Throwing Yen Away

If you walk around San Diego and happen to see some Japanese yen coins on the ground, I might have put them there. Since I arrived from Japan, I've been finding yen in my pocket that isn't worth terribly much, so rather than carry it all the way back home with me I've been dropping the coins in parking lots and on sidewalks for others to find. I often do the reverse when I'm in Japan, tossing pennies or dimes or quarters from the U.S. that I happen to have carried back to Japan with me onto the ground, where they might be picked up by someone and puzzled over. Perhaps there's some high school student who isn't sure of their future, I reason, and finding a "lucky penny" from the U.S. will push them to study English more. Or perhaps finding a cool Japanese five-yen coin with its stylistic "zen" design and hole in the center (so you can carry your coins on a string) will make someone's day in the U.S. It's silly, of course, but if I can make one person happy by tossing a few coins around, I'd consider it a good exchange.

If I have yen I don't need, I like to toss some coins to the four winds.

Of Personal Checks, Garbage Disposals, Bread and Tissue

When going to the U.S. from Japan, there are little things you notice. First, being able to pay for something by writing a personal check is convenient, yet something that's totally unknown in Japan, where people usually use cash for purchases, and the concept of checks doesn't exist at all. Garbage disposals are another thing -- it's so easy to get rid of uneaten food and other nama gomi (lit. "raw garbage") with one, but they aren't allowed in Japan because of all the rice people eat, which would clog the pipes. In Japan bread only lasts a couple of days before it goes stale, yet bread in the U.S. seems to last for two weeks or more, presumably due to higher levels of preservatives. And tissue in the U.S. is markedly different from Japan. Not only is it more expensive -- you can get a five-pack of large boxes of tissue for $3.00 at Japanese stores, which seems ridiculously cheap to me -- but the sheets are thick and luxurious, almost too much so, and I get the impression that it's made that thick so they can give you fewer sheets in each box. And what's up with rose scent? Every time I sneeze I feel like someone has put perfume inside my nose.

Tissues in the U.S. are different from Japan is subtle ways.

Peter's Favorite Places to Visit in Japan

In the tradition of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Japanese are keen on organizing famous places into convenient sets of three. The three most beautiful Japanese gardens are Kenroku-en in Kanazawa Prefecture, Kairaku-en in Mito and Koraku-en in Okayama, for example, while the three best night views of Japanese cities are Hakodate, Kobe and Nagasaki. In that tradition, I present to you...Peter's favorite three things to see in Japan. Number three would have to be Byodo-in temple near Kyoto, a serene building built in 998 A.D. which can be seen on the back of the Japanese ten yen coin. Next is Todai-ji, the beautiful temple in Nara that houses the largest bronze statue of Buddha in Japan, a wonderful area to explore. And my all-time favorite place in all Japan is Sanjusangen-do, or the Hall of Thirty-Three Bays, a fabulous elongated building in Kyoto housing 1001 wooden statues of Buddha. Walking the length of the 850 year old building to see all the statues all will really change the way you view the world.

It's said you can find your own face among the Buddha statues.

Too Many Eulogies

So far this has been a heck of a year for losing awesome people, including Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper, J.D. Salinger and the "Great Bird of the Anime Galaxy" Carl Macek. Now Peter Fernandez, who provided the voice of Speed Racer, wrote the famous theme song and directed all the episodes has passed away at the age of 83. Like Robotech creator Carl Macek, Peter was responsible for guiding a generation of young people towards Japan, although no one knew the word "anime" back in 1967. He single-handedly created the impression that dubbed Japanese animation sounded "funny," with odd syllables tacked onto the ends of sentences to make the mouth movements fit better. My mother met Mr. Fernandez at an auto show and talked his ear off about her nutty son who learned Japanese and went to live in Japan all because of Speed Racer (there was a little more to it than that, Mom). Incidentally, Peter's influence on the anime community wasn't all positive. After the success of the first two seasons of Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato, the melodramatic anime series about the battleship Yamato being converted into a spaceship to save Earth from destruction, Peter was brought in to produce the third season, the Bolar Wars. Since he didn't know the (excellent) voice acting staff that had done the first two seasons, he brought in all new talent, which unfortunately rendered season three unwatchable to old school fans like me, since the voices are all wrong.

Speed Racer reaches the finish line in the sky, uh-huh.

Faux Pas in Japan

Before I came to Japan in 1991, I took four years of Japanese at my alma mater, SDSU, so compared to most first-time gaijin I spoke quite a lot of Japanese. I could do many useful things, like ask directions when I got lost (which was a frequent occurrence, as there are no street names in Japan), and I knew just enough Japanese for me to put my foot in my mouth really, really well. Yes, I've committed many faux pas during my time in Japan, such as trying to impress a pretty girl by speaking Japanese to her, but accidentally using onna kotoba, words that women use which are the bane of male students of Japanese, or committing a deadly slip when ordering mango juice, since "mango" is dangerously close to the worst word that exists in Japanese. (Manko is the word for the female reproductive area.) In Japanese hospitals, thermometers are always used in the armpit, but I put one in my mouth, causing much shock among the nurses, who had never seen anyone do such a barbaric thing. And then there was the time I bought my wife some pretty flowers, only to find out that I'd accidentally bought kiku no hana (chrysanthemums), which are only used as offerings to the dead on special Buddhist days -- that really got a laugh out of her.

Very pretty, but only for dead people.

Grind Up Those Sesame Seeds

In a recent update I mentioned that the way to express the idea of "brown-nosing" someone was goma o suru, literally meaning "to grind up someone's sesame seeds for them." If you want to try this word out on Japanese people you know, just say goma-suri! ("stop trying to flatter me!") when someone says something nice to you, then watch them jump out of their shoes in surprise that you know a word like that. This phrase is one idiom that's commonly used in Japanese, although it sounds strange to us since the cultural image of an underling winning points with his boss by grinding his sesame seeds is so different from what we're used to. Japanese spend many thousands of hours memorizing the strange idioms and turns of phrase we use in English, never quite sure why it could be possible to "rain cats and dogs," or why something simple is a "piece of cake" or "easy as pie" but not the other way around. As is usually the case with language, asking why something means what it means doesn't get you very far, so encapsulating what you're trying to learn as a defined unit and figuring what situations it works best in is usually a good approach.

