Let's Analyze Fuzzy Japanese Grammar

A language reflects the character of the people who use it, and vice-versa. One interesting bit of Japanese grammar students learn early on is the verb ending masho, which corresponds to "let's..." as in "let's eat" (tabemasho), "let's go" (ikimasho) or "let's not smoke" (tabako wo yamemasho). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (e.g. do not smoke, do not ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, essentially making statements like "let's put our telephones into vibration mode" (maanaa modo ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). These statements subtly create a warm and fuzzy atmosphere of cooperation that make people want to do their part for the good of everyone, an important pillar of Japanese polite society. Every year, the Japanese tax office sponsors commercials featuring famous TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms -- "Let's fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly," is the message. I wonder which approach is more effective?

The Japanese government is always saying things like, "Let's pay our taxes correctly!"

Hikikomori is Listed in the Oxford Dictionary of English

I saw in a news article that the word hikikomori (pronounced "hee-kee koh-moh-ree") had officially found its way into the Oxford Dictionary of English, Third Edition, which was published last week. Translatable as shut-ins, stay-at-homes, agoraphobes or -- as my daughter delicately suggested, "indoor people" -- hikikomori are individuals who have pulled back from society, shunning human contact often in favor of online interaction. Although there are reclusive types in every society, the large numbers of Japanese NEETs -- meaning "Not involved in Education, Employment or Training" -- has the government worried, since 1.2 million citizens not working or paying taxes can't be good for the bean counters. The phenomenon of hikikomori is often taken up in popular manga and anime culture, including such works as Welcome to the N.H.K. and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei / Goodbye Mr. Despair, and is often romanticized as the ultimate expression of otaku spirit. Incidentally, J-List has great T-shirts for aspiring hikikomoris and otaku, so check them out.

Hikikomori is now an English word.

Of San Diego, And Reverse Culture Shock

My daughter has returned home to Japan after staying a month with me here in the States. During her time here we did a lot of fun "San Diego-ey" things like taking a bicycle ride from the top of beautiful Mt. Soledad down to the seaside and exploring the La Jolla coves in a kayak, and I think she had as much fun as a thirteen-year-old teenager can admit to. She also got to improve her English skills quite a bit. Right about now she'll be arriving back in Japan and, besides being exasperated at how hot and humid it is there, she'll start the several day process of "reverse culture shock." After a month of being surprised that a "small" drink in the U.S. is so much larger than anything seen in Japan, now the reverse will happen, and she'll be unable to accept that the largest size drink the restaurant offers is just 12 oz. Of course I'm ready to go back to Japan too -- I need to eat onigiri!

We've had lots of fun doing San Diego-ey things this summer.

Japan's Pension Reforms In Trouble: KHAAAANNN!!!

Japan is trying to reform its national pension system, but recent political turmoil -- the fall of Yukio Hatoyama's government over his wishy-washiness on U.S. base issues and subsequent poor showing in Prime Minister Naoto Kan's first election -- has made that a difficult goal to achieve. In Japan there are two different Social Security-like systems, Employees Pension Insurance for anyone working for a large company with 20 or more employees, and National Pension Insurance for workers in smaller companies and anyone who is self-employed. Like Social Security in the U.S., enrollment in a pension system is mandatory, but there's no mechanism to force people to make their payments into the National system, making it easy for younger Japanese to essentially opt out entirely. (Several politicians including the current Prime Minister got in trouble for not making their payments a few years ago.) Considering the challenges Japan faces, they really need strong leaders who will work together to find the best answers for the country.

Every year J-List brings a huge number of awesome Japanese calendars to our customers, which feature the best anime, JPOP, traditional photography and other themes. We're happy to report that 2011 Calendar Season is officially started! While it'll be another couple weeks before we get the bulk of this year's calendars in (still waiting for the big list to be released), you can start browsing now.

Japan's pension system is so complex, they have to make horrible graphics like this to understand it.

