Famous Foreigners in Japan

Hello again from J-List! It's time for another slice of life from the land of strawberry and whipped cream sandwiches. No, seriously.

As gaijin, it can be interesting to study Japan by looking at the foreigners who interacted with the country before us, and who were likely confused by the same things, like how to use chopsticks or how to wear a yukata so that it won't have slid off your body by morning. Interesting people like John Kendrick, an American who participated in the Boston Tea Party and fought in the Revolutionary War then went on to be the first American to visit Japan. Or the amazing William Adams, an Englishman who changed the course of Japanese history when he arrived in Japan in 1600 and became the friend and personal advisor of Ieyasu Tokugawa, as well as the first-ever foreign daimyo feudal lord. Albert Einstein also had a special relationship with Japan, spending several months here in 1922-1923, even visiting Nara and feeding the deer there.

Then there's a man with the unlikely name of Ranald MacDonald (no relation, I'm sure), who has the distinction of being the first English teacher in Japan. A half-Chinook, half-Scottish bank employee, Ranald happened to encounter three Japanese fishermen who had washed ashore in Washington State but were unable to return home because of their country's policy of enforced isolation from the outside world. Touched by their plight, he decided he would go to Japan, despite the fact that it was death for foreigners to enter the country, and in 1848 he booked passage on a whaling vessel that would take him close to Hokkaido. Pretending to be a survivor from a shipwreck, he allowed himself to be rescued by the aboriginal Ainu and was handed over to the local Samurai lord, who shipped him off to Nagasaki. Although many Japanese could speak Dutch, not a soul knew English, so Shogun officials decided to send several bright students to learn English from Mr. MacDonald while he awaited a ship to take him home. The studies paid off, and when Admiral Perry showed up in 1853, students trained by MacDonald were able to communicate with him. If Mr. MacDonald had thought to write a book about his exploits in Japan he'd have become famous all over the world, but instead he was completely unknown until 30 years after his death. Today there's a commemorative statue in Nagasaki thanking Mr. MacDonald for his contribution, and if I know Japan, I'm pretty sure they sell little cakes or rice crackers with his face on them, too.

The first English teacher in Japan was...Ranald McDonald?

2013 Japanese Calendar Update

While we love to carry popular Japanese calendars like Evangelion, Hatsune Miku, IdolMaster, and the large Studio Ghibli Wall Calendar that's published every year, we go to the distance for our customers and stock photo, art and other calendars that are awesome, even if they're not the top sellers. We love to stock calendars that capture the spirit of Japan, like this beautiful photo calendar showing Japan during the various seasons of the year, our popular Mt. Fuji and Night View of Japan calendars, or this gorgeous calendar showing example of traditional Japanese rooms. Browse all 2013 Japanese calendars now!

Microsoft Windows 8 + Eroge

J-List has been involved in licensing and publishing Japanese visual novels -- also known as eroge or "hentai" games, though many titles are all-ages -- since 1998, and we're thankful to our wonderful customers for helping us create a market for these unique games outside of Japan. We think visual novels are a great medium for telling a story, and games like Yume Miru Kusuri or Shuffle! or Deus Machina Demonbane or Go! Go! Nippon! have outstanding stories that you really get involved in while you play, not to mention incredible characters to interact with and (mosaic-free) graphics to enjoy. Whenever a new version of Windows comes out, we go through a long process of testing our games to make sure they're compatible, and we've spent a couple weeks checking all our currently shipping titles. We're happy to report that, except for a very few hiccups, all our English-language visual novels work great with either 64- or 32-bit editions of Windows 8. (For detailed on a few games that have issues, see this post.) I was nervous about the changes in Windows 8 at first, but I've found that with a few minor modifications it was quite an enjoyable OS to use, and it even managed to run some ancient games that Windows 7 wouldn't touch. View the most popular English-translated visual novels on J-List now, or browse games available by convenient Internet download.

(By the way, while Windows 8 is a solid OS, we'd like to point out that Windows RT, Microsoft's locked-down platform for ARM processors, is a closed system that only allows "approved" software to be installed. This means that ecchi titles like the games we license and sell will never be available for this platform, so we naturally recommend customers interested in these games choose Windows 8 over Windows RT.)

J-List's visual novels are ready for Windows 8.

New Taiga Drama for 2013: Yae no Sakura

A new year means certain things in Japan, like exchanging formal greetings with everyone you know the first time you see them in January. It also means the start of a new "Taiga Drama," the big-budget historical drama broadcast by NHK, Japan's clone of the BBC, every year. Japan has always had an excellent tradition of remembering its history through jidai geki (period dramas; this is where we get the word "Jedi" from). It's basically as if a show as awesome as Downton Abbey was on every Sunday night, all year long, and when the year ended a new show would start up. The Taiga Drama for 2012 is called Yae no Sakura, the story of a Yae Niijima (Neesima), a female samurai who fought in the Boshin War in 1868-1869, dressing as a boy since girls weren't allowed to fight. This was an uprising of Tokugawa Shogun-affiliated samurai lords in Northern Japan who fought against the new Meiji Government being formed around the Japanese Emperor. The story takes place in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, and the drama is very much intended to help encourage the economic recovery of that region, still struggling after the March 2011 earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi. Whenever a new drama starts up there's always a "history boom" as viewers take an interest in the new subject material, and I'm sure many fans will be making visits to this historic region of Japan.

A new samurai period drama set in Fukushima.