If you want a raise, grind up your boss's sesame seeds.

Prime Minister KHAAAN! Suffers a Setback

The Japanese election was last Sunday, and as expected, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan lost ground, giving up a total of ten Upper House seats. It was a big setback for Prime Minister Kan (warning, sound will play), who took over after Yukio Hatoyama's fail whale inability to resolve the base-related issues on Okinawa, make all freeways free and magically put $250 per child into the bank accounts of every family in the country each month. The opposition Liberal Democratic Party picked up seats, despite having no viable plan to fix what's wrong with Japan and no stand-out leaders as far as I can tell. Another winner in Sunday's election was Your Party...no, I don't mean your party, but Your Party, also known as Minna no Toh (lit. "everyone's political party"), which combines some popular reform policies of the DPJ with the pro-business stance of the LDP, the better to form a coalition with either group. While I'm not against the new party's principles, any political party whose official English name is Your Party is just asking to be mocked by Stephen Colbert.

The Democratic Party of Japan faces a setback.

Japan's Foreign Population Dips

Like all countries, there are various foreigners living in Japan, and the "made in Japan" TV you bought last month was likely assembled in part by hands from Brazil, Peru, India, Korea, and so on. Last year the number of foreigners living in Japan declined for the first time since 1961, dropping by about 31,000 from the previous year to 2.2 million people, or 1.72% of Japan's population. The reason of course is the bad economy and accompanying slashing of jobs in factories in 2008 and 2009, although most of those jobs have happily recovered. Having the number of foreigners living in Japan drop is a bad situation in part because many see immigration as the last chance Japan has to turn its population decline around. Since Japanese are only having 1.3 babies per couple on average, it's up to immigration to help provide economic vitality as the country ages. Yet Japan has essentially zero people coming from the outside to settle permanently, compared with 1.2 million legal immigrants who enter the U.S. to live and work each year, contributing to the tax base and in many cases taking American citizenship and adding greatly to our country.

Japan's foreign population dropped for the first time since 1961.

Is Japan Strange?

If you read blogs about Japan at all, one question that gets asked a lot is, "Why is Japan so strange?" And looking at images of middle-aged salarymen wearing Lucky Star cosplay and kawaii gravure idol Aki Hoshino with nylon stockings over her head which are then pulled up, making her face look ridiculous, one might think that Japan is just a tad odd. But as I've written before, there's a tendency for only those aspects of Japan which look strange or ridiculous to our gaijin sensibilities to be reported on the Internet and by the masukomi (the news media, shortened from the English "mass communications"). When nothing bizarre happens in Japan, there's only silence from the country, but once a man tries to legally marry his favorite Love Plus video game character, people start wondering that they're putting in Japan's drinking water. I remember growing up in the 1970s watching the awesome Monty Python and Benny Hill on American TV, and I had a somewhat warped impression of the U.K. as a result. Yet nothing less bizarre and hilarious could have broken through the cultural wall, so that's what we got.

Then again, maybe Japan is a little strange.

Japan, a Land Without Lawyers?

What would you do in a world without lawyers? Well, for all intents and purposes that that's the reality of life in Japan, a country that has just one lawyer for every 7325 people, compared with one per 288 individuals in the United States. Lawyers are extremely rare in Japan, and I've only met one during my 19 years in the country, despite having several friends in the U.S. who hold law degrees. Since people obviously need to file various legal documents at different times in their lives, there's a lesser official called shiho shoshi (which Google tells me translates as "administrative scrivener") who can file papers related to starting businesses, buying land and so on. Like politicians, doctors and certified public accountants, lawyers in Japan belong to a class of occupations that have a special status, and they're called by the respectful title of sensei. And I'm pretty sure they don't have lawyer jokes in Japan.

If you want to live in a place with no lawyers, come to Japan.

My Route 66 Weekend Vacation

Over the weekend I came across a cool map of old Route 66 in my house in San Diego, and decided to take an impromptu road trip to the historic American highway -- like, leaving immediately after throwing some clothes in my mother's prized Mazda Miata. Road trips are always fun, but when you're coming from a cramped, urbanized country like Japan, which has around half the population of the U.S. crammed into 1/25 the land area, there's something special about getting out on the open road and driving for hundreds of miles. They have freeways in Japan, but for the most part you only use them when making a long-distance journey like going from my home prefecture of Gunma down to Tokyo, not for short hops around town. Instead, most driving in Japan is on normal roads, with traffic lights, road construction and pachinko parlors all around you, and you could easily drive for an hour and only have travelled 20 km or so.

At the Grand Canyon, I happened to drive past the Flintstone's Bedrock City Campground, an RV park designed to look like the world of Fred Flintstone, right down to the rock-wheel car he drove in the animated series. The first word out of my mouth when I saw the amazing place was dasa-kakko ii. This is a combination of the word dasai (da-sah-ee), which means uncool, out of fashion or cheesy, and kakko ii (kah-koh ee), which means cool or "good style." Put together, the two words describe something that's both campy yet awesome nevertheless, meaning something like "dorky-cool" in English.

I also stopped by the Grand Canyon, beautiful as always; this campground was dasa-kakko ii or "dorky-cool."

Godzilla Day is My Blogger Anniversary Day

This Sunday is my 12th anniversary as a J-blogger. J-List has been around since 1996, but I trace my beginning as a blogger to the Japanese release of that awful American Godzilla film. I went to see the film with my wife, and as we drove back to our house I was so full of comments I had to send a J-List email update at 3 am to get them all out. I wrote about how the Japanese films illustrated the concept of wabi and sabi, translated as "sober refinement and elegant simplicity," the esthetic idea that a single rose blooming is more beautiful than one hundred roses, or that a single monster battling all of Japan is more beautiful than a hundred baby Godzillas running around New York. I got an enormous amount of feedback from customers asking for more commentary like that, and I realized that J-List isn't in the business of selling anime figures and bento boxes and "Looking for a Japanese girlfriend" T-shirts, but is instead all about being a bridge of ideas to Japan for people around the world.

