The Kokoro of Code Geass

In an episode of Code Geass, the anime about an alternate-reality Earth in which Japan is conquered by the evil Empire of Britannia, Zero asks his friend Suzaku a question. "What is it to be 'Japanese,' and how do you define the concept of 'race'? Is it through language? The land where people are living? Blood relationships?" "No, not that," Suzaku replies, "It's determined by their kokoro." It's a good scene to illustrate one of my favorite Japanese concepts, kokoro, which essentially means heart, but only the philosophical or spiritual aspects of it. A kokoro is the purest definition of a person's self including their mind, their current and future goals and aspirations and everything that they hold dear. Although I'm not Japanese, the fact that I've lived here for 18 years and have embraced the language and values of the country means that my kokoro has has joined with Japan on some level. It's not unlike my father, also named Peter Payne, who emigrated from Britain to the U.S. in the 1950s and stayed all his life, becoming very passionate about his new adopted country.

Code Geass is an anime that can get quite philosophical at times.

Interesting Bread Culture in Japan

For a country that eats as much rice as Japan, they have some pretty interesting kinds of bread here, too. Introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century, pan has been made in Japan long enough for it to morph into some pretty interesting shapes, including a few that Westerners might have trouble identifying. The most basic type of bread, of course, is the normal sliced variety, which can be purchased in standard sized loaves cut into eight, six or four slices, depending on how thick you like your sandwiches to be. Anpan is a traditional round bread with Japanese sweet beans (anko) inside, and Curry Pan is a ball-shaped piece of fried bread that contains spicy curry -- yummy. Whenever I'm passing through a train station and get hungry, I pick up some yakisoba pan, essentially a long piece of bead with chow mein-style noodles stuffed inside, about as simple a snack as you can ask for. One of the most famous forms of Japanese bread is Melon Pan, thanks to it appearing in some well-known anime series. Originally made using a rice mold for making omelette-rice dishes which gave it a shape like an almond, in the 1920s the the bread took on a round shape and got its current name, thanks to the resemblance to a honeydew melon. In some parts of the country it was made with a cookiein ther center, called Sunrise, since it looked like a Japanese flag and hi no de (sunrise) as seen on the Japanese flag.

Good Japanese, Bad Japanese

One of the themes I write about a lot is how people in Japan are sensitive to how they're viewed by the world at large. Japanese who improve the image of the country in the eyes of foreigners, such as animation director Hayao Miyazaki or groundbreaking soccer player Hidetoshi Nakata, attain a lasting halo among fans at home, while Japanese who harm the image of Japan, such as Yoko Ono or canibal-turned-food critic Issei Sagawa, become pariahs. There's a TV show called Nippon All Stars that basically introduces Japanese who have done or are doing amazing things on the world stage, for example Ichiro Ogimura, the hard-working professional ping-pong player that helped redefine the image of the Japanese in the eyes of the U.S. and Europe in the postwar years, or Takeshi Imai, an engineer who's worked to develop techniques for cloud-seeding to increase rainfall in parched areas of Brazil. The other day I saw a segment about Ikuyoshi Nemoto, the chemist who invented a long-lasting glow-in-the-dark paint that emits light for up to eight hours after the power goes off. In addition to probably being responsible for the glowing hands on your watch, his company's products have been widely adopted for use in buildings in the aftermath of 9-11.

Yoko Ono is so disliked in Japan, they write her name in Katakana.

Striking a Balance as a Gaijin in Japan

Every gaijin who decides to put down more permanent roots in Japan needs to strike a balance with his surroundings. Some, such as ESL teacher types who naturally speak English in their day jobs, or others who don't plan on spending more than a year or so here, might reasonably be content with learning only enough Japanese to get around town and make friends. Other newcomers to the country might embrace the language more formally, perhaps setting using the Japanese Language Proficiency Test held in December as a goal to help motivate themselves. Some foreigners get into life here so much that they "lose their gaijinity" as it were, like an American friend of mine who reads a Japanese newspaper every morning and files his own Japanese taxes even though he has a perfectly good J-wife who could do it for him. Sometimes it can go in the opposite direction, like another friend of mine who's a full professor at a university in Kyushu, yet he actively avoids using perfect polite Japanese with the other teachers to maintain a "comfort buffer" of lowered expectations around him. Personally, I am happy being an American expat, able to speak the language and interact with anyone I need to, but always being "me" at the end of the day.

This American guy was made the head of his volunteer fire department. Congratulations, dude!

Update on the Japanese Jury System

Japan's judicial world is undergoing big changes as the country prepares to introduce a "citizen juror" system in which guilt and sentencing of certain serious crimes will be carried out with the assistance of a panel of six randomly-chosen citizens. This is a huge change because Japan hasn't had a tradition of juries since before World War II, and the only experience the average person has with this "lay judge" system is likely from popular American TV shows. While it certainly seems reasonable to have a person judged by a jury of his peers rather than the current system of three professional judges, who may cynically believe they've "heard it all before," I'm not sure if the Japanese are ready for this new system. While people here may be famous for their group-oriented thinking, raising the specter of a juror changing their decision to go along with others rather than because it reflects their own beliefs, a larger problem might be the tendency of some Japanese to be extremely stubborn, going against the group just to be contrarian, like that last farmer who still refuses to sell his land to the Narita Airport Authority after thirty years despite the fact that they've already built the airport. (This type of frustrating person is called amano-jaku. Maybe you have one of these people at work?) Still, changes to Japan's legal system are certainly called for, as illustrated by the recent release of a former bus driver who was imprisoned for 17 years for a murder which a recent DNA re-test proves he didn't commit.

Japan is introducing a trial by jury system, which will be a bit of a challenge for people.

Cute Car Culture from Japan

In Japan, there are two kinds of cars, normal-sized ones and the super-small kei cars, defined as vehicles with engines that are 660 cc in size or smaller, which always feature a yellow license plate so you can tell them apart. Although they aren't as powerful, these cars get better gas mileage and also enjoy various tax savings from the government. While one doesn't usually expect these smaller, more economical cars to also be kakko ii (cool, good style), more and more I'm seeing manufacturers add interesting features and tweak their designs so they appeal to hip young people, with boxy, wagon-style lines and sporty interiors. I've even seen some adventurous Japanese converting kei-style vans into a serviceable "camping car" (RV) for their family, which sounds like a lot of fun. Still, no matter how long I live in Japan, I can't get used to the sight of these tiny kei vehicles being used for police cars, which are called mini-pato, for miniature patrol cars. They look so much like children's toys, I have to have a giggle every time I see one driving around.

I am always amused when I see a mini-pato, or miniature police car.

