Evangelion vs Kill la Kill

"The distance from Earth to space is the same as from Tokyo to Hakone, about 50 miles/80 km." This was a tidbit from a Japanese trivia show which illustrates that outer space isn't really all that far away, about the distance of a short drive from Tokyo to Hakone, a pleasant area near Mt. Fuji. I'm planning a trip to Hakone with a friend next week, and since it's the setting for Evangelion, I thought I'd re-watch the Rebuild of Evangelion movies so I can figure out what 聖地 seichi "holy lands," e.g. real places that appear in anime, we want to visit. There are a lot of changes in new movies compared with the original 1995 series, including tightening the story and tweaking the characters. (Asuka is less of a classic tsundere, for example.) Another change is the arrival of Hollywood-style product placement, and everything from Lawson Convenience Stores to Yebisu and Kirin Beer to UCC coffee and Doritos is clearly visible to viewers in the new films. No company benefited from the trend towards product placement and anime cross-marketing than Pizza Hut, who signed promotional deals for everything from Code Geass to Oreimo to the new Eva movies, raking in money whenever otakus in Texas or the U.K. or Santiago, Chile get hungry for some pizza while watching anime. I'm quite happy when they put real products in anime, like the official Totoro caramels or those Grave of the Fireflies candies, since it allows us to share an emotional connection with products the Japanese also love.

After finishing up with Eva for the evening, I was still in a Gainax-ey kind of mood, so I turned on a few episodes of the new Kill la Kill. (It's not actually a Gainax show, but is made by the director of Gurren Lagann and some animators from Hideki Anno's animation studio Khara, so it sort of is, spiritually.) Kill la Kill is a hard anime to describe: it's basically Gurren Lagann meets Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt meets スケバン刑事 Sukeban Deka, aka Delinquent Detective Girl, an 80s TV series about a street-tough high school girl who fights crime undercover using her "battle yo-yos." Everything about Kill la Kill is meticulously designed, from the low frame-rate style of the retro animation to the outrageous battles in each episode, and it's just what the doctor ordered for fans who are feeling a touch of "harem anime fatigue." A lot of the references in the show will doubtless fly over the heads of most foreign viewers, such as the character Mako, whose design is based on a 1982 anime called Macchingu Machiko-sensei, and the flamboyant fighting scenes are an homage to a 1986 series called Hono no Tenkosei, or Blazing Exchange Student. Of course, "Gainax" has a long history of extensively referencing classic anime series: one of my favorite shows is Gunbuster, the story of the battle between humans and an alien race that spans 12,000 years...yet it's all one big homage to a 1970s tennis anime called Aim for the Ace.

I'm a fan of the frenetic "Gainax" anime Kill la Kill; the trend of product placement in anime.

J-List Loves PS Vita!

Remember that J-List stocks the cool PS Vita TV, a super-awesome "micro-console" that plays anime games and visual novels for the PS Vita on your big screen TV. Like Sony's other platforms, the Vita TV is region-free and will play compatible games from any region, though please note that currently it's not possible to log in with PSN accounts from the U.S. or Europe. You can of course create a Japan PSN account with one of the handy prepaid cards we sell, which gives you access to demos and other Japan-only content, or play compatible shrinkwrapped Vita games from the U.S., Japan etc.

The "Common Sense" of Japanese Anime Companies

A couple of updates ago I wrote about the word 常識 joshiki, meaning 'common sense,' and how one of the worst things a company can do is attempt to do business in one country while operating under the joshiki of another. Doing this creates a kind of "perceived schizophrenia" which causes stress among fans, who wonder what in the hell Japanese companies are thinking when in reality they're just operating by a different set of mental rules. While J-List is loaded with awesome 2014 calendars from Japan, don't bother looking for AKB48, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu or Johnny's-kei calendars, as the companies that manage these artists have found it more profitable to force fans to join fee-based fanclubs and sell calendars to them directly. (No, non-residents of Japan are never allowed to join these clubs.) The reason for those $100 Sailor Moon T-shirts is similar: Bandai decided to sell these direct to customers, jacking the price way up and removing distribution to third-party shops like J-List. (It's not our fault!) I remember hearing that Japanese companies excelled at "long-range thinking" but this is a real knee-slapper: in reality they're terribly conservative and would rather make too few of a product than risk it sitting around in a warehouse, which is why we encourage fans go get your Sailor Moon preorders in as early as you can, lest the item(s) you want be removed from the site. Other things that can be frustrating to dedicated fans include when Japanese companies sell products via lottery, or when they make limited edition Gundam models or Pokemon 3DS units but make no way for people outside Japan to buy. The Japanese companies aren't trying to frustrate us on purpose, they're just handicapped by trying to operate a global business with fans all over the world while maintaining a "common sense" that's only compatible with the Japan domestic market.