Strangely enough, I'm thankful to this guy for helping me become a better blogger.

Food is a Natural Cultural Bridge

San Diego has a vibrant Asian community, and driving down the Convoy Street will introduce you to a wealth of restaurants serving Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and other types of cuisine. Yesterday some friends invited me out to a place called Yakyudori for good ramen and Sapporo beer, and everything was delicious. While we were eating, I realized everyone in our group seemed to know all the Japanese words related to the food we were enjoying, from shoyu (soy sauce) ramen to katsu (fried pork cutlet) to edamame beans. It then occurred to me that food is a natural area that bridges Japanese and Western culture, providing an easy toehold for people to mingle language and ideas back and forth. There are many other "natural cultural bridges" that make it easy to share information between East and West, such as kaiju monster movies, martial arts, anything awesome related to samurai and ninja, and of course the ecchi stuff. Are there any other natural bridges between Japan and the rest of the world you can think of?

Food is an natural cultural bridge between East and West.

How 'Bout my Crooked Teeth?

One of the highlights of Anime Expo was the concert given by the two singers of Macross Frontier, the 25th anniversary sequel to the original Macross series. The concert featured May'n, who performs the singing voice of the sexy Sheryl Nome, and Megumi Nakashima, the voice of Ranka Lee, and it was a blast. Besides the live stage, the concert hall featured two giant TV screens which showed close-up video of the stars as they sang. This was great, but for one problem: seeing both singers close-up like that made me really want to take them to a good orthodontist. For someone reason, Japanese often have crooked teeth which look strange to Westerners, almost like they've got too many teeth for their mouth. These teeth are often fixed with braces as children, although just as often they're left the way they are since, well, they're considered to be very cute. Crooked teeth are called yaeba (yah-eh-ba) and as far as I can tell, they function in Japan the way a beauty mark works in the West: a tiny defect in a person that becomes their "charm point."

I'd have given my eye teeth to take these girls to a good orthodontist.

In Japan, Yes Doesn't Mean Yes

Leave it to Japan to turn something as simple as "yes" and "no" into something more complex than it needs to be. But because of the differences in language and culture, sometimes even these simple concepts can cause confusion. "Yes" in Japanese is hai, and in addition to affirming a statement or question, it's also used to let the person whose talking to you know you're listening attentively. This is called aizuchi, words of agreement that a Japanese will say while listening to another person. It's not uncommon for gaijin to assume that a person saying hai...hai to us is actually agreeing with what we're saying, when in fact the opposite may well be true. "No" in Japanese is iie (EE-eh), but in a society with as many shades of grey as Japan, its actually quite rare to hear a statement or question answered with such a flatly negative word. It's more common to hear something like chotto (CHOE-toe, which literally means "a little") used to vaguely hint that the cookies you'd baked didn't taste very good ("well, they're a little..."), rather than a direct negative statement ("no, I don't like them"). One of the more common uses of iie is in response to someone thanking you for something, in which case it means something like "No, don't mention it."

Yes means yes, unless it doesn't. No means, "Don't mention it." .

Driving in the U.S. vs. Japan

Driving in the U.S. after living in Japan for so long presents certain challenges. Like the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, Japan drives on the left side of the street, which means you need to pay attention to what other cars are doing when switching from one country to the other to avoid any problems. Although it's not that difficult to make the switch -- just make sure you're closer to the center of the road than your passenger, whichever country you're in -- I find it's impossible to keep from accidentally trying to get into the wrong side of a car, no matter where I am. Similarly, although automobile controls are identical no matter what country you're in, the turn signal and windshield wiper controls are reversed between the U.S. and Japan. This increases the likelihood that I'll accidentally turn my wipers on when making a turn, usually when a group of attractive girls happens to be watching me. In Japan, there's a 5-second delay between when one traffic light turns red and the next changes to green, which means there's always a stream of cars running every red light since people know they have a few more seconds to make it across. This time delay doesn't exist in the U.S. however, which is a very important thing to keep in mind when driving.

Like the U.K., the Japanese drive on the left, which causes me to get in on the wrong side of the car sometimes.

$50 Hello Kitty Melons

The other day I saw a post about the newest in wacky fruit goodness from Japan, a high quality yubari melon with Hello Kitty's face embossed into the skin. For those not used to Japan's world of high-end fruit, the price of this rare treat -- a cool $55 -- might have seemed excessive, although it was pretty much what anyone would pay for a really delicious hand-grown melon shipped in a special gift box. Japan is really into gift giving, and there are two gift seasons called chugen (in the summer) and oseibo (in the winter) during which families give gifts to people who have helped them especially, like neighbors or teachers or anyone whose sesame seeds they want to grind up. (The way to express the idea of "brown nosing" someone in Japanese is goma o suru, lit. to grind sesame seeds for someone.) Popular gifts include delicious boxed fruit, gift boxes of beer or sake, useful household items lke detergent or soy sauce, rare steaks of Kobe beef, and other really awesome stuff. It's also common for employees to give gifts to their bosses, to butter them up before the summer and winter bonuses seasons. You can even find gift items on J-List's popular Anime and Gift Snacks page...

In Japan, giving $50 melons as gifts is an important part of the culture.

All About "Sumimasen"

You may know the Japanese word sumimasen, which generally corresponds to "excuse me" and is one of the more useful phrases to learn, but like most aspects of Japan there's a little more to it than appears on the surface. First and foremost, sumimasen (soo-mee-mah-SEN) is used in any situation where you need to apologize for something small, such as causing someone inconvenience by bumping into them in the street, calling the wrong number, or ordering curry with beef intestines accidentally because you couldn't read the kanji in the menu, then asking for something else instead. Many situations which would call for a "thank you" in English work better with sumimasen in Japanese, something I learned at a public bath a few weeks after first arriving here. We'd stayed a few minutes after closing time, causing minor inconvenience to the staff who no doubt wanted to get home, and as we left my Japanese coworker said sumimasen to them ("we're sorry for taking too long in the bath") rather than the phrase I would have used, arigato ("thank you for letting us stay a few minutes past closing time"). When I asked about this, I was told that "'Thank you' sounds cheap. 'Excuse me' is a better word for Japanese people." The sumimasen phrase is also used when asking for service in a restaurant, and one difference between Japan and the U.S. is that in Japan, it's okay to loudly use the phrase to indicate that you're ready to order, whereas in the States you usually close your menu and sit quietly to be noticed most of the time. Like many Japanese phrases, you can use the all-purpose word domo (which loosely means "very") to add a layer of politeness, e.g. domo sumimasen! ("I'm really sorry!").

