Emotional and Tragic Anime Series

One thing I love about anime is its ability to affect viewers emotionally, often with characters so tragic they're almost Shakespearean. In Madoka Magika, the dark and "grown up" magical girl anime, we can sense that forces closing in on poor Miki Sayaka which result in her eventual downfall, and in the AnoHana anime (aka "We Still Don't Know the Name of the Flower We Saw on That Day") the character of Menma is very moving indeed. One series I like a lot is She, The Ultimate Weapon (Saikano), about a girl who's asked to use her esper powers to defend Japan in a great war...but she keeps growing more and more powerful, until she's able to crack the Earth in two, though all she wants to do is be with her boyfriend Shuuji. If you like your anime happy and cheerful, be wary of Sword Art Online, which has some amazing (and sad) plot twists, as does the outstanding Steins;Gate, which features some very emotional scenes as Okabe timeslips again and again in an effort to save his childhood friend Mayuri, fated to die no matter what he does. The list of highly emotional anime series goes on -- I could add Clannad After Story and Air, but I'd need to get out a tissue box. So, who are your favorite tragic anime characters?

One of the most emotional series I've seen is Air, the story of... *sob*

20 Years of Changes in Japan

I write a lot about the ways Japan has changed in the two decades I've lived here. When I first arrived back in 1991, the country was still a very closed place, with very few new products and ideas entering from the outside world, and very few choices for Japanese consumers. Happily, the long post-bubble recession coupled with the arrival of the Internet would bring some welcome changes for the country. Back in the day, the only source of English news of any kind of the Far East Network, the AM radio station broadcast by the U.S. armed forces, but now thanks to the Internet and smartphone revolution I can work out at the gym while streaming BBC news programs or even local San Diego radio news, which would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. The retail world has changed, too, with the arrival of large, efficient chains from overseas, like Toys R Us, Amazon.com and Starbucks. These companies have had a disruptive effect inside Japan, to be sure -- a large toy distributor J-List used to buy from went bankrupt when Toys R Us arrived in the marketplace -- but the end result has been positive for Japanese consumers. Costco has been an especially welcome addition to life in Japan, allowing us to buy hard-to-find foods like American hot dogs, which my wife insists are a great food to serve for breakfast for some reason. The main downside of having Costco in Japan is is that it's harder to buy omiyage (souvenirs) for the J-List staff when returning from the States -- we can't just get whatever looks good from the San Diego Costco, but actually have to look hard for interesting gifts instead.

Japan has certainly changed a lot in the past 20 years.

The Japanese [heart] Curry Rice

Japanese food has become famous all over the world, and most people are familiar with sushi, sashimi, tempura, soba, udon, sukiyaki, etc. When I arrived in Japan, I was pretty surprised that the food the Japanese seem to love best of all isn't Japanese at all...it's curry rice. Originally from India, Japan's version of curry is based on a thicker beef-based variety that was introduced into the country by the British during the Meiji Period. These days curry is made from concentrated blocks of curry powder called "roux" (a French word that Japanese people always expect Americans to know), and the market for these pre-made curry blocks is huge, worth 82 billion yen (US$1 billion) annually. There are some interesting variations on traditional curry, including katsu-curry or curry with a fried pork cutlet on top, curry udon (a delicacy of Nagoya), curry pan (bread with curry baked inside) plus yaki curry, curry rice baked to create a delicious "doria" dish. When I first met my wife's mother, she made delicious curry rice for me, and I know that the daughter of such a woman would surely be worth marrying. If you want to try making some Japanese-style curry yourself, J-List can help.

The most popular food in Japan is "curry rice."

More 2013 Anime Calendars Posted

2013 calendar season is in full swing, and we've been posting dozens of gorgeous 2013 anime, photo, idol, JPOP and "men's" (JAV) calendars for you to browse and preorder, from Evangelion to Oreimo to the gorgeous calendars for fans of Tony Taka and Kantoku and more. Remember that all preorders are held without charging until the actual calendars come in, starting in October, and you can always add to your order or change items before the items are ready to ship. Click here to see all new 2013 Japanese calendars posted to J-List!

The Japanese Love Lists

Quick, do you know how many Great Lakes there are on North America? The answer is five. The reason I know this is, the official name of the Great Lakes in Japanese is "Go-daiko" or the Five Great Lakes. The Japanese can be really organized at times, and they like to codify things into little lists to make them easier to manage, not unlike the classic Seven Wonders of the World ranking. Have you read the Four Great Tragedies of Shakespeare? I didn't know there were only four of them, but this is the term the Japanese use to describe Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear. These "most famous" mini lists are positively legion in Japan, and no matter what subject you're interested in, there's probably a "best whatever" list for you. If you're planning a trip to Japan, you might want to hit the Nihon Sankei, the Three Most Beautiful Views of Japan, which are the gnarled Japan Pines of Matsushima, the floating arch at Miyajima near Hiroshima and the view from the top of Amano Hashidate Mountain in Kyoto (which, by tradition, you're supposed to look at upside down, looking between your own legs). How about the Three Rare Delicacies of the World? Caviar, foie gras and truffles. The Three Great Soups? Bouillabaisse, Shark's Fin and Tom Yan Kung. How about the Three Great Guitarists of the world? Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. There is even an official listing for the Three Great Brands of Ham in the world.

This is really how you're supposed to do it.

Mistaken Perceptions of Other Countries

It's funny how wrong perceptions of other countries and languages can sometimes be, like the time I was asked if I could translate Vietnamese, with the idea being that since Japan and Vietnam are both in Asia, maybe the languages were similar. (They're not.) Then there are people who think Spanish is spoken in Brazil (it's Portuguese) or who say things like, "You're Taiwanese? Do you still have family in Thailand?" While there'll always be some confusion when dealing with other places -- who among us hasn't confused the Hindi and Urdu alphabet from time to time? -- it's important to interact with others with an open mind and fix these mistakes. The Japanese have their share of erroneous perceptions too. I once met a lady who asked me if we had McDonald's in the U.S., and I taught English to a 6-year-old boy who believed that ninjas originated in the U.S. for some reason. (I was also asked in all seriousness if, because I have blue eyes, I perceived the world with a blue tint.) In the K-On! Movie, the girls of the Light Music Club plan a trip to the U.K., and I love the scene where Yui says, "No silly, we're not going to England. We're going to London."

