Pictures from Aomori and Hokkaido, if you want them

Yes, I am finally getting around to posting my pictures from my trip to frozen (well, slightly cool) northern Japan. Enjoy, if you like. All pictures should be clickable so you can get the large versions.

Well, it was time for our trip to northern Japan, a trip I've always wanted to take with my son. Since he was going to be a jukensei or test student, studying for his high school entrance test, it was now or never. High schools are not required as in the U.S. and there's competition to get into good high schools.

We took an overnight highway bus up to save time, since driving the 9 hours up Japan would have left little time to do actual stuff while there. Here's the world famous gaijin in Japan with his laptop, cookies and some chu-hai, computing during the drive up via his iPhone with the 3.0 tethering hack. I was having loads of fun in that bus, let me tell you.

Arrived in Aomori City too early to do anything useful. Even McDonald's was closed. Here's the Prefectural Office of Aomori that we decided to check out.

They have Japan's most pathetic Animate branch, a tiny shop on the 4th floor of a building.

Aomori is a slightly more rural area than Gunma, although the city itself is larger than our city of Isesaki. Here's a roadside stand selling scarecrows, something I've never seen before.

Have I mentioned that I love Japan? Always something to entertain you. Happy drug!

Driving around in a rented Mazda Demio around the tip of northern Tsugaru, the penninsula on the left of the prefecture. Incidentally, the penninsula on the right is called Shimokita, and there's supposedly a lot of rivalry between from the two people, or so enka singers on TV say.

This is Hirosaki Castle, a beautiful castle in Aomori. Although it started out as a small castle town, it's grown to a very large city. Interesting to see the mix of modern and very old in Japan.

We took the ferry across the Tsugaru Straights, the scene of so many enka songs. The most famous of these songs is Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu-geshiki or Winter View of Tsugaru Straights. Another really famous song is Kaikyo sung by the famous Yoshi Ikuzo, whose hometown we visited while in Aomori.

Now that we were in Hakodate, Hokkaido, we had to enjoy some real sushi. We found a great kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) place that was fabulous.

This being a Japanese city, it must have a tower, since everyone knows Japanese cities all need towers. This was near a star-shaped former fortress that played a historical role in the formation of modern Japan at the beginning of the Meiji Era. This is my son, who was trying to take in all the Meiji Era history I was throwing at him.

The fort as seen from inside the tower. It was pretty amazing, as far as 150 year old Japanese forts go.

This is Perori-kun, a cutified version of Admiral Perry, who visited Hakodate as one of the Japanese cities that were to be opened by treaty.

Hakodate is a really nice city if you like San Francisco. The two were clearly founded near each other and have the same kind of feel.

Awesome Hokkaido sunset is awesome. We were freezing up there while we waited for the sun to set.

This is the "Million Dollar View" as seen from the restaurant up on Hakodate-san. Incidentally, they could have charged an arm and a leg for the the food here, but it was very reasonable -- $13 for curry with pork cutlet, $5 for beer. Japan is amazing that way. The food was even outstanding.

The view, after dark. It was breathtaking, and there were hundreds of people there snapping photos.

The day we were to leave we woke up and took in the asa-ichi or morning fish market. I had tuna bowl and beer for breakfast and my son had crab bowl.

This is the Seikan Tunnel, and the Tappi Undersea Station. While I expected a normal station with little shops, the reality was slightly less fun, since the station is really there for evacuation in case of a fire or other disaster.

We walked and walked through these tunnels. It was interesting, and a little clausotropobic. I was sure I was being crushed by the weight of the air around me, but they said it was about the same pressure as on the surface.

The sign for Tappi Kaitei Station is quite famous. I gather densha otaku types make their way down here, since that's what I'd do if I were a train otaku.

Mm, want some Nazi Beer from Hokkaido? Actually this mark denotes Buddhist temples and has nothing to do with the Nazis. Just another one of those little curve balls that Japan throws at you.

Last picture. This was me and my son, and two girls who happened to ask us to take their picture at the top of Mt. Hakodate. We were like, what are the chances of the two girls we met on this mountain taking the Tappi tour with us, hundreds of miles away? Japan and coincidences go hand-in-hand for some reason. Like me learning Japanese from the Touch baseball manga, then happening to come to live in the city Adachi Mitsuru was born in, and marry a woman from here who shares the artist's fricking birthday.

Well that's all -- hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Our Hokkaido Adventure, Continued

My son and I are safely back home after our great adventure in northern Japan. On Saturday we did more sightseeing, of course visiting Mt. Hakodate to take in the famous night view and hitting the fish market the next morning. Then it was time to head for home, so we crossed back to Aomori using the Seikan Tunnel, taking a special train that stopped at the Tappi Undersea Station so we could take a tour of the only train station located 140 meters below sea level. Completed in 1988, the Seikan Tunnel is the longest and deepest in the world, spanning 53 km (33 miles) from end to end. The tunnel was built in response to a lack of capacity at the ferry docks that shuttled people and vehicles between the two islands, along with a series of terrible ferry accidents that claimed the lives of 1430 passengers in a single year. The tunnel was a very difficult dream to realize: it employed 1.4 million people and cost $7 billion, including 34 lives due to various accidents during construction.