Kinben: the Hardworking Japanese

One of my favorite Japanese words is kinben (keen-ben), which means industrious, diligent, and studious. Just as America has always had the Protestant Work Ethic to serve as a model for what hardworking people should aspire to, Japan values diligence and hard work as excellent traits for a person to adopt. By and large, this diligence is usually measured in terms of time rather than raw effort. Doing an hour or two of overtime each day is probably the norm at most Japanese companies, where employees show their effort to their colleagues and boss in a unit that everyone can easily recognize, time. The pinnacle of the kinben concept of hard work is the tetsuya, which means working all night in order to get the important project finished. If an employee in Japan pulls an all-nighter to get his important work done, he'll probably gain a lot of respect from his boss and coworkers. This Japanese tradition of working and studying hard has rubbed off on my son, and I'm not surprised to see him cracking the books at his study desk until 11 pm or later, something that would have been unthinkable for me until I got to university

If you want to earn the respect of your co-workers, work all night long on a project.

Things To Do in Tokyo

Tokyo is the sprawling capital of Japan, so large that it's more like a prefecture than a unified entity, made up of 23 individual city-like wards which are similar to New York's burroughs. Just as the various regions of Japan work hard to associate themselves with something interesting so tourists will have an excuse to go there -- for example, there's a town in Shizuoka famous for wasabi flavored soft-serve ice cream -- different parts of Tokyo specialize in different kinds of products. Everyone knows that you can find anime goods and maid cafes in in Akihabara, as well as all the latest electronic goodies. The popularity of the rock band anime K-On! has brought a boom in musical instrument sales, with all the shops in Ochanomizu getting on the bandwagon. Looking for used books? Head to the Kanda area and you'll find dozens of shops that Read or Die bibliophile Yomiko Readman would love, some selling books that are hundreds of years old. If Japanese dolls is your thing then Asakusa-bashi is where you want to go, and to browse interesting cookware, including knives, bowls and wax sushi replicas , then take the train to Kappa Kitchen Town in the Kappabashi region of Tokyo. There is even a section famous for ramen fans (Ogikubo), with many famous shops for you to explore next time you're in Tokyo.

Find delicious-looking wax food replicas in Kappa Kitchen Town.

"Ranking" Mania in Japan

For some reason, the Japanese love rankingu (ranking), and there are TV shows that go out of their way to find interesting topics and organize them into ordered lists for you. For example, a variety show might sample all major brands of sausages sold in supermarkets then report on which were the most delicious, do a report on Haruki Murakami's runaway best-selling novel IQ94, and then rank the top brands of bottled green tea or the most popular pet names this year. There's even a show called "Father's Wideshow Study" that sums up the important news from the past week in order of how many hours each subject was reported on by the media, so that busy salarmen who don't have time to watch the news every night can keep up with current events. This love of ranking isn't new, and the Japanese have a long tradition of listing the "three best" of a given topic, such as the three most beautiful views in Japan (nihon sankei), which are the Japanese pines of Matsushima, the view from the top of Mt. Amanohashidate along the Sea of Japan, and the floating Japanese arch at Miyajima near Hiroshima. There's also an official ranking of the three most beautiful Japanese gardens, with the top spot going to Kenrokuen Park in Kanazawa Prefecture, an amazing place to visit.

Kenrokuen is ranked as the most beautiful garden in Japan.

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Easy Kanji Anyone Can Read

Kanji are the mysterious Chinese pictographs used in China, Japan, and to a limited extent, in South Korea. While they can seem like meaningless chicken scratches at first, they're actually a well organized complex system for communicating meaning. There are several fundamental ways that kanji are constructed, the most common being organized by radical, where similar words are grouped according to their meaning. For example, the characters for "read" "speak" and "language" all have a left section that looks like a stack of books, and words related to the weather such as "snow" "lightning" and "cloud" all incorporate the character for "rain" into them. When you look up a word using a kanji dictionary, searching for the radical first is a quick way to find the character you need to look up. Despite the complex structure of kanji, there are some characters that are made in such a way that their meaning are immediately communicated, even to beginners. Words like the kanji for the numbers for 1, 2 and 3 are easy, as are some basic words like mountain (yama). The character for "old" (furui) looks like a little Western grave stone, while the kanji for "meat" (niku) is a little rib cage. One of the simplest characters is ki (tree), which can become hayashi (woods) if you draw it twice, or mori (forest) if you draw three of them. Easy as pie!

School Culture Festival

My son is in the second year of junior high, so it's time for us to start thinking about what high school he'll be attending. Unlike in the U.S., Japan's compulsory education ends with junior high, making high school an optional choice, not unlike university. Different high schools cater to different types of students -- for example, there are high schools that focus on sending students to top-ranked universities, commercial high schools that teach practical job skills, agricultural high schools for students who'll take over the family farm someday, and at least one school dedicated to teaching students to get jobs as commercial airline pilots later in life. Yesterday we attended the bunka-sai (culture festival) of a school my son is considering, the highest-ranked boy's high school in our prefecture. We roamed the halls, checking out the displays the various clubs had made for us, like the Math Club, which had prizes if you could solve problems they'd posted, or the Model Railroad Research Club, which had created a miniature Japanese city for trains to zoom around. (For some reason, really smart students in Japan always seem to be train otaku.) As I roamed, I went into stealth mode, pretending not to speak Japanese so I could judge the English ability of the students at the school, and most of them could at least talk to me when I asked them questions. The culture festival wasn't exactly moe moe kyun (to use my favorite phrase from K-On) due to the school being all-boy's, but it was fun to be able to experience an anime-style "school festival" episode in my own life just the same.

I got to experience a real-live "school festival" although it wasn't quite as cool as this.

Honorific "O" Revisited

I wrote last time about how some words related to Buddhism customarily receive the honorific o in front, for example otera (temple) or ohaka (grave). This prefix (which is sometimes used as go) is added to certain Japanese words to highlight their importance, which is done both in everyday life as well as more formal situations. Words like money (okane), relationships like mother or grandmother (okaasan, obaasan), and some everyday comforts (oyu boiling water, ofuro hot steaming bath, gohan rice), are usually included in this category. While words having to do with death or Buddhism tend to take the honorific prefix, Shinto terms usually don't, although this is one of those things that the Japanese would never notice about their own language. Adding the honorific o sort of "softens" the word to the ear -- for example, calling someone stupid (baka) or fat (debu) might be quite insulting, but a woman might use obaka or odebu as a cute-sounding term of endearment referring to her husband or child. Words related to children or babies nearly always take the prefix, a fact which confused me when my son was born and I suddenly had to learn to speak "baby talk" in Japanese.

Cool stuff like Buddhist temples get the honorific o added before their names.