Sumimasen is one of the most commonly used words in Japan.

Slurp Your Noodles in Japan

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way of eating Japanese and Chinese noodles like ramen, udon and soba is to slurp them while holding your face near the bowl, sucking in the soup along with the noodles. There's no upper ceiling to how loud you're allowed to slurp, and making these noises is one way of letting whoever prepared the noodles for you know that you think they're delicious. When foreigners come to Japan, they usually eat their noodles without making these noises, prompting Japanese to say shizuka desu ne ("you eat very quietly"). There are other differences in eating etiquette. In Japan, it's perfectly okay to pick up your ramen bowl and drink the soup from it directly, although drinking out of a bowl might get a child smacked in the U.S. It's okay to slurp Asian-style noodles, but spaghetti is another matter, and the image of an old Japanese man loudly vacuuming his pasta off the plate is very unsophisticated. Some table manner no-no's are related to Buddhism, including the taboo against sticking chopsticks straight up in rice or handing food to someone else chopsticks-to-chopsticks (both of which are part of funeral ceremonies in Japan).

Eating some foods quietly is considered strange in Japan.

Japanese Girls Think Their Fathers Are Unclean

Well, we're done with Anime Expo, and what a fun time it was. Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello during the show!

In the last season of Lost, Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada -- quite well known outside Japan due to his being in Ring and The Last Samurai -- played the role of the mysterious priest Dogan, who keeps the smoke monster out of the temple or something. My wife has a been a fan of his since his Japan Action Club days, and was thrilled to be able to enjoy some lines of dialogue in her native language, rather than in the many difficult dialects of English that Lost is so good at. In his first scene, Dogan refers to an "infection" (kegare) that one character had been exposed to. It was a word I knew well, because it's what my Japanese daughter says if I try to kiss her good night. For some reason, Japanese girls have a major issue with their fathers once they reach a certain age, which seems to go beyond the general fear of "cooties" that all teenagers might feel. In Japan people take baths every day, and a family will use the bath water for several family members, since all washing is done outside the tub, but my daughter insists on taking her bath before me every night, so my fatherly bacteria won't infect her. It's not that she hates me or anything -- we get along great. She's just decided that, like all fathers, I am simply unclean.

So what do you think? If you're female, do you hug and kiss your father, or push him away because he smells bad and makes dumb jokes?

Japanese girls often view their fathers as "unclean."

Ways Japan Has Changed

I like to think back on what Japan was like when I first arrived, in 1991. Although the Tokyo land bubble had officially burst two years before, the halo of Japan's long period of rapid economic growth still pervaded the country. Employment was high, and everyone had plenty of money to buy silly things like toilets that wash and dry your butt, complete with remote controls -- why anyone would need a remote control for a toilet seat I can't say, but I've seen them with my own eyes. There was actually too much employment in Japan back in those days. On my first trip to Tokyo Disneyland I went into an ice cream shop and was surprised to see no less than eleven employees, wiping down counters while they waited to serve me, although I was the only customer in the store. It was a magical time, when companies could make profits without asking themselves hard questions about how they were serving their customers. The hard times that Japan faced throughout the "lost decade" that came after were difficult indeed but at least Japan emerged a leaner, more efficient place as a result.

Japan has changed a lot since I've been here.

English Education Reform in Japan

The Japanese Ministry of Education has announced a new initiative designed to improve English ability by requiring English lessons to start in the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school, instead of the first grade of junior high school, which is the current policy. You might think that the future might see an improvement in the language skills of the Japanese due to this bold new plan, but if you've taught ESL in Japan for as long as I did, you'd know that precious little will actually change. The program essentially calls for Japanese teachers who may or may not have any special language skill to add an hour of English instruction per week. Since many homeroom teachers don't know English at all, other than the dreary grammar they were forced to memorize for their university entrance exams, I'm afraid many students will have katakana-ified English ingrained on their brains and will have even more trouble learning any kind of natural, living English later. Even bringing in native English teachers doesn't solve the problem. An hour of English per week simply isn't enough to build a base of vocabulary and give students confidence at using the language. I don't mean to be pessismistic, but without Japan studying successful bilingualism programs in countries like Canada and the Netherlands and making touch choices, Japan will always be EFL (English as a Foreign Language), not ESL (English as a Second Language), and things will pretty much always be the same.

Japan is rolling out another English reform program.

Japan, the Most Pro-American Country In The World?

One of the better aspects about living in Japan, from the point of view as a Yankee expat, is the country's status as the most "pro-American" nation in the world. From James Dean to Marilyn Monroe to Hollywood and Hawaii, the average Japanese person tends to have a favorable image of the United States, despite a few minor problems like the current rise in tensions over the Futenma Marine Base on Okinawa. Two of the most popular icons in "Japanese" history are Admiral Matthew C. Perry, who forced Japan to trade with the U.S. at gunpoint in 1854 , and Douglas MacArthur, the victorious general who oversaw the occupation of Japan, credited by many (my mother-in-law included) for "saving" Japan from itself and helping to create the modern country we know today. Which is kind of odd, since Perry and MacArthur can were nothing if not enemies of Japan at the time, and yet today they're considered heroes. Carrying it a bit further, America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and yet the Japanese nearly always have a positive view of the U.S. If you figure Japan out, can you tell me?

Admiral Perry is often made into a cute mascot character.

