Careful When Ordering Mango Juice From a Pretty Waitress

When you learn a foreign language, you definitely need to develop a sense of humor. Like the other day when I was talking about the concept of katami, which are the treasures of a person who has died which are distributed to friends and family members. But I'd gotten the word wrong, substituting kataki, which literally means a sworn enemy who you must kill. So instead of talking about the big fur cap my father left me when he died -- otosan no katami -- I had said kataki, implying that this object was the hated enemy of my father which I was duty-bound to destroy. The best thing to do when you do screw up like that is to embrace the awkwardness, since you'll definitely never make that mistake again. And be careful when ordering mango juice from a pretty waitress...

The word manko, referring to the female genitilia, is the worst word of Japanese -- way too similar to "mango."

Visiting the Anime Holy Land

One of the coolest things an obsessive anime fan in Japan can do is seichi junrei, e.g. making a "pilgrimage to the holy land," which in this case refers to visiting places from your favorite anime series. Whether it's traveling to Lake Kizaki in Nagano Prefecture, where Please Teacher/Twins was based, trawling the backstreets of Tokyo that provided the setting for Bakemonogatari or communing with moe spirits in the K-On! school (which is a decommissioned elementary school), pretty much every anime these days is based on actual reference locations. Whenever my wife snorts at the idea of otaku traveling around Japan to visit places from their favorite anime, I remind her of her first trip to Rome, when she visited all the places Audrey Hepburn went to in the classic film Roman Holiday, even eating gelato by the Spanish Steps. Obsessions are so much fun! (By the way, we've posted a handy guide to visiting famous sites from anime series to the site today.)

You can visit the places in your favorite anime someday.

Harry Potter Loves Star Wars

"If there's a bright center to Britain, Number Four Privet Drive is the street that it's farthest from." I recently got a new TV, and proceeded to break it in by watching the nerdiest movies I could find, which naturally included Star Wars: A New Hope and the first Harry Potter film. As I watched these two movies back to back, I was struck by how similar the two main characters were, a connection I'd not made before, though it's quite obvious in retrospect. Both were delivered by bearded men to be raised by unsupportive uncles, where they would grow up after much hardship to find that they were really wizards (though one was called "Jedi"), receiving rare magical items that belonged to their fathers which would help them to defeat a Dark Lord. Anime is fun to de-construct, too, breaking down memes into their component parts and seeing what inspirations came from where -- a Hollywood movie here, a reference to an old TV show there.

Harry and Luke, heroes of a thousand faces.

San Diego Comic-Con Wrap-Up

Well, the San Diego Comic-con is over, and the J-List staff is tired, but still exhilarated. As usual, it was awesome getting to meet so many J-List fans, shake lots of hands and even sign an H-game package or two. We also handed out about 20,000 of our trademark J-List pocket tissues, too.

Goodbye to the San Diego Comic-con, we'll see you next year.

Fish Names in Japanese and English

The other day I went out to a seafood restaurant with my wife and daughter, who are visiting from Japan. As they looked to me to help them decide what to order from the menu, I discovered a strange linguistic gap in my brain: I was almost completely ignorant of fish names in English. My awakening as a lover of seafood occurred after I arrived in Japan, and as a result I could tell you the subtle differences between saba and hokke and aji, though I had no idea which was which was what on an English menu, and what we should order. Like all Japanese, my wife assumes that I know every word of English automatically because I'm a native speaker, and she can't understand how gaps in my knowledge could be possible. In the end we got sushi and were very happy with it.

I learned to love fish in Japan, and I often don't know fish names in English.

"Like, or Love?"

Suki desu ka? One of the first useful words a student of Japanese learns is how to say "like" (suki), which is pronounced quickly so that it sounds rather like the English word "ski," leading all students to immediately make the joke sukii ga suki desu ka? (Do you like skiing?), since the words sound similar. The word suki is often a student's introduction to the concept that a word or idea in one language might have many possible meanings in another language, depending on the situation. Right off the bat, suki can mean "like" (in the context of your favorite food or hobby) or "love" (when said in reference to another person). Like all Japanese words there's some ambiguity involved, which is the subject of more than a few melodramatic misunderstandings in anime and manga. For example, if a girl was looking at a cake and said suki desu, she could theoretically be expressing her love of cake, or else she could be confessing her feelings for a boy who was also in the room. Once I saw a variety show in which former JAV actress Ai Iijima walked around New York, asking Americans kyonyu suki? which sounds like "Can you ski?" in English, but is really asking if they prefer women with large oppai. It was funny to see the Americans on the show nodding their heads for the camera at her question. Try it on your friends!

