"Campaign Girls" in Japan

Some images just seem to sum up Japan for me somehow. Walking through a tunnel of torii arches in Kyoto, which represent the 108 temptations we're subject to over the course of our lives. Seeing Mt. Fuji through the branches of a sakura tree in bloom. A Buddhist priest begging for alms in front of Louis Vuitton store in Ginza, or visitors to Tokyo's Meiji Shrine washing down the KFC they'd just eaten with holy shrine water. Then there's this picture, which shows a chorus line of attractive models employed by Japanese cellular carrier AU to promote its brand. They're "campaign girls" which large companies hire through talent agencies for promotional events, and they're similar to the "race queens" who promote interest in F-1 racing. (The reason these girls are all the same height is, their shoes are each made with custom sole thickness for each girl. Genius!) Marketing events using models like these are quite common in Japan, and I'll never forget the time I was wandering around Shinjuku and a line of two dozen beautiful girls wearing "Swatch" watches and matching T-shirts came marching by, part of a brand awareness campaign. Before she met me my wife worked briefly as a campaign girl, but it wasn't very glamorous: her job was to stand against a wall holding a "no smoking" sign while smiling.

A lineup of "campaign girls" promoting the AU brand. Do you find this awesome, strange or creepy?

The Most "Wishlisted" Items on J-List

J-List has a great wishlist system that makes it easy to add products on our website to your wishlist for later viewing and optional sharing with others, and I sometimes like to browse all J-List products in "wishlist popularity" order to see what our customers are most interested in. It warms our hearts to see customers love the new Totoro plush chair we recently added, or watch them checking out our kawaii Japanese fashion products, or Japanese Kit Kat and Pokemon bento boxes. We also have hundreds of 2013 Japanese calendars in stock right now, and it looks like our Ghibli and Totoro offerings are among the most popular calendar items.

Japanese Chocolate and Snack Sale through Nov 11!!

J-List loves to bring you delicious chocolate and other snack products from Japan, and for a limited time we're having a sale on all our snack items, so if you want to pick up some awesome Japanese Pocky or Kit Kat or bizarre gum or Kracie "DIY" snacks, now is a great time. The sale will run through November 11, which has been designated as "Pocky Day," since 11/11 looks like four Pocky sticks lined up next to each other. Click here to see all J-List's Japanese snack sorted by popularity!

Japan, World War II and UXBs

One thing about being an American is visiting our national shrines in Washington D.C., which include dignified memorials to the veterans who fought in World War II and the solemness of Arlington National Cemetery, which I took my son to this year. Japan, in contrast, has almost no visible signs of the Pacific War, as it's usually called in Japanese -- there are no memorials or shrines in mainland Japan (though there are on Okinawa), and the closest thing to Arlington is Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of 2.4 million Japanese soldiers are symbolically enshrined, though not without controversy. (One puzzling exception to this: a park in the neighboring city of Kiryu there's an old Japanese Zero fighter on display that kids and climb on, why I cannot say.) One inescapable leftover from World War II are unexploded bombs which are regularly uncovered even 67 years later. This week saw two of them, one in Tokyo that forced a neighborhood to evacuate while it was disarmed, and another in Sendai which caused the city's airport to close.

Japan's proposed WWII memorial. I am totally going to hell for posting this.

"Why did you come to Japan?"

One interesting aspect of Japan is that they're the only country in the world that cares what foreigners think about them. The other day I caught a TV show called "YOU wa Nani Shini Nihon e?" ("Why did you come to Japan?"), hosted by Bobby Ologun, a popular "talent" from Nigeria who's a fixture on Japanese TV these days. In the show, a camera crew walks around Narita Airport and interviews interesting foreigners who have just arrived, exploring what motivated them to come to Japan. There was quite a range: a student arriving in Japan to study martial arts, two girls from Germany who had arrived to attend a Dir en Grey rock concert, and a cyclist whose dream was to tour the Sea of Japan side of the country on his bicycle. The Japanese are also fascinated by foreigners who sing in their language, and there's a TV show called Nodo Jiman The World featuring contestants from countries like the U.S., Britain., Canada, Spain, and Sweden singing famous Japanese songs on stage as they compete for prize money.

The Japanese are fascinated by foreigners who love Japan.

Halloween in Japan 2012

Happy Halloween from Japan! October 31st is a fun day to wear scary costumes and chase ghosts and spirits from your town (or something like that). It was important to me that my half-Japanese kids be "acculturated" to the U.S. as they grew up, so I made sure they were exposed to such grand American traditions as Scooby Doo and School House Rock and the Peanuts TV specials like "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" -- and I also brought them to San Diego so they could experience the joys of trick-or-treating firsthand, just like American kids. Japan, of course, has no historical connection with Halloween, and like Valentine's Day and (arguably) Christmas, it's treated as a fun annual event imported from the West. While there's no tradition of trick-or-treating here, there's plenty of fun stuff to do, like going in costume to clubs in Roppongi, or going to see the popular Kawasaki Halloween Parade in Kawasaki, sandwiched between Tokyo and Yokohama. Or if you want to be somewhat annoying, you can ride the "Gaijin Halloween Train," an underground event in which hundreds of costumed foreigners try to get on the same train on Tokyo's Yamanote loop line then have a drunken party inside. (It's officially banned due to the inconvenience it causes to hapless Japanese unlucky enough to be trapped on the train with all the foreigners.)

I am always down with posting Halloween fanart.