Onigiri Color Codes

If you were to plan a picnic, you might pack a basket containing things like sandwiches, potato salad or maybe some pickles, but a Japanese person would almost certainly bring along onigiri, those delicious rice balls. Formed using the honorific "o" prefix that can be seen on many Japanese words and nigiri, meaning "to squeeze," onigiri are a popular way to grab a quick snack on the go. Although they can be as simple as a hunk of salted rice pressed into a triangle shape, there's usually a bit of fish, konbu seaweed or ume plum inside, and nori covering the outside. Onigiri are a major product category for convenience stores in Japan, and even before a new gaijin learns to start reading the language around him he often memorizes the all-important onigiri color code at Seven Eleven -- red for salmon, blue for "sea chicken" and so on. Onigiri are a staple of bento culture, and Japanese housewives get up extra early to press rice balls to include in lunches for their kids or husbands, just as my own mother made peanut butter and honey sandwiches for me all those years. Along with popular bento items, J-List sells many onigiri related products on the site -- click and browse some of them now.

A gaijin needs to learn the onigiri color codes to survive in Japan.

The "Japanese Girlfriend" Method of Studying

There are many ways of approaching the study of Japanese. You can follow the traditional approach, studying with Japanese textbooks like the Genki series. Or try learning through popular culture, like manga and JPOP songs or even dating-sim games. Another study method I've employed at various times is the "Find a Japanese Girlfriend" approach, wherein you find an attractive Japanese girl to date and share language with. While softer and more huggable than even the best kanji wall poster, there are some drawbacks to choosing this path to mastering nihongo. The biggest is that the language used by women and men is quite different, with the best example being the first and second person pronouns used by each group. For example, males will usually use the neural boku or the more manly-sounding ore (oh-reh) to refer to themselves, while females use the more formal watashi or cute-sounding atashi, and if you pick up too much Japanese from your significant other, you might sound more effeminate than you'd like. Incidentally, we have a fun line of T-shirts, hats and hoodies for anyone interested in finding their own Japanese girlfriend or boyfriend -- click and browse our fun products!

One way of studying Japanese is the "Japanese girlfriend" method.

Only 109 Days Til the Japanese Language Proficiency Test

If you're studying Japanese or plan to, there's a good chance you'll need to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), the primary test for students of Japanese. Taken by 500,000 applicants each year, the test was begun in 1984 in response the increase in interest in Japan by people all over the world, and is held each December all over the world (and in East Asian countries, again in July). This year some changes are being introduced into the test, essentially bringing it from four levels of difficulty to five, to make it easier for students to rise one level each year. The new system starts at level N5 (the easiest) and goes all the way to N1 (the hardest, needed for entrance into a Japanese university), with level N3 essentially falling in between the old levels 3 and 2, to make it easier on students. I have fond memories of my own JLPT study days, of stressing out over kanji pronunciations or how to use a certain bit of Japanese grammar, and I find myself envious of anyone studying for the test this year. The sign-up deadline is this September, so if you're interested in taking the test, register right away to avoid the agony of missing your registration. There are just 109 days before this year's test -- if you need study supplies, textbooks or other products to help you learn, J-List has you covered!

If you need to prepare for the JLPT, J-List can help.

Yo Dawg, I heard you like sulfur...

I remember when I first learned the Japanese word for "name" -- which is namae, pronounced nah-mah-eh -- I noticed the similarity between the two words and wondered if the Japanese could have borrowed theirs from some Western language. It turns out that this isn't the case, and the parallel between the two is purely accidental, a surprisingly common occurrence known as a "false cognitive" in linguistics. In Japanese you thank someone by saying arigato, which is very similar to the Portuguese word obrigado, but this is another example of unrelated words accidentally having similar pronunciations. Or the word so, which by an amazing coincidence corresponds perfectly with the word "so" in English as in so desu ka? "is that so?" Or the way the Japanese word for "road" is doro, essentially the same word with the syllables reversed. Another minor coincidence I found: the word for sulfur in Japanese is iwo, yes as in the famous World War II battleground Iwo Jima, which literally means "Sulfur Island." Guess which body in the solar system is famous for its sulfur volcanoes? Jupiter's moon Io, pronounced in Japanese (and Greek) exactly like the word for sulfur.

