Winter Foods in Japan

One topic I cover a lot is how Japan is a very "seasonal" place, with distinct customs and foods for each time of year. With winter coming, I'm ready to enjoy some great Japanese winter dishes, preferably with my legs inside the kotatsu to keep me warm. One popular category of dishes is called nabemono, literally "food cooked in a large central pot" that the whole family can eat out of, and some popular versions include ishikari nabe (a miso-based soup with salmon added) and chanko nabe (meat, fish and vegetables cooked together, so hearty that this is what sumo wrestlers eat to bulk up). I'm a big fan of the Japanese dish known as oden (pronounced oh-DEN, not like the Norse god), a hodge-podge of slowly-stewed daikon radishes, boiled eggs, tofu, chikuwa and octopus tentacles, this being Japan and all. (My mother-in-law makes the best oden in the world, and I married my wife in part because of that, figuring that the daughter of such a woman would be a worthwhile choice later on down the road.) But my favoritest winter food ever would have to be sukiyaki, the classic stew consisting of thinly sliced meat, tofu and vegetables cooked in a shallow pot. If you're interested in making some of these delicious dishes, we've got some nice new English-language Japanese cookbooks posted for you.

Sukiyaki (above) and oden (below) are great in winter.

1.8 Million Pocky Tweets!

Congratulations to the Ezaki Glico company! November 11 has been designated as "Pocky and Pretz Day" because 11/11 looks like four Pocky or Pretz sticks lined up waiting to be eaten, and last Sunday the company enjoyed a record 1.8 million tweets about its brand here in Japan. This is a world record, and has earned Pocky a place in the Guinness Book. Let's celebrate by eating more Pocky and Pretz!

New Japanese Elections Coming -- Kill Me Please

The election in the U.S. is finally over, and I'm sure everyone is happy to have it behind them. Unfortunately the election cycle is just about to begin for people in Japan, as Prime Minister Noda has indicated he will dissolve the Diet this year. The main question in the election will be, will the currently ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) maintain the control of the government it won in 2009, or will the pro-business, more conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which ruled the country for most of the postwar period, return to power. Things aren't looking too good for the DPJ, which made extensive promises to its supporters in its "manifesto" to get elected, most of which had to be discarded as "difficult to implement" after they got into power. The party has proven rather inept at diplomacy, which has caused strain with the U.S. over Okinawa, and it's widely perceived that the problems with China and Korea have been caused in part by the weakness of the DPJ's leadership. The wild card in the election might be Shintaro "The Only Japanese Politician Whose Name You Probably Know" Ishihara, the former Tokyo governor and manga-hater. He recently created his own national political party, the Sunrise Party, and is in negotiations to try to join forces with several other small political parties.

This is a moe poster remining voers to vote in the Fukushima regional elections

Bacon-Pan from Japan

The Japanese are ahead of the U.S. in several key areas, including the availability of square watermelons and taxis with doors that open automatically for you. They have toilets that play music, in case you're like Japanese women who get nervous at the thought of someone listening to you pee, then wash your butt for you when you're done. They have vending machines that will sell you a hot can of coffee or even creamed corn soup, very nice to warm yourself with while waiting for the train on a cold train platform in winter, and you can purchase train tickets or food at convenience stores by tapping your cell phone to a computerized plate, no money required. Despite being a rice-eating nation, Japan has some pretty interesting bread, like melon-pan, round sweetened bread that looks sort of like a melon, curry-pan, delicious fried bread with spicy curry inside, and shima-pan, striped bread baked in the shape of...okay, I'm just kidding about that last one. The other day I went to my local bakery and saw the greatest achievement of bead in the history of mankind: butter bacon-pan, delicious butter rolls with bacon baked right inside. I wish I were eating some right now.

I think bacon-pan might be the best thing ever.