Magazine Subscriptions from Japan

J-List sells awesome Japanese anime, manga, fashion, hobby and other magazines via our popular revolving monthly subscription service, making it easy to get the newest issues of Japan's best magazines sent to you each month. Many magazines come with cool omake (Japanese for "free stuff"), like posters, figures etc. Best of all, because the subscription is revolving you can quit or change magazines at any time. Click to see our most popular subscription magazines from Japan!

Preparing for The Hobbit's Japan Release

I'm currently re-watching the Lord of the Rings films on Blu-ray in preparation for the coming Hobbit movie. Like other Tolkien fans in Japan, I'm doki doki (nervous) as to whether or not the first minutes of The Hobbit will feature the name of Toda Natsuko as the Japanese translator. Ms. Toda is a huge name in the movie business, the "Queen of Subtitles" whose personal schedule can influence the release dates of Hollywood films that want to sell well in Japan. Whenever Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt comes to Japan to promote a film she's on hand to interpret for them and make sure Japanese movie-goers are reminded of her star status. She's translated everything from E.T. to Titanic to the Harry Potter films and every James Bond movie since 1983. She also translated the three Lord of the Rings films, and drew the ire of fans by screwing the job up, either by crassly translating some of the most memorable lines without referring to the established Japanese translations of the books or getting other lines just plain wrong. Fan outrage was so great that Peter Jackson had to get involved, reassuring fans that errors would be fixed for the DVD releases. So we've got our fingers crossed that the subtitles for the Japanese version of The Hobbit won't be bungled.

Fingers crossed that The Hobbit's subtitles won't be screwed up.

Exploring Stereotypes with Japan and the World

Stereotypes are bad because they cause us to make assumptions about people from other countries before we've gotten to know them. I've often found myself doing this with the Japanese people I met here, only to discover they were a lot deeper than I'd originally thought, like the father of a student I used to teach who seemed like the most boring "salaryman" ever until I learned that he loved trains and had recently traveled from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Siberian Railroad. Then there was the silver-haired mother of my daughter's friend who seemed like a normal Japanese obasan (middle-aged woman), though she was really an established author of children's books. On the other hand, sometimes stereotypes can be eerily accurate. When I went to Germany I asked an older man to take my picture, and when he couldn't work my camera, he let out a frustrated "Ach!" just like a parody of a monocled villain from a 1960s spy movie. In Italy, the gentle, matronly mother of a friend of mine punctuated every third sentence with "Mama mia!" which seems too stereotypical to be possible. Japanese are famous for saying ah, so (short for ah, so desu ka? or "oh, is that so?"), and they really do say it a lot. I'm always embarrassed when I inadvertently say this in Japanese when my American family is nearby, snickering.

Exploring international stereotypes, with Hetalia fanart naturally.

Decision 2012: Japan's Most Delicious Cookies

The U.S. is currently embroiled in "election hell," and while this doesn't involve Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney driving around in a loudspeaker car shouting their names outside your window at 8 am, as it does in Japan, it's still a lot of noise to endure. The other day I caught an interesting "election" on Japanese TV -- it was a television program in which viewers got to vote on their favorite brands of cookies and crackers. All the major companies were there, from Glico to Morinaga to Meiji plus foreign brands like Nabisco and McVittie's from the UK. It was a close contest, with Nabisco's Japanese Oreo offerings competing with classic Ritz Crackers and those those oddly named Collon cream cookies, but in the end, Fujiya's Country Ma'am soft cookies were able to come from behind and take the top spot. Fujiya's Peko-chan character -- her name comes from peko peko, which is the sound of hungry stomach rumbling in Japanese -- was smiling with her trademark tongue hanging out of her mouth as she accepted the award.

Decision 2012: "Country Ma'am" were voted the best cookies in Japan.

J-List Mobile Site Reminder

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Moero Downhill Night Blazer Golden Master!

Great news for fans of English eroge and visual novels: we're happy to announce that Moero Downhill Night BLAZE, the third and final chapter in the fun Initial D-style parody racing game, has gone "golden master" and will be shipping out in a couple weeks. J-List is based on Gunma Prefecture, where the 'Initial D' anime is located, and when we saw the Moero game series we knew we wanted to publish it for fans around the world. The third volume was delayed because the original publishers had the bad fortune to be located in Sendai, Japan, and they received much damage when the earthquake hit on March 11 of last year. (Happily, no one was injured.) Since this game includes not just interactions with cute girls and ero content but actual 3D racing simulation, it's a bit of gaming history, too. You can still preorder the game for free shipping when it's ready!

Dialects in Japanese

Every language has dialects, and Japanese is no different. I've heard that since Japanese people are more likely to stay in the same place all their lives, or move to Tokyo for work or education then do a "U-turn" (as the Japanese call it) back to their home prefecture a few years later, the country's dialects are more pronounced than in other countries for this reason. Often dialects are used to add a new dimension to a character in anime, and if you have a group of females in a given show, you can bet there'll be one whose "charm point" is speaking some cute but odd-sounding variant of Japanese. Beyond the major dialects -- rough and comical Osaka-ben, eerily polite Kyoto-ben, Gaelic-sounding Tohoku-ben from Northern Japan -- it's funny to observe the "artificial" dialect of gaijin-ben, the over-inflected Japanese that foreigners are known to speak, which is often used by radio DJs and announcers on TV shows to add a "chic" flavor to their speech.

Nisemonogatari is the anime that will make you appreciate Kyoto-ben.

