Various Tidbits

J-List carries thousands of fun products, and one of our favorite categories are Ghibli and Totoro products. We've got a great lineup of Totoro products on the site now, like the plush Totoro and Catbus toys we've restocked today, and that awesome Totoro backpack. We've still got a few of the 2010 Totoro calendar, which functions as a picture frame when 2010 is done, and there are fun Ghibli-blessed snacks, too, like traditional Kompeito candies from Spirited Away or Milk Caramel from Morinaga, a favorite of the Catbus. You can even browse the top 50 Ghibli products on J-List right now -- fun!

In other news, we're happy to announce that Cat Girl Alliance, the newest dating-sim game from G-Collections, has gone "golden master" is will be shipping very soon. A hilarious game that focuses on the stranger side of the genre, you'll enjoy everything from cat girl cosplay to futanari and much more, and have loads of fun. With eight endings and dozens of paths to explore, this game is one that all fans should check out. Click here to see the game's official site if you like, or here to preorder the game for free shipping when it's ready.

Japan's Former Capital of Nara Turns 1300 Years Old

The year 2010 marks the 1300th anniversary of the founding of Nara, the former capital of Japan and one of my favorite places in the world. The city was built by Empress Gemmei in 710 in imitation of the Chinese city of Xi'an (where the terra cotta soldiers were buried), and it served as the center of Japanese civilization until 794 when the new capital of Heian-kyo (Kyoto) was established. During the Nara Period, Japan experienced an influx of Buddhist art and culture, and the oldest works of Japanese literature appeared during this time. Today Nara is principally famous for Todai-ji, the breathtakingly beautiful temple that houses the largest bronze Buddha statue in the world, and for deer, which walk freely throughout the sprawling Nara Park. The city government combined these two images to create Sento-kun, the official mascot commemorating the city's 1300-year history. Nara's birthday celebration will be going on all year, so if you have any plans to be in Japan, consider adding the city to your list of places to visit. (See this page for some useful tourist information.)

Walking through very old places like Nara, it might be easy to think that the fascination we foreigners feel for Japan is a new thing, but it's not. Back in the 1920s, a famous gaijin by the name of Albert Einstein visited Japan, invited to hold a series of lectures on General Relativity so that the Japanese could understand his theories. (If I know anything after teaching ESL for eight years, I'm pretty sure they smiled politely but didn't understand a word he said.) Everywhere Einstein went he was followed by reporters and fawning fans, and he stayed many months here, traveling all around the country and sharing his thoughts with leading Japanese scientists. He also schlepped around the Kyoto area, and was fascinated by the physics behind the nightingale floors in Nijojo Castle, which are designed to squeak when walked on so that ninja couldn't sneak into the castle. He also stayed in a traditional ryokan inn in Nara and walked around feeding the deer, just like foreign visitors do today. It's kind of cool to feel a kinship with such a famous person -- did he have trouble keeping his yukata on while he slept, too? How did he manage with chopsticks?

Nara is a beautiful ancient city in Japan, one of my favorites.

Kodomo Tencho, Japan's Cutest "Talent"

Japan's entertainment world is a very unique place, and it's interesting to observe it with my gaijin's eyes. Any given variety show will feature a panel of various interesting entertainers known as "talents" -- a comedy duo here, an actress there, perhaps a retired Hawaiian sumo wrestler or an American known for speaking a rare dialect of Japanese to spice things up a bit. The point is to entertain viewers with the mix of personalities and always offer something the viewer will want to watch. Currently one face you see a lot of is a Seishiro Kato, the nine-year-old child star who distinguished himself in last year's NHK Taiga Drama. He's universally known by the name Kodomo Tencho ("child store manager") due to a series of Toyota TV commercials in which he appears as the manager of a car dealership explaining about the tax breaks you get from buying a fuel-efficient car.

You can see "Kodomo Tencho" (child store manager) on Toyota commercials every day.

Back in Japan, and Other Stuff

Well, we're back in Japan after the approximately 20-hour door-to-door journey from San Diego. We had a great time in the U.S., spending time with family, shopping, and doing general "American stuff" we can't usually do here. I even got some quality time in watching a Chargers game with my son, which is impossible to do in Japan.

J-List has a huge selection of awesome books from Japan, from glossy artbooks to manga volumes to anime and manga magazines that give you free stuff in each issue. Like Azumanga Daioh? We've got the entire series in stock. Need a whole bunch of gorgeous anime posters? Hit just about any issue of Megami Magazine and your prayers will be answered. Want to explore the most beautiful art Japan has to offer? See artbooks like 100 Masters of Bishoujo Painting or Headphone Musume or the K-On! Official Guidebook. Magazines that give you free stuff are popular with our revolving magazine subscription customers, too.