Archaic Kana in Evangelion

All languages change and evolve over time, and Japanese is certainly no different. There was no written language in Japan until kanji was introduced along with Buddhism and Confucianism around the 5th century. At first Chinese kanji were used directly, with Japanese grammar and character pronunciations more or less laid on top (a system known as kanbun), and this was replaced by a system of assigning sounds to characters arbitrarily (the man'yo-gana), which grew into the hiragana and katakana writing systems in use today. But the Japanese language has continued to change even in recent years. For example, the current practice of writing Japanese horizontally from left-to-right was only standardized after World War II, and if you look at the "retro" design on the Sakuma Drops candies, you might be able to tell that the writing is "backwards" compared with how the language is written today. There are several hiragana and katakana characters that were commonly used a century ago but which have disappeared from use today...although Hideki Anno goes out of his way to design all written text in Evangelion to use these strange, archaic characters as much as possible.

Evangelion is filled with bizarre, archaic writing just to be different.

Thinking about Christmas at J-List

We're getting into Christmas mode around here, adding tons of extra products to the site that would be perfect for that special Japanophile on your list this year. Between our popular Fuku-bukuro grab bags, which are flying off the virtual shelves right now, and our always popular J-List Gift Certificates, we have more than 5000 awesome products from Japan for consideration. How can we help you today?

Remember, Shuffle! is Now Open for Preorders

Remember our good news, about the impending release of Shuffle!, one of the most famous and awesome visual novels to be translated into English. The upcoming shrinkwrapped package version will be great for fans and collectors, 100% uncensored and DRM free, and it will be shipping soon. Did you get your preorder in yet?

Fire-Prone Japan

Clang clang! Clang clang! Right outside my window right there's a fire truck driving by slowly, ringing a bell and playing a recorded voice: "This is the community volunteer firefighting brigade. Please remember to extinguish all flames before going to sleep tonight." Japan lacks American-style central heating in its homes, and most Japanese use kerosene heaters to heat individual rooms (though those kotatsu heater tables are popular as well). With so many space heaters in use, it's not uncommon for fires to occur, and every couple weeks there's another sad report of a house fire somewhere in the country. Fire has long been the bane of Japan, a country with a high population living in homes of wood and paper, and firefighting is so important that there's an awesome tradition of ukiyoe art featuring traditional firemen of Japan dating back to the Edo Period. Over the past few years, Japan has -- finally, from my American-centric point of view -- gotten more serious some of the public safety concepts that we take for granted, and now requires that smoke detectors be installed in all new homes.

The Edo Version of the FDNY, Circa 1650.

"Half" Japanese Girls: You Can (Not) Resist

The third Evangelion movie is coming in a week, so my son and I re-watched the second film to get into the mood. The two main heroines of the second Eva movie are Asuka Shikinami (née Souryu) Langley and Mari Makinami Illustrious, two bad-ass characters who share a common defining trait: they're both haafu, half Japanese and a quarter each of German and American (in the case of Asuka) and half British (for Mari). The Japanese have a long-standing fascination with haafu, considering them to in many ways to be the perfect blending of hybrid features, and many popular fictional characters feature mixed ancestry to make them more appealing, from Lupin III to Solid Snake to L from Death Note. While Japanese might be whiny and weak like Shinji and true foreigners potentially scary and unstable (remember the Brit who decided to go for a swim in the Imperial Moat in Tokyo in the nude?), characters who are haafu combine the best of both worlds. While the belief that half-Japanese are automatically more talented or assertive than full-blooded Japanese is a myth, it isn't always. A couple years ago my daughter went to Kamakura with her school and some foreign tourists came over to talk to the students. Every student froze sold, despite the fact that they'd studied three years of English by then, and it was up to my daughter to interpret for everyone.

Asuka and Mari are bad-ass haafu characters.