Japan and Equality of the Sexes

I saw a report that Japan had fallen to 101st out of 135 countries with regards to gender equality, dropping from 98th place last year. The gender equality ranking is based on four factors with regards to women in society -- economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment -- and Japan was ranked at the bottom of all G-8 countries, after Italy (rank 80). It's difficult to know how to feel about Japan's low ranking, below Azerbaijan (99) and only a few points ahead of Cambodia (103), India (105) and Kuwait (109). On the one hand, Japan is still a largely male-dominated country in which males hold most powerful government posts and corporate jobs. On the other hand, Japan's women are extremely well educated, and have a large array of potential economic and political choices open to them -- including pausing their working years to raise kids before returning later if they so choose -- and enjoy the longest lifespans in the world. True, when I first came to Japan I was surprised to see job listings for "female, age 30 and below" printed in the newspaper, and my wife's first job back in the 80s mostly involved memorizing how each male employee of her company took his green tea, but those days are gone. The long recessions of the past two decades have helped Japan move forward with regard to equality, too: when we started J-List back in 1996, a company with a female president (my wife) would have been a rarity in our rural corner of Japan, yet now as she does business with bankers and accountants there's nary a raised eyebrow from anyone. In the end, I believe there's too much of a cultural gap between Scandinavian countries (at the top of the equality ranking) and Japan for any ranking to really be meaningful.

So what do you think? Is Japan a terrible place for women or a pretty good place for them?

Does Japan deserve its low equality ranking?

"Gangnam Style" As Seen from Japan

The Korean rap song "Gangnam Style" has become a huge phenomenon, introducing people all over the world to the randomness of K-POP. But for various reasons, the song hasn't been all that popular here in Japan, in part because no Japanese version was released (most K-POP groups release one here) and also because Japanese are tiring of Korean culture after a summer of squabbles over islands and unprecedented insults to their Emperor. It's widely believed that Korean fans express their patriotism by repeatedly pressing the "F5" (reload) key in Internet Explorer in order to push the YouTube view counts of their favorite videos up, something which the president of the Korean Wave Research Institute, a group funded by the South Korean government to promote K-POP around the world, angrily dismissed. According to Yasu, the staff member who keeps our site stocked with artbooks and awesome 2013 calendars, there's another reason the song hasn't caught on here: Japanese fans don't like it. He says, "To Japanese, what's good about K-POP is it's approach to beauty. The extreme beauty of the male or female stars as they perform, the many hours they spent preparing for a performance, that's enjoyable to see. We don't feel the same 'beauty' when we watch Gangnam Style."

Japanese have been cool towards "Gangnam Style."

J-List Mobile Site is Up!

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Random Questions about Japan People Have Googled

Google has changed all our lives and added several points to our collective IQs, for which I'm very grateful. If you type part of a question into Google, it will pop up with some suggested searches based on what other people have searched for, which sometimes leads to unexpected results like, "Why is my quiche watery?" or "Is sushi an aphrodisiac?" I thought I'd pick ten questions about Japan I randomly found on Google and answer them, in case anyone finds this useful.

Why do Japanese wear face masks?

Many Japanese wear what appear to us to be surgical masks when in public, if they're sick (in part as a courtesy to others) or if influenza is going around (to protect themselves). These masks inspired the founder of Aflac to open a branch in Japan, which was one of the most successful business decisions of the 20th century.

Why do Japanese girls have bad teeth?

It's not uncommon for Japanese to have crooked teeth, in part because orthodontic standards are somewhat behind the U.S. and Europe, and also because many Japanese believe crooked teeth to be cute. They're called yaeba and are often found in moe anime characters, represented as a single fang.

Why do Japanese people live longer?

Many reasons, including differences in diet (more fish, less meat) and smaller portions, preferring unsweetened Japanese tea to soft drinks, and having a society with strong social relationships which provide ikigai (a reason to go on living) late in life.

Why does Japan drive on the left?

Along with the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, Japan drives on the left side of the road. The historical reason appears to be that Japan hired a British engineer in 1870 to plan its rail system, which began a tradition of Japan following the United Kingdom in all things transportation-related.

Do Japanese women eat sushi when pregnant?

The J-List staff tells me they often crave it, but most expectant mothers avoid fish for fear of ingesting too much mercury.

Do Japanese say I love you?

Of course. There are two ways to say this, suki desu (lit. "I like you" but with a strong romantic implication) and ai shiteru ("I love you," usually considered too strong for casual use). Japanese men don't like to talk like this to their girlfriends or wives often because "it's better to say it infrequently and appear stoic and manly" (according to my sources).

Why does the Japanese flag look like that?

Japan's name means "the origin of the sun" (since it is, as seen from China), and the flag, called hinomaru ("circle of the sun") represents that. Japanese women draw little Japanese flags on their calendars every 28 days, which I find extremely cute.

Why do Japanese get nosebleeds?

The gag of a character getting a nosebleed when he or she gets excited dates back to a 1970 manga published in Shonen Jump called Yasuji's Life Lessons for Messed Up Kids. It's basically a meme that's been around for four decades and counting.

Why do Japanese names end in vowels?

All Japanese words do, unless they end with the consonant "n." Japanese is a syllable-based language in which you can express ka, ki, ku, ke or ko but never a "k" by itself, and all syllables consist of a consonant and a vowel, or the "n" sound.

Why do Japanese women cover their mouths when they laugh?

It's considered rude and unfeminine for women to show their teeth, and they'll generally cover their mouth while laughing. Also, Japanese of both sexes cover their teeth with one hand while using a toothpick -- and I do it too, having been here so long.

Some questions about Japan answered, if you are curious.

