North Korean Schools in Japan

Currently the status of pro-North Korean schools in Japan is being debated. There are of course many "Koreans" living in Japan, although they were born and raised here and often don't speak the Korean language at all, yet for cultural reasons they keep their own national identity and refuse to take Japanese citizenship. There are two political groups who represent the rights of these zainichi ("residing in Japan") Koreans, the moderate Mindan for holders of South Korean passports and the pro-North Korean Chongryon. The latter organization operates 218 pro-Pyongyang schools in Japan which are used to maintain a North Korean cultural identity, including language and allegiance to the "Dear Leader." The government is hammering out the details of a plan to make public high schools free (they're not part of compulsory education and cost around $100 a month per student), and the question of whether or not to include the North Korean-affiliated schools in this program is being discussed. Back in my days as an English teacher, I visited the local North Korean high school once, teaching a sample English lesson to try to get some of the students to come study at our English school. It was definitely one of the stranger experiences I've had as a teacher... (Incidentally, I saw it reported that Japan doesn't fund these pro-North Korean schools at all, yet our own prefecture of Gunma, at least, does contribute $2800 per student per month to these schools. Perhaps this has something to do with our special status as the Pachinko capital of Japan.)

An assembly at a North Korean high school...in Japan.

Fun Japanese Snacks That Go With Beer: "Otsumami"

There's a special category of snacks made to be consumed with alcohol called otsumami (oh-tsoo-MAH-mee), which encompasses everything from those persimmon seed-shaped spicy rice crackers with peanuts (Kakipea) to dried, shredded ika (squid) which tastes better the longer you live here. There's almost no end to the variety of these snacks, and every convenience store will sport a well-stocked selection near its beer, wine and sake. Some of these snacks are relatively well-known outside Japan, like the edamame soybeans that are great to pop into your mouth on summer nights at the beer garden, while others are more obscure, such as chi-kama sausage made of pressed fish and jalapeno cheese, Pretz-type stick snacks, and various types of canned fish. The other evening I was having a glass of wine with Mrs. J-List and she pulled out a bag of snacks she'd bought that day, offering some to me. Unfortunately it was one of my least favorite foods in the world: tiny dried anchovies, which she proceeded to eat eat like Cheetos, scooping up the little heads that had broken off and fallen to the bottom of the bag. *shudder*

Mozart and Beethoven love Kameda™ Brand rice crackers.

Interesting Japanese Phrases: "New Rice"

It's funny the way culture reflects language and vice-versa. One phrase you'll hear sometimes in Japanese is tenka no~, which literally means "having received the blessing of Heaven and the Emperor to rule Japan." During the sengoku or "Warring States" period of Japanese history, that's what the various warlords were trying to do: win enough power that they could go to the Emperor in Kyoto and receive his blessing to become the designated military ruler of the country (Shogun). In modern usage, tenka no~ is used to refer to companies that receive special status from the government, and someone might cynically complain about tenka no NTT ("NTT, Anointed by Heaven") when their phone service is bad. Another word I'm fond of is shinmai (SHEEN-mai), which means "new rice" that's just been harvested. A person who starts a new job will often be referred to with this term, e.g. shinmai salaryman for someone working their their first 9-5 job, or a shinmai idol singer who has just made her debut and is still "green."

Someone starting a new job is shinmai, or "new rice," a word I like for some reason.

Japanese Study Supplies @ J-List

Whether you want to master some situation-based Japanese phrases, teach yourself hiragana and katakana or undertake a formal study of the Japanese language, J-List has some great products to help you reach your goals. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test has been revamped for 2010, and we've got some great textbooks covering the new material which we've been adding to the site. You can enjoy the fastest and most efficient electronic dictionary with the DS Kanji Dictionary (which features just about everything you'll ever need to look up), a big selection of flashcards and other study tools, plus the excellent Zebra Check Set for hiding information you're trying to memorize on the page, making it easier to memorize anything. You can view all our Japanese study supplies, or just the top 50 Japanese study aids this week.

Forgetting My Own Dialect of English

I've got an American friend who once asked me an odd question. "I forget, do Americans stand in a line, or in a queue?" Forgetting your own dialect of English might sound like a strange thing to have happen, but in a place like Japan where foreigners of all nationalities are grouped together into one big gaijin melting pot, little things like vocabulary and grammar can seem pretty unimportant. It's quite common for gaijin to hang out with foreigners from other parts of the world, and I've been known to throw back a beer or two with friends from other countries -- it's fun to debate American politics with Canadians or Australians or Brits, since they're emotionally divorced from the day-to-day political issues in the U.S. One word I accidentally picked up was "uni" (you-NEE), slang from Australia (I think) that means university, but none of my friends back home knew what I was talking about when I used it.