Things I've Learned about the Japanese: Part 16

I've learned some things about the Japanese people during my time here, which I thought I'd share with you. First, they really, really love to eat goma (sesame seeds), and healthy goma flavored foods are everywhere here, from salad dressing to the sesame seed flavored snacks J-List sells. Japanese people tend to be very humble, and will often vehemently deny any compliment you give them, no matter how true it is. The Japanese learned the gesture of "flipping the bird" relatively recently, and it's common for people here to point out locations to you on a map using their middle finger, a gesture which would be interpreted as rude by Americans if we thought they were doing it on purpose (they're not). Japanese assume every Westerner they meet speaks English, and is very outgoing and genki, saying "Oh my God!" or "Unbelievable!" several times per day. They also assume every English speaker knows every word ever coined, and when I go to the doctor he's visibly disappointed when I'm unfamiliar with the difficult medical terms he's trying to use.

Japanese expect gaijin to know every English word.

Posted for Preorder: Shuffle!

There's lot of good news in the air for fans of English-translated dating-sim games and eroge. Not only is the third and final Moero Downhill Night driving game series coming out very soon, but we're posting one of the most awesome English-translated visual novels ever, Shuffle! It's the story of a lucky guy who finds himself caught between two cute girls not of this world, and one of the most famous games ever translated into English. The upcoming shrinkwrapped package version will be great for fans and collectors, 100% uncensored and DRM free. So preorder it now!

Invisible Buddhism in Japan

Soon after arriving in Japan, I walked to a Seven Eleven to buy some onigiri, those triangle-shaped rice balls that are similar to sandwiches in the U.S. While I enjoyed my lunch, I wandered behind the convenience store and was surprised to see a beautiful Buddhist temple nestled in between a beauty shop and CD rental store. People were walking by, not paying the slightest attention to the small temple despite it looking to my outsider's eyes as out-of-place in a modern glass-and-asphalt city as a UFO. That's largely what Buddhism is for many in Japan, it seems to me: it's all around you, like the air, but is generally unseen until your life takes you to some point where it shifts to the foreground, such as the death of a family member. Buddhism has been a part of Japan for almost 1500 years, and you can see its footprint in many interesting areas. When Japanese people clean their homes on December 31st so they start the new year with a clean slate, they're reenacting an ancient Buddhist temple-cleaning ceremony, though no one is consciously aware of it. It's very important to make sure you don't position your bed so that your head is facing north, as this is called kita-makura ("north-pillow") and it's only for the dead at funerals. Even the common Japanese phrase itadakimasu, said before eaten any meal in Japan, is originally a Buddhist term humbly thanking the animal that died so you could eat it.

In neighboring Takasaki there's a 5-storey Buddhis Kannon statue that constantly watches us.

Japanese Love Gaijin Who Love Japan

I write often about how the Japanese love it when foreigners take an interest in their culture, and nothing is more fascinating to them than seeing a gaikokujin who knows more about a certain subject than Japanese do themselves. I recently caught another TV show that introduced these kinds of unique foreigners called "Like! Japan" First there was a traditional enka singing competition in New York followed by a spirited trivia contest because hardcore foreign fans of AKB48, then a father-and-son combo in Italy who love Japanese trains and could name all the train stations on Tokyo's Yamanote loop line. Finally there was a competition between four Americans who could best be described as "Japanese history otakus," possessing a huge amount of knowledge of Oda Nobunaga, one of the most famous names in Japanese history. They were able to answer such tricky questions as, "When Akechi Mitsuhide brought his army into Kyoto to assassinate Nobunaga, what did his say to his troops before fighting?" (The answer was Teki wa Honno-ji ni ari! "The enemy awaits at Honno-ji temple!")

How's your knowledge of Oda Nobunaga history?