Passing Decade, Coming Decade

Well, 2010 marks the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and good riddance, I say: no more trying to figure out how to refer to the current ten-year period in short form, like we do with normal decades such as the 80s or 90s. It certainly was a decade of change, with many aspects of our lives revolutionized on a daily basis, and we all got more connected with each other through the hive-mind known as the Internet. For J-List, it was an awesome decade of growth, as we served customers all around the world -- almost 300,000 of them, incredibly -- and discovered new and interesting ways to fulfill our mission of being a "Wonderful Toybox of Things from Japan" for you. Decades, of course, don't always begin or end in neat, rounded numbers. For me the 1980s ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but the 1990s didn't start until the Street Fighter II boom arrived. So when we look back on the new decade that's just beginning, it will probably look a lot different to us. But no matter what happens this decade, J-List plans to be a peaceful island of Japanese popular culture for you!

Street Fighter II started the 90s for me. What event will be the official start of the 2010's?

Ryoma Sakamoto, Renaissance Samurai

My wife is a very happy woman, thanks to NHK, Japan's version of the BBC and the Domo-kun people. Every year the television network produces one gorgeous high-budget historical period drama called the Taiga Drama, and this year's is to be about one of the most respected historical persons in recent history, Ryoma Sakamoto (1836-1867). Ryoma was a versatile "renaissance samurai" who was responsible for organizing the domains of Choshu and Satsuma (now Yamaguchi and Kagoshima Prefectures) to work together to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate and form a modern government centered around the Japanese Emperor, who had been nothing more than a figurehead ruler for a millennium or so. He knew that if Japan were to experience a protracted civil war, it might find itself colonized by the European powers of the age, and he cleverly engineered a nearly bloodless change of government. The reason my wife is happy is that the new drama about Ryoma's life stars Masaharu Fukuyama, the popular actor and singer who is one of her favorites.

I happened to catch an interesting TV show about Ryoma's life, which featured several television personalities sitting on the floor of the room Ryoma had been in when he was assassinated by Shinsengumi-allied samurai at the age of 32, which has become as famous to the Japanese as the Dallas Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll are in the U.S. They discussed many aspects of Ryoma's life, including his role as an "idea man," able to apply some of the ideas he learned from John Manjiro (a fisherman who was rescued by an American vessel and spent several years in the U.S.) to the strict world of the Edo Period Japan. He was fascinated with the technology of the West, and was the first samurai to wear Western-style boots instead of traditional geta sandals, and he also carried a Smith & Wesson pistol, as innovative a gadget in his age as the iPhone is today. He's also credited with founding Japan's first modern corporation, a trading company that would eventually grow into the Mitsubishi conglomerate of companies. All around, a pretty amazong person, and worthy to be thought of as the George Washington of modern Japan.

The Kyoto inn where Ryoma was assassinated is part of history; Ryoma was famous for wearing western-style boots.

Our San Diego Japanese New Year's

We had a nice Japanese-style New Year's at home in San Diego. After cleaning the house from top-to-bottom (known as Osoji or "big cleaning"), we settled down to watch to watch the 60th annual Kohaku, the "red-and-white song battle" that pits the top male and female J-POP singers against each other in a competition to see which team can put on the best show, which was broadcast on the Japanese channel our cable company offers. The Kohaku show is more than just the best J-POP event of the year, it's also a bit of entertainment history, and everyone from AKB48 to Jero to Ayumi Hamasaki is there each year. (Fans of J-List's prepaid iTunes Japan cards can browse this year's Kohaku music on iTunes via this link.) After the Kohaku show it was time for Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming), a show that broadcasts solemn images of people making their way to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do hatsu-mode (ha-tsu MOH-day), the first prayer of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell thhttp://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/pictures/horoscopes-s.jpgat chimes 108 times, a Buddhist tradition tied to the 108 temptations that mankind is subject to. Happy New Year!

Some of the best bands in Japan (and South Korea) performed at Kohaku 60.

