Japan, South Korea and Freedom of Thought

One aspect of Japan I like very much is the way people are generally open to debate and free thought here. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by article 21 of the Japanese constitution, and you can express virtually any opinion in Japan without running into trouble -- you can even be a communist if you like, and no one will care one way or the other. There are quite a few outstanding TV programs here which, for me, capture Japan's tradition of free-thinking debate. One is If Ota Hikari Were Prime Minister, in which comedian (and very smart guy, in the center of the top left picture) Ota Hikari throws out various topics to be debated by different commentators, including actual sitting politicians from Japan's major political parties. The show does cool things like, bring a studio full of children in and have them fire questions at the politicians, who struggle to match their bizarre politician's logic against the smart insight of the kids. There's also an interesting program called Asa Made Nama TV (Live TV Til Dawn, the lower left image, above) in which political commentator Noritsugu Watanabe is locked in a room with leading politicians where they debate various issues all night long while the cameras roll. While there are always a few touchy subjects -- anything related to the Emperor or the politically connected Sokka Gakkai Buddhist religion (SGI) will be handled delicately -- virtually anything else is fair game for lively debate, from Japan's future and place in the world to whether North Korea's nuclear program means Japan should seek nuclear weapons herself.

Sadly, this tradition of allowing free thought doesn't seem to be the case with Japan's neighbors, at least where I sit on this side of the Sea of Japan East Sea. I happened to see an article that South Korea was requiring all children receive mandatory education on Dokdo, the islands also claimed by Japan. It's possible of course that this "education" will be open and free, presenting both sides of the debate fairly, but it's far more likely it will be a brainwashing session so that 100% of Korean children believe the "proper" things about Dokdo/Takeshima. Dissent on the issue is apparently frowned upon -- the author of an informative blog on the history of the dispute lost his university teaching job for daring to post evidence that was pro-Japan, something that really shouldn't happen in a country as modern and well-educated as South Korea.

Please note, by the way, that I'm not choosing sides on the Dokdo/Takeshima issue. I believe that neither side has an iron-clad claim to the islands, which each clearly wants only to keep the other side from getting them. There's a long history of both governments inadvertently referring to the islands as the territory of the other side in official documents, and the rest comes down to which county recorded the islands as their territory on old maps, which isn't conclusive one way or the other. While it was definitely the policy of the Allies and Douglas MacArthur that Dokdo/Takeshima was valid Japanese territory, clearly Japan should take the realistic view and negotiate and end to the conflict. My main point is that, Koreans should be able to debate issues like this dispute calmly and rationally, instead of posting silly billboards in Texas and shouting in all-caps on Twitter and Facebook.

Japan loves to debate issues on TV news programs; South Korea goes overboard with its passion sometimes.

Cross-Cultural Food

Whenever two cultures come into contact, there's a sharing of language on both sides. This is why we all know the word "head honcho," which was imported from the Japanese 班長 hancho (meaning neighborhood or squad leader) during the Allied Occupation. It's also fun to observe what happens to food when two cultures bump into each other: the creation of hybrid dishes that are totally new, and usually delicious. There are many examples of this intercultural food blending, including Tex-Mex cuisine, California Roll sushi and Teriyaki McBurgers from McDonald's. When you go to a 洋食店 yohshoku-ten or "Western restaurant" in Japan, you might encounter some blended foods you've never seen before, like korokke (Japan's take on French croquettes, delightful with Bull-dog sauce), Napolitan spaghetti (a pasta dish that can be made with simple ingredients including ketchup and Tabasco sauce), katsu (fried pork cutlet), nikujaga (a meat-and-potato stew, famous for sounding like the lead singer of a certain rock band) and various Japanese doria and gratin dishes. Few places represent the coming together of multiple cultures as much as Okinawa, and one food that can be seen as a bridge between East and West is Taco Rice, a popular dish of flavored ground beef, cheese, tomatoes and lettuce eaten over white rice. I had some last night, and it was wonderful.

I'm a fan of "hybrid" dishes like Okinawan Taco Rice.

Have You Ordered Saya no Uta Yet?

In the history of Japan's highly developed culture of visual novels, a few games really stand out as being absolutely fresh and unique, and one of these is Song of Saya. It's the story of Fuminori, a medical student who's been in a horrible car accident which forever altered his perceptions of the world into one of abject horror. But there is one bright spot in the hell that he constantly perceives, that of Saya, the only girl who appears beautiful to him. What dark secret to Saya hiding, and who will deliver the world to safety? Written by Urobuchi Gen, creator of Madoka Magika and Fate/Zero! The game is gone "Golden Master" and will be shipping in late April or early May. Order your copy now!

"Yellow Sand" in Japan

Although I generally like my adopted country of Japan, there are a few aspects of life here that aren't so much fun. Hay-fever season and being so close to nuclear-happy North Korea are two of these, and a third would be 黄砂 kousa, the "yellow sand" that blows over from China. Known as Asian dust, yellow sand or yellow wind (I swear that's what it's really called), it's a weather phenomenon whereby fine dust is blown from the deserts of Mongolia eastward towards Japan where they irritate people's eyes and make our cars filthy. While the dust is usually not a major concern, this year has been extremely bad, causing the sun to disappear in the dust clouds and making actual sand dunes appear around J-List. Among other problems, jumbo jets cannot fly when contaminated with the dust and must be meticulously cleaned before they can fly, which costs several thousand dollars.

"Yellow sand" blowing from China is a problem in Japan.

Minorities In Japan

I often write about how Japan is a homogeneous place in which 98.5% of the people consider themselves to be of the same genetic "Yamato Japanese" stock, despite the obvious variations in skin color, facial shape and body type you notice if you actually pay attention to people. While Japanese like to propagate this "myth of Japanese uniformity" for socially convenient reasons (it eliminates all discrimination, in theory), the reality is that even "pure" Japanese contain varying amounts of Mongolian, Korean, Chinese, Ainu and other blood in their veins. (I contributed some American blood, too, through my kids.) No matter how far the happy social umbrella of a unified Japanese gene pool is stretched, though, there are certain groups within Japan that it just can't cover. These include zainichi ("residing in Japan") Koreans and Chinese, who were born and raised here and often speak only Japanese yet don't take Japanese citizenship for cultural reasons; Okinawans, who have a unique culture and language separate from Japan; the Ainu, the original residents of northern Japan; nikkei foreigners, usually Brazilians or Peruvians of Japanese descent who get special visas to immigrate to Japan; and regular gaijin like me, who have come to Japan from other countries for various reasons. While born-in-Japan Koreans have historically been the largest minority inside Japan, a few years ago zainichi Chinese overtook them to become the biggest group.

