Otaku Dreams Come True in Japan

I've written before about the way Japan-related fandom can be a place where dreams come true. Many of Japan's professional creators including manga artist group CLAMP, Fate/stay night writer Nasu and music/vocal team I've Sound/KOTOKO started out as artists making doujin works to sell at Comiket, while they refined their skills so they could go pro eventually. Then there are singers like British teen Beckii Cruel and the singing duo ClariS, who were able to turn popularity on Japan's Nico Douga video sharing site into record contracts. Dreams can come true in the J-POP world, too. American Chris Hart from San Francisco was always fascinated with Japanese music, and he studied the language in part using J-POP songs, which is a good way to reduce your speaking accent and pick up vocabulary words. After coming to Japan in 2009, he appeared on a TV show called Nodo-jiman! The World in which foreigners sing songs in Japanese (this is a thing here), and he cleaned the floor with the other contestants by virtue of his amazing silky voice. The next thing he knew he'd signed with Universal Music and had a major debut single under his belt. Chris had always been a fan of Matsuda Seiko, the Japanese idol singer who pretty much invented the category back in the early 1980s (she's the direct inspiration for Lynn Minmei), and he was able to fulfill his dream of singing with her in a duet single that comes out today. You can find this single plus of Seiko-chan's songs on iTunes Japan (iTunes link), and buy them with the handy iTunes Japan prepaid cards we sell!

J-POP fan Chris Hart's dreams came true in Japan.

Halloween 2013

Although Japan has no historical connection to the American (actually Scottish) tradition of Halloween, there's been more and more attention paid to the holiday over the past decade or so. While a lot of this comes from companies using Halloween to market products, such as the events Tokyo Disneyland puts on during the month of October, it also flows from Japan's natural love of cosplay. There's no custom of trick-or-treating in Japan, but many schools put on costume events which allow children to get into the spirit of things, and there are parties and parades in Japanese cities that allow folks to show off their costuming skills. Raising bilingual and "bi-cultural" kids has been a challenge for my wife and I, since even more important than mastering both languages is having the proper cultural and emotional connections to each country. Happily, I've been able to use Halloween as a bridge to the U.S. for my kids, and we still watch It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on TV together every October 31st. You never know how the complex world of anime memes will work, and for some reason Japanese artists have really embraced Halloween as an excuse to make incredible cute moe art. If you want to see some of these pictures, I'll be posting some to the J-List Facebook Page and Twitter feed.

Another Halloween is upon us all.

Fun "Harem" Eroge in English

One fun category of English-translated eroge is the "harem" game, which forgo some of the more subtle story elements visual novels are known for in lieu of good old fashioned "H" play. We're well stocked with great harem-themed themes in English, from Harem Party to Come See Me Tonight vol. 1 & 2 to the Idols Galore/Slave Pageant combo game. Click here to see the top English-translated harem game titles!

Sexual Nuances in Japanese Words

When you study a foreign language, it's natural to want to learn the "naughty" words first, but there's just one problem: most of profanity you're used to doesn't exist in Japanese. The most common insult is baka ("stupid"), and while the S-word does exist (it's kuso, in case you were wondering), there's no social stigma attached to it, and the word is regularly used in children's anime. That's not to say there aren't words that have an ecchi aspect to them, of course. Whenever I go to an udon restaurant I always do a double-take at seeing bukkake udon on the menu...but of course it's just a normal noodle dish with various ingredients tossed on including grated daikon radish, and it's naughty meaning arrived later. (My wife often trolls me by buying bukkake udon for my lunch if I don't specify what I want to eat.) If you like your gyudon beef bowl with extra juice you can ask for it つゆだくtsuyu-daku, or dripping with juice...though this word has developed a certain slang meaning, too. Kanji are made up of "radicals," elements that help define meaning, and one that appears along the bottom of characters like 思 (thought) or 恋 (romantic love) is called shita-gokoro...but this word also means "lower heart" and describes someone with less-than-pure intentions towards someone else. Okazu is an interesting word literally meaning "that which is eaten with rice," e.g. the main dish of any meal...though it also carries the slang meaning of "materials or fantasies used to assist in solo stress relief." In Italy and other countries you say "chin chin!" when making a toast, but this is a cute word for "penis" in Japanese. The single worst word in Japanese is manko, referring to female genitalia, and everyone avoids saying this word...though inevitably you'll need to refer to the number 10,000 (man) with a counter for small objects (ko), no doubt in front of a pretty girl, and will likely embarrass yourself.

There's a natural tendency for some words and concepts to bring out our ecchi side.

New Madoka Magica Movie!