For perfectionists: I know that "Iwo" is meaningless rendered in proper Romanized Japanese. It's an old construct from a previous age that's been trapped in its current form due to the famous name of Iwo Jima. The word for sulfur is 硫黄 (いおう), which would be iou if Romanized correctly. Which is funny since the name for the moon of Jupiter is the same.

"Yo Dawg, I heard you like sulfur, so I put some 硫黄 in your Io and now you have sulfur volcanoes."

Geek Culture has Become Very Cool Lately

I'm grateful for many aspects of the modern world we live in. Like the high-speed Internet connection that enables me to work alongside my staff in Japan despite the fact that I'm currently 5620 miles (9044 km) away from them. Or being able to read reviews of restaurants on my smart phone while wandering around looking for a place to eat. I'm also very pleased with the way "nerd culture" has become so accepted by the world at large. This wasn't always the case, and I'm sure a generation ago a professional man who kept a huge collection of Star Wars figures in his office, as I do, would be viewed in a strange light by his coworkers. Of course, not everyone is as plugged into this fun nerdy culture as you or I. Once during a previous San Diego Comicon I saw an SDSU student who had GREEK WEEK printed on his T-shirt. I misread his shirt, and said, "I thought your shirt said 'geek week,'" which made the man visibly upset. I was surprised at his reaction -- what could possibly be wrong with someone thinking your shirt had "geek" written on it? Then it dawned on me that he probably wasn't as tuned in to geek-driven pop culture as I was, and thought I was insulting him.

Nerd culture has become very cool in recent years. Which is a good thing.

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

One interesting aspect of the Japanese is how superstitious they can be, at least as seen from my contemporary American point of view. Whether it's getting one's future told through tarot cards or a palm reading or the famous beliefs about people's personalities being determined by their blood type, most Japanese have some ways of thinking that might be thought of as unique. There's a complex system of old wives' tales that people follow -- don't cut your fingernails at night or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, don't ever write a person's name in red ink or they'll die, don't whistle at night or snakes will come and bite you, don't sleep with your head pointing to the north -- which I've learned to respect, or at least work around in my daily life.

Ghosts are another popular area of Japanese supernatural culture, so much that there are TV variety shows made on the subject quite often. Some people are said to be reikan no aru hito, that is, people who have a greater than average sense of ghosts and apparitions, and my Japanese wife and daughter are definitely in this group. Once after my father passed away, my daughter (who was about five at the time) turned to empty air and shouted, "Stop watching me!" My wife thought I'd gotten out of bed and was standing there looking at my daughter eating her breakfast, but I was still asleep, and the general consensus was that she was "sensing" the spirit of my father who had come to visit us. Recently my wife and daughter were having a fight, and they both thought they saw my mother's face reflected in the window at the same moment (she also passed away recently). That stopped their fight in a hurry, I can tell you.

Ghosts are a popular Japanese superstition, er, belief.

Learning Japanese in Japanese

When I started my third year of Japanese at SDSU, there was a new book we were required to buy: a Japanese dictionary, the same type used by Japanese junior high school kids to look up words in their own language. From that point on, rather than spit out the meanings of vocabulary words in English, we were required to learn the Japanese explanation for words. So for a word like gambaru (in English, to work hard, to do one's best) we had to memorize a long sentence explaining what it meant in nihongo. Although we all grumbled a lot, it was really good for us, since it exposed us to more ways to express ideas in our new language. While I've been on my extended trip to the U.S., my daughter has been learning English from a tutor to help bring her English reading level up. She learned all about Benjamin Franklin in English, for example, with no opportunity to cross-reference the new words she was learning with Japanese, which helps her gain confidence when speaking even though it's hard for her at first. (Incidentally, we recommend the Kanji DS Dictionary for the Nintendo DS, since it contains many useful dictionaries including J-E, E-J, kanji and a straight Japanese-language dictionary for looking up words natively.)

My daughter learned about Benjamin Franklin in English.