Yokohama is the center of Chinese culture inside Japan.

Anime Voice Actors Are the Best

One of the joys of watching anime is, of course, the incredible high quality of the seiyu, the voice actors that bring the characters to life for us. Often an anime series will succeed or fail based on the quality of its voice actors, and smart production studios will put a lot of effort into choosing the voice cast carefully. In the currently running love comedy Sakura-so no Pet na Kanojo, my favorite character is Nanami Aoyama, voiced by up-and-coming seiyu Nakatsu Mariko. Nanami has come to Tokyo from Osaka to follow her dream of becoming a voice actress -- woah, that's kind of meta -- and there she falls in love with the male lead Sorata and comes to live in the Sakura-so boarding house to be near him. Nanami's voice really communicates emotions -- or "feels," to use the modern term -- to viewers, and the way she falls into Osaka-ben when she gets excited is so charming. Voice actors lucky enough to get famous roles become household names in Japan, and almost everyone is familiar with names like Akira Kamiya (voice of Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star and Saeba Ryo from City Hunter) and Norio Wakamoto (who shows up in everything from Code Geass to Mirai Nikki to our own excellent Family Project visual novel). When Lupin III voice Yasuo Yamada died in 1995, it was a national tragedy that everyone felt. Last week Goro Naya, who voiced the undaunted Inspector Zenigata as well as Captain Okita from the original Space Battleship Yamato, passed away, causing an outpouring of sadness and fanart tributes.

Anime voice actors bring the characters to life.

The Song of Saya -- Now Golden Master!

In the history of Japan's highly developed culture of visual novels, a few games really stand out as being absolutely fresh and unique, and one of these is Song of Saya. It's the story of Fuminori, a medical student who's been in a horrible car accident which forever altered his perceptions of the world into one of abject horror. But there is one bright spot in the hell that he constantly perceives, that of Saya, the only girl who appears beautiful to him. What dark secret to Saya hiding, and who will deliver the world to safety? Written by Urobuchi Gen, creator of Madoka Magika and Fate/Zero! The game is gone "Golden Master" and will be shipping soon -- so order your copy now!

New Fears of a Super Earthquake

Even while it continues to help the Tohoku region recover from the terrible earthquake and tsunami of two years ago, the Japanese government is trying to prepare for future disasters. One great fear that's being planned for is a possible "Nankai Megathrust Quake," a particularly nasty kind of earthquake caused by contact between large tectonic plates located to the south of Japan. These have caused great damage over the past 1300 years, including a particularly bad quake and 28-meter tsunami in 1854 that killed 3000 people. For all the damage and loss of life caused by the March 11, 2011 quake, the Tohoku area of Japan is among the most lightly populated parts of Japan. Now the government is projecting damage and loss of life of up to ten times the 2011 quake's numbers if a similarly strong quake were to happen in Southern Japan -- among other things, as we learned in Kobe in 1995, building codes are less strict in the region, compared with the more quake-prone Tokyo. Which is one more reason we're happy to be in Gunma, as far from the sea as you can get in Japan.

Images from the big quake and tsunami in 1946.

Heir to the Soba Restaurant

The other day I went with my wife to eat at our favorite soba noodle restaurant. After a strapping young man who worked at the restaurant delivered our lunch, my wife said, "I'm really happy for the owner of this place, since he has a successor to take over this shop when he dies. That was him just now." She was talking about 後継ぎ ato-tsugi, meaning an heir or successor who takes over a family business, and it's quite an important concept here in Japan, at least in our more rural part of the country. One problem is that Japanese have been having fewer and fewer kids, often just one, and this places a strain on those children who may want to do something different with their lives than take over, say, their parents' rural liquor store (in the case of my wife). Looking at the young man who was following in his father's footsteps and making soba noodles the proper traditional way, it was hard to avoid feeling happy for the owner.

Having an heir to take over the family business is important.

The Japanese Love Trains

One of my favorite aspects of Japan is definitely the train culture here, and it's always fun to take a trip somewhere by rail, whether it's to Tokyo for shopping or business or picking some random, lonely station in the mountains of Gunma and traveling there just because. There's a lot of pressure in Japanese society, and all too often people choose to check out of life early by jumping in front of a train as it pulls into the station -- these "human injury accidents" (as they're euphemistically called) can get so common in Tokyo that you'll sometimes allow extra time before appointments, just in case the train you need to ride is delayed because of a suicide. This situation will hopefully be improved soon, thanks to the installation of tall safety gates at stations in Tokyo which only open when the train is stopped and ready to take passengers. The pride and joy of Japan's rail system are the shinkansen or "bullet trains" which zip along at up to 300 km/hr. The newest of these is the brand new Super Komachi "Japan Red" train in Akita in Northern Japan. It's a beautiful train, and is being heavily promoted in part to attract train aficionados to the area to spend much-needed tourist dollars.

Train culture is important in Japan. This the official Shinkansen of Char from Gundam.

Sakura, Sakura Everywhere

Spring is in the air, a great time to remind you of all the fun sakura-themed products J-List stocks. We've got bento boxes decorated with sakura petals, real cherry trees that "bloom" on your desk over the course of a few hours, various sakura-themed Japanese snacks including the mystery of Hatsune Miku bread, plus popular Sweet Sakura Tea. Click to browse the top sakura-themed items from Japan!