The new Madoka Magica movie opened this weekend, so naturally I made time to go see it. Whereas the first two films (which we have on Blu-ray, complete with English subtitles) were a compilation of the series, the third movie features a great new story that starts where the series left off. (I'll avoid spoilers, but will say that the movie was great, with lots of everything that we all love about Madoka.) I like Madoka Magica because of the way writer Urobuchi Gen cleverly deconstructs the magical girl genre in the same way Western comics like Astro City or Top 10 toy with the superhero genre. Viewers go into Madoka expecting something in the tradition of Rayearth, Nanoha or Sailor Moon, yet the series refuses to conform to expectations, eschewing predictable monster-of-the-week stories and transformations that happen at the same point in every episode, instead jumping around chronologically and giving us a heroine who doesn't even become a magical girl until the series is mostly over, when the drama is highest.

The Madoka story continues with a new movie.

Culture Festivals in Anime

Over the weekend I went to my son's high school to attend his last 文化祭 bunka-sai or culture festival, since he'll be graduating next March. Culture festivals are put on every year in the fall, or in schools with higher academic standards, every two years. More than most aspects of Japan, culture festivals are somewhat easy for us to understand, since if you've watched three episodes of anime in your life you've probably seen two centered around a school festival -- though I've yet to catch an episode in which a character's parents show up to embarrass their kids in front of his classmates, as I did with my son. At a school festival, the different classes and school clubs put on various dashimono (er, mini events) which follow popular trends -- in addition to a zombie nurse-themed haunted house and movie club that created parody versions of famous TV commercials, one class put on an Attack on Titan-themed palm reading shop. Culture festivals serve several purposes: they're a chance for students to have some fun after test season, and they're important for cross-pollination between schools, as students from different schools can visit with friends, and incoming students trying to decide which high school to attend can visit and get a feel for things. Going to culture festivals are also the only way students who go to all-girl or all-boy schools can hope to find a girlfriend/boyfriend.

Culture Festivals are a staple of modern anime.

iPhone and Android Accessories from japan

J-List is well stocked with awesome products for your cell phone, whether you've got the iPhone 5/5S/4 or Samsung Galaxy 3/4. In addition to great anime-themed cases featuring Sailor Moon and other popular anime series, we stock those ridiculously cute Nyanko Earphone Jack cats that love to sit in your phone and act cute. Click to see the top iPhone and Android products from Japan!

Why is Anime in Japan So Expensive?

I write often about the word 常識 joushiki, which means "common sense," e.g. the common beliefs and opinions shared by a given group. Naturally what is common sense to someone in the U.S. or Canada is often going to be different from someone living in Europe, in Japan and so on. Part of the "common sense" of otaku culture in Japan is that it's perfectly reasonable to charge fans $80-100 for a DVD or Blu-ray with 2-3 episodes in it, because the discs come in limited versions with cool artbooks and stickers for collectors, though this is obviously not a price most consumers in the U.S. would be okay with. (This is why the import anime Blu-rays we stock are priced as they are, in case you ever wondered.) The higher prices Japanese fans pay is important to anime studios of course, and anime fandom fans around the world can be said to rest on the backs of these dedicated Japanese fans. One of the important things for companies to keep in mind is to make sure you're never trying to do business in one country while retaining the "common sense" rules of another -- doing so will lead to a failed business in a very short time. Over the years, J-List has worked with many Japanese companies, and one of our challenges has always been, how to to keep them from trying to apply Japanese "common sense" rules to the West, for example charging prices that are higher than our customers would be comfortable with for our licensed English-translated eroge and visual novels, or printing gorgeous dakimakura and wall scrolls which look nice yet cost hundreds of dollars, more than most fans will agree to.

Japan can seem a different planet from the rest of the world, where $100 DVDs are the norm.

New Anime Review: Nagi no Asukara

I'm always happy when an anime series manages to be totally fresh and original, rather than yet another moe harem show about awkward young people who "have few friends" yet somehow enjoy a richer social life than I ever had in high school. One standout anime in the new season is Nagi no Asukara ("Calm Sea From Tomorrow"), which can be described as Ponyo meets Tari Tari. It's an alternate world where some humans live in the sea and some on land, the two groups having separated many years ago. When their junior high school closes, four students from the sea village must attend school on the land, which leads to friction between the two groups, especially when romantic feelings between sea-girl Manaka and land-boy Tsumugu start to bloom. The world revealed in the show is absolutely fascinating, something only Hayao Miyazaki could have conceived of, though don't bother asking why the under-the-sea world has things like musical instruments and people drinking sake out of cups despite already being under water. Because it's an original anime and not based on an existing manga or novel series, it's getting a lot of attention by fans, and hopefully we'll get a strong ending to the show like we did with AnoHana.

I'm enjoying the new anime Nagi no Asukara a lot.