Good News for Eroge Fans

If you're a fan of the PC dating-sim games J-List sells, then Christmas just came early. We've got not one, but two awesome games in stock for you today. First is the fabulous sequel to dungeon-crawling yuri-RPG Lightning Warrior Raidy. Raidy 2 is 3x as big as the original, with towns, items to buy and sell, multiple 3D dungeons to explore, and more saucy wandering monsters and bosses than you can shake a sword at. Then enjoy Moero Downhill Night 2, which combines fast-paced Initial "D" style downhill racing with beautiful girls who want you to take them to the finish line. A super sequel to the first game, with many great girls and cars to race. Both games are shipping now on CD-ROM, or wait to order the download in a week (to allow time for preorders to reach customers). Official website for Moero Downhill Night 2 is online, too!

How Kanji Input with Computer Works

I remember when I first started learning Japanese, I wondered how Japanese text entry could work on a computer. I pictured some horrible keyboard with hundreds of keys, but in reality, Japanese computers use the same QWERTY keyboards as everyone else (though often with cool katakana characters printed on the keys). Japanese input is accomplished through a front-end processor, basically a program that ships with Windows and Mac OS X (and iPhone/iPad) that handles converting your text into the correct mix of hiragana, katakana and kanji before it's pasted into your document or email. With Japanese text input selected, you type some text with the keyboard -- for example, aoi sora which means "blue sky." Hit the space bar, and the computer will convert the text you've just typed into the kanji/kana combination it thinks you want, although sometimes problems can occur here, as there are often alternate or archaic kanji in the computer's dictionaries, and it can be hard to know which to choose. When you get used to the system, you can enter Japanese text quite quickly, although there's a downside -- entering Japanese into a computer becomes so easy that it's easy to forget how to write kanji manually.

Dude, there's katakana on the computer keys.

Giving Speeches in Japanese

While the Japan Language Proficiency Test is the most recognized test of Japanese, and likely the best for anyone studying the language to focus on, there are other, more abstract tests of one's Japanese ability. Like ordering a pizza, and explaining to the person on the other end of the phone how to get to your house. Or ordering fast food at a drive-thru and trying to get one's Japanese accent so good that the person on the other end doesn't know you're a foreigner. Another test that "lifer" gaijin like me will eventually need to pass is giving a speech in Japanese, which I've done many times. In fact, because I run a company, whenever one of my Japanese employees get married I'm often the guest of honor, expected to give the longest speech. The other day the J-List crowd got together to say thanks and sayonara to Asami, the J-List employee who keeps us well stocked with bento, traditional and fashion products. I'm in San Diego with family now, but I wanted to write a little speech to let Asami know how much we'd appreciated her hard work over the last three years, which I had my wife read in my place. Thanks, Asami, and welcome to Ai-chan, her capable replacement.

Live in Japan long enough, and you'll have to give a speech in Japanese.

Living in Japan Changes You

First of all, the J-List and JBOX.com websites were down for a portion of Saturday due to a site issue (a random DDOS attack). Apologies if you were trying to use the site during that time -- everything is fixed now.

Living for many years away from your home country would change anyone, and being in Japan is no different. For those working as teachers of English as a second language (ESL), the long hours of interacting only with students can lead to embarrassing changes in your own language skills -- you can actually end up speaking English too clearly and carefully. In Japanese society, modesty is considered an important trait to have -- it's much better to be self-effacing than boastful -- and that can rub off on gaijin who have lived in Japan a long time. Japanese roads generally don't have names, which forces your brain to remember roads spatially, rather than memorize places locations by street names, and I fancied I could feel my brain stretching to adapt to my strange new environment. Also, since the Japanese language uses the katakana writing system to express foreign words, I sometimes found myself losing the connection with how words are spelled in English. For some reason I'd never encountered the famous Louis Vuitton brand before going to Japan, and I basically learned the name in katakana. It took me several years to learn how to spell it in English.

Teaching ESL can make you speak too slowly and clearly.

Three Words of Japanese For You

Life is a little more fun when you know some Japanese, whether it's to communicate with nihonjin who can't use English or to catch the attention of cute Japanese coeds on campus. One word you can get quite a lot of mileage from is sugoi (soo-GO-ee), which means "amazing" or "incredible" and which can be used just about any time you need to praise someone. See a Japanese man who's adept at playing the Super Mario theme on an accordion? Just tell him sugoi! and your meaning will be instantly communicated. Then there's daijobu (die-JOE-boo), which means "okay" or "alright" and is generally one of the first words a person learns after coming to Japan. Want to ask if someone is alright with your menu selection at a restaurant, or if they're okay after bumping into that drunk salaryman just now? Just say Daijobu? (Are you okay?) and they can reply, Daijobu (Sure, I'm fine). Finally, another fun short word you can find some interesting uses for is zan-nen (ZAHN-nen), which means "what a shame!" or "how unfortunate!" If someone misses the answer to a question or otherwise fails at something, you can pull this word out and get some laughs from them. It's used a lot by Japanese game show hosts when a guest makes a wrong answer and misses out on the big prize.

Daijobu! It's okay! 

Japanese Hate Speaking English

I see that some of Japan's manga publishers are finally taking action against websites that allow large-scale downloading of their copyrighted works. You could make arguments about the merits of scanlations, including reaching larger audiences, giving access to books that wouldn't be profitable to print and providing competition for licensors, but the question of why haven't Japanese companies done anything about these sites until now is an interesting one. While some might point to the slowness of Japanese companies in coming to grips with the many changes brought by the Internet, my own pet theory is that the individual executives working at these companies are personally terrified that if they took action against any group outside Japan they'd have to speak English at some point. Yes, there's an odd complex among some Japanese (principally males) that if they deal with foreigners in any way, they'll be called upon to speak English and will be embarrassed if they can't. Maybe they could, um, hire someone who speaks English to handle that part?

Some Japanese (usually males) have a complex about English.

Stuff I Buy in the USA

One of my Twitter followers asked me a question the other day. "What items do you take back to Japan with you when you visit the States?" Well, I flit between the U.S. and Japan more than most gaijin, so I've got a pretty good system in place. First, there are certain staples that I like having at home, including "Butter Lite" syrup for pancakes, since Japanese syrup tastes like overly sweet honey, and I always have to bring powdered packets of taco sauce mix, gravy and so on, since it's handy to have around. A bottle of vitamins costs about the same as it does in the U.S. but for 1/5 the contents, hence I always stock up on any health products I think I might need. There's nothing worse than being sick and not having access to the cold remedies you're most familiar with, so I always restock my medicine cabinet with everything from NyQuil to Alka-Seltzer Plus to Advil. The night before my flight back to Japan I go to a store and get Mexican tortillas and a block of really good cheese, since cheese in Japan is limited to "slice cheese" (which is yellow and tasteless) and "melty cheese" (which is white, and also tasteless).