My Career as a Japanese Civil Servant

I like to think I've made the most of my time in Japan, having a wide range of experiences in different fields of work. I've worked in education, teaching eikaiwa (English conversation) and more advanced subjects like writing and TOEFL test preparation at English schools, and I've experienced the harried-but-fun life of an entrepreneur thanks to J-List. But in between those two carriers, I had a third, that of a Japanese public employee, working as "coordinator of international relations" at my local city office. My job was essentially to be the bilingual gaijin in the city office who could translate emails and letters, meet with foreigners who visited our city in an official capacity and spend four hours on Fridays at a help desk for foreign residents who needed help with some problem or another. In Japan, all national and prefectural employees who administer the official business of the government, as well as all policemen and firemen, are 公務員 koumu-in, civil servants who can arguably be considered a unique caste in Japanese society. In exchange for a guarantee of lifetime employment, they agree be transformed into a certain kind of bland individual who will faithfully manage the business of government without ever interjecting their own personality or ideas into the process. It was fun to have the experience but I think I'm more suited to running J-List somehow.

My brief career as a Japanese public employee was very educational.

Japan Sakura Season 2013

Over the weekend I went to Tokyo to meet with some friends for beers and Osaka-style kushi-katsu (pork cutlet and other foods fried then dipped in a delightful sauce before eating). As usual, it was fun to go to Tokyo and feel the energy all around me. While I was there I read a news post saying that the cherry blossoms had officially opened in Tokyo, so I headed for Ueno Park to see them for myself. The start of sakura season is an important time in Japan, marking not just the symbolic end of winter but the beginning of many new things, since the school year and entrance ceremonies at Japanese companies begin at this time of year. For the next ten days people will gather under the cherry trees and contemplate their fleeting beauty while imbibing beer and sake, then the cherry blossoms will be gone. This year's sakura season start tied with 2002 as the earliest-ever since the government started keeping detailed records on cherry blossom blooming patterns in the 1950s.

The Season of the Sakura has come to Japan.

Thinking About Anime Logic

I've got a few hobbies, including reciting lines from all Tom Hanks movies in a Forrest Gump voice and trolling the Budweiser Lime Facebook page by telling them what "BL" means to most of us. I'm also a fan of analyzing anime logic, the unique set of physical rules that apply in anime but nowhere else. Like the way eyebrows happily exist on top of hair, or the strange properties of light that cause it to bend around the glasses of a meganekko character so we can see their large, expressive eyes even if the frames are in the way. Everyone can be clumsy at times, but only in anime do characters fall down in such as way as to accidentally kiss another character, or come in contact with their pantsu. Anime hair colors may seem random at first, but they follow several establishes patterns, with red hair being matched with fiery-spirited characters, blue for "pure" characters who are usually naive, gray/silver for characters who hide a mysterious secret or power, etc. Still, it's odd that some characters are perceived as being "foreign" (and possibly scary) based on hair color, like Kodaka from I Have Few Friends, yet no one wonders about a "Japanese" girl with luxurious blonde hair (Sena from the same show). Perhaps the strangest aspect of anime is how boring, mild-mannered males always end up with a half-dozen cute girls romantically in orbit around them -- maybe someone who's better at math than me can write an equation describing the attractive force produced by the main character in a harem anime so the rest of us can try to get in on it.

It's fun to deconstruct the physical laws of anime.

Great Time to get a PS Vita

Now that the Sony PS Vita has gotten its price drop in the U.S., we can really recommend that everyone who's interested in playing fun import anime games from Japan consider getting one. As with the PSP before it, the Vita is really shaping up to be the best ota-gaming platform we could have asked for, and all games are region free! Whether you want to play the best version of Fate ever made, dance to the pantsu of Hatsune Miku or get great Japan-only DLC via our prepaid PSN Japan prepaid cards, there are many great reasons to get a Vita. Incidentally, we're often asked about import games for other platforms. Sadly, both Xbox and Nintendo have chosen to region lock their current systems, so the only options available to fans of import anime games are the Sony PSP/PS3/PSVita and Windows platforms.

Takasaki, Home of Daruma

Yesterday I took a drive to Takasaki, part of the Takasaki-Maebashi-Isesaki tri-city area in our home prefecture of Gunma. I was there to pick up a computer that had been repaired, but since Takasaki happens to be the location of the only Domino's Pizza in our prefecture, I decided to get some Hatsune Miku pizza and bring it back for the J-List crew to share. While I drove through Takasaki's unpleasantly narrow roads, I reflected on how history can affect the present day in interesting ways. Both Gunma's prefectural capital of Maebashi and J-List's home city of Isesaki are fairly pleasant places to drive in, with wide, well planned roads, but driving through Takasaki is usually an experiment in frustration. One reason for this is both Isesaki and Maebashi were bombed during World War II, which gave city planners a chance to rebuild with more forethought, but Takasaki was not. Also, Takasaki was an important castle town back in the Edo Period, so its roads are narrower and harder to navigate than if it had been a more modern city.

Takasaki is famous for its Daruma dolls. Which is pretty cool.

Japan Loves Disney

Over the years certain companies have found success here in Japan, including Nestle (they celebrate a century of selling coffee and interesting flavors of Kit Kat this year) and Aflac (they were a tiny regional insurance company until one of their founders visited Japan in 1970 and, impressed by the way people wore health masks in public, decided to expand into Japan). Another company to really win big in Japan has been Disney, which has become well established in the hearts of everyone here. Japan has the most profitable Disney theme park in the world (Tokyo Disneyland), which opened in 1983 and has broken all profit records thanks to the Japanese willingness to wait in 3-hour lines to go on rides and spend an average of $300 per guest on gifts. There are many "Disney otakus" in Japan, fans who hunt for rare Disney-themed products, and I've seen TV shows in which fans are quizzed on their knowledge of Disney lore. You can even get a Disney-themed smartphone with the new line of Disney-branded phones from Softbank which are being heavily advertised using the song from Cinderella ("A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes").

Disney is one of the most successful companies in Japan.

I'm "Kiwi Fruit Generation," How About You?