Passing through the tunnel, we got to see the Shinkansen track they were laying which will eventually allow people to travel by speedy bullet train from Tokyo to Hokkaido. While I love riding these comfortable trains and appreciate that they've become an international symbol of Japan to the world, I wasn't sure how to feel about the country's eventual plan to bring its iconic high-speed trains all the way to Sapporo. Japan is a country positively addicted to construction, and while its engineering is probably the best in the world -- something I could really appreciate, walking through concrete tunnels hewn out of the ocean floor -- there's a time when not building something might be a good idea, too. Like when you've got a falling population, as Japan does, and when you have popular alternatives to rail, like the perfectly good network of domestic airlines. Already 90% of travelers heading from Tokyo to northern Japan opt to travel by air, since a 4-6 hour train journey just isn't convenient or most people, and I doubt this trend will change in the near future. I'd like to see Japan acknowledge that it's no longer a scrappy economic powerhouse and start making good decisions about the country's future based on a realistic world-view.

The night view from Hakodate is beautiful to behold.

Japan Election: My View

The Japanese election is over, and as expected, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a significant victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that ruled the country almost continuously since 1955. Japanese voters appear to have lost patience with the LDP and Prime Minister Aso, who managed to oversee a staggering 15% annualized drop in GDP during his tenure -- oops! There were several reasons for the DPJ's landslide. First, they had a more organized game plan, spelling out their promises to voters in their now-famous "Manifesto" (clearly modeled on the old Contract with America). Another factor was the poor relationship Prime Minister Aso had with the media, being openly combatative with them at times, which affected the coverage his party received, especially from certain news channels. And as has been pointed out on political talk shows here, another factor in the change of parties was what's known as migi ni narae, (migi ni nah-rah-eh), an old army command that literally means "copy the person on your right!" Translatable as "me, too-ism," the word describes the tendency for Japanese to suddenly decide to move as a group towards a certain goal when they perceive that others are headed that way, too. The DPJ has made certain specific promises to voters, including monthly payments of $280 per child to families with kids while ending deductions for spouses (to encourage women to get into the workforce), and making all the freeways free -- of course all without any discussion of how the revenue for these programs will be generated. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

After a decisive election win, Japan's next Prime Minister will be Mr. Hatoyama.

How the Confederate States of America Helped Japan

Quick: name one way that the Confederate States of America contributed to the creation of modern Japan? Well, I'll tell you. In 1864 the Confederate government commissioned the C.S.S. Stonewall, a state-of-the-art ironclad built in France to serve as a commercial raider against Union ships. After the war ended, the ship reverted to the U.S., and was eventually sold to the new Meiji government. During a conflict known as the Boshin War, in which forces loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate fought against the new government built around the Emperor of Japan (who they figuratively "restored" to power after centuries of being a political figurehead, an event known as the Meiji Restoration), the pro-Shogun forces fled to Hokkaido and declared the island to be the independent Republic of Ezo. After a failed attempt by the famous Shinsengumi samurai to steal control of the powerful ironclad (now renamed the Kotetsu), there was a big naval battle in which the ship acted as a veritable Death Star, laying waste to the opposing vessels while suffering no damage itself. As a result of the Naval Battle of Hakodate, the Meiji Government was victorious, and modernization of the country could continue.

The C.S.S. Stonewall played an important role in the formation of Japan as a modern nation.

Aomori and Hokkaido Update

My son and I are enjoying our trip to northern Japan. We had fun exploring Aomori, visiting the windswept beauty of the Tsugaru Peninsula on the western side of the prefecture, birthplace of enka singer Yoshi Ikuzo, who has belted out many songs about drinking sake while lamenting lost love, and one really famous song about how rural the village he came from is ("we have no traffic lights because...we have no electricity there"). Then we took in the city of Hirosaki, a beautiful castle town from the Edo Period, which was great fun to explore. While we were here, we got to experience one of the most unintelligle dialects of nihongo there is, Tsugaru-ben, which is said to be closer to French than Japanese, and I believe it. Then it was off to the ferry terminal to take a boat to Hokkaido...

Now we're in Hakodate (hah-ko-DAH-tay), a beautiful city on the southern tip of Hokkaido. While northern Honshu has been inhabited continuously since the stone age, Hokkaido itself was sparsely populated when the Meiji Era began. Japan's new government realized the island might be in danger of being seized by Russia, so in the 1870s they opened the land up to mass settlement. Perhaps as a result, many cities here such as Hakodate and Otaru have a San Francisco-esque feel to them, complete with pleasant streetcars that have been running for over a century by now. Hakodate was one of the cities visited by Admiral Perry and his famous "Black Ships" (this year is the 150th anniversary of the opening of the city's port), and the first American to be buried in Japan lies in the city's gaijin bochi (foreigners' grave yard). The city lies at the foot of Mt. Hakodate, and is famous for having one of the most beautiful night views of the world, up there with Hong Kong and Naples, according to a list someone made up. We'll be sure and check it out.