The Story of the Chinese Zodiac

The story of the Chinese Zodiac is one that's as familiar to Japanese children as Noah's Ark is in the West, so I thought I'd tell it to you. On the day of the New Year the Gods (or Buddha, depending on which version you read) declared a race among thirteen animals to come and offer New Year's Greetings. The Ox knew he was the slowest animal, so he started out before the others. The Rat noticed this and hopped on his back, jumping off at the last minute to claim first place. The Ox came in second, followed by the fleet Tiger. The Rabbit was next, with the kind-hearted Dragon behind, who was delayed by helping the Rabbit across the river. The Horse ran along then, but the Snake slithered between his legs and startled him, beating him in the race. The Sheep, Monkey and Rooster were working as a team to get across the river, and arrived next. Then came the Dog, delayed because he stopped to take a bath along the way, with the Boar coming in last -- he'd gotten confused and climbed the wrong mountain, forcing him to backtrack. The thirteenth animal was the Cat, who had forgotten what day the race was held and asked his friend the cunning Rat, who told him the wrong date, which is why there's no Year of the Cat, and why cats hate mice today.

These are the twelve kanji of the Chinese Zodiac.

Happy New Year from J-List

Happy New Year and akemashite omedetou from J-List! It's excellent to be here for another year, bringing you Japanese bento boxes, anime toys, unique snacks and other products, as well slice-of-life reports from Japan by me. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger according to the ancient Chinese Zodiac (in Japanese, tora), and as you can see we've chosen a nice Toradora! theme for our New Year's greeting to you. (If you like, you can download a nengajo New Year's Card version in PDF format to print it out.) Thanks for being a fan of our little company, and we hope to continue to be a bridge between Japan and the rest of the world all year long!

Happy New Year from J-List. We plan to make 2010 a year to "tora"-y (try) many new things!

The Japanese Passenger on the Titanic

Among the fun things we're doing here in Las Vegas, we took the kids to see Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition on display at the Luxor, which lets you experience the history of the ship through the objects recovered from the wreck. My kids were in awe at the various items they'd brought up from the bottom of the sea, from plates to ceramic toothpaste containers to perfume that -- incredibly -- still managed to give off fragrance after 90 years at the sea bottom. There's even a giant bulkhead that they managed to bring up in one piece, which was just amazing to see. As you go into the exhibit, they hand you a "boarding pass" containing the name of a random passenger, and at the end you can look at a list to see if you're alive or dead. Mine was unfortunately one of the third-class passengers who didn't survive...

One passenger who was lucky enough to live was interesting to us, since he was the only Japanese on the ship. Masabumi Hosono was an employee of the Japanese Transportation Ministry sent to Russia to study railroads, and after finishing his assignment, he prepared to cross the Atlantic on the Titanic. When the ship had its fateful collision with an iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14, Mr. Hosono was asleep, and didn't wake until someone knocked on the door of his second-class cabin to tell him to put his life-vest on. He eventually made his way to the lifeboats and, hearing an announcement that there was room in lifeboat no. 10, he jumped in. His life was saved, but he might have wished it hadn't been: he was attacked in the Japanese press for living when so many others had died, and fired from his job at the ministry, and some even called for him to commit suicide to atone for his dishonorable act. If he'd died, the world of music would have been less bright: he was the grandfather of Haruomi Hosono, one of the founding members of the influential band YMO, which helped bring Ryuichi Sakamoto to the world stage. Anyway, the Titanic exhibition was fantastic, and if you're going to be in Vegas any time soon, I highly recommend you go see it.

Do you know the story of the Japanese passenger on the Titanic?

Have a Happy New Year

Well, it's the end of another year. Time to watch the parade of famous singers on this year's Kohaku Uta Gassen (Red and White Year-End Song Festival), and eat soba noodles which supposedly give you long life since the noodles are long. This has been an awesome year for J-List, and we thank everyone for helping make it a successful one. The way to wish someone a Happy New Year while it's still December is yoi o-toshi o (yo-ee oh-toh-shi oh), literally meaning "[please have a] good New Year." After January 1st has arrived, you say akemashite omedetou (ah-kay-ma-shtay oh-meh-deh-toh), literally "congratulations on entering the New Year." So until we meet again, please have an awesome (and safe) New Year's celebration, and yoi o-toshi o!

Arashi is going to be featured in a big way at this year's Kohaku.

Abercrombie & Fitch is the new "Gap" of Japan

We're still having fun here in Vegas, doing tourist-ey things with the kids like exploring interesting casinos and seeing what shows we want to take in. We're also in "power shopping" mode, hitting all the outlet malls and loading up on clothes, shoes and other things to take back home. Being Japanese, my wife is quite good at organizing her shopping, and she's made a point of hitting the after-Christmas sales at Aba-Kuro, also known as Abercrombie & Fitch, the newest in-demand trendy American clothing brand in Japan. While Japanese are paying $100 or more for a single piece of clothing from the just-opened flagship store in Ginza, my wife will smile at the more reasonable prices she paid at the sales here in the States.