Fall in Japan Update

Fall is my favorite time of year in Japan. The weather is nearly always pleasant, and there's nothing like going for a drive in the mountains around J-List to take in the beauty of the leaves as they change color. Autumn is known as minori no aki, shokuyoku no aki or "the season of harvest, the season of hearty appetites," and some of the most exquisite Japanese dishes can be enjoyed during this time of year. Fall is also the season for undokai, or School Sports Day, a very big deal to anyone with kids in Japan. The events are almost always the same, no matter what part of the country you're in: students are organized into teams (usually "red" and "white" though at my kids' school they used the names of mountains in our prefecture) and they run relay races, have tug-of-war battles, or play a game that involves throwing red bean bags into baskets. For some reason, these sporting events feature strings with flags from various countries hanging from them, as in the image below, and children will compete to see how many countries they can name.

Fall is the season for eating, and School Sports Day.

Fantastic 2013 Anime Calendars In Stock Today

As you know, J-List sells a ton of amazing calendars from Japan, which are great to have on your wall all year long. We got a ton of calendars in stock today, including the hugely popular Sword Art Online calendars and A Certain Magical Index, cute animal calendars like Japanese cats, dogs and other animals, plus gorgeous photo calendars like Famous Castles of Japan (printed on high quality film, not paper). Click to see all 2013 calendars, ranked by popularity!

Chanto: Doing What's Expected of You in Japan

I like to look at ways we can understand Japan through its language. Here in Japan, there's often "one" correct way to do things, and this is summed up with the words chanto ("properly") and chanto shita ("proper"), which are used to grant a higher status to "the way things should be done." My first encounter with this concept was soon after I'd arrived in Japan and set up my apartment with a TV, kotatsu heater table and rice cooker, when the mother of one of my students asked me, "Peter-san wa mainichi gohan, chanto taiteru no?" ("Are you cooking rice every day, properly?"), the implication being that to cook nutritious meals with properly steamed rice was good, but, say, eating instant ramen every day would be bad. You hear these words in phrases like chanto benkyo suru (to study [as you should]) or shushoku shite chanto shita shakai-jin ni naru (to get a full-time job and become a proper member of society), and so on. Almost without fail, those who don't do what's expected of them in Japan -- young people who drop out of school and pursue a music career, NEETs or couples who live together without getting married, even crazy gaijin like me who quit their English teaching jobs to start companies selling Pokemon bento boxes and ridiculously cute cat figures for your smartphone to people around the world -- are seen in a negative light by society (although sometimes we don't care).

You can pick up a lot of information from a word of Japanese.

The Best Gyoza in Japan

Over the weekend Mrs. J-List and I took a drive up to Nikko for a relaxing dip in an onsen. Nikko is one of two really special places in the Kanto (Tokyo/Yokohama) region, a collection of some of the grandest temples and 5-story pagodas in this half of Japan, as well as the grave of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys. On our way back we passed through the city of Utsunomiya, a pleasant regional city that's famous for its gyoza, those delicious Chinese dumplings that are known as "pot stickers" in English for reasons that are beyond me, and we picked up some to take back to the family. Gyoza are dipped in a sauce that contains soy sauce, vinegar and rayu (Japanese chili oil), and I'm one of those people who really obsesses over getting the correct amount of each. The soy sauce provides most of the taste, and yet the tang of the vinegar and the zing of the chili sauce are also very important.

Gyoza from Utsunomiya is the best.

Traditional Products from Japan. And Snakes.

J-List is much more than an anime shop, and we've always worked hard to bring a huge selection of traditional products that capture the spirit of Japan. 2013 is the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese Zodiac, and we've got lots of great snake-themed products from Kyoto for you to browse. This year's traditional photo and art calendars are also beautiful, and we have dozens for you to browse. Click here to see all products on our new Home and Traditional page, in order of awesomeness as chosen by our customers.

Ueto Aya Apologizes for Road Construction

One of the more important aspects of the Japanese is their humility, which is considered an important trait for both individuals and companies to have. Part of this is not being afraid to apologize if you've made a mistake or error or if you've caused meiwaku (inconvenience) to others, and it's a common thing to see everyone from politicians to company presidents lowering their heads in apology when it's called for. Cute actress Aya Ueto was recently hired by NEXCO, the new public company that administers Japan's freeway system (it stands for Nippon Expressway Company, in case you were wondering). Her job is to serve as the company's official spokesperson, and much of what she does is appear in TV commercials alerting Japanese drivers as to what areas of the expressway system will be under construction and when, after which she bows her head deeply, apologizing for the inconvenience to commuters. The idea of having a company apologize for frustration they're causing you (and actually mean it) is quite refreshing and pleasant. Do companies do things like post polite construction signs that bow in apology to you in your country?

Apologizing for inconveniencing others is important in Japan.

20 Year After the "Freeze" Shooting

The Japanese have a unique relationship with the United States, and many are fascinated with our culture, from Hollywood to classic cars to cool "American" bands like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. (Just as it can be hard to differentiate Japanese, Chinese and Korean culture from the West, Britan and the U.S. tend to run together in the minds of Japanese people.) The father of one of my son's friends is a connoisseur of American World War II films, and I had a group of students who regularly toured the U.S. on Harley Davidsons, which is a pretty cool thing to do. Sadly, some Japanese who go to the U.S. don't come back, which happened with the sister of a former homestay student, who went to Nebraska to study English only to die in an unfortunate car accident. This week marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Yoshihiro Hattori, the Japanese high school student who was shot and killed when he mistakenly approached the wrong home while on his way to a Halloween party, certainly something that should not happen to anyone in any country. The event shocked and saddened Japan and burned the word "freeze" onto its collective psyche for all time, and I still remember the emergency "survival English conversation lessons" my school had me teach in the weeks after the shooting.

The Japanese love the USA, but sometimes there is sadness.

