Foreign Loan Words in Japanese

One interesting aspect of Japan is the many ways its language has changed since the 1868 Meiji Restoration, which abolished 265 years of rule by the Tokugawa Shoguns and "restored" power to the Emperor, allowing Japan to become a Western-style Constitutional Monarchy. During the Meiji Period foreign loan words like 珈琲 ko-hi (coffee) were introduced, archaic enough to have kanji assigned to them; then came the Allied Occupation, when words like ドンマイ don'mai and オーライ oh-rai, Japanese approximations of "don't mind" (nevermind) and "all right," entered the lexicon; and today, hundreds of English words related to computers, politics, fashion and more are imported every year. Because of this, virtually any Japanese over the age of 50 feels stress at encountering English words they aren't familiar with, and there are actually katakana dictionaries to help these people learn what "manifesto" or "innovation" or "nothing venture, nothing win!" mean. Now a disgruntled viewer has sued NHK, Japan's clone of the BBC and presumably the last bastion of "proper" Japanese. The individual, who is 71 years old, got tired of hearing words like "compliance" and "initiative" and "globalization" in katakana English in news broadcasts, and is suing for $14,000 dollars in damages.

Japanese get stressed when encountering too many foreign words.

Peter's Trip 2013 Update

I'm on the final leg of my pre-Anime Expo trip around the U.S., and finally headed towards home. After visiting Mt. Rushmore (or "Rushmore" as the locals call it) and the old west town of Deadwood, I stayed in a place called Hot Springs, South Dakota, no doubt drawn there by my long time in Japan. (The hot springs turned out to be a river made slightly warm by underground springs, but I was warned, "Be careful if you go in, there are leeches.") Now I'm in Colorado, drawn to the state's image of cool, frosty mountains...so naturally they're having the worst heat wave in 100 years or something. I'm staying at the 104-year-old Stanley Hotel, the original inspiration for The Shining, and when I'm done with this update I'll be exploring the place to see if I can find any of the ghosts that are supposed to be hanging around the hotel.

My trip around the U.S. continues. Now in Colorado!

Cool Products Thursday, June 27, 2013

Great news: the new all-ages visual novel If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この大空に翼を広げて Kono Oozora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete) is shipping Friday! It's a great story about youth, love, and dreams of flying in the wide blue sky, with absolutely stunning artwork with higher resultion than ever seen before in a similar game!

Humble Hokkaido

One thing textbooks don't tell you about becoming bilingual in a language is the way you'll naturally come to internalize the values of the language group over time. This is why I'll tend to take Japan's side when blogging about, say, the historical background of the island disputes with South Korea and China, though I always do my best to research the issue and present the other side's viewpoint as well. Two things that are important to the Japanese are 謙遜 ken-son or personal humility, and 調和 cho-wa, which means getting along harmoniously with others, and I learned a hard lesson related to these concepts back when I was in university at SDSU. The city of Hakodate, at the southernmost tip of Hokkaido, wanted to hire eight native speakers to teach English and act as goodwill ambassadors during city events for two months, and I jumped at the chance to go to Japan for free. I'd studied Japanese for two years at that point, and thanks to learning with manga and translating Japanese songs I could speak the language pretty well...although I had not yet internalized the important concepts above. When it came time to select who would go, the interviewer was impressed with my language skills, but he sensed my pride and headstrong nature, and I wasn't one of the candidates chosen. Not being picked for the program was a bitter pill for me back then, but it introduced me to the concepts of ken-son and cho-wa, as well as 反省 hansei, which means to reflect on your own shortcomings rather than blame others when something goes wrong. Looking back, I'm really glad I was able to learn that lesson.

I lost the chance to go to Hokkaido.

Japan Loves Awards

I happened to see that popular actress Ayame Gouriki, famous for her energetic nature and boyish short-cut hair, was awarded this year's "E-Line Beautiful" award by the Japan Association of Adult Orthodontics, which essentially means she got an award for having an extremely beautiful face when viewed in profile. If you think this is a pretty silly thing to give an award for, you're right: it's just one of dozens of awards given in Japan for purely PR purposes. There's the Nail Queen Award for the woman with the most beautiful fingernails, one for models with beautiful legs, the Nice Couple Award for the most congenial married couple, plus the Japan Megane Best Dresser Award, given to the most fashionable female who wears glasses. There are hundreds of literary awards, too, so many in fact that only a few of them are worth receiving. Virtually every publishing company has established a line of "prestigious" awards to dole out to writers each year, though the really important award for Japanese literature is the Akutagawa Award, or the Tezuka Award for manga. There's even a local version of the Academy Awards called...the Japan Academy Awards, where Japanese actors and directors win awards for Japanese films made during the year.

Ayame-chan won an award for having a beautiful profile.

Peter's USA Trip, Part 2

My pre-convention season trip across the U.S. continues, having taken me from Utah to the other side of Wyoming, where I visited the beautiful Devil's Tower National Monument, which has been on my bucket list since seeing Close Encounters of the third Kind (Japanese title: 未知との遭遇 michi to no souguu or "Encounter With the Unknown") as a child. It was a breathtaking sight, though I couldn't find any aliens no matter how hard I looked. My Japanese wife and I are quite strange: she's always been more fascinated by the U.S. than her home country of Japan, while I've been more focused on Japan. As a result, I've been all over Japan but my wife has only been to a few places like Kyoto and Osaka, and on the flipside, she's visited several parts of the U.S. (Florida, Wisconsin, New England, Mt. Rushmore) that I'd never been to. So I'm happy to be catching up with her just a little on this trip.

There were no aliens. Apparently Haruhi hasn't summoned them yet.

J-List Anime Figure Sale Almost Ended

Just a note, our 2x points sale on all anime figures will be ending soon. The sale covers all prepainted figures, the amazing super-posable Figma and Revoltech action figures, the super-kawaii Nendoroid line, plus "cast off" (naughty) figures. Preorder figures are also included, so preorder the figures you want now! Click to browse all anime figures, ranked in order of awesomeness by our intelligent, attractive customers!