Mistaken perceptions of other countries are all too easy.

Diplomatic Crisis in Asia

Tensions are running high in Asia these days over territorial issues which are starting to affect politics and economics in the region. The Japanese government recently sent inspectors to survey the Senkaku Islands, done in preparation for the government to buy them from their current private owners so they can be controlled by Japan directly. The Senkakus are uninhabited islands that were claimed by Japan as terra nullius in 1895 and developed in the first half of the century (Japan had a fish processing factory there from 1900-1940), and were administered by the U.S. along with Okinawa after the war then formally returned to Japan in 1972. The islands have been claimed by China and Taiwan since 1970, after it was discovered that the region held oil and natural gas reserves, and every couple years China is wracked by demonstrations resulting in rocks being thrown through the windows of Japanese businesses. Then there's Dokdo / Takeshima, two ugly islands claimed by both Japan and South Korea which were unilaterally occupied by South Korea in 1952 (in violation, it must be said, of U.S. postwar policy and the Treaty of San Francisco). The average Japanese hadn't spared two seconds to think about the islands before, using the Japanese mantra shikata ga nai ("it can't be helped"), but when President Lee visited the islands and made disparaging comments about Japan's Emperor, people here got extremely angry, no doubt switching from kimchee imported from Korea to domestic brands. The real problem is that there are two disputes. I believe Japan could reach an agreement with South Korea, but this would weaken it's position in the more important Senkaku issue...hence nothing can move forward.

A crisis over useless islands in the Pacific.

2013 Anime Calendar Season Begins!

We've got great news today: the real start of 2013 calendar season. We've updated the J-List site with dozens of gorgeous 2013 calendars, with all the most popular series represented, from Sword Art Online to Fate/Zero to Super Sonico and My Neighbor Totoro. This year is extra special because there are offerings by Japan's top artists, including Tony Taka, Twinkle and our favorite, Kantoku. Browse all 2013 Japanese calendars now, and get your preorders in early!

How the Japanese Language Works with Computers

Back in the early days of my interest in Japan, I used to wonder how computers and word processors might work in the language, with its convoluted system of hiragana, katakana and kanji -- I'd imagine keyboards with hundreds of keys on them to make input possible. The reality is much simpler: modern computer OSes use a front-end program (IME in Windows, Kotoeri on Mac) to take text you've entered using the normal keyboard layout and convert it to the proper kanji or kana characters for you when you hit the space bar. There are certain fundamental issues that come up when using Japanese with a computer. First, there's the danger of henkan-miss or mistakenly entered kanji characters, like a news report on Japanese "living abroad starting this year" that displayed "shellfish living in your stomach starting this year" on the screen by accident. Then there's the problem of mojibake (mo-ji-bah-kay), literally "characters turning into monsters on your screen," which can happen if your web browser can't figure out the correct character conversion to use for displaying text. Finally, since Japanese net users are the laziest in the world, a class of English slang words typed with Japanese input mode active has been born, like yoh-tsubeh for YouTube or sloppy versions of "ok" and "up" (upload). If you ever see Japanese net users using the letter "w" in strange ways, it represents laughter.

Thursday is Imouto no Hi (Younger Sister's Day)

The Japanese are fond of designating certain days to commemorate random things, and every time I get in my car it greets me and tells me that today is Mandarin Orange Day or something like that. Often these special days are decided by Japanese phonetics -- for example, the number four can be pronounced yo, so it's somewhat logical that April 4 be declared "Yo-yo Day." It turns out that September 6 is Imouto no Hi, or Younger Sister's Day, first established by manga-ka (manga artist) Kunio Hatada. It's a day to do something special for your younger sister, if you have one, and reflect on the nice things she does for you, like cooking you omelet-rice with a ketchup heart drawn on top, or waking you up every morning before running off to school with a piece of toast in her mouth. The genre of imouto chara -- younger sister, or characters in similar roles -- have become a major meme in anime these days, and a vehicle for moe stories like I Can't Believe My Younger Sister Is This Cute and and My Little Sister is Among Them! In case you were wondering, younger brother's day, older brother's day and older sister's day also exist, on March 6, June 6 and December 6, respectively.

Thursday is Imouto no Hi, a day to celebrate younger sisters. Is that creepy?

Otaku Tourism Update

J-List is based in Gunma, a landlocked prefecture in the exact center of Japan that's said to be shaped like a crane in flight, which is a pretty Japanese observation to make. It's a land of mountains -- Gunma is the setting for the Initial D mountain racing anime -- plus there are many onsen hot springs, which is fine by me. While we like our prefecture a lot, we're not always happy with our city of Isesaki for various reasons. These days there's a boom in anime series being set in real locations, in part to add a realistic flavor to a two-dimensional world but also to help promote interest in rural parts of Japan. The Komoro and Lake Kizaki regions of Nagano Prefecture are featured in the anime Please, Ichika! Ano Natsu de Matteru, and these areas have worked closely with the animation studios to help promote ota-tourism, bringing in fans who want to visit the locations in the anime and buy limited products you can only find there. Similarly, if you take a trip to Hokkaido you'll be able to find lots of limited edition Hatsune Miku products, which has become part of the character of Sapporo. But despite the fact that Isesaki is the setting for the Nichijou anime, our city totally failed to realize the benefit of promoting this fact to the outside world. When I think of the limited edition Nichijou Roll Cake we could have used to bring in tourist dollars, featuring Nano and Hakase and Sakamoto on the package, it brings a tear to my eye.

Our city failed to bring in Nichijou tourism.