Whenever I'm in the U.S. I stock up on things I can't buy in Japan.

Funny Products in the USA: Green Tea w/Lemon?

Whenever I'm back in the U.S., I like to go to the grocery store and compare the various products I see with stores back in Japan. American companies like using "brand extension" to create spin-off products tied to existing brands -- this is where such such wonderful ideas as Colgate frozen dinner entrees, Coors' bottled mineral water and FritoLay's brand lemonade came from -- and when I go into a store in the U.S. I'm never sure what wacky new crossover product I'll see. It's also fun to check out the local versions of familiar products in Japan, like the chicken flavored instant yakisoba noodles, or green tea flavored with lemon, mint, and passionfruit, which would freak out any Japanese who saw them. On the other hand, these products have a "strangeness" about them (from the Japanese point of view) which makes them fun to bring back to the J-List staff as souvenirs.

Green tea sold in the U.S. comes in flavors that would surprise Japanese if they knew about them.

Blade Runner is To Bubblegum Crisis as 2001 is to Planetes

I've always had an odd affinity for movies released in the year I was born, which was 1968. Three awesome movies happened to come out that year: the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the hardcore sci-fi films Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I especially love 2001, because of the huge scale of its story and unparalleled visual presentation, although you have to appreciate the movie for its wabi and sabi (sober refinement and austere serenity) as it's not an action film. If there's an anime version of 2001, it'd have to be Sunrise's cult series Planetes, an realistic hardcore sci-fi series about humans living in space whose job is to recover floating space debris in orbit around Earth. It's kind of like a super-realistic version of a Gundam series without the mobile suits.

In the show, the staff of the Space Debris Section has a certain keyword they use to indicate they've understood what they've just been told: aikopii, which seemed like a mysterious and oddly cute-sounding word of gibberish to me. It took me several episodes to realize that this mysterious word was actually the English phrase "I copy." This inability to recognize English words pronounced with a Japanese accent is something that happens from time to time, due to the unfamiliar phonetic system of the Japanese, but after studying the language and living here for so long, I was surprised it could still happen to me. Guess I better crack open some Japanese textbooks again...

Planetes is a hardcore SF anime I like a lot. You copy?

Life, the Universe and Birthdays

Sunday was my birthday, and while turning 42 certainly has its own nerdy charm -- although I still don't know the secret of Life, the Universe and Everything -- birthdays are not as welcome as they were when I was 12. I did manage to have a nice party with my family here in San Diego, though, which made it okay. Before the party, we all baked a birthday cake for me, and I realized that the time-honored American (Western?) tradition of licking the bowl after baking a cake was not one that the Japanese practiced. In fact, I was pretty sure my family back in Japan would stare in amazement if I explained the subtle hierarchy involved in determining while child would be able to lick the bowl or the beaters after a cake is baked.

The Meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything: 42

Interesting Bread From Japan

Although rice is the famous staple food of Japan, eaten with almost every meal, the Japanese are no slouches when it comes to bread. Called pan in Japanese, from the Portuguese who introduced it, there are dozens of varieties available to sample. While the word "bread" likely calls up visions of a loaf of sliced bread, there other types which would look more like a doughnut to most gaijin, like the famous famous Anpan, round bread with different types of Japanese sweet beans inside, or Melon Pan, essentially a large piece of sweetened bread that looks like a honeydew melon cut in half -- or like a brain, which is why Japanese say eating it will make you smart. One of my favorite types of Japanese pan is Curry Pan, fried bread with spicy curry inside, yum. Why can't someone make this outside of Japan?

"Curry pan" is bread with delicious curry inside.

My Son's Trip to Kyoto

If you watch any anime at all, you'll know the classic story archetype of the "school trip," when all the students go off to some interesting part of Japan together. Last week my son took his school trip to Kyoto and Nara, the ancient capitals of Japan. The timing was perfect: this year marks the 1300th anniversary of the establishment of Nara, and there are many celebrations to take part in. He visited all the famous places in the two cities, like Nijojo Castle, with "nightingale floors" that make sounds when you walk on them to keep ninjas from sneaking in, and the breathtaking Todaiji temple in Nara, which houses the largest statue of Buddha in Japan. My son and some of his friends also did like the Lucky Star girls in episode 21, making the trek to take their photo in front of the headquarters of Kyoto Animation, the studio that created Lucky Star, Haruhi and Clannad, which made me jealous as hell.

When otaku go to Kyoto, they visit KyoAni's headquarters.

Yoji Jukugo: Expressive Kanji Phrases in Japanese

One interesting aspect of learning Japanese is tackling the complex world of yomoji jukugo, a class of four-character compound words imported from Chinese which add flavor and elegance to Japanese speech and writing. Because the words use complex kanji characters to represent abstract meaning they can be hard for foreigners to learn, yet some of these phrases are used so often the context is not hard to pick up. Some common examples of these kanji-based expressions include jigo-jitoku (lit. "self executed, self benefit"), which is how the Japanese express the idea of "it serves you right"; or happo bijin (lit. "eight directions beautiful-person"), trying to present a positive face in all eight directions, meaning someone who is trying to be popular with everyone; or isshin doutai, (lit. "one heart, same body"), signifying two people who are so close their hearts are completely joined by love or friendship. If you're an anime fan, you may already know some of these four-kanji expressions: Tenjo Tenge literally means "the heaven and the earth," and Ikki Tousen is a phrase that means "the most powerful knight in the world."