Some Rare Professions You Can Find in Japan

There are some rather unique professions in Japan, from the waitresses who work at cat girl maid cafes to people whose job it is to hand out those handy pocket tissues (the kind you get with every J-List order) at street corners in Japanese cities. In addition to normal taxis there are what are known as daiko, or "replacement drivers," essentially a tax with two drivers, one of whom will drive you home in your own car (with the other car following behind), a great option for when you've had too much to drink but need your car the next morning. When a company releases a new product, they'll often hire extremely beautiful models called "campaign girls" to hold the product and show it off. Similar to campaign girls are "race queens," incredibly cute girls who promote F-1 racing in Japan. If you ride in an elevator in a posh Tokyo department store, you might be surprised to see a uniformed "elevator girl" who pushes the buttons for you and announces the items sold on each floor in the most charming voice. Japan is not always the most efficient country in the world, and there's actually a job called "traffic flow measurers" who sit by the road and manually click a counter each time a car goes by. (This was featured in an episode of K-On! once.) One reason bank ATMs aren't 24 hours in Japan is, there's nearly always a person inside the machine (in a small room built into the back of the machine) who does things like refill the dispenser when it runs out of money as well as guard the machine from thieves -- can you imagine doing that for a job? Finally, when choosing the most delicious rice is really important, you might go to a "rice sommelier" who's an expert at tasting and classifying the different brands of rice sold in Japan.

Race queens and Campaign Girls in Japan, two of my favorite Japanese professions.

More 2014 Calendars In Stock

2014 Japanese calendar season is going strong, and we're filled to the gills with awesome anime, moe art, JPOP idol, cute cat and ecchi calendars from Japan. Japanese calendars are really great, with large, poster-sized pages that are beautifully printed, a great way to spend 2014. Today we received stock of a dozen or more calendars, including Sword Art Online and Oreimo, and we posted the upcoming Shirow Masamune calendar too. Get your orders in fast!

Curry Rice and Japan

"You've been in Japan too long when you no longer find anything amusing about the concept of 'Vermont Curry.'" Although you may think of certain foods like sushi, sashimi, tempura and sukiyaki as popular Japanese dishes, the honorary national food of Japan has got to be curry, or as the Japanese always call it, curry rice. Curry spread out from India during the 1700s, a gift from the British Empire that's enjoyed in Japan more than any other kind of food save rice itself. Many companies compete to bring the best curry to market, with products like House The Curry (the Japanese love to add the word "the" to product names), Java Curry, and Vermont Curry, flavored with the mild kiss of Vermont apples. One of the rules of curry-eating is, it takes even better after it's been left to sit out all night, and "second day curry" is just heavenly (although my son discovered that "second day Chef Boyardee ravioli" is pretty good, too). Curry is available in many forms in Japan, poured over fried pork cutlet; as udon noodles in a curry soup, a popular dish from Nagoya; or as curry bread, a doughnut-like ball of bread with curry inside.

Mmm, I could go for some delicious curry rice right about now.

Some Thoughts on the Word "Free"

Words are amazing things, able to communicate meaning in spoken and written form and also adapt when new concepts come along that need naming, like the word "Madopantsu," which describes Homura's favorite thing. The Japanese import a lot of English words, often due to the constant march of technology but also because English words sound 格好いい kakko ii (cool, good style). One English word that comes up a lot in Japan is "free," which happens to be the name of Kyoto Animation's popular anime about boys in a swimming team. The word "free" carries its normal meaning of "without restraint or limitation," though it's other meaning of "costing no money" sometimes applies. If you make a call to a company asking about their products, the call will likely be "free dial" (a.k.a. a toll-free call), and many Japanese apparel and cosplay products are listed as being "free size" by the manufacturers, which basically means "one size fits all." During off-peak hours, a love hotel might advertise "free time," meaning a time of day where couples can stay for longer than the usual three hours if they like. The Japanese love buying and selling stuff at flea markets...but for linguistic reasons, they think they're called "free markets," where products can be bought and sold freely. (The Japanese also think that Pizza Hut is "Pizza Hat" because the red roof looks like a hat to them.)

Some thoughts about the word "free."

The Sexless Japanese

A couple days ago a newspaper in the U.K. published an article about the declining interest in sex by many Japanese people. It's a theme I've written about before: among the many challenges Japan faces as a nation is an odd trend of both men and women being less interested in doing the "dance with no pantsu" than previous generations, deciding it's mendokusai or "too much work." There are many reasons for this trend, including the general stress of society and work, the sad reality of social awkwardness by both sexes, and "herbivorification," a metrosexual-esque trend that has many Japanese men more interested in learning to cook and create beautiful bento lunches than make sexual conquests. Another factor is known as "parasite singles," the result of having so many only children: because they know they'll be able to inherit their parents' house and land eventually, many young people enjoy lives of luxury, never getting serious about work or starting a family. It's tempting to think that the rise in otaku culture might be partially responsible for the decreased interest in sex, but it's just one of many distractions in everyday life in Japan. While it's true there's no shortage of games in which men get to interact and fall in love with beautiful moe girls, the reverse is true, too, and there are plenty of games in which women can explore incredible fictional love relationships. One popular mobile game for iOS called Kiss of Revenge, about a woman who approaches a man not for love for so she can kill him, to take revenge for something he did many years ago. As she goes to execute her plan, she realizes she's fallen for him and must make a choice: love or revenge?