Japan's Falling Population, Part II

Last time I talked about some of the challenges Japan is facing as its population falls due to a combination of the normal aging that most industrialized nations face combined with sudden changes in Japan's society, zero net immigration and, uh, these things. Japan isn't the only place with a falling population -- countries like Ireland, Germany, Italy and Russia also have populations that are declining, but the effects aren't noticed as much there due to immigration (8% of people in Germany are foreigners, compared with under 1.5% for Japan). Finding a way to get foreigners to move here permanently has proven a challenge for the government so far. A pilot program to bring nurses over from Indonesia met with some success, but since Japanese law currently requires foreign nurses to have nearly perfect linguistic and kanji skills, most of the nurses ended up returning home. Japan has been doing a few things right, however, removing some of the frustrations gaijin here face, like the unpopular alien registration card and the "reentry stamp," a $70 official passport stamp that had to be obtained if you wanted to leave Japan then return. It's quite easy to get Japanese citizenship, and sumo wrestlers from Hawaii or Mongolia who want to run their own sumo stable one day usually become naturalized citizens, as do gaijin tarento (foreign TV stars) like Bobby Ologun from Nigeria. I'm often asked by J-List customers if I've gotten my Japanese citizenship yet, and I tell them no, I'm quite happy with the 永住権 eijuu-ken (permanent residence status) I've got now.

Bulgarian sumo wrestler Koto-oshu also took Japanese citizenship.

Valentine's Day is Coming

February 14th isn't far off, and now is a great time to start thinking of Valentine's Day. Whether you're a girl who wants to give chocolate to express your feelings of love, friendship or gratitude to that special boyfriend/husband/son/father/coworker (as they do in Japan) or are doing it other way around, J-List is loaded with awesome chocolates that will win the heart of that someone special. From awesome Japanese Kit Kat varieties to amazing chocolate molds to other really surprising chocolate products, we've got lots for you to see.

Japan's Population Falls Again

Japan got some bad news when it was revealed that the population of the country dropped at a faster rate than expected in 2012. Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2008 then started declining as deaths outpaced births, dropping by a staggering 212,000 last year. The reasons for Japan's falling population are many -- I honestly could probably list 100 if I tried -- but the big ones include men and women getting married later and having one or maybe two children rather than 4-5 like their parents did, concern over the rising costs of raising a child to adulthood, social issues like the "herbivorification" of males which causes them to have less ambition and be less interested in sex, and so on. Europe has issues with low birthrates, too, but the slack is picked up by immigration. Unfortunately this is more difficult for Japan, as there's no convenient pool of people willing to come live here, and there are many language and cultural barriers to overcome, too.

Japan's population is falling at a faster rate than expected.

My Vacation to Malaysia

Selamat pagi! That's 'good morning' in Malay and Indonesian, and a Nichijou reference, in case you didn't catch that series. My family and I have just gotten back from an enjoyable vacation in Malaysia, on the island of Penang, an up-and-coming tourist destination in Asia that has a lot of fun activities to offer. We had a great time, doing all the usual things like snorkeling through exotic reefs, eating various Asian foods at open-air stalls, and shopping. I'm tired and sunburned, but I got some real relaxing done, so the trip was a success.

In a lot of ways Malaysia strikes me as the opposite of my adopted home country of Japan. Over the course of its history, Japan has had relatively little influence from the outside world, successfully fighting off Mongol invaders twice with the help of conveniently-timed typhoons that wrecked the invading fleets (this was the famous 'divine wind') and completely closing the country to Westerners from 1633 to 1868 when the influence of European powers started to become a threat to the stability of the country. This helped to create a homogenized nation in which 98% of people believe themselves to be of the same genetic stock. (Actually this is a form of national self-hypnotism, since there's plenty of Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, Russian and other DNA sloshing around Japan's gene pool…including some of mine.) Malaysia has had a very different history, with massive cultural and linguistic influences from many different sources resulting in a fascinating country of many languages and cultures including Chinese, Malay, Indian and European.

When we arrived at the hotel, we went to the tour desk to look at various day trips they had to offer, which included tours of beautiful temples, hikes through the jungle to see orangutans and so on. I wasn't surprised to see a Japanese-language tour being offered for potential "long-stay retirees" who wanted to visit supermarkets, shopping malls and hospitals in preparation for a possible extended period of retirement. Countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Australia are all the rage in Japan these days as enjoyable destinations for retirees who want to walk on the beach and play golf while enjoying a cost-of-living that's often well below Japan's. Malaysia is especially popular in part due to the lower costs: while a "mansion" (what they call a condominium here) can easily cost $2000 or more in a Japanese city, units can be rented for much less in Penang, and retirees can enjoy sunshine and golf all year-round.

I had a fun vacation in Malaysia; thousands of Japanese are moving to Malaysia for their silver years.

Make 2013 a Year for Bento

A new year is a good time to make some bold changes in your life, and one suggestion we have is to consider switching to healthy Japanese-style bento for your lunch. Bento is fun to make and delicious to eat, and you can make some pretty gorgeous "decoration bento" creations with a little practice. Bento is great because it offers automatic calorie control, so it's easier to avoid eating more than your allotment for that meal. Why not browse our selection of bento boxes, or check out our bento and kitchen accessories?

Of Beef Bowls and "Factions"

Before the new year arrived, I went to Yoshinoya for lunch for my official "last beef bowl of 2012," and decided to post a picture of my meal to my Twitter and Facebook feeds. As usual, food in Japan can be confusing and/or difficult to identify to people not familiar with it, and I got several questions about what I was eating. Several people commented on the raw egg sitting in a bowl, and I answered that that I was going to add a dollop of soy sauce to the egg, mix it up then pour it over the beef bowl, pushing the egg inside with my chopsticks so the heat from the rice could cook the egg. I'm what's known as 卵派 tamago-ha or "raw egg faction," the name for people who think beef bowl is better with raw egg mixed in, while people who eat it without the egg are そのまま派, sonomama-ha or "just-as-it-is faction." This tendency to break people into groups using the 派 (meaning faction, denomination or school, as in two opposing schools of thought) kanji is quite common in Japan. For example, there's an ongoing debate raging in my family about whether fried eggs are better with soy sauce or that heavenly Bull-Dog Sauce. While I'm usually 醤油派 shoyu-ha or "soy sauce faction," I switch to the ソース派 so-su ha or "sauce faction" if the fried egg in question will be part of a sandwich or otherwise eaten with bread. You can use the 派 kanji for just about anything you want to debate, e.g. Kirino-ha or Kuroneko-ha, etc.

