Exploring the Limits of Bilingualism

After 4 years of language study at SDSU and nearly 23 years of living in Japan, I'm as bilingual as I'd ever need to be. Actually I'm less bilingual than I've been in the past in one regard, that of writing kanji, since in our modern era almost no one writes kanji characters by hand anymore, instead using pasocon and keitai (personal computers and cell phones). This leads to the loss of kanji writing ability, a problem that affects Japanese people, too, though happily reading of kanji is not affected. While I'm able to work with the Japanese staff, translate eroge and even manage contracts in Japanese, it can be surprisingly easy for me to find myself outside of my linguistic "comfort zone." The other day my wife was telling me about the history of the area around J-List, saying that there used to be many 鍛冶屋 kajiya in the area. This word was unfamiliar to me, and it turned out to be "blacksmith," a word I'd never happened to come across. I also had trouble when I went to the eye doctor a few weeks ago and found myself assaulted with vocabulary words for potential eye-related issues I'd never heard of in Japanese or in English.

I didn't know the word "blacksmith" in Japanese.

Moe-Tastic Visual Memes in Anime

Anime is filled with fun tropes and memes. One that comes up in romantic comedy series is the 間接キス kansetsu kiss or "indirect kiss," which is what happens when you drink from a can or straw after the person you're in love with has put their lips on it. It's something only elementary school kids would be silly enough to talk about in real life, yet the meme pops up in anime quite often. The Japanese way to find out if someone is running a fever is to touch foreheads with them (called odeko-touch), which is also seen in anime from time to time, usually with moe-tastic results. Sometimes the meaning of these jokes can be difficult for us to understand culturally, like the tendency for a sleeping character to be drawn with a snot bubble growing out of their nose. One decades-old visual gag in anime and manga is to draw a character with a flower growing out of their head, which represents aho (ah-ho), Osaka-ben for "stupid" -- essentially, the character is so dumb their brain is made of dirt, hence a flower can grow there. The bird often seen on Yuko's head in Nichijou is a variation of this joke.

Odeko-touch is how you check for a fever in Japan.

We Will Never Forget Georgia...Coffee

I'm safely back in Japan after a longer-than-usual flight, since it was from the East Coast instead of California, where I normally am coming from. It's certainly nice to be back "home" in my adopted country.

Yasu and I certainly had a good time in the U.S. We saw the best parts of Savannah and Macon and Athens, visited the Georgia Guide Stones (a kind of modern Stonehenge an anonymous individual erected), and explored some cool old houses and museums. In proper Japanese tradition, we visited a Target and loaded up on things we needed, like sportswear and vitamins and cold medicine, which are either hard to get in Japan, or just much more expensive here. We also bought plenty of omiyage, souvenirs for the J-List staff back in Japan. Since it's October, I figured several types of Halloween candy would make a fun gift for the staff, and I also scored some boxes of Count Chocula cereal, which the gaijin staff will hopefully appreciate, since it's certainly not something you can find in Japan.

When the Japanese think of Georgia, this is what they picture.

Cosplay and Eroge Sale at J-List Now!

October is the perfect time to think about cosplay, and J-List is having a big 2x J-List Points sale on all cosplay related products you might want to snap up, from sexy Japanese over-knee socks to Attack on Titan masks and much more. We're also having a sale on all English-translated eroge and visual novels, making it the perfect time to snap up some great titles, like the Cthulhu horror love story Saya no Uta (by the creator of Madoka Magica) and the new Moero Downhill Night game trio set.

Foreigners in Japan

You probably take it for granted that during the course of your day you'll come into contact with people from other countries doing various jobs, like driving a taxi or working in a hotel. This is much less the case in Japan, a country which has far fewer foreign-born residents -- only around 1.5% of the country, compared with 12%, 10% and 9% for the U.S., France and Britain (These numbers are as from 2005 and exclude zainichi, those born inside Japan but holding a passport from South Korea, etc., for cultural reasons). While it's common for foreigners to work in some jobs in Japan, such as the Brazilians and Peruvians who assemble electronics at the Sanyo factory in our prefecture, or the native English speakers who work as language teachers and translators, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've gone into a business and encountered a foreigner doing a job normally performed by a Japanese. There was the young man collecting shopping carts at Costco who didn't speak Japanese at all, and a girl at KFC who had trouble understanding my American accent because she was also from China. The other day my wife had a similar experience, making a clothing purchase from a lady who seemed to be having trouble working the cash register and communicating with the other staff. It turned out she was a Chinese woman married to a Japanese who had just started the retail job, though her language skills were still "improving." Clearly as Japan's population falls due to its low birthrate and lack of net immigration, Japanese will have to deal with foreigners more and more often.

At no time did any of these Chinese people say "Yatta!"

Onigiri, the Soul Food of Japan

Food can be an important bridge between cultures, something Yasu and I are certainly learning here in the American South. While you might think that sandwiches and potato salad would make the perfect picnic food, a Japanese person would almost certainly choose おにぎり onigiri, those delicious triangular rice balls seen in Spirited Away and Pokemon ("Nothing beats a jelly-filled doughnut!"). Formed using the honorific "o" prefix that can be seen on many Japanese words plus nigiri, meaning "to squeeze," onigiri are a popular way to grab a quick snack on the go. (An omusubi is the same thing as an onigiri, by the way.) Onigiri are a major product category for convenience stores in Japan, and even before a new gaijin learns to start reading the language around him he often memorizes the all-important onigiri color code at Seven Eleven -- red for salmon, blue for "sea chicken" (tuna) and so on. Onigiri are a staple of bento culture, and Japanese housewives get up extra early to press rice balls to include in lunches for their kids or husbands, just as my own mother made peanut butter and honey sandwiches for me all those years. Along with popular bento items, J-List sells many onigiri related products on the site -- click and browse some of them now.