Japanese people are doing the horizontal mambo less often.

2014 Anime Calendars In Stock Today!

2014 Japanese calendar season is going strong, and we're filled to the gills with awesome anime, moe art, JPOP idol, cute cat and ecchi calendars from Japan. Japanese calendars are really great, with large, poster-sized pages that are beautifully printed, a great way to spend 2014. Today we received stock of a dozen or more calendars, including Sword Art Online and Oreimo, and we posted the upcoming Shirow Masamune calendar too. Get your orders in fast!

Of Pickles, Beans and Culture

I've written before that two of the most important foods to any culture are beans and pickles, two food categories that tend to be closely tied to our respective cultural identities and difficult for outsiders to approach. When Japanese go to the U.S. and eat Mexican food for the first time, they're invariably turned off by the taste of refried beans, and you can tell a Japanese who's lived in the U.S. for a couple years because he's learned to love Mexican food. Similarly, many traditional Japanese sweets are based on anko or azuki, sweet Japanese beans that took me a few years to warm up to. A couple months ago I had the urge to eat one of my favorite foods -- tuna salad with extra pickles on a toasted plain bagel -- but I was out of pickles. I decided to swing by a local import shop to see what they could offer me, but the only brand of Western-style pickles was something from Germany, with Kühne Gewürzgurken Auslese printed on the label. Ignoring my better judgment I bought a jar, but unfortunately they were not to my taste, though no doubt any Germans passing through my corner of rural Japan would have loved them. In the end I bought a jar of Vlassic pickles through an import company in Kobe called the Foreign Buyers Club, which can get any food for you as long as you don't mind buying a large supermarket-sized case. Sometimes you just can't say no to your own culture.

Oddly I couldn't tell if these were dill or sweet pickles.

Kamen Rider and "Tokusatsu" Shows

There are many sides to Japanese pop culture, including anime, manga, moe-kei games, and cosplay. Another category with a long history is known as 特撮 tokusatsu, meaning "special effects," which describes the various types of live-action hero and monster TV shows, such as "Super Sentai" (Power Rangers-style teams of heroes who fight for justice), monster-specific series like Ultraman plus the long-running Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) franchise. Virtually every child in Japan grows up watching these shows, and they're forever tied to that point in television history as they go forward in life. My son grew up during the era of Seiju Sentai Gingaman, Kamen Rider Kuuga and Ultraman Gaia (all late 1990s shows), and if he encounters a person of similar age he'll be able to talk about these series with them. The newest Kamen Rider show is Kamen Rider Gaim, which is getting a lot of buzz as it's written by Urobuchi Gen, the legendary writer responsible for Madoka Magica and our popular game Saya no Uta. Whether this means we'll see main characters getting decapitated by Cthulhu monsters remains to be seen.

There's a new Kamen Rider series on TV. Will you be watching?

Japanese Traveling Abroad

Japan is an island nation and is thus naturally closed off from the rest of the world, both geographically as well as culturally. To travel abroad for the first time is a coming-of-age event for any Japanese, and they are naturally very doki doki (er, flush with excitement) about what they'll encounter in the outside world. Although Japanese usually study 6-10 years of English, it's usually textbook English intended for passing tests, and most Japanese need many months of extra study before they can use the language with confidence. Because Japan is a peaceful country where you're unlikely to ever experience danger, Japanese often suffer from 平和ボケ heiwa boke, literally "being stupid in the head from too much peace," which can make them do dumb things, like the 18-year-old female student of mine who thought it'd be appropriate to walk around the streets of Los Angeles alone while wearing bunny pajamas. Mai, the J-List employee who keeps our site stocked with bento boxes, ridiculously cute panda- and frog-themed coffee cups and traditional Lucky Cat Chopstick Rests, has taken a week off to go to New Zealand, so if you see a random Japanese woman walking around there, be sure and wave hello.

Japanese people love to visit other countries.

Free Tissue, Anime Glasses with Every J-List Purchase

When you order from J-List, you get a lot more than awesome bento products, anime figures, Japanese snacks and shimapan. You also get free Japanese pocket tissues included with each order, along with fun anime eyeglasses that transform you into your favorite anime character. Note that pocket tissues and anime glasses are subject to availability, and won't be included with some orders if they might damage your items, such as including pocket tissue in a package with thin doujinshi. Why not browse J-List and make an order today?