My favorite of these four-character kanji phrases would have to be issho kenmei (ee-show ken-mei), which literally means "to try very hard, as hard as anything you've ever done in your life." Like the verb ganbarimasu (to do one's best, to work hard), this phrase represents a big part of the Japanese study/work ethic that really defines Japan as a nation. When I make up my mind to do something, I'm the kind of person who works very issho kenmei at it, whether it's climbing Mt. Fuji, learning Japanese or creating a company to sell Totoro bento boxes and Samurai Sword umbrellas to people all over the world. Perhaps the most famous symbol of being issho kenmei about something are those traditional Japanese hachimaki kanji headbands, which are worn by anyone who is fired up with passion for something, for example high school students studying for their university entrance exams, new employees in a company opening ceremony, volunteers at a political rally, or gaijin studying Japanese.

The kanji phrase isshin doutai means "one heart, same body".

My Egg McMuffin Reconsideration

Let us all pause a moment and reflect on how awesome Egg McMuffins are. When I was six years old, my mother announced that she'd gotten a computer job in Aukland, New Zealand, and the family moved there for a year. Being in a country that was quite different from the U.S. was my first taste of culture shock, and we combatted it by finding a familiar food to eat -- the Egg McMuffin from Aukland's lone McDonald's restaurant (this was back in 1976, so there are more of them now, I expect). When I came to Japan to live, I found myself experiencing the usual homesickness that anyone leaving their home country would, so once again I reached for my familiar friend, savoring the way the egg combines with the cheese and the Canadian Bacon just so. Someday I'll be sick in bed, and I hope I have loved ones around me who will bring me this wonderful food to eat and make me feel better.

Over the years I've been sustained by my old friend, the Egg McMuffin.

Moero Downhill Night 2 Shipping Soon!

Good news for fans of the PC dating-sim games we sell: the upcoming game Moero Downhill Night has been declared "golden master" and will be shipping soon. A game that combines the thrill of fast-paced thrill of downhill mountain racing, Japan style, with beautiful girls who want you to take them to the finish line, it's a really outstanding game. Visit the Moero Downhill Night 2 official site, or click here to preorder the game now.

Julius Scissors

One odd thing about learning a foreign language is that you observe things native speakers might not notice. For example, for some reason I was explaining the meaning of a Cesarean Section birth to my kids, which is called teioh sekkai or "Emperor-King Cutting Open" in Japanese, in case you ever wanted to know. My wife said, "I'll bet the word 'scissors' comes from the same root word as Ceaser," which was something that had never occurred to me, and may well be correct, for all I know. A common word for "boy" in Japanese is seinen, written with the characters for "blue" and "year," which seemed quite random to me. Then one day I remembered the odd blue spot that all Japanese children are born with on their buttocks called the Mongolian Spot, which fades away around the age of five. I was sure that the etymology of "blue-year" meaning "boy" had to be related to this blue spot, which (as the J-List staff told me) is something that no Japanese would ever have thought of (and which they thought sounded like an accurate idea).

Hmm, Julius Scissors...I can totally see a hairdresser using that name. I'd better trademark it just in case. 

Julius Caesar's famous name related to the word "scissors"?

Japanese Gestures in Anime

Anime is a useful bridge between East and West since it allows you to pick up on some of the minute details of human communication, which would never be discussed in a language textbook. In the West, when a person wants to indicate himself with a gesture he'll likely point at his chest with his forefinger or thumb. In Japan, however, a person will point to their nose if they want to communicate the idea of "Do you mean me?" which takes a little getting used to. Of course, I've lived in Japan long that I do these kinds of Japanese gestures while in the U.S., which can feel really strange. Once I went into a store and the employee there decided I must be from France for some reason, although I was as American as he was. I wasn't sure what he was basing his assumption on, so I just smiled without saying anything.

This Japanese gesture means "who, me?"

San Diego, Beer & Carl Macek

I'm enjoying my time in San Diego, doing various family-related things right now. The other day a couple of friends took me out for some quality beers at a local micro-brew pub called Toronado -- if you're local to San Diego, I recommend it. As we drank, raising more than one glass to the memory of Carl Macek, I noticed how bright the sky was outside, despite it being past 8:00 or so. This, of course, is thanks to daylight savings time, the much-reviled system of setting clocks ahead or behind to take advantage of more daylight. They don't have this system in Japan, which is good for people who hate remembering to set your clock on a certain day, but bad for those of us who dislike having Mr. Sun peeking at you when you go to bed, as so often happens to me.

There's no daylight savings time in Japan, which is both good and bad.

Rainy Season in Japan

Japan has entered its rainy season, a month-long period when it will rain most every day as the country does its best impersonation of Seattle. The word for rainy season is tsuyu, written with characters that mean "plum rain," and there are several theories about how this odd name came about, including that it comes from the fact that Japanese plums ripen around this time of year, or that the raindrops pelting you start to feel as large as plums. Although some might complain about the dreary weather, the rain is important to Japan's rice growing, and odd years when very little rain fell have been followed by bad rice harvests. Incidentally, if you ever want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow, do what Japanese kids do and throw your shoe as hard as you can. If the shoe lands upright, it will be a nice day tomorrow; if it lands on its side, look for clouds; and if it lands upside down, it will rain. Wherever you are in the world, you can keep rain at bay with J-List's awesome Samurai Sword Umbrellas, with beautifully detailed wooden handles that are a joy to trip.

Japan and Nostalgia

For some reason, gaijin always seem to remember the first words of Japanese we learn. In my case it was the word natsukashii (nahts-kah-SHEE), which translates as "nostalgic" or more accurately, "what you're saying makes me so nostalgic I look like one of those manga characters with a big tear rolling out of my eye." From appreciating the wabi and sabi (sober refinement and austere serenity) of old buildings from the Showa Period to maintaining a complex appreciation for the JPOP singers of past eras (iTunes Japan link, log out of your current account if link doesn't work), the Japanese are definitively a people in touch with the past. The other day I was walking down the street and decided to duck into a shop to ask directions. It was an old tabako-ya (tobacco shop) that looked like it'd been around for a hundred years or more, and the awesome feel of the old-style wood panes of the doors and the earth floor inside the shop really spoke to me the moment I walked in.

The Japanese are bit fans of nostalgia.

This Blog Post is Titled: "....................."