Onigiri rice balls are the "soul food" of Japan.

J-List Is Almost Old Enough to Buy Products From J-List

Yasu and I continue to have fun in Georgia, visiting various tourist sites and finding interesting foods to eat, like fried okra and black-eyed peas and more fried chicken than I usually eat in a year. We headed down to Savannah to do some sightseeing -- including visiting the site of the Forest Gump bench -- and soon we'll head back to Japan. It's been a fun trip!

October 1st was the 17th anniversary of the founding of J-List. Yes, it was 17 years ago that we started this strange, wonky company dedicated to finding interesting Japan-related products that people might want to buy. Even before I officially quit my job as an ESL teacher to start the company, I'd run a year-long "proof of concept" by buying used JPOP music CDs and selling them to people on USENET. (The name J-List comes from "The Japan List," a giant Excel spreadsheet I used to track the items I had in stock.) Doing something totally crazy like quitting a safe English teaching job to start a company was a big step, and my conservative Japanese family was sure I was off my rocker. Happily it all turned out okay, and now J-List is almost old enough to buy products from J-List! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the many years of support -- we are blessed to have the most awesome customers in the world!

Thanks for 17 years of support for J-List!

J-List Anniversary Sale!!

Because it's J-List's anniversary, we decided to have a special sale for everyone. From now through Sunday night, we're giving an extra 10% off all products from J-List, automatically and in addition to any other discounts you get, like the double J-List Points on all cosplay related products and English-translated eroge. The sale ends at the stroke of midnight, California time, on Sunday, so get shopping now!

Driving in Japan vs. the USA

One of the minor challenges about being back in the U.S. is getting used to driving on the opposite side of the road from Japan, which drives on the left, British style. It's not that hard, of course -- just make sure your body is always closer to the center line than your passenger, wherever you are, and you'll never have a problem. Happily the arrangement of the foot pedals in cars are standard no matter what side of the road you're driving on, but this isn't true of the lever for the turn signal (called "winker" in Japan, by the way), which is reversed right/left when you switch from Japan to the U.S. This causes my already borderline dyslexic brain to get confused and turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. Also, no force in the universe can stop me from trying to get into the car in the wrong side when I've moved between countries, which causes me to make a nonchalant stroll to the other side of the car, hoping no one will notice my goof.

Getting used to driving on the other side of the road.

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013 Report

Well, our time at Anime Weekend Atlanta is done, and we're sorry to see it end. We had a blast, shaking hands with lots of customers and seeing more Touhou cosplayers (and crossplayers) than we've ever seen before, thanks to the appearance of Touhou creator ZUN at the show. Like Otakon, the popular anime convention held in Baltimore, the energy of AWA was a bit different from the atmosphere of conventions on the West Coast, with an extra level of passion applied by the fans, perhaps because they're farther from the source, Japan. Anyway, thanks to everyone who came by to say hi!

We've had fun so far in Atlanta, sampling various local treats like Cajun Gumbo Ya Ya and a Catfish Po Boy as well as a restaurant called Steak and Shake, which readers on my Twitter feed and Facebook page recommended. Naturally visiting a new part of the U.S. will bring a bit of culture shock. For example, my Japanese employee and I have had the darnedest time finding any Koreans or Japanese, at least in the part of Atlanta we've been in so far. While we were walking around the convention, I heard someone point to Yasu and whisper, "Look, there goes a real Japanese person." Now that the convention is done, Yasu and I will be taking a few days to explore this corner of the USA and then head back to Japan.

We enjoyed many laughs and cosplays at AWA.

The Official Steins;Gate Site is Up!

We're happy to be working with NitroPlus in releasing Steins;Gate to the world in English, something we feel is an important event for the genre of visual novels and unique games from Japan. Steins;Gate is a hardcore SF story about an amateur science lab that inadvertently creates a machine to "time leap" into the past, which naturally causes a large number of problems with an evil organization called SERN that could destroy the future. We're happy to report that the official U.S. site is up, filled with information on the story and characters from the game. The URL is http://www.steins-gate.us, we hope you'll browse it and preorder the upcoming limited edition. The game is scheduled for release early in 2014.

2014 Japanese Chocolate Season has Become

J-List is famous for making delicious snacks from Japan available to folks all over the world, but there's one problem: chocolate products like Pocky or Japanese Kit Kat aren't available during the summer months because it's so hot and humid in Japan, they'd turn into so much Meltykiss. Happily, it's finally cooled down in Japan, so we're happy to announce the glorious return of Pocky, Japanese Kit Kat, Oreo and other chocolate items to the site. This year's lineup is great, too, with amazing Green Tea Pocky and Kit Kat offerings, plus limited stock of the Star Wars Giant Pocky that collectors will want to grab.

J-List is at AWA, Hope to See You Here!

I've made the long hop from Japan to the U.S., this time to Atlanta, Georgia, where I'll be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta. If you'll be at the show we hope you'll come by our humble J-List/JAST USA booth (#100, very easy to remember) and say hello, and check out the English eroge and visual novels we have for you. (We've got far less stock than at our normal shows since we flew in directly from Japan, so if you're looking for J-List T-shirts, cosplay products or snacks from Japan, it's best to get them from the site directly.) We also have an awesome panel on Saturday night at 8 pm, which we hope to see you at!

We're getting ready to party in Atlanta, CNN style, but without Georgia Coffee.

This is my first time in The Peach State, except for domestic transfers through Atlanta. I already took my employee Yasu to Varsity, a drive-in restaurant that's been around since 1928, and after the show we plan to visit some of the highlights of the city, including CNN and the Coca-Cola headquarters. Without a doubt the most famous image of Georgia to the Japanese is one that doesn't actually exist here: Coca-Cola's long-selling brand of canned coffee called Georgia Coffee, which it started marketing in 1975. (Back in the early 90s there was a cool line of Twin Peaks advertisements for Georgia Coffee, and one of my first business ventures on the early Internet was, ah, "liberating" these posters and selling them on USENET.) Georgia is also famous in my family because a friend of my son's couldn't pronounce the word properly, despite attending an immersion school for learning English. He pronounced it "Ji-ro-gia," so that naturally became his nickname until the end of time.