My Last Beef Bowl of 2012

Delicious New Year's Foods from Japan

There are many traditional foods enjoyed on New Year's Day. The most famous is called osechi-ryori and is essentially an extravagant bento box containing various foods designed to keep for several days, traditionally made to give the women of the house a break from cooking so they can relax in the new year. As with most traditions in Japan, osechi ryori is incredibly old, dating back to the Nara Period 710-794 A.D. The Japanese eat other foods too, including scrambled egg sushi, various traditional beans I don't know the names of plus Mugi's eyebrows, also known as pickled daikon radish. My favorite New Year's food is without a doubt mochi (rice cake), a square of extremely dense rice that's been pressed into a solid shape. Cook it over a flame or in a microwave and it will turn soft and chewy, and it's delicious with soy sauce and nori. Much as I love the stuff, I can only eat it once a year since it's very high in calories. Mochi is also one of the most dangerous foods in Japan because it's extremely chewy and easy to choke on, and every year a few elderly Japanese and even children choke to death on it.

Mochi is a delicious but dangerous food.

Happy New Year 2013!

2013 has officially arrived, and we wish everyone a peaceful and happy year. We hope that J-List will be able to bring you a little closer to Japan all year long. Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

We had a pretty normal start to the new year, which included sleeping late then lazing around in the family kotatsu, watching the New Year's marathon on TV while checking to see what New Year's cards had arrived. (If you want to see the New Year's card we sent out this year, here it is.) We then went to our local Shinto shrine to pray for good luck and business success in the new year, both for J-List and for the liquor shop my wife's parents run, which involves buying abura-age (fried tofu) from a stand and laying it at the feet of statues of fox deities, since everyone knows that foxes love fried tofu. We then visited various relatives, catching up with what they'd been doing over the past year. You might imagine that my son and daughter, aged 17 and 16, would rather stay home and surf the Internet rather than be dragged to relatives' houses, but they were more than happy to come along. The reason was the Japanese tradition of otoshi-dama or money children receive from relatives on New Year's Day. They each pulled in about $200 from various relatives, which meant they were more than happy to sit and talk politely for one evening.

(If you want to know what New Year's is like in Japan, watch episode 20 of Hyouka, which accurately captures the solemn spirit of greeting your friends for the first time in the new year then praying for happiness at the Shinto shrine…it's a great episode.)

New Year's Day is the most festive in Japan.

2012 was a great year for J-List, and we're primed and ready to make this year an even better one. We plan on bringing you even more random and wacky products from Japan this year, from cute Panda-shaped sandwich makers to epic 2D glossy artbooks to our amazing traditional Neri Ame candy you knead with chopsticks before eating plus awesome cosplay products. Thanks for being a part of our wonky little company, and here's to a great 2013 together!

New Years in Japan 2012

Today is New Year's Eve, a day to do any last-minute "big cleaning," including getting the car washed, since no one wants to start a new year with a dirty car. December 31st is the day to eat Japanese soba (buckwheat noodles), which supposedly helps everyone enjoy long lives because the noodles are long, and December 31st is the busiest day for restaurants that serve noodles. Another big activity for the last day of the year is watching Kohaku, the "Red and White Song Battle," a live show put on by NHK every year since 1951 in which female singers (the red team) battle male singers (the white team) to see which side can put on the most extravagant performances. Kohaku is the most important music event of the year, and virtually every top star will be there, from the venerable Saburo Kitajima to AKB48 to the up-and-coming Momoiro Clover Z and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. (Fans of J-List's prepaid iTunes Japan cards can browse this year's Kohaku music on iTunes if they like.) After the Kohaku show ends at 11:45 pm, NHK broadcasts 行く年、来る年 Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming,) showing solemn images of people making pilgrimages to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do 初詣 hatsu-moh-de, the first prayer for good luck and happiness of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell that chimes 108 times, a Buddhist tradition tied to the 108 sins that mankind is subject to. Then, the TV display flashes "0:00," letting you know the New Year has silently arrived.

Then comes Oshogatsu, New Year's Day, the most important day of the year in Japan. On that day we'll all sit around the house relaxing, eating mikan oranges and mochi rice cakes with our legs in the kotatsu heater table and watching the big New Year's Marathon that's held every year in our prefecture, which is broadcast nationally on TV, since sitting around watching people run in the cold is apparently a good way to start the year. It's important to relax as much as possible on New Year's Day because if you're busy on that day, it's said you'll be busy all year. Just as kids rush downstairs to see what presents Santa brought them in the U.S., Japanese children hurry to get the mail so they can see who sent them a nengajo or New Year's Card, a huge custom in Japan.

By the way, the way to wish someone a Happy New Year while it's still December is よいお年を yoi o-toshi o, literally meaning "[please have a] good New Year." After January 1st has arrived, you say 明けましておめでとう akemashite omedetou (ah-kay-ma-shtay oh-meh-deh-toh), literally "congratulations on entering the New Year."

This is how Jedi celebrate New Year's in Japan. 

A.D. 2012, So Long.

Well, we've come to the end of another year. 2012 was a great year for us at J-List, with lots of growth for us as a company as we sold fun products like soft Totoro blankets and "shimapan" and cute bear-themed Japanese fashions while giving you slice-of-life updates from Japan three times a week. We released some outstanding English-language visual novels and eroge, too, including the legendary School Days -- thanks to everyone for supporting our efforts to license and translate these unique games from Japan. It was an enjoyable year for me personally, with plenty of travel -- I managed to visit Taiwan, Australia, tour Sapporo and Northern Japan by train, plus hit Washington D.C., New York and Boston over the summer...and we leave for a short vacation in Malaysia early in the new year. While the past year was not a great one for Japan, with its flagging economy and territorial disputes with China and South Korea which undid a decade of goodwill in Asia, at least things are ending on a positive note, with new leadership and hopefully some better news coming next year.