Abercrombie & Fitch is the new "Gap" of Japan.

Strange English in Japan

The Japanese are extremely creative when it comes to language, and often invent new English words to describe the things they use every day, a phenomenon known as wasei eigo or "made-in-Japan English." Sometimes these words can be quite confusing if you were to hear them used in casual conversation, like pepa doraiba, or "paper driver," meaning someone who has a drivers' license yet doesn't drive regularly; or risutora, from the word "restructure," which means having one's job eliminated; or rokehan ("location hunting"), to scout for a location for a video shoot; or ekiho, what the girl at Starbucks calls out when I order my coffee "extra hot." After a while you start to get a feel for the cognitive leap that caused the word to be created, like the way the word "skeleton" is used to mean translucent, like the original iMac. The worse thing is when I get used to these strange "English" words and am crazy enough to use them on anyone outside of Japan. If someone wished you a Meri-Kuri, would you understand that they were talking about a Merry Christmas?

Did everyone have a Meri-Kuri (Merry Christmas)?

Spirited Away + Earthquakes = Strong Emotions

I wrote a few weeks ago about how I believed I'd "cracked the code" as to why Japanese animation is so compelling to people around the world: it's all about the emotions. From boy-meets-moe love stories to anime series with involved love triangles, and even stories that make you taste the sadness of losing someone you love or jealous rage through the characters on-screen, there's something special about the way anime pushes our emotional buttons. One anime I've enjoyed recently is Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, an extremely realistic series about a young girl and her brother who are caught in a devastating quake in Tokyo. The story is about how Chihiro Mirai grows as she is spirited away to a magical world caught in world of death and destruction, and you really feel the fear and confusion in the characters as you watch them deal with great adversity, like Tokyo Tower falling down around their heads. Other forms of media have their emotional highs and lows, of course, but I think there's something about the way the Japanese combine character, setting, and unique visual elements to really make you feel the story in unique ways.

To me, anime is at its best when it conveys strong emotions.

Japan's "Forget-the-Year" Parties

Hello again from J-List, now in Las Vegas, where we've taken the kids for some post-Christmas relaxation. We hope you had a great Holiday!

2009 is winding down, as everyone looks back to reflect on all this year has held for us. Right now it's the season for bounen-kai or "Forget-the-Year" parties in Japan, and any bar, restaurant or izakaya (a kind of cozy traditional Japanese pub-restaurant) you visit will be crowded with groups of people having these year-end parties. Since it's naturally a big time for Japan's major beer manufacturers, there are plenty of advertisements in trains and around town promoting good times with friends and lots of ice-cold Asahi Super Dry or Kirin Ichiban Shibori to go with it. Not only does Japan have traditional Year-End Parties as an excuse for friends to get together and drink, there are New Year's Party for celebrating the new year that's just begun, held in January. Japan does love to drink socially, and even has a word for the concept: "nomunication," which is the word nomu (to drink) + the English word "communication."

Japan's beer companies are heavily advertising for "Year-End Parties."

New Year's Cards for 100 Million

Can you hear that endless mechanical noise? It's the sound of thousands of inkjet printers in Japan, grinding out nengajo, the traditional New Year's Cards that are so much fun to receive on January 1st. Just as video camera technology around the world is greatly aided by Japan's tradition of school "Sports Day" events, when children run relay races as proud parents capture the action with the latest HD video camera, printing technology owes a great debt to the custom of New Year's Card giving in Japan -- I wouldn't be surprised if the printer driver installed in your computer has built-in support for a paper size called hagaki, which is Japanese for "postcard." Every year hundreds of New Year's Card-related products are offered to consumers, from newfangled inkjet printers to professional printing services offered by Fuji Film, which are being pitched by Maki Horikita this year. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, so I expect a lot of people will be incorporating tigers into their New Year's Card designs. What will our nengajo be? Find out on January 1st, like every one else.

Maki Horikita is this year's Fujicolor Image Girl, and very kawaii.