One thing I like about the Japanese is their interesting way of looking at things, which is often very creative. There's a fun new show called Generation Tengoku (Generation Heaven) which divides people into three groups, the Banana, Kiwi Fruit and Mango Eras. This is based on what fruits were rare and exotic in Japan at the time, with Banana Era being people currently aged 60 and above, Kiwi Fruit Era being in their 40s and Mango Era being the current generation of people in their 20s. Each episode presents nostalgic facts about the three groups which are interesting to compare and contrast. For example, people in the Banana Era grew up seeing images of spacious American homes on TV in the 1960s, spent the current equivalent of $40,000 to visit Hawaii for a week and were greatly influenced by English news and music broadcasts on the Far East Network, the radio station of the U.S. military in Yokosuka. People in the Kiwi Fruit group played "Invader Game" (what Space Invaders is called here), imitated the fashions and hair styles of Bobby Brown and MC Hammer at discos, and took part in the great "wine boom" of the early 90s, when everyone pretended to know about wine. The Mango Era has been defined by the rise of smartphones, flamboyant singers like Lady Gaga and of course the runaway popularity of hanryu, the "Korean wave" of dramas and KPOP singers, which caused a generation of women to start using random Korean slang despite puzzled looks from everyone around them. The best thing about the show is how accurately they recreate each era -- the ridiculously colored suits and overly-permed hair from the 1990s, the old timey tatami rooms of the Showa Period, and so on.

A new way of thinking about generations.

Interesting "Trap" Products from Japan

One popular theme in anime these days is "trap" characters who appear to be female but who might just have a surprise for you. Called 男の娘 otokonoko in Japanese, there are many characters who are interesting because of this odd ambiguous nature. J-List has tons of great "trap" products, from the new Otoboku ~ Maidens Are Falling For Me! English eroge to popular manga and magazines to cosplay products. Click to see the most popular "trap" products from Japan!

Japan, International Marriage and "Herbivore Men"

One thing about Japanese women which amuses my wife no end is their pre-conceived notions about what it's like when a Japanese woman marries a Westerner. They imagine that we're gentlemen in every way, holding doors and chairs, cleaning the house and cooking exotic meals for them once a week. Japanese men often have bad reputations for never showing feelings of love to their wives, some of which may be on purpose -- J-List's manga buyer Yasu says, "I only tell my wife I love her once every few years or so, so it makes a real impact when I do." In contrast, foreigners are thought to be much more passionate and romantic, and any child made from such a union must surely come out with beautiful golden hair just like those Licca-chan dolls.

The other day I met two female friends of my wife who are in their 20s, and they definitely seemed to fit this pattern, being openly envious of my wife for having found such a rare American to marry while she denied I had any good qualities at all. (This is a Japan thing: compliments made about one's family members must be countered with strong denials for the sake of politeness.) Both girls were extremely attractive yet lamented their inability to find boyfriends, and I cautiously asked how this could be possible. "Men of our generation are terrible," one of them told me, "more interested in reading men's fashion magazines and working part-time jobs than dating. They have no drive, no hunger." She was talking about the modern social phenomenon of 草食男子 soushoku-danshi or "herbivore men," the tendency for young Japanese males to have less ambition in life and to prefer a quiet evening in front of the computer to pursuing girls for dating and more. I'd known about the phenomenon of course, but hadn't imagined it had advanced so far. In response, many women are becoming 肉食女子 nikushoku-joshi or "carnivore women," more aggressive about getting what they want and more than happy to ask a man she likes out.

Japanese often have stereotypes about international marriage.

Japan Loves Green Tea

When Japanese visit a supermarket in the U.S., they're often amazed at the huge variety of breakfast cereals available there. One of my former ESL students wrote, "In SAFEWAY, many kinds of corn flakes about one hundred have overpowered me. I felt a difference of the staple foods." If you go into a Japanese convenience store for some bottled iced tea, you might experience a similar surprise at the more than 80 varieties of Japanese, Chinese and Western teas competing for your 150 yen, with everything from green tea to jasmine to oolong and proper British "Afternoon Tea" available. As with breakfast cereals, manufacturers come up with gimmicks to entice customers to buy, for example attaching Madoka Magika or K-On! phone straps to the bottle as a cross-promotion. The other day I found a cool new idea by green tea manufacturer Itoen: a "Matcha Powder-in Cap" bottle with Kyoto-grown green tea in a special compartment at the top of the bottle which was released into the water when you opened it for the first time. Of course, one of the biggest differences between Japan and the U.S. is that here people nearly always reach for unsweetened tea like green tea or mugi (barley) tea instead of sugary soft drinks. If you want to get into drinking healthy Japanese tea this summer, we've got great varieties of hot or cold brew tea bags in stock now.

Japan takes its tea seriously.

Get Hatsune Miku On Your Phone

Hatsune Miku is now the official spokes-idol of Domino's Pizza, and there's a cool app for iPhone that lets you interact with Miku in a lot of fun ways, including taking "augmented reality" pictures with a CG miku in many cute poses and performing a concert on your pizza box (you might need to grab an image of one from the Internet for this to work). To purchase, get one of our iTunes Japan prepaid cards and create an iTunes Japan account if you don't have one already (the app itself is free, of course), and if you need help using the app, see here for instructions. We love Hatsune Miku and have dozens of products featuring her in stock -- click here to see the most popular products as ranked by our customers!

Shiniji Kagawa's Great Achievement

One thing I write about often is how the Japanese are very sensitive to how they're viewed internationally, and how making a good impression in the eyes of other nations is very important to them. Whenever a Japanese athlete becomes famous in the world stage their popularity at home instantly soars, with extra bonus points awarded if they're able to speak an exotic European language like Italian. Last week Japanese soccer player Shinji Kagawa, playing for Manchester United, scored a hat-trick (scoring three goals in one game), a first for any Asian player in that league. Japanese TV cameras showed a pub overflowing with happy British fans shouting Kagawa's name, which will surely get him a lot of attention here in Japan, and maybe some sponsorship contracts.

Celebration for Kagawa's hat-trick. Japanese fans are definitely pleased.

Domino's Japan x Hatsune Miku

One big trend over the past few years has been "otaku marketing," tying product brands to anime series that fans will get excited about. Whether it's placing Lawson's or Family Mart convenience stores in the Evangelion and Macross Frontier movies, showing Tiger and Bunny characters drinking Pepsi Nex or the constant on-screen eating of Pizza Hut pizza in Code Geass, companies tying their products to anime is here for good. (We even posted Skal, the meme-drink from the new Nitroplus anime Robotics;Notes, which many customers had asked for.) Now Domino's Pizza hopes to follow in Pizza Hut's footsteps by licensing the famous virtual singing idol Hatsune Miku for their line of home-delivered pizza. In addition to cool Vocaloid-themed pizza boxes that are delivered on Miku-decorated motorcycles, there's an iPhone app that lets you enjoy your pizza while an "augmented reality" version of Miku sings and interacts with you.