We took the ferry to Hokkaido, the home of diary products and potatoes in Japan.

Strange English Product Names

The other day I went into a store and saw an advertisement for a chair that used bags of compressed air to massage your body. What caught my eye wasn't the design of the chair, but the weird English name they'd given it: PLIM UP. It's a good example of how the Japanese love to get creative with English product names, giving birth to linguistic concepts that would never occur to native speakers since little things like grammar don't get in the way. Hence, you have a floor cleaner called Quickle Wiper, microwaved chicken with the name of Perky Bit, a map company called Mapple, a construction company that sold houses under the brand name of "Home, Homer, Homest," and the popular sports drink Pocari Sweat. It's funny how easily you can grow accustomed to some of these odd-sounding names, like the Sony Walkman, which must have sounded really weird to people when it first came out, or the Rebuild of Evangelion movies that are so awesome despite the strange name.

When you think about it, "Fate/stay night" is a pretty strange name to get used to, too.

My Trip to Aomori

Tomorrow I'm going on a bit of a vacation to northern Japan with my son, a fun trip that we're taking now since next summer he'll be a jukensei or test student, and will be doing little except for studying for his high school entrance exams. We'll be taking one of those overnight busses all the way up to Aomori Prefecture, at the top of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where we'll do some sightseeing in Hirosaki and (knowing me) find an onsen hot springs bath to take a dip in. After that we'll catch the ferry across to Hokkaido to visit one of my favorite cities, Hakodate (ha-ko-DAH-tay), checking out some cool historical sites as well as the most beautiful night view in Japan. Then we'll do something we've always wanted to do: take the train from Hokkaido back to Aomori, which goes through the Seikan Tunnel, the longest and deepest tunnel in the world. Our real goal is to visit the train station that exists under the sea, because damn, it's a train station under the sea! We just have to go there. (If you're a fan of Twitter and are so inclined, you can follow us on our journey.)

Aomori lies at the extreme end of the Tohoku (lit. "east-north") region of Japan, an area that's historically been so far from the cultural heart of the nation (Kyoto, then Edo/Tokyo) that it didn't develop at the same pace at the rest of the country. As you travel farther north, the place names start to sound funny, and the kanji characters used to write them get equally bizarre, so that a person from Tokyo will actually have to stop and ask locals how to read a certain kanji on his map. (Heh, give them a taste of what it's like to be a foreigner in Japan.) The reason for this, of course, is that northern Japan was settled by the Ainu, who were once everywhere in the region before they were pushed northward by the expanding Yamato Japanese. The Ainu possess a separate language and culture which among other things involves -- I am not making this up -- tattooing moustaches on the upper lips of their women. Which may or may not be one reason why they're not running the country these days.

Aomori Prefecture is famous for apples,Nebuta, and snow; Hirosaki is the "Kyoto of the North."

Japan [hearts] Mayonnaise

There are certain things the Japanese just seem to really like for reasons that are difficult for foreigners to understand. Like the Carpenters, whose music seems to be far more popular here than in the U.S. Or Colombo, whose crime-solving gruffness is popular enough that he can still be seen regularly on TV here. Or novels by Sydney Sheldon, who has large number of fans in Japan. Another thing the Japanese like a lot is...mayonnaise! It's true: the Japanese eat it all the time, putting it in salads, on traditional Japanese dishes like Okonomiyaki, and even on pizza. When you order french fries at a Denny's, they'll bring you two little dishes, one containing ketchup and the other mayonnaise, and you can dip the fries in whichever condiment you like, or go for both (which is my own preference).

A popular way to eat mayonnaise. Yech!

Japanese Election and Manifesto Update

The Japanese election season is in full swing, with the two major parties -- the currently ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the upstart Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) -- campaigning hard to try to win enough votes to form the next government. Unlike the U.S. with its two-party system, several of the smaller political parties enjoy quite a lot of influence for their size, and you see (and hear) candidates representing the Japan Communist Party and New Komeito (a party related to the Sokka Gakkai Buddhist religion which has nothing to do with any religious organization at all, nope) quite a lot. It's interesting to observe the election, as issues like the low birthrate and economic recession are fervently discussed. While I can't say that the LDP has impressed me with its leadership (far from it), I don't think that much good will come of the DPJ victory that everyone seems to be expecting. The party is only eleven years old, formed in 1998 by members of smaller parties, most of whom defected from the LDP at some point. The platform -- or "manifesto" -- of the DPJ was formed when the group was the minority party, and while it's easy for politicians to make statements about making all the freeways actually free, or about Japan's military relationship with the U.S., things change when you're suddenly in power. If the DPJ does win on August 30, I don't expect a lot to change, since the vast majority of Japan's bureaucracy remains in place even if the party in power changes.