Japan Organ Transplant Law Update

I saw a news report about a new Japanese law governing the harvesting of living organs from brain-dead donors which had just gone into effect. You might be thinking that I'd accidentally picked up a newspaper from 25 years ago, but no -- Japan is only just catching up to the rest of the world in this important area. Previously organs from individuals who had signed a donor card could be harvested for transplants, but there was a catch -- only persons aged 15 or older were eligible to sign the donor cards, which was essentially a death sentences to anyone under that age who needed a new heart or liver but lacked the resources to travel outside of Japan to obtain one. One of the themes of Japan as a nation is that it is "behind" the U.S. and Europe in terms of its social structures, who are generally seen as as more "advanced" by the Japanese in general. It's nice to see this aspect of Japanese society being updated.

Why am I not surprised that Japan's donor cards are kawaii??

Would You Like Some 'Nutsmeg' Spice?

You know you've been in Japan too long when your mother sends you a bottle of nutmeg spice for Christmas, and a Japanese person asks what it is, upon which you immediately answer, without having ever heard what the spice is called in Japanese, "This is nutsmeg, which is great in warm milk." For some inexplicable reason of phonetics, some English words are imported into Japanese in their plural forms. Words like shirt, suit, swimsuit, peanut, and sport always appear with the 's' sound on the end, even if you're discussing the word in its singular form. In Japanese, one refers to a suitcase as a suitscase, and it takes the brain a few months to get over the weirdness of this -- ditto for learning to ask for peanuts butter or watching the Fruits Basket anime. There seem to be three reasons for some English words being mapped to their plural versions in Japanese. First is the rather convenient lack of singular/plural in Japanese grammar -- saying hana ga kirei means either "the flower is pretty" or "the flowers are pretty" depending on how many flowers you happen to discussing. Also, the softer 'tsu' ending on the plural forms is easier for Japanese to pronounce than a hard 't' consonant sound. Finally, converting some words to their plural forms also avoids the dreaded L/R confusion that can be a problem in the language. Because "fruit" and "flute" would have the exact same pronunciation when rendered in katakana, the writing system used for expressing foreign loan words, the musical instrument became furu-to and the edible stuff became furu-tsu.

There's nothing like fresh nutsmeg in warm milk, mmm.

25 Years after JAL Flight 123

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the tragic crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which occurred in my home prefecture of Gunma, as fate would have it. I learned of the crash one day when I suddenly decided to ride my bicycle 40 km to check out some caverns I'd heard about. (I had lots of free time for random stuff before I started J-List.) My wife shuddered when I told her where I was headed, and she said, "I could never go out there, that's where that plane went down in 1985." JAL flight 123 took off from Haneda airport headed for Osaka, but suffered a massive failure of its hydraulic system, which made it impossible to control the plane. After an agonizing 32 minutes in the air, it crashed. Adding to the tragedy, an American military unit arrived on the scene to aid the survivors of the crash but was ordered to stand down by the Japanese military, who then didn't arrive until the next morning. The disaster was the largest loss of life in a single aircraft crash ever, and it's even more legendary because of one very famous passenger: Kyu Sakamoto, who sang the Sukiyaki Song, the first Japanese language song to hit #1 in the U.S. Here's a link with many different versions of this epic song: http://www.jbox.com/sukiyaki. The man also sang another epic song from the 20th century, Ashita ga Aru (There Will Be a Tomorrow), the unofficial theme song of recession-ripped Japan.

Kyu Sakamoto was one of the victims of JAL Flight 123.

Filial Piety in Japan, and University

Last time I talked about the concept of filial piety, or oya koko, which is the respect you pay to your parents because without them you wouldn't be here. This formalized tradition of respecting your parents is part of Confucian teachings which exerted influence on Japan during the Edo Period (1603-1868). In the U.S. the top universities are private schools like Harvard, Princeton and MIT, while inexpensive state-funded schools (like mine, SDSU) are lower in the rankings, but in Japan this is reversed: the public universities are where everyone wants to go, in large part because they're much cheaper than their private counterparts like Waseda or Keio. One way kids show oya koko to their parents is by studying extra-hard so they can get a cheap education at Tokyo or Kyoto University, which are around $6000 per year. As a father with two kids who will be starting university in a few years, this is one kind of parental respect I am very much in favor of.

If you can pass the test to get into Tokyo University, your parents will be happy.