(Currently the Domino's Pizza iPhone app is experiencing some issues, perhaps due to its popularity with users in Japan. We'll eventually be releasing instructions on users of our iTunes Japan prepaid cards can use the Hatsune Miku pizza app from outside Japan.)

Domino's hopes to score a marketing win with Hatsune Miku.

A Time for Remembrance

Today marks the second anniversary of the terrible magnitude 9 earthquake that struck northern Japan and triggered deadly tsunamis, transforming the coastal regions into a sea of sadness as the waters pushed up to 10 km inland. Though earthquakes are fairly common in Japan, we knew immediately that this one was different from the way the ground jerked beneath us, "surging" at an odd angle, and Twitter immediately lit up as people shared news and emergency information. Though Wikipedia tells me the initial quake lasted six minutes, we had little awareness of any ending, as aftershocks were felt every minute or two for hours afterwards. In the end, 15,881 people would be confirmed dead and another 2668 as "missing" (even worse than being dead, from the viewpoint of many survivors). It was a time of unbelievable sadness, yes, but also a time when the world came forward to help Japan, from the U.S. military's much-appreciated "Operation Tomodachi" relief efforts to the great help everyone through the charitable organizations. I was personally in awe of the Japanese around me, how they calmly followed official instructions with no looting or hoarding; J-List didn't even miss a day of shipping, as the post office came to pick up outgoing packages the following Monday as if nothing had happened. Two years on, most of the debris has been removed and things are recovering slowly, though many rural areas are still largely deserted. In the end, the disaster was a reminder that we should all be a little nicer to each other every day, since you never know what life holds in store.

The healing of Tohoku continues slowly.

Anime Snacks & Drinks from Japan

J-List loves to find fun anime-related snacks and drinks for you, and we carry everything from the official Sword Art Online pizza snacks to One Piece Gummy candy to Star Wars Darth Vader Pepsi. By customer request, we're stocking Skal, the popular energy drink seen in the currently running anime series Robotics;Notes. Order some today!

Oddly Pronounced English Words in Japanese

As a native English speaker, it's nice that there are so many English loan words in use in Japanese, though in practice a lot of these words aren't always rendered with 100% phonetic accuracy due to limitations of the katakana sound system. The Japanese often use English words for happy, positive concepts, and one word they like is "healthy"...however since it's pronounced ヘルシー herushii, it took quite a while for my brain to get used to it. The other day I was watching a news report that mentioned a government "think tank," but for phonetic reasons this word came out as "sink tank," made my brain want to rebel. The most elementary English word of them all, the definite article "the," is yet another example of pronunciation that must be re-learned, since it comes out as ザ za when the Japanese use it. Some other English words that come out oddly when rendered in Japanese include tune, steam, etiquette and artist, which are pronounced chune, su-cheemu, echi-ketto and ah-chist. There's also the English phrase "thank you," which for reasons of pronunciation always comes out as san kyu in Japanese. Since this sounds like the numbers 3 and 9, it's common for March 9th to be designated a day of "thanks" by some companies, including the creators of Hatsune Miku.

And don't even get me started on "Tirol" chocolates, pronounced chi-ROH-ru.

Gaijin are "KY" (Cannot Read the Air)

One theme I write about often is the Japanese idea of 常識 joshiki, translatable as the knowledge that every (Japanese) person possesses by default, a sort of "universal common sense." Joshiki is all around you in Japan, the list of knowledge and behaviors and attitudes that nearly everyone seems to share...except us poor gaijin, who are doomed to always be on a slightly different wavelength from everyone around us. I'm from San Diego where it's usually warm, so I'm more than happy to wear short sleeves on a warm day in March, though this often surprises Japanese, who are trained by their school system to only wear summer clothes from June 1 through October 1. Another bit of "common sense" in Japan is that the only time outdoor swimming is permitted is July and August, and Japanese people I knew were shocked when I went to the beach on September 1st. The combination of not being aware of these subtle cultural facts and our normal tendency to mis-understand some Japanese words means that foreigners are often viewed as "KY," slang for 空気読めない kuuki yomenai, which means "cannot read the air" (i.e. are usually unaware of subtle social situations). In the end I don't worry about trying to follow the Japanese way too closely, preferring to be マイペース ("my pace"), a phrase used to describe someone who lives life at his own pace and in his own way.

Foreigners are often on a different wavelength from Japanese.

Paper Doors and Japan

When I came to Japan my head was filled with silly stereotypes of delicate wooden houses with paper walls. The reality, of course, was...pretty accurate, at least in the case of my house, a 40+ year old wooden structure with a liquor shop built into the first floor and a second floor that was added when I moved in. Nearly all houses in Japan today combine both Western and Japanese features, for example having a 洋間 yoh-ma or "Western-style room" with a sofa and chairs right next to a 和室 washitsu or "Japanese room," with tatami mats, recessed alcoves for displaying art and other traditional features. One of the hallmarks of Japanese architecture are shoji doors, lightweight wooden frames with paper covering them which let light in yet retain heat when closed. As with many other aspects of Japanese life, shoji paper doors have a very long history, dating at least from the Heian Period (794-1185). While foreigners may love the look of these traditional Japanese rooms, they're not universally popular among Japanese people. Being made of paper, they don't provide much in the way of meaningful privacy, and children and cats love to poke holes in them. I've heard shoji paper doors are a contributing factor in Japan's "sexless" marriage problem, since who would want to do the horizontal tango with the kids or (ulp) in-laws just a paper door away?

Paper doors are a symbol of Japan.

Light Novels on iTunes!