Some Japanese politicians really like the word "manifesto."

Japan and France

This week J-List's own Tomo, the employee who keeps our site well stocked with interesting DVDs, Hello Kitty shoulder massagers and microwave potato chip makers, is taking a week off and heading to Paris, France. It's his honeymoon, and he wanted to take his new wife (who happens to be from near the now-famous Japanese city of Obama) someplace special. While the Japanese all study English and enjoy traveling to the U.S. and U.K., no place can match France for raw je ne sais quoi. Japan may be famous for its creative "Engrish" on T-shirts and shop signs, but French is also a popular language of decoration here, messed-up grammar and all. Japan's love affair with France can be seen in anime, starting with the famous Rose of Versailles which galvanized a generation of girls with the drama of Oscar François de Jarjayes and Marie Antoinette. There are several anime characters who have hilarious parodies of French names, too, like Louise Françoise De La Bamue Le Blanc De La Vallièr from Zero no Tsukaima. My theory is that the more distant a place is culturally and linguistically, the more exotic it will seem, and since many Japanese visit places like Hawaii or Los Angeles all the time, the U.S. doesn't have the same pure mystique as France, which seems "farther away." Anyway, if you've got a J-List T-shirt and live in Paris, why not wear it this week? I told Tomo to keep his eyes open and say hi to any customers he runs into.

This is the image that comes up when Japanese think of France.

Nihongo ga Jozu! You speak Japanese very well!

You've been in Japan too long when you get a nihongo ga jozu ("you speak Japanese very well") and feel mildly insulted. This happened to me the other day: I was at one of the onsen hot springs around my house -- amazingly, there are three of them within a 5 km radius of J-List -- talking with the lady at the counter, when one of the other employees came up and praised my Japanese skills. It's an odd fact of life in Japan, but foreigners who are learning the language strive for that magic moment when Japanese people will finally stop telling them how good their Japanese is and just talk to them normally. After four years of study at SDSU and almost eighteen years living here, I am hopefully as bilingual as I'll ever need to be. Unless I venture outside my core areas of experience, like visiting a history museum or trying to engage my son in detailed discussions of Chiinese history and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I can get by pretty well.

My goal was to study enough that people stopped praising my Japanese abilities. Right, Patty?

Japanese Abbreviations

The Japanese love to abbreviate long, hard to pronounce words. Whether its lopping off some kanji to change Tokyo Daigaku (Tokyo University) into the more manageable "Todai" or coining shortened terms like konkatsu, the "wedding activities" that are so popular with single people too busy to find potential marriage partners, the Japanese are efficient speakers. It's also interesting to see how they create on-the-fly slang words for anything they like, shortening Starbucks to Sutaba or rendering the somewhat unwieldy title of Monster Hunter into the more concise Mon-han. They also use many of the abbreviations found in English, but find it easier to pronounce acronyms such as JAL (Japan Air Lines), ANA (All Nippon Airways), LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and even VIP as if they were normal words (e.g. "jal" "ana" "lax" and "vip") rather than saying the letters individually, as we do in English. On the famous Japanese 2chan BBS, the sub-group that roughly corresponds to the /b/ board on 4chan is known as VIP ("vip"), and the Japanese version of /b/-tards are known as "vippers."

I like this Starbuck's logo better than the normal one.

Yako-bus, the Overnight Busses of Japan

Right now my wife and daughter are down in Kyoto, visiting a friend on the Sea of Japan side the country. There are many choices for traveling around Japan -- by car, by speedy Shinkansen train, or even the cheap-but-slow "Youth 18" train tickets I mentioned a few weeks ago, which let you travel as far as you want on normal (slow) trains for around $20 per day. (Of course the best option for anyone visiting from outside the country is the all-you-can-ride Japan Rail Pass, which unfortunately isn't available to us poor gaijin who live here.) For this trip, my wife opted for one of the overnight busses that are a popular alternative to trains for getting from point A to point B. Basically they're extremely comfortable busses with fully reclinable seats so you can sleep while the driver gets you to your destination by morning. At around $90 to get from our prefecture of Gunma to Kyoto, the cost is significantly lower than a bullet train ticket would be, and best of all you save on hotel fees, since you're sleeping inside the bus.

Comfortable overnight busses are a popular way to travel in Japan, but less romantic than overnight trains.

