "hitting one thousand" and literally meaning a warrior so strong he can defeat a thousand opponents. One word I had fun learning about is yuju fudan (yuu-juu foo-DAHN), written with the characters for "kindness" "softness" and "indecision." The term describes just about every male character in a romantic or "love comedy" anime series, the main character who's surrounded by beautiful females, but he can't make up his mind which girl he's in love with, so he ends up being nice to everyone. On the surface it's just a word meaning someone who can't make up his mind about something, but in the context of anime it becomes the lynchpin to many of the most dramatic character-driven stories. Some of the classic yuju fudan characters include Tomoya from Clannad, Kaoru from Ai Yori Aoishi, Makoto from School Days, and Kyosuke from the classic 80s romantic esper anime Orange Road. (Among the many Japanese study aids we offer on J-List, there's a nice book that teaches these 4-character compound words through manga.)

Japanese Anime Eyes

The word for "eye" in Japanese is me (pronounced "meh"), although there's a more poetic-sounding alternative word, hitomi, which is used in songs and other romantic settings. (Useless trivia: Humphrey Bogart's famous line from Casablanca in Japanese is kimi no hitomi ni kampai, "I raise a glass and toast to your beautiful eyes.") All Japanese have brown eyes, although they'll always tell you their eyes are "black" if asked because they think you're asking about the center part of the eye rather than the iris. Eye color is something the Japanese are quite fascinated with when it comes to gaijin, and I've had many students who wanted to talk about my eyes, ask what color my parents' eyes were or see if I perceived the world through a blue tint. One of the more interesting aspects of Japanese animation is how characters are portrayed with a veritable rainbow of eye (and hair) colors despite being 100% Japanese ethnically. Essentially, the designers are using the medium of animation to create characters that go beyond the perceived limitations of "Japanese" facial features, incorporating colors and styles without limitation. While anime characters might be perceived as looking "Caucasian" by some, they actually surpass even the most flamboyant Western features, creating an idealized world in which any type of beautiful facial attribute can be expressed.

Keeping Warm in Japan

Winter is here, and for this San Diego boy this means a constant battle to keep from freezing to death, although happily there are some innovative ways to keep warm in Japan. Japanese homes lack central heating, meaning that you're generally heating one room of your house at a time, which while economical is still hard to get used to. The most traditional way of keeping warm is a kotatsu, essentially a short table with a blanket over it and a heater inside -- just put your legs under the blanket and you'll be toasty in no time. The most popular heating method is a kerosene heater called a "stove," or a similar unit called a "fan heater" which has a computerized fan to improve air circulation; these two methods provide the most energy for your heating dollars, although the portable kerosene tank always manages to run out of fuel at the worst possible time, meaning that I have to stand by the front door at midnight with a hand pump and refill the kerosene, while trying not to get the stuff all over everyone's shoes (since there are many shoes by the front door of a Japanese house). A better option is a gas heater that uses natural gas stored in large tanks, which we switched to at J-List last year -- no more kerosene tank to fill up on cold winter mornings. There are some other options, too, including a "hot carpet" (essentially a carpet that gets hot when you turn it on) and in-floor heating based on the traditional ondol floor heating, in use for centuries in Korea. My other favorite way to keep warm is are the amazing kairo heating pads, which keep you warm for hours just sitting in your pocket, which we just happen to sell.

Japanese New Year's Comedians

The shows on Japanese TV around New Year's are especially interesting to watch. I was fascinated with a Japanese variety show special that pit various teams (professional athletes, comedians, sexy idols like Aki Hoshino and Maki Horikita) against each other doing silly sports, including one event in which participants wore a suit of velcro and had to launch themselves against a wall, to see who could stick to the wall at the highest point. New Year's is also a good time to catch some anime specials, and there are always some cool shows on, including stuff for old school fans like me. New Year's in Japan is also time to watch manzai, a kind of stand-up comedy routine from the Kansai region of Japan that usually consists of a team of two comedians, a straight man (tsukomi) and a dumb partner (boke, boh-kay). The two spar off against each other, with the straight man getting angry and short-tempered at the mistakes his dumb-witted friend makes. This year one of the most popular manzai teams is Hige-danshaku, aka "Bearded Baron," a silly comedy team consisting of two dapper-looking gentlemen who hold glasses of wine, which they clink together in celebration whenever one of them makes a joke. These two guys are everywhere this year.