There are few J-List posts I can say I've waited years to write. One was my post on the election of Naoto Kan as Prime Minister in 2010. I'd literally had my eye on him for more than a decade, hoping he'd become Prime Minister someday mainly so I could make Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn jokes (warning, sound will play). I was apparently the only blogger to mark the 10th anniversary of the "All Your Base" meme, which I'd waited patiently for several years to write. Then there's the original Super Dimensional Fortress Macross anime, the popular 1982 series which, along with Urusei Yatsura and Akira, had a huge effect on Japan's popular culture that reverberated around the world during the 1980s, laying the groundwork for all that would follow. The last frame seen in the series shows a photo album being closed, with some enigmatic words on the cover -- "A.D. 2012. So long." -- which have stuck in my brain since I first saw them. So I was pretty much destined to write this post and include the image, ever since I started blogging in 1998.

Back in 1985, the year 2012 seemed like such a far-off time. Anyway, "A.D. 2012, so long!"

Thanks for Making 2012 a Great Year for J-List!!

2012 is done, and we'd like to say thanks to you, our awesome customers, for making this our best year yet. We love to be a bridge between Japan and the rest of the world, offering fun anime magazines, random fashion items, bento and kitchen products plus strange Japanese versions of your favorite brands, and we'll keep doing in the new year! Until we meet again, please have an awesome (and safe) New Year's celebration, and yoi o-toshi o!

Last Chance to Use J-List's December Sale

Christmas is over, but our special sale continues through the end of December! Through the end of 2012, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts: buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us. All sales end January 1st.

Japan's Real Problem is Leadership

What is leadership? Everyone probably has their own definition, perhaps something about individuals with natural talent having the courage to stand up and be a beacon for others to follow, hopefully choosing to do what's right rather than what's popular with the most people. While Japan currently faces a huge number of problems ranging from economic stagnation to population decline to an infrastructure in need of renewal, I think one of the biggest challenges is the chronic lack of leadership in Japanese politics. While you or I may think that leaders should have unique skills and vision that set them apart from the average person, in Japan people spend their lives learning the importance of getting along harmoniously and not expressing your opinion in an overt way, and the best leaders are those who can gently nudge others to see things their way. A lot of Americans complain about the two-party system, which makes it hard for serious third party candidates to get a toe-hold in the minds of voters, but Japan takes things to the other extreme, with 14 large and small parties that make a lot of noise but don't move the country in any specific direction. Then there's the tendency for all Japanese to immediately turn on anyone impudent enough to actually become Prime Minister, which is described by the Japanese proverb deru kui wa utareru or "the standing nail is driven" (e.g. anyone who stands out for any reason will be hammered back into place). This more than any other reason is why Japan's leadership has been so dysfunctional over the past two decades, a period which has seen only four leadership changes in the United Kingdom but a staggering 15 in Japan

Meanwhile, in an alternate moe universe... (game link here)

My Life Is Becoming An Anime

Anime, of course, is a collection of fun memes which continually build on story and character concepts established in previous works. It's a completely false world, or rather a world that's as stylized as, say, Hollywood movies are, and just as we don't actually see cars exploding dramatically in the U.S. every other day, most Japanese males don't find themselves surrounded by harems of adoring females on a regular basis. Still, it's funny how often anime seems to become real for me. Whenever I attend the school festival at my son's high school, I feel like I've lived through a 22 minute "school festival episode," and when I take my family to Guam for a vacation, I feel like we've all dropped into one of those "beach episodes" every anime studio feels compelled to include. Once I was talking to my wife, and I happened to ask what club she was in in high school. She replied, "The light music club, why do you ask?" which was quite a thing to hear as a K-On! fan. The other day I was watching the ending to Chuunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai, which is about high schoolers who'd previous suffered from "8th graders' disease" (the name for the tendency of kids in junior high school to engage in childish fantasies) trying to discard their delusions and live normal lives. My wife said, "8th graders' disease? Oh, I had that really bad when I was a girl." She didn't give details, but I can't get the image of her wearing an eye patch and using imaginary super powers to open train doors. Woop woop!

Sometimes anime can become surprisingly real.

And in case you don't know this...

The Chinese Zodiac in Japan

If you browse J-List's Home & Traditional page, where we stock fun and interesting things for your home along with traditional products from Japan, you're likely to notice a lot of snake-related products right now. This is because 2013 is the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese zodiac. The animal for the year a person was born in can be quite important in Japan, and there's a body of beliefs based on the system, for example people born in a Snake Year are thought to be compatible with Roosters and Oxes but not Monkeys or Boars, and so on. Just as you can look up your horoscope using traditional Western astrology, a lot of websites are happy to give you advice based on what your Chinese zodiac animal happens to be.

The story of how Chinese Zodiac came to be is extremely famous, as well-known throughout Asia as Noah's Ark is in the West. Here's the story, in case you don't know it. On the day of the New Year the Gods (or Buddha, depending on which version you read) declared a race among thirteen animals to come and offer New Year's Greetings. The Ox knew he was the slowest animal, so he started out before the others. The Rat noticed this and hopped on his back, jumping off at the last minute to claim first place. The Ox came in second, followed by the fleet Tiger. The Rabbit was next, with the kind-hearted Dragon behind, who was delayed helping the Rabbit across the river. The Horse ran along then, but the Snake slithered between his legs and startled him, beating him to the finish line. The Sheep, Monkey and Rooster were working as a team to get across the river, and arrived next. Then came the Dog, delayed because he stopped to take a bath along the way, with the Boar coming in last -- he'd gotten confused and climbed the wrong mountain, forcing him to backtrack. The thirteenth animal was the Cat, who had forgotten what day the race was held and asked his friend the cunning Rat, who told him the wrong date. This is why there's no Year of the Cat, and why cats hate rats and mice today.