Japanese Gestures

I read an article on BBC's news site about a study of facial expressions around the world, which essentially found that expressions aren't necessarily universal, and might be interpreted differently depending on a person's cultural background. While I don't remember having any confusion over reading facial expressions when I arrived in Japan, I do remember having difficulty with the various gestures the Japanese use in their daily lives, such as the famous Lucky Cat gesture for "come here," which looks to Westerners as if the person were shooing you away with their hand. Japan's body language does seem to be extremely rich and complex, perhaps because gestures allow for mugon ryokai or communicating without words, a specialty of the Japanesey. Some other common gestures used here include a raised pinky or thumb, which mean "girlfriend?" or "boyfriend?" respectively (i.e., do you have a hot date tonight?); cutting your cheek with your thumbnail, which means, "be careful of that person, he might be a yakuza"; covering your mouth with your hand as if whispering, which means, "I think that person might be gay"; and making devil's horns with your fingers, which is, "if I stay out late drinking, my wife will turn into a demon and punish me." If you'd like to learn more about Japan's gestures, we've gotten in a nice book for you in San Diego.

This might mean, "Is that a call from your girlfriend?"

Mr. James, the McDonald's Hawking Gaijin Parody

McDonald's Japan is currently running a bizarre promotion using a caricature of an American named Mr. James, who hails from Ohio and is living in Tokyo with his daughter Jennifer. The advertising campaign is promoting McDonald's All Stars, four premium hamburgers that will be available through November, starting with the current Tamago Double Mac. The fact that Mr. James speaks broken katakana Japanese and is called improperly ("Mr. James," just as I spent years being called "Mr. Peter" by my students) has some foreigners in Japan upset about the ads, even going so far as to make an anti-Mr. James group on Facebook. While I think the ads are silly, I'm not particularly offended by them or anything. I'm personally at peace with the fact that many Westerners often are walking parodies of themselves in Japan, bumbling around asking for directions and snapping pictures of public restrooms and vending machines because they look new and interesting to us, and we probably look even funnier than Mr. James to the Japanese. This is okay -- it's all part of the cultural communication process between East and West. I also know that the character of Mr. James is based on the overwhelmingly positive image that Japanese have of foreigners here, from that first overly exuberant eikaiwa (English conversation) teacher they had back in school. Japan making fun of gaijin is quite common, from anime series that feature oddly-accented foreigners in them to the bizarre OH! Mikey, a parody of Americans living in Japan made using fashion mannequins, and there's nothing vindictive about it at all.

Mr. James loves Japan and McDonald's hamburgers, but some foreigners hate him.

Cute Japanese Girls and the Third Person

One of the cuter -- or possibly creepier -- things that Japanese girls do is refer to themselves in the third person. A good example of this in anime is the character Fuko from Clannad After Story, who says "Fuko" in reference to herself despite disliking it when people treat her like a child, which is of course part of her moe charm. Usually, Japanese girls will use their own names in place of a first-person pronoun at a young age, then when they start school and begin interacting with other girls will switch to atashi, a feminine version of watashi, the most common word for "I" in Japanese, or possibly the slightly masculine-sounding boku if she's the tomboy type. Since my own daughter still calls herself by her own name despite being in junior high school, I thought I'd ask her about it. "Well, I can't go around calling myself atashi [I]," she told me. "It would sound too grown-up, and it wouldn't go with my personality at all. It sounds much cuter this way." It's really amazing how the Japanese have been able to make a simple concept like "I" so incredibly complex.

The character Fuko from Clannad refers to herself in the third person. Is that cute?

Then: Making an Otaku Pilgrimage

Since we were nearby, we stopped by Lake Kizaki, the area famous as the location of the Please Teacher and Please Twins anime series. Virtually every scene was based on a specific location in the town, or at various sites nearby, which had the effect of adding a layer of realism to the anime usually not present. It also transformed the rural town into hallowed ground for thousands of otaku, who regularly visit to see and touch and commune with their favorite anime. Judging from the number of fans I saw there, the town's anime-derived notoriety was bringing in plenty of money for the local economy, and there's even a day each year when fans will come from far and wide, forming groups that walk around the lake and pick up trash. Some other parts of Japan that have become popular pilgrimage sites for anime fans include Washinomiya Shrine, seen in Lucky Star; the town of Hama in Miyagi Prefecture, where you can visit an exact replica of the shrine from Kannagi; the Clannad town in Tokyo; and Shirakawa-go in Gifu Prefecture, which served as a model for the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni town. so you can act out all your favorite scenes from that happy series. To think that some people say that otaku only think in two dimensions...

It can be fun to visit sites from your favorite anime series in Japan.

Saabisu, saabisu!

Last time I talked about some phrases that are very concise in Japanese yet have many long and complex potential translations in English, depending on the situation. Another example of words not meshing up neatly across languages is the word okyaku-san (oh-kyak-sahn), which can be rendered in English as guest, customer or passenger depending on if the person is staying in a room, making a purchase or riding on something. In English we draw sharp distinctions between a car, a truck and a van depending on the vehicle's shape and purpose, yet in Japanese there'll naturally be different set of words that are arbitrarily differentiated -- for example, they use one word for the mathematics learned in elementary school (sansuu) and another for math learned at every other stage of education (suugaku), which always confuses me. If the owner of a restaurant came up and put a glass of iced coffee on the table for you, saying, "This is service," you might not understand that he'd just given you a drink for free; but in Japan, where the word saabisu has come to mean "something given for free to add extra value for the customer," you'd figure it out before too long. So now you know what Misato is talking about at the end of every Evangelion episode -- "Service, service!"