How Japanese Name Endings Work

Have you ever wondered what all those suffixes added to the ends of Japanese names mean? They can be quite interesting, so I'll go through them for you here. First, -san is the basic name suffix that everyone is familiar with, and it indicates formality, like adding Mr. or Mrs. to a name in English. Used with the last name usually (e.g. Fujita-san), it can also be added to the first name (Tomo-san) to indicate some politeness while also showing a measure of familiarity. In business settings, companies are referred to collectively with -san, too, e.g. J-List-san. Two other common name suffixes, -chan and -kun, are used when talking to girls and boys who are younger than the speaker (e.g. Hanako-chan and Taro-kun), or when you're close to the individual. Note that males adding -chan to a girl's name in some situations can be seen as sexist and rude. In Japanese companies or in school settings, there are strict differences between upperclassmen/superiors (senpai) and underclassmen/juniors (kohai), and I can generally tell the relative ages of members of a group by listening to who is more polite to whom. Some other name prefixes that are used often include -sensei (an honorary suffix for teachers, doctors, politicians and -- really -- certified public accountants); -senshu (athletes, e.g. Ishikawa-senshu when referring to golfer Ryo Ishikawa); and -anaunsah (announcer), a name suffix for newscasters.

The way name suffixes are used in Japan is incredibly complex.

What part of San Diego is your family grave located in?

The other day my wife asked an unexpected question: "What part of San Diego is your family grave located in?" I blinked at her ability to surprise me even after 15 years together, and told her we didn't really have one. In Japan, of course, this would be unthinkable, as the concept of a "family" is forever anchored to the family grave, where the ashes and bones of your loved ones will be stored in ceramic jars after they die. My wife's family grave is located in a small plot with twenty other gravestones near our house, and on certain days of the year such as the Obon Buddhist holidays or the meinichi (death anniversary) of her grandmother, she'll visit the grave and bring her departed family members up to speed on what we're all doing, while washing the gravestone and lighting some incense. When a man or woman gets married and moves into their spouse's home, they're removing themselves from their parents' official family registry and joining the registry of their spouse, by extension declaring that they're going to enter the grave of the new family when they die. Of course, graves can be incredibly expensive, especially the closer you get to Tokyo, which has spurred the creation of "grave mansions," multi-level apartment buildings that make it easy to visit your loved ones just by riding the elevator up a few floors. The word for grave in Japanese is haka, but like many solemn Buddhist-related words it's nearly always used with the honorific o on the front (e.g. ohaka).

The gravestone is a central part of defining the family in Japan.

The True Story of Afro Samurai

It's fun to dig around Japanese history for interesting tidbits to discover. Like William Adams, the Englishman who arrived in Japan with a Dutch ship in the year 1600 and who was befriended by Ieyasu Tokugawa, the third of Japan's three great unifiers. Adams' arrival was good timing for Tokugawa, who used the 19 cannon on the ship to win the Battle of Sekigahara, the watershed victory that made him the Shogun (military general) of all Japan and ushered in the 265 years of peace known as the Edo Period. In return, Adams was made a daimyo, or samurai lord, and given a fief with retainers in present-day Yokohama, which is about as awesome as it gets for a gaijin in Japan. But Adams wasn't the first foreigner to attain the status of samurai. In 1581 Nobunaga Oda, the first of the above three unifiers, met a black slave traveling with an Italian Jesuit. Since Nobunaga loved unique things from foreign countries, he took an intense interest in the man, giving him name of Yasuke and making him a retainer. As a samurai, Yasuke served Nobunaga faithfully, and when his lord was attacked by a turncoat general at Honnoji Temple in Kyoto, Yasuke went to assist Nobunaga's son, and fought very bravely. He was eventually captured and turned over to the Jesuits, and no further mention is made of him after that. Who would've thought that Afro Samurai was based on a true story?

(Of course, you can read the novel Shogun to get a slightly shifted but interesting look at the Englishman who became a Samurai lord.)

Did you know that Afro Samurai was based on a true story?

Unexpected Benefits for Learning Japanese

The Japanese system of phonology is a unique one based on syllables, for example allowing for the sounds ka, ki, ku, ke and ko to be expressed, but not 'k' by itself. This limited phonetic system is the primary reason Japanese often have thick accents when speaking foreign languages, since you can't easily fit the subtleties of English or French through a filter with only thirteen consonants and five phonetic vowels. This linguistic deficiency contains some unexpected benefits for foreigners learning the language, however, The simpler phonetic system means fewer difficult sounds to master, and no intonation to mess with at all. In addition, there's no confusion about how to pronounce a given word as long as you know the kana reading. For example, many anime fans might debate about the correct pronunciation for Evangelion, whether the 'g' in the middle is hard or soft, but katakana never lies, and tells us that the 'g' is indeed hard, and the show should be pronounced evan-GEH-lion. As I often write, the best way to learn Japanese is always using a textbook that starts you off memorizing words in real hiragana rather than romanized Japanese, since the brain tries to apply linguistic rules like 'silent e' to Japanese written with the Roman alphabet. which harms your early pronunciation. (The Genki textbook series or the White Rabbit kanji flashcards that we sell are great examples of study tools that force you to read hiragana and katakana right from the start).

How do you pronounce Evangelion?

Summer Time is Jinbei Time

Summer is here, which means attending festivals, shooting off fireworks with the kids, drinking mugi-cha (barley tea) and engaging in "air-con wars" with my wife, who won't let me turn on the air conditioning until the room is hot enough to melt lead. It also means I can change to my preferred sleep-wear of choice, my jinbei, which is essentially a light Japanese cotton kimono worn after getting out of the bath or for sleeping in, or to events like the neighborhood festival. The other day I came out of the bedroom wearing my jinbei to find my Japanese family standing there, of course wearing normal yofuku ("Western clothing"), i.e. jeans, T-shirts and so on. because they'd been up for a few hours already. We all just stood there for a few seconds contemplating the irony of the gaijin who was dressed like a samurai and the Japanese wearing normal clothes, and then laughed. By the way, we've gotten some of these cool jinbei pajamas in stock if you'd like to check them out.

Summer is the season for wearing a jinbei.

Gaijin in Japan: an Overview

Although the average Japanese person on the street might think there are a lot of foreigners living and working in Japan, in reality the number is tiny, just 1.63% of the overall population here. This number, which includes Japan-born Koreans and Chinese who choose not to take Japanese citizenship for cultural reasons, compares to 8% foreign-born residents in the U.K., 9% for Germany, 11% for the U.S. and 13% for the Netherlands. Although the number of foreign barbarians in Japan may be low, the Japanese never seem to get used to us, and it's fun to observe the confusion that arises when the two worlds intersect. First of all, all Westerners are assumed to be American, which is the country the Japanese are most familiar with; similarly, Japanese expect that all gaijin can speak English. Last month I met a guy from Italy who didn't speak my language, so we stood there chatting in Japanese about various topics, a sight that provided great amusement to the Japanese people walking past us. Although I do still occasionally receive compliments from older Japanese on my use of chopsticks, for the most part people have come to terms with the idea that foreigners will do things like know how to order sushi in Japanese or have vast knowledge about obscure topics. For some reason, I've met quite a few people who were surprised when they heard I've married a local girl and have Japanese kids going to normal schools, despite having been here for 18 years.