Advice for Finding Accommodations Inside Japan

One of my Twitter followers asked me if I had any recommendations for his upcoming trip to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. While I don't have any specific knowledge about the best places to stay up there, I do have some general advice for finding accommodations inside Japan. The first time I went to Kyoto I took my trusty Lonely Planet travel guide with me, which was loaded with information on places to stay. But one thing was odd: in every ryokan inn or youth hostel I stayed in, nearly all the guests were gaijin (foreigners) like me, with nary a nihonjin (Japanese) in sight. I eventually realized the other gusts were all using the same travel book I was, and since then I've made it a point to use Japanese-language travel information sources when I can. Another tip: considering exploring Japan through minshuku, which are awesome budget versions of Japanese inns, rather than full-service hotels. The down-to-earth feel of these family-owned lodgings is great, and the people you'll meet there are fascinating, too. For a slightly more Western feel, search out pension inns, a kind of Japanese/European bed & breakfast that's also fun to stay in.

Is summer vacation too long?; I've had some great times staying at inexpensive minshuku inns.

Is Summer Vacation Too Long?

I caught an article in Time the other day which presented the case against the long three-month summer vacation in the U.S., which (the article argued) was an unnecessary holdover from our agrarian past that harms America's competitiveness in the world today. While the question of whether summer vacation is too long or not may depend on how old you are -- a kid will say it's it's too short while a parent with four loud children might lean the other way -- I'm generally of the opinion that summer vacation in the U.S. is longer than necessary, allowing students to forget most of what they learned the previous year. In contrast to the U.S., Japan's summer break is much shorter, from mid-July through the end of August. Teachers work to ensure the nation's children won't become baka (stupid) by giving them homework to do, which helps them stay at least a little focused on school even while they get sand-between-the-toes at the beach. This summer homework is a common plot device in anime, including the infamous "Endless Eight" episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, in which Haruhi (who is a God) wanted summer to go on forever, so it repeated 15,532 times, until Kyon finally made her finish her summer homework assignments.

Is summer vacation too long? Or is that the frazzled parent in me talking?

Filial Piety and the Japanese

When a person comes to live in a country as different from the U.S. as Japan is, it stands to reason that they'll be exposed to some new ways of thinking. One new paradigm I encountered was the idea of "filial piety" (in Japanese, oya koko, pronounced oh-yah koh-koh), or the respect and honor you pay your parents just because of who they are. I had a friend who'd just become a teacher, and like most Japanese young people she lived with her parents. "But I'm not making much money yet," my friend told me, "so I'm only able to give my parents $300 each month for the household." I don't know about you, but when I was 22 I was still figuring out what I was going to do with my life, not kicking money to my mother to help her with her household finances, and I was impressed that my friend was able to think so selflessly of her parents like that.

Sadly, my friend was not as hot as Yomako.

Taxis in Japan

I happened to see a news report that said that taxis in London had been ranked the world's best, with Tokyo's taxis coming in 5th overall. While I've not had the opportunity to ride in a taxi in London, I was surprised by Tokyo's low ranking, since I've always found taxi drivers in Japan to be the most polite and professional in the world. Not only are Japanese taxis spotless, with their drivers diligently polishing every surface whenever the driver waits for a fare, they make visitors feel welcome thanks to the passenger door that opens automatically for you. Of course not every taxi ride in Tokyo is going to be a smooth one for foreign visitors. There may be language problems since drivers' English skills may vary, or confusion about what is near what in sprawling Tokyo, which is not actually a city but a prefecture with 23 cities inside it. There are also plenty of potential problems due to the chaotic way Japanese city blocks are laid out, and unless you have a map to where you're trying to go, it's possible even your driver won't be able to find your destination.

I've always found taxi drivers in Japan to be outstanding.