Japanese Tourists Abroad

I once saw an interesting thread on Japan's ubiquitous BBS 2ch entitled, "Things Japanese people do abroad that mark them as Japanese," and I thought I'd talk about this topic. The list included things like, being extremely detailed about giving exact change or stressing about leaving an accurate 15% tip, or waiting quietly for the rear door of a taxi to open automatically for you. (Taxis in Japan have a hydraulic lever that allows the door to open automatically.) Back in my university days you could go assume that a person wearing highly evolved fashions with Engrish phrases like "I feel happiness when I eat a potato" was Japanese, but the fashion landscape has changed a lot since the 80s, and most really strange English comes from China these days. Of course the body language of Japanese people is somewhat unique, from indicating "me?" by pointing at the nose instead of the chest, or making that ubiquitous "peace" sign (though that's become quite accepted all around Asia by now). Another way to tell Japanese people from other Asians is to listen to their speech. Japanese is (thankfully) not a tonal language language at all, unlike Mandarin or Cantonese (which have 4-9 different ways to pitch a given syllable). If the speech sounds "flat" to your ear then it might be Japanese.

There are some interesting things Japanese tourists do when travelling.

Abenomics and Japan's Women

One of the stated goals of Prime Minister Abe's "Abenomics" is to make sweeping changes that empower Japan's women to help revitalize the economy, though this isn't going to be an easy job. Japan ranks 101 out of 135 countries on the Global Gender Gap Report, which compares the economic and political participation, education attainment and health and longevity. This is a number I've taken issue with before because it places Japan only slightly ahead of Cambodia (103), India (105), and the UAE (107) and implies that Japanese women are unable to live their lives as they choose, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The situation of women in Japan is a complex one, and frankly not one easily understood by self-important Scandinavians coming up with rankings that they can put themselves at the head of. While the list of problems that need to be addressed is long -- waiting lists for daycare, a lack of understanding in company environments when a female employee has to take a day off because of a sick child, a troublesome law that gives married women a tax incentive to earn less then $10,000 per year, which obviously limits the potential she can achieve -- the idea that Japan's women are being actively repressed just because 50.0% of them aren't running for political office is not an accurate view of "life on the ground." One aspect of the country that was hard for me to comprehend was the way many Japanese women (more out in Gunma where J-List is located, fewer in Tokyo) actively want to be housewives and raise their children at home, often quitting careers they prepared for for many years before returning to work when the kids are older. While there is still plenty to fix in male-dominated Japan, the fact that women usually have this option available to them is a huge social achievement in my book.

Some thoughts on Japanese women and "Abenomics."

Utah, the Harem State

Since I've got another couple weeks before I get busy with the anime conventions, I decided to throw a suitcase into my 2002 Miata convertible and head out for a part of the U.S. I've not been to yet, starting with Utah. I've had a great time so far, spending the weekend hiking and riding horses through Zion Canyon National Park and taking pictures of breathtakingly beautiful mountains. I'm not used to experiencing culture shock in my own country, but I've encountered some in this somewhat unique U.S. state: last night I was in a pizza restaurant, mildly disappointed that the restaurant didn't serve beer...while a family sitting next to me was miffed that the restaurant offered no caffeine-free drinks other than water. When I brought this up with my Twitter followers, a Utah-born Japanese person pointed out that she experienced a similar kind of culture shock while visiting Japan, so I guess it goes both ways. Utah residents seem to have a good sense of humor about things, such as the locally brewed beer called Polygamy Porter (motto: "Why have just one?") or a restaurant that sold an ice cream treat called Never On a Sundae.

I'm having lots of fun in Utah.

Random Snacks from Japan @ J-List

J-List sells hundreds of fun snacks from Japan, some of which are almost guaranteed to make you say "What??" (which is kind of our goal). from do-it-yourself Pudding to famous March of the Koalas cookies to unique flavors of Cheetos from FritoLay Japan and Moko Moko Toilet Candy, our Japan snack lineup is always fun. Click here to see the top snacks from Japan today, as ranked by our customers!

Foreigners and First Names in Japan

One day I took my son out for a bowl of gyudon, steamed beef over rice, the most popular form of fast food in Japan. The restaurant was crowded, so I added my name to the list, writing "Peter" in the katakana writing system that's generally used for foreign names and loan words, and sat down to wait. "Everyone else wrote their last name," my son observed. "Why did you write your first name?" This was an interesting question, and I didn't have an answer for him right away. Ostensibly, names in Japan are written in family name, given name order, so someone named Taro Yamada in English would be Yamada Taro in Japanese. But by unwritten rule, Westerners always continue to use their name in the same order as they do back home. When I was a teacher, I was universally known as "Peter-sensei" by my students, never "Payne-sensei" as you'd expect. This probably has something to do with the innate "fun" of teachers of English (conversation) , since we're native English speakers and teach enjoyable lessons and don't give tests on grammar and vocabulary, unlike teachers of English (the actual academic subject). My students were basically on a first-name basis with "Peter-sensei," something that would be unthinkable for any of the other Japanese teachers, and this made it easier for me to reach them, I thought.

Foreigners in Japan often end up being called by their given name quite often.

Drinking in Japan vs. USA

Yesterday was my birthday, so I went on something called a "drinkabout" with some local friends, essentially a pub crawl to some excellent bars that's facilitated by a convenient "beer bus" that arrives every 30 minutes to take everyone to the next place. (If you'll be in town for the San Diego Comic-Con, give it a try -- you can see schedule details here.) In the years I've been in Japan, San Diego has gone and re-invented itself as the home of craft beers, and there is a huge selection of amazing brews to sample. Drinking in the U.S. is very different from drinking in Japan, of course. In Japan, there's much less choice when it comes to finding amazing beers, since the Japanese government likes its beer companies large and easy to manage tax-wise, and while I love Kirin and Sapporo as much as the next guy, the variety of what's available in San Diego was amazing. It was also interesting to compare the social act of drinking itself. In Japan, beer is usually consumed in small glasses, and everyone is constantly refilling everyone else's glass, though never their own, since that's a mild taboo. (If you don't want to drink alcohol, you can act out the same ceremony but with oolong tea instead.) Whenever foreigners in Japan drink together, there's an odd tension for a few moments while they decide whether they want to pour each other's drinks Japan-style, or just pour all their own beers.