Gaijin always seem to confused the poor Japanese.

Linguistic Quirks of Japanese

Each language is special, with unique features that may cause confusion for speakers of other languages. For example, Romance languages like Spanish and French have noun genders, forcing English speakers to puzzle over why a pen is feminine while a pencil is masculine. Although Japanese do consider it a point of pride to think of their language as being especially hard to learn, I am convinced that no language is intrinsically more or less difficult than all the others. Still, there are some barriers to learning Japanese that must be overcome, starting with the two syllable-based writing systems, hiragana (the wavy looking one) and katakana (the boxy, masculine looking one), which you can tackle by memorizing the shapes and what sound they make (we can help). Kanji is also no small challenge unless you happen to come from China, although you'd be surprised how much you can read with just a few hundred characters under your belt after a year or two of study. Grammatically there are some confusing areas, such as having to get used to two different verbs for to be (in a place), aru (ah-ROO) for inanimate objects like a car or building, and iru (ee-ROO) for anything that's alive, like people or animals. Whenever you learn something new, it's important to test it to find the limitations on that new piece of information so your brain can internalize it, and I remember bugging my sensei about which verb was correct for objects like zombies, cyborgs, freshly-killed corpses and Venus Fly-Traps.

Is a Venus Fly Trap animate or inanimate? I'm actually still not sure which verb to use.

Newest Hair Trend from Tokyo

Besides promoting world peace through shared popular culture and Hello Kitty bento boxes, I consider it my mission to try to help our readers categorize and understand this wonderful country called Japan as best I can. This can be a challenge since it is such a chaotic place, and we're never sure what new and interesting thing will come along next. The newest trend among fashionable females is called "mori hair," from the Japanese word moru, meaning to pile on (as in, to pile food onto a plate), and it describes women with hair that's lifted off the head so that it looks thick and luxurious. While the original gyaru-esque fashion style can be said to have gotten its start with the rise of J-POP diva Namie Amuro and her "Amullers" (that is, Amuro with -ers on the end, referring to the generation of girls who copied her style), this more refined look takes its cues from Japan's "cabaret clubs," hostess bars where extremely glamorous women will pour drinks for men, and is related to the Little Devil Ageha school of Tokyo street fashion. Of course, you can follow these and other hot trends in Tokyo by checking out the fashion magazines that J-List sells by convenient revolving subscription. Since you never have to pay in advance for the issues (although you have that option if you want), you can cancel or change magazines at any time. Individual issues are often available too.

"Cele-up" your look with mori-hair, which means to act more like a celebrity.

Himiko, Ancient Queen of Japan

Japan's archeology world is buzzing after evidence that an ancient burial mound near Nara may have contained Queen Himiko, the legendary early ruler of Japan. According to Chinese records including the famous Legend of Three Kingdoms, Himiko was the queen of a land called Yamatai in the nation of Wa (the oldest Chinese name for Japan), a mysterious sorceress who could use magic to foretell the future, and who was waited on by 1,000 female attendants, and one male one. She's celebrated in popular culture in many ways today, including an anime and manga series by OH! Great. Now a 280-meter "keyhole type" burial mound has been successfully dated to around the year 248 A.D., the year of Himiko's death, indicating that it may have been the actual resting place for the legendary ruler. Sadly, it's like likely that we'll never know for sure if the burial mound did contain Himiko or not. The exact location of Yamatai isn't known, and scholars debate whether it was located near Nara or instead in the Kyushu area, with each region loudly insisting that it is the location of the ancient kingdom, no doubt so they can sell little boxes of Himiko-themed cakes to tourists. The city of Saga, in Kyushu, even went so far as to create a replica of a 3rd-century Japanese village for visitors to explore, in order to cement its claim as the birthplace of culture in Japan in the minds of people.

Himiko is the legendary early ruler of Japan during the Yayoi Period.

Not Fitting In In Japan

Being half Japanese and half American, my kids don't always fit the mold that's prepared for them here in Japan. At my daughter's school they have something called fuuki kensa, which is an inspection by the teachers to make sure the students aren't doing scandalous things like dyeing their hair, shortening the hems of their skirts or painting their fingernails. Sure enough, the other day the teacher wanted to know why my daughter had lightened her hair, but of course it was her natural color, which caused a bit of a logical disconnect until the teachers realized she was haafu. Pierced ears are also a no-no in conservative Japanese schools, and the teachers were amazed to see that my daughter had had her ears pierced when she was younger. Of course, going to junior high school here means learning English in the formal "this is a pen" way that Japan loves so much. My daughter's (Japanese) English teacher was coming in to start one such lesson when he overheard my daughter singing one of the songs from High School Musical in perfect English, which just about made him jump out of his shoes with surprise.

(I am guessing that they probably did this in the U.S., back in the 1950s or 60s? It seems like something you'd expect to see in Back to the Future.)

Japanese Efficiency and K-On!

One way for companies to prosper is to be more efficient, finding ways to use technology to get more work done in the same amount of time. Over the past decade or so, J-List has been able to make use of various new technologies in order to be much more efficient, and I look back with amusement at how things were done even 15 years ago, before Internet-based conveniences like Skype, instant messaging and sending PDF files through email existed. Sadly, one of the major themes of Japan seems to be the triumph of inefficiency, and there are whole industries where people seem perfectly happy being less productive. When you drive into a company's parking lot, for example, there are often a few older men in uniforms who will guide you to an empty parking space, even though most would be able to find it unaided. Banks are another area where they just seem to do things differently. While my local branch in San Diego can get by with 4-5 employees, a Japanese bank feels the need to have 20 or more behind the counter, yet somehow the time each customer is made to wait is longer than in the U.S. I love the scene in episode 2 of the anime K-On, when Yui wants to buy a guitar and the other girls decide to help her earn money. The scene where the girls sit and manually click off a counter as cars drive by is classic Japan -- although it could be done cheaply and accurately with some kind of sensor built into the road, it's a time-honored tradition to hire people to count the cars manually instead. Today is the end of our company's fiscal year, the day the J-List staff has to count every item in inventory. Until recently, this work had to be done laboriously by hand, written up on paper and re-entered into spreadsheets, but finally the Japanese tax office decided it was okay to automate the process, which saves us a huge amount of time.