Japanese Pen, Notebook and Study Product Sale!

September is time for studying, and J-List is happy to announce a great new sale for everyone. For the next month, get 2x J-List Points on all awesome Japanese pens, erasers, and other stationery and art supplies. Since everyone who'll be taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test this December needs to get studying, we're also including all Japanese study products in the sale. See all items included in the sale now!

Healthy Japanese

Like many people, the Japanese are very health conscious, and it seems every time I watch daytime variety shows on TV, some new health boom is being discussed. One week it might be green tea with fat-busting elements called catechin, then a story on the benefits of eating onions to make your blood sara sara (smooth-flowing) instead of doro doro (thick and syrupy), or promoting the benefits of a glass of kurozu (a black rice vinegar, diluted with water) after dinner, which supposedly changes an acidic body into an alkaline one, or something. Something must be working, because the Japanese are among the longest-lived people in the world, although the terrible loss of life from last year's tsunamis caused Japan to drop behind Hong King for women for the first time in 26 years. I happened to see that last Friday was the 100th birthday of Katsumi Tezuka, the actor who was inside the rubber Godzilla suit for the first few films in the series. I shall raise a glass of black rice vinegar to him tonight!

The guy in the Godzilla suit has turned 100 years old.

Comparing Spain and Japan

The other day I caught an in-depth Japanese news show on the economic crisis in Spain, which was interesting because the problems that country is experiencing are very similar to what Japan went through after the bursting of its land bubble in 1991. During the Japan's bubble period, the value of all land in Tokyo was higher than the entire United States on paper, and when things crashed in 1991, it resulted in a "lost decade" of economic hard times for Japan. The causes of both crashes were remarkably similar, including over-spending on municipal "if you build it they will come" projects, too much access to easy credit and a speculative bubble in land prices. One silver lining is that countries like Spain can learn a lot from the steps Japan took to solve its own economic problems and act on them sooner (Japan's government took years to start to combat the crisis). As is common with Japanese news programs like the one I was watching, a male "announcer" (newscaster) stood beside an attractive female co-announcer, while a panel of distinguished guests looked on, ready to make comments. Naturally they needed a Japanese-bilingual foreigner to round out the group and give a foreign point of view, a role filled by model and "talent" Jessica Claros from Malaga, Spain.

Japan is uniquely qualified to understand Spain's crisis.

Space Battleship Yamato Returns

It's a glorious time for me as an anime fan, thanks to the new Space Battleship Yamato series that started running this season. It's a proper remake of the 1974 classic space opera, telling the story of the Earth in the year 2199, under attack by radioactive "planet bombs" sent by the evil Lord Desslar of Planet Gamilas. All life on earth will cease unless the Yamato (the World War II battleship, refitted with alien technology to be a spaceship) can travel 148,000 light years to the planet Iscandar and bring back a device that can remove radiation with one year. The story is heavily influenced by Japan's experiences in World War II, of course, and the original series really marked the first time the subject of the war could play a part in popular culture in any way. While the new series is remarkably faithful to the original, creators Yutaka Izubuchi (Gundam ZZ, Loddoss War, Patlabor) and Hideki Anno (Evangelion, Gunbuster, Macross) are tweaking the story elements -- for example, the crew sometimes wears Gundam-style pressure suits, and the Gamilas have a proper alien language, for added realism. The original series was a bit of a sausage fest, so new female characters have been added, such as a bridge crew member, a fighter pilot and an assistant to Dr. Sado, who still drinks Captain Avatar's spring water, er, I mean sake all the time. The new characters have modern moe design features like glasses and ahoge (that strand of hair that sticks up on some characters to serve as a "charm point") in order to modernize the series.

The Space Battleship Yamato remake is great!

2013 Japanese Calendars Posted

Regular J-List customers know that near the end of the year we offer hundreds of gorgeous calendars for fans of anime, manga, traditional Japanese art and more. While the bulk of anime calendars aren't released for preorder yet, we've been posting the new calendars to the site as they are announced. We've already got a great lineup of epic calendars for you to browse, from Totoro and Jiji the Cat to Yotsubato and Hetalia and this year's Japanese Women in Kimono calendar. Click to browse all 2013 Japanese calendars now!

(Are we really posting calendars for 2013? When we started J-List it was 1996 and we were posting 1997 calendars. Wow...)

Bowing Level: Japanese

Bowing is an important form of social communication in Japan. Whether it's a short sumimasen accompanied by a brief lowering of the head at someone for bringing you a cup of coffee (which essentially means "sorry for inconveniencing you"), or a gomen nasai said with a deeper bow for communicating a more serious apology, Japan's culture of bowing is interesting to observe. Japanese people bow to each other while talking on the phone or to thank other drivers for letting them go ahead of them in traffic, and naturally foreigners pick up on this, too, though it can be embarrassing. The ultimate form of a bowing is dogeza, known in English as kowtow or in Internet visual parlance, orz, which is when a person places their body on the lowest level possible, literally touching their head to the ground. This is done to ask for forgiveness for a serious breach or to make a very important request of someone. When my Japanese wife's mother met my mother for the first time, she did this, prostrating herself on the floor in a gesture that meant, "I humbly ask you to look after our daughter from now on," which freaked my mother out more than a little. Today we have some interesting Japanese plush toys featuring Japanese salrymen making this deeply Japanese gesture.

An example of dogeza ("Please, give us a role in the series, too!")