New Year's and Giving Children Money

Akemashite omedeto from J-List! We had a nice New Year's Day in Japan, writing our family's nengajo (New Year's Cards) and getting a lot of relaxing in. After hitting a Shinto shrine, which appears to be protected by an anime-like fox deity from the statues of foxes all around it, it was time to head to our uncle's house to eat a ton of food and listen to him talk about his World War II days. My wife and I were going straight there, but the kids wanted to go with their grandparents who were going to stop by some other relatives' houses first. I knew exactly what they were after: otoshi-dama, the "yearly coin" that adults give to children on New Year's, usually $20-30 per child depending on the relationship and the child's age. Visiting more relatives means getting more money, and it's a great way to motivate children to spend time with family without complaining. They managed to pull in around $150 each this year, which is quite a good haul.

These are the little envelopes they sell for putting the money you give to children in. There is of course a post-New Year's toy shopping season as kids to to buy their own favorite toys with the money they received

Please Have a Safe and Happy New Year

Today is New Year's Eve, known in Japan by the odd-sounding name of o-miso-ka, which sounds like it means "Big Miso Day," although the miso here actually refers to the number 30, the number of days in most months under the old Lunar Calendar. Today is the day to eat Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles, which supposedly helps everyone enjoy long lives because the noodles are long, and December 31st is the busiest day for restaurants that serve noodles. Another big activity for the last day of the year is watching Kohaku, the "Red and White Song Battle," a live show put on by NHK every year since 1951 in which female singers (the red team) battle male singers (the white team) to see which side can put on the most extravagant performances. Kohaku is "the" music event of the year, comparable to the Academy Awards in the U.S. in the buzz it generates, and virtually every top star will be there, from the venerable Saburo Kitajima to the red-hot R&B artist Thelma Aoyama, and even Jero, the first black enka singer in Japan, who really proved himself this year. (Fans of J-List's prepaid iTunes Japan cards can browse this year's Kohaku music on iTunes via this link.) After the Kohaku show ends at 11:45 pm, NHK broadcasts Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming,) showing solemn images of people making their way to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do hatsu-mode (ha-tsu MOH-day), the first prayer for good luck and happiness of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell that chimes 108 times, a Buddhist tradition tied to the 108 sins that mankind is subject to. Then, the TV display flashes "0:00," letting you know the New Year has silently arrived

Then comes Oshogatsu, New Year's Day, the most important day of the year in Japan. On that day we'll all sit around the house relaxing, eating mikan oranges with our legs in the kotatsu heater table and watching the big New Year's Marathon that's held every year in our prefecture, which is broadcast nationally on TV, since sitting around watching people run in the cold is apparently a good way to start the year. Part of the route for the marathon happens to go down the street we live on, so we can see our house on TV every year, which is always fun. It's important to relax as much as possible on New Year's Day because if you're busy on that day, it's said you'll be busy all year. Just as kids rush downstairs to see what presents Santa brought them in the U.S., Japanese children hurry to get the mail so they can see who sent them a nengajo or New Year's Card, a huge custom in Japan. These postcards are decorated with images of the Chinese zodiac animal for the new year, so this year's cards will feature many images of cows.

Of course we'll be making a trip to our favorite Shinto Shrine to pray for good luck in the new year. 2009 is my yakudoshi, my unlucky year according to a complex Japanese superstition that crossed over from China millennia ago, so I need to pay some money to have the Shinto priests say extra prayers to keep my bad luck away. According to this system, the ages of 25, 42 an 61 (for men) and 19, 33 and 37 (for women) are extremely unlucky, and you should avoid doing certain things like building a house, starting a business or otherwise making a major change in your life during these years. (The years before and after each unlucky year are also somewhat unlucky.) The tricky thing is that these years are calculated according to the old Japanese system of figuring ages, whereby a newborn baby was considered "1 year old" at birth. In other words, you should subtract a year from these dates when figuring your yakudoshi, hence the age of 41 for me (next year) is my big unlucky year. Of course, I privately laugh at some of the superstitions the Japanese come up with, like don't cut your fingernails at night or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, but the yakudoshi belief is pretty much the primary superstition in Japan, so in the interests of experiencing Japanese culture to the fullest, I'll avoid building any houses in 2009.