The Customer is God

Recently I wrote about how one of the more pleasant aspects of Japan was the high level of service you can generally expect. The Japanese version of "the customer is always right" is okyaku-san wa kamisama, literally "the customer is God," and it's not hard to see this attitude in action. Most of the time you'd expect store employee to try to sell you stuff you don't need, but when I tried to buy some stupid plug-in cards for a camera I was getting, one employee went out of his way to tell me they were a waste of money. Once I dropped the tray that holds water to make ice cubes in my refrigerator, and when I went to order a replacement I expected them to charge me $100 or more, but to my surprise they charged me just $1, despite having me by the proverbial octopus balls. I'm also impressed whenever I get my car serviced at the Mazda dealership, operated by the company directly, as is the norm in Japan. As I pull out, the employee who was helping me walks out into the street to stop traffic for me, literally placing himself at risk of bodily injury to make that final good impression on me. The strategy might be working: I realize we've bought four cars from them over the years.

Getting your car serviced in Japan might make you feel like God.

Christmas in Japan is Less "Real"

Of course one of the most enjoyable things to do this time of year is...Christmas shopping. I'm quite a kurisumasu otaku, or fan of all things Christmas, and I love hitting the malls to shop while getting into the Christmas spirit, perhaps while sipping one of those Egg Nog Lattes from Starbuck's, which they don't sell in Japan. They have shopping malls in Japan, of course, which are all beautifully decorated, but there's something fundamentally less "real" about Christmas there. I hit some of my favorite shopping malls in San Diego today, picking up some items that I think my family will love. As usual when I'm back in the U.S., I'm bowled over not just by the size of the "small" drink served at restaurants (which is quite a bit larger than the Japanese version), but by the incredible variety of choices available to everyone here, even just roaming the strip mall near my house. There's nothing like living in a foreign country to make you appreciate how good things are back home.

Christmas in Japan is beautiful, but somehow feels less "real" than back home.

Manga, the Whimsical Pictures of Japan

Manga are the famous Japanese comics that have come to define Japan around the world. Literally meaning "whimsical pictures," the word manga was coined in 1811 by Hokusai, the ukiyoe artist who brought us the famous "36 Views of Fuji" paintings you've probably seen. People of all ages read manga comics in Japan, from the very young to full-fledged members of society, and every Sunday dozens of customers come by the rural liquor shop my wife's family runs to get the new issue of Shonen Jump -- even successful businessmen driving BMWs. Manga isn't just a fun thing to read for leisure: in no small way, it forms the basis for Japan's wider popular culture. Obviously many anime series start out as manga, like A Certain Magical Index or Azumanga Daioh, but it's not uncommon for mainstream dramas or feature films to be based on manga stories, as well. Some examples are the currently running Liar Game, a drama about a mysterious game in which players are each given 100 million yen and told to try to steal as much money from each other as they can, and Jin, the tale of a modern doctor who "time-slips" back 150 years into the Edo Period.

Manga is everyehwere in Japan -- here's a cute image from a songbook at my daughter's Christmas pageant.

The Mechanics of Keigo, or Polite Japanese

Every language represents different challenges to learners. If I were to study a Romance language like Spanish, I'd need to cope with the idea of nouns having genders, which might be difficult since they seem arbitrary when coming from English -- can anyone tell me why a pencil is el lapiz (male) while a pen is la pluma (female)? In Japanese, the mechanics of how politeness works is a potential rough spot for foreign students. While you can generally cover any polite situation by using the the formal forms of verbs rather than informal (for example, using the word ikimasu for "to go" instead of the informal iku, which you'd only use around close friends or people who were younger than you), there are times when a person wants to bring his nihongo to the next level. The most common word for "person" in Japanese is hito, but in business settings you often use two different terms, the "exhaulting" word kata when referring to a person in the company you're addressing, and the "humble" word mono (moh-noh) when talking about someone from your own company. If you want to experience a really awkward situation in Japan, get these two words confused, as I've done.

You should say kata when addressing another company, not mono, like I did.

Time For a "Kuri-Pa," or Christmas Party

Christmas is a happy time in Japan, when couples can exchange gifts or maybe plan a special evening together, and children can look forward to a visit from the most famous gaijin of them all, "Santa-san." It's also the season for kuri-pa, or Christmas Parties, and various groups will organize get-togethers complete with funny hats, noise-makers and firecrackers that shoot paper streamers into the air, making them appear closer to December 31st in some ways than Christmas, at least to my eyes. Over the weekend I attended a Christmas Concert at my son's school, and there was a small Christmas party afterwards for the students and parents. They'd prepared a real feast, too, with all manner of Japanese snack foods from Pocky to Kit Kat to these little snowman cookies that looked delicious. Unfortunately there was no teacher present to tell people it was okay to start the festivities, so everyone mulled around pretending they weren't surrounded by tables of delicious snacks, despite being hungry and thirsty after the long musical performance. It was a good example of the Japanese concept of enryo (ehn-ryoh), which means to show restraint or discretion in social situations, and I felt sorry for everyone there as I secretly filled my pockets with munchies.