Hatsune Miku 5th Anniversary

Today is the "birthday" of Hatsune Miku, the popular Vocaloid singer that has come to represent Japan in the eyes of the world in the same way that Astro Boy and Akira did in previous eras. Miku-chan is a character designed by Crypton Future Media in Sapporo, Hokkaido to promote the Vocaloid voice synthesis software developed by Yamaha, and when the software was released five years ago today it was an instant hit in part thanks to her. While the virtual idol herself was created by popular Japanese artist Kei, Hatsune Miku was warmly embraced by Japan's fan artists, who create breathtakingly beautiful original images which I like to seek out and post to J-List's Facebook and Twitter feeds. Miku has passed through several phases over the years, including her "leek period" (a crossover meme from Bleach) that featured her singing the Finnish folk song "levan Polkka" and the oh-so-gorgeous "Love is War" period, and she's always evolving for us. Recently birthdays of popular anime and other characters have become quite a big event for online otaku culture, with fans baking cakes and planning romantic candlelight dinners with their favorite waifus characters, and I'm sure Japan's 2ch BBS will be inundated with creepygusta images of private birthday celebrations with Miku tomorrow. If you love Miku-chan as we do, J-List has some great Hatsune Miku products to show you, including the just-released PS Vita Hatsune Miku game that has a great "augmented reality" feature that lets Miku dance on your desk (wow).

Happy 5th birthday to Hatsune Miku!

First Impressions of Japan, and the U.S.

It's interesting to look at first impressions of a new country. When I came to Japan in 1991, I was surprised to see vending machines everywhere, and I couldn't stop thinking the yellow "in" signs placed in front of Japanese restaurants were In-n-Out signs, beckoning me to come in and have a Double Double. (In-n-Out is the best hamburger chain in the American Southwest, trust me.) Going into restaurants and having the employees shout Irasshaimase! ("Welcome to our shop!") took some getting used to, as did using coins for the equivalent of $1 and $5 bills (I prefer them now though). Going the other way, Japanese people are surprised by various aspects of life in the U.S. when they go there, starting with the sizes of everything from American roads to houses to "medium" Cokes that are three times a large as they need to be. If they go to a part of the U.S. other than Southern California, they're amazed to see that there are four distinct seasons, which they usually believe is a unique feature of Japan. They're also surprised at the amazing number of breakfast cereals available in our supermarkets. One of my ESL students once wrote, "In SAFEWAY, many kinds of corn flakes about one hundred have overpowered me. I felt a difference of the staple foods." Japanese stores usually have about 8-10 varieties including Kellogg's "Corn Frosty" or "Genmai Flake."

Japanese are surprised at the selection of cereal in the U.S.

Fun Anime & Kanji T-Shirts @ J-List

For years J-List has been making fun anime and kanji T-shirts, and we've got some great designs for you, from our Haruhi "No Normal Humans" design to our K-On! x Beatles tribute shirt and fun shirts for fans of tsundere or yandere anime characters. We also have hoodies, great for the coming cooler months. Click here to browse our most popular Japanese T-shirt designs!

Japan, Taxes and Pensions

After several years of intense negotiations, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan was able to push through a bill that will raise the Japanese consumption tax from its current level of 5% to 8% in 2014, with a further increase to 10% a couple of years later. While I'm no fan of paying more taxes, I believe that something needs to be done to improve Japan's financial situation, already in bad straights and now needing to pay for the recovery of Tohoku after last year's earthquakes and tsunamis. The other day I caught an interesting show in which Japanese director Beat Takeshi lead a round-table discussion featuring politicians, writers and other smart people as they debated the financial issues Japan faced going forward, including the crisis of people not making their National Pension payments. Japan has two pension systems, "Social Insurance" (shakai hoken) for employees at larger companies, and National Pension (kokumin nenkin) for workers at smaller companies and self-employed. In one of the biggest blunders by a modern government ever, employees covered under the National Pension system are "required" to make their pension payments...but since the money is not deducted by employers like Social Security is in the U.S. and there's no actual enforcement for non-payment, a full 41% of Japanese who should be making their pension payments are not. This is a crisis not only for the individuals in question but also for Japan at large. I hope they can come up with some good solutions.

Japan is trying to fix its National Pension system with attractive graphics like this.

Japan and the Disabled

Today is the start of the 2012 Summer Paralympics, where thousands of athletes will show off their athletic skills and try to win the gold. I'm often asked about how Japan fares when it comes to people with disabilities, so I thought I'd write about the 3.5 million people with physical handicaps in Japan (2.5% of the population). It's often said by Japanese that they are "behind" the U.S. and Europe socially, and the relatively high number of areas that aren't currently wheelchair-accessible in Japan are thought to reflect this...though as Japan is a nation that must cram half the population of the U.S. into a land area the size of Montana, it's sometimes considered shikata ga nai ("it can't be helped") that the country isn't as friendly to people with special needs as the U.S. Still, over the past decade things certainly have gotten more "barrier free" -- a made-in-Japan English term used to describe places free of obstacles for elderly or disabled people -- and these days most every train station I visit has elevators and accessible bathrooms. Japan does a lot for its disabled citizens, including assistance with education and employment and covering most of the costs for special vehicles and guide dogs for the blind. Near J-List there's a sports-and-rehabilitation facility that's free for people with disabilities (the rest of us pay $3 to use it). I used to teach English to wheelchair racing and basketball players there, and I hope that some of my former students are representing Japan in London!

Japanese athletes aim for gold at the Paralympics. Good luck!

In Stock Now: Necomimi Brain-Powered Cat Ears

We love to find fun cosplay products from Japan, and one of the most popular products we've ever carried has been the Necomimi Nuerowear cat ears, which work by picking up your brain waves, moving just like a cat's. The unit work great, sensing changes in your brain waves as well as circulation. At the summer's anime conventions we sold them, and whenever someone would approach the ecchi side of our booth we'd laugh as the ears shot straight up, just like a real cat. We recently restocked the U.S. version of the Necomimi Cat Ears, and today we got in the alternate cat ear coverings, which allow you customize your cat ears so they're special. So cute!