 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, J-List's wonderful customers, for making 2008 such a wild ride for all of us. We genuinely love bringing our unique brand of Japanese popular culture to the world, and we hope to do a lot more in the new year. The way to wish someone a Happy New Year before January 1st is yoi o-toshi o (yo-ee oh-toh-shi o, lit. "please have a good new year"), and when you meet them for the first time in January, you say akemashite omedeto (ah-kay-mash-tay oh-meh-deh-TOH, lit. "congratulations on opening the new year"). So, please have a very nice New Year's celebration with friends and family, and we'll see you next year. Yoi o-toshi o!

Time For Big Cleaning, Buddhist Temple Style!

As December draws to a close, Japan is getting ready for Oshogatsu (New Year's Day), by far the most important holiday in the country. But before we can start the new year there's plenty of work to do, beginning with osoji (oh-SOH-jee), the year-end "big cleaning" that everyone does here, scrubbing their home from top to bottom, re-papering the shoji doors, replacing the family toothbrushes with new ones, and washing the car so it's spic and span for the new year. This year-end cleaning isn't just a way to make the house presentable for company: it's based on a Japanese custom called susuharai, a year-end cleansing of dirt and cobwebs that's been done at Buddhist temples for centuries. Companies do "big cleaning" too, and tomorrow is the day when all J-List employees will stop work and spend several hours sweeping, vacuuming and wiping every inch of the office, washing the windows and even the front door. Between cleaning, Year End Parties and stocking up on food for the first few days of January when most stores are closed, people are extra busy this time of year. In fact, the old name for the month of December is Shiwasu (she-WA-su), which literally means "the month when Buddhist Priests are running around being very busy."

Japan and Sarcasm

Although I sometimes wish otherwise, my personality can be a little on the sarcastic side. For example, if I saw a movie that didn't meet my expectations for some reason, I might describe it as the best movie I'd seen all year just for the sake of irony. Or if my wife praised me for helping her aunt who runs an export business and who loves having an American in the family to check her terrible English for free, I might channel Homer Simpson: "Oh, look at me! I'm making someone happy! I'm the Magical Man from Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!" That brand of humor doesn't exist in Japanese at all, and when I started dating my wife we actually had to go through a period of "humor training" where she learned not to take my American sarcasm at face value. My style of wry humor naturally influences my kids, since children are constantly watching their parents and subconsciously copying them. When my son was suffering through a particularly boring lesson at his school, he remarked to his friend what an "interesting" lesson it was, and how the information they were learning was something they'd all treasure throughout their lives. His friend didn't understand him at first, and it took several seconds for them to realize that he was making a joke, but one that was culturally alien to Japan.

Wither Moé?

Moé (pronounced mo-EH) is one of the primary concepts driving much of the anime world today, essentially occupying an entire sub-section inside the larger genre of Japanese animation, manga and games. Written with the character for "sprout" or "bud," it has the same pronunciation as the word moeru "to burn," and in many ways the meaning is closer to this word, essentially being translatable as "burning with passion for my favorite two-dimensional anime character." Some consider the beginnings of moé -- of anime characters so lovely they become the focal point for fans, beyond the wider setting and plot of a series -- to be the character Claris from the classic Lupin III film Castle of Cagliostro by Hayao Miyazaki, and I agree: this is pretty much the point when venerable anime magazine Animage started increasing the number of color pages so they could print beautiful artwork featuring the popular female characters that fans demanded to see. It's interesting to compare Claris with the current high-water mark of the genre, Clannad After Story, the second series based on the popular PC dating-sim game by Key, a "harem" type story about a circle of girls who are all secretly in love with the main character, Tomoya. Just look into the eyes of the character Nagisa -- you can literally see galaxies swirling in them, and the emotions conveyed by the characters, including joy, sadness, love and anger, is really something to experience. Animation creators have never been better at pushing the emotional buttons of fans, and I hope they never stop.