For the Japanese, "How to English" is Difficult

The Japanese do their best when it comes to learning English, with most taking six years in junior high and high school, and up to ten years if they take it in university. But although many master reading and writing, speaking it well can be another matter. Some of our words seem to be custom-made to frustrate poor Japanese ESL learners, and there are many categories of words that are as hard for them to pronounce as the hardest French words are for English speakers. Japanese famously lacks differentiation between L and R, and I had a Japanese friend who refused to discuss politics because she knew that sooner or later she'd have to use the word "election" and feared embarrassing herself. Nothing is harder for Japanese to pronounce than words that combine both L and R sounds, like jewelry, parallel and vocabulary, and words where the vowel is basically an "rrrr" sound, like girl, world or the last syllable of computer are also challenging. The big test for any Japanese student of English is, do people understand them when they go abroad, and all too often the answer is no, as in the case of a former student who asked for water in a restaurant and was brought a glass of beer. My wife does her best with English but sometimes life can be cruel: J-List's San Diego office has an employee named Marissa, and I have a niece named Melissa, and my wife never knows which person I'm talking about.

The Japanese study "How to English" but pronunciation is hard.

You Need a Map in Japan

Coming to Japan meant getting used to many things. Canned coffee, or corn and mayonnaise on pizza. Rooms that were often cold in winter, as Japanese homes lack American-style central heating. Also, the very idea of going to a place by looking up an address had to be thrown out the window. Except for certain major thoroughfares like National Road 17 which takes you to Tokyo, or the Prefectural Akagi Road which meanders up picturesque Mt. Akagi, roads in Japan lack names of any kind and are usually referred to abstractly, e.g. "the road between the elementary school and the convenience store." Adapting a French model, Japan breaks their land into prefectures (ken), cities (shi), and towns (machi or cho), with the towns divided into smaller blocks like 3-chome (third block), and so on. A Japanese address looks something like "Gunma-ken Isesaki-shi Sakura-cho 2-19-15," but if you ever try to visit a place based on this information you'll be driving around in circles, as the only people who can make sense of a Japanese address are postal workers. Instead, to find a given location you nearly always need a map, which is why most every printed advertisement will have a map indicating how customers can find the business. (Car GPS systems are also a very nice thing to have when driving in Japan, and I won't drive without one). In the new anime Onii-chan Dakedo Ai Sae Areba Kankei Nai yo ne (which you can remember using the short name of OniAi), Akiko wanders around Tokyo trying to find the house where her oniichan lives in, eventually asking a policeman to help her find it.

You definitely need a map to get anywhere  in Japan.

More 2013 Calendars from Japan

We're in the middle of 2013 Anime Calendar Season, and this year's calendars are just about the best we've ever seen. We've posted a great volley of calendars we just got in stock, including IdolMaster and Pokemon and this year's 2013 Totoro and Ghibli 3D calendars (which are different every year, and great to use as photo stands when the year is up. Also see great new preorder offerings too, like Chunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai and Gackt. Click to see the newest 2013 calendars from Japan!

Happy Karaoke Culture Day!

Do you like karaoke? If so then we have good news: today has been designated as Karaoke Culture Day by the National Karaoke Industry Association of Japan. Karaoke (pronounced kah-rah-OH-kay) literally means "empty orchestra" (the kara is the same from karate, in case you were wondering), and it was invented in 1971 by Daisuke Inoue, a musician from Kobe who kept getting asked to make instrumental-only recordings of his music by fans, which gave him the idea of a "music box" that would pass a microphone signal through speakers. His idea led to a revolution in the way people enjoy each other's company (or annoy each other, depending your feelings on karaoke) and sparked a multi-billion dollar global industry -- though Mr. Inoue never saw any of that as it didn't occur to him to patent his invention. I'm a big fan of karaoke, and found it a useful tool for learning Japanese, since memorizing the lyrics of Japanese songs I wanted to sing is a darned good way of internalizing vocabulary, plus I can sing the song to myself if I forget the word. Using karaoke as a Japanese study tool also deepened my relationship with Japan itself, since I wouldn't have come to love the Tohoku region of the country if I hadn't discovered the joy of singing enka, which no one expects foreigners to be able to sing.

Happy Karaoke Culture Day, everyone!

The 2nd Richest Man in Japan

I saw that Japanese cellphone company Softbank is making a major investment into Sprint, the third largest cellular operator in the U.S., and since the founder of the company is one of Japan's more interesting businessmen, I thought I'd write a bit about him. His name is Masayoshi Son (孫正義), and if his family name doesn't sound particularly Japanese to you, it's because it's Korean: Mr. Son was born as a zainichi ("residing in Japan") Korean, a large minority of people who are born and raised in Japan yet who maintain North or South Korean identify for cultural reasons impossible for Westerners us to comprehend. (Mr. Son took Japanese citizenship in 1990.) While he was in high school, he brashly visited the office of the legendary Japanese businessman Den Fujita, responsible for launching McDonald's and later Toys R Us in Japan, returning again and again until his business idol agreed to meet with him. Mr. Fujita told him he should go to America to study English and learn how to invest in microchips, as they were the future. Masayoshi got off to a good start, selling a translation device he patented to Sharp for $1 million and using that money to start a company importing Space Invaders machines from Japan to Berkeley during the coin-op video game boom. He slowly grew his empire, founding Yahoo's successful Japan subsidiary and taking over Vodafone's cellular operations, eventually bringing the iPhone to Japan. Son, Japan's second riches man, is a great example of how successful a person can be when he thinks outside the box, something that can be surprisingly difficult for Japanese people to do.