Switching Bodies in Kokoro Connect

One unique aspect of the Japanese language is the great difference between male and female speech, including gender-specific pronouns, e.g. the word for "I" is ore (oh-reh) for boys trying to appear more manly than they are, and atashi for feminine girls. It's a (minor) issue for foreigners studying the language, since it can be all too easy for a male to pick up the speech patterns of a girlfriend or female teacher, which can be embarrassing. The gap between female and male speech is explored in the new anime Kokoro Connect, about a school Cultural Research Club where the members inexplicably start to switch bodies, with male club members suddenly finding themselves in the bodies of female members and vice-versa. This leads to interesting scenes in which a female character speaks with the voice of the male character whose body she has switched with, using female inflection and pronouns despite the voice itself being male, as well as female characters using masculine speech when boys have swapped bodies with them. It's quite an interesting exploration of what makes us who we are...it's also more than a little sexy.

The new body-switching anime Kokoro Connect.

Japanese Memory Tricks

Quick, what's the square root of five? I have no idea, but my wife knows: it's 2.2360679. How about the Periodic Table of Elements? My wife can recite the first dozen or so. Do you know what year the Kamakura Bakufu, the first military government in Japan, was established? She tells me that it was the year 1192. This isn't because she's especially smart -- like all Japanese she has a tendency to be self-effacing and regularly calls herself baka, or stupid. No, the reason she knows these tidbits of knowledge is because of the way Japanese memorize some forms of information, by converting it into easily learned phrases, which is called goro-awase. Through a mechanism few gaijin can really understand, numbers are easily mapped to syllables in Japanese, for example the ee sound can stand for ichi (one), and yo or shi for the number four, and o for zero. To conjure up the square root of five in the example above, my wife needs only to remember a phrase that translates as, "at the base of Mt. Fuji, a parrot cries" (Fuji-sanroku ni ohmu naku). Back in the late 1980s, the U.S. was going through a period of serious Japan envy, when just about everything from the country seemed to be perfect, especially the much-vaunted education system, and at least a small reason the Japanese were beating us on international standardized tests was because of these little mnemonic tricks. Of course, breaking information down into easy-to-digest chunks or memorizing by association are great ways to study more effectively. If you're looking for some innovative ways to learn Japanese, be sure to view our study pages for some good ideas.

It's easy to memorize information when you do it in Japanese.

Japan [Hearts] France

Perceptions are always fun to explore. The other day I made a lunch date with Mrs. J-List at a nice French restaurant we like to go to occasionally. The Japanese are big fans of French-style formal dining, and every Japanese city is well served by several French restaurants with price points ranging from expensive to very expensive. As we ate, I amused myself by wondering how different Japan's stylized image of French dining differed from what French people actually eat. Japan's fascination with all things French might trace back to the popularity of The Rose of Versailles, the anime and manga about the French Revolution from the 1970s. In addition to Tokyo Tower, a 1:1 scale homage to the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo is filled with boulangeries offering all manner of French-style baked goods, restaurants with trained sommeliers for recommending the perfect wine, and pâtissiers who have apprenticed under master pastry chefs in Paris. A famous symbol of Japan's love of France is their embracing of a thick brown sauce called demi-glace, which is as popular in Japan as teriyaki is in the U.S. But when I asked some of my Twitter followers in France about it, several had never heard of the sauce and needed to use Wikipedia to find out what it was.

The Japanese have a slightly idealized image of France.

Buying a New Car in Japan

Over the weekend we got a new car, a Mazda CX-5. It's a fun and sporty small SUV that seemed to suit our needs better now that the kids are getting old enough to not want to do "family stuff" with us that much. Buying a car in Japan is naturally a little different than in the U.S. First of all, rather than buying from a third-party dealer, you nearly always go to an official car dealership operated by Toyota, Nissan, Mazda etc. (This direct-from-manufacturer model was emulated by GM's Saturn brand.) You never drive off with a car that day, but instead order it and wait three weeks while they make it in the factory...or in our case, three months, since the model we got was backlogged due to its popularity. (Fun fact: Mazda cars are made in Hiroshima, Japan.) While having to wait for your new car can be a bummer, I've come to appreciate the slow taste of anticipation quite a lot. One reason people buy new cars in Japan is a tax-and-car-inspection called sha-ken, which is required every two years and which costs around $600-1500 (this fee includes a road tax and two years of required auto insurance). It's unpleasant to pay this fee, so many Japanese use it as an excuse to look at new cars when the two year date rolls around, which helps keep the domestic Japanese economy humming.

Artist's concept of a car showroom in Japan (not really).

Kawaii Nendoroid Figures at J-List!

We love finding kawaii anime figures to post to the site, and none are cuter than the Nendoroid series by Good Smile Company. Featuring incredibly "Super Deformed" versions of your favorite characters, Nendoroid figures come with many extra parts allowing you to create awesome new poses and complete dioramas with your other figures. Click here to see the most popular Nendoroid figures on the site!

Taboo Subjects and the Japanese

J-List has a popular Facebook page as well as a Twitter feed, and I sometimes like to throw out questions to my readers and get their feedback. One user asked, "Do Japanese avoid topics like religion or politics when talking with friends?" which I thought I'd write about here. Naturally, there is an unwritten list of "taboo" topics that Japanese will avoid in social situations. Politics is one, and it's rare that a discussion about a person's affiliation with one political party or another will take place, though in the weeks before an election these rules are relaxed somewhat. The Japanese nearly never discuss a person's religion, considering it to be a violation of privacy, and the you generally have to know someone very well before you discover if there's a Christian or a member of such-and-such sect of Buddhism. (An exception might be members of Soka Gakkai, a modern group formerly affiliate with the Nichiren Buddhist School that can be considered an "evangelical" Buddhist religion, always eager to recruit new members.) Asking whether a person is of mixed ethnicity is also rarely done, unless the person is obviously haafu (half-Japanese, half-Western, like my kids). While commenting on a person's weight gain is a pretty major taboo in the U.S., the Japanese don't share this view, and will often make good-natured but indelicate statements about my weight when I see them.

It's rare for politics or religeon to be openly discussed in Japan.