Beat Takeshi x Hideki Tojo

On Christmas Eve Japanese television viewers got to see a rare historical drama in which internationally famous director and comedian Takeshi Kitano played Hideki Tojo, the Japanese general and former Prime Minister who is generally seen as the main force behind many of the actions Japan took during World War II, including both in China and Korea as well as Pearl Harbor. The drama, which also contained documentary portions including interviews with some still-living individuals from the era, was called "What Was That War All About Anyway? The Japan-American War and Hideki Tojo" and told the story of the general in the months leading up to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. I was surprised to see such a touchy subject as this taken up in a mainstream media channel since the name of Hideki Tojo and the topic of the war in general is an all but taboo, and only a director of Takeshi's stature could have made the project possible. I certainly hope for more open discussion of some of these events in the future.

Takeshi *totally* looks like Hideki. The resemblance is scary!

Sprawling Tokyo and Standing Soba

Japan's capital city of Tokyo is a sprawling mass of concrete, asphalt and steel that holds 35 million people in its greater metropolitan area (the city itself including three surrounding prefectures), which is slightly less than the population of California. Because there are so many people living in close proximity, things are a little different in Tokyo compared with most other parts of the world. I'd never been in a McDonald's with multiple floors until I came to Japan, but in Tokyo it's quite common to see fast food restaurants with three stories, with the ground floor for the kitchen and two floors for patrons to eat on. Family restaurants are often built with the parking lots occupying the ground level and the restaurant essentially raised up on stilts allowing the cars to fit under the building, while convenience stores with apartments built over them for the owners to live in are common, too. The idea of "personal space" doesn't mean much in Tokyo, whether it's trying to squeeze behind the tiny tables at a coffee shop or traveling on a train so packed that breathing becomes difficult. J-List is located in a fairly small city about 100 km from Tokyo, so we're spared much of the stress of having too many people around us. But even our spacious city is quite different from back home, something I'm reminded of whenever I stop at the train station for a bowl of tachi-kui soba, the "stand-and-eat noodles" that are consumed while standing at a counter, since there's no room for seats in the tiny restaurant.

More on Tokyo

Tokyo is a large and complex place. Many areas of the city are famous for different things, like Akihabara for electronics and anime culture, Shibuya for urban street fashion, Kanda for used books and Shimbashi for old-style salaryman bars and open-air yatai food stalls. One of the more infamous parts of Tokyo is Kabukicho in Shinjuku, a dark area filled with bars, hostess clubs and other businesses of somewhat ill repute, making it the only part of Tokyo where a visitor might feel unsafe while walking. A trip down the main avenue in Kabukicho on a Friday night is quite an experience, with hundreds of yobikomi (guys who try to convince you to come into their bar to drink), including many Nigerians for some reason. The days of the area's status as the city's unofficial red-light district may be numbered, however, with Tokyo's Governor-who-can-say-no Shintaro Ishihara doing his best to clean up the shady region in order to strengthen his bid for the 2016 Olympics. The trend isn't new: ever since 44 patrons of a gambling hall died in a sudden fire in 2001, police have been watching some of the shadier businesses. Last week's closing of the historic Shinjuku Koma Theatre, where enka songs were performed live for half a century, has led to conjecture that a shiny new glass tower will be erected on the spot in the near future, further changing the face of Kabukicho. While cleaning up some crime is probably a good thing, some are concerned about the "Disneyification" of Tokyo's last rough spot.

Ai Iijima 1972-2008

Oops, one more post to the blog only. It's being reported that Ai Iijima, the former adult actress who pretty much defined the 1990s for me (um, long story) has died, apparently by suicide. Very sad. After joining the AV world, she had many ups and downs and amazingly landed on her feet, becoming an accomplished author and mainstream geinojin ("talent").

A Very Merry Christmas from J-List

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except at J-List, where we're still busy efficiently processing the hundreds of orders we're receiving from all corners of the globe. Let us know how we can serve you today, either with our always-fun products from Japan or our new, improved J-List Gift Certificates, which are printable PDFs that can be sent through email for speedy delivery to your lucky recipient, or to you (so you can present the gift certificate to them directly). Japan iTunes cards also make great gifts that can be sent quickly through email, in case you've run out of time this year.