The English word "service" here usually means something you get for free, a kind of "plus alpha" if you will.

Matsumoto Castle, Nagano Pref.

Over the weekend I took my son to Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture, one of the most beautiful castles in this part of Japan. Built in 1590 at the tail end of Japan's "warring states" period, the castle is not only breathtaking to behold from the outside but fascinating to explore inside, with its many floors and rooms including a special space for viewing the moon at night. Fast forward to the Meiji Era, when Japan was busy modernizing in emulation of Great Britain and the United States: the castle was actually sold at auction and scheduled to be demolished so that its iron fittings could be melted down for the scrap value. Happily, a local resident named Ryozo Ichikawa lead the charge to save the castle and have it protected by the local government. Sadly, many of Japan's old castles were located in major cities and did not survive World War II, which gives us a reason to treasure the ones that are still standing all the more.

Matsumoto Castle is one of the best castles accessible from Tokyo, and I recommend you try to visit sometime.

My Trip to Matsumoto Casatle and Lake Kizaki

This is Matsumoto Casatle, the castle we went to see today. One of the oldest and most beautiful castles in this part of Japan, because a) there was never as much culture over in Eastern Japan as in the Western and Southern areas and b) many castles were dismantled for scrap during the Meiji Period :(

By the way, these pictures are being posted via a new script I wrote which will hopefully make it easier to post pics in the future. And the pictures link to the original sizes on Flickr, so if you see anything you want to grab, click through and do so.

Another view, with myself and my son in it. Zoom zoom.

Lots of cool stuff to see inside. A local collector of old, old guns from Japan's past donated his collection to the city, so there were many amazing guns to see that were hundreds of years old.

Another view of the castle, this time from the other side. One reason I picked today to go was, the weather was never, ever going to be as nice as this in August. It wasn't even really hot.

We then went over to Lake Kizaki, which is about 35 km from Matsumoto. It's famous for being where Please Teacher and Please Twins were "filmed." This is the Lawson where Miina washes her feet in episode 1.

Virtually everything that shows in the two anime series is based on an actual shot, making it fun to go see your favorite places.

If you're not familar with the place, watch the series opening credits here.

Had to visit the Hekikawa Daily Store, which is really a Yamazaki Daily Story run by some nice older ladies. The place is naturally filled with otaku, eating noodles and buying souvinirs. I was dropping off something a J-List customer wanted me to deliver to the owners.

Here they are. They of course get customers all the time who like the two anime series, and have had people from Europe drop by, even. By the way, they have an official blog up in Japanese, if you want to leave comments to say hello they'd get a kick out of it I'm sure.

This is the train crossing from the opening credits. Note the four other cars filled with otaku pretending not to be there to geek out like I was doing.

Next stop, Uminokuchi Station, where several scenes from the series (including the climax of Twins) take place.

Inside is pretty cool. I could imagine sitting here for hours, soaking it all up. It's funny to have anime become so real. For example, on Friday Taiga's swimsuit from episode 7 of Toradora appeared on my desk, which doesn't happen everyday.

The view of the lonely train line is pretty awesome. That alone would make this a nice station to explore.

Note the unidentified otaku doing what I was doing.

The name of the station is quite boldly shown in the series.

We drove around and hit some other sights around the lake, like the campground from the bonus episode of Twins (ufufu), and the dock.

Finally, of course, was The House. As in, the house that Twins is set in, which is occupied by some presumably non-otaku family, who wonder what the hell is up with people taking pictures of their home at all hours of the day. Anyone got enough courage to ring the doorbell and see if they'll tell us what it's like? I kind of wish the house were empty, I'd gladly pay a fee to go inside.

Announcing the Start of 2010 Japanese Calendar Season!

We're happy to announce the start of 2010 Japanese Calendar Season! Every year J-List posts hundreds of great calendars, which are printed exclusively for the domestic Japanese market, and our customers love having access to such a huge selection of fun and interesting calendars from Japan. The first 20 or so calendars for this year have been posted, including beautiful scenes of Japan in all seasons, breathtaking tea gardens, famous dogs and cats from Japan, cute idols like Yuko Ogura, and more. Note that the bulk of our anime/idol calendars will be posted in a couple of weeks from now, but you can get started checking out the traditional new calendars now.

Deflation in Japan and $9 Jeans

Despite some recent positive rumblings, the recession continues to be hard on the Japanese economy, pushing the unemployment rate here all the way up to 5.4%, very high by local standards. As I've written before, the two recessions Japan endured during its post-bubble "lost decade" have made the Japanese quite good at dealing with economic hard times, and it's interesting to see how companies deftly switch gears, lowering prices and offering new and innovative products to attract customers. The latest product to make headlines is a $9 pair of jeans that mammoth department store chain Aeon is hawking, no doubt hoping to entice buyers curious about how good a pair of $9 jeans could actually be in order to get them into the store. Unfortunately all the price-slashing has raised the threat of deflation, and a benchmark that tracks wholesale prices fell 8.9% in the month of July alone.