For years, J-List customers have been buying our iTunes Japan prepaid cards which make it easy to create a Japan-based iTunes account so you can download anime, JPOP and KPOP songs, Japan-only iOS apps (many of which are released free, though you need an iTunes Japan account to access them), and so on. Now there's another great reason to get into iTunes Japan content: books! Apple's iBooks app for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad is now compatible with Japanese content, and there's a great selection of awesome manga (digitally created for highest quality) as well as light novels for you to browse. All content is compatible with any iOS device you own. 

The Japanese Love Gift Giving

There are certain things that are very important to the Japanese, including obsessing over cleanliness, making sure things as kawaii as they can be and...gift-giving. The Japanese are master gift givers, and have many customs related to giving and receiving, which provides a valuable "social lubrication" that makes all manner of personal and business relationships work more smoothly here. The most common form of gift is the omiyage (oh-mee-yah-geh), or souvenir from a specific place, and whenever J-List goes to discuss licensing eroge and visual novels with new game companies, we visit their office with a box of local treats from our home prefecture of Gunma for the staff to share. Incidentally, if you ever come to Japan, it's a good idea to bring some items to give out as gifts to people you might encounter here, as it will really make things go more smoothly. Just about anything in a box that's representative of where you're from is fine -- even cigarettes are okay, if you know that the person you'll be encountering smokes. (Supposedly Newport Menthols are a good brand.) Another good idea is Starbucks mugs from your city, since everyone loves coffee in Japan. Incidentally, J-List stocks some great Japanese snacks in gift boxes which are fun to give to others.

An Omiyage shop in Okinawa.

Managing "China Risk"

One keyword that's big in Japan these days is チャイナリスク ("China Risk"), which describes the many potential problems that countries and companies face when dealing with China in the 21st century. Seen from Japan, the list is very long indeed, including environmental problems, rapidly rising labor costs, manufacturing quality issues (there've been several food-related scares here), legal issues like international companies losing the rights to their own names because of local trademark squatters, and the huge problem with counterfeits (Asia is awash with fake Yamaha and Honda motorcycles, for example). The biggest problem Japan has faced so far was last year, when the government purchased the disputed Senkaku Islands (known as the Daiyou Islands in China) from their private Japanese owners, ostensibly to keep nationalists from both sides from landing on the islands and inflaming the situation. The plan backfired and Chinese rioted, in orderly government-sponsored demonstrations (in Beijing) and open violence elsewhere. (They also destroyed a "Japanese" Samsung factory, since Korean companies pretend to be Japanese to improve the worldwide image of their products.) An interesting drama called Made In Japan recently captured the frustration Japanese feel over China, telling the story of a struggling Japanese electronics manufacturer who halts a dedicated engineer's lithium-ion battery manufacturing project, only to see him move to China and complete the project with a Chinese manufacturer.

Balancing "China Risk" is a challenge.

Do You Have a "Childhood Friend"?

When manga and anime creators go to design a new character, they have many core persona types to start from. They might choose to create a basic pure imouto younger-sister character but tweak her personality with yandere tendencies while making her speak the Osaka-ben regional dialect randomly, or present a new take on the classic fiery-haired genki magical girl by making her a "mayoler" (a person who loves mayonnaise) just for laughs. One type of character that's quite common in anime is the osana-najimi or "childhood friend," who grew up alongside a main character and knows everything about them. I spent my own childhood moving from place to place every couple of years, so the idea of having a lifelong friend is unknown to me, though my wife grew up in the neighborhood we live in now and has several. But an osana-najimi isn't exactly a friend, it's both more and less. "It's like they're always there, and you never think about them. Since you were together from the beginning, you can't remember a time when that person wasn't around." In the (surprisingly good) new anime Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru (My Girlfriend and Childhood Friend Fight Too Much, shortened to OreShura by fans), the main character Eita is fawned over by his childhood friend Chiwa as well as the beautiful Masuzu, who becomes his girlfriend as "camouflage" to get the other boys to stop trying to date her. In one scene, Masuzu says, "You sure know everything that Chiwa is thinking, don't you?" and he replies, "Yes, well, I'm her childhood friend after all."

"Childhood friend" characters are a staple in anime.

Fun Japanese Fashion + Cosplay Items On Sale

This month J-List is having a big sale on all Japanese apparel and cosplay products, including everything from amazing Japanese socks and "socks glue" to pantsu, anime T-shirts and those wacky Horse Head masks. You've never had a better excuse to browse our Japanese Apparel and Cosplay product page than now!

Raising "Haafu" Kids Bilingually

Over the past 17 years I've helped raise two great kids who are haafu, half Japanese and half American -- well, a quarter American and a quarter British, but whatever. Since my Japanese wife and I both knew how hard it is to learn a language, we wanted to make sure our kids were raised bilingual, so we came up with some strategies to help make this possible. If the kids ever wanted something from me, they had to ask me in English, and I only purchased DVDs from the U.S. so they were forced to watch everything in English only -- I even imported dubbed anime from the U.S. and watched it in English with them, pretending there was no Japanese track on the disc. I worked hard to make sure they were exposed to American cultural icons, ike Thanksgiving and Halloween and Scooby Doo, so they had a proper link to the U.S. In the end, of course, there's no "free" way to learn a language, and both my kids had to buckle down and learn English vocabulary and grammar, which they've done very well at.

Like some of our favorite anime characters, my kids are haafu.

Understanding Japan's Military Through Anime

You probably don't think of Japan as a military power, but the country does possess a large military force with an annual budget of $46 billion dollars. The Japanese military is called the 自衛隊 jiei-tai ("Self-Defense Forces" or SDF) and was created in 1954 as a strictly defensive force after the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan. Being an all-volunteer defensive military, the SDF lacks certain features such as aircraft carriers, air-to-surface missiles, bombers and marines, and all Japanese fighter jets are modified with short-range fuel tanks to ally any fears Japan's neighbors might have of ever being attacked. One of the biggest problems with Japan's military forces is that they're basically extra-legal -- Article 9 of Japan's constitution strictly states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential will never be maintained" despite the daily reality of Japan's armed forces. In the 21 years that I've lived here, there have been numerous attempts at amending the constitution to give the SDF some official legal status, but Japan's strange form of democracy, in which every little political party has the right to shout out their opinion and consensus is very hard to reach, has made this impossible so far. One popular type of obsession in Japan is "military otaku," and there are Japanese who love everything about Japan's armed forces. There's a whole sub-grouping of anime series specifically designed to appeal to these military fans, from Girls und Panzer to Muv-Luv Alternate: Total Eclipse.