The Chinese Zodiac is quite important to Japanese people.

Year End = Extra Awesome Product Update

This is kind of a special update, since the year is winding down, so we've posted an extra awesome volley of new products including all the popular anime magazines for the month, including Megami Magazine, NyanType, Dengeki Moeoh and more. These magazines are loaded with great free stuff for fans in the form of posters, calendars and even figures. Grab the issues you want before they're gone, or consider a revolving subscription, which can be canceled or changed at any time.

Last Chance to Take Advantage of J-List's EMS Sale

Christmas is over, but our special sale continues through the end of December! Through the end of 2012, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts: buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us. All sales end December 31st.

Prime Minsiter Abe's Second Chance

Today marks the return of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power, as Shinzo Abe is officially confirmed as Japan's newest Prime Minister. Mr. Abe faces many challenges, including dealing with the deflation that's kept the Japanese economy stagnant, developing a workable energy policy and managing delicate relationships with South Korea and China. Though Mr. Abe received good marks on foreign policy issues when he was Prime Minister in 2006-2007, avoiding inflammatory visits to Yasukini Shrine (a Buddhist temple where the souls of Japanese war criminals are interred), this time he's been specifically elected as a "hawk" who will defend Japan's territory from encroachment by China. The LDP is a conservative pro-business party, and is taking action to help Japanese companies like Sony and Panasonic, whose exports made Japan famous before the companies fell on hard times over the past four years. He's also embracing the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), a group of business leaders who have advised Japan's governments in a semiofficial capacity since 1946 but who were given the cold shoulder by the last ruling party. While there's a lot of cynicism by foreigners in Japan, who joke about forming a betting pool to guess how long Mr. Abe will last this time around and what his official reason will be when he quits this time (in 2007 it was because of "poor health"), I am hopeful that better economic news is in store for Japan in the coming months.

Prime Minister Abe gets another chance as PM. Don't screw it up!

Big Cleaning 2012

We hope everyone had a great holiday, wherever you are in the world. My family had a more-or-less traditional Japanese Christmas dinner, with baked chicken, mashed potatoes, "Christmas cake" and sushi, and it was great fun. Let's do it again next year!

Now that Christmas has over, Japan is getting ready for the end of 2012 and the arrival of the new year, which is the most important time in Japan. There's lots to do, including buying traditional New Year's foods like mochi, pressed squares of white rice called "rice cakes" in English (this name sounds really strange to Japanese people) which are delicious to eat. The Japanese have a great year-end tradition of cleaning the house from top to bottom, called 大掃除 oh-souji or "big cleaning," and I love it because crossing into a new year with a clean house feels great and mentally prepares you for new challenges. Companies have this tradition as well, and tomorrow the J-List staff will be processing the day's orders early, then we'll stop all work and clean our company from top to bottom, throwing away the past year's accumulated junk and making everything fresh and new.

It's time for year-end "Big Cleaning"!

Awkward Moments as a Gaijin in Japan

As an American living in Japan, I go about my day in a normal way, hitting the gym, filling my tank with gas, swinging by the store to do some shopping, etc., and the people I encounter deal with me pretty much like they would any Japanese person. Still, there are times when being a gaijin in Japan can feel a little strange, like that time (discussed a few updates ago) I went to a concert and found myself the only foreigner in a huge crowd of short, black-haired Japanese female fans. Five years ago I was sitting in a doctor's office when a TV news report about the death of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, happened to come up. Suddenly I was acutely aware that I was an American sitting in a room filled with Japanese people, more than a few of whom were old enough to remember the events of World War II, and I probably had one of those big anime sweat drops floating above my head. This experience was repeated almost verbatim yesterday while at my local onsen hot springs bath. There's a TV inside the sauna room, and while I was sitting inside there was a new report about the death of Keiji Nakazawa, the manga artist who created Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen), the famous story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Mr. Nakazawa was six years old on August 6, 1945 when the atomic comb exploded just 1.2 km from his school; by chance he had been standing in the shadow of a brick wall, which allowed him to survive and tell his story in manga form later. When the news report about his passing was broadcast, the sauna seemed to grow a little more quiet, although that might have been my imagination.

Sometimes it feels strange being an American in Japan.

Thanks for Making Christmas 2012 Great!

Christmas 2012 is behind us, and we'd like to thank everyone for helping to make this the best-ever Christmas in the history of J-List. We sold tons of anime calendars, "Fuku-bukuro" grab bags, cute little cat figures for your phone plus those crazy horse head masks, and we had a great time. If you missed anyone on your Christmas list, remember we can shoot a J-List gift certificate to them for you at the speed of email. Thanks again, and see you next year!

J-List Winter Sale Continues!

Christmas is over, but our special sale continues through the end of December! Through the end of 2012, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts: buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us.

(As promised, we selected one lucky J-List customer per day over the past month to receive a $50 gift certificate. The winners have already been contacted by "Santa Megumi." Congratulations if you were one of the lucky winners!)

Random Nihongo Lesson

Now it's time for a Japanese lesson, with some fun words you might be able to make use of someday. There's a class of single-word phrases which, for some reason, have many possible translation paths in English, making them challenging (but fun) to use. First there's やはり yahari (it also shows up as やっぱり yappari quite commonly), which you use to express your own expectations about something, roughly equivalent to "I knew it" or "just as I thought." When someone tells you something you didn't know, you can use なるほど naruhodo (nah-roo-ho-doh), which means "I see" or "that's news to me." If you watch an hour of anime in Japanese, you'll likely hear the phrase まさか masaka (mah-sah-kah) at least once, usually said by a shocked character -- it just means "it can't be!" or "you've got to be joking!" Finally there's a great word to pull out when you want to praise someone: さすが sasuga (sah-soo-gah), which roughly means "I always knew you were incredible" or "You never let us down." So if you have a friend or coworker named Yamada-san who does something good, hit him with "Sasuga, Yamada-san!" and know that you've made his day.