We wish Mr. Son well...I hope he doesn't 損
(son, Japanese for 'financial loss').

Fewer Children in Japan

I often write about Japan's falling birth rate since it's one of the more visible challenges the country is facing now. Signs of shoshika -- the social problem of fewer and fewer children each year -- are everywhere, from the unneeded elementary schools that are decomissioned and turned into community centers to the shock I received when a toy store in our neighborhood went out of business and was replaced by a shop selling Buddhist altars and gravestones. Most families have one or two children, though Yasu, the J-List employee who stocks our site with manga and Japanese study books, has three charming daughters, and we congratulate him for doing his part to repopulate Japan. Having a really large family is a rare enough thing to get you on TV, as I saw the other day when I happened to catch a show about a husband and wife that had 13 children living in my own city of Isesaki. The family operates a soba noodle restaurant that isn't very successful, and the show was full of feel-good images of the kids trying to think of ways to get more customers into the shop. So if you've got a large family, move to Japan and you might find yourself on TV!

Having lots of kids will make you famous in Japan.

Hatsune Miku's Pantsu and More @ J-List

J-List loves Hatsune Miku, the virtual idol created to promote Yamaha's innovative voice simulation software, and we have tons of her products in stock, from limited Sakuma Drops w/Vocaloid keychains included to the gorgeous 2013 Hatsune Miku calendar and Blu-ray live concert videos to her official pantsu and more. Click to see some of our favorite Hatsune Miku products now.

Language Play in Japanese Advertisements

Each language has its own unique phonetic features and potential for language play, some of which are picked up by advertisers to create messages around. In Japanese, the word zo (zoh) means "increase" or "more" (as in "50% more free"), but it's also the word for elephant -- hence, it's not uncommon for a TV commercial to make use of elephants to reinforce the image of getting more free for buying such-and-such brand. Similarly, rakuda is the word for camel, but it also means "[this] is very comfortable and convenient," so every few years some company will make a TV commercial featuring camels basking in comfort because of some product. Dogs say "woof!" in English, but to the Japanese the sound is wan!, and some companies create cute dog characters showing that they're "number wan" (number one) in their respective industries. The word mou (moh) means "already" but it's also the local version of "moo," and so, it's common for commercial messages to be communicated using cows saying things like, "Stop wasting your money on brand X, already!" Finally, the word kaeru means "to change" (it's the same kanji as the hen in hentai), but the word also means "frog." Thus NTT makes use of frogs in its advertisements about companies facing the neverending changes the business world.

An advertisement from NTT about "changes," drawn by a frog.

Bored, Unmotivated Main Characters in Anime

It can be interesting to analyze the themes used in the creation of characters for anime and manga: the fiery tsundere girls, the bokuko tomboy girls who talk like boys, the omnipresent rich ojosama girls who belong to wealthy zaibatsu families. One common theme seen in a lot of anime series is the use of a Japanese male main character who is bored and generally lacks ambition, with no idea what he wants to do with his life. Maybe the character is ecchi, maybe he has some interesting secret like a latent power or gaps in his memory that must be explored, but in general these bland "Joe Everyman" characters are similar to each other, presumably designed so that the majority of (Japanese) viewers can identify with them. In Hyouka, the main character is Houtarou Oreki, an unmotivated young man who shows his lack of enthusiasm at every turn, with his mussed hair and clothes and half-open eyelids, despite his penchant for solving mysteries whenever Chitanda becomes "curious" (ki ni narimasu!). Other generic main characters include Sasahara from Genshiken, who goes on a journey of discovery about what it is to become an otaku, the snarky Kyon from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Junichi from Amagami, as well as nearly every other main character in "harem" stories.

Oreki is a typical unmotivated main character.

Safely Back in Japan

I'm safely back in Japan after a pleasant flight on Korean Airlines, which I chose because I like their bibimbap, and hearing the sing-song voices of the flight attendants makes me imagine I'm inside one of my wife's Korean dramas. Some might say being trapped in a flying metal tube for 12 hours from LAX to Narita would be a difficult thing, but I prefer flying internationally to taking domestic flights in the U.S., which have added added stress due to incessant flight delays and rushing for hub connections. As usual, it feels somewhat strange to be back in Japan -- the neat order of the rice fields as seen from the air near Narita seemed to embody the way Japan's society is much more organized and ordered than the U.S., with little squares and boxes for people to fit themselves into -- but that might have just been the high altitude getting to me. If this update should trail off suddenly, it means I've surrendered to the jet lag that's dragging me down right now...

The first sight of Japan, when approaching Narita.

Random Preorder Products @ J-List

J-List carries thousands of products, including hundreds of upcoming anime figures, gorgeous printed tapestries, beautifully printed 2013 calendars, epic cosplay products and more, available as preorder products. Sometimes I like to browse the preorders sorted by customer awesomeness ranking to see what products are being preordered the most. Remember, preorder products are held without being charged until the items are ready to ship out to you, and no payment is required before we have the items on hand for you.

Preserving the "wa" in Relationships in Japan

Many English speakers know the Japanese word wa, which means harmony and peace, and it's not rare to hear someone say, "Man you're really messing up my wa, dude." But there's a similar word wa that's probably more important to daily life in Japan, meaning ring, hoop, or circle, and is the word most used to describe a circle of friends or some other group of mutual acquaintances. The Japanese are, of course, a very group-oriented people, and there are mechanisms in place for ensuring that relationships work smoothly all around. Back in my teaching days, I observed that every Japanese seems to have at least two sets of core friends: those they've known since elementary and junior high school, which are where compulsory education in Japan ends; and a different set of friends who they met in high school. (Everyone is very careful to manage these relationships separately, as mixing groups of friends wil result in way too much politeness.) One of the major themes in a lot of anime series is the way love interests disrupt the balance in a circle of close friends. In Kokoro Connect, Inaba is torn apart by her love for the main protagonist, Taichi, but tries to say nothing lest the group "become unable to be together as five people, together." More than the love she feels for someone, preserving the happiness of the group is more important.