Muv-Luv is an anime that appeals to Self Defense Forces otakus.

Happy Shrine Maiden Day!

When foreigners come to Japan they're immediately enthralled with the beautiful temples and shrines they encounter here. Japan has two main cultural/religious traditions which coexist side-by-side and which fill different roles for people as they go through their lives. The first is Shinto, which finds kami (spirits or gods) in things like trees or mountains and which is tied to happy life events like weddings, celebrating newborn babies or the arrival of a new year. The other tradition is Buddhism, which was imported through China and Korea and which today is mostly related to funerals and honoring family members who have gone on. While you probably can't remember the last time you saw an anime that was steeped in solemn Buddhist themes (Buddhist statue gags in Nichijou notwithstanding), you can probably think of several that feature Shinto shrines and characters wearing the trademark garb of miko Shrine Maidens. This is because Shinto seems inherently more "happy" and is more likely to find its way into popular culture and thus is more visible to us, while Buddhism is far more difficult for us to access. Incidentally, May 5th happens to be Miko-no-Hi or "Shrine Maiden Day," because "3-5" sounds like mi-ku to the Japanese. If you happen to see a Shrine Maiden, give her a hug.

March 5 is Shrine Maiden day.

J-List's Fashion and Cosplay Sale is Going On Now

Announcing the J-List Spring Fashion + Cosplay sale! Since we have so many fun Japanese fashion products + accessories plus cosplay products and anime t-shirts, we decided to have a sale on these items for you this month. Through the end of March, get 2x J-List points on all these excellent products! Click to see the most popular Japanese apparel and cosplay products, as ranked by our customers!

Developing 信頼 (Trust) in Japan

One concept that's very important in Japan is 信頼 shinrai (SHEEN-rye), meaning "trust." There are many situations when you see trust in action in Japan, for example the way Japanese bars will display dozens of bottles with customers' names written on the side. This is called "bottle keep," and the bottles have been purchased by customers who drink from them whenever they come in, trusting the establishment not to steal sips from their Yamazaki 18 Year. If it starts to rain while you're at the post office, they've got a rack of umbrellas you're free to borrow, and if you should ever lose your wallet while in Japan, just go to the nearest police station and the police will loan you train fare to get home. Once I was building a wooden deck on my house and needed a way to get the lumber from the home center to my house; happily, the store had a truck that they loan out for free, even to foreigners like me. Japanese can sometimes trust too much. Once I went to make a purchase in an electronics store but didn't have enough cash with me; the clerk actually offered to loan me the money I needed, even though she didn't know me at all. I don't know about you, but I find that being in a society where trustworthiness is valued is great, and I'm always careful to make sure I don't betray trust that anyone puts in me.

Trust is an important aspect to life in Japan. And Hibiki.

Confusing Words in Japanese: Kowai and Kawaii

When dealing with other languages there's plenty of potential for words that are similar in sound to become confused in the brain despite being totally unrelated, for example the word 盆栽 bonsai (a miniature tree) is often confused with banzai (a Japanese word roughly meaning "may the Emperor live for 10,000 years," essentially a translation of the British "God save the King"). Other words that can be confused easily are 奇麗 kirei (meaning clean or pretty, depending on the context) and 嫌い kirai (hateful); 可愛い kawaii (cute) and 怖い kowai (scary); or いっぱい ippai (to be full) and おっぱい oppai (er, boobs). Sometimes words can sound "different" when they're really the same, like Nippon and Nihon, two valid ways to say the name of Japan in Japanese (the first one sounds a little more formal/patriotic and is what's always used on NHK news broadcasts), or 腹切 harakiri and 切腹 seppuku, two words for Japanese ritual disembowelment but with the kanji in different order (the first uses the Japanese reading for the characters, the second the Chinese one). Word confusion can happen going the other direction, too, like the many Lord of the Rings fans here who believe the title is Road of the Ring (e.g. the road the ring takes to get to Mordor), or the way 99.9% of Japanese believe Pizza Hut is really Pizza Hat (the red roof even like a hat).

Is it kawaii or kowai? Or sometimes both.

Technology as Seen in Anime

One cool aspect of animation is how it can express any idea without limitation, since anything that can be drawn on paper of can be animated. This extends to technology, and it's quite common for anime to show us fanciful glimpses of possible futures, like the Fyu-Neru robot from Guilty Crown, with both legs and wheels so it can roll anywhere yet climb stairs or furniture, a great design we might actually have in our homes someday. Often the technology shown in anime becomes another "character" in the story, like the Cyberpunk tech and Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell or the important role of cell phones in Steins;Gate or School Days. I've recently been watching the new Nitroplus series Robotics;Notes, about a school robotics club that sets out to build an actual giant robot. The series is highly influenced by iPad-like tablet computing, and shows us a future in which everyone carries these tablets for gaming, communication and interaction with "augmented reality" virtual idols.

Robotics;Notes shows us the glorious future of tablet computing and robots.

J-List is Having a Fashion + Cosplay Sale

Announcing the J-List Spring Fashion + Cosplay sale! Since we have so many fun Japanese fashion products + accessories plus cosplay products and anime t-shirts, we decided to have a sale on these items for you this month. Through the end of March, get 2x J-List points on all these excellent products! Click to see the most popular Japanese apparel and cosplay products, as ranked by our customers!

Japanese Grammar and Taxes

Language reflects the character of the people who use it, and this is definitely true of Japanese. One of the first bits of Japanese grammar students of the language learn is the verb ending ~masho, which corresponds to "let's...," as in 食べましょう tabemasho ("let's eat"), or 行きましょう ikimasho ("let's go") or タバコをやめましょう tabako wo yamemasho ("let's not smoke"). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (e.g. do not smoke, do not ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, essentially placing a social expectation on individuals that they'll alter their behavior for the good of the larger group. Some examples of this might include, "let's put our telephones into vibration mode when riding on the train" (maanaa modo ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). Another situation when this fuzzy "let's all cooperate" type of language is used is tax season, when the Japanese Tax Office sponsors commercials featuring TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms while saying, "Let's all fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly."