We [heart] Fangirls

One of the best things to happen to anime fandom has been the rise of the fangirl. Back in the 80s, when the popularity of anime subculture was growing and fans were beginning to organize themselves around clubs on university campuses -- this was before Akira, also known as "the first anime movie a guy could maybe discuss with a girl" -- anime was a very male-dominated affair. As the medium hit the mainstream in the 90s, several key innovations brought in female fans by the truckload, including "hybrid" series like Sailor Moon, which appealed to fans of all sexes and ages, and Gundam Wing, which compelled female fans to spend hours debating the comparative hotness of Heero x Duo and Trowa x Quatre online. Neon Genesis Evangelion was a groundbreaking series in many ways, not least because of the character Kaworu, who created a renaissance in yaoi doujinshi that brought fangirls in for years. The "BL" revolution of the 90s launched a generation of female fans who are now called fujoshi, a word originally meaning "young miss" but written with characters that mean "rotten girl" (the term is somewhat self-mocking, not unlike our "I Like What I Like so Get Off My Back!" yaoi girl's T-shirt). Of course girls who like the bishounen character design style but not the yaoi content can explore otome games, another popular girl-centric genre that a lot of fans enjoy. Fandom today is an incredibly rich and complex world in which everyone can find something worthwhile no matter what they love, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fandom is a much better place with fangirls in it, don't you think?

Evangelion is In the Air

Can you feel it in the air? The third Evangelion movie is coming out soon, and there are naturally lots of great Eva products being released in Japan, which we are happy to carry on the site. Whether you're looking for the 2013 Evangelion calendar, great new iPhone case and officially licensed character cups, our Eva + Pikachu parody T-shirt or Calbee Eva potato chips with a trading card inside, you should browse the site and now. See the top Evangelion products, as ranked by our customers.

Remember, Pocky Day is Almost Here!

This Sunday, November 11, is a special day for Pocky fans. It's been designated by the Ezaki Glico company as Pocky Day, since 11/11 looks like four Pocky sticks lined up, ready to be eaten. To help celebrate all Japanese snacks including Pocky and Pretz, Nestle Kit Kat and more, we're having a sale on all food products through Monday, so get your order in now! Click here to see all J-List's Japanese snack sorted by popularity!

Unique Advertising Methods in Japan

There are many innovative ways Japanese companies advertise to get their messages out to people, like running a short commercial twice, back-to-back, so you can't tune it out easily. Many Japanese advertising campaigns are so interesting they develop a following outside Japan, like the Lotte Fit's gum commercials that will make you get up and dance, or the nosebleed-inducing AKB48 "mouth to mouth" Puccho commercial (YouTube videos embedded in our product pages). The Japanese take public transportation a lot, and innovative advertising in trains is common, like the campaign that transformed the metal bars passengers hold onto while commuting into lightsabers to promote the Star Wars DVD release here, or turning an entire train into a giant advertisement for K-On! One method of advertising I've always liked is pocket tissue, which are printed by banks or ramen shops to promote their wares and handed out on street-corners -- they're useful because you never know when you'll need some tissue. If you've ever been to an anime convention J-List was at we probably handed you some of these pocket tissues, and we also include a pack with orders you make from our website. And if you make an order now, you'll get our cool limited-edition holiday pocket tissue with "Santa Megumi" on it. (Please note that J-List tissues aren't included in orders that would be damaged by them during shipping, like thin books or doujinshi, and are subject to availability).

Pocket tissues are a popular way to advertise.

University Crisis in Japan

In many ways it's been a blessing for Japan to have very little in the way of natural resources compared to, say, Saudi Arabia, which has forced the country to invest heavily in its own citizens through education. In the decades after World War II, Japan has built an excellent educational system based on competition: in order to get into a good university, students had to work hard and learn to apply themselves from an early age, which has yielded many benefits. As Japan's population falls, however, the country faces a new crisis, with the prospect that one day, any student who wants to attend a famous university can just walk right in. without studying. In order to maintain Japan's academic standards, Japan's Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology -- yes, that's really her title -- has surprised everyone by refusing to approve three new universities that had applied for official accreditation, a decision which I frankly applaud. I've written before of the incredible foolishness of creating new universities in a country where elementary schools are being designed to be "barrier free" so they can easily be repurposed as community centers for the elderly when they're no longer needed for children. While it's inconvenient for the staff involved with these new universities, Japan needs to start making hard decisions about its future going forward.