Of course, you can be too efficient, in which case there's only one person doing all the work in any given country, which wouldn't be fun either. What do you think about the inefficiency-as-sort-of-socialism that's practiced in Japan?

The girls from K-On get a job counting cars that pass by on the street, a common job here.

Yokohama Celebrates its 150th Anniversary

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the opening of the port of Yokohama, which began when Admiral Matthew Perry sailed his "black ships" into the harbor to demand that Japan open itself to trade with the United States. When the city was designated as Japan's first open port on June 2, 1859, it was little more than a fishing village located 30 km south of the Japanese capital of Edo, but it was quickly adopted as a base of operations by the fast-growing class of foreign entrepreneurs who helped it to modernize rapidly, introducing the first Western-style newspaper, the first gas lighting and (thankfully) the first beer brewery, which would become Kirin. Today Yokohama has grown into one of the world's foremost cities, with 3.69 million citizens and dozens of diverse industries. I've always had a soft spot for the city, no doubt due to its San Francisco-like beauty and its long history of cultural interaction with foreigners, both from the West and via its well-developed Chinatown, which is a great place to eat in. My hometown of San Diego happens to be the sister city of Yokohama, another reason for the city to be at the top of my favorite places in Japan.

Yokohama celebrates its 150th anniversary as an open city.

Japan Population +1

J-List's plan to re-populate Japan is going well, and J-List employee Jun (the guy who brings you such great toys, anime figures and Japanese snacks) has a new baby boy! Little Kaji-kun is doing great and was brought home from the hospital yesterday.

The Japanese are Pros at Recession-Beating

The recession continues to take its toll here, with the export-centric Japanese economy shrinking at an annualized rate of 12.7% over the last quarter, the biggest decline since the "oil shock" of 1974. I'm impressed the calmness everyone in Japan has been displaying over the rough economy, but not surprised: after the hard times of the 1990s, the Japanese are professional recession-beaters, and are taking things in stride, knowing that the economy will improve. As is to be expected in any downturn, certain industries are doing worse than others. While virtually every well-known manufacturer of electronics has fallen into the red, convenience stores and low-priced conveyor-belt sushi restaurants are booming, and television production has been helped by the impending switch to digital broadcasting, too. Happily, there are some signs that the worst of the recession is behind us, as the government reports positive numbers on the rise for the first time. Production is starting to come back, too, and Toyota, Honda and Mazda are all resuming full factory output next month.

Just a last reminder that J-List continuing our "Fiscal Year is Ending" sale through the end of the month, in which we'll give you a $5 gift certificate code for every $100 you spend on the site. This means you've got an excuse to add another few items to your cart if you're just under the next $100 level, and save money. The gift coupons will be issued as your order is processed, and never expire -- you can use them any time. What great products from Japan can we get for you today? Hurry, though!

Better times ahead for Japan? Automakers resume full production by next month.

Don't Be Rude to the Rice

The other day I noticed a bag of rice sitting on the table. Something about the way the grains were packed together seemed to beckon to me, and I found myself tossing the bag up and down and punching it lightly with my fist, which earned me a rebuke from my wife. I was sure she was worried about me spilling the contents of the bag all over the kitchen, but instead she said: "Don't do that! It's rude to do to the rice." Rice is extremely important to the Japanese, who eat it with almost every meal, and the local version of "eat your food because there are starving children in Ethiopia" is "eat your rice, there are seven gods in each grain who will be angry if you don't finish everything." Alternately, parents will talk about how hard the local farmer worked to make the rice, which traditionally takes 88 different steps to get it from seedling to table. The importance of rice in Japanese culture is expressed in various religious ceremonies, such as funerals, when a final bowl of rice is offered to the soul of a person who has died with chopsticks standing straight up in the rice, and in Shinto purification rituals performed before starting construction on a building (which we did, for example, when we built the J-List office).

Rice is an extremely important part of Japanese life and culture. There are no cute harvest goddesses that I know of however.

Narrow Japanese Buildings

Japan squeezes about half the population of the U.S. into a country the size of California, which alone would seem to guarantee that people would be squashed together a bit. On top of this is the fact that so much of the land here is mountainous, and the Japanese have an odd cultural dislike for living on mountains, which forces people even closer together in the cities. This scarcity of land tends to make for some oddly-shaped buildings, and as a foreigner it's fun to pick out some of the more bizarrely-shaped structures, some of which are so narrow you wonder how they keep from falling over. Creating beautiful living spaces for small plots of land (called kyosho jutaku) is a highly developed art form in Japan, and there are many architects and building companies who specialize in designing homes that take up very little land yet are unbelievably spacious inside.

There are some pretty funky-looking buildings in Japan.

English Used Freely in Japan

The Japanese do like English, and use it to add a little je ne sais quoi to their language, but always on their own terms. Politicians, for example, will pepper their speeches with English phrases like "manifesto" "innovation" and "new millennium frontier" to show how intelligent they are, despite the fact that these words often mean very little to voters. (Maybe that's the point?) Because the Japanese are free from the baggage of having to create grammatically correct English, they're able to shape the language in any way that makes sense to them. Just as the Swiss accidentally hit upon the name Swatch for their Swiss watches because the designers didn't speak enough English to know that the word sounded a little strange, the Japanese have used creative English to their advantage, coming up with terms like Re-House (a company that remodels homes), Book Off! (a used book store chain) of course the Walkman, now a part of product marketing history. Often words are simplified to make them shorter and easier for Japanese people to use, for example a convertible becomes an "open car," screwdrivers come in "plus" and "minus" varieties, and when a man no longer wants children he might consider getting a "pipe cut." The English word "my" is often repurposed to reflect the warm feeling associated with owning something, and banks will often advertise low rates for a "My-Home Loan" or promote the joy of owning your very own "Dream My-Car."

If you want to enjoy your Human Car Life, you'd better get a My-Car Loan.

Difficult Cultural Nuances in Anime

While it's fun to experience Japan through anime, I wonder how often some of the more subtle cultural nuances are difficult for viewers to pick up on. In the popular anime Clannad, there are two twins, Kyou and Ryou Fujibayashi. Although they were born just minutes apart, the oneesan (older sister) Kyou is very protective of her imoto (younger sister) Ryou, and tries to get the main character Tomoya interested in her. It's common for high school kids to call each other by their last names in Japan, but when Kyou tells Tomoya, "Since both my sister and I are 'Fujibayashi,' it must be confusing, so you can call me Kyou," she basically lets the audience know that it's she who's interested in Tomoya, ready to leap-frog over her sister by getting on a first-name basis with him, which implies a special closeness. The mechanics of polite Japanese are also difficult to express properly in English. When Kyon goes back in time to meet a younger version of Haruhi, he's not surprised when she speaks to him in a commanding manner despite being three years younger than him at the time. Similarly, there's a scene in Touch where the rough coach Eijiro Kashiwaba berates two senpai who had betrayed him many years ago. Although he's filled with anger, he never drops his polite tone when addressing his former upperclassmen, something that would be difficult to conceive of in English.