Speaking of taxes, they have them here in Japan, of course, and they work pretty much the same in Japan as they probably do with your country. There's a National Tax Office with local offices in every city for collection of taxes, which are distributed to the various regions of Japan so they can function. (This year a new Tohoku Reconstruction Tax kicked in, to help fund the rebuilding of Northern Japan.) While most tax and accounting concepts present in the West exist here, there are a few fundamental differences. There's no concept of joint ownership of homes or bank accounts by married couples in Japan, with the odd result that the house we live in is owned by my father-in-law, but the land is owned by his wife. While the U.S. government creates programs like 401(k) and IRAs to encourage people to save for the future, Japanese actually save too much, so the government tries to erect penalties to discourage this. Finally, some common concepts in the U.S. like property being held in a living trust are totally alien here in Japan, which can cause confusion when you live with one foot in each country like I do.

"Let's file our taxes accurately, everyone!"

Cool Products Wednesday, February 27, 2013

In addition to updating this site with slice-of-life news from Japan three times a week, I have a popular Twitter feed and Facebook page where I post random anime images and links to updated J-List products. It's fun to watch and see what J-List products people are most amazed by, for example there's that Death Star ice ball maker that gets a lot of attention, or the Horse Head mask that's great for making Internet memes. Our customers squee'ed with happiness when we posted the new Japanese Green Tea Kit Kats for 2013, and so many people have tweeted about the awesome Totoro Plush Chair we can't keep them in stock.

Earthquakes and Japan

There are a few unpleasant things about living in Japan, like riding packed trains in Tokyo at rush hour, or accidentally overfilling the kerosene for your heater, spilling smelly fuel all over your family's shoes. Another aspect of living in Japan I could do without is earthquakes. While things have definitely quieted down since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, we do still get one or two quakes large enough to notice each week. The other day the J-List staff was happily doing our work when everyone's cell phones started making a loud chirping sound none of us had heard before, and about two seconds later things started to shake. It wasn't that big a quake -- a 6.2 magnitude centered in Ibaragi Prefecture, about 75 km away -- but the unexpected alarm from our phones (which are part of Japan's new early warning system) made us think that the Big One had arrived.

Being ready for earthquakes is important in Japan.

School Backpack and Study Desk Season

In addition to hay fever season in Japan, it's also time to prepare for the start of the new school year, which begins in April. Education is taken very seriously here, and in the case of new first graders, families will go all-out to make sure the child gets off on the right foot. First, every student must have a desk to do his or her homework at, and there's a huge industry of companies selling stylish and functional study desks for kids with features such as a plastic sheet with images from the latest popular anime series that can be removed later when the child is older. Another important choice is what kind of school backpack to buy. School backpacks are called randoseru, from the Dutch word ranzel, and they're extremely well made hard leather backpacks designed to hold everything the student needs over six years of elementary school. Right now Japanese TV is being bombarded with commercials for these school backpacks and study desks, which can be quite expensive, no doubt because retailers know that well-off doting grandparents are usually the ones picking up the tab.

Poor Miku-chan forgot her school backpack was open before she bowed.

Appreciating Humility in Japan

One aspect of the Japanese I'm a fan of is their humility, the general tendency to be self-effacing and avoid boastfulness when dealing with others. This humility takes many forms, for example most Japanese will vehemently deny a compliment paid to them, or may deflect the compliment back to you with the phrase おかげさまで okage-sama de, which literally means "it's all thanks to you," said even if you just met the person in question and they had nothing to do with helping you attain whatever skill or ability you've just been praised for. Humility is baked into the language, for example when speaking formal business Japanese there are different verbs for "to go" or "to see" depending on whether you're referring to the (glorious) client you're trying to win a contract with or your own (worthless) organization. The Japanese also express humility by bowing in various situations, with the deepest type of bow known as dogeza, when you lower yourself to the floor in front of the person, something my wife's mother did the first time she met my American mother, begging us to "take care of her selfish daughter." Another symbol of Japan's humility, I've always thought, was the way schools and companies (including J-List) do their own cleaning rather than hiring staff to do it. They apparently have a similar policy at the gym I go to, requiring all employees to do the most unpleasant job in the company, cleaning the sweaty mats the customers use to sit on while in the sauna, in rotation.

Humility is an important trait to have in Japan.

Haru Ichiban, the First Wind of Spring

Right now it's extremely windy in Japan, with strong gusts fierce enough to rock our house and make us think we're having an earthquake. It's known as haru ichiban or the First Wind of Spring, and it acts as a sort of herald for the end of winter here in Japan. While I'm all for saying goodbye to cold weather, the strong winds in the spring aren't always welcome because they also bring massive waves of pollen which cause suffering for the 30% of Japan's population with allergies. The reason hay fever is so bad in Japan goes back to the postwar years when the Japanese government, wanting to streamline its forestry industry, decided to standardize on sugi (Japanese cedar) for the vast majority of its trees. When they all start pollinating at the same time it overwhelms the immunities of poor Japanese, who are unable to do anything but put on one of those health masks and suffer until the air clears.

Haru ichiban winds bring spring, but also pollen.

Have you ordered our new "Trap" Game?

We're big fans of Japanese visual novels, aka eroge or H-Games (depending on the content), since the genre offers so much variety. Just after shipping the extremely fun card battle game with the not-too-subtle title of Boob Wars, we've got more good news for our customers: a limited package release version of Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling For Me! is coming in March. This is a very popular "trap" game in which you play a male attending an all-girl's school, which naturally leads to some interesting situations when the girls find out your secret. So it's basically a "trap" game that's all hetero. Preorder it now!

Japanese Snacks Stocked in San Diego

In addition to hundreds of snack and drink items stocked in Japan, J-List stocks some great products in our office in San Diego for your ordering convenience, from authentic Ramune drinks with the glass ball to energy drinks featuring your favorite video game characters plus Tentacle Grape, the fun carbonated grape soda. Click here to view all San Diego-based Japanese snacks, as ranked by our customers.