Have fun using these random Japanese phrases.

Inefficient Japan

Japan is a wonderful country, full of friendly people and vibrant culture that seems tailor-made to appeal to gaijin like us. Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the most inefficient places on Earth. While J-List has always made use of the latest Internet technologies to serve our customers better, we often find the Japanese suppliers and distributors we deal with are a decade or more behind us, still sending us 20-page faxes every night rather than PDF files sent through email. I'm a huge fan of RSS, the system websites use to organize their data for easy distribution -- incidentally, the J-List site has excellent support for RSS feeds, allowing you to automatically track certain types of products with tools like Google Reader -- but of course no Japanese publisher supports RSS on their websites, making it harder for us to learn about their upcoming books and order them. There are some very inefficient job categories in Japan, like men whose job it is to guide you to an empty parking space when you arrive at the mall, or people who sit by a road, manually counting the number of cars that go by each hour so the city can track traffic flow. Over the past decade, J-List's home city of Isesaki has been undergoing some major reconstruction, converting train tracks that run through the middle of the city to elevated tracks. On either side of some recently constructed raised train tracks -- exactly at the "location" of the Shinonome Research Lab from Nichijou, as luck would have it -- I noticed that there were always men standing on either side of the tracks, watching the road. It turns out that the clearance of the train tracks is a little lower than normal, so the men stand there to watch for trucks that might be higher than the 3.8 meter clearance and stop them before they try to cross under. Could you imagine being paid to stand and watch a road for 12 hours a day?

And another thing: Japanese banks close at 3 pm. It's a plot to force men to get married!

A Merry Christmas from J-List!

Well Christmas is here, and soon children all over the world will be nestled all snug in their beds, probably unsure of what a "sugar-plum" is but not caring as they wait to hear reindeer hooves on the roof. What does Christmas mean to you? For me it means having a special dinner with the family followed by the annual viewing of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and maybe listening to some Mormon Tabernacle Choir songs while opening presents. I join the entire staff of J-List in wishing you the best Christmas ever!

Christmas in Japan, of course, is very different from in other parts of the world. Like Valentine's Day, Christmas is a fun custom imported from the West that exists largely because department stores realized it was a good way for them to sell stuff. Even the Japanese tradition of eating "Christmas cake" on New Year's Eve came about through a clever marketing campaign by the Fujiya Confectionery Company, which decided to adopt the British custom of Christmas cakes to Japan in 1922, though the Japanese version is usually sponge cake with whipped cream and strawberries rather than fruitcake. Although Japanese love Christmas, they sometimes don't seem to "get" the holiday in the same way most of us do in the West, as seen by their custom of playing Christmas music through February or so. It's still cold out, they reason, so why not listen to Jingle Bells one more time?

Best wishes for a very merry and moe Christmas, from all of us at J-List!

Sword Art Online @ J-List

The world didn't end on December 21st, but it did for some the following day, with the airing of the final episode of Sword Art Online. The awesome tale of a massively multiplayer online game in which people die if they're killed in-game, .hack SAO was the smash hit of 2012. If you're a fan of the show, we've got figures, keychains. posters, 2013 calendars, even some interesting parody products. Why not browse our selection of Sword Art Online products and see what we've got in stock?

Ninja or Kabuki Stagehand?

It's funny how we're all wired to perceive things a certain way, depending on what culture we come from. When my daughter was younger, we took her to an eye doctor in the U.S. for some tests, and the doctor showed her some pictures and asked her to identify them. She wasn't able to answer properly, not because of some problem with her eyes, but because the pictures -- silhouettes of household objects -- looked strange to her since she'd grown up outside the U.S. When I went to see a kabuki play in Tokyo for the first time, I was confused by the story, and not just because of the archaic Japanese the actors were speaking. As the story progressed, men in black costumes would appear on stage and scurry around, moving props and background objects. To my eyes, they looked like ninjas ready to strike their enemies dead, yet for some reason the characters on stage ignored their presence and went on with the story. It turns out I was looking at kuroko, stage hands who manipulate objects during the performance but who are supposed to be ignored by the audience. These unique "invisible shadows" show up on other performance arts, too, especially bunraku, a play put on using highly detailed dolls that are manipulated by a puppet master who wears dark clothing, making him invisible to the audience.

You or I would see a ninja, but Japanese would see a kuroko stage hand for Kabuki.

Unique Features of the Japanese Language

The Japanese language is very different from any Western language, and just as English speakers need to get used to the concept of genders for nouns in European languages -- can anyone explain why a spoon is male, a fork female and a knife neutral in German? -- students of Japanese will encounter some new ideas. These include sentences in SOV (subject-object-verb) word order, grammatical "particles" that mark different parts of sentences for you, plus the custom of omitting information from sentences when it's clear from context, e.g. saying 行く？iku? for "shall we go to lunch now?" although all you actually said was "go?" Another new concept is the っ sound, aka "small tsu," essentially a brief pause in the middle of some Japanese words similar to the glottal stop you hear in words like mitten, uh-oh, and Hawai'i. This sound is represented in English by double consonants, as seen in Lotte, purveyors of quality caffeine gum and Rikka, the lovable girl from Chuunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai. Another issue in Japanese is differentiating long and short vowels, something that we don't have in English. When LEGO used the Japanese word for "imagination" (空想) for its experimental crowd-sourced model project, it wisely changed the spelling to Cuusoo. The more common romanization of kuusoh (with two long vowels) might accidentally be reduced to kuso (with two short vowels), which is a Japanese expletive meaning "poop."