Japan and the Color Red

What color is the sun? You might answer that it's yellow, or orange, or white. However, when asked this question most Japanese are likely to answer "red," perhaps because of the red circle on the Japanese flag, called 日の丸 hi-no-maru or circle-of-the-sun. It's interesting to look at other ways the color red has special cultural meaning to the Japanese. Babies are thought to be red-colored when they pop out of their mothers, and 赤ちゃん aka-chan is the most common way to refer to a baby in Japanese. In lieu of signing their names with a pen Japanese use a kanji "name stamp" called a hanko which uses red ink, though it's very bad form to write someone's name with a red pen, as it's thought they'll die if you do that. Red is the primary color you'll see when you visit a Shinto shrine, including the red Daruma dolls and torii arches, and lovers are said to be connected by an 運命の赤い糸 unmei no akai ito or Red String of Fate, an invisible red thread tied to their pinkies. Red is also the color of celebration in Japan, and it's common for families to eat 赤飯 sekihan or red rice with beans in it to celebrate life's important events, such as a wedding or a daughter's first, er, "flowering," to use the G.R.R. Martin term. If you want to try this rice (which is delicious, not sweet at all as some Japanese beans are), we have it in stock now.

Yes, definitely red.

New Anime Report: Outbreak Company

A new anime season is upon us, and I'm doing my best to keep up with the flood of new shows. One series I started watching last night is Outbreak Company, a fun anime with lots of fantasy themes. When a doorway connecting Japan and an alternate world is discovered, the Japanese government gets the bright idea of using moe culture as a bridge between the people in the other world and Japan. They hire Shinichi Kano to be Japan's "otaku ambassador" whose job is to introduce anime and manga to the residents of the Holy Eldant Empire to help them understand the Japanese people better. The show accurately captures the ineptness of the government of Japan to really understand 2D culture and why it's become popular around the world -- one government official describes it as, "Akiba-kei, tsundere, moe, you know, stuff like that." In addition to being a vehicle for making jokes about otaku culture and how it's seen by outsiders (e.g. foreigners like us), the show has quite a lot of interesting social commentary to make, and the story seems quite well developed. it's also got the cutest half-elf moe maid character I've ever seen.

Outbreak Company is a fun new anime series.

Japan's New Hair Trend is the New Black

As with other countries, fashions are constantly in motion in Japan, heading off in new directions then doubling back every few years. The latest trend in Tokyo this autumn is a 黒髪ブーム kurokami boom or a boom in jet black hair, inspired by the popularity of idols like Oshima Yuko of AKB48 and elegant model Mitsu Dan. Most Japanese go to junior high and high schools that have strict guidelines for student appearance, and a student or teacher is designated as the Public Morals Officer who makes sure skirts aren't raised too high and hair isn't dyed a lighter color. (My daughter would sometimes be questioned about her hair, but of course she's haafu and light brown her natural color.). When they graduate from school, it's common for Japanese to enjoy their newfound freedom and lighten their hair color (those rebels!), but now this trend is reversing, and black is, well, the new black. One a trend starts to take hold in Japan it's not uncommon for it to skyrocket until it seems everyone has become part of the wave. This is due to a phenomenon known as 右へ倣え migi e narae, which is a command to "line up, standing just as the person to your right is standing," which also describes the tendency of Japanese to copy people around them when a new trend starts to take hold.

The latest trend in Tokyo this season is black hair.

Combo Packs of Hentai Games in English

J-List has been involved with English-translated visual novels and eroge for years, and we love introducing these fun games to our customers. Because it's hard to keep every game in print as a shrinkwrapped package, we started combining two games in one, and our customers love being able to buy these reduced-price games, since there's nothing like getting a great game plus one more free. We've got Crescendo and Target: Pheromone, Idols Galore and Slave Pageant, the excellent yaoi titles Absolute Obedience and Enzai, a super pack with Amorous Professor Cherry plus Kango 1 & 2. and the especially awesome Do You Like Horny Bunnies vol 1 & 2 series. Not only do these great game packs let you get multiple games for a low price, they're great for collectors who want to own the games in physical formats. All games are DRM-free.

Sake and Japan

Everyone is familiar with Japanese sake (酒, pronounced SAH-kay, never "saki"), the distilled rice wine known as "spring water" to Yamato/Star Blazers fans. Sake has been made for millenia, from 6000 years ago in China and 2000 years in Japan, and is one of the world's oldest fermented beverages. Sake is often served hot, called atsukan, and it tastes great heated with a camping stove while sitting under the cherry blossoms in the spring. As with wine in the West, sake has always been associated with religious ceremonies, and when we built our J-List office, a Shinto priest came out to purify the ground with sake and salt to ensure that we would have good luck in the future. If you're interested in trying some sake, the staff of J-List recommend you consider Koshino Kanbai, Hakkaisan or Shira-Yuki, and always avoid the inferior (but often well marketed) brands Sho Chiku Bai, Ozeki and Gekkeikan.