We're happy to be working with NitroPlus in releasing Steins;Gate to the world in English, something we feel is an important event for the genre of visual novels and unique games from Japan. Steins;Gate is a hardcore SF story about an amateur science lab that inadvertently creates a machine to "time leap" into the past, which naturally causes a large number of problems with an evil organization called SERN that could destroy the future. We're happy to report that the official U.S. site is up, filled with information on the story and characters of steins. The URL is http://www.steins-gate.us, we hope you'll browse it and preorder the upcoming limited edition. (If the site doesn't come up for you it means DNS is still propagating, try again in a couple hours.) 

We have lots of awesome new and restocked J-List products on the site, from "moe" anime magazines to artbooks to wonderful Japanese snacks and of course plenty of "naughty" products. Visit J-List or JBOX.com to browse these great items now!

Japan Loves American Stuff

One of the amusing things about living in Japan is seeing what can only be described as "American branding," selling a product by draping it in red, white and blue and associating it as closely as possible with the USA. Japanese generally see America as kakko ii -- literally "good style" or cool -- and love owning items like Zippo lighters, Coleman outdoor cooking gear and clothes from L.L. Bean. Branding your product as American can often bring a boost in sales, which is why the American restaurant chain Coco's adds "The California Restaurant" to their signs here, and why Jack Daniels and KFC wrap their advertising messages in images of old Tennessee or Kentucky. Levi Strauss stumbled trying to build a name for themselves in Japan during the 1970s, until they hit on the idea of using iconic Hollywood stars like James Dean, John Wayne and even Marilyn Monroe to advertise their jeans (they came cheap, since they were dead), which has to have been one of the most successful advertising decisions ever.

Who doesn't have a full set of Coleman outdoor gear?

Random Observations by my J-Wife

When you're married to a Japanese woman you should be prepared to hear some surprising observations every once in a while. The other day I was watching a TV show about Soichiro Honda, the enigmatic founder of the Honda Motor Company, on his meinichi (the anniversary of his death). Suddenly my wife said, "Look at those ears of his. No wonder he became rich, with ears like that. Money couldn't help but fall into them." Yes, Japanese commonly believe large ears (or to be more specific, large ear lobes) are found in people who will be financially successful, so if you've got big ears, lucky you! My wife is also thankful to our two dogs and two cats, since "pets die in place of family members in order to protect them." This comes from Buddhist concept called 身代わり migawari meaning to sacrafice one's self in order to save the life of another, and whenever a pet of ours passes away the family is saddened, but also thankful just in case. My wife also likes wondering aloud why there are no elderly people anywhere in CSI: Miami ("it's very different from what I saw when I visited there") and also telling the kids to finish their rice, "because there are 88 gods in each grain, and they'll be mad if you caused them to die in vain."

Behold the glorious ears of Soichiro Honda.

Memes in Japan and the West

I write a lot about memes because they're an interesting form of communication in the 21st century. Memes, of course, are "units of human knowledge and culture" that move through society, changing and evolving the way organisms do. Just the progress of animal genes will be corralled by physical barriers like a mountain range or an inland sea, memes are often grouped by geography and language, with only a few -- Maru the Cat, the cardboard box Gundam cosplay guy, the awesomeness of Bob Ross -- able to make the jump from one area to another. While users of the English-speaking Internet might be sharing Come At Me, Bro! or Overly Attached Girlfriend JPEGs, Japanese would likely be using memes from Japan's 2ch BBS like 日本語でおk [sic] nihongo de ok ("please say that again, in simple Japanese this time"), or quoting that most memorable line from Mobile Suit Gundam "You hit me! Not even my own father hit me!" which is likely not so memorable to gaijin fans. The English translation of Steins;Gate poses some unique challenges in this area, since several characters speak in Japanese "netspeak" and use verbal memes that would be unfamiliar to non-Japanese fans, many of them obscure references from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Happily the game has a useful on-screen "tips" feature which explains these references as well as the many scientific terms found in the game.

Some memes manage to cross from East to West, but not many.

J-List Will Be at Anime Weekend Atlanta

Remember, J-List will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta from Sept 27-29. I'll be there too, or that's the plan anyway: if I'm late it means that Typhoon Pabuk's untimely arrival off the coast of Japan caused the flight to be canceled. We hope you'll come by our booth (#100) and say hi, and also attend our panel on Saturday night, where we'll give information on all the great English-translated visual novels we've got coming. We'll have limited stock of our dating-sim games in the dealers' room at AWA but no other stock, so if you were looking to get T-shirts, cosplay items and so on, grab them from the site instead.

Steins;Gate is Up for Preorder!

Remember our good news: preorders for the English version of Steins;Gate are up now! After we announced that the game was coming at the summer anime conventions, so many fans asked us to do a Japan-style limited edition release as we did with School Days, we couldn't help but say yes. The limited edition of Steins;Gate will be our best ever, with metal "lab member" pins and a plastic case to display them in, plus a gorgeous original artbook. Plus when you preorder, you'll get the download version of the game on day 1 when the game is released, with no delay, as a bonus. So order the Steins;Gate Limited Edition now, or preorder the Download Edition if you like. 

You've Been in Japan Too Long When...

Living in a foreign country changes you, a fact I learned when, after just a year living in New Zealand as a boy, I came back with a Kiwi accent. Back in the early days of the Internet gaijin living in Japan would get together on Usenet and create "You've been in Japan too long when..." lists. Here are some of my favorites.