Living in Japan might make your dialect of English change.

Japan Can Make You Say "LOL WUT?"

I've lived in Japan nearly two decades and have seen some things that really confused me over the years. Like the odd statues of tanuki (Japanese badgers, like Totoro) displayed for good luck outside restaurants, which feature very detailed anatomical parts including huge balls and sometimes erect members, or a "graveyard of vending machines" I happened across once, with hundreds of defunct vending machines all lined up on a vacant lot. Currently there's a popular song in Japan called Toire no Kamisama, or "God of the Toilet," and when I heard the title of the song I had no idea what it could possibly be about. It turns out that grandmothers -- who often live in the same house their children and grandchildren -- tell their granddaughters that there's a "goddess of beauty" hiding in the bathroom of every family, and girls who clean the family toilets without complaint will become beautiful when they grow up. It's ultimately a song of thanks to the singer's grandmother, and when the song gets to the part where she dies after saying a final goodbye, it can really choke you up.

These anatomically correct statues are displayed outside many restaurants.

 

The History of Totoro

Once while my family was watching My Neighbor Totoro, the awesome animated film about a magical forest spirit that only children can see, my wife remarked to our kids, "But I think your dad can see Totoro, too." The fourth feature film by Studio Ghibli, it tells the story of a family that moves to rural Japan to be near the hospital where their mother is recuperating from tuberculoses, and the magical creatures Satsuki and Mei encounter. Totoro is a combination cat, owl and tanuki -- a kind of Japanese badger often thought to be magical -- who guards the forest and all who live there, not unlike a Japanese version of Dr. Seuss's Lorax. In the story it's indicated that Totoro gets his name from the Three Billy Goats Gruff, when Mei mispronounces the word "troll," although in reality Totoro's name came about when the daughter of a friend of Miyazaki mispronounced the city of Tokorozawa in Saitama Prefecture as "Totorozawa." Originally planned as a short film to be released as a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies since the producers were sure that no one would want to see a movie about two girls and a monster in rural Japan, Totoro went on to define Studio Ghibli more than any other work. True Totoro fans planning a trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo should time their visit to coincide with the showing of Mei and the Kittenbus, the "sequel" to Totoro which gives additional insight into the world of Totoro and the Cat Bus. A brief check of the movie schedule for this year (which frustratingly is in Japanese only) indicates the short film can be seen from 5/22~5/31, 7/16~7/31, 9/16~9/30 and 11/1~11/8. If you're looking for awesome Totoro products, you can browse all of them here, or view the top 50 Totoro products by order of popularity.

Can you see Totoro? According to my wife, I can.

Bento Boxes @ J-List

J-List loves to find fun products from Japan for our customers, and I especially love the traditional bento box offerings from Hakoya. Whether you're looking for a very traditional bento with lacquered wood styling, a jubako "stacking" style bento that makes it fun to discover food each level is hiding, or bento boxes that are just fun, like the Henohenomoheji bento (this is a face drawn out of hiragana characters), we have cool products in stock. You can browse all our bento box offerings, or check out the top 50 bento boxes from Japan.

All About the Media in Japan

I was recently asked to write about the news media in Japan, and I'm happy to oblige. Like other countries, the Japanese masu-komi (as the media is called, from "mass-communications") reports on various news events to keep everyone informed on what's happening in the world. From the beginning of Japan's rapid industrialization during the Meiji Period newspapers have been been important industries, and several have come to form the center of complex corporate networks that also own television stations, baseball teams, and so on. As with all things, politics enters the reporting to a certain degree, and you pick up pretty quickly that Yomiuri-affiliated news sources will generally be on the conservative side while Asahi Shimbun's networks will lean to the left. The exception to this is NHK, Japan's version of the BBC, which strives in all things to be completely neutral. There are some interesting blind spots in the way the media works here. For example, they tread lightly when discussing certain topics, such as the Imperial Family or any topic related to a certain politically well-connected Buddhist religion. When Google rolled out a nifty feature that allowed users to overlay historical maps with their own neighborhoods there was criticism because the maps allowed everyone to see which areas had been designated for burakumin, the class of people who performed "unclean" jobs like tanning and cremation. Any discussion of the burakumin is a huge taboo in Japan and the news media uniformly avoided reporting on the Google scandal. The exception was Yahoo Japan, which is increasingly gaining a reputation as a place to turn to for unfiltered news.