Sake is a famous image of Japan.

Japan's Sweet Bean Bread Hero

Quick, name the most valuable licensed character in Japan. If you went with Hello Kitty or even Pokemon, you chose wrong. The top character in Japan by market share is named Anpanman ("Sweet Bean Bread Man"), a popular bread-themed superhero who fights against the evil Baikinman ("Bacteria Man") with his friends Currypanman (made of curry-filled bread) and Shokupanman (whose head is a giant slice of white bread) and his girlfriend Melonpanna (made of sweet "melon bread"). Anpanman is universally loved by all children in Japan, who wear his face on their T-shirts and underwear, and is enormously successful as a licensed property. The show is cute but can be weird at times, like Anpanman's penchant for breaking pieces of his head off and offering it to people when they're hungry, since his head is made of bread and it grows back. Yesterday it was announced that Anpanman creator Takashi Yanase died of heart failure at the age of 94...which is a quite an amazing number of years to be making children happy. Whenever the evil Baikinman bids someone farewell in the show, he always says, "Bye Bye-kin!" (pronounced 'bye bye-keen'), and if you ever want to surprise a Japanese person use this phrase on them and watch them jump out of their shoes.

The creator of Anpanman has gone to that bakery in the sky.

Rainy Tokyo

One of my favorite things about Japan is the quality of service you experience almost everywhere. Yesterday my employee Yasu and I drove into Tokyo to visit a company to discuss upcoming English visual novels, which takes about 90 minutes from our corner of Gunma and costs around $40. (Alas, Japanese freeways are not free.) Our timing could have been better since Typhoon Wipha was approaching the city, turning the streets of Tokyo into a giant Blade Runner set. During the drive down, a sensor in my car beeped warning that tire air pressure was low, so we pulled into a "gasoline stand" to have the tire pressure checked, which was done for free by an extremely cheerful and knowledgeable service station attendant. After we concluded our business we visited some stores in Akihabara to search for artbooks and other products we wanted to carry on the site, and were delighted when the staff of the bookstore bagged our purchases then produced plastic rain covers for our bags, so the books inside wouldn't get wet. We were definitely happy with the good service we received.

I've…seen things you wouldn't believe. Maids with shimapan handing out tissues in front of Tora no Ana…

Cute Cat Products at J-List

Are you a cat lover? If so then we've got some really fun cat-related products from Japan you should see, from Lucky Cat dolls that will bring good luck into your life, to catgirl-related figures and games, and even cute cats that attach to your iPhone or Android phone. We also carry authentic kotatsu heater tables, which are seen in many anime series. In addition to being an economical way to keep warm in the winter, kotatsu heaters are a great gift for your cat, since they love to sleep in them.

Agriculture and Farming in Japan

Like all countries, agriculture is important to Japan, and a large number of people are involved with various types of farming here. Although the amount of farmland in Japan is comparatively small, just 13% of the country compared with 40% of the U.S., it's intensely farmed, with a crop of rice grown in the summer followed by a crop of wheat or soybeans in the late fall. The Japanese consider food self-sufficiency to be an important national goal, no doubt due to the starvation they experienced during and after World War II, and large swaths of land are designated as farmland that cannot be developed for any other purpose. (This includes where J-List is located, though we were able to re-zone our land so that we could build our office. As a result we're surrounded by rice fields on all sides, which is quite funny for such a high-tech company.) One of the biggest differences between farming in Japan and America is the scale: while a few mega-corporations tend to dominate U.S. agriculture, most farming is done on a family level, or by very small companies.

When I was in the Atlanta area, I drove out to visit my brother and his wife, who run a farm raising various kinds of livestock including pigs, sheep, rabbits and free-range chickens. I was impressed by what I saw: a sustainable, efficient farm that made use of all available resources and had very little negative impact on the Earth. Best of all, they're able to harness the power of the Internet to reach out to customers who want to buy their organically-grown and all-natural products in ways that are similar to how J-List uses the Internet to connect with our customers. This kind of innovation is harder for Japanese farmers, in part because farming in Japan is managed from the top down, with most crops bought and sold by the government to stabilize prices. There's the reality that most farmers in Japan are aged 60 or older, a hard age to learn new Internet tricks. There are some silver linings for farmers in Japan, however, including low taxes thanks to government policies that encourage people to keep farming the land. Also, many farmers are able to create valuable high-end crops that sell for fabulous prices, like those honeydew melons that go for $100 each (which are usually bought to give as gifts to others) or famous brand mangoes that are greatly sought after by consumers.