Preserving the balance of relationships is important in Japan.

Are the Japanese Conservative?

Although the Japanese may have a reputation of being quite open-minded when it comes to sex, what with their open views about the need for "love hotels" in a society where the oldest sons generally live with their parents permanently, and their laissez faire attitude about mild nudity being shown on late-night broadcast TV, in truth the Japanese are extremely conservative about many things. I once went to Thailand with my wife, and we were on a beach with many female tourists from Europe who were sunbathing topless. I slyly suggested that she could do the same if she wanted, and she exploded with embarrassed reaction that would have rivaled Taiga Aisaka. The Japanese are also extremely suspicious of the European custom of friends kissing each other on the cheeks, something that gets parodied in anime from time to time ("Don't you know? In the West it's just a greeting"). Every women I've ever known in Japan uses pads instead of tampons, the idea of the latter being somehow scandalous, and if you suggest to a Japanese woman that she try using tampons she'll turn red and giggle like a little girl. 

Japanese are conservative about many things.

Fun with Japanese Brand Names

Well, my little trip to the U.S. has come to an end, and it's time to head back to Japan. I'm loaded up with various things I've purchased, like bubble bath, dental floss (it's quite expensive in Japan) and packets of Taco Bell taco sauce that my son asked me to bring back. See everyone on the other side!

One of the fun aspects of learning Japanese was unlocking the meanings of words I already knew in the form of Japanese company names. A lot of names are abbreviations, like Ricoh (short for Riken Kankoshi or Scientific Light-Sensetized Paper), or Kyocera ("Kyoto Ceramics"). Icons important to the Japanese find their way into company names a lot, like Asahi ("morning sun"), Hitachi ("rising sun") and Sunrise Animation, and naturally Mt. Fuji is well represented in company names like Fujitsu (which started out as Fuji Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing before they shortened the name). Many corporations are named after their founders, like the automobile company Souichiro Honda launched in 1946, or the chocolate company Taichichiro Morinaga created after studying confectionery-making in San Francisco, or Bridgestone, founded by Shojiro Ishibashi ("stone-bridge"). Often Japanese company names have interesting stories attached to them, like Subaru, the name for the star cluster the Pleades, which was formed when several failing companies including Nakajima Aircraft (which built the infamous Zeros) banded together after World War II, or Datsun, created as the "son" of founders Den, Aoyama, and Takeuchi, though this was changed to "sun" as "son" is Japanese for financial loss (don't tell Softbank owner Masatoshi Son, Japan's richest man). The reason so many company names like Nikon, Nissan and Nissin start with ni is that the name of Japan in Japanese is nihon. Some others company names include SEGA ("Service Games of Japan"), a company founded by an American to import pinball machines to American military bases, and EPSON ("Son of Electric Printer"), which is rather silly. Speaking of silly, Sony started out Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kaisha (Tokyo Communications Engineering Company) but changed its name because founder Akio Morita liked the then-common English phrase "sonny boy."

It's fun to trace the origins of company names.

Fun Cosplay from J-List

J-List carries dozens of fun cosplay products from Japan, from shimapan striped anime underwear for cosplay and other uses to those "spats" tight bicycle shorts worn by your favorite magical girls to real costume uniforms you can use this Halloween. Just in time, we got the oh-so-wacky horse head masks in stock which turn you from a human to a bizarre horse in seconds. The smash hit product of the San Diego Comic-con, these masks are available for order, and we'll rush it out to you ASAP.important.

The Japanese Love Tests

The Japanese love to take standardized tests, and many people use them as a tool to better themselves over the course of their lives. While most of the tests are pretty run-of-the-mill, qualifying a person's abilities at speaking English, say, or using various software tools in a business environment, there are quite a few interesting ones, such as a test for calculating numbers rapidly with an imaginary abacus, your fingers moving over wooden beads that aren't there. There are tests for speedy and accurate operating of a cash register in a supermarket, a test for maids, a test for memorizing a train schedule, and (good for us gaijin), the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. My wife is what's known as a shikaku getter or someone who loves to "collect" random qualifications. She's got a license to prepare sushi and sashimi, is legally able to operate a forklift, and has a certification for handling dangerous materials, in case J-List ever wants to open a gas station as a side business. There's even a Hello Kitty Standardized Test, commissioned by Sanrio. I assume the test consists various trivia like, how tall is Hello Kitty? (as tall as five apples) and so on.

The Japanese love to take standardized tests, on almost every subject.

How Kanji Names Work

Foreigners are fascinated by kanji characters because they're so different from anything we use -- the idea of capturing complex meanings in pictographs rather than sounds as our alphabet does is very exotic. Kanji may look like random squiggles at first, but it's a highly evolved writing system that packs a lot of information into each character. A good example is the way words like language, to speak, to read and to translate all share the same left side (the "radical"), which happens to look like a stack of books on a table, making it possible to guess at meanings based on the elements the characters contain. Although the "official" way to write the names of foreigners is using the katakana writing system, it's quite fun for foreigners to assign kanji characters to their names instead, and J-List sells custom name stamps with your name rendered in kanji, chosen by our native Japanese staff so you don't have to worry about your kanji meaning "diarrhea" or anything. I went a step beyond other foreigners: partially by accident, I officially registered my name with complex kanji characters. As a result, filling out legal forms in Japanese is incredibly difficult, and my wife is often asked if her husband is Chinese.