My American Hamburg Steak

I'm having fun spending time in my American house with my Japanese daughter, although we both tend to get homesick for familiar foods from Japan. The other day she announced she was going to make "Hamburg" steak for me, which is a hugely popular dish from Japan, essentially a Salsbury steak made with ground beef and topped with various sauces. (To the Japanese, a "Hamburg" is a hamburger steak without bread, while a "hamburger" is the same thing with the bun part included; similarly, a "Frankfurt" is a frankfurter by itself, with no bun around it.) She got all the ingredients together -- ground beef, bread crumbs, browned onions and an egg -- and cooked me some good "Hamburg" steaks, complete with a demi-glace sauce made from that amazing Bull-Dog Sauce mixed with ketchup, and we ate it all over steamed white rice. It was delicious, though it wasn't quite the same as we'd had back in Japan so many times. Eventually we realized what was wrong: the ground beef in America is 100% beef, but most of the time when you buy it in Japan you're getting a 50% beef and 50% pork blend called aibiki, which is why the taste was slightly different.

"Hamburg steak" is one of the most popular dishes in Japan (partially because it's cheap).

Tierrasanta, where Santa Claus wears a Tiara

It's funny how perceptions work differently in different languages. If you're below a certain age, the most famous Chinese name after Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-Tung if you're even older) is probably Chun Li, the cute fighting vixen from Street Fighter II who shouts "Yatta!" ("I did it!") after she wins a fight. While the brains of English speakers labor over properly memorizing a strange-sounding name like Chun Li, which has no mental hooks for us to attach it with, Japanese have the benefit of being able to internalize the name using kanji characters. Because kanji names have meaning, Japanese might get the impression that Chun Li was a beautiful baby born in the spring, since the characters mean "Spring Beauty." We have a house in the Tierrasanta area of San Diego, and just for fun I asked my Japanese daughter what she thought the name might mean. Her answer was really cute: "It means Santa Claus wearing a tiara crown."

"Tierrasanta" made my daughter think of Santa-san wearing a tiara.

Mid-Summer Greetings Cards

Hello again from Japan, where the zipper in your pants is known as the "window of society" (shakai no mado), one of my favorite random euphemisms.

This has been a difficult summer for Japan. First, the heat has been incredible, contributing to more than 100 deaths and sending thousands to the hospital, including comedian George Tokoro, who plays the voice of Ponyo's father. Japan has also started finding that some of its oldest citizens are in fact dead or missing. It all started when municipal authorities decided to check up on an 111 year old man, only to find a mummified corpse that had been there for thirty years. This may have been part of the man's personal choice to self-mumify himself in a Buddhist custom of purification, but his family is going to have some 'splaining to do about why they kept his pension money for themselves all these years. Another 50 centenarians are said to be missing, including a 113-year-old woman born in 1897, Tokyo's oldest citizen.

Yes, this summer has been a hot one, with temperatures as high as 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), of course with very high humidity. It's the perfect weather for enjoying some Japanese mugi cha or refreshing barley tea, which is the most popular drink in Japan when it's hot out. In Japan there's a nice custom called shochuu omimai or a mid-summer greeting card. Individuals and businesses exchange these cards in July and August, and the various companies J-List works with such as Soft on Demand and dating-sim game companies Will and Nitroplus send us these cards to see how we're handling the hot summer.

Midsummer greetings cards are a nice tradition in Japan.

Keeping Up with the Gaijins

History is in all of us, and each nation has its own unique quirks or features that come about as a result of its own past. For the Japanese, the arrival of Perry's black ships in 1853 brought them face-to-face with the fact that Japan couldn't stand against nations like the United States and Great Britain. After the "respect the Emperor and expel the foreign barbarians" revolution that ejected the last Tokugawa Shogun in favor of a government formed around the Emperor (which theoretically "restored" the Emperor to power, hence the term Meiji Restoration), the country underwent an unprecedented program of modernization, retiring the old system of feudal domains (han) for a modern prefectural system based on that of France and introducing education to the people. One of the forces driving this was Japan's desire to be seen in a positive light by foreigners from the powerful countries of the West, and today, the Japanese are still very concerned about how they appear to gaijin. Many large-scale public works, such as the first Shinkansen line launched in 1964, coincide with international events like the Olympics, when foreigners would visit Japan in large numbers and "oo and ah" over their technical achievements. It's like Japan is still trying to prove to the West that they've left the backwards feudal nation they were 150 years ago behind.