Drinking in Japan is very different from in San Diego.

Bread In Japan

It's well known that the Japanese love rice, and eat it with nearly every meal, but they're no slouches when it comes to making exotic types of bread, too. Introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century, pan (as it's called, no relation to shimapan) comes in many shapes and sizes. There's shoku-pan or normal sliced bread, awesome "curry bread" with spicy curry inside, and even "Bacon Cheese France," French bread with cheese and bacon somehow baked inside. Some varieties of Japanese bread are often made with the simplest of ingredients, such as yakisoba pan, a roll with delicious chow mein-style noodles shoved inside, or ichigo whip-sand, sandwiches made with whipped cream and strawberries, sold in convenience stores. Most of us don't think of bread as being sweet, but many types in Japan are, including anpan (a traditional round bread with sweet anko beans inside), melon-pan (vaguely melon-shaped) bread beloved of a certain tsundere girl, and honey toast, essentially a loaf of bread that's been toasted then covered with honey or syrup plus fruit and other good things.

There are many kinds of bread in Japan.

If My Heart Had Wings is Coming...

Remember that a great all-ages visual novel is coming out in English very soon. Called If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この大空に翼を広げて Kono Ohzora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete), it's a great story about youth and love and dreams. The game ships June 28, and you can preorder either the package or download edition now.

Shinzo Abe, the Last Best Hope for Japan?

It's been seven months since the return of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the pro-business conservative party that ruled Japan for much of the postwar period. Mr. Abe (pronounced "ah-beh") had a brief stint as PM back in 2006, when he was heralded as the youngest Japanese leader ever, but he quit after only a year for "health reasons" brought on by frustration over the fact that young leaders have very little political capital and generally can't get anything useful done. His return to power last year was made possible by China and South Korea, who had spent so many months whipping their own people into an anti-Japan frenzy, over the Senkaku/Daioyu Islands in China's case, and as part of the normal election cycle for South Korea, all of which angered Japanese voters enough to return the LDP to power. Abe promised to get Japan's economy humming again, and unleashed a program of monetary easing and public works projects which have worked wonders for the economy so far. Last week he announced his third volley of reforms which promised to break down many of the barriers harming Japan's international competitiveness, but the changes fell far short of what economists say is needed. Hopefully after the upcoming Japanese election we'll see some bolder reforms.

Shinzo Abe, the last, best hope for Japan?

Bullying and "Ijime" in Japan

One sad aspect of Japan's society is いじめ ijime (pronounced ee-jee-MEH), the cruel bullying that happens in school, sports and other social situations. We're all human, of course, and various forms of hazing can be found in any group, from college fraternities to making the new guy at McDonald's count all the pickles in the pickle bucket as an initiation ceremony, but it's become a real social problem in Japan. There are some reasons why ijime is especially bad in Japan, including the strictness of the top-down senpai-kohai relationship system and Japan's custom of organizing students into classes which never change for the entire year, so instead of each student going to a random classroom each hour, you've got the same people around you for 7 hours a day, six days a week. (Yes, Japanese students have to go to school on Saturdays.) Of course, ijime can happen to anyone, and my wife even had problems with some of her co-workers at a company she used to work at. Once, everyone was going out to a French restaurant, and they told her to dress in normal, everyday clothes, but when she arrived wearing jeans, she saw that everyone else had secretly dressed up just to embarrass her. My half-American daughter has also experienced some ijime in her almost-homogeneous school from time to time, like the cruel girls who told her she couldn't join their club "because their Tamagotchis didn't understand English." The topic also comes up in our excellent English-translated visual novel YUME MIRU KUSURI: A Drug That Makes You Dream. One of the girls in the game is a transfer student who's being bullied by her classmates, and you must find a way to protect her and eventually form an, ahem, special bond with her.

Bullying is a sad aspect of life in Japan.

Eating Too Much in the U.S.

There are many differences between Japan and America, and one of the biggest is food. Obviously the things that I eat while visiting the U.S. are very different from what I'm used to back in Japan, with less fish (either cooked or eaten as sushi or sashimi) and of course no large portion of steamed white rice with almost every meal. While I've been in San Diego, I've been visiting several restaurants I want to eat at "just once" -- my favorite Mexican restaurants near the J-List San Diego office, the local In-N-Out Burger, the Cheesecake Factory -- but these meals can add up quickly, and I know when I get back to Japan I'll be going on a big diet. Another problem with being in the U.S. is finding unsweetened beverages -- many restaurants, the local Subway sandwich shops included, have been replacing normal iced tea with super-sweet Honey Green Tea® and Raspberry Blast® flavors, which are impossible to drink after 20 years of consuming healthy unsweetened barley and green tea in Japan.

There are many foods to eat "just once" while in the U.S.

Lower Prices on Great English Eroge + Visual Novels

Remember that J-List recently executed a big permanent price drop on almost 50 of our popular English-language eroge and dating-sim games, making it easier than ever to pick up some awesome games to play! We've permanently lowered prices on almost 50 of our great visual novels, from The Sagara Family to Yume Miru Kusuri to Kana Little Sister and Brave Soul. Prices have been lowered by $5 or $10 on a huge number of games, so it's a great time to browse the reduced-price visual novels and eroge and see which titles you'd like to pick up!

My Top Ten Places to Visit in Japan

I'm often asked to recommend places to visit by J-List customers who are planning a trip to Japan. It's a big topic, since there's so much to see in Japan, but I'll try to throw some ideas out. So if it's useful to you, here's my top ten recommended sights to see in Japan.

My top ten list of places to visit in Japan.