The pinnacle of moe for me, the scene when Kyou and Ryou realize they've not been chosen.

Cultural Lessons and Initial D

The other day I bought an Initial D driving game for my Playstation 3, which is fun since the mountains of Haruna, Myogi and Akagi are all real places located near J-List. I had a problem with the game, however: every time I tried to select an option I found I was hitting the cancel button instead of execute, which would bring me back to the previous menu. The reason was related to an interesting cultural wrinkle between Japan and the West: here, a circle (maru) always means "yes" or "correct" while an X (batsu) is always "no" or "wrong." So while gamers from America and Europe expect the X button to execute the current menu option, in Japanese Playstation (and PSP) games this is reversed. I first encountered this issue when studying Japanese at SDSU: when my teacher handed me my test back marked with dozens of red circles, I thought I'd gotten all the answers wrong, but I soon figured out that circles meant good. We've had similar cultural issues with the coffee maker we use at J-List, a large 12-cup model purchased in the U.S., since the girly-man coffee makers here are laughably small. The Mr. Coffee switch displays a 1 for "on" and a 0 for "off," and invariably one of our Japanese staff members will put the switch in the "circle" position, expecting the coffee to flow then wondering when nothing happens.

Living in Gunma is fun for an Initial D fan, since I can go on these real roads if I want.

Japan and the New Type Influenza

Japan is doing its best to deal with the outbreak of the "new-type influenza virus" that has taken hold here, with 302 cases officially reported, although no deaths thanks to Japan's excellent medical system. Everywhere you go, Japanese consumers are snapping up those health masks and wearing them to keep the germs away. The influenza fear is having an effect on the economy, too, as travel plans to areas where flu cases have been reported are cancelled, including my son's scheduled school trip to Kyoto next month (it's been put off for a year). Prime Minister Aso has appeared on TV and urged people to remain calm, but I know this has to run its course: once Japanese people have decided they're going to freak out about something, everyone gets on board. This is thanks to the concept of migi e narae (migi eh nah-rah-eh), an old army command that literally means "Copy the person on your right!" although it's more useful to think of it as "me, too-ism." Basically, this word describes the Japanese tendency to do whatever people them are doing. If you're concerned about the new influenza, the best advice might be to stay home and avoid unnecessary contact with others. To that end, I recommend everyone buy cool stuff from J-List. That's a great idea!

Japan is currently undergoing fear of the new influenza. Good thing we stocked up on Hello Kitty masks.

The Paradigm of Living in Japan

Living in Japan means getting used to a new paradigm, and it often feels like the country exists on another dimension from the rest of the world. Maps that aren't oriented towards the North, with swastikas written on them, since the symbol (properly called manji) denotes the location of a Buddhist temple here. People shooting off fireworks while it's still light outside. Buying a six-pack of beer and paying the same price as six individual cans. Then there's the tendency for important public messages to be delivered by cute "mascot characters" like Chidejika, whose name comes from chideji (terrestrial digital) the shika (Japanese for deer). The character, who reminds people that they need to prepare for the switchover from analog to digital TV due to take place in July 2011, replaced SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi when he was arrested for public nudity at a park at 3 am.

Chidejika is the official mascot of the end of analog TV broadcasts in Japan, which has become a massive target of online parodies with the 2ch crowd:

This is a Miku Hatsune video about Analoguma (Analog Bear).

The Most Famous Monkeys in Japan

All my life, I've heard the words "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," but I never connected the phrase with Japan particularly. Imagine my surprise when I went to Nikko Toshogu, a beautiful collection of temples about 100 km north of Tokyo, and saw the famous 17th century wood carving of the three monkeys respectively covering their eyes, ears and mouth. The phrase in Japanese is mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru (do not see, do not listen, do not speak), and it's partially a pun, since the -zaru verb ending sounds similar to the Japanese word for monkey, saru. Like most really old things, three wise monkeys originated from outside Japan, and there are variations of the monkeys and the message in many cultures. Incidentally, Nikko is just about the most beautiful place you can find in Japan outside the Kyoto region, and it should be at the top of your list of places to visit if you're looking for something to do in the Kanto area. I love walking through the beautiful temples and going to the 5-story pagoda, which houses the bones of the single most famous Japanese person, Ieyasu Tokugawa, who unified Japan and ushered in the Edo Period.

The three wise monkeys, a famous image of Japan.

Evangelion Phone: You Can (Not) Buy One

I love my iPhone, really I do. It lets me read Wikipedia in bed, check the status of the J-List servers from anywhere, practice my Japanese calligraphy, send my random thoughts via Twitter and engage in impromptu lightsaber battles with other iPhone users. Still, there are times when the more traditional keitai (cell phones) sold in Japan tempt me. Today Japan's #2 cell phone maker "au by KDDI" announced 19 (!) new models for the coming summer season, including a solar-powered phone that can be recharged by leaving it in the sun, a phone with a Kindle-like "e-paper" display that shows information such as weather reports, and a model designed by Giorgio Armani. But the most geek-tastic new phone is from Docomo: the limited-edition tie-in with the upcoming Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance movie, designed by Gainax and director Hideaki Anno.

Docomo's new Evangelion phone is nerdgasm-inducing.

Service and Tipping in Japan

One of the most pleasant aspects of living in Japan is getting excellent service wherever you go, whether it's at a restaurant or having your tank filled by cheerful employees who will wipe your windshield and get rid of any trash in your car for you. At the hot springs hotel I stayed at last weekend, I was impressed with the amount of effort the staff put in for us, bringing the multi-course meals and laying out the futons and making sure we knew where all the baths in the hotel were located. One might be tempted to think that the staff was going out of their way because we were foreign visitors, but that wasn't my impression: if you are the okyaku-sama (the word that covers the English concepts of guest, visitor and customer) you will be treated well. Ironically, no matter how good the service is, you can't show your appreciation by tipping. Although the Japanese have imported many customs from the West, from Western furniture and clothing to medicine, the custom of tipping doesn't exist in Japan at all.

The year 1955 is alive and well at Japanese gas stations.