Japan's Masu-komi is always on the job, unless the subject matter is one they don't cover for some reason.

In Japan, a Scarf is Called a "Muffler"

Coming to live in Japan means remapping some of the English words in your brain to fit the way the Japanese use them. Sometimes it's little things, like the way "juice" is used to refer to any canned or bottled drink including tea or cola, or a winter scarf being called a "muffler," or the way a "bike" always refers to a motorcycle and never to a bicycle, as it might in my own dialect of English (California). If you're hungry, have a "sand" (what sandwich is often shortened to) or perhaps some "ice" (ice cream), and if you work very hard you might be able to buy a "mansion" (an apartment that's owned rather than rented). In some cases the English words that sound unfamiliar to me may come from Britain, such as the owner of a restaurant or coffee shop being referred to as "Master" or the use of pantsu to mean underwear rather than its North American meaning of external trousers. Sometimes the words are different because they represent entirely new concepts. In the world of high school baseball, the English word "manager" always refers to females who will join the team and do things like wash uniforms, keep score and generally see to the well-being of the team members.

In Japan, a scarf is called a "muffler" which can be hard to get used to.

Moe Moe Military Beam!

Manga are the famous comics that have come to define Japan around the world, although Japanese above a certain age will also use the term for animation shown on television rather than in printed form. I learned about manga comics in the 1980s and I was instantly captivated by this "new" art form, although of course it's not new at all. Manga, which literally means "whimsical pictures," was invented by the Edo Period by ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, who created pretty much every famous picture of old Japan you've ever seen, from Red Fuji to the Great Wave Off Yokohama. Today, manga is used extensively for education, like the manga-based books on Japanese history bookstores overflow with, as well as for the dissemination of information to the public on earthquake preparedness. Now moe manga style art is being used to recruit for the Japanese military, as in the above image created by the Tokushima Prefecture SDF, which reads, "The more to learn about a career in the Self-Defense Forces, the more you realize it's a job you can take pride in!" Doesn't it make you want to sign up?

A moe illustration recruiting for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.

A Delicious Way to Experience Many Japanese Foods

J-List has some fun ways for you to sample Japanese culture, including those awesome traditional Food Drops candies, which let you taste regional delicacies from all over Japan, including classic tastes in the ukiyoe Food Drops line. Be sure to try the new Food Furikake line, too, which is dried ingredients you sprinkle over rice to enjoy delicious tastes. Great for bento, too!

One Does Not Simply Pronounce "Eyjafjallajokull"

Iceland's erupting volcano Mt. Eyjafjallajokull has certainly been in the news a lot this week, and the media here was filled with stories of poor European travelers who were unable to return home, and had to wait at Narita Airport for days to find out when flights would be resumed. One group from Norway was upbeat, though, saying, "It's okay, really. It's more opportunity to enjoy the delicious food and pleasant people in Japan." There's been a lot of mirth at the inability of anyone not from Iceland to correctly pronounce "Eyjafjallajokull," which looks, Yasu observed to me, like something his baby daughter would type on a computer keyboard. In Japanese, the concept of not being able to pronounce a certain word is a bit difficult to grasp due to the syllabic nature of katakana, which guarantees you can at least see how the syllables should sound (see example, above). The downside to katakana is that all sounds will be filtered through the limited Japanese phonetic system, which is why Japanese have such thick accents when speaking English, but at least everyone can pronounce "Evangelion" the same way.

Manga, The Ultimate Medium

I recently watched an anime called She, The Ultimate Weapon (aka Saikano: The Last Love Song on This Little Planet), a well-written high school love story about a boy named Shuji and his shy girlfriend Chise (chi-seh), with an interesting twist that Chise has been turned into a terrible weapon of destruction by the Japanese military. Chise is a great character: although she can destroy entire cities, she's still a shy, bumbling dojikko who falls down a lot and who isn't sure of her own feelings toward her boyfriend. In one scene I thought was interesting, Shuji and Chise nearly break up because neither is sure about how to handle themselves in a romantic relationship. Chise says, "I don't know anything about dating...I read comics....but unlike other people, I didn't know what to do." This scene highlighted a big difference in the perception of comics between Japan and the West, and the way many stories in girl's manga serve as an important source of information on love and relationships that wouldn't be available through any other medium. This is an idea that would have been impossible to conceive of before manga became part of the larger world popular culture. Can you imagine reading X-Men or Spider-Man to find out about relationships?