The Japanese People and the English Language

The relationship between Japan and the English language is a long and complex one. Everyone studies the language for six years in junior high and high school, or up to ten if they take the language in university, but not everyone has the same level of real mastery. Some Japanese -- doctors, lawyers or politicians -- will often show off their higher education by peppering their speech with more English phrases, in the same way English speakers might throw in a French phrase here and there to spice things up, but these terms are far from universally understood. In the popular anime Sword Art Online, an (awesome) show about a virtual online fantasy game in which players become trapped in the game world, forced to play or die. In one scene, Asuna tells Kirito, "When to players get married inside the game, their inventory space is joined. It's a very platonic idea, but also romantic, too." Kirito has no idea what the word "platonic" means, so she has to explain it to him. This happens to my wife: after years of being married to me, her Japanese is filled with so many English words that others sometimes can't understand her easily.

There's a lot to like about Sword Art Online.

Traditional Stuff from Japan

J-List loves all aspects of Japan, from anime to manga to the traditional imagery of Kyoto, and we carry a lot of fun traditional products for you. We've got a lot of interesting Japanese footwear, to wooden geta sandals and the popular waraji woven grass sandals worn by samurai in the Edo Period, and even authentic tabi, the split-toed boots worn by ninjas, carpenters, and Mythbusters' Adam Savage when he wears his famous No Face costume. We also stock authentic kimonos, yukatas plus my favorite jinbei kimonos, great for summer festivals or using as pajamas. Click to see all our traditional clothing and footwear from Japan.

Gaishi-kei: Foreign Companies in Japan

One interesting word of Japanese is gaishi-kei, a word that means "foreign capital company" and which describes firms from America and Europe doing business in Japan, like Coca-Cola, P&G, Nestle, Michelin, Apple and AFLAC. Since these companies come from outside Japan, they represent a way of doing business that's uniquely un-Japanese, which often leads to interesting results in the marketplace, as the unifying Japanese concept of joshiki (lit. "common sense") don't apply to them. Gaishi-kei companies also offer opportunities to Japanese employees that are likely not available at their more straight-laced domestic counterparts, and Japanese who have an aptitude for foreign languages, who are good at thinking "out of the box" and/or who have the ambition to do interesting things with their careers are often attracted to these unique companies. When my wife and I went to Tokyo a couple weeks ago, we decided to stay in the Park Hyatt, the foreign-operated hotel featured in the film Lost in Translation. I was impressed with the hotel on several levels, including the level of service they provided and the linguistic ability of their staff. The hotel gets a large number of guests who are foreigners, and knowing that we generally love everything about Japan, they'd decorated the hotel with fascinating books on Japanese history, art and culture that we were free to pick up and read at any time. I was very impressed, and wanted to read everything. I don't think a Japanese-run hotel would have thought of doing something like that.

Foreign companies in Japan are interesting.

A Song of Ice, Fire and Nihongo

When learning Japanese, there are various yardsticks students will use to measure their progress. Are you able to converse normally with Japanese on everyday subjects? Can you "think" in Japanese without translating things to your native language first? Can you describe to the pizza delivery man how to get to your house without him realizing you're a foreigner? (That's not easy, trust me.) It's common for Japanese people to compliment gaijin on their Japanese ability, but serious students know that the real goal is to get to the point where they don't tell you nihongo ga jozu ("your Japanese is very good") but just shut and talk to you normally. The official measure of fluency is, of course, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, the 5-level test that helps you increase your language skill year-by-year, with the highest level (N1) being required for entering a Japanese university. I recently discovered a level that's even higher than that, when I was watching the Game of Thrones series with my wife and she asked me to explain all the relationships in the series to her in Japanese...Baratheon, Lannister, Stark and Targaryen. I was ready to die just then.

Want a challenge? Try explaining Game of Thrones to someone in Japanese.

Coincidences and Japan

Today's interesting word of Japanese is guuzen (goo-zen), which means "coincidence." I don't know why, but there seems to be something about Japan that brings out the most unlikely coincidences, at least for me. On several occasions I've bumped into people I studied Japanese with at SDSU in Tokyo and Yokohama -- quite a feat, considering that I live far from these places myself. Before coming to Japan, I taught myself the language using the classic baseball manga Touch, and by an incredible coincidence the city I came to live in (Isesaki, Gunma) just happens to be the birthplace of the artist, Adachi Mitsuru...who also shares a birthday with my wife. Yulia Nova is a beautiful Russian model, and the photographer who publishes her works just happens to be in the same city as J-List, about 3 km away, again totally by chance. Yesterday I learned that the company that makes those incredibly cute cat "phone jack mascot" iPhone figures our customers love just happens to be based in our city...and actually within walking distance from J-List. So instead of being made in China, they're made in our little corner of Japan, something we thought was pretty cool.

The company that makes these is very near J-List, despite us living in a small rural city.

Cat Cafes

Speaking of cats, I've written before about how much the Japanese love them, regularly turning the furry felines into "Internet pet idols" and traveling for miles to visit famous cats like Tama the Stationmaster or the residents of the Cat Temple in Fukui Prefecture. If you really love cats, why not come to Japan and go to a "cat cafe"? It's a variation on the basic Internet cafe model where patrons with too much time on their hands pay a fee to relax in a pleasant space where they can drink coffee, access computers and read manga, but these establishments add lots of adorable cats to the mix. Visitors spend hours playing with the cats, which is a soothing experience the Japanese call "neko therapy." It's quite a popular concept, and there are almost 150 of these cat cafes in Japan now, with names like Neko Cafe Calm, Cat's Time and (my favorite) Curl Up Cafe.

Tthe Japanese really love cats. You have no idea.

Super Awesome Thing: Aselia the Eternal

J-List is heavily involved with licensing and translating Japanese visual novels, eroge and other rare and fun games from Japan for our customers all over the world. One game we love a lot is the Aselia the Eternal, a popular all-ages RPG with a fun gameplay system that features maps, real combat, and 40-50 hours of total gameplay to enjoy. For more information on this outstanding title, visit the Aselia the Eternal Official Site or click here to see the game's product page.