(As usual, I always advise that you lean Japanese from books like the Genki series or White Rabbit flash card series, which "force" you to read Japanese in proper hiragana and katakana rather than in the English alphabet. This helps you learn more accurately and reduces any speaking accent later.)

All About Japanese Offices

Before I started J-List in 1996, I had a brief career as a public employee, working in the local City Office as a "Coordinator of Internationalization" providing various services to foreigners in our city, translating documents for them if they couldn't read Japanese, and so on. On my first day of work I was surprised to see that the department I'd been assigned to included about 25 people, all working in a giant open space with desks in rows, and being in a room where so many people had a direct line of sight to me at any moment was an unnerving experience. This kind of office layout is common in Japan -- at one of our book distributors (Tohan), the entire company works in one cavernous space, with hundreds of employees occupying rows of desks, buzzing around the room or talking to clients quietly on the phone, without so much as a cubicle wall to hang a Dilbert strip on. While this is taking the open office concept a bit too far, running my own company in Japan has given me an appreciation for Japanese style workplaces. At J-List the employees work at an "island" of six desks pushed together, with each having a place to store the projects they're working on, photograph products for posting on the site and so on. I honestly believe the lack of walls improves our communication since you can turn to anyone and ask when such-and-such product will be back in stock, and having everyone working alongside each other helps us all stay focused.

Japanese offices are open, without cubicles or walls.

J-List Gift Certificates, The Perfect Otaku Gift

Christmas is almost here, and we hope everything is getting ready to have a really special time with family and friends. If you're still looking for the perfect gift for a Japan-obsessed person on your list, we humbly recommend our J-List Gift Certificates, which let your recipient buy anything from the J-List or JBOX.com websites. Since we create a high quality PDF file and send it to the email address you specify, you've got the option of either sending your gift via email or printing it out and presenting it to them in person. It's the gift they'll remember forever! J-List gift certificates are processed several times per day and we can get one sent to the email address you specify ASAP.

Our Christmas Sales Are Still Going

Remember, J-List is having three great sales right now. First, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts. Through the end of December, buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us. Finally, everyone who makes an order is entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate, one per day, given away by Santa Megumi on Christmas! And if you're ordering products stocked in San Diego, we now offer a UPS Next Day Air option too.

Swastika Shock in Japan

J-List has a popular Twitter feed and Facebook page, and I like to post random slice-of-life thoughts from Japan. When Google Maps for iOS came out a few days ago, I took it for a test-drive to see how good it performed in my semi-rural Japanese city. While the streets and turn-by-turn directions worked fine, the satellite data for my city is particularly bad, looking like it was photographed by the first Sputnik. I tweeted a screenshot showing this, and received several questions about why there was a swastika on my map. This is actually a "manji," a 4500 year old symbol from Sanskrit used in the Hindu and Buddhist religions. In Japan it's used to indicate the location of Buddhist temples on maps and totally unrelated to the Nazi version, which is pointing the other direction. You learn something new every day!

You can even type a swastika as a character with your computer. Turn on Japanese input and type まんじ (manji) and hit the space bar and 卍 will appear. 

The swastika (reversed actually) is closely associated with Buddhist temples.

Macross: Do You Remember the Early 80s?

As a card-carrying fan of oldschool Japanese animation and pop culture, I make it a point to enjoy both cool new series like Sword Art Online and Chuunibyo Demo Koi ga Shitai as well as the classics. 2012 happens to be the 30th anniversary of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, one of the pivotal shows from the 1980s that's responsible for the industry becoming what it is today, and I decided to re-watch the entire series in Japanese. 1982 was a very different time from 2012, and I found myself noticing lots of differences between modern anime series, starting with the lack of Korean and Chinese staff names shown in the ending credits -- anime today is absolutely a "pan-Asian" industry, but this wasn't true thirty years ago. The language was slightly different back then, too: characters often addressed each other using the word オタク otaku in its original meaning of "you and your family" rather than its current definition, which would be unthinkable today. For maximum irony, I decided to watch it on Blu-ray in full 1080p, and it was fun to identify little pieces of dust as they danced around on the animation cels, though overall the show holds up great considering it was released in the same year as MS-DOS 1.0. Incidentally, if you're a Macross fan, got lots of cool products on the site like the new Macross the First manga reboot plus the upcoming "ultimate" Macross 30th Anniversary PS3 game.

I'm re-watching the original Macross for its 30th anniversary.

Japanese Snacks Shipping from San Diego!

J-List has a conveniently located shipping center in San Diego, California, which is great if you're in a hurry to get anime and kanji T-shirts, San Diego-based Fuku-bukuro grab bags in time for Christmas, you've got some great options. We also stock Japanese snacks in our San Diego office, and we've posted a huge update of delicious Japanese food items you should see. We've got everything from U.S. based Hello Kitty snacks and delicious udon noodles and authentic ramune drinks and more. We even have the only shimapan Pocky you're likely to see this year. Click to see all San Diego-based Japanese snacks and drinks now!

We Love Japanese Toilets

When foreigners visit Japan, they naturally focus on areas of the country that stand out to them as unique, like maid cafes in Akihabara, pachinko parlors, love hotels and of course Japan's high-tech toilets. Most toilets you're likely to encounter in residential homes or hotels here are "washlets," those awesome toilets that wash and dry your butt for you and also have a "bidet" feature, though being male I'm sure I don't know what that is. They were invented in 1980 by the TOTO Corporation -- no relation to Dorothy's little dog, the name is actually short for 東洋陶器 Toyo Toki, meaning Eastern Ceramics -- and were originally developed for use in hospitals before the company decided to try selling them commercially. Japanese toilets increase your comfort by keeping the seat heated to the perfect temperature for you (this is called a "warmlet") then by washing your backside when you're done doing your business. They're popular with Japanese women, who always seem to suffer from chronic constipation, since the stream of water can be a big help. The toilets have other features, too, like cool LED lights for trips to the bathroom at night, hydraulically operated seats that open for you, and white noise generators to mask any sounds you might make while doing your business, which Japanese females hate, dainty feminine things that they are. TOTO and its competitor INAX are trying to build a market for high-tech Japanese toilets outside Asia, but so far it's been slow going, perhaps due to taboos regarding toilets in the West. I imagine most homes in Europe and the U.S. don't have conveniently-located electric sockets right by the toilet, either.