Japanese and Mexican Beans

Yesterday I took my wife out to my favorite Mexican restaurant in San Diego. While she scarfed down the refried beans she said, "This is delicious. I guess I'm not Japanese anymore." She was referring to the fact that virtually every Japanese detests Mexican style beans, and the mark of a Japanese person who's lived in the U.S. for some time is that they can eat all types of Mexican beans. I've got a theory that both beans and pickles are at the heart of each culture, and it always takes time to learn to appreciate the differences in one place if you come from another. And sure enough, I love nothing more than a crunchy Vlassic dill spear, while Japanese usually hate American pickles, much happier to eat traditional Japanese versions like pickled eggplant, daikon radish, or -- I swear I am not making this up -- fish intestines, all of which I can't stand. Incidentally, you can try Kyoto-style Japanese pickles with our popular Traditional Food Drops candies.

It's usual for Japanese people to hate Mexican style beans.

The Only Gaijin in the Room

Because I live in a smaller rural city in Japan, there are fewer foreigners around me, and it's not uncommon for me to find myself the only non-Japanese person around. When I take my family to the Shinto shrine to pray for good luck in the new year on January 1st, for example, I'm likely to find myself in a huge crowd of Japanese faces with nary a Westerner in sight. This is less due to the paltry number of foreigners in our part of the country and more to cultural differences, e.g. most of the Brazilians or Peruvians or Canadians living in Japan are at home doing their own thing rather than standing in the freezing cold trying to experience Japanese New Year's Day culture. Sometimes being the only foreigner around can take real courage. Once I went to a concert by a minor group called Personz, which wasn't the sort of band to attract gaijin fans. Not only was I the only non-Japanese in the entire concert hall, but most of the other attendees were short Japanese females, which meant I stood a head or more above everyone, the better for every pair of eyes in the room to lock onto the strange barbarian in row 23.

Being the only gaijin can be a challenge.

Random Japanese Concepts and the "Saemoe" Tournament

Each language is structured in different ways, and it's fun to learn a little bit about how they work. In English, we have four demonstrative pronouns -- this, that, these and those -- but in Japanese there are three, kore (koh-ray) meaning "this" associated with something close to me, the speaker, sore (soh-ray) or "that" for something near you, the person I'm speaking to, and are (ah-ray), "that over there" for something far from both of us. (You nearly always ignore plurals in Japanese.) Often meanings are imported wholesale from Chinese, like a group of kanji-based words that use the character sai, meaning "most," which is how you can express ideas like biggest (saidai ), smallest (saishou), highest (saikou, which also carries the slang meaning of "awesome" if you ever wanted to know how to say this in Japanese), or lowest (saitei, which is also a pretty potent insult). The Japanese interwebs are about to start buzzing with the new Saimoe ("most moe") Tournament, in which otaku vote on who the cutest anime characters are. Last year Taiga from Toradora! took the prize -- I wonder who will win this year?

"Beat" Takeshi and the Cycle of Death and Rebirth in Buddhism

Japan is a Buddhist country, and this manifests itself in some interesting ways. Several national holidays are Buddhist for example, such as Obon in August when the entire country shuts down for three days so everyone can return to their parents' homes to greet the spirits of dead family members who return home for a visit. One concept I've encountered quite often is rin-ne (REEN-neh), the endless cycle of death and rebirth, which basically says that a person's children will lead pretty much the same life as their parents, a pattern that can be hard to break out of. One good example of the cycle of rin-ne being broken is acclaimed comedian/director "Beat" Takeshi Kitano. His father was Kikujiro, a poor house painter who drank all the time, and it was expected that Takeshi would follow in his father's footsteps. Takeshi's mother Saki, however, was adamant that her son would break away from their family's cycle of poverty, so she did part-time jobs secretly to save money to buy study books so her son could attend university one day. I'd say it worked out pretty well.

Takeshi Kitano's mother was determined to break the rin-ne cycle.

Japanese and Tipping

Over the weekend I took a day off to spend some quality time with Mrs. J-List, visiting a nice hotel in downtown San Diego where we could relax after this year's hard anime convention season. We had fun walking through the historical Gaslamp District, which is so hard to enjoy properly during the chaos that is the San Diego Comi-con, and had a nice dinner together. While we were there, my wife did what Japanese people always do when visiting the U.S., stressing out about every tip we paid to servers at restaurants, the hotel staff that brought our bags up, and so on. There is no tipping in Japan, of course, and so Japanese who go abroad read travel books about this exotic custom to make sure they're doing it just right. While I'm usually happy to toss a few bills on the table and leave it at that, my wife meticulously calculates the proper 15% tip amount each time, and always makes sure she has a pocketful of $1 bills ready in case we need to leave unexpected gratuities.