You've been in Japan too long when...

• ...you bow to the person on the other end of a phone conversation.
• ...you no longer remember the English names of fish. ("Spanish mackerel? Never heard of it, but try this delicious saba sashimi.")
• ...you've mastered the art of sleeping while riding in a train...standing up.
• ...you kill time waiting for the bus by practicing your golf swing with an umbrella.
• ...while stopped at a stoplight, you turn off your car's headlights to avoid blinding the person across the intersection from you.
• ...you know the size of every room in your house in 畳 (jo), or standard sized tatami mats.
• ...you've forgotten your weight, height and shoe size in the units of your home country.
• ...if you have mastered that squeezing a lemon slice with the chopsticks thing so that you don't get lemon juice on your fingers.
• ...if you confuse concepts like "stepmother" and "mother-in-law" because they're both covered by the same word, giri-no-haha or "mother-of-obligation," in Japanese.
• ...if you're okay with strawberry and whipped cream as a sandwich filling.
• ...if you order "American coffee" when home for a visit. ("American coffee" is a kind of weaker coffee blend served in Japanese coffee shops.)
• ...if the letter "W" carries the concept of "double" (as in, double the savings, double the benefits) as it does for Japanese.
  
  Mmm, I could do with a strawberry and whipped cream sandwich right about now.

Capsule Hotels in Tokyo

I had some trouble finding a hotel to stay at after the NitroPlus event, so I decided to stay in a capsule hotel, where you get a cozy, clean space to sleep in complete with TV, electric socket for charging your electronics and an alarm clock. Based on a "capsule home of the future" concept unveiled at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair, the first capsule hotel opened in 1979, allowing a high density of guests to sleep in a small space and making it possible to stay in the heart of a Japanese city for around $40. While some -- including someone on our Facebook page -- may feel capsule hotels are like sleeping in a morgue, I find them to be fun and convenient, and certainly an experience worth trying if you visit Japan. The capsule hotel concept seems to be growing in popularity, and you can find variations on them in Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and even Moscow.

The cheap way to stay in Tokyo.

NitroPlus 2013 Super Sonico Live Event Report

Over the weekend I went down to Tokyo to attend a musical event put on by NitroPlus. It was a blast: a 5-hour live performance by 15+ artists that make the music for the company's amazing games, from Demonbane to Saya no Uta and of course Steins;Gate, as well as anime series the company helped create, like Psycho-Pass, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Fate/Zero and Madoka Magica. The company's official mascot Super Sonico also made an appearance, performing while being projected on a thin curtain in front of the stage. The event was really an amazing thing to see: the sprawling Tokyo International Forum filled with dedicated fans of a company famous for awesome games and visual novels, most of the eroge variety. The idea of a live concert for music from computer games makes sense considering their popularity in our culture, but to see it on such a massive scale was really something else. We've been working with NitroPlus for four years by now, and I've been incredibly impressed with their dedication to the quality of every aspect of their games, including visual elements, game music and BGM. Now we're hard at work on the English release of Steins;Gate, designing the artbook and package and producing the metal "lab member" pins that come in the limited edition set, for release in early 2014. Did you order your copy yet?

We had a blast at the NitroPlus x Super Sonico live event.

Steins;Gate Is Up for Preorder!

Remember our good news: preorders for the English version of Steins;Gate are up now! After we announced that the game was coming at the summer anime conventions, so many fans asked us to do a Japan-style limited edition release as we did with School Days, we couldn't help but say yes. The limited edition of Steins;Gate will be our best ever, with metal "lab member" pins and a plastic case to display them in, plus a gorgeous original artbook. Plus when you preorder, you'll get the download version of the game on day 1 when the game is released, with no delay, as a bonus. So order the Steins;Gate Limited Edition now, or preorder the Download Edition if you like. The game is scheduled for release in winter 2014.

J-List Will Be At Anime Weekend Atlanta, Will You?

Remember, J-List will be attending Anime Weekend Atlanta from Sept 27-29, including me, so if you'll be at the show, please come and say hi, or come to our panel on Saturday night! We'll have limited stock of our dating-sim games in the dealers' room at AWA but no other stock, so if you were looking to get T-shirts, cosplay items and so on, grab them from the site instead.

Japanese Who Don't Quite Fit In

One of the more unique aspects of Japan is its homogeneous society in which 98% of the people consider themselves to be of the same genetic stock, despite the reality that even "pure" Japanese carry varying amounts of Mongolian, Korean, Ainu and other blood in their veins. This "myth of Japanese uniformity" may seem strange, but in reality it's a social tool that the Japanese have used to create a happy society ostensibly free of discrimination, since almost everyone is "included" in the overall social group as an equal. (This is the theory, anyway.) No matter how far this happy social umbrella may be stretched, though, there are certain groups within Japan that it just can't cover, such as zainichi ("residing in Japan") Koreans and Chinese, born and raised in Japan yet not willing to take Japanese citizenship for cultural reasons; Okinawans, who have a unique culture separate from Japan; the Ainu, the original residents of northern Japan; gaijin like me, living and doing various jobs here; and, potentially, haafu, those who are half Japanese and half some other ethnicity and whose acculturation to Japan may vary depending on their situation. Another group that sticks out just a little are 帰国子女 kikoku shijo, "return-country children" who have lived abroad for some years then returned to Japan. A good example of this concept is Makuse Kurisu from the hardcore SF time-travel game Steins;Gate, a genius girl who lived for seven years in the U.S., and whose mannerisms give away how un-Japanese she's become. She prefers to eat her noodles with a fork instead of chopsticks, and her time in the U.S. has somehow managed to turn her eyes blue.

I'd love to hear how living in the U.S. for seven years can turn your eyes blue.