Dharma, 108 and the Buddhism of Lost

Like many others, I'm a big fan of Lost. Unfortunately my wife has gotten into it, too, which means I have to translate the difficult international accents for her, since the show seems to be tailor-made to torture Japanese ESL learners. In a recent episode, the character Jack had to give something of his father's to another character in order to accomplish a goal, and this made my wife observe, "Wow, this is just like Buddhism." (In this case the idea is katami, possessions of a person who has died which are distributed to his friends later.) Yes, the producers of Lost do seem to enjoy adding "pop Buddhist" themes to the story, such as the Dharma Initiative, the mysterious organization doing experiments on the island, which J-List readers will recognize as Daruma, the famous famous red statues that represent the Buddhist monk who meditated for so long that his arms and legs atrophied and disappeared. Then there's the computer with a button that must be pushed every 108 minutes to keep the world from ending. The number 108 is quite important in Buddhism, representing the 108 sins that a person must overcome in order to reach Nirvana, and on New Year's Eve the temple bells are rung 108 times. Interesting tidbit: in India, the number you call when you have an emergency is...108!

The producers of Lost are fond of adding Buddhist themes to the show.

How to Search Google in Japanese

Google is an amazing tool that allows us to find information in seconds, and I swear by it. When searching in Japanese, however, Googling can be a bit more complicated. First of all, to find information on an individual in Japanese you obviously need to know the correct kanji for their name, and searching with the wrong characters will bring up unexpected results just as misspelling a name will mess up Google results in English. There are many different name kanji for writing Japanese names, and the most common names can be the hardest to work with since there are so many possible variations. If you wanted to find information on singer Ayumi Hamasaki, for example, you'd type the name in to the kanji front-end processor (IME on Windows, Kotoeri on the Mac) then hit the space bar, scrolling through the many possible kanji. Which one is it? Surprise -- all of them are wrong. The singer writes her first name in hiragana.

Five common ways of writing the female Japanese name Ayumi in kanji.

And there she is!

My Favorite Place: Onsen Hotels

A friend from Italy came to our prefecture for a visit, so I took him to one of my favorite places in Japan, an onsen hotel in the small mountain town of Ikaho. While most any volcanic hot spring is a joy to bathe in, I'm a big fan of the larger onsen hotel experience, where you can roam the hallways in your yukata sampling several different baths, then do fun stuff like karaoke or table tennis. Japan can be a strangely uniform place, and features you can find at one hot spring hotel will usually be available almost everywhere. For example, I guarantee you'll find a vending machine selling Haagan-Dazs ice cream and a little shop inside the hotel that sells ramen to guests who get hungry late at night. Also, there's always a "game corner" where you can play video games, but for some reason they're always games from 10-15 years ago. The inn we chose is quite a famous one, having been operated by the founding family for the last 420 years -- wow. One thing I like about the dating-sim games we sell is the cultural tidbits you can get from them, and our game Tokimeki Check in! is filled with fun references to these hot springs inns, if you're curious to learn more about them.

The hot springs inn I went to was founded in 1576. Yes, I was amazed by that, too.

Star Wars vs. Japan

Since the two great obsessions of my life have been Japan and Star Wars, I enjoy it when they come together in interesting ways. Star Wars is of course heavily based on concepts borrowed from Japan, from bushido-infused Jedi Knights wearing kimono to the Obi-Wan-as-ronin themes to the word "Jedi" itself, which comes from jidai-geki, or historical period dramas. One of the most famous Japan-related inspirations in Star Wars was Darth Vader's helmet, which is based on the kabuto helmet of Masamune Date, 1567-1636 (family name pronounced dah-tay). He was an enigmatic daimyo who founded the city of Sendai in northern Japan, and who did some amazing things, like sending Japanese envoys to Mexico, Spain and Rome in 1619 to negotiate trade, just as the Tokugawa clan was beginning its policy of isolation from outside cultural influences. The pro-Christian daimyo was always open to new ideas, and he loved international gourmet food, which has given the city of Sendai a reputation for excellent restaurants today. His helmet is one of the most iconic in history, with perfect Darth Vader-style dimensions and a large metal crescent on the top, symbolizing animal horns. I personally believe the famous samurai lord contributed his name to cause of the Sith, too, since "Date" seems too close to "Darth"
to have been an accident.

Darth Vader's helmet is based on a famous samurai's kabuto.

Tokyo as the Center of Japan

Japan is often said to be a "vertical" society, in which a given person has a higher or lower social level based on their status, age or number of years in an organization, a concept that takes some getting used to when coming from the U.S. Interestingly, there's a similar relationship between Tokyo and the rest of the country that seems to be a relic from Japan's past. Basically, Tokyo is by definition the "heart" of Japan by virtue of its being the designated capital, which is reflected in interesting linguistic ways. For example, all trains come in two types, nobori or "climbing" and kudari or "descending," and after a while I figured that this had to do with whether the train was going towards or away from Tokyo. Similarly, there are words like jokyo suru which means "to come to the capital," a concept I can't picture us making a special word for in English. "Standard Japanese" is defined as whatever people in Tokyo happen to speak, which is again quite different from the U.S., which has no official geographic linguistic center.

Tokyo is the center of Japan in more ways than are immediately apparent to the casual observer.

Interesting Japanese Foods: Takoyaki

Japan is home to many interesting foods, only a small number of which are generally known to the outside world. Like taiyaki, sweet bean paste cooked inside a shell shaped like a fish, great to eat in the winter (see a chocolate version here), or chawan-mushi, chicken and other good things steamed inside a heavenly egg custard, often served as a separate course in traditional Japanese meals. Another enigmatic food is takoyaki, especially popular in the Osaka region ever since it was invented in 1935. In stark contrast to the English word taco, tako is Japanese for octopus; to differentiate the crustacean from the Mexican food, the Japanese always use the plural word "tacos" (takosu) for referring to the latter, even if they're talking about just one taco. Takoyaki are basically fried balls of batter that contain a piece of cooked octopus meat inside, painted with a delicious sauce, which is great to eat piping hot while walking around a summer festival. While many wouldn't be too thrilled at the idea of eating octopus meat, it actually has no taste and is strangely satisfying to chew, and it's become one of my favorite foods. Once in rural Japan my wife and I happened across a takoyaki vendor who'd decided to call his little shop Tako Bell, which was such an unexpected thing to see we howled with laughter. If you're curious about this unique Japanese food, FritoLay has created a crunchy Takoyaki-flavored snack that we've posted today.

Takoyaki is a famous food in the Kansai region that I like.