• First, Tokyo. All the obvious stuff like Akihabara and Shinjuku are great to take in, just don't fool yourself that Tokyo isn't a massive concrete jungle. Try to hit Akiba on the Sunday after payday (the 25th of the month) to really feel its power.
• Nikko, a pleasant collection of temples dating back to 766 AD. You can see the grave of Tokugawa Ieyasu and also the "see no evil, hear no evil" monkeys. If you like miniatures, visit Tobu World Square nearby, which recreates the world's grandest places in perfect detail.
• Kamakura, home of the second largest bronze Buddha statue in Japan. Be sure to ride the Enoden train, in operation since 1900.
• Mt. Fuji. Making the climb to the top is not difficult at all, and it will change your life forever. (I sang the Space Battleship Yamato theme at the top.) The climbing season is July and August.
• Moving to Kyoto, Kinkaku-ji is simply the most famous Buddhist temple in Japan. Built in 1397, it was burned down in 1955 by a mentally ill monk who thought the beautiful building didn't match the austere tradition of Zen Buddhism.
• Ryoan-ji, the Zen Buddhist temple famous for its rock garden. You can lose yourself for hours here.
• Sanjuusan-gendou, or the Hall of 33 Bays, a collection of 1000 wooden statues of Buddhist "Kanon" (kind of like Buddhist saints who have been raised to deity status). It's said you can find your own face among them if you look long enough.
• Fushima Inari, the temple in Kyoto where you walk through thousands of torii (Japanese arches), which simulates our passage through life.
• In between Kyoto and Nara is the down of Uji, famous for green tea as well as the Byodo-in temple, displayed on the back of Japan's 10 yen coin. It's one of the most peaceful places in the world.
• Finally in nearby Nara, Todai-ji is one of the most amazing places in all Japan. It's the largest wooden building in the world, and it houses the largest statue of Buddha in Japan.

Thoughts on Language and Pants Falling Down

Language has many uses, including communicating great ideas, recording the events of history and ordering pizza. It also helps define the people who speak it, and I'm always fascinated by the connection between Japan's language and its people. Japanese is well-known for being a vague language in which information is omitted from sentences if it's understood by the context, to the point that foreigners have to pay close attention in order to follow what's being said. Correspondingly, the Japanese are also vague -- or "about," an English word they've re-purposed to mean vague and imprecise -- and they're masters as fitting deep nuance into the words they use every day. Another function of language is, at times, to hide your conversation from others. In Las Vegas my wife and I were shopping in a Ferragamo store (if you marry a Japanese woman you'll become quite familiar with these), and some interesting customers came in to buy shoes. They were sporting the current "pants at half-mast" vogue, and thanks to Japanese, I was able to call my wife's attention to them so she could witness the latest in silly fashions trends in the U.S.

We got to check out the latest fashions in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Vacation Update

Mrs. J-List and I had fun in Las Vegas, relaxing by the pool and turning off our brains for long periods of time. We ate some amazing food, lost and won some money at the blackjack tables, and are now very refreshed. Time to get back to work!

I like going to Las Vegas because there's such a variety of people to be found there. Obviously there's a huge cross-section of Americans there, from Texas and Florida and New York and Boston. But Las Vegas is also a "Mecca" for visitors from all over the world, and we had several interesting conversations (and a few drinks) with folks from England, France, Sweden and a few other countries. We also managed to see a famous K-POP singer (we weren't sure who she was) being mobbed by Korean fans, which added to the international flavor.

We had fun in Las Vegas. Artist's concept above.

J-List Will Support the Sony PS4

There was a lot of buzz last week about the upcoming Sony PS4 "winning" the next-gen console wars because it would have a lower price than Microsoft's Xbox One and didn't block the sale of used games. We think the PS4 will be a hit for another reason: like the PSP, PSVita and PS3, the PS4 will be region free, meaning anime fans can buy ecchi fighting games, Hatsune Miku pantsu simulators dancing games and other otaku-friendly titles and play them on hardware from anywhere in the world. While we wait for the PS4 to arrive, why not browse our lineup of great anime games for the current Sony platforms? All games are fully region free.

Bilingualism is a Fleeting Thing

After 4 years of studying Japanese at SDSU and 22 years living in the country, I'm as functionally bilingual in the language as I'd ever need to be, able to talk with business partners and review contracts in Japanese, able to get my car repaired and order pizza, etc. Still, the brain only learns what it needs to know, and all I need to do to cut my linguistic competence in half is to walk into a history museum and expose myself to words from even a century ago, since the older words are so unfamiliar to me. (Japanese underwent many changes as it modernized over the past 80 years, including changing its writing direction, as seen in the Sakuma Drops candies with the logo written in the 'old' horizontal direction of right to left.) One good thing about living in Japan is that it will give you a real appreciation for fish, and I've really learned to enjoy everything from saba stewed in miso to broiled sanma with soy sauce and grated daikon radish on top. Of course, I have no idea what these fish are called in English since I've only encountered them in Japan...though the Internet tells me they're Japanese mackerel and Pacific saury.

An example ofarchaic right-to-left yokomoji writing. Flavored with Setsuko's tears.

Funny Place Names in Japanese

It's fun to look up odd place names, like Intercourse, Pennsylvania, Climax, Michigan, Whiskey Dick Mountain in Washington State or the island of Poopoo in Hawaii. Naturally, there's a large body of place names that sound naughty when pronounced in Japanese, too. Places like Nampa, Idaho, which is funny because 軟派 nampa happens to be a common slang term that roughly means "girl hunting," what bored young men in Japanese cities usually do on weekends, asking random girls they encounter to go to karaoke or out for drinks with them. (If girls go hunting for boys it's 逆軟派 gyaku-nampa or "reverse nanpa.") Boyne City, Michigan holds a special place in the hearts of Japanese men, since "Boyne" becomes ボイン boin in Japanese, essentially the "boing" sound of boobs moving. There's a mountain in Malaysia called Mt. Panty (Gunung Panti), one in Indonesia called Mt. Baka (Bukit Baka, baka of course meaning "stupid"), and good old Scheveningen in the Netherlands, which comes out sounding like スケベ人間 sukebe ningen in Japanese, meaning "perverted human being." (I'm sure they could use some of our T-shirts there.) But the grand-daddy of funny-sounding place names is of course Eromanga, a mining town that's the farthest point from the sea in Queensland, Australia, with a name that sounds like ecchi manga comics. I swear I will go here someday and write a J-List post about it.