Tokyo Tower Anniversary

Today is the 50th anniversary of one of Japan's most famous sights: Tokyo Tower, which serves as the primary broadcasting hub for the entire Tokyo region. It was back during Japan's period of high economic growth after the end of World War II that the government realized the need for a large, centralized broadcasting point for NHK and the various other private television networks that were emerging, to avoid Tokyo becoming littered with ugly towers. The company that took on the project took its inspiration from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, deciding to recreate the famous structure in a perfect 1:1 scale, although Tokyo Tower had to be designed with earthquakes in mind. Back in 1958, Japan was still underdeveloped economically, and couldn't produce enough steel for the tower's construction, so they purchased hundreds of scrapped tanks left over from the Korean War. Today the 333-meter Tokyo Tower is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, and thousands ascend to the observation decks every year to look out over the sprawling Kanto Plain. (Supposedly you can see Mt. Fuji on a clear day, but I've never been able to.) The fascination with the tower can be felt in anime, too, especially in the works of CLAMP, who always manage to work Tokyo Tower into each of their works. Sadly, the company that runs Tokyo Tower is in debt up to its eyeballs thanks to an especially bad investment in a golf course in the 1990s. With the potential loss of broadcasting customers who are scheduled to switch to the new Tokyo Sky Tree tower that will be completed in 2011, one wonders how the company will fare going forward.

Lucky Bags from Japan

After Christmas comes Oshogatsu, or New Year's, a very special time in Japan. While January 1st is usually spent relaxing at home, visiting with relatives or taking a trip to a shrine for hatsu-mode (ha-tsoo moh-day), the first prayer for happiness of the new year, it's a big time for shopping, too, with stores having start-of-the-year sales to get customers in the door. One of the more popular customs of the New Year's season is lining up to buy fuku-bukuro, sealed "lucky bags" filled with unknown contents which feature items valued at much more than the price of the bag. These bags are so popular, you can see lines of customers waiting to buy them at department stores, and everyone hopes to get something really cool for the discounted price. This year J-List is bringing this Japanese tradition to our customers, too, with four different "lucky bags" offering different anime toys and figures, traditional and bento items, and more. What mysterious items will your bag hold?

My Buddhist Santa Claus Reconsideration

I've always been a huge fan of Christmas, and when the season approaches you can always see me with a Santa hat on my head and Christmas music playing on my iPod. But my first Christmas in Japan was quite a surprise. When I got here, I didn't expect the Japanese people I would meet to be very religious, so after arriving in my city I was surprised to find myself surrounded by a kind community of Japanese Baptists who ran a friendly church complete with a kindergarten for the local kids. There's no greater thrill for Japanese children than to get presents from a real gaijin dressed up as Santa Claus, and when the church asked me to play "Santa-san" I was all too happy to oblige, ho-ho-ho'ing as I handed out presents and being sure to speak only English, to keep things properly authentic. I've since been asked to play Santa dozens of times, although one of my more memorable performances was at a Buddhist preschool. They had none of the trappings of the holiday like festive decorations of snowmen and reindeer, and in lieu of Christmas carols the kids sang a song about the happy birth of Buddha while holding candles, which was quite an interesting cultural experience. But Santa Claus knows no borders, and the kids were thrilled to receive presents from me. All of us at J-List sincerely wish you and your loved ones a wonderful and warm Christmas holiday this year!

The First Christmas in Japan

Christmas is nearly here, and throughout Japan children are looking forward to getting a present from "Santa-san" while guys plan that big date with their girlfriends on Christmas Eve. December 25th is a unique time in Japan, a special event imported from the outside world with very little in the way of local roots or traditions, making it feel in some ways like an adaption of a Japanese matsuri (festival) more than the most solemn holiday in the West. Did I say holiday? Of course Christmas is just a normal work day in Japan, and there's nothing like sitting in a traffic jam on Christmas Day to give you that "bizarre Japan experience." One of the big cultural differences between Japan and the U.S. is how the roles of Christmas and New Year's Day are reversed: here, Christmas is more often than not a time to have a loud Christmas party with your friends, complete with party hats, exploding firecrackers and maybe a karaoke machine, while New Year's is a solemn, holy day for visiting with family and going to the Shinto Shrine to pray for happiness in the new year. Christmas at my house is a bit of a hybrid affair, with plenty of American trappings like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special combined with Japanese Christmas Cake from the local cake shop. Hmm, maybe we'll go for a Hello Kitty one this year...

