Asashoryu, the Happy Sumo Wrestler

Sumo wrestling is the national sport of Japan, enjoying a special legal status and support from the government. Every two months, a 15-day tournament is held, three in Tokyo and one each in Nagoya, Osaka and Kyushu. Wrestlers fight one bout each day, and the one with the best record of wins-to-losses at the end of the tournament is declared the winner. There are six ranks for the wrestlers to climb up through, with the top being yokozuna, or Grand Champion, and for a wrestler to attain this rank, he's supposed to not only be the strongest but have the proper kokoro (heart, soul) that embodies the spirit of sumo wrestling. (I can hear Yoda's voice: "...The deepest commitment, the most serious mind.") When top-ranked Mongolian wrestler Asashoryu sealed his victory at the sumo championship last week, he pumped his arms in the air in exultation, but this breech of proper sumo etiquette has landed the wrestler and his stablemaster in hot water, earning them both a stern warning from the Japan Sumo Association.

What do you think? Is it fair to ask a non-Japanese wrestler to hide his happiness and emotions that much in the name of being a good sportsman?

Japan's top-ranked sumo wrestler takes a victory lap

Language, Bilingualism and Translation

It seems that the skill of translation can be quite separate from the ability to communicate freely in a language. My son took a standardized test given to all students in our prefecture the other day, with an unexpected result: he got a relatively low score on the English portion of the test. This surprised us, considering he's fluent enough to watch American TV and movies without even paying close attention to the screen, and only occasionally has to ask me what certain specialized words mean. The test called on the students to translate sentences from English to Japanese and vice-versa, which seemed to present a special challenge for him because of the "raw" way he learned English, talking with me, interacting with his family in San Diego, and learning from native teachers at the experimental English school he attends. Because I learned Japanese as an adult, "connecting" the vocabulary and grammar to concepts already in my brain, I can think of a Japanese word like mezurashii (meh-zoo-rah-shee) and the English meaning (unusual, rare) will spring into my mind. But in my son, the synaptic bridge joining these two concepts might not have been created yet, potentially causing interesting difficulties in moving meaning from one language to the other. If you want to learn about how your own brain works, study a foreign language!

The act of learning is actually creating synapses in your brain. Isn't that freaky?

Japan, the Cash Based Society

Japan is an extremely cash-based society. Although credit cards have gotten more popular with consumers over the past couple of decades, people here are generally more comfortable dealing with cash, and often carry a lot of it. When my wife goes shopping in the U.S she brings a lot of money, and once she managed to lose her purse with more than $1000 in it, something that most folks could not imagine doing. (Happily, she got it back safely, cash included, thanks to an honest man who turned it into the police.) The Japanese sentiment that cash is kamisama (God) is expressed in the tendency for households to keep all their savings in normal accounts paying around 0.05% interest rather than stocks, and I just realized that I don't know a single Japanese person who owns any stocks in a public company. In 2006, singer Keiko Fuji (who is the mother of JPOP star Hikaru Udata) tried to board a plane from New York to Las Vegas with $420,000 in her carry-on luggage. The authorities promptly confiscated it, sure that anyone with that kind of cash must have been involved in some illicit drug deal. It appears, however, that the former star just liked carrying around lots of money when she went to Vegas since, you know, banks are such a trouble to deal with and everything. After several years, no evidence has been found to show that the singer had been involved in any wrongdoing, and happily, the money is scheduled to be returned to her soon.

Most Japanese households keep their savings in low-interest cash accounts

Test Post - Is the new server working?

Doing a sample post, to see if the server move worked. If so, this site will be faster and more enjoyable to use! Enjoy the upgrade.


Here's my new favorite image of Obama at his Mac for you.

Beer in Japan

Although Japan might be famous for sake, wine distilled from rice, the beverage most people order when it's time to throw a few back after work is beer. Beer has been brewed in Japan since 1870, when Norwegian-born William Copeland came to Yokohama to seek his fortune and founded what would become the first beer brewery in the country. (It's popular to visit his grave in Yokohama and leave cans of Kirin beer as an offering, to thank him for his hard work.) Today the market is dominated by the "big four" breweries of Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo and Suntory, and in accordance with standard Japanese business practices, these companies also have strong businesses selling everything from processed foods to bottled tea. (Can you imagine buying iced tea bottled by Coors?) Now Kirin has announced it will be making big changes to its flagship Ichiban Shibori by altering the ingredients and moving to a 100% hop brewing process, rather than the current formula that contains rice. Will consumers respond to the "premium" Kirin beer, or will this be a "New Coke" moment for the company? As soon as we get some in at my father-in-law's liquor shop I'll let you know.