I want to visit Eromanga, in Australia.

Buying Stuff in San Diego

Mrs. J-List has joined me in San Diego, and I've spent a few days taking her around doing "San Diego-ey" things, like visiting the iconic Hotel del Coronado and exploring restaurants downtown. I've also taken her shopping to buy various things she needs to pick up while in the U.S., like make-up (brands that cost $9 at Target are three times that much in Japan), taco and fajita mix, Zip-Loc bags, and Jell-O brand pudding which are unavailable in Japan. Buying omiyage -- souvenirs -- is a very big deal to the Japanese, and a lot of our time has been spent shopping for gifts for friends, the J-List staff in Japan and/or business acquaintances. Some of the gifts she's picking up are quite interesting, including cinnamon flavored Colgate toothpaste (American toothpaste has more fluoride than in Japan, so it makes a practical gift), Newport cigarettes (they're unavailable inside Japan and thus are a sought-after item by men who smoke) plus those Tide detergent "Pods" which my wife just loves. My son back in Japan made a request too, that she bring back a box of Lucky Charms, which he says "tastes like America."

(Now we're off to Vegas for our vacation, so no update on Friday. See everyone next week!)

I've been shopping for odd American products with my wife.

Moekanji Cards are Now In Stock!

We’re happy to be carrying the “Moekanji” cards, an awesome way to master the first year of kanji by harnessing the power of moe. Best of all, the cards “force” you to memorize vocabulary using hiragana rather than Romanized Japanese (e.g. the English alphabet), which helps your spoken accent a lot. The Moekanji card series is now in stock and ready to ship out to you immediately. Why not order a set now?

The Japanese Love to Line Up To Eat Ramen

Over the years I've learned a few things about the Japanese people. They are hardworking, honest and way more punctual than I could ever hope to be. They also love to line up for things. If a Japanese person is walking down the street and sees people lined up to buy something -- takoyaki or Belgian waffles perhaps -- there's a good chance they'll stop what they were doing and get in line, too. It seems there's something innately fun about standing in line to buy something, and the general rule is that the longer the wait at a restaurant is, the better the food will be -- and if no customers are waiting to eat, it's a sign that the food isn't very good. (Similarly, Japanese will avoid going to a restaurant that only has a few cars in the parking lot, but are happy to stop if the parking lot is full of cars.) I've experienced this phenomenon firsthand when I took my son down to Tokyo for his Lego robot soccer tournament one year, and we walked around the city trying to find something good to eat. We ended up lining up behind two dozen Waseda University students for an hour to eat was the best chashu pork ramen in our lives, perhaps because we had waited for so long to eat it.

In Japan, if you don't have to wait in line for it, it's not delicious.

The Kanji For "Person" Teaches Us How To Be Better People

During the two months I'll be here in the U.S., I've got a long list of things I need to get done, including performing various software installs and upgrades in J-List's San Diego office, finalizing a refinance on my house in San Diego (if you think dealing with banks is difficult, try doing it from the other side of the world), and making sure to stock up on American cold medicines like Nyquil and Alka-Seltzer Plus, as Japanese medicine doesn't work so well on my giant gaijin body. I'll also be picking up some herbal supplements a lady I know from my gym asked me to get. When my wife heard of this, she said, "Why are you helping that lady? You don't even know her." I countered with a Japanese proverb 人の字は１人じゃ立てない hito no ji wa hitori ja tatenai, meaning "the kanji character for 'person' cannot stand up all by itself, it needs the support of another." This saying -- that the kanji for 'person' (人) is drawn with two lines because each side is holding the other up, which represents the way people support each other as we go through our lives -- is one of the more interesting observations I've encountered in Japan.

The character for 'person' cannot stand up by itself.

Learning About Japanese Culture Through Shoes

It's funny, the little bits of Japanese culture you can pick up from random episodes of anime. I've been trying to keep up with the current season (not an easy task as there are many good shows this time around), including Oreimo, aka Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, aka My Younger Sister Can't Be This Cute, which has really given fans some satisfying episodes this season. In a recent episode, Kyosuke officially starts dating the enigmatic Ruri, more commonly known by her Gothic Lolita persona of Kuroneko ("black cat"). In one scene, Kyosuke is waiting for Ruri in her house when Ruri's two younger sisters get home. They immediately know that something isn't right because they see "a strange pair of shoes" in the genkan, a recessed area by the front door where shoes are always removed in Japanese homes (and some businesses, including J-List). If the story had been part of some other culture, Kyosuke might have hidden from the girls, but thanks to Japan's tradition of removing shoes there was no way for him to escape. Stories involving shoes -- for example, a drama in which a girl stops by her boyfriend's apartment but knows instantly that he's entertaining female company the moment she opens the door because she sees unfamiliar shoes -- are something that could only come from Japan.

Kuroneko is the ideal otaku girlfriend.

Cosplay Products from Japan

The summer anime conventions are almost here, but there's still time to get cool cosplay related products from Japan. Whether you need some awesome Japanese "Absolute Zone" socks, cat ears that are controlled by your brain, anime-style cosplay glasses or really bizarre masks, J-List is loaded with cool products for you to browse. Click now to see the top apparel and cosplay products, as ranked by our customers!