When Christmas draws near, it's time for a Christmas Party with friends.

Raising Bilingual Kids

The other day I sat my family in front of the TV to watch Up, the fantastic film by Disney/Pixar, which is called "Uncle Carl's Flying House" in Japan. I'd seen the movie in the States during the summer, so I knew they'd love it, and I wasn't disappointed. When world-famous explorer Charles F. Muntz shows up in his cool-looking airship, my wife said, "Oh, I know what that is, it's a blimp." This is a bit of a running joke in my family because "blimp" was the first English word that my son knew but my (Japanese) wife did not. We've always helped our children grow up to be bilingual so they can enjoy the benefits of both Japan and the U.S. freely, but of course there comes a day when your kids surpass your own linguistic ability. That day came when my son was five or so and called out to a blimp that was flying overhead, causing my wife (who had never encountered that word) to get flustered at how he'd managed to learn a word that she didn't know. When my kids were younger, I'd have "kanji battles" with them to see who could write more characters, and they tried very hard to beat the gaijin only to be vanquished. Now that they're older and my constant use of computers and the Internet has eroded my kanji-writing ability (a phenomenon which plagues native Japanese, too), they can both kick my butt quite easily.

We try to help our kids grow up bilingual, as much as we can.

Getting Used to Japan

Life in Japan is quite different from back home in the States, and there were many things I needed to get used to when I came here in 1991. Constantly standing out as "the gaijin" was one, and getting used to children looking at me as if I were wearing a clown suit or something. Becoming comfortable being in smaller spaces. Learning not to flinch at paying $2 for a newspaper or a video game in a game center or around $5 for the equivalent of a gallon of gas. But there were good things, too, such as learning to take really good service in restaurants or shops for granted, since being treated well is the norm here in Japan. Forgetting the smell of gasoline on my hands thanks to most service stations being full service, like something from Back to the Future, isn't bad either.

Gas stations in Japan are usually full service, and always awesome.

The Japanese "Variety" Show

The cornerstone of the Japanese television world is the "variety show," and although the Western stereotype of these programs isn't entirely accurate -- they rarely throw contestants who answer questions incorrectly into pirania-filled water -- they can be interesting to watch. The "king" of variety shows in Japan is Waratte Iitomo ("It's Okay to Laugh"), which has run six days a week since it began back in 1982, earning host Tamori a place in the Guinness Book. The show is made up of segments that are goofy yet oddly entertaining, like "Rare Beast Hunter Imoto," an ugly female comedian with thick eyebrows drawn on her face who travels the world looking for rare animals to compete against, like the time she challenged a cheetah to a 100-meter dash. On one program I caught recently, several famous "talents" were given sheets of paper and asked to design men's underwear, and it was interesting to see what ideas they came up with. Super cute Becky (no, not that one) came up with underwear that said "I love..." with a space where the man's girlfriend would write her own name, to make sure that he couldn't cheat on her with another girl. Scary, but creative, too.

Popular "talents" like comedy duo London Boots and Becky make us laugh.

Gift Suggestions & Happy News

J-List is loaded with products to make your Christmas more fun this year. We've got amazing snacks from Japan like the newest flavors of Pocky and Japan Kit Kat, which can incidentally be purchased by the sealed box for an automatic discount, if you want to sock some away in your desk at work. We never tire of finding delightful Sanrio products from Japan, like our 3D Cookie Cutter, which make a cool three-dimensional Hello Kitty cookie for you (also works with toast). And don't get us started on how awesome our Hello Kitty massagers, we mean shoulder massagers, are -- these ironic and fun items have been a top-seller this season. If you're rushed for a gift idea, you can check our San Diego based items, including the popular Grab Bags of fun random items, or of course consider a J-List Gift Certificate or iTunes Japan card, which can be sent through email (no waiting). Finally, you should browse our awesome 2010 calendars, since we have more than 100 in stock for you to check out.

In other news, J-List has a Holiday gift for you: we're announcing the end of the V-Mate authorization system for our download H-game products. Previously, customers who purchased Internet Download Editions of our G-Collections games needed to install Virtual Mate activation software and have a live Internet connection when they wanted to play. With the release of the patches we're posting today, Virtual Mate is no longer required (although it is still supported normally). Among other things, this means that anyone running 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or 7 may now purchase and play our games! Now you can run our amazing PC dating-sims on practically any version of Windows without hassle, including the convenient and discreet download versions.