(Of course, some of the content in books like Sho-Comi can get on the steamy side, as it's aimed at a higher age teenager. In cases like these, J-List always specifies this in the descriptions so there's never any confusion with customers.)

Saikano is a unique love story in the middle of war, which is dark and moving.

Strange Branding in Japan

One thing I've learned about Japan is how differently the idea of brands works here. We generally expect companies to make products similar to the ones they've made in the past: Dell sells computers, but if they started selling running shoes tomorrow, you'd wonder what was in their drinking water. Yet this tendency for companies to do what we expect them to doesn't always apply in Japan. Panasonic makes performance bicycles and builds homes under its PanaHome brand, Asahi sells beer as well as bottled green tea and BalanceUp nutritional snacks, and Yamaha makes everything from pianos to motorcycles to network routers and a popular line of golf clubs. Department store chain Ito Yokado operates the Seven-Eleven and Denny's chains in Japan, and when revenue dropped it decided to re-brand itself around its most profitable segment. It changed its name to "Seven&i Holdings" and slapped a giant Seven-Eleven sign on all of its department stores...as well as on its Denny's restaurants, which damages both brands, since I expect to be able to order onigiri rice balls along with my hamberg steak. Now I see that Sony will start selling two kinds of laptops: the normal Vaio line it designs, and cheaper "division two" Vaios designed and built by generic Chinese companies that will still be sold under the Sony brand name. I don't now a lot, but doesn't this seem like a bad direction for one of the world's most famous PC brands to take?

Kanebo's rose-essence fragrance and the re-branded Denny's, examples of unique branding in Japan.

Anime & Manga Magazine Subscriptions from Japan

The Japanese have solved the problem of how to save the publishing industry: give cool free stuff to readers, known as omake (oh-mah-kay). J-List carries tons of great magazines through our revolving subscription system, which lets J-List customers buy the most popular anime, manga, hobby, fashion and "H" magazine as they're released in Japan, and many of these magazines come with great free stuff in most any issue. Like Shonen Ace or Young Ace, which has awesome manga stories as well as figures and more for you, or the super-deluxe omake magazine Dengeki G's Festival. If you like loads of anime posters, make sure you subscribe to Megami Magazine or NyanType, both of which are outstanding. These free gifts are only available with that month's issue, and if you miss one it will be very diffcult to find later, so we recommend you consider subscribing (remember, you pay from month-to-month and can quit at any time). Click here to see all the magazine subscriptions J-List sells, ranked by popularity.

Japan's "History Girls"

I often write about the latest wacky social trends to take root in Japan, since I know I'll never run out of material to report on. Like the phenomenon known as bento danshi, or men who take an interest in making healthy and economical bento lunches. If you've been paying attention to the products J-List has been adding to our site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you may have noticed an increase in the historically-themed traditional items we've been carrying, from the bento boxes decorated with samurai crests on them to other interesting traditional Japanese products we add to the site regularly. This is largely due to the recent popularity of Japanese history among females, a phenomenon known as rekijo or "history girls." I've always thought that Japanese have a deeper connection to their own history than we have in the U.S. at least, which you can see in the popularity of jidai geki period dramas on television. But the boom in history among females that's been going on over the couple few years -- no doubt helped by casting handsome actors like Gackt or Masaharu Fukuyama into major roles -- has been fascinating to watch.

Japan's "History Girls" have fallen in love with Japan's past.

Carl Macek, 1951-2010.

I saw the news that Robotech creator Carl Macek had died on Saturday, making it a sad day for all old-school anime fans indeed. As the main person involved with bringing the popular Super Dimensional Fortress Macross series to the English language as Robotech, Carl Macek can be credited with introducing a generation to Japanese animation and doing more to make "anime" a household name than anyone before Katsuhiro Otomo and his film Akira. Of course, no one is going to accuse Mr. Macek of being perfect. His "Will it blend?" approach to joining unrelated shows is fairly annoying to us now, although he did have his reasons for combining three different series into one gestalt (television stations required at least 65 episodes for syndication, so he needed to find additional material from somewhere). I've been attending anime conventions since the late 1980s and met Mr. Macek and his wife many times, and I always admired him and was happy to work in the same industry as him. Tonight I will certainly raise a glass in toast to Carl Macek.