The first recorded Christmas in Japan took place in 1552, when missionaries who had accompanied Francis Xavier held mass in a newly constructed church in what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture, at the southernmost point of the main Japanese island of Honshu. Christianity would soon be outlawed by the Tokugawa Shoguns, who wanted to close the country to all outside influences, but Christmas was practiced for 250 years by kakure Kirishitan, the "secret Christians" of Kyushu who disobeyed the law on pain of death. The spirit of Christmas was also kept alive by the Dutch traders on Dejima, a man-made island in Nagasaki Harbor which was the only place foreigners were allowed to visit during the "closed country" era (as it wasn't considered part of Japan proper). They invented a fictional holiday called Dutch Winter Solstice so they could celebrate the season without raising the eyebrows of the authorities, although I wonder if anyone was really fooled. It wasn't until the early Meiji Period that the ban on Christianity was lifted, and slowly images of the holiday began to seep into the Japanese consciousness. These days Christmas is a fun affair, a time to walk under sparkling lights with someone special or buy a gift for your kids, but it's New Year's that's the real focal point of the year in Japan.

Christmas lights in Japan are so pretty!

December 22 is Domo-un no Hi!

Today is a special day for Domo-kun, the super-cute Japanese monster character who's become so popular throghout the Internet: it's his 10th anniversary, or his 10th birthday if you will. Domo-kun was created by Japanese production company TYO to star in a series of 30 second stop-motion animation films for NHK's "BS" (broadcast satellite) network, which would serve as station identification between feature shows. The character was only intended to be used for a year, but he became so popular that NHK made him a permanent fixture. The word domo is an all-purpose Japanese polite term that can be short for domo arigato (thank you very much), domo sumimasen (I'm really sorry to have inconvenienced you), or even domo hisashiburi desu (it's really been a long time since we saw each other last), and as such the term is especially useful for foreigners who want to be polite but aren't sure which word to use in a certain situation. These days Domo-kun gets a lot of work on children's TV shows, teaching kids to bow and speak politely to their elders. We've been carrying fun Domo-kun products since the very beginning, and are proud as punch as the way our little guy has grown up. To mark this special day, we've got some rare items for Domo fans, the last stock of the cool Domo Square Plush cubes, in stock in our San Diego location -- check them out!

Forget-the-Year Party

Tonight is J-List's bonenkai (boh-NEN-KAI), or Year End Party, a big tradition in any company in Japan. Literally meaning "Forget the Past Year Party," it's a time to look back on all that's happened over the past year and say otsukare-sama deshita! (ohts-KAH-ray-sah-mah deh-shta, "thanks for your hard work") to all employees. We'll eat a lot of good food, drink and then hit the karaoke box for some serious anime singing. 2008 was a busy year for J-List, and we all worked hard to bring many cool products from Japan to tens of thousands of customers all over the world. Things weren't always easy, and there are but they were always fun, and we sincerely thank you for being "Friends of J-List" and helping us grow.

The Happiest People in Japan

With the economy in the doldrums in Japan, people here are buckling down as they wait for the recession to sort itself out. The Japanese have a magical phrase that allows them to endure all manner of adversity, which is sho ga nai meaning "it can't be helped," and that sentiment is being expressed more than a little right now. Yet there's one group that never seems to notice economic hard times: the komuin (KOH-MOO-een), a class of national and regional government employees that are the last bastion of absolute job security in Japanese society. Komuin are modeled after the civil service traditions of Western nations, and a wide range of professions are part of the system, including police, fire fighters, and teachers at public schools and universities; before their respective industries were privatized, all employees of the JR train line, the Japanese post office and even Japan Tobacco were government employees. While I have memories from my college days of the hard choices the State of California had to take to make its budget stretch in rough times, including cutting a wide range of budgets, I can't say that I've seen any case when public employees here faced serious job or budget cuts in similar situations. These days criticism is being focused on eight so-called "independent government corporations" like JETRO, an agency that promotes trade between Japan and other countries, which were found to be giving their employees hefty "food allowances" of up to $90 a month amounting to $14.5 million since 2003. Considering how wasteful these agencies are under the best of conditions, I can certainly understand the ire of Japanese taxpayers when they heard of this special treatment lavished on beauracrats that no one else is entitled to.