Japanese 'Dajare' Jokes

All things considered, it's nice to be able to speak Japanese. You can talk to people in Japan who you wouldn't otherwise be able to communicate with, like the old man who used to cut my hair while telling me local stories from World War II. I've discovered another use for being bilingual: it allows you to make twice as many bad jokes as you otherwise would. For whatever reason, I've become adept at making a kind of Japanese pun known as dajare (dah-jah-rey), although in my family we call them dadajare since I'm "Dada" (which is itself a bad pun). The word for "to enter a bath" is nyuyoku, which sounds close enough to New York that I might make a joke about it...or coin a new word, nyu-yokka (New Yorker) meaning a person who loves taking long baths. Nestle makes a chocolate drink called Milo which is pronounced "mi-ro" in Japanese, which happens to be the informal command form of the verb for "to look." Hence, whenever I see Milo being sold in a store, I'm compelled to point and say, miro! (look at that!). One way to say "I don't have it" or "there aren't any" in Japanese is nashi, which also happens to be what those delicious Japanese pears are called, so naturally I might reply "Japanese pear" if my wife asks me if I have her car keys. I've encountered quite a few other gaijin in Japan on my Twitter feed who tell me that they, too, have become adept at making these bad jokes. Perhaps there's some brain-level connection between bilingualism and seeing humorous (?) connections between words.

Perhaps the most basic dajare joke is, arumikan ni aru mikan, or a mikan orange on an aluminum can.

Amuro in a Gundam Music Video?

There are two people named Amuro in Japanese popular culture. One of them is Amuro Ray, the young boy who climbed into the cockpit of an experimental RX-78 Gundam prototype and, using his intuitive Newtype abilities and a serendipitously placed instruction manual, was able successfully pilot it and destroy two Zaku who were attacking him. In the process, he inspired a generation of boys to dream of piloting their own giant robots, and his famous lines like "You hit me again! Even my father never hit me!" and "Amuro...ikimasu!" (Amuro, launching now!) are known by everyone here. The other Amuro is Amuro Namie (iTunes Japan link), or Namie Amuro in English name order. She's the legendary singer from Okinawa whose popularity created a social fashion phenomenon as young "Amullers" imitated her style, a trend that eventually morphed into the current Shibuya/Harajuku fashion culture you can see on J-List. Now the two Amuros have come together in a new music video in which the singer appears floating in space with the hero of the One Year War, the first time a flesh-and-blood person has been inserted into the Gundam universe. What do you think?

Singer Amuro Namie makes a journey to Gundam-land, complete with normal suit and Lalah-style forehead jewel.

Awesome stuff: Domo-kun Hoodies, Grab Bags and iTunes Cards

J-List is a wonderful window to Japan on the web. Some awesome items you might consider this gift-giving season include our warm Domo-kun and other hoodies, conveniently stocked in San Diego and very soft to touch. We love to find rare and fun traditional items from Japan, like our popular Lucky Cat Tea Cups, which are great for displaying or drinking tea out of. Our fukubukuro grab bags are a huge hit this year, and we have items both in stock in San Diego and Japan, including a new "cosplay" lucky bag. Finally our iTunes Japan prepaid cards, which are fully compatible with the iPod/iPhone sitting under your tree this year, and you can even buy 3000 yen iTunes card credit in a spiffy J-List gift certificate that can be emailed or printed by you. Having an iTunes Japan account has many benefits, including access to the "free single of the week" plus this Christmas album, free to anyone with an iTunes Japan account.

Common Sense and the Japanese

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that the Japanese are (usually) guided by a mysterious "universal common sense" that they can all tap into somehow. Called joshiki (JOH-shki), translatable as "common knowledge so basic no one ever need think about it," this is the reason that Japanese generally seem to be on the same wavelength about things, and why we gaijin appear strange and unpredictable to them. When it rains, virtually every Japanese person will reach for an umbrella so they can keep as dry as possible, but I'm likely to just go out into the rain if it's only sprinkling a little -- it's not like a little water is going to kill me. Similarly, the Japanese seem to believe that warm clothes must be worn exactly from October 1 to May 31st, and whenever I wear a T-shirt in November because it's still plenty warm out I feel like I'm breaking some unwritten rule. Getting medicine from the doctor used to be another example of the "common sense gap" between Japan and foreigners. A decade ago, the nurse would dispense various pills or powders to me in little envelopes, but whenever I'd ask what each type of medicine actually was for, she'd look troubled, like no one had ever asked her that before. Nowadays, medical staff are good about clearly explaining the purpose of each type of medicine, which I believe came about in part due to Japan being sensitive to feedback from the foreign community here.