What do you think? Was Carl Macek the "Gene Roddenberry" of the anime world? Or have I been sniffing too much glue? If you're younger than a certain age you likely won't have an opinion, since you'll have only watched decently translated anime that wasn't changed around to fit an external plan. Give me your thoughts in the comments.

Carl Macek helped make anime what it is today.

HP Computers are "Maid in Japan"

Increasingly otaku culture encompassing everything from anime to Miku Hatsune to cosplay is becoming Japan's mainstream culture, at least among anyone with an Internet connection and a Pixiv account. It's always fun when companies get into the spirit of things, like when the Akihabara KFC dressed their Colonel Sanders statue in a maid's costume, or when Microsoft commissioned an official anime character mascot for Windows 7. Now Hewlett-Packard is getting into the game, with its new "Maid In Tokyo" campaign featuring girls from the kawaii idol group "Idoling!!!" who give customers a maid cafe experience right in their web browser. Answer the correct quiz about HP's products and the girls will make desktop wallpaper featuring a picture of a pancake with your name written in chocolate sauce, just like they do in Akihabara.

HP is embracing otaku culture with its "Maid in Tokyo" campaign.

Awesome Bento Boxes @ J-List

J-List takes real pride in the excellent lineup of products we offer to our customers around the world, and our selection of bento boxes is second to none. Whether you're looking for gorgeous traditional themed bento offerings by companies like Hakoya, bento boxes for guys or fun Hello Kitty or Totoro lunchboxes, you can find something fun on our site. Click here to view all bento box offerings, here to see the bento accessories including onigiri makers, or here to see the top 50 bento boxes ranked by order of popularity.

Land of the Lost vs. Anime

Recently I got the urge to re-watch the classic 70s show Land of the Lost, about a family that gets trapped in a strange land populated with dinosaurs and lizard-men and lots of other bizarre creatures. Like Jonny Quest, which I wrote about last month, Land of the Lost was a rare example of a "children's" show that managed to engage and challenge the minds of its viewers, with incredible stories of time travel, alternate worlds and a complete mythos for fans to explore -- it was very much "Lost" for kids. It's no wonder the writing was so good, since SF legends like Ben Bova, Larry Niven and Star Trek's D.C. Fontana contributed scripts, and in the prehistoric days before Japanese animation, it was cutting-edge stuff. Since the show had a budget of about $50 per episode (or so it seemed), they had to get creative on the production side, for example the Sleestak "God of the Pit" who we never see, only hear. While the show did have innovative stories, it retained some of the condescending attitudes of the era -- no matter what kind of dangerous situation Marshall, Will and Holly were in, they'd say things like, "but you might be hurt!" rather than using the word "killed," since kids would apparently be traumatized at the very suggestion of death. Nowadays there are dozens of thoughtful anime series with stories that really challenge the mind, and young people today probably can't imagine a time when virtually all television aimed at anyone under the age of fifteen had to be completely sterile and boring.

Or am I giving TV too much credit for not being condescending to viewers? Maybe it's still bad but I just don't know since I'm grown up and living in Japan.

Land of the Lost told hardcore SF stories in the pre-anime era, and it was gloriousLa.

All About Japanese Variety Shows

Japanese game shows are a popular staple of television here, although "game show" isn't actually that good a name for them since there are no contestants and no cash prizes. The Japanese term "variety show" is better, capturing the wide range of strange and interesting stuff these shows throw out to viewers. One show might invite famous guests on and have them throw a large die with different topics written on each side, like, "talk about something embarrassing that happened to you," and the person will have to talk about that subject if that came up. Often the shows will focus on capturing the amusing reactions of famous stars, like one show I caught the other day which had cute J-POP idols touch objects they couldn't see (but which were visible to us), such as eels or a turtle. Food is another big part of Japanese variety programming, like "Darts Trip" in which darts are thrown at a map and camera crews are dispatched to that location to find interesting stuff to report on, which usually involves discovering exotic regional foods which they bring back to the studio for everyone to eat.

 

Fun with Japanese variety shows. I love Yoon Sona, the girl in the middle, by the way.