Bowing Culture

It's well known that bowing is something done in Japan as a greeting or to express respect or apology. There are many kinds of bows, from the casual ojigi you make to a coworker to a deeper bow of thanks you'd do when accepting your salary envelope from your boss on payday to the always-fun "bowing to someone while talking to them on the phone," which I catch myself doing. When I went to work for a large English school I had my first experience with chorei (lit. "morning bow") which is a brief formal meeting where the employees stand in a circle and basically promises to gambaru, or do their best and work hard, followed by a deep bow. Bowing is done in Japanese public schools, too: when the teacher enters the classroom the students stand as one and bow, then take their seats again. I once had a class of students at a business school I taught at do this to me, which really freaked me out. I told them that since there were to learn English from me, I'd be happy if they treated me like an American teacher.

Way More Information on Japanese Grammer Than You Wanted To Know

I talked a couple weeks ago about how the Japanese language lacks definite and indefinite articles like "a" and "the" and how the many nuances of these ostensibly simple words can cause frustration even for Japanese who have studied English for ten years or more. (For example, why do we talk about being able to "play the guitar" if there's no actual guitar in the room that we're referring to?) While Japanese certainly is a challenging language to learn, I have to say that there were quite a few areas where the language was actually less complex than English. Right off the bat, the Japanese have only one verb form for simple present and simple future tense, so there's no need to differentiate between "I study [everyday]" and "I will study [tomorrow]" unless you need to for some reason. One of the banes of ESL students everywhere is the subjunctive mood, like "if I had known that yesterday, I wouldn't have driven the car," but happily this grammar doesn't exist at all in Japanese, so that's one less thing for gaijin to need to study. Japanese has no plurals for nouns, so there's no need to study strange phrases like "a pair of jeans" (which looks to Japanese people like a single object), and there are no issues with count/non-count nouns, although the different counters used for thin objects, small objects etc. used in Japanese can be challenging for foreigners to learn. The bottom line is that while kanji represents a big challenge for Westerners, there's nothing overtly difficult about the language itself. Why not start today?

Today we're doing a really good update, with tons of new and back-in-stock items for you to check out. The J-List staff is working hard to get everyone's order out in a timely manner, and we're ready to fill your order ASAP. We've got tons of great snacks, anime figures and toys, 2009 calendars, Studio Ghibli toys and bento boxes, and much more. Browse our product lineup now!

Education Shock

Of all the aspects of Japan I had to get used to when I came here, the educational system was one I remember being especially confused by. My very first morning in Japan was a Saturday, and to my surprise the children of the family I was staying with got up and rushed off to school. Compulsory attendance on Saturdays had been part of public education here for decades until it was abolished in 2002 under the yutori kyoiku or "Slow and Easy Education" reforms, but that first sight of students cheerfully walking to school instead of playing was hard for me to wrap my brain around. More confusion was waiting for me when I started teaching junior high students at a juku, an after-hours school to help students keep up with their schoolwork and prepare for future entrance exams. I was perplexed by the idea of children willingly studying in a classroom until 10 pm instead of watching TV and having fun like I did at that age. Another point of confusion for me was that mandatory education stops at the ninth grade here, and by definition all high schools are optional for students, although nearly everyone attends. Since students choose schools based on their academic level and future goals, high schools function like a miniature version of the university system, with top-ranked schools competing to attract the smartest students and other schools specializing in subjects like engineering, commercials skills like bookkeeping, or (since our prefecture is quite rural) agriculture. Speaking of schools, I've got some good news: my daughter passed her examination for the private junior high school she wanted to enter, and was accepted! I think I'll get some victory sushi on the way home tonight.

Super Convenience!