The rise of manga and anime has brought the West into contact with some interesting Japanese visual conventions. I remember reading the first Japanese comics ever translated into English, and wondering what characters meant when they said ".............." It was strange at the time, although by now most of us have figured out that this indicates a pause in which the character is thinking deeply about something. Sailor Moon introduced us all to the "sweat drop" that appears over a character's head when they're upset about something, which took people a while to get used to, I'm sure. The other day my wife was playing with a chalkboard program I had on the iPad, and she naturally (from a Japanese point of view) drew an umbrella with her name and mine underneath. This is called ai-ai-gasa or "love-love umbrella" and it's the staple of Japanese kids who want to imply a romantic relationship between two people in the class when the teacher isn't looking. In my day it was the "sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" song...

"Love-love umbrella" and the anime sweat drop are odd concepts from anime.

World Cup in Japan

The World Cup is going on right now, and Japan is in getting in the spirit in a big way. It's part of Japan's komumin-sei (the "national personality" that I write about every so often) to want to be included in international events with the other countries of the world, and Japanese fans are really excited to join in. I caught a TV show the other day that pit two teams of soccer fans -- one made up of Japanese "talents" (a generic word for TV personalities) and a gaijin team of Japanese-bilingual foreigners -- in a battle of World Cup related trivia. The foreign team won the contest handily.

One of the questions put forth to the participants was especially interesting, I thought. A ship carrying people from different countries starts to take on water, and the captain needs to get each person to jump in the sea immediately. To the American he says, "If you jump in, you'll be seen as a hero," which makes the American man jump in right away. (From the Japanese point of view, Americans seem to have a hero complex.) To the British man the captain says, "If you jump in, you'll be seen as a gentleman." To the Italian: "If you jump in, you'll be popular with women." The German man is told, "You must jump in now, it's the rule," while the captain tells the French man, "Please do not jump in the water." (So Germans are responsive to following rules and French people will always do the opposite of what they're told?) The trivia question the two teams had to answer was, what did the captain say to the Japanese passenger to get him to jump in the water? To see the answer, highlight the following text with your mouse cursor.

The answer was, the captain told the Japanese man that "everyone else is jumping in the water," which made the Japanese passenger happy to do so, too.

Back in the USA

Hello again from J-List. This time, I've made the hop from Japan to San Diego and am enjoying the beautiful weather here (well, better than Japan anyway).

While passing through Narita some signs advertising the various shops located inside the airport caught my eye. "Watch out for your time! Sorry to make you so amazed!" one proclaimed, next to another that said, "This is the place where you can buy your 'DREAM.'" I had to snicker, picturing the poor translator who had to convert the original Japanese slogans into English, despite the reality that some phrases just can't be brought over in a way that makes them sound natural. I have a gaijin friend who works as a translator, and sometimes he gets jobs "editing" English translations that had been made by native Japanese speakers. Reading phrases like the above, I feel sorry for him.

You've Been in Japan Too Long If You "Teach" Someone Your Phone Number

You've been in Japan too long if you "teach" someone your phone number. In Japanese, you'd usually use the phrase oshiete kudasai (lit. "please teach me") when asking someone to communicate information to you rather than itte kudasai ("please say"), as we might in English. When learning Japanese, it can be difficult to figure out which words to use for everyday situations, above and beyond learning the words themselves. What's funny is, the rules of your new language can get in the way of your first language, a concept called "interference." In Japanese, the words for "splinter" (a tiny piece of wood) and "thorn" (the sharp protrusions on a rose stem) are the same, toge (toh-gay), which took me a while to get down in Japanese. Once while in the U.S., my daughter got a splinter in her finger, but silly gaijin that I am, I said, "Oh no, you got a thorn!" causing my mother to wonder how her son could make a mistake like that. I've also been temporarily confused by the words "mother-in-law" and "stepmother," which are both represented by the same word, gibo. This is what happens when you go nearly 20 years without recalling certain words.

Even more confusion: cactus needles are also called toge.

Of Train Station Bento and Tokyo Fashions

Over the weekend I took a trip down to Tokyo for a business meeting and to enjoy some quality shochu and yakitori with friends. I was leaving the house around lunchtime when my mother-in-law asked if I wanted some of the curry she was cooking before I left. I told her no thanks -- what I wanted for lunch was ekiben, the famous "train station bento" that you buy to eat on a train. The world of train station bento lunches is great -- each station makes it own unique type, which represents what that part of Japan is known for. If you visit Toyama along the Sea of Japan, buying masu-no-sushi bento (salmon sushi sold in a big wooden frame) is great, and when my son and I made our trip to Hokkaido, we knew we had to try Ikemeshi Bento. The nearby city of Takasaki is famous for daruma dolls, so naturally you can buy Daruma Bento at the train station there. If you are interested in Japan's ekiben, we've got a really nice guidebook about train station bento culture on the site today.

Walking around Tokyo is always fun. In my home prefecture of Gunma, located about 100 km northwest of Tokyo, most people drive their cars when they need to go somewhere, but in Tokyo it's more common to use the the extensive network of trains and subways instead. This means you've always got at least 50-100 people around you whenever you're out and about, which means plenty of opportunity for one of my favorite hobbies, people-watching. Yes, I love checking out out the random people I see on the trains and occasionally posting about what I see on my Twitter feed. As usual, I'm always amazed at the intensity of the fashion culture I see in Japan's capital, with extremely attractive Tokyo girls sporting interesting fashions that can sometimes make my eyes spin in their sockets. By which I mean they are so beautiful that foreigners in Gunma informally talk about to the "Wall of Omiya" (a city between Gunma and Tokyo) as the point where all the pretty, stylish girls get off the train. 

Remember, J-List always has interesting J-fashion items, from magazines to Goth-Loli outfits and accessories to those dreamy "Absolute Zone" over-knee socks, on our Japanese Fashion Page.

Tokyo is a very fashionable place; I'm a big fan of ekiben, Japan's train station bento culture.

2010, the Summer of Evangelion

It's the Summer of Evangelion in Japan this year, and J-List is working hard to find fun Eva-related products for the site. From the UCC Coffee + figures sets to those dreamy Evangelion car sun shades to the gorgeous Evangelion 2.22 movie Blu-Ray and DVD and various prepainted figures, we have something for every fan. Click here to browse all Evangelion related products, or here to see the top Evangelion anime products sorted by popularity.