How the Japanese View America

One of the interesting aspects of Japan is that it's one of the most pro-American countries on the planet, with most people having a positive view of the U.S., occasional issues over the bases on Okinawa notwithstanding. Compared with Japan's more restrictive society, Japanese often view America as more "free," and learning English and immigrating to the U.S. is a popular option for Japanese who don't fit in with society here for one reason or another. (My wife has a Japanese friend who always says whatever she's thinking no matter who will be put off by it, because "that's what Americans do"...I could see why she'd have problems living in Japan.) Japanese are usually favorable to American brands, viewing them as kakko ii -- meaning "good style" or "cool" -- which allows companies like Jack Daniels and Harley-Davidson and Costco to win many loyal customers here. There's a booming business for American companies that license their names for use on unrelated products, and if you're looking for a bicycle in Japan, you can find one bearing the Chevrolet or Ford Mustang or Coleman logos. I bought a Zippo bicycle for the lulz, because I like the company but don't smoke.

Black Rock Harley-Riding Shooter.

Lightning Strikes in Japan

All things considered, Japan is a pretty safe country to live in, generally free from a lot of things that can kill you. The number of murders in Japan each year is slightly more than that of New York State, deaths from traffic accidents are low, and generally Japan is very heiwa (peaceful). There are some dangers of course -- as we all learned a year ago, earthquakes and tsunamis can take a terrible toll if you're caught in the wrong place without a clear evacuation plan. Then there's lightning, so frequent on hot, sticky summer afternoons, which proved tragically fatal over the weekend. Two 22-year-old females were attending an outdoor concert in Osaka when the light drizzle turned into a sudden "guerrilla thunderstorm" (gerira raiu, a very colorful Japanese term). The two women moved closer to a tree to try to get out of the rain when lightning suddenly struck the tree, killing both of them. In a separate incident, a 15 year old boy in Shiga Prefecture near Kyoto was struck by lightning while jogging, and is in critical condition.

A sad lightning strike at a concert in Osaka.

Increased Competition for "Randoseru" Backpacks in Japan

One of the proudest days in the lives of parents is going shopping with their child to buy a school backpack, which will be used during elementary school to carry textbooks and study supplies as well as the hopes and dreams of mom and dad. Called randoseru (from the Dutch word ransel, meaning backpack), these school backpacks have been a symbol of growing up going back to the Meiji Period. Because the backpacks need to last all six years of elementary school, they're extremely well-made and can be quite expensive, and it's common for grandparents to step up and buy them as a gift for their beloved grandchild who's about to start school. One of the biggest problems facing Japan today is shoshika, the declining number of children brought about by Japan's low birthrate, and this has caused Japan's school backpack industry to heat up with increased competition as companies chase fewer children. The Japanese school year doesn't start until next April, but already manufacturers are advertising heavily and slashing prices to make sales. If you're interested in these randoseru Japanese backpacks for that Mayoi Hachikuji cosplay you've been planning, we've got one on the site now.

A Japanese randoseru school backpack symbolizes growing up.

Shimapan and Absolute Zone Socks at J-List

J-List carries a lot of random cosplay products from Japan for you. First are our wonderful selection of shimapan, the striped panties that have become such a popular meme in anime, which we have in several colors. We also love the over-knee socks known that create an awesome space between the top of the socks and where a girl's skirt begins, which is known as zettai ryoiki, or the Absolute Zone. Of course, socks that fall down would be terrible, so we stock Japanese Socks Glue, too. Click to see our awesome selection of Japanese fashion items and cosplay products now!

Ghost Town Tokyo and Ekiben

Yesterday I took a trip to Tokyo to take advantage of Obon, when half the city leaves for their home prefectures to be with family, turning Japan's capital into a ghost town for four days. It was fun, walking around the usually-bustling Shinjuku and Shibuya with very few people around me, and my wife and I had a pleasant time. I made a point of leaving Tokyo right around lunchtime so I could eat one of my favorite things in the world: ekiben, the famous "train station bento" that you buy at train stations to eat on a train. The world of train station bento lunches is great -- each station makes it own unique type which represents what that part of Japan is known for. Visit Hokkaido and you'll be able to buy ika-meshi bento, which is flavored rice cooked inside a delicious squid, while no trip to Toyama is complete without eating masu-no-sushi, a delicious trout sushi pressed into a round wooden frame and eaten like a pizza. Our prefecture is famous for Daruma dolls, so naturally Takasaki Station sells ekiben in a special daruma-shaped bento box that's quite delicious.

Tokyo during Obon is empty, it's actually pleasant to be there.

Buddhism in Japan: Bring Home the Bacon

Last time I talked about Obon, the Japanese Buddhist holiday in which families welcome the souls of departed family members home for a visit. Buddhism in Japan can be quite a perplexing subject, especially if you're unfamiliar with the religion. Officially a branch of the Mahayana School of Buddhism, imported into Japan through the Korean Peninsula in 552 A.D., Japanese Buddhism developed many unique features, stressing the importance of one's ancestors while paying less attention to ideas about karma or reincarnation found in some other Buddhist traditions. While many may have the image of Buddhist priests leading ascetic lives, fasting as they seek satori (enlightenment), Japanese Buddhism is more about providing a calming social framework for people, especially when family members pass away...and driving really bodacious Mercedes-Benz cars. Yes, for some reason Buddhist monks are ridiculously wealthy, receiving a huge amount of money for their services yet paying no taxes. They get to drink, too: there's a custom at Japanese funerals called bozu-okuri, meaning "driving the priest home after the wake because he's too drunk to drive." Whenever Japan goes into a recession, Buddhist priests get embarrassed about their wealth and hide their luxury cars, driving more modest economy cars in public. There's a fun scene in episode 2 of Tari Tari when the father of one of the characters, a Buddhist priest, is seen rapidly counting his money in front of a computer spreadsheet.

Japanese Buddhism can be a confusing thing.