Kirin will be changing the recipe for their flagship beer

Wasteful Japan

I love Japan, really I do, but there are times when I have to shake my head at the lack of competence of the Japanese government. Currently they're preparing to distribute money to consumers to help them deal with the rough economy here, but the stimulus package is turning into an embarrassment for Prime Minister Aso's government as the news reports on the $600 million or so that it will cost in bank transfer fees to send around $130 to each household. Japan is faced with the prospect of an unprecedented decline in the population in the coming decades, yet there's precious little in the way of a plan to deal with the situation and help maintain Japan's economic standing in the world. Japan is a nation addicted to construction, and this time of year you can't go anywhere without running into delays as work crews tear up streets then lay the asphalt surface down again. Instead of building roads that are already pretty much okay, it seems plain to me that money could be better spent to bolster Japan's hospitals, which already suffer from a lack of important staff. (And don't get me started on the road near J-List they started to build, then stopped in the middle of construction, leaving a gravel road that's no one can use and a lot of wasted money.) The lack of support for Mr. Aso's government and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party means a real possibility that the opposition Democratic Party of Japan might win a majority of seats in the next election, which would be disruptive and potentially dangerous for Japan, as the party has only been around in its current form for a decade.

Kirin will be changing the recipe for their flagship beer; Enjoy some "reverse chocolate" from Morinaga

This year it's Gyaco Choco from Japan!

Japan is getting ready for Valentine's Day, that very special time when women show their devotion to the men in their lives by presenting chocolate to their boyfriends, husbands, fathers and, if they don't mind giving "obligation chocolate" (expected in certain social situations), male co-workers. But confectionary maker Morinaga is doing things differently this year, promoting the idea of gyaku choco or "reverse chocolate," by which they mean guys giving chocolate to girls, just like they do in the rest of the world. "Instead of waiting for a girl to give you chocolate," a tag line on their website reads, "be bold and give chocolate to them instead!" They've even released some packages of their delicious chocolates printed with reversed images, specially made for trend-setting males who want to be original and give a chocolate gift to that special girl instead of waiting for her to come to him. Whether you're giving chocolate the standard Japanese way or doing things in reverse, J-List has an excellent selection of delicious chocolate snacks from Japan in stock for you right now.

Enjoy some "reverse chocolate" from Morinaga this year!

I Love the Smell of Kimchee in the Morning

Words sure are complex things, and it's interesting to consider why we use one word over another. This morning I was running late for work, so I grabbed a quick Japanese breakfast of white rice and kimchee, that delicious spicy pickled cabbage from Korea. I remarked to my mother-in-law that I was opting for a simple breakfast today, using the English word "simple" but with a Japanese accent, resulting in something like sin-puru. This got me thinking about why I'd chosen that word rather than the perfectly good term (kantan) that exists in Japanese. The answer is that words serve different purposes to people, and sometimes using a word from another language can provide a little je-ne-sais-quoi to your speech. In Death Note, you can see Light Yagami pull off one of his unique murders of the corrupt and unjust using his supernatural notebook then utter the phrase "Checkmate" when he was done. But the term used to declare victory after a game of Shogi, "Oh-te," would sound ridiculous if used in the saem situation.

Kira from Death Note, is so bad-ass

I love the smell of kimchee in the morning.