Job Interviews in Japan

Running a business in Japan naturally means I have to interview Japanese job applicants who want to work for J-List, and I often wonder if they're not freaked out by having a foreigner sit down across from them at the interview. Job interviews work somewhat differently in Japan compared to the rest of the world. Here, in lieu of a western resume or C.V. applicants write out a form called a 履歴書 rirekisho or "personal history form" which shows all school, work and other related information in a standardized format. They're handwritten, too, which helps us determine something about the neatness (or lack thereof) of applicants. While in the U.S. it's expected you'll exaggerate your skills a little, perhaps appearing more outgoing than you really are and padding your resume a bit, in Japan things couldn't be more different. A reserved, humble attitude is what you need during a Japanese-style job interview, too, and successful applicants will actually talk down their own past work achievements in ways that would be incomprehensible in the U.S. in an effort to show how harmoniously they will fit in with the organization.

An artist's concept of a job interview in Japan. May not reflect actual reality.

Admiral Perry is Popular in Japan, For Some Reason

This Saturday is the 160th anniversary of the arrival of Admiral Perry's famous "Black Ships" to Japan, an event that's almost without parallel in the history of the world. After the Tokugawa clan won the title of Shogun (supreme military ruler) at the beginning of the Edo Period (1603-1868), Japan grew fearful that it would eventually be colonized by the Western powers of the day, and took the extreme step of closing the country off to the outside world entirely, except for a trading post with the Dutch in Nagasaki. For 200 years no foreign influence was allowed in, and many aspects of Japan's culture that we appreciate today exist because of this unique period of history when Japan's culture could grow like plants in a greenhouse. In 1853 everything changed, when Admiral Perry sailed his ships into Yokosuka harbor and demanded that Japan open to trade with the United States. It was a deep shock to the Japanese, who slowly realized they had to deal with the West and begin the process of becoming a modern industrialized nation. Today Admiral Perry is a household name, and (this being Japan), you can buy cookies with his face on the box in port cities like Yokohama and Hakodate, Hokkaido.

160 years ago Admiral Perry sailed into Japan's hearts.

Meme Update from Japan: Attack on Titan

Ever since that dancing CG baby and "All Your Base Are Belong to Us," the Internet has run on memes, which are units of culture created and shared by people. (The term was originally coined by Richard Dawkins to describe how ideas spread and evolve through populations of humans in the same way that genes evolve biologically.) Of course, the memes that are popular in the West aren't going to be the same as the ones currently bouncing around in Japan. Japanese websites are not making Game of Thrones "Wedding Planning for Dummies" jokes, and American fan artists aren't generally aware of the "Gununu" anime face meme or that bizarre "Cicada Block" running gag. There are a few exceptions of course -- anything related to Vladimir Putin and horse masks is equally liable to become popular no matter which country you're in. Japan can be especially fickle when it comes to what is deemed worthy of meme-hood. One year it might be art involving the "gaijin 4-koma" joke, then famous Tokyo icons like the Shibuya 109 department store or the TAITO STATION game centers start showing up in the backgrounds of anime and games. The latest boom to take off in Japan is an homage to the popular anime Shingeki no Kyojin (English title: Attack on Titan) in which people recreate their favorite poses of humans attacking or being eaten by giants, through the miracle of forced perspective.

The newest meme from Japan, Titan Attacking!.

We Love Artbooks

We love all forms of 2D artbooks and stock hundreds of them on the site, including artbooks that will give you a nosebleed and books that will lift your soul. You can always find the most famous artists, from Nishieda to Kantoku to Shirow Masamune, and discover some great ones you didn't know about already. Browse the newest 2D artbooks now, or view them sorted by "awesomeness ranking" (as sorted by our customers).

Anime Exposes People to New Ideas

One reason I'm thankful to the rise of anime and Japanese pop culture is that it's exposed so many people around the world to new concepts, from the "vertical" nature of Japanese senpai/kohai (senior/junior in a school or organization) relations to some interesting gender-related surprises, thanks to the extensive Japanese tradition of stories involving males assuming female roles or vice-versa (traps and reverse traps). Appreciating the comedy and/or drama of mixed-up gender roles goes back very far, to the kabuki plays of the Edo Period in which extremely talented male actors would fill female roles, or the Takarazuka Revue, the all-female troupe that's put on a variety of shows with women expertly playing male roles since 1913. Anime is rife with stories that break gender rules, from the classic Rose of Versailles, which follows Lady Oscar, raised as a boy, throughout the events of the French Revolution, or the Rumiko Takahashi classic Ranma 1/2, about a boy cursed to change into a girl whenever he gets wet, usually with hilarious results. Even the dating-sim games we've been involved with have been known to bend a gender or two, such as the X-Change and Yin-Yang series.

Anime opens people to a lot of new ideas.

Raising Bilingual Kids

Even before my wife and I became parents, we knew we wanted to give our children the gift of bilingualism. I've always been fascinated with how the brain adapts to thinking in two languages, and I've enjoyed watching the process in my kids as they grew up. Learning a language through immersion is the best way to attain a language, of course: my kids would start speaking English within hours of interacting with my American family or with kids they played with in the U.S. back when they were young. However, learning a new language in this unstructured way can lead to a kind of "raw" bilingualism in which children can function in both languages but lack the synaptic links between words, so eventually they had to study both languages properly just like the rest of us. How a person learns a language is heavily dependent on their personality, and my son and daughter went about the process in very different ways, with my son "pre-thinking" what he was going to say to avoid making mistakes and my daughter just opening her mouth to speak, nevermind what errors she might make. Sometimes my kids would have "English wars" which were amusing to watch. My daughter (who was great at natural pronunciation) would tease her brother by asking if he could pronounce difficult words like "perfect" "girl" "jewelry" and "it's the rich aroma and full body of Excella that wakes the morning all around the world" (from a Meg Ryan Nescafé commercial) without a katakana accent, which was harder for him. He would counter by asking if she knew what "condensation" meant (a word he picked up in his science class), and of course she had no idea.

As parents, we've helped our kids grow up bilingually.