The coming "famine" of students will cause problems for Japan's universities.

J-List 1,000,000th Order!

J-List has been bringing you interesting and random products from Japan since 1996, selling everything from our famous "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" kanji T-shirts to Hello Kitty "shoulder massagers" and more. Today today we reached a pretty awesome milestone: our 1,000,000th order. The order was by a customer in Reno, Nevada, for some awesome Megami Magazine issues, and we gave him a gift certificate to thank him. We'd like to say thanks to our amazing customers, and here's to another million orders!

Stylized Language Used in Anime

It's got to be a challenge for anime creators to come up with fresh and interesting characters for fans to enjoy, but fortunately they're quite good at inventing new variations on facial features, hair ornaments and endearing personality quirks to make their characters unique. The popular new anime Chunibyo demo Koi ga Shitai ("Regardless of My Adolescent Delusions of Grandeur, I Still Want a Date") is the story of Yuuta, a Japanese high school student who spent his junior high school years pretending to be a magic-using video game character but who now wants to lead a normal life...so naturally he's surrounded by cute moe girls who won't let him. Kyoto Animation has come up with some great characters, including the eye patch-wearing Rikka who does that cute protective thing with her arms whenever Yuuta bops her on the head, and Shinka, the cutest girl in class, who also spent her early years engaging in childish fantasies that she now wants to erase. My favorite of the batch is definitely Sanae, the clumsy girl who uses her twintails as weapons to fight with. As is often the case in anime, Sanae speaks in a highly stylized way, essentially putting desu on the ends of all sentences that don't need them. The end result is cute, although no one in the history of the country ever spoke this way. Just as it's not a good idea for Japanese learners of English to say, pattern their speech after the fictional character of Yoda, it's important for anyone studying Japanese to avoid trying to learn too much from anime.

Sanae speaks a fictional dialect of Japanese.

The American Election, As Seen From Japan

Well, the U.S. election is almost upon us, and if you're sick of being bombarded with political messages and 24-hour news coverage, the good news is that very soon we'll all be at the farthest point from the next election possible. The election is being covered on the Japanese news, with correspondents in the U.S. reporting on the campaigning. Japan has a British-style Parliamentary legislature with a Prime Minister elected by the ruling party or coalition of parties, and the system in the U.S. is quite confusing to people here, so commentators are careful to explain the uniqueness of the U.S. electoral system, especially the Electoral College. Thanks to the vote-by-mail system, I was able to cast my ballot even though I'm on the other side of the world. Incidentally, we've got a great English-translated visual novel called My Girlfriend is the President about a normal Japanese boy who wakes up one day to find that his girlfriend has somehow become President of Nippon (naturally, aliens are involved). If you'd like to pick up this great eroge we're having a $10 off sale through Wednesday. We wish you many happy elections!

This image has me imagining a "moe" version of Mitt Romney, ugh.

International Marriage as Seen from Japan

Kokusai kekkon, or international marriage, is a popular way for Japanese to find a partner who can provide something that other Japanese are unable to, and more and more Japanese of both sexes are open to the idea of marrying someone from another country. The other day I caught an interesting TV show called Sekai Banzuke: World Ranking that took on the topic of international marriage, inviting famous gaijin "talents" (Japanese-bilingual foreigners who work as commentators or commedians in Japan) who have Japanese husbands and wives to hear their thoughts on the subject. The discussion was quite spirited as foreigners from the U.S., Britain, France, India, Brazil, Finland, South Korea and Hong Kong told of the various trials they faced getting used to living with a foreign spouse. These challenges included lifestyle differences (the guest from India said his wife got tired of him asking to eat curry three times a day, every day) as well as language (the Harvard-educated American "talent" Pakkun annoys his wife by correcting her Japanese in front of others). The show also covered one of the most famous international marriage of the 20th Century, that of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which is a rarity as Yoko is oddly unpopular in Japan and almost never discussed in the media.