Nintendo's Former President Goes to Another Castle

I saw the sad news that Hiroshi Yamauchi, the former president of Nintendo, had died at the age of 85. An amazing man who headed the company from 1949 to 2002, he dropped out of Waseda University to take over the Kyoto-based maker of karuta playing cards when his grandfather got ill, guiding it through the awkward years as the company tried operating a taxi service and a love hotel and made an electronic "Love Tester" that tested the compatibility of couples using electric current, before finally settling on electronic games. Nintendo is more than just the company that made Donkey Kong and Mario a part of your childhood, if you're below the age of 45 or so: it's also one of the most striking business success stories ever. When the company brought its "Family Computer" game system to the world it also executed a plan for domination of the industry, for example by not allowing outside studios to make more than five games per year so that no single company could exert leverage on the platform. As a result of these smart policies, Nintendo's stock was more valuable than Japan's vaunted auto manufacturers at its height in the 90s, and the company achievements are still a source of pride to Japanese.

Nintendo's former president has gone to another castle.

Japanese Living in Unexpected Places

One theme I write a lot about is how the Japanese are interested in the outside world, and especially in how they fit into it. One TV show that captures this idea is called ナゼそこに？日本人 Naze Soko ni? Nihonjin ("Why are Japanese living in a place like this?"), which follows the lives of Japanese living in exotic parts of the world like Morocco, Kenya, and Siberia, even following the life of a woman running a Japanese-style onsen hot springs inn in New Zealand. Last week's episode focused on a Japanese woman who had married a man from Spain, and detailed how she had to get used to his family's custom of taking a siesta from 4-5 in the afternoon, being careful to make no sound while the family slept. The show then segued to Los Angeles, introducing a Japanese woman named Tomoko and her famous husband Billy Blanks, who enjoyed a brief career bringing his Tae Bo workouts to Japan after his popularity in the U.S. faded. The camera crew followed the couple's life together, including some of the linguistic and other challenges all international couples encounter.

Japanese living in unexpected places.

Steins;Gate is Up for Preorder!

Speaking of Steins;Gate, we've got some good news for you: we've posted the upcoming English game for preorder now! After we announced that the game was coming at the summer anime conventions, so many fans asked us to do a Japan-style limited edition release as we did with School Days, we couldn't help but say yes. The limited edition of Steins;Gate will be our best ever, with metal "lab member" pins and a plastic case to display them in, plus a gorgeous original artbook. Plus when you preorder, you'll get the download version of the game on day 1 when the game is released, with no delay, as a bonus. So order the Steins;Gate Limited Edition now, or preorder the Download Edition if you like. The game is scheduled for release in winter 2014.

Raising Bilingual Kids is like Han Solo and Chewbacca

My wife and I naturally wanted to raise our two kids to be bilingual in English and Japanese. I always did my best to speak English to the kids and require them to ask me questions in English if they wanted something, but the results were often like Han Solo and Chewbacca. One policy I always maintained was that all movies would be watched only in English, so if they wanted to see Harry Potter or Toy Story, it'd be done without Japanese subtitles. This caused them to learn in a more "natural" way than Japanese children, who memorize grammar and vocabulary and translate sentences, but there were some disadvantages to this method. When you or I learn a foreign language as an adult, we build synaptic bridges in our brains, and when we go to translate a sentence, these bridges what enable us to know that "apple" in English is ringo in Japanese. My kids, however, essentially learned English and Japanese separately, with fewer synaptic links installed -- thus, my daughter loved eating "corn" but hated tomorokoshi (which is Japanese for corn). Sometimes we'd be in the bath together (parenthood in Japan involves taking many baths with your kids) and I'd test their ability to translate from one language to the other. Although they were largely functional in both languages, the act of translation was surprisingly difficult for them.

You learn a lot about the human brain when you raise bilingual kids.

Mino Monta Teaches Us About "Responsibility"

One concept you encounter quite a lot in Japan is 責任 sekinin, meaning responsibility or duty. Whether it's a clipboard in a restaurant bathroom an employee has signed signifying that he's checked and cleaned the bathroom each hour, or the time Kusanagi of the band SMAP was arrested for being naked in public (he'd had a bit too much to drink) and was banned from working for several months to atone for his error. Last week the famous TV announcer Mino Monta -- who's listed in the Guinness Book as the TV presenter with the most live TV appearance in a week, 22 hours -- appeared in a press conference with his head held low. It seems his son Yuto had happened upon a drunk civil servant sleeping in the street and thought it'd be a good idea to steal the guy's bank card and try to withdraw money. He was caught on camera and arrested, which caused a huge scandal for one of the most famous faces on Japanese TV, which brought on his heartfelt apology. Incidentally if you're wondering why the son's hands are mosaiced out in the picture above, it's illegal to show handcuffs on suspects as it creates an expectation of guilt in society that hasn't yet been proved by a court of law.

Mino Monta takes responsibility for his son.

Kantai Collection: the New King of Japanese Pop Culture?

You never know when the next boom in the anime subculture will show up. One year the hottest thing might be products related to the indies shooting game Touhou, and the next, everyone at Comiket will be clamoring for Hatsune Miku and her Vocaloid friends. The Next Big Thing for otaku culture seems to be 艦隊これくしょん Kantai Collection ("Fleet Girls Collection"), abbreviated as KanColle by fandom, a Japanese online game in which players fight battles and collect cards featuring "moe" versions of famous Japanese battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers from World War II. That's right, the characters are cute anthropomorphized versions of the such famous ships as the destroyer Shimakaze, the carrier Akagi, and of course the great battleship Yamato. There's even a moe version of the carrier-battleship Ise, which my wife's uncle served on. The game is currently so popular it's nearly impossible to get an account, and fanart based on the game's characters have taken over Pixiv, Japan's online artist community -- I've been posting some to the J-List Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr feeds if you want to follow along. We're starting to see some great KanColle products showing up on the site including a 2014 calendar, and we can certainly hope to see an anime someday, preferably by the creators of Strike Witches.