Farming in Japan is different from in the U.S.

Kyoukai no Kanata: Beyond the Megane

When manga and anime creators go to design a new character, they have many options available to them. They might go with a simple imouto character with flowing twintails or try a variation of the iconic tsundere girl who hides her feelings of love with violent anger…or they might strike out in a bold new direction, like the eerie "clock eye" of Kurumi from Date-A-Live, or the odd single jeans-leg of Kaori Kanzaki from A Certain Magical Index. While various character design fashions might come and go like so many moe eye patches, I'm definitely a lifelong fan of meganekko, or girls who wear glasses. One of the key elements of moe is that the character must possess one or more imperfections or character flaws, whether it's cute clumsiness or the inability to read social situations around her…or just bad eyesight. One of the cutest glasses-wearing girls in anime today can be seen in the new series by Kyoto Animation called Kyoukai no Kanata (English title Beyond the Boundary), the story of an immortal half-human high school boy and the clumsy glasses-wearing girl who befriends him (after trying to kill him several times). So far it can be summed up as "Fate/stay night meets K-On!" but the characters are quite endearing so I know I'll keep watching. If you're a fan of megane, we've got a full line of anime cosplay glasses on the site, and all on sale this month, too!

A new KyoAni anime about megane and demons, or something.

Sailor Moon is Exploding at J-List

On Friday we posted a huge update of great new Sailor Moon products which the J-List staff has been busy searching for, including new Sailor Moon figures, "transforming" pens and pointers and a really cute Luna/Artemis reversible pouch. We posted some more items today, so browse the entire list of Sailor Moon products and see what you want to order. If at all possible we'd love it if fans could preorder the items they want ahead of time. You aren't charged until the items come in stock if you pay with a credit card, and this helps us know how many products to order (so we don't sell out before you get yours).

What Color Are Your Eyes?

Quick, what color are your eyes? You may have answered blue or hazel or brown, but if you were Japanese, you'd likely have replied, "black." Like all East Asians, Japanese are all born with brown eyes, but for incomprehensible cultural reasons they'll always tell you that their eyes are "black" if asked because they think you're asking about the pupil and not the iris. Eye color is something the Japanese are quite fascinated with when it comes to gaijin, and I've had many students who wanted to talk about my eyes, ask what color my parents' eyes were or see if I perceived the world through a blue tint. I personally have hazel-blue eyes that change color depending on what I'm wearing, and whenever I told my Japanese students this they were shocked and refused to believe me. Maybe the "black" eyes of Japanese people explains why they use the word 青 ao meaning blue to describe a "green" traffic light. I'll have to ponder that one a bit...

The twins with blue yes, from Please Twins.

How Do Japanese Feel About the USA?

When studying a language, it's not uncommon to encounter a word that that's difficult to translate on a 1-to-1 basis. One word that took me a while to pin down was 憧れる akogareru, a verb which means to respect or admire (say, a talented colleague);  to be attracted to (a nervous girl preparing to confess her love to her senpai); as well as to long for or to yearn after (for example, to yearn to visit Rome in the fall). This third definition sums up how many Japanese feel about the U.S., which seems to hold a special place in their hearts as a sprawling land of freedom which they describe with the word 格好いい kakko ii, meaning "cool" or "good style." I talked about this with Yasu while we were driving from Atlanta to Savannah, and he said, "I was personally attracted to America through its cool street culture, which was really big when I first came here. Now I feel I've come to the 'real America' and it's really great for me." Japanese aren't the only ones with romantic feelings for the U.S., of course, and in my own travels while back home I've encountered families from Europe and elsewhere making RV trips to the various beautiful sights America has to offer, and a gang of 20 cool old dudes from Switzerland fulfilling their dream of crossing America on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The word akogareru also describes how a lot of us feel about Japan, about making that first visit to the otaku "holy land" Akihabara or walking through the shrines and temples of Kyoto. It's a good word, I think.

Japanese are drawn to the U.S. just as we are to Japan.

The End of Space Battleship Yamato 2199

A new anime season is upon us, and as usual I'm still rushing to finish last season's shows, like Attack on Titan, the second season of Bakemonogatari/Monogatari and the realistic otaku girl anime WataMote. The most important show to me in recent months has been Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the re-make of the 1974 space opera about the WWII battleship Yamato, transformed into a spaceship capable of traveling 148,000 to the planet Iscandar to bring back equipment that can heal the Earth of radiation poisoning. It's not every day one's childhood walks through the door to greet you warmly, and director Yutaka Izubuchi and his production staff have done a fantastic job of updating the classic story for modern audiences and adding new twists in the plot, several based on episodes written for the original series but never produced. It's fun to see some of the story adaptions they've made: for example, there are now "blue" Gamilas aliens as well as a "white" sub-race that's part of the empire, a nod to President Desler's original white coloring in the 1974 series, which was changed to blue ten episodes in after some criticism. I've been savoring the last few episodes of the new series, unable to bring myself to pull the trigger and actually watch the end, though I'll probably give into temptation this weekend. If you're interested in one of the greatest space opera stories ever told, I recommend this show a lot, and happily, the Yamato 2199 Blu-rays are fully region free and subtitled in English! (And no, it's not necessary to watch the original first.)