Do you do anything hijoshiki-teki, that is, un-commonsensical?

When it rains, Japanese reach for an umbrella, as seen in this illustration.

On Language and Minotaurs

The other day I was watching a BBC documentary on ancient history, because BBC documentaries are awesome -- I hope our readers in the UK know how much we appreciate them. I took note of the way the word "minotaur" was pronounced in the show: MINE-ah-tour, which differed from my California dialect of American English in which the word is pronounced MIN-ah-taur. The question of how to inflect/pronounce words like this wouldn't be an issue in Japanese, thanks to the katakana writing system, which provides an absolute (if imperfect) way to pronounce anything. Japanese who go to America sometimes encounter a native English speaker who can't pronounce names like Chopin or Hermes or Evangelion "correctly" (this word of course being subjective), and are amazed by this. On the other hand, Japanese can have an incredible amount of difficulty reading their own language, especially kanji for names, which can have many possible readings. As I was writing the description for an issue of Dengeki Hime, I encountered a name that used difficult kanji. Not only could I not read the name, but none of the Japanese staff at J-List could read it either, and it took several minutes of Googling for us to find the official pronunciation (it was Manaka Komaki from the game ToHeart).

Minotaur in Japanese is minotaurus, from the Latin. Shirow draws rather nicely, don't you think?

Japan and Train Otakus

Japan has a lot of trains, which is a good thing because they also have a lot of densha otaku, rail fans who love everything about trains, whether it's riding on the sleekest Shinkansen or exploring old abandoned train lines. During my career as an ESL teacher I encountered more than a few students whose main release from the stress of studying was visiting obscure corners of Japan to ride on their favorite train, and densha lovers can even be seen in the political world here -- Land Minister Seiji Maehara is a rail aficionado who has published photographs of steam locomotives. On a TV show called Tonari no Maestro (The Master Next Door), which finds amazing accomplishments by average people and reports on them, I saw a piece on Japan's #1 train lover, who managed to visit all of the 9861 train stations in the country. His name is Takahisa Sugihara, age 61, and he spent 30 years traveling around Japan and stopping at each station, earning himself a listing in the Guinness Book as a result. On the show he reminisced about his favorite stations, like one in Kyushu that's built inside a private home so travelers can enjoy the smell of curry stewing in the kitchen as they pass through, or a station in Aichi Prefecture which faces the sea, making it the most beautiful train station in Japan at sunset.

This train station near Nagoya is the most beautiful in Japan. I want to go there now.

Ocean Waves, Good Times

Anime is a window into Japanese society and a valuable resource for anyone hoping to understand this complex country. The animated film Ocean Waves (Japanese title Umi ga Kikoeru or "I Can Hear the Sea") is a subtle story by Studio Ghibli that tells the tale of a girl from Tokyo whose parents have divorced, forcing her to move to Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku with her mother. The story is about her struggles to adjust to this new part of Japan, where (she says) everyone talks like they came out of a samurai period drama on TV, and of a love triangle formed when two friends fall in love with her. Against the backdrop of the story is the group of high school students who instinctively create a stable group dynamic where everyone can feel like they're a member and no one need feel ike an outsider, which is quite different from my own high school experience, let me tell you. The scene near the end of the film, when the students all have a reunion and share food and beer together while some members of the group dare to confess their secret loves, is great to observe.

"Ocean Waves" is a subtle and deep film by Studio Ghibli, and one of my favorites.

Gift ideas: Wasabi Doritos, Star Wars Stuff, Calendars

J-List remains in Super High Efficiency Mode, processing orders and getting them processed and out the door as quickly as possible. Snacks have been especially popular this year, as customers fun snacks like Japanese Kit Kat or Wasabi Doritos. There are a lot of Star Wars fans in the world, and a lot of people buying wacky Japanese Star Wars gifts for them, like the Lightsaber Chopsticks we have in stock. If you look on our new Plush Toy Page (now separate from our Totoro & Ghibli page), you can see some of the cute new yutanpo toys we've been selling, soft plush toys with hot-water bottles inside to make your bed toasty. Finally, J-List's 2010 anime, J-POP and other calendars have been a huge hit this year, so much that we're selling out of things left and right. The last of the Shirow calendars and the already-decimated Kyoto Animation calendars are in stock now, but for how long? Browse now!