Cool Traditional Products from Japan

J-List is much more than an anime shop, and we go out of our way to sell hundreds of fun traditional items that make you think you're in a Kyoto souvenir shop. From onsen bath powder to those wicker pillows that are so wonderful for napping with in the summer to a sakura tree that blooms right on your desk and many interesting Buddhist products, we've got a lot of fun items to browse. Click to see the top traditional Japan items here.

The Japanese Love Mayonnaise

I've learned a few things about the Japanese during my time here. They generally think that every foreigner is tall and blonde even if we're 5'5" with dark hair. Japanese companies love to individually wrap things, and there are usually at least three layers of meticulously designed wrapping between you and that cookie you'd like to eat. They love concrete, and think nothing of creating parks where pristine concrete comes right up to where the trees are...or of covering random mountainsides "just in case" there might be a landslide someday. They're also the biggest fans of mayonnaise in the world, consuming 1.8 kg (4 lbs) of the stuff per person per year. Japanese put mayo on salads, sushi, on traditional foods like takoyaki or okonomiyaki...and one of the most popular kinds of pizza is corn and mayonnaise (I swear I am not making this up). The Japanese word for someone who really loves mayonnaise is mayoler, and it's not uncommon for characters to have an unnatural love of the stuff as a personality quirk in anime, like Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny or Tsukasa from Lucky Star. As in Europe, the Japanese often eat French fries with mayonnaise, or both ketchup and mayonnaise together, dipped randomly. If you're curious about Japanese mayonnaise, naturally we have some on the site for you.

The Japanese are great lovers of mayonnaise.

J-List is in Las Vegas!

Just a reminder: J-List is in Las Vegas August 17-19 for AniMegaCon, a new convention we think has a lot of potential. In addition to cool Japanese products from J-List, you can find lots of guests, an amazing maid cafe plus a free hentai video room sponsored by us. Hope to see you at the show!

Japanese Territorial Issues, and a Cat

There's an interesting Japanese news-and-discussion program on Saturdays called Yasuhiro Tase's Weekly News Report, where the important news stories of the day are discussed by some very smart commentators. Because the topics covered in the show are quite heavy and intellectual, they "soften" things in a uniquely Japanese way: by keeping a cat on the set and allowing the camera to follow what the cat is doing while various subjects are being debated. Last week was an interesting topic, one that concerns many Japanese: the ongoing territorial disputes with Russia over the four Kuril islands north of Hokkaido; with China and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands; and with South Korea over two useless rocks called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, which have become a major thorn in Japanese-Korean relations. Japanese are concerned that, as their status as an economic superpower wanes, their sovereign territory will be taken away by their more confrontational neighbors, and there'll be little Japan's weak government can do to stop it. (For example, a Chinese government official recently called on Japan to return Okinawa to its "proper" Chinese ownership.)

The territorial dispute with Korea came to a head when President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea made the first-ever visit by a Korean President to the islands on Friday, which set off a flurry of protests from Japan. That the trip just happened to come in the months before the Korean national elections was no coincidence: Korea and China are happy to make use of disputes with Japan to whip their voters into a ferver and deflect criticism of their own domestic policies. The rocks in question were first mapped by the French whaling ship Liancourt in 1849 (their international name is the Liancourt Rocks) and were officially claimed as Japanese territory in 1905, but when World War II ended the status of the rocks was not specifically decided by treaty, which has led to the current dispute (though the U.S. was clearly on the side of Japan during the Occupation, regarding the islands). On the Japan side of the argument, there are multiple European maps from the late 1800s which show the rocks as belonging to Japan (indicating that the world powers of the era considered the islands to be Japanese), a passage in a 1714 historical document in Korea that expressed concern that "Japanese territory" (the Liancourt Rocks) being so close to Korea's, and the fact that Korea doesn't seem to have ever named the islands in antiquity or mapped them clearly. On the Korean of the argument, there are documents that show that the government of Japan considered the islands as belonging to Korea from the 1870s, and the Korean government did make an official survey of the islands in 1900, five years before Japan's official annexation. The bottom line is that neither side has an iron-clad claim, and each only seemed to start caring about the islands when the other party showed interest, making the whole thing rather like two children fighting over a toy. The reality is that South Korea has had possession of the islands for 70+ years, and has made such a fuss about them that Japan will likely never get them back.

A hard-hitting news program starring a cat; Dunkin Donuts Korea knows what side their bread is buttered on.

Happy Obon from J-List

We're right in the middle of Obon (pronounced "oh, bone"), an important four-day Buddhist holiday during which Japanese return to their parents' homes and hold ceremonies for family members who have died, visiting the family grave to wash it lovingly and leave flowers and make sure the deceased know they haven't been forgotten. While I don't know much about Buddhism itself -- which incidentally is no different from most Japanese people, who usually don't take an interest in the subject until later in their lives -- I know the Japanese really care about their ancestors, starting with parents and grandparents, since (as my wife has pointed out to me) without them you wouldn't be here, would you? Obon is a great time for local festivals, and most neighborhoods throw a fun celebration with free food and an open space for doing the traditional dance called bon-odori (pronounced "bone-odor-ey") while wearing a summer yukata. Obon is similar to Thanksgiving in the U.S. in that many people travel home for the long holiday, and if you get caught in the traffic jams going in or out of Tokyo during the peak travel times, you'll be there a while.

Obon in Japan is an important cultural event.

Learn Japanese with J-List!

J-List genuinely wants to help people around the world learn about Japan through its wonderful language, and we offer great study products from flashcards to kanji posters to textbooks and more. One time-honored way to motivate yourself to study is to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test every December. The test comes in five levels, from N5 (the easiest, testing kana and basic kanji) to N1 (the hardest, required to attend a Japanese university), with the idea being that you can try to raise your level in between each test. This year the test will be held on December 2, so there are only 110 days of studying left! Click here to see our JLPT study materials and here to see all Japanese study products, as ranked by our customers.