Kantai Collection is the Next Big Thing in otaku culture.

A Ton of 2014 Calendars In Stock

The really big list of 2014 calendars finally came in, featuring more than 100 gorgeous anime, Japanese music and fashion idol, and even naughty JAV calendars, and we've posted a ton to the site. Japanese calendars are printed on huge glossy poster-sized pages and are a really excellent way to spend 2014 with your favorite obsession, whether it's Attack on Titan or Pokemon or something less famous but equally cool like Ultraman or beautiful gardens of Kyoto. Japanese calendars also make great Christmas gifts. Browse the newly posted 2014 Japanese calendars now!

Thoughts on Korea and Discrimination

In a post I made to J-List's Facebook page about Tokyo winning the 2020 Olympics, one reader from South Korea posted a comment saying that he hoped Japan would not show discrimination to Koreans during the games. I was surprised at his comment -- while there's no such thing as a country totally free from discrimination, the Japan I see every day is certainly not that kind of country. The second largest ethnic group in Japan are zainichi ("residing in Japan") Koreans, who were born in Japan and often don't speak more than a few words of Korean but who for historical and cultural reasons choose to maintain South or North Korean citizenship and passports. The Japan I see is very sensitive to criticism about how this group is treated and has tackled issues important to them, such as removing the old rule that anyone taking Japanese citizenship also adopt a Japanese name (which would be unacceptable to Koreans) and removing fingerprints from the foreign registration cards all foreigners carry. Our prefecture of Gunma even provides funding to two North Korean private schools which display pictures of Kim Jong-un in classrooms and indoctrinate their students against Japan, though some other prefectures decline to extend this funding to similar schools. If there's a discrimination problem between Japan and Korea, maybe Koreans -- the ones in Korea, I mean, since zainichi living here are essentially Japanese with a heightened appreciation for kimchee -- should look in a mirror. They've created a culture of hatred for Japan that goes beyond what may have once been appropriate based on history, obsessing over every misdeed done to them in TV dramas and encouraging their children to create terrible anti-Japan art. (Amazingly, South Korea has convinced itself that it hates Japan more it hates North Korea, a country that randomly kidnaps and/or kills its citizens.) Maybe for the sake of peace and commerce, South Korea could lighten up a little, and realize that nothing good can come from poisioning future generations.

Hoping for Happier Times between Japan and Korea

The Use of "Hanko" Kanji Name Stamps in Japan

While Japan generally imitates the legal framework of the West, one big difference is the use of 判子 hanko, or name stamps, when indicating approval on a contract, filling out forms at the bank, and so on. A custom imported from China ages ago, virtually every Japanese carries one of these unique name stamps with them. When a couple decides to get married, they head to their city office and fill out a marriage form, then both get out their hanko stamps and, in an iconic gesture, stamp the document...and then they're married. One of the joys of being a gaijin in Japan is getting one of these name stamps made, which involves choosing official kanji for your name (though it's perfectly okay to have one made using katakana, too). There are various ways to go about assigning kanji characters to a foreigner's name, including basing it on the pronunciation or assigning your name as an unofficial reading for the kanji that represents your name, called ateji. Incidentally, J-List has a great custom name stamp service, which includes free assigning of a kanji name to you based on your preferences, and because our staff are native Japanese, you don't need to worry about the characters meaning something embarrassing. These hanko stamps are legal for use in Japan.

Japanese use hanko stamps in lieu of signatures.

Typhoon Season in Japan

Japan is certainly a country with plenty of potential for natural disasters -- my mother once visited us for two weeks, and managed to experience a huge typhoon, an earthquake and a volcanic eruption all during the time she was here. September in Japan is storm season, and every week we watch them form in the Pacific, hoping they won't hit Japan, Okinawa or some other populated area. Today a large tropical storm named Man-yi (or just good old "typhoon no. 18" in Japan, which doesn't have the tradition of naming storms) hit Japan's main island of Honshu dead-on, making landfall near Osaka and heading north to drench Tokyo and Northern Japan. The winds and rain caused 380 flights to be canceled, halted Japan's bullet train network and caused massive flooding around Tokyo and Kyoto. Happily J-List's home prefecture of Gunma is as far from the sea as you can get in Japan, so we're usually spared most of the damage from incoming typhoons.

September is typhoon season in Asia.

Amazing Anime Figures In Stock

J-List is loaded with thousands of fun products from Japan, including prepainted anime figured. We've got the super-deformed Nendoroid series and super detailed Figma and Revoltech figures. cute girls for fans of Sailor Moon or Sword Art Online, and even Tony Taka figures that can give you quite a nosebleed. Browse our anime figures now, ranked according to awesomeness courtesy of our customers.

Peter's Advice for Students of Japan

I received a request in my Twitter feed from a customer who was studying Japanese in preparation for a visit here, but having problem with her language study. Since I'm sure there are others who would like to read my comments, I thought I'd make a general Japanese Study Advice post here.