Foreigners are fascinated by kanji characters.

2013 Japanese Calendar Update

The 2013 Japanese Calendar Season is raging, and J-List has hundreds of amazing anime, Japanese idol, traditional art and photo and ecchi calendars in stock for you, and now is a great time to get your order in. About 30% of the calendars are in stock and shipping now, and the rest will be in stock in the next 2-3 weeks. These calendars make outstanding gifts for Christmas, and great gifts to yourself, too. Click here to see the most popular 2013 calendars!

Eye Patch Moe

Hello from Japan, where the words "not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin" mean something very different.

In addition to writing these updates three times a week, I post interesting images to the J-List Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook pages, along with links to newly updated products. (Click through and follow us, if you like!) It's not uncommon for people reading my posts to ask what moe means, and since today, Oct 10, is "Moe Day" (because the date looks like the moe kanji if you write it a certain way), I thought I'd write a bit about this. Moe (always pronounced mo-eh) is a genre of (mostly) female character design traits that are calculated to elicit feelings of love and protectiveness by (mostly) male fans. While moe is about many things -- the large, expressive eyes, the impossibly cute hair and hair accessories -- to me it's all about the character imperfections that become what the Japanese call "charm points." Whether it's the extreme dojikko clumsiness and meganekko glasses of Homura from episode 10 of Madoka Magika or the extreme shyness of Mio from K-On! or even the realistic boredom and melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, the "defects" in the characters are what really make them interesting. A variation of this is "bandage moe," the odd cuteness of girls who are injured, with casts and possibly IV drips in their arms, or the ever-popular eye patch moe. I recently started watching the new anime Chunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai, which features a hyperactive girl with the cutest eye patch this side of Ayanami Rei. Incidentally, we've got these eye patches in stock if you want one for Halloween or other cosplay uses.

Chunibyo is a new anime for "eye patch moe" fans.

Making Mistakes with Foreign Languages

Making errors when speaking a foreign language comes with the territory, and smart language learners will do what they can to embrace their own screw-ups as a positive way of moving forward with their language studies. At the very least, it's important to avoid being so scared of making an error that you never open your mouth, which is a problem a lot of Japanese learners of English have. Wanting to avoid linguistic slip-ups, they prefer to pre-load their "brain cache" before speaking rather than just opening their mouth and letting the words fall out naturally. I've made plenty of large and small errors over the years, for example there was the time I confused the word hinan (to evacuate) with hinin (to use a contraceptive) in mixed company, or all the times I confused "mango" with a similar word that refers to the female reproductive parts in front of a pretty waitress. Before I married my wife, we were planning what photographs we wanted taken at the wedding, and she kept telling me how she wanted a picture of her standing on "the glass." I couldn't understand what she was saying -- did she want a picture of herself standing on a reflective surface while wearing her dress? -- but it turned out she was talking about the grass lawn in front of the chapel in San Diego.

Linguistic mistakes are everywhere, you just have to embrace them and move forward.

Japan, America and Bubble Bath

It's funny how smell has the power to capture memories like nothing else. Every summer we burn Japanese mosquito coils (called katori senko or "mosquito-killing incense"), and the pleasant fragrance of the burning coils never fails to bring back memories of summers gone by. The same is true of the space heaters used in most Japanese homes in the winter -- that first whiff of the kerosene fumes always transports me back in time. I'm here in the U.S. for a couple weeks, and keep encountering unique smells that aren't present in Japan, like the strong smell of Tide laundry detergent or Bounce dryer sheets that Mom used to use, or the lemon scent of those terribly inadequate "moist towelettes" you get to wipe your hands in barbecue restaurants. (They should follow the Japanese model and give customers hot steaming towels instead.) The product that seems to capture the smell of America more than any other for my family is Mr. Bubble bubble bath, and I'll be bringing several bottles home with me when I head back to Japan.

Mr. Bubble captures the smell of America to me.

Japanese Chocolate Season 2012-2013 Starts

Announcing the start of the 2012-2013 Japan Chocolate Season! It's finally gotten cool enough in Japan that we've been able to post our most popular products, including Japanese Pocky, Nestle Kit Kat and other fun chocolate items. This year we've got some amazing offerings, including some favorites from last spring that will sell out and be gone forever. Click to see the new Japanese Kit Kat and Pocky items!

Hard to say "Sayonara"?

Something about living in another country can make a person think introspectively about themselves. When I started J-List back in 1996, I kept on teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) for a couple of years, slowly quitting my classes as J-List grew to consume all my waking hours. When it came time for me to quit my last teaching job, the school I'd been working for threw me a party, complete with karaoke and all the trimmings. Afterwards, I got a ride home with one of my students, an interesting lady in her 40s who was studying English because she wanted to live abroad for a few years. "Well," I said as we neared my house, "I'll see you later." "No, you won't," she replied. "A person has the same number of sayonaras in their lives as first meetings, and we won't see each other again. But please be genki in your future life." For some reason, being told "goodbye" in such absolute terms was more honesty than I was used to, and I was somewhat unsettled by her words. It seemed to me that the kokumin-sei or "national character" of Americans (or at least this American) was not geared to acknowledging partings so completely, causing us to use lighthearted parting words like "see you later" instead. There was another example of this in a recent episode of Kokoro Connect, when Aoki travels to Sendai to tell his old girlfriend Nana that he's found a girl he cares for, and she tells him "Sayonara" with finality as he walks away.

The Japanese seem good at saying sayonara.