Would you like a pair of $9 jeans? Some prices in Japan are falling fast.

Confusion when Translating Japanese to English

It's funny how words in one language don't always match up with words in another, especially when you're talking about languages as different as English and Japanese. Take the word sasuga (sah-soo-GAH), which is used to express praise when one's expectations have been met. For example, if a man named Yamada-san surprised you by knowing a bit of unexpected trivia, you might say, "Sasuga, Yamada-san!" which could be translated as "Good old Yamada-san!" or "I always knew you could do it, Yamada-san!" or perhaps, "I had a feeling you woundn't let us down, Yamada-san!" These linguistic differences cause headaches for translators because there's often no "best" way to express something in another language, making translation between Japanese and English about the least exact science there is. Some other short Japanese phrases that crop up in anime yet have potentially long and complex translations in English include masaka! (MAH-sah-kah), meaning "You've got to be joking!" and yappari (ya-PAH-ree), translatable as, "just as I suspected."

Obon Festival in Japan

Japan is in the middle of Obon (pronounced "oh, bone!"), a four-day Buddhist holiday that's kind of like Thanksgiving in the U.S., in that this is when everyone heads home to spend time with family, but it's also similar to Halloween since the sky is supposedly filled with the ghosts of our dead ancestors who've come home for a visit. Much of Japan shuts down during August 13-16 as people travel to their jikka or "real home," meaning their parents' house. There they'll spend some quality time with family and make a special trip the family grave to wash it with clean water and leave chrysanthemums, which are flowers for the dead, something I found out when I accidentally bought some to give to my wife (oops). While I don't know much about Buddhism itself -- which incidentally is no different from many Japanese people, who often can't tell you why a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine are different -- I have known the Japanese to really care about their ancestors. My wife regularly looks to her dead grandmother for guidance and protection, and every morning my wife, her mother or my daughter will burn a stick of incense at the family altar to let the dead known they haven't been forgotten. Some parts of Japan have beautiful festivals related to Obon, like the floating lanterns of Nagasaki or the famous Daimonji festival in Kyoto, in which fires spelling out the kanji character for "great" are lit on a mountain above the city.

Some parts of Japan have beautiful Obon festivals, like Nagasaki's floating lanterns.

Kiki's Delivery Service Subtitle Confusion

The other day I got an odd hankering to watch one of my favorite Hayao Miyazaki films, Kiki's Delivery Service, the story of one young witch's journey out into the world. The version I was watching was in Japanese, but with English subtitles, and as the movie progressed I noticed something interesting: the subtitles didn't match the Japanese dialogue of the film very closely. They included quite a few lines by Kiki and her black cat Jiji which didn't exist in the original, and I eventually figured out that they had been transcribed from the English dub of the movie and not translated directly from Japanese. It was immediately apparent that, whoever the producers of the English version were (*cough* Disney *cough*), they didn't rate their viewers' intelligence very highly, since many of the lines added did nothing but cover five-second patches of (gasp!) silence by stating information that was obvious to viewers, anyway. It became quite interesting, seeing what parts of the movie the U.S. producers felt needed "improving" by adding meaningless bits of exposition, despite the fact that no character was actually talking. Incidentally, if you're interested in the official DVD releases of all the Studio Ghibli films, complete with extras full storyboard versions and English subtitles, J-List has them all in stock, along with a great upscaling region-free DVD player to play them on.

The English version of Kiki's Delivery Service left me puzzled by some of the changes.

South Korean ESL vs. Japan

When we were in Las Vegas we happened to see a family from South Korea playing in the pool, and I decided to say hello. The family had a boy of around five years of age, and I was immediately impressed with how good his English was: he was able to answer a few of my questions and even make a joke, saying his family was from North Korea, which got his father quite flustered. The boy knew English because he'd been studying ESL, but I was amazed all the the same. Japanese children study ESL, too, often from a very young age, but something about Japan -- its conservative and xenophobic island-nation mind-set, perhaps -- keeps most students from actually, you know, learning the language. What was South Korea doing differently that enabled children to actually interact using English? Japan should study what programs its Asian neighbors are getting results with and make changes to its curriculum, although as long as I'm wishing, I could also use a pony.

What are the South Koreans doing to learn English that Japan isn't?