International marriage and Japan.

Star Wars + Disney Thoughts

While Japan has been a huge influence in my life from a young age, the other great inspiration for me has always been Star Wars, as the 400+ Star Wars figures displayed in my office can attest. I was therefore quite interested to read the news that Disney was buying the rights to the Star Wars franchise, and spent a few hours chuckling at entertainment blogs as they tried to come up with variations on "When You Wish Upon a Death Star" puns. I enjoyed seeing the range of reactions by fans on the J-List Facebook Page, some of which were negative ("I'm surprised my childhood was only worth 4 billion dollars") while others were hopeful ("it can't get any worse, I think it will get better"). In some ways it seemed like we were "kids" being told by our parents of a divorce and remarriage to a new parent, and some fans seemed to really be in shock about the news. Personally, I'm upbeat about the ownership change, since Disney and Star Wars have been joined at the hip ever since Star Tours opened in 1987, and the fit seems to work pretty well. (The marriage of Star Wars and Japan isn't too bad either.) My main passion is for the really excellent Star Wars games like the Battlefront series, and I'll keep my fingers crossed for some good news in this area in the future.

What are your thoughts on the Disney + Lucasfilm marriage?

(Mostly) All-Ages Manga @ J-List

J-List sells tons of great manga from Japan, which are perfect for fans and collectors and anyone wanting to teach themselves Japanese using what is pretty much the most enjoyable method available. We carry all the most popular comics, including rare books like the limited edition of the final volume of Evangelion. Browse our all-ages and general manga volumes here.

Remember J-List's Big Chocolate & Snack Sale

Remember: J-List is having a great limited sale on all chocolate and other snack items from Japan, to celebrate Pocky Day (November 11), making this a great time to pick up Japanese Pocky or Kit Kats or bizarre gum or Kracie "DIY" snacks. 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!

Homestay Shimasu Ka?

Before I came to live in Japan more than two decades ago, my family used to host Japanese homestay students, and I learned a lot about the country through those experiences. We hosted quite a few over the years, high school kids from Yokohama and Nagoya, a university student from Hokkaido and so on, and had a lot of fun as well as more than our share of linguistic and cultural communication problems (which are kind of the point). There's one unfortunate reality to homestay programs in the U.S., and that is since host families receive money for putting up their Japanese guests, homestay has been turned into a for-profit activity by some, who host as many foreign guests as their houses will hold and greatly reduce the chance for useful cultural sharing to take place. If you think you'd be interested in sharing your home with homestay students from Japan, learning from them as you help them learn about your country, please look into what programs you can find on the web. Googling homestay programs in your city is a good place to start, or consider contacting a nearby university that has an ESL department to see if they're looking for homes to place new students in.

We recommend you consider a homestay student if you want to have a great experience!

I'm Not Upgrading your OS Because I Like You Or Anything. Baka!

Microsoft has released a new OS, and in Japan that means new moe characters will be used to market the product to fans. The tradition of creating cute characters to represent computer OSes started on Japan's 2ch BBS with a discussion about making a character who was "as unstable and prone to breakdowns as Windows Me." This was the birth of "OS-tan" (-tan is the same as the cute -chan name ending, but pronounced like a cute child would), and characters representing all other major OSes soon followed. Microsoft got into the spirit of things by promoting Windows 7 with Nana Madobe, an official OS-tan, then added her cousin Claudia who represents the company's cloud computing initiatives. With Windows 8 there are two new cousins, Yuu and Ai (you and I, get it?), one of whom (Ai-chan) is a classic tsundere. There's even a family tree for the entire Microsoft OS family, including Kyuhachi (Nana's father, representing Windows 98) and the venerable grandfather San'ichi (representing Windows 3.1). It remains to be seen if Japanese fans will embrace the official characters and create fanart about them, but if any (ahem) interesting doujinshi show up, we'll be sure to carry them on J-List.

Windows 8 has new moe mascot characters.

"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.