The Japanese have a reputation for being innovative and coming up with new ways to make everyone's life a little more convenient. I had my first taste of this phenomenon when I bought a crappy Datson B-210 back in college, which sported a single key that worked in both the ignition and the hatchback and didn't mind whether it was upside-down or not, which was a lot more convenient than the dual keys that came with the Mustang I'd owned before. When I came to live in Japan I was greeted with many more of these small but much-appreciated innovations. First there's the faucet that juts out of nearly every toilet here, giving you a place to wash your hands with the clean water as it runs into the tank after a flush, or the spring-loaded toilet paper holders that let you insert a new role with a flick of your wrist. The toilet seat heater/butt washers also fall into the "extremely convenient" category. I'm a big fan of margarine tubs in Japan, which have little holes in the lid that allows you to keep a butter knife half-in and half-out of the tub, so you don't have to get a clean one from the drawer each time you butter toast. They also have blocks of cheese that's already pre-sliced, so you can pull off a piece without cutting it. If I were in charge of coming up with new products at a company in the U.S., I'd mine Japan for ideas til the cows came home.

Atsuhime

When I was six years old, I lived in New Zealand for a year. Besides falling in love with something called Big Ben's Meat Pies, I learned that the BBC makes historical dramas that really delve into the past, which was interesting to me since it's not something Americans are used to seeing. Japan's NHK follows the BBC model very closely, making many jidai-geki or "period dramas" -- this is incidentally where we get the word "Jedi" from -- that bring various episodes of Japan's long past to life for modern TV viewers. There are many productions shown over the course of the year, but the best is always the Taiga ("Big River") Drama, which runs from early January to the end of December and has the biggest budget and the most beautiful costumes. This year was the 47th Taiga Drama since the series started in 1963, and it told the story of Atsuhime, a girl who married the 13th Tokugawa Shogun. The period was an especially tumultuous one, which saw the arrival of Admiral Perry and his "Black Ships" then culminated in the Meiji Restoration, when the 250-year rule of the Tokugawa clan ended and a modern government was founded around the Japanese Emperor. It stared the popular actress Aoi Miyazaki, who gave a brilliant performance and won many fans for the show, which pulled in ratings of 28% last night.

I Bought 12 Boxes of Cereal

If you went to the supermarket recently, you might have picked up some cereal and put it in your cart. I bought some cereal recently too -- 12 boxes, in fact. Although breakfast cereal can be found easily in Japanese supermarkets, with familiar names like Corn Flake, Corn Frosty, Choko-wa (chocolate loops), Genmai Flake, and recently, Fruits Loops (the "fruits" is a fluke of Japanese phonetics, I love it for some reason), the boxes are so tiny that an American shopper would probably laugh out loud in the middle of the store, with just 1.5-2 "normal" servings of cereal in each box. So I occasionally decide to make an order from the Foreign Buyers' Club in Kobe, a service that lets foreigners living in Japan purchase anything from the U.S. (or Britain, or Australia), as long as they don't mind ordering by the supermarket case, which usually means 12 boxes. Having that much of any single brand of cereal is a little tiring, but it's nice to have the option of buying natsukashii (nostalgic) food from home when I want it.

It's quite interesting to see how Geoffrey Giraffe, Tony the Tiger and so on have been adapted to Japan. Creepy sometimes, but interesting.

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Kanji We Can Believe In

Each year the organization that publishes the Standardized Kanji Test announces the "kanji of the year," the single character that best sums up the events of the past twelve months. The kanji character is announced at a ceremony at the beautiful Kiyomizu Dera temple in Kyoto, one of Japan's most famous places, and it's fun to try to guess what it will be ahead of time. The character for 2008 has been announced, and it's truly a kanji we can believe in: hen 変, meaning "change," reflecting the many changes that Japan went through this year, including a new Prime Minister, plenty of economic turmoil and the election of a new American President with a similar message. The mechanics of individual kanji characters can be quite complex, and the hen character is used in many words, including normal verbs like kaeru 変える (to change [something]) or kawaru 変わる (to change [yourself]), and it's also the word for "strange," as in hen na gaijin 変な外人 (strange foreigner), something I've been called more than a few times. Anime fans may be familiar with some words that incorporate the hen kanji, too, like henshin 変身 (transform!), a staple of so many Japanese TV shows, taihen 大変(meaning "terrible" or "what a shame"), and that infamous "H" word hentai 変態, which has come to represent the more naughtier elements of anime, manga and computer games from Japan but which just means "not normal" or "perverted" in Japanese. Other characters that were considered this year included kin or "gold" to celebrate Japan's Olympic medals, raku meaning "fall" due to the stock market drop, and shoku or "food" in reference to the food scandals from China.