In Orange Road, Madoka had to use English to clearly ask Kyosuke's feelings, since Japanese was too vague to be of use.

The 100th Anniverary of the Invasion of Korea

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Japan's invasion of the Korean peninsula, which started a 35 year period during which the entire nation of Korea was officially annexed by Japan -- high schools in Pyonyang even participated in the Koshien high school baseball tournament in Osaka, the same Koshien that's celebrated in baseball manga today. I'm going to use my great knowledge of Japan and predict that the Japanese government will issue an apology to the governments of the two Koreas over the next few weeks. I'll go out even further on a limb and state that, although this will be the eighth official apology Japan has made to Korea (this doesn't include numerous heartfelt expressions of regret by the Emperor of Japan, whose statements lack the force of law), people on the other side of the Sea of Japan the Eastern Sea will not be impressed. There will be angry words exchanged between netizens of Japan's 2ch BBS and their counterparts in South Korea, and maybe a new wave of DDOS attacks back and forth. Business as usual, in other words.

As I've written before, it's hard to know how to feel about all this. Japan did terrible things, and hasn't properly educated its young people about what it did. On the other hand, over-educating your population on every wrong that was done to you in the past, as Korea (and China) do regularly, is just unhealthy. They also beat the dead horse of Japan's WWII crimes to create a nationalistic unity, deflecting cricitism against their own failings and winning votes as good as any American politician who raises fears of attacks by Muslim terrorists if the other party wins the election does. Japan did bad things, but part of the reason we judge them so harshly is that it happened during 20th century, the era of photography, rather than in the 19th century or early, when Great Britain was doing the exact same things -- creating an empire by force, starting with the country that lay immediately to the west of it -- without it being documented photographically. Or have I lived in Japan so long that I am hopelessly biased to their side of things? Love to hear your thoughts.

Maybe South Korea can take this opportunity to thank Japan for whatever apology that is coming and say, "Okay now, it's been a century, you don't need to apologize any more. We're moving on." But that would probably be overly optimistic.

Tensions ahead for Korea and Japan?

J-List Comic-Con Update

We're enjoying our time at the San Diego Comicon, which is a a fantastic celebration of worldwide popular nerd culture. If you're at the show, we hope you'll come see us at booth 129 in the heart of "Anime Alley" and say hi, and check out the selection of items we have for you. Remember that we're having a special week-long sale for everyone who isn't lucky enough to be here in San Diego with us. Through Sunday, for every $100 you buy on J-List, you'll get a $5 coupon to use with your next order.

We are loving life at the San Diego Comicon right now. Come visit us at booth 129!

Uniformity in Japan

Just as Americans are accustomed to thinking of our country as a union of semi-soverign states, each with its own unique history and traditions, one of the hallmarks of Japan is "uniformity." During my bachelor days I travelled around the country quite a bit, going from cold but vibrant Hokkaido in the north, through the barren Northern Honshu area where sad enka songs were born, and all the way down to modern, bustling Hiroshima, and one thing that has always stood out for me was how similar many things were. Roads, signs, telephone poles, the way schools are constructed, all seem to be following one master blueprint, with little or no variation between regions. There are exceptions of course -- the cold climate of Northern Japan requires sturdier architecture to withstand the heavy snowfall compared to the rest of the country, including veritically oriented traffic lights rather than horizontal ones -- but by and large many aspects of life in Japan are remarkably similar whether you're in Tokyo or Kyushu or wherever.

Traffic lights in Japan always look like this, except in the colder parts.