Exploring Asian Culture Through San Diego

Every large city has its Asian district, and in San Diego it's located along Convoy Avenue in the Kearny Mesa region of the city. I like to drive through this area and take in the incredible mix of Asian businesses that assault my vision from all sides: foot massage parlors, noodle shops, more Korean BBQ restaurants than you can shake a stick at plus plenty of sushi restaurants run by Koreans, Chinese and, on extremely rare occasions, an actual Japanese person. I've even got a favorite frozen yogurt shop run by a Vietnamese lady where they play the latest Cantonese pop hits, which is quite random and enjoyable. It's funny to observe the way all aspects of Asian culture become blended together, until no one is exactly sure whether the food they're eating is a Korean take on Japanese cuisine or a Taiwanese variation of "American" Chinese, which is completely different from anything you'll find in China, of course. While we in the West tend to think of our own national cultures as being unique and distinct from each other -- British culture is different from the U.S., Italy is completely unlike Germany -- seen from an Asian country, our respective languages and cultures blend together into one unrecognizable mass just like the local Asian culture does in San Diego.

I like exploring Asian culture in San Diego.

J-List's Figure Sale Continues

Remember: this month we're giving 2x points off all awesome anime figures, including prepainted figures, the amazing super-posable Figma and Revoltech action figures, the super-kawaii Nendoroid line, plus "cast off" (naughty) figures. Click to browse all anime figures, ranked in order of awesomeness by our intelligent, attractive customers!

The Grammar Behind "Fruits Basket"

A few weeks ago I went with my son to an onsen hot spring, which is a rarity these days since he's getting too old to do boring stuff with his dad. While we were in the bath area, he asked me to get him a "buckets," using the plural form of the English word, and so I brought him two of the little buckets used for splashing water on yourself, knowing of course that he only wanted one. For phonetic reasons, some English words are imported into Japanese in their plural forms, including words like shirt, suit, swimsuit, peanut, fruit and sport. These words are always used with the 's' sound on the end (e.g. shirts, suits, swimsuits, peanuts, etc.), even if you're talking about just one of the item. In Japanese, one refers to a suitcase as a "suitscase," and it takes the brain a few months to get over the weirdness of this. Learning to ask for a "peanuts butter sandwich" or some "Minutes Maid Orange Juice" are similar, as is the English word "bucket," which always appears as "buckets" in Japanese. There seem to be three reasons for some English words being mapped to their plural forms like this. First is the rather convenient lack of singular/plural in Japanese grammar: saying 花が奇麗 hana ga kirei could mean either "the flower is pretty" or "the flowers are pretty" depending on how many flowers you happen to discussing, and as a result, the Japanese don't sweat the plural/singular state of a word any more Americans consider the gender of nouns in Spanish when they speak English. Another reason is that the softer tsu ending on the plural forms is easier for Japanese to pronounce than a hard 't' consonant sound. Finally, converting some words to their plural forms also avoids the dreaded L/R confusion that can be a problem in the language. Because "fruit" and "flute" would have the exact same pronunciation when rendered in katakana, the musical instrument became フルート furuuto and the stuff you eat became フリーツ furuutsu. So now you know where Fruits Basket gets its rather unique name from.

I had a friend who would put his hands over his ears every time he heard Fruits Basket.

Changes in Japan for Gaijin

I saw on online discussion board that asked ex-pats living in Japan whether life there has changed for the better since they arrived, and my answer is a resounding yes. The current age of smartphones and the Internet aside, there have been many serious improvements for gaijin living in Japan since I arrived back in 1991, from the ability to travel around Tokyo without being exposed to endless cigarette smoke to the general flow of useful innovations from the outside world that have improved the lives of people in various ways. Japan has a normal capitalist economy in which companies compete to bring the best products to market, but many industries from books to music CDs had special rules allowing manufacturers to set prices artificially, resulting in higher profits in the short term but companies that were slow to change when the Internet came knocking a few years later. One area that has improved a lot has been banking: back in the day ATMs used to close at 7 pm Monday through Saturday and were closed all day Sunday...and all holidays, meaning if you forget to get cash out before Golden Week you had to starve. Attitudes inside Japan have improved, too: twenty years ago, it would have been highly irregular for company with a female president and an American vice president to exist, but nowadays it's not surprising at all.

Japan has changed much in 20 years.

Use of Alternate History in Anime: Samurai Girls

Like other forms of media, there are many types of stories to be found in anime, including love comedy, various kinds of romance story (love triangles, yuri, yaoi), and of course plenty of hard-core sci-fi action. There's also a healthy traditional of "alternate history" to be found in anime, such as The Ambition of Oda Nobuna, classical Japanese history remixed with cute moe girls; Koihime Musou, a reworking of the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms in eroge form; Strike Witches, World War II-era magical girls (?) fighting aliens with the power of pantsu; and Muv-Luv, in which humans reach the moon in 1967 only to find a murderous race of aliens who then invade Earth over several decades. I recently started watching Hyakka Ryouran: Samurai Bride, the sequel to the fan service-laden Samurai Girls. The story is set in a steam-punk -- or more accurately, "Edo-punk" -- world in which the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate never relinquished power and the era of Bushido never ended. The show itself can be summed up as Queen's Blade with samurai swords and lots of ecchi jokes, but the stylized world they create is surprisingly deep and interesting. Our upcoming Nitroplus eroge Hanachirasu is another example of alternate history, set in a world in which the atomic bomb was not completed in time to force Japan to surrender, resulting in Kyushu and Hokkaido being occupied by the U.S. and the Soviet Union permanently. When guns are banned from Tokyo, mega-corporations are forced to hire sword-wielding mercenaries to protect their interests.

Samurai Bride is an alternate world of sword-wielding girls.

New Sale at J-List! 2x J-List Points on All Figures!

It's a new month, and a new sale from J-List! This month we're giving 2x points off all awesome anime figures, including prepainted figures, the amazing super-posable Figma and Revoltech action figures, the super-kawaii Nendoroid line, plus "cast off" (naughty) figures. Click to browse all anime figures, ranked in order of awesomeness by our intelligent, attractive customers!