Once More Into The Breach: Japanese Election Hell

Japan currently stands at the brink, staring down at an abyss so hellish I can scarcely contemplate it. I'm talking, of course, about the upcoming election in which the various political parties here will woo voters non-stop for two weeks in an attempt to win enough votes to form a governing majority. Naturally, elections are different in Japan than they are in the U.S. Most obvious to visitors from other countries are the loudspeaker cars that drive around your neighborhood shouting the name of their candidate and thanking you for your support. This annoyance aside, there are some interesting limitations placed on how politicians can advertise themselves to voters. Election posters are allowed, displayed on designated bulletin boards throughout a given city, or at private residences. Television advertising is not allowed during the election period, a big change from the U.S., where our elections seems to pivot on which candidate is running which (usually negative) ad this week. Similarly, using the Internet to reach out to voters is currently NG (a word the Japanese use meaning "no good"), and it's illegal for a registered candidate to send email or use services like Twitter to get votes during the official election season, although third parties aren't always bound by these rules. Incidentally, Japan's famous otaku Prime Minister Taro Aso was in J-List's home city of Isesaki today, here to give a speech in support of local politician.

Incidentally, don't ever steal or deface these posters, as this carries a serious penalty if you're caught by the police.

An official election poster display board;.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test

The primary test for students of Japanese is the Japanese Language Ability Test, or JLPT, used by a mind-blowing 500,000 applicants each year to measure their language ability and serve as a goal for each year's study activities. Started in 1984 in response to the rising tide of interest in Japan around the world, the test is held each December both inside Japan as well as in 40 countries internationally. There are four levels to the test, with level 4 being the easiest -- you need to know your hiragana and katakana and maybe the first hundred kanji characters -- and level 1 equivelent to the language you'd need at a Japanese university. The test is structured so that students can move up one level each year, and I found that having the test as a personal goal was an excellent motivator. The sign-up deadline is this September, so if you're interested in taking the test, now is a good time to register. For information, see the JLPT English page, and a list of links on where you can take the test outside of Japan here. There are just 118 days before this year's test -- if you need study supplies, textbooks or other products to help you learn, J-List has you covered!

Aiming to pass the JLPT is a good way to motivate yourself to study

Noriko Sakai and "Hansei"

Well, singer Noriko Sakai has turned herself in to the authorities, admitting to using stimulant drugs with her husband for the past year. If I know anything about Japanese people, it will be time for her to show hansei, a word which can be translated as reflection, introspection, and contemplation about what you've done wrong. This concept is one that everyone living in Japan needs to understand, as it's really an important part of human relationships here. It can open doors, like the time I took a trip to Guam without getting a required re-entry stamp in my password that I needed to get back into the country, so I used my Gaijin Bambi Eyes to get the Immigration staff to make an exception for me. More importantly, hansei is a device for communicating on a deeper level than mere words that you've done something wrong and are thinking seriously about it, which is a very Japanese thing to do.

Noriko Sakai falls from grace. I hope she comes out okay in the end somehow.

I'm depressed now. I think I'll watch the Gunbuster opening theme, which she sang.

Meru Otonashi and Japan's Negative Internet Culture

It's funny how the Internet can bring out the best and the worst in people, and all of us seem to change a little when interacting with others online. Depending on various factors -- the kind of virtual interaction, the degree of anonymity of the participants and so on -- even the most passive person can turn into a fire-breathing Internet troll, spitting venom at all who disagree with their views. This strange mechanism works in Japan, too, as normally mild-mannered net users shed their polite exteriors when participating in heated discussions in chat rooms or forums like the famous 2chan BBS. Japan's negative net society is so pervasive that it's changed the course of more than a few careers, such as artists caught plagiarizing by sharp-eyed 2-channelers and one of the producers of Gurren Lagann, who was pressured into resigning by online haters. One of my favorite characters from the anime and manga Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye, Mr. Despair) is Meru Otonashi, a quiet girl who's too shy to speak to anyone directly, so she sends them emails from her keitai. The mails she sends are so hateful and insulting that the recipients can't believe what they're reading, but since the girl is all sweetness and light in person, no one can take her to task. Of course not all parts of the Internet are full of negativity, and if you're on Twitter, feel free to follow J-List and read some hate-free, positive observations about Japan, anime and our wonky little company called J-List.

Meru-chan embodies all the hate and negativity on the Internet.

Would You Like to Climb Mt. Fuji?

There comes a time in every Japan-loving gaijin's life when he or she must take the plunge and climb Mt. Fuji. An active volcano 12,388 ft (3,776 meters) high that rises gracefully from the prefectures of Shizuoka and Yamanashi, Mt. Fuji is an incredibly beautiful image of the country. In Japanese its name is Fuji-san, with san being the correct pronunciation for the character for mountain, although this character is read yama in other situations, and foreigners are famous for using the wrong name (Fuji-yama). Climbing season is from July 1 to August 31, during high summer, since it's really hot down at sea level yet freezing cold at the apex. Climbers usually start from the 5th level, the highest point that vehicles can reach, and take one of three walking routes up to the top (the 10th level). As you climb up, you pass the various milestones and get a special stamp on your walking stick to commemorate each achievement; eventually you'll reach the top, out of breath from the thin air but happy to be having such a great experience. Traditionally mountains are associated with Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, and Mt. Fuji has been considered a holy place for thousands of years.

Mt. Fuji, or Fujisan, is the most famous single symbol of Japan.