• First, consider your goals, whether it be to learn the basics of the language in order to gain a deeper appreciation for Japan, to travel and make friends, or to become fluent someday.
• While Japanese isn't really any harder than French or Spanish, learning the writing systems can bog you down, but learn to embrace it. Make sure to only use study tools that force you to learn using proper hiragana and katakana, as reading Romanized Japanese (Japanese written in the English alphabet) will harm your progress and give you a bad speaking accent. The Moekana/Moekanji, Genki and White Rabbit series are all excellent.
• If you've studied a foreign language before, learning Japanese will be easier because your brain "knows" it's possible to do, but if this is your first time learning a foreign language you'll have to get to that point.
• Everyone learns differently, and you should try to see what methods work for you. I had success with writing out sentences in my textbook multiple times, transcribing and translating JPOP songs for friends, and using mnemonic connections to "trick" my brain into learning, but your brain may work differently.
• Another approach I discovered was to treat Japanese sentences and grammar like mathematical equations that I could manipulate. Once I'd memorized a basic sentence like 私はアメリカ人ですが、彼女はアメリカ人ではありません Watashi wa America-jin desu ga, kanojo wa America-jin de wa arimasen ("I'm an American, but she isn't an American") I could substitute other words, making new sentences. This helps your brain interalize the information more smoothly.
• Reading manga is good because almost all the words you see are verbally spoken by the characters, and thus can be used by you in the same way. Don't go overboard with this though, and balance this type of studying a formal approach at the same time.
• There are study methods that didn't exist when I was learning back in the late 80s, from online teaching services to software programs to innovative approaches like using Twitter to practice your new language. That said, I still think a formal program, either at a university or language school, is the best route for most.
• I found studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December to be an excellent motivator, and have fond memories of obsessing over each year's test as it approached, which made me study harder. See info on how you can take the JLPT outside Japan here.

And remember, if you're trying to learn a little Japanese or a lot, J-List can help.

Poor Tomoko from WataMote can't catch a break; Japanese are masters at the art of gift-giving.

The Japanese Art of "Omiyage" Souvenirs

If there's one thing the Japanese are good at, it's gift-giving, and one of the most enjoyable kinds of gifts to give and receive are おみやげ omiyage (pronounced oh-me-yah-geh), or souvenirs given to friends, family and coworkers after returning from a journey. The other day I caught one of Japan's popular "ranking" shows on TV, which introduced the most popular omiyage gifts from each region of Japan. These included the top brand of "castella" cake from Nagasaki, those oddly named but delicious "chinsuko" cookies from Okinawa, and a delicious eclair sold only in Tokyo's Haneda Airport with the odd name of "Samantha Tabitha." (J-List's home prefecture of Gunma is much less famous, but we do have Initial D cookies.) Japan is experiencing a huge boom in yuru-chara or anime-style mascots who promote tourism in Japan's rural cities. One of the most popular is Kumamon, the official mascot of Kumamoto, Kyushu, and there are plenty of products bearing his cute face for sale these days.

Japanese are masters at the art of gift-giving.

Watamote, aka Breakfast Club for the Current Generation

I continue to enjoy Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui!, aka No Matter How I Look At It, It's Your Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!, shortened to WataMote to make it easier to remember. It's the story of poor Tomoko, a socially awkward fujoshi (female otaku) who's so into manga and romance-simulation games that has trouble making friends at school...and for Tomoko, there's no Light Music Club or Genshiken to help her find lifelong soulmates to connect with. She tries everything she can to turn her social situation around, hatching one crazy plot after another in order to become popular, but her plans always seem to backfire. Though the cruel situations she finds herself in make the show physically painful to watch at times, both as a former high school nerd from the days when the concept of "nerd pride" didn't exist and also as the father of an otaku daughter today, it's definitely a fun show. What I like best about it is how it might possibly affect some viewers in a positive way. Though Tomoko would love to blame her unpopularity on others, for example the "bitches" in her class who have boyfriends, in reality she has to take a large part of the blame for her social problems herself. Perhaps the show can be therapeutic to girls (and guys) who are battling the same kinds of social issues, if nothing else then by showing them they're not alone.

Poor Tomoko from WataMote can't catch a break.

Kawaii Fashion Products In Stock at J-List

J-List stocks fun Japanese apparel and cosplay products from Japan, with hundreds of products for you to browse. We've got kawaii Japanese "over knee socks," T-shirts for Totoro fans, anime cosplay glasses that will make you look like an anime character and authentic shimapan. Why not browse all our Japanese apparel and cosplay products now?

Yakuza and Saunas in Kyoto

One of the best things about Japan is the way a foreign visitor will generally never have to feel fear about anything, as you'll generally be safe no matter where you find yourself, though I did manage to find an exception to this rule. I'm a big fan of public baths and hot springs, and I learned early on that you can travel around Japan cheaply by staying at "saunas," which are 24-hour public baths that also offer traditional saunas as well as a communal room for customers to sleep in. They're cheap, costing around $35 to stay in the heart of a large city, and it can be fun to strike up conversations with the other patrons, who are often so surprised to see a gaijin in a place like that that they'll buy you a beer. The first time I went to Kyoto, I thought it'd be fun to stay in a sauna, but I hadn't realized at the time that Kyoto is a hotbed of yakuza, and the sauna I'd decided to stay at was filled to the brim with scary-looking gangsters with full-body tattoos and various scars. I tried to make the best of the situation, pretending not to notice the sideways looks I was getting while I enjoyed the baths. It was easy to pick out which man was the oyabun (yakuza boss), since he was the one getting his back washed vigorously by his underlings (kobun), who fell over themselves to do anything he wanted.

Note, the yakuza you see in saunas almost never look like this.

Unique Speech Patterns in (Super) Anime Characters

I've written before that, while anime and manga can be useful tools for studying Japanese, it's important to avoid relying on them too much. When anime creators go to design a new character, they work hard to differentiate them in various ways, adding visual features like the iconic yellow hair ribbon Haruhi wears, or Yotsuba's prehensile pigtails, which move in response her mood. Increasingly, animators use language to make their characters stand out, giving their creations unique speech patterns that can be as separate from natural Japanese as Yoda's speech is from Galactic Standard English. Nowhere is this more common than in A Certain Scientific Railgun, a series in which virtually every character has a unique way of talking, for example "rich girl" Mitsuko, who speaks in a parody of how aristocrats talk, often using the phrase ごきげんよう go-kigen-yoh, an archaic way of saying "good luck." Then there's the "super" girl Saiai, a level 4 esper who has to show you how "super" her powers are by inserting the word 超 cho (meaning "super") into every "super" sentence. Another show that uses language that's quite far removed from "real" Japanese is Bakemonogatari, in which characters speak in a way that's overly formal yet very elegant-sounding to the ear. So while using anime and manga to study Japanese is okay, you should balance things with a more formal study program at the same time.