The Japanese Passenger on the Titanic

It's fun to delve into history and see what interesting people you can find, like Nakahama "John" Manjiro, the first Japanese to visit the U.S. back in 1841, or six Christian samurai who decided to settle permanently in Spain in 1617, which has blossomed to 700 descendants today. Then there's the lone Japanese passenger on the Titanic. Masabumi Hosono was an employee of the Japanese Transportation Ministry sent to Russia to study railroads, and after finishing his assignment, he prepared to cross the Atlantic on the Titanic. When the ship had its fateful collision with an iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14, Mr. Hosono was asleep, and didn't wake until someone knocked on the door of his second-class cabin to tell him to put his life-vest on. He eventually made his way to the lifeboats and, hearing an announcement that there was room in lifeboat no. 10, he jumped in. His life was saved, but he might have wished it hadn't been: he was attacked in the Japanese press for living when so many others had died, and fired from his job at the ministry, and some even called for him to commit suicide to atone for his dishonorable act. If he'd died, the world of music would have been less bright: he was the grandfather of Haruomi Hosono, one of the founding members of the influential band YMO, which helped bring Ryuichi Sakamoto to the world stage in the 80s.

His failure to die on the Titanic caused his family decades of dishonor.

Foreigners Asking "Why?" About Japan

When a foreigner goes to Japan, especially for an extended period of time rather than a brief visit as a tourist, they usually start to ask why? about everything they see. Why do the Japanese love aloe flavored yogurt so much? Why do Hello Kitty melons sometimes cost thousands of dollars? Why is it bad luck to sleep with one's head pointed north, and how is it that the Japanese are the cleanest people on the planet yet when you go into a public restroom there's usually an old, gross cup by the sink, inviting you to take a drink of water? When confronted with these questions, Japanese often don't have a good answer, perhaps because these things have always been around them all their lives and are thus taken for granted, or perhaps (as I've been told by a Japanese friend), they don't think all that deeply about their own society. The confused feeling when a foreigner asks "why?" about some aspect of Japan is one the Japanese staff of J-List knows all too well, I'm afraid, since I often bounce the strangest questions off them when I'm researching these little updates I write.

Foreigners often ask "why?" about what they see in Japan.

When The Higurashi Cry, It's Hot

There are many powerful images of summer in Japan, including visiting the Tanabata festival while wearing a yukata, lightning fireworks with friends, enjoying かき氷 kaki-gohri (shave ice) or a bottle of ramune, or taking in the pleasant aroma of mosquito coils burning inside ceramic pig. But for me, nothing represents Japan's hot, humid summers like the endless drone of cicadas, which make their min-min-miiiiin sound outside my window all summer long. In Japanese the insects are known as semi, though they've got an alternate name which will be more familiar to anime fans: 日暮し higurashi, a somewhat romanticized name written with kanji that also mean "sunset." Unlike in the U.S., which faces a massive swarm of 17-year cicadas this summer, the Japanese versions of the bugs are there every year, happily providing background noise for summer.

Higurashi are a symbol of summer in Japan.

Cute Cats for your Phone

J-List loves to find cute products from Japan, like the awesome cute cats for your phone that have won our customers' hearts. The cats sit in your earphone jack and...do nothing at all, but he does it in such a cute way it's extremely charming. We posted some new cute cat toys for your phone today, cats that play with a ball of string (attached to a chain). Browse the newest iPhone and Android phone accessories from Japan now!

The More Japanese You Learn, the Less Girls will Like You

There are certain paradoxes you encounter when dealing with Japan. For example, we often think of the country as a streamlined high-tech land of the future, but in reality things are quite low-tech, like the NHK employee who comes around to manually pick up people's TV-watching fee each month rather than automating the process somehow. Japan is the most polite country in the world, where society's "golden rule" is to never cause 迷惑 meiwaku (inconvenience, trouble) to others...and yet, politicians and pro-Emperor nationalists regularly drive around with speaker cars shouting their loud slogans and annoying everyone. Another paradox I've noticed is the inverse relationship between how much Japanese a foreigner studies and how popular he is with a given member of the opposite sex. For various reasons, Japanese perceive foreigners to be a lot of "fun" and rarely expect us to be able to speak Japanese properly, let alone be capable of appreciating the Tale of Genji in its original 11th century manuscript form. When we do these things, they nod and smile and compliment us, but on some level they probably wish we could be more like the other gaijin are, perhaps belting out an Earth, Wind and Fire number at the karaoke machine while everyone claps instead of singing a sad enka song about the windswept Tsugaru Strait between Aomori and Hokkaido. A male who speaks a little Japanese might find he's more popular with some Japanese females than he might be back at home...but if he goes overboard and studies "too much" Japanese, well, some of those girls might be less attracted to him. On the other hand, my wife took an interest in me specifically because I was able to write the kanji for "rose" (薔薇 bara) on a napkin, which not even Japanese people can write. I'm sure she thought, a foreigner who can write a kanji like this must surely be someone worth getting to know better.

My theory certain explains this guy.

Phoenix Comicon Final Report

Well the Phoenix Comicon is over, and I'm back in San Diego. The show was a blast, and we had tons of fun. We learned that fans in Phoenix are very awesome and dedicated, and also that they're starved for shimapan, horse head masks, BL games and brain-powered Necomimi ears. Though we're old hands at doing these conventions by now, the Phoenix Comicon offered more surprises than most shows we've been to, such as the fire alarm that forced a temporary evacuation of the entire convention center, or the freak electrical problem we had with our trailer while driving back, which we had to patch with -- I swear I am not making this up -- some Tentacle Grape labels we happened to have with us. It was definitely a fun event, and we're happy to add it to our lineup of shows we regularly attend, the others being Anime Expo and the San Diego Comic-Con of course. (Sorry we can't get out to more conventions!)

More fun memories from Phoenix.

The Most Popular Products on J-List Today

I often like browsing all J-List products by product popularity ranking, to see which products our customers think are most awesome at the present moment in time. Usually there are sexy anime figures at the top of the list, or the latest English eroge release, or the newest bizarre Japanese snack treats -- usually random Japanese versions of products they are familiar with like Green Tea Oreos or Cheeseburger flavored Cheetos. Why not browse these products and see what we have in stock for you?