Japanese Food is Very "Herushii" (Healthy)

One interesting aspect of living in Japan is getting used to the, ah, unique pronunciations of English words the Japanese often employ. For example, the Japanese word for "healthy" is kenko-teki, but for various reasons -- mainly related to the Japanese having positive feelings about anything expressed with English words -- the worth "healthy" is often used as-is, written in the katakana writing system as a foreign loan word (ヘルシー）. Due to limitations of Japanese phonetics, however, it sounds like herushii, something that took me quite a while to become accustomed to. Some other "English" words that are mangled by Japanese pronunciation include "micro" (pronounced MEE-cro about half the time), and "theme" (which is teema in Japanese, due to the fact that it actually came from the German, not English). J-List is happy to be working with Nitroplus, the legendary game company that publishes Demonbane, but in Japanese their name is actually pronounced like "nee-tro" rather than the English word "nitro." Confusing much?

Japanese food is considered very herushii?

Of Math and Star Wars

I'm convinced that people can do anything they decide they can do. For example, I'm not good at math, and if you give me a difficult math problem I'm positive I won't be able to solve it for you. But if you were to change the math problem into something I care about, such as Star Wars, I'm sure things would be different -- a word problem calculating the speed at which the Death Star orbited the planet Yavin would be pretty awesome. I drive a Mazda Miata with a stick shift, and I love the car, driving it everywhere when I'm in San Diego. My Japanese wife cannot drive a stick, and refuses to get behind the wheel of my car because she's sure she'll end up stalled on a steep hill with cars behind her honking angrily. If only she'd decide that she could drive a stick, I'm sure she'd suddenly do much better, and if she could do that then maybe I could decide to be good at math, too.

(Incidentally, the Japanese word for a standard transmission on a car is "mission," and so I tease my wife by saying "Mission: Impossible" to her, which is a really bad joke, but actually one of my better dajare gags.)

How long would the Death Star take to orbit Yavin traveling at 4000 mph?

San Diego Comic-Con is Here Again!

We're getting ready for the San Diego Comicon, which is going to be a blast. We hope you'll come see us at booths 129 and 228 in the heart of "Anime Alley" near the East end of the convention center. We'll be loaded with awesome J-List T-shirts, Totoro and Ponyo plush toys, PC dating-sim games, Samurai Sword Umbrellas and more good stuff. For those not fortunate enough to be able to attend the convention, we have some happy news -- a special week-long sale! During this week, for every $100 you buy on J-List, you'll get a $5 coupon to use with your next order.

Party time, San Diego Comicon is here again!

Kanji Is Fun

One of the challenges in learning Japanese is tackling kanji, which is not easy for Westerners, as it's a very different paradigm from anything we've ever used. The usual way to learn kanji is to start at the beginning, with ichi, ni and san and all the other characters covered in the first grade, and going from there. Some kanji you encounter early on include jin, or person, which is added to the end of countries to make that nationality (e.g. America-jin is an American, nihon-jin is Japanese), and ko, a word that means "child," or in some situations, "girl." I remember learning that adding the -ya kanji for "roof" to nouns made a word meaning a shop that sold that item, e.g. hana (flower) + ya = hanaya (a flower shop). When I learned the word for car (kuruma), I haltingly asked my teacher if I could say kuruma-ya to mean a shop that sells cars, and the answer was correct. In making the mental leap myself, I'd taken my first step into a larger world.

Dressing Up To Go To Wal-Mart?

Although I try to avoid going to Wal-Mart, sometimes I find myself needing something that's convenient to buy there. Last night at 10 pm or so I asked my Japanese wife if she wanted to with me so she could pick up American make-up, soap and other items she likes to stock up on when in the U.S. Her response was amusing to me: "I can't go. I don't have time to put on make-up and dress nicely." I explained that if she dressed up in special clothes to go to Wal-Mart at 10 pm she'd be in the only person in America doing so, and she decided that a T-shirt was okay to go out in after all. The episode illustrates the Japanese view of kakko (kah-koh), lit. style or fashion, and how they often place a lot more importance on how they look than we might in the U.S. It's also common to find skiers, golfers or surfers in Japan with exquisitely chosen outfits and equipment, before they've even begun to learn the sport in question.

Do you dress up to go to Wal-Mart?

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.