Japanese People I Have Met

Before I came to Japan, I thought I knew pretty much what kinds of people I'd find here: lots of Japanese salaryman types riding the train to work, overstressed students struggling to get into university, and so on. This was 1991, when there were no blogs to provide "slice of life" information about Japan, and it seemed that every book on the subject was written by old-timers who came here after World War II and never left. I was naturally surprised to encounter Japanese people of every imaginable type here, which makes sense of course since I only had stereotypes to work from before. For example, I met a normal Japanese businessman who was an "airport otaku," able to discuss the features and history of just about every major airport in the world in great detail. Then there was the time some very average high school students I'd been teaching asked me to come and watch them dance. They were in a "rockabilly circle" (club) that dressed in extravagant 1950's era outfits and put on impromptu street performances -- it was really cool. Even the seemingly mild-mannered Jun, the J-List staff member who keeps our site stocked with interesting snacks and toys, surprised me: in his younger days, he traveled along the Silk Road through China, India, and Iran, and had perfected the art of eating with his fingers without making a big mess.

All things considered, I did not expect to meet Rockabilly fans when I came to Japan.

English Words with Kanji

I wrote last time about an amusing marketing campaign by Georgia Coffee to sell canned coffee using the slogan "Yes, we can!" with the final word written in kanji. Say what -- a kanji character for an English word? While the general rule is that the katakana writing system is reserved for foreign names for people and places along with imported words like "bottle keep" (when you leave a bottle of bourbon you've purchased at your favorite bar with your name on it, trusting that no one else will drink it) or "skinship" (the Japanese word describing the important connection between a parent and child), some English words have been in use in Japan for so long they've been assigned honorary kanji, such as tobacco, coffee, or beer. This is an example of something called ateji, essentially assigning a pronunciation to characters that have a similar meaning. Sometimes the results are amusing -- for example, the characters for tobacco happen to be written with characters for "smoke" and "grass."

My Son and the Coming Exam Test Hell

On Sunday my wife and son drove to his juku, or evening preparatory school (a.k.a. "cram school"), for a formal meeting with the teacher who oversees his studies there. Next year my son starts the third year of junior high, which is the beginning of juken hell as he prepares for the entrance exam to get into high school, and the meeting was to make a concrete study plan for the next 18 months. Japan's educational system is complex and difficult for Westerners to understand, but basically, compulsory education ends at junior high, making high school effectively optional, which creates competition for the best schools. Under Japan's meritocracy system, students who want to attend one of the top schools must study hard, and there's an entire ecosystem of large and small juku schools to help students reach their educational goals. My son is interested in engineering and has decided to shoot for the top boy's high school in our prefecture, a difficult goal which will mean many hours of studying on top of his normal schoolwork. It'll be hard for him, and also for me, since it means many months of doing almost no father-and-son stuff like playing catch or evening lightsaber battles. But it's all part of raising a kid in Japan.

Yoyogi Seminar is one of the largest "cram" schools in Japan.

Yahoo vs. Google: Which Female Users are More Sexy?

Women who use Yahoo vs. those who prefer Google -- which are sexier? That's a question posed by one ladies' magazine, which polled 600 female users of both websites about how they perceived themselves. While Yahoo's star may have been eclipsed by Google in the U.S. and Europe, the brand is still going strong here in Japan, where less-sophisticated users often associate the Yahoo website with "the Internet" in general, often not knowing there's anything beyond it. Yahoo just seems to "get" the Japanese market in a way that other companies have trouble emulating, and their market share for search in Japan stands at 51% compared with 39% for Google. The magazine's poll found that among female Googlers, 23.5 ranked themselves as "sexy" or "somewhat sexy" while just 9.6% of female users of Yahoo described themselves this way. The article went on to postulate that users of Google thought the service was kakko ii or "cool" because of its more technical approach to the web, while Yahoo Japan users thought less deeply about what tools they were using to get information.

Yahoo is still king of search in Japan, especially among females.

Thoughts on Newsweek Japan and Job Interviews

My wife reads the Japanese version of Newsweek, and sometimes I thumb through it to see how it compares to the U.S. version, or the laughable "International" edition that just happens to have exactly one news story from each region it's sold in, e.g. India, Singapore, Japan, etc., whether or not there was any important news going on. Although Newsweek is published here in Japanese, the editors know their readers tend to be interested in English and international business, and I once came across an article on how to tackle an American-style job interview. The Japanese are used to treating English as if it were an exact science, with "one" right answer to a given question, e.g. the correct reply to "How are you?" is "Fine, thanks, and you?" These questions, however, would have been linguistic torture for Japanese ESL learners, with open-ended questions ("tell me about yourself"), requests that they accurately evaluate themselves ("what are your strengths or weaknesses?") and so on. This is the complete opposite of how job interviews are handled in Japan, where people looking for employment are expected to act in an extremely humble way, accurately representing your past work or educational history while dressing down what they're achieved in the past, and avoiding standing out from other applicants. If you don't wear this mantle of modesty during a job interview you certainly won't be hired in Japan.

The Japanese edition of Newsweek knows their readers are interested in English.

Interesting Social Observations Over a Bag of Chips

The Japanese, as I've often written, are a group-oriented people, and it's interesting to observe the subtle body language that goes back and forth when people get together. If you have a bag of interesting chips that you want to offer to friends, the correct way to do it is to open it "party-biraki" style, placing the bag with the seal facing upwards, then ripping the entire bag open so that the contents sit on the opened wrapping. This makes it convenient for everyone to take some of the chips, but it also helps your guests get past their enryo block. The Japanese have a tendency to avoid taking something that's offered, called enryo (translatable as restraint, reserve, or as a verb, to refrain from doing something), and it can be difficult to get people at a party to lighten up and have fun if they're so busy being polite to each other. By opening the bag so that the contents will go to waste if your guests don't eat, you give them an excuse to dig in.

The correct way to encourage Japanese guests to eat.

Famous English Phrases in Japan -- Yes, We [kan]!

For some reason, I'm able to recite the "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address address in Japanese. It's one of the most famous phrases in English, up there with the "I Have a Dream" speech, and since my students had to study it in their English classes, I picked it up while teaching them. Snippets of the Bible and of Shakespeare make their way into the Japanese language, too, and anyone who reads newspapers or magazines will be familiar with the local versions of "pearls before swine" or "frailty, thy name is woman," although they might be fuzzy on the source. The most famous English phrase in Japan is probably one you're not familiar with. It's "Boys, be ambitious," which was spoken by Professor Clarke, who taught English and agriculture at what would become Sapporo University in 1876. I have no idea why these words would become so well known here, but the Japanese of the day certainly took them to heart. The latest English phrase to become known by everyone in Japan is "Yes, we can!" and Georgia Coffee even made an advertisement for their canned coffee, substituting the kanji for "can" (kan) in the slogan.

(Although foreign loan words are written in katakana, there's a small subset that have been in use so long they have been given honorary kanji.)

Georgia Coffee came up with an amusing way to advertise their products using English.