Some (super) Railgun side characters.

The Japanese Love "Peace"

One of my first impressions of the Japanese people as I was growing up was that they love photography and always make the "peace" sign when getting their picture taken, which was one of those rare times when a stereotype turned out to be completely true. The origin of the ubiquitous Japanese pose is not 100% clear. It could have come from the Winston Churchill's famous "V for victory," or (according to another theory) from a 1972 TV commercial for a Konica camera in which an actor ad-libbed a peace sign at the end, which happened to resonate with viewers. Supposedly, there are different variations on how Japanese (specifically females) will perform the gesture, depending on what era they come from. Women in their 40s will make a fairly orthodox peace sign, while ones in their 30s grew up being told the gesture was stupid by their parents, and thus tend to make shy "V" gestures that are less noticeable. Japanese women in their late 20s make "double peace" signs near their chin in a compact but cute gesture born from the popularity of "Purikura" photo booths in the 1990s, while the trend among the youngest Japanese females is "reverse peace," done with the palm facing towards the person making the gesture. Which happens to be a rude gesture in much of the U.K., Australia and New Zealand...oops.

Japanese girls do "peace" differently according to age.

Sword Art Online Products from Japan

J-List loves the popular anime Sword Art Online, and we're loaded with fun SAO products you might want to browse, from figures to parody T-shirts and the new 2014 calendar, with gorgeous glossy pages and totally original art. We also have parody "dolphin polishers" for solo players who need to replenish their personal mana level.

Japan's Kawaii Automobile Market

Japan's automobile market is quite different from what you may be used to in your own home country. For starters, every car is sold through factory-owned dealerships rather than through third-party dealers, a model famously copied by GM's Saturn division, and when you buy a new car you generally wait 2-3 months for the factory to build it rather than driving it off the lot that day. There's a cycle of "lucky" and "unlucky" Buddhist days in Japan, and it's important to make sure you take delivery of a new vehicle on one of the lucky ones lest some tragedy befall you and your family. In addition to car models you may be familiar with -- the Honda Odyssey, the Toyota Prius, the Mazda CX-5 -- there are many models sold only in Japan, with names like Nissan Elgrand Homy, Honda That's, Mazda Bongo Friendee and Daihatsu Naked. One of my favorite categories of automobile is the subcategory of extremely kawaii cars marketed to females, with cute names like Nissan Moko, Suzuki Chocolat and the Daihatsu Mira Cocoa and Move Latte. They sound delicious.

The Japanese automobile industry has been greatly affected by two social trends over the past decade or so. The first is 自動車離れ jidosha-banare or the trend of young people being less and less interested in owning a nice car, which began around the turn of the millennium. Whereas previous decades saw young people saving their money for that first set of wheels, the current generation of young Japanese places more emphasis in other areas of their life, such as keitai (cell phones) or social media, and don't see car ownership as the status symbol it once was. This has caused Japan's domestic car market to shrink, and forced car companies to get creative at making cool-looking "kei" (light) cars that can be purchased for the equivelent of $12,000 or so. A related trend is 草食化 soushoku-ka, the so-called "herbivorification" of males in Japanese society. In days of yore, a guy would be happy to work extra hours so he could save up for a really nice car that would impress girls, which is called a nampa-sha or "girl hunting car." Over the past decade or so, more men have mellowed and are less interested in dating and making sexual conquests, happy to sit at home watching YouTube or working on hobbies than in more "carnivorous" eras.

There's a complex ecosystem of cute cars for girls in Japan.

A Very Akira Olympics

All Japan is in rapture right now over the announcement that Tokyo has been selected to host the 2020 Olympics. While Madrid and Istanbul put up a great fight, the strong presentation by Tokyo coupled with the improving economic position of Japan and large number of facilities already in place enabled Tokyo to carry the day. While Prime Minister Abe won points with his speech about Japan wanting to "repay its debt to the world in full" for all the help the country received after the deadly earthquakes and tsunamis of March 11, 2011, a lot of the credit for the win went to Takigawa Christel, a half-French, half-Japanese TV announcer who was able to pitch the benefits of holding the Olympics in Tokyo to the IOC in French, which absolutely turned Japanese fans to jelly. The announcement was made a 5:20 am, Japan time, and many dedicated fans stayed up all night to be the first to hear the news. The selection of Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics is more than just a big win for Japan, it's the fulfillment of a destiny for otaku-dom. Fans of the classic anime Akira will remember that the film is set a few months before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and the final battle takes place in the newly constructed Olympic stadium.

Congratulations to Tokyo and Japan!

More Yumina the Ethereal Character Data

You can't have a good eroge without a meganekko, an extremely cute girl who wears glasses, and there's a really nice one in our new ero RPG Yumina the Ethereal. Her name is Honma Maino, and she's a shy, mild-mannered girl who loves to read books and take care of the school library. At Jinbu Academy, where athletics are king, culture clubs like the Library Committee occupy the bottom of the social pecking order, but she always works hard anyway. She's one of the super cute characters you can romance in the game, and one of my favorite girls. Visit the official Yumina site, or go order the game from J-List in shrinkwrapped package or Internet download form now!

2014 Calendars Posted to the Site!

We were happy that 2014 calendar season got off to an early start with the Kantoku, Tony Taka and other calendars we'd posted last month, and now we've got more good news: the main bulk of anime calendars has come in and are available for order now. This year looks like it'll be a great one, with large, glossy calendars for fans of Hatsune Miku, Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, Oreimo and more. Browse the newly posted Japanese calendars now and get your preorders in early!