I'm enjoying the Yamato re-make.

The Great Sailor Moon Boom of 2013

Time seems to be flowing backwards in the anime world these days, with classic old shows like Space Battleship Yamato coming back from the grave. Another show that's rising fast is Sailor Moon, thanks to the new series that will be airing in 2014. We've been adding great Sailor Moon products over the past few months, and today we have a huge volley of new items, including Sailor Moon figures, "transforming" pens and pointers, stationery and notebooks, and the cutest Luna/Artemis reversible pouch. We'll be putting our order in with the distributors in for these items next week, so if at all possible we'd love it if fans could preorder the items they want ahead of time. You aren't charged until the items come in stock if you pay with a credit card, and this helps us know how many products to order (so we don't sell out before you get yours).

Japan Consumption Tax Goes Up

In 1989 Japan enacted its first consumption tax (e.g. VAT or sales tax), forcing a 3% tax on purchases on a loudly complaining populace, and in 1997 the rate was raised to 5%. Now after years of wrangling by Japanese politicians, the tax is slated to be raised to 8% next April, which will likely cause more wringing of hands by consumers here. (Depending on where you live in the world, you might feel it's "quaint" to get upset over an 8% VAT, of course.) While there's a long list of products exempted from California's sales tax (essentials such as food, medicine, etc.), Japan's consumption tax is charged to nearly everything, all food, educational materials, even land and home purchases, which means there's always a big rush to finalize real estate purchases before a tax increase, followed by a big drop afterwards. The tax rate is scheduled to go up to 10% in another two years, too, though hopefully the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will wait for a rise in wages before they follow through with that.

More than the increase in consumption tax to 8% is the nervousness the move is making people feel about the future. Japan is unique among industrialized nations in that there's very little permanent immigration from the outside compared with the U.S. and Europe. Coupled with the low birth rate of just 1.39 children per female, this means Japan has greater financial challenges thanks to fewer young people supporting a rapidly aging society. (Japan is quite envious of the U.S., with its near-2.0 births per female and plenty of incoming immigration.) Internationally famous director and comedian Beat Takeshi hosted an interesting TV show in which politicians and scholars were given the opportunity to suggest strategies to tackle Japan's growing public debt. One suggestion was a "death consumption tax," with the reasoning being that if a person uses money during his life he's paying taxes and contributing to society, but if he saves his money without spending it society isn't benefited, so upon his death let's take a portion of that as consumption tax. While the aging of Japan is a big issue, another part of the problem is Japan's worthless leadership Japan over the years, with politicians addicted to building Shinkansen lines to Hokkaido and a "tunnel to nowhere" across Tokyo bay for no reason other than economic stimulus. Over the summer Japan's national debt passed 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen (one quadrillion yen, around $10 trillion), which is twice Japan's current GDP. When Google Calculator translates your country's national debt into scientific notation, things can't be good.

There's concern over the coming rise in consumption tax.

Autumn in Japan 2013

Fall is here in Japan, without a doubt my favorite time of the year since the weather is mild and the country becomes more beautiful. Just as spring is marked by 花見 hanami or cherry blossom viewing, the Japanese enjoy taking in the vibrant colors of fall, especially もみじ momiji or Japanese maple trees, and there's nothing like having a barbecue in the mountains of Gunma with family and friends with the leaves showing their colors all around. Autumn is the season for being assaulted by ads for "limited" products like Kirin's Aki-Aji ("Taste of Autumn") beer, as well as TV commercials inviting us to get on a train and go to Kyoto, which is breathtakingly beautiful as the leaves turn. It's hard to resist jumping out of my chair and heading there right now.

Autumn is my favorite season in Japan.

Yumina the Etheral, a Great Ero RPG in English!

J-List has worked for many years to help build a market for the amazing eroge and visual novels in Japan, and one game we're very proud of is the recently released Yumina the Ethereal, a great game with strong battle and RPG elements by the staff that brought us Aselia the Eternal. The main heroine -- named Yumina, surprisingly enough -- is a student whose grades are so bad she's doomed to be held back a year, unless she can get voted student council president. Can you master the battle system and help Yumina achieve her goal? Visit the official Yumina site which has a fully playable demo, or go order the game from J-List in shrinkwrapped package or Internet download form now!

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.