Japanese obsess about leaving tips in the U.S.

WTF, Japan?

No matter how long a person lives in Japan, there are always things that can bring on what expats call a "Japan moment," the feeling of utter amazement at something bizarre you've just encountered. Maybe it's something cute, like a big truck playing the Main Street Electrical Street Parade song as it backs up instead of a boring beep-beep-beep sound, or that first time seeing the plastic Colonel Sanders in front of KFC wearing his "Santa Wear" (Santa Claus Suit). Maybe it's a food item, like strawberry and whipped cream sandwiches, or the ham and cheese on French Toast complete with syrup pre-applied to the bread I saw once. You never know what will bring on that sense of "only-in-Japan" next -- driving through an extremely rural town and coming across a replica of the American Statue of Liberty? Seeing a nondescript building with "Oh!" carefully painted on it? Meeting someone who has taught English for 30 years yet has never been outside of Japan, and who asks you "Where is your domicile?" instead of something simple like "Where do you live?"

Great placement on that door, guys.

Sushi in the U.S. vs. Japan

Normally when I come to the U.S. the last thing I want to do is eat Japanese food, since there there are so many other choices here, like Mexican and Thai and Chinese. (Chinese food does exist in Japan, but in a very different form from what you'd find at Panda Express, often melded so closely with everyday Japanese dishes that no one can tell the two apart.) This trip, however, I've been in the U.S. for so long doing stuff with my American family that I started really craving nihonshoku (Japanese cuisine), so last night I took the family out for the best sushi I know of in San Diego. Sushi in California and Japan are naturally a little different. First of all, the most common way to eat sushi in Japan is kaiten-zushi or conveyor belt sushi, which is cheap and convenient, although traditional places are common, too (though they are pricier). We laughed out loud at some of the menu items with names that would never fly in Japan, like Kabuki, Last Samurai, Yakuza and Gaijin Rolls. As is often the case when eating "Japanese" food in the U.S., the Master (the owner of the shop) was Korean. Which was okay with me -- the fish was fresh and good, and he gave us kimchee (Korean pickled cabbage) to eat for free.

Sushi in the U.S. is a little different from Japan. Not bad, just different.

Big Problems in Sumo Land

Sumo wrestling is the official sport of Japan, enjoying special status and support by the Japanese government. It's more than a sport, really, since it's closely tied to Shinto religious ceremonies going back centuries, and legendary figures from Japan's history like Hideyoshi and Nobunaga were sumo aficionados, although contestants fought to the death back in those days. Recently the sport hasn't been able to catch a break due to a series of scandals that have rocked the Japan Sumo Association and its fans. It started with a marijuana scandal which resulted in several wrestlers being ejected from the sport for trafficking in illegal substances, and things got worse when a teenage wrestler in training died as a result of bullying by other members of his sumo stable. (Not sure why, but a house where a team of sumo wrestlers lives and practices is always called a 'stable' in English.) Maverick Mongolian wrestler Asashoryu was forced to quit in shame after he smashed in the face of a patron in a bar, which wasn't exactly in keeping with the hinkaku (dignity) required of Grand Sumo Champions. Now the existence of gambling ties to yakuza gangsters has come to light, which has enraged fans and caused NHK to boycott broadcasting the Nagoya tournament. I've always loved the uniquely Japanese character of sumo wrestling, and hope the sport can clean its house and get things back to normal soon.

The sumo world is facing some big problems.

Otakon 2010

Unfortunately I'm not able to attend Otakon, the awesome East-Coast anime convention, this year. But that doesn't mean you can't score some great J-List stuff, since our East Coast team will be there, with fabulous manga, dating-sim games, and J-List tissues for everyone who stops by to say hello. We'll be at booth 0119 -- see you there!

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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.