Babies Cry When They See Foreign Barbarians

The other day Yasu, the J-List employee who keeps our site stocked with awesome anime artbooks, Japanese study supplies and those wacky "Food Drops" candies, brought his one-year-old daughter Kokoro to J-List to show her off. Kokoro-chan was a cute baby, but she took one look at me and started crying loudly, since she'd never seen a gaijin before and didn't know what to make of this strange-looking creature. (Fortunately the Cat Bus plush toy I gave her made her feel better.) Before I started J-List I taught ESL for several years and I've had my share of kids who were nervous about meeting a strange foreign barbarian who spoke a funny language. This kind of thing is sho ga nai, as they say, meaning "it can't be helped." Since I was often serving as the first non-Japanese person these kids were encountering, I always did my best to avoid doing anything which might traumatize them or make them associate foreigners or studying English with anything bad. I usually wear sunglasses when outside, but since Japanese don't usually wear them -- I've been told that their darker eyes soak up more sunlight so the world doesn't look as bright to them, although I don't buy that for a second -- I always take my sunglasses off when around kids to keep from scaring them.

Babies often cry when they encounter gaijin, since we're new and strange to them.

J-List Free T-Shirt Sale! Buy 2, Get a "Mystery" Shirt Free

For years J-List has been printing our line of awesome kanji and anime T-shirts and we have a huge lineup of really great designs, no matter what your interest in Japan is. Now in order to help us make room for cool new designs, we're announcing the J-List T-shirt Sale! For every two San Diego-based T-shirts or hoodies you buy, we'll send you a "mystery" T-shirt for free -- think of it like a free "Lucky Bag" surprise. It's a great time to browse our lineup of awesome designs and pick up a shirt or four! Click here to see all our wacky shirts, here to view shirts for girls and kids, or here to browse the top 50 T-shirt over the past week.

Job Interviews in Japan

Running a business in Japan naturally means I have to interview Japanese job applicants who want to work for J-List, and I often wonder if they're not freaked out by having a foreigner sit down across from them at the interview. Job interviews work somewhat differently in Japan compared to the rest of the world. Here, in lieu of a western resume or C.V. applicants write out a form called a rirekisho or "personal history form" which shows all school, work and other related information. (We had to learn to fill these out as part of my Japanese class.) A reserved, humble attitude is extremely important during a Japanese-style job interview, too, and successful applicants will actually talk down their own past work achievements in ways that would be incomprehensible in the U.S., where resume-padding and a bit of exaggeration are all part of getting a job. When my wife was learning English in the U.S. they would do mock interviews and she was unable to talk about any of her achievements, so used to being humble at job interviews was she.


Of course, a lot of these odd rules are thrown out the window in the case of foreigners, so if you ever find yourself in a job interview here, don't worry too much about it. They can't very well expect foreigners interviewing for, say, a cheerful ESL teacher to act as if they have no personality as Japanese must do.

Job interviews are a unique (and strange) process in Japan.

More on "Kata" and Japan

I've written before about how one interesting way to make sense of Japan is through the concept of kata, a word which can be translated in many ways, including "mold" (to shape things with), "model" (as in the model number of a computer or other product), "type" (for classification, also being used for blood type), or the customary postures taken in martial arts. It's the word's meaning of "customary form" that I'm mostly concerned with here, and the way it describes the patterns of thinking that become accepted practices in Japan, which no one ever then thinks very deeply about. I saw a news item the other day about popular AKB48 idol Atsuko Maeda being named "Police Chief For a Day" in Tokyo to help kick off this year's Spring Traffic Safety Week, and this seemed to me like a good example of kata in action. To have a pop star appear in fluffy media stories wearing a police uniform is silly on the surface, but viewed as a part of a pre-defined idea that famous stars will lend their names to certain projects for the public good, it's easier to understand. (If you are a fan of AKB48, their music is available through the iTunes Japan store with the prepaid cards we stock. You may need log out and select the iTunes Japan store to access the songs.)

AKB48 star Atsuko Maeda was Police Chief for a Day.

Love Letter in the Shoes Box

When you become a fan of Japanese animation, you expose yourself to a world of cultural concepts that are strange and unfamiliar at first, but which are always fun to learn about. Like the nuances between senpai and kohai, or senior and junior in a school or organization, something that doesn't generally exist in America. (The high school I went to went from 8th through 12th grade, and Japanese are always amazed to hear that many classes were taught with students of different grades learning together, which would be unthinkable here.) Another meme you see in anime a lot is a girl or boy who gets a love letter from an admirer wanting to confess their love. In Japanese schools, there are racks of geta-bako or "shoes boxes" where you put your dirty outdoor shoes and change into soft shoes that are worn inside the school. The popularity of a given anime character is often communicated to the audience by how many love letters fall out of his or her shoes box when they open it, a cultural message that would likely be difficult for Westerners to understand at first

"Love letter in the shoes box" is a popular anime meme.