Japan's Most Influential Web User

Big changes may be coming to Japan's online world with the announcement that Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of the infamous BBS 2ch (pronounced ni-channeru and abbreviated ni-chan), has sold the rights to the popular website to a company in Singapore. "I thought it might be interesting if I sold 2channel off, to see if there would be any difference if it was owned by a company, rather than myself," Nishimura said in an interview. 2ch is a massively popular BBS and all-around source of vibrant Japanese Internet culture, birthing such legends as Densha Otoko (Train Man), the true story of an anime otaku who won the love of a beautiful woman by getting advice from readers of the site, and Kikkoman, the super hero who also dispenses soy sauce. The site is so influential that companies and politicians tread lightly to avoid catching the ire of 2-channellers, as its users are called. No one is sure what the infamous founder is up to in transferring ownership in the site to a third party, but there's widespread conjecture that it's a legal move designed to protect him from the many lawsuits he's faced over content from the website's anonymous users. The BBS has a less-than-sparkling reputation for reasons other the libel issue: crimes are often announced on the site by deranged users looking for attention. Police have learned to take posts on the site very seriously, as they did when a 2ch users made a death threat against Mongolian sumo wrestler Asashoryu, arresting the man immediately.

The influential Hiroyuki of 2ch is Japan's version of Kevin Rose

Things That Look Strange To Foreigners

It's been said that Japan is the only country in the world that cares what its foreigners think, and I'm inclined to agree. The other day I caught a variety show that featured a panel of "talents" (well-known entertainers and idols) talking about things in Japan that stand out as odd or interesting to foreigners. For example, there's a scene in the film Battle Royale in which Beat Takeshi is holding a cheap umbrella in the rain, which looks odd to non-Japanese eyes because it's clear plastic, something you don't see in America or Europe but which is very common here. Bookstores in Japan are supposedly interesting to gaijin, too, with books that have obi or paper "belts" around the outside with advertising or other information printed on them, or cards handwritten by the staff of the bookstore recommending this book or that. Japan has many home electronics stores which foreigners love to visit, and they're often surprised to find "washlets," those butt-washing toilet seats that are so popular in Japan, which you'd never expect to see in a Best Buy. Also, most every electronics store has a theme song that they play constantly while you're in the store, designed to get stuck in your head so you'll come back and buy more. Hot towels handed out to you in most every restaurant, taxis with doors that open automatically via a hydraulic mechanism and those cool health masks were also discussed. Of course, the most interesting thing to me is that the idea of people sitting around taking in great detail about how their country and customs appear to foreign visitors. I could be wrong, but I just can't see a similar show in the U.S. being very successful, although I'd love to be proven wrong.

Books in Japan (and sold by J-List) often have a removeable paper "belt"

Japanese Train Sleepers

I took a day off and went down to Tokyo yesterday to catch up with a friend over some beer and hot sake. On the train, I wasn't surprised to see several people around me doing what Japanese always do on trains: fall deeply asleep the moment we leave the station. Look around any train car and you'll be sure to see at least a couple of these amazing train sleepers, snoozing away while somehow managing to remain (mostly) upright. When they arrive at their station, they magically wake up through a mechanism I haven't figured out yet, and exit the train. To me the ability to sleep soundly in a public place like that is the ultimate expression of trust in one's society, and since Japan is a very safe place, people usually have no problem with dozing off while they wait to get wherever they're going. I believe it's analogous to children sleeping in the back seat of a car while your parents drive somewhere driving you somewhere.

Sometimes it can be nice to sit next to a Japanese train sleeper, if she's cute.

Gaijin: Foreigners in Japan

The word for "foreigner" in Japanese is gaijin, written with kanji meaning outside + person, making it essentially equal to the word "outsider." All countries have foreigners, of course, but Japan's status as one of the most homogeneous countries in the world has a special meaning for Westerners living here, forcing most of us to "be at peace with sticking out in a crowd." A person from Sweden or France could walk down the street in New York without anyone noticing that they came from another part of the world, but in Japan, the "other-ness" of a non-Japanese face can't be hidden. In my home prefecture of Gunma, it's quite common for me to go somewhere -- a school function, or my daughter's Girl Scout meeting -- and suddenly realize that I'm the only non-Japanese present, often out of hundreds of people. While I'm okay with this, I've known some who couldn't handle the stress of "living in a fish-bowl," as one friend put it. While few in super-polite Japan are rude enough to openly stare at a foreigner, children sometimes can't resist gazing at the great big American pecking away on his MacBook. Whenever this happens, I smile at the child and say, "Konnichi-wa," which hopefully gives him a positive impression of having met a foreigner. (For some reason I am positively obsessed with making sure I don't act in a way that makes young children think of foreigners as "scary.") My own response to the issue of being different from everyone around me is to embrace it, driving my Miata with the top down and my blond hair blowing in the wind.