I am a big fan of Japanese "washlets."

Costco Japan Report

Yesterday I took my life into my own hands, daring to go to Costco on a Sunday. I'm a big fan of the company and the way they've brought American-style warehouse shopping to Japan, which has enabled Japanese to experience the joys of imported wine and frozen waffles and Dr. Pepper. A Japanese Costco store is almost exactly the same as the stores back in the U.S., right down to the signs advertising USDA Choice Beef, though they probably have better selections of sake in the liquor aisle than the stores near you. While the company is doing a great job in their Japan stores, there are a few things they might consider changing in the future. They sell giant frozen pizzas here just like back in the States, yet I don't know a single Japanese person who has an oven large enough to cook one; why not sell two smaller pizzas instead? Ditto on the large frozen turkeys they sell: since almost no one in Japan has a proper oven, perhaps Costco should consider an optional cook-it-for-you service like Honey Baked Ham. The company's tiramisu deserts come in a container so large that shocked Japanese describe it as a "bucket," and even my family couldn't hope to finish our giant pumpkin pie, so I brought half in to work to let the J-List staff share. I was happy to find Costco selling frozen burritos, something you don't really miss until you live in a country that doesn't have them. Unfortunately they'd chosen to sell bean burritos, perhaps not knowing that Mexican refried beans are to Japanese as the fermented natto soybeans are to Westerners. (They should go with beef or chicken burritos instead.) 

So if there are any Costco executives reading this, my consulting rates are very affordable, and you can probably pay me in dinner rolls.

The tiramisu from Costco is the stuff of legend in Japan.

On Being a Gaijin in Japan

The word for "foreigner" in Japanese is 外人 gaijin, which actually meals "outside-person" (e.g. outsider), but since this word can have negative connotations, the word 外国人 gaikokujin ("outside-country-person") will always be used on official documents or the TV news. Probably the single biggest difference between Japan and the West is that here, 98% of the county comes from more or less the same genetic stock, which means that foreigners stand out much more than we would in, say, Paris or Budapest. This can sometimes be a challenge, since I often find that I'm the only foreigner present in a place, whether it's working out at the gym or in a crowded hall during a concert. Some foreign friends I've had over the years have been bothered by standing out so much, or at the occasional stares (always by children rather than adults, as this is the most polite country in the world), saying that Japan was like "living in a fishbowl." I just ignore any odd attention I may find myself receiving, perhaps breaking the ice with a polite konnnichiwa.

So, what's it like to be a gaijin in Japan?

Japanese Election 2012 Results

The Japanese election is over, and as expected, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) scored a big win. The LDP ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 until they were booted out of power by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 2008. Voters returned the reigns to the old guard for several reasons, including frustration over the rocky economy and unfulfilled promises in the DJP's "Manifesto" plus four years of ineptly handled foreign diplomacy, which caused important international relationships to suffer, including Japan's ties with the U.S. They are also betting that the incoming Prime Minister Abe (ah-bey, not like the American President) will be better able to resist encroachment from China on the Senkaku Islands, a dispute which caused terrible anti-Japan riots this year. There's hope that the business situation will improve for Japanese companies, too. While the DPJ had been positively hostile to business, refusing to listen to advice from the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) or aid important companies like Panasonic, Sony and Sharp, the election of the pro-business LDP has already sent the stock market here soaring.

The Japanese election is over and old guard is back.

J-List Sale Reminder

Remember, J-List is having three great sales right now. First, we're giving a whopping $15 or $40 back when you order items from Japan and choose EMS shipping, which is fully insured and trackable and will arrive at your house in about 4 days. Order $100 or more to get $15 back as a store credit, or $200 or more to get $40 back. Next, we have a special offer on J-List's world-famous anime and kanji T-shirts. Through the end of December, buy any two J-List shirts shipping from San Diego and get a free shirt chosen randomly by us. Finally, everyone who makes an order is entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate, one per day, given away by Santa Megumi on Christmas! And if you're ordering products stocked in San Diego, we now offer a UPS Next Day Air option too.

Cool Gift Ideas From J-List

J-List is hard at work processing the orders we're receiving every day, getting everything out the door to our customers. There are some great Christmas gift ideas, from our Fuku-bukuro grab bags to our trademark J-List T-shirts to our iTunes Japan prepaid cards and always-fun J-List Gift Certificates, which are send in high quality PDF form to the email address you specify. How can J-List serve you today?

North Korea is the Least Fun Country to Live Next To

While I generally enjoy living in Japan, there are a few things I dislike. Having to pay $22 to see a movie in a theatre or $35 for a pizza, which are exotic "Western" imports and thus expensive, though 100-yen-per-plate sushi offsets this somewhat. The voices of politicians shouting at me through loudspeakers during Japanese elections is also something I could do without. It's also no picnic living next to North Korea, the least fun nation on the planet, which operates state-sponsored programs to counterfeit Japanese currency and smuggle illegal drugs into Japan, and has kidnapped at least 17 Japanese citizens since 1977 to serve as language teachers for North Korean spies. Now North Korea has launched a long-range missile, I mean a peaceful satellite, a three-stage ticket that splashed down off the coast of the Philippines. While the belligerent act was clearly intended to threaten Japan and South Korea, the message is clear: North Korea can strike at any country in Asia and even reach the West Coast of the U.S. So, anyone want to trade places with us?

North Korea launched another missile. That means I get to use this graphic again.