The Top Products at J-List Ranking

J-List carries a lot of unique and interesting products, and it can be fun to see what the top 50 products are, which you can view using this link. Many customers have come to rely on our iTunes Japan prepaid cards to access great music and other content through iTMS Japan, which pushes those cards way up to the to spot. People are rushing to get the last Sakura Green Tea Kit Kat before warm weather arrives, forcing us to remove all chocolate products from the site. We sell traditional dagashi products like the Neri Ame liquid candy you knead with chopsticks, which is all very inexpensive, making it popular with customers. Finally our selection of bento boxes is second to none, and we love to see them move up in the ranking.

Flower Viewing, Summer Wars Style

Over the weekend I wanted to take the family someplace special to enjoy the beautiful sakura that were in full bloom. We opted to go to Ueda (oo-EH-da), a Japanese city in Nagano Prefecture with an old castle that saw a couple of important battles between Ieyasu Tokugawa and the Sanada clan in its heydey. An amazing 1000 sakura trees had been planted throughout the castle grounds, and they were just wonderful to see. Ueda Castle is an especially popular tourist destination this year since it was used as the inspiration for several locations in the animated film Summer Wars. The city has gone all-out to welcome anime fans, publishing an official Summer Wars guide to the areas used in the film in PDF format (links here and here) and selling limited edition Summer Wars products at the castle.

As we walked around the castle grounds contemplating the beauty of the cherry blossoms, I was happy to see stalls selling various foods. They were yatai, small open-air food stands that are always found at Japanese festivals or outside Shinto shrines during cultural events. There's always something good to find at a yatai, from Takoyaki and Taiyaki to Chocolate Banana Crepes and roasted corn and soy sauce, and of course Jyaga Butter baked potatoes, a favorite of mine. It was great to roam around while eating a little of this and a little of that then take a nap under the cherry blossoms. Of course, you can enjoy some of these tastes in the form of the traditional Food Drops candies that J-List sells, which taste remarkably faithful to the original foods.

(You can see pictures from my flower viewing in a Flickr slideshow a few posts down)

Tthe sakura were beautiful at Ueda Castle, and the Chocolate Banana Crepes were good too.

International Marriage in Japan and "My Darling is a Foreigner"

Japanese marrying partners from other countries is called kokusai kekkon, and it's viewed by many here as an alternative choice for those who want something different than what a Japanese spouse offers. Currently about 6% of registered marriages are between Japanese and foreigners (8.4% in Tokyo), a high number considering we account for just 1.5% of the population here. Japanese females often have a rose-colored view of what it must be like to be married to an American, expecting that we hold doors and chairs like perfect gentlemen, do the dishes every night and sometimes cook up a romantic dinner for two. We also say "I love you" often, unlike Japanese men who supposedly don't communicate with their wives as well, in some cases saying nothing more to them than than Meshi! Furo! Neru! (Food! Bath! Sleep!) after getting home from work. Children produced by international marriages must surely be kawaii, just like having your own living Licca-chan doll. (Licca is a popular fashion doll who is half-Japanese, half-French.) When Japanese women think of marrying a foreigner, they probably imagine something like Darling wa Gaikokujin, or My Darling is a Foreigner, a popular manga about a Japanese woman who marries an American man and all the funny misunderstandings they have together. The series has been made into a major Japanese film now, which explores the challenges people from different cultures face when trying to make a life together.

"My Darling is a Foreigner" is now a major film release in Japan.

Anime Cosplay Season is Coming

The summer anime conventions will be here before you know it, and we're busy beefing up our stock of great complete anime costumes and other accessories. Whether you're looking for cosplay outfits for guys to wear or costumes for girls, we've got a great selection for you. We also have those awesome authentic school uniforms from Matsukameya of Nagoya, for making the ultimate otaku statement, as well as great costume accessories like our Ninja Masks, anime Eye Patch and authentic "skirt type" school swimsuit.

Flower Viewing 2010, Summer Wars Style

I took the kids to Ueda, a town in Nagano Prefecture famous for its "1000 sakura trees" park inside the old Ueda Castle, which is where a lot of the scenes from Summer Wars were set. Here is a Flickr slidedshow of the pictures if you'd like to see them.