Early images of foreigners mingling with Japanese in the Edo Period. That must have been fun.

More on Gaijin: Statistics in Japan

Here are some numbers on the 2.2 million foreigners who live in Japan and make up 1.63% of the overall population here. While the classic image of a bumbling American or Brit on a mountain bike asking for directions to the train station might be prevalent in the minds of most Japanese -- this is because the foreigners they've had the most contact with have been their English teachers -- in reality Americans and Europeans make up only a small number of the total. The largest "foreign" group here are Chinese followed by Koreans, and as I mentioned last time, many of these were actually born and raised in Japan but maintain a unique identity for cultural reasons that are beyond my ability to grasp. (Interesting aside for anime fans: Lynn Minmei from Macross would have fallen into this category.) The next largest group are the nikkei (Japan-related) from Brazil and Peru, descended from Japanese who went on a diaspora to South America a century ago. In general, foreigners in Japan each find their own specific niche to occupy, and truth be told, I couldn't tell you much about the daily lives of people in most other groups. When I was an English teacher, I did English-teacher-type things like go see American movies, explore my city for hidden temples and study Japanese. I did my best to break out of that shell, though, hitting all the Peruvian restaurants the Japanese are too timid to enter, working out with a big guy from Iran for a few months (we communicated in Japanese, always an amusing sight to see), and challenging a Chinese friend to see who could get a higher score on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. (I beat her score barely.)

Breakdown of foreigners living in Japan by country. I assume the U.S. figures count military stationed here.

Akiko Wada: Resident Korean in Japan

One of the most famous singers in Japan over the past two decades has been Akiko Wada, who appears on most every music show belting out songs in her signature strong voice. I found out the other day that this pillar of the Japanese music world isn't actually Japanese, but zainichi kankoku-jin, or a South Korean residing in Japan. While discovering that an entertainer actually comes from a neighboring country shouldn't be any more surprising than learning that William Shatner or Michael J. Fox are originally from Canada, in Japan there's a bit more to it. Ms. Wada didn't immigrate to Japan from South Korea, but was born in good old Osaka to zainichi parents. To my American sensibilities, this means that she should be Japanese, not Korean, perhaps with a heightened sense of her unique ethnic roots, but in Japan there's a strong tradition of Koreans maintaining their cultural identities by preserving Korean citizenship, attending schools taught in the Korean language, and so on. (I once went to the North Korean high school in our city to recruit students for the school I worked at, one of my more bizarre experiences as an ESL teacher.) There are no insurmountable barriers to taking Japanese citizenship, and Koreans and Chinese living in Japan, who enjoy a special lifetime residence status, are welcome to become Japanese at any time. Those who choose to keep their citizenship do so for various reasons, including the desire to maintain their ethnic identity and their unwillingness to take a Japanese kanji name, which is still legally required so the person can be added to the family register. I could become a Japanese myself as long as I passed some minimal requirements, but I choose not to: it's more fun being an American in Japan rather than a Japanese who is bad at kanji.

Akiko Wada is a pillar of the Japanese music world, and can probably mix you up some great Kim Chee soup

Pronouncing English with Katakana

One of the small benefits of the Japanese language is its syllabic nature, which eliminates some of the nuance of how words are pronounced. I was listening to some music on my iPhone the other day when a song by Dido came up, and I realized that I had no idea how to pronounce her name properly -- was it DIE-doh, or DEE-doh? In Japanese, you'd generally have katakana written above a name which would provide a way for everyone to know with 100% accuracy how it should be pronounced. When I was a boy I loved dinosaurs, and I remember trying to figure out how on Earth you were supposed to pronounce names like diplodocus and acrocanthosaurus properly. This wouldn't be an issue in Japanese, though, since katakana syllables are always pronounced the same way. There are downsides to using a system like katakana for pronunciation, though. When I order Indian food in the U.S. I probably speak with a Japanese accent since I got into Indian curry after arriving in Japan, and to this day I have no idea how to pronounce camembert cheese properly, since I first ate it here.

The talented singer's full name is Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, by the way

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.