Sometimes it's impossible to figure out what companies like Bandai are thinking.

Japan Jobs Best Done by Gaijin

In Japan there are certain jobs that best performed by gaijin, a word that means foreigner, though in practice it nearly always refers to Westerners rather people from nearby Asian countries. Someone playing Santa Claus for Japanese children will have more of an aura of wonder and mystery if he's a foreigner, and the same is true of the cast members at Disneyland, since having an American or European actress playing Cinderella is just more magical than a Japanese person would be. Near J-List there's a wedding hall called Georgian House which attempts to recreate the splendor of early 18th century England in its architecture. In addition to having real gaijin ministers to marry couples (though they're just English conversation teachers making some money on the side, I know a few of them), the photography staff is also made up of foreigners, which lends an extra je ne sais quoi to the atmosphere of the place. Recently Japanese consumer products company Sunstar started running TV commercials for fluoride-enriched mouthwash. The commercial features a foreigner wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard, so you know the product must be effective.

Certain jobs should be done by gaijin.

More Ships, Moe Problems

I've been watching an anime about naval ships represented by super-cute moe girls. You may think I've gotten my hands on a pre-release version of the upcoming anime for Kantai Collection, the popular game in which the Japanese ships of World War II are reborn as anime girls, but in fact I'm talking about the new anime Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio, aka Arpeggio of Blue Steel. In the year 2039, several fleets of mysterious sentient warships suddenly appeared, laying waste to the navies of the world with unearthly weapons and blockading all trade between countries. Each of the advanced ships is represented by kawaii anthropomorphic avatars called "Mental Models," who naturally come in twintail, tsundere and similar varieties. No ship can stand against the invaders, except for I-401, a submarine with a mysterious girl named Iona as its avatar, who seeks out Gunzo Chihaya, the son of the famous commander who was victorious against the invaders 17 years ago, and asks him to become her captain. It's quite a good show with a unique world-view and enjoyable characters, and I'll keep watching for sure.

Did you think it was KanColle? Too bad, it was just Arpeggio of Blue Steel!

The PS Vita TV is Here!

Everyone is excited about the newest game console to be released. We're not talking about the Playstation 4 or Xbox One, mind you, but the brand-new PS Vita TV, a super-awesome "micro-console" that plays the many, many anime games, visual novels and Hatsune Miku pantsu viewers rhythm games on any HDTV in gorgeous quality yet is very inexpensive itself. As with all Sony game platforms, the PS Vita TV is fully region region free and very otaku friendly, allowing you to play any game you life from anywhere in the world. The PS Vita TV also supports streaming and remote playing of PS4 games, as well as Internet video streaming, though compatibility with these services might not be supported outside Japan. It'll also play anything the Vita plays, including PSP and PSOne, and will work with U.S. PSN accounts. So why not order a PS Vita TV from J-List, along with some awesome games?

How Japanese Grammer Works

Grammatically, Japanese is quite interesting, seemingly unrelated to all other languages, though one theory suggests a link to languages like Hungarian through a 40,000-years dead hypothetical linguistic ancestor. One interesting aspect of Japanese is the use of grammatical "particles," words that denote the topic and subject (wa and ga), the object (o), whether or not the sentence is a question (ka on the end), and so on. One use particle is の no, a particle with a "glue-like element" (to use the words of my Japanese teacher from SDSU) that binds two words together, for example to show possession. ピーターの車 Peter no kuruma ties the words Peter and kuruma (car) together, therefore denoting the car that belongs to Peter. Back in the Golden Age of anime fandom, the first Japanese most of us learned was ダーリンの馬鹿 Darling no Baka, the words Lum says before she gives Ataru a lightning bolt. This phrase ties the words darling and baka (stupid) together to produce an insult to Ataru. (Fun fact: Lum's pet name for Ataru is a reference to Bewitched, which was a huge hit in Japan. The Japanese mis-translated Samantha's husband Darren's name as "Darling.") When Japanese retailer "Gentleman's Fashions no Aoki" opened branches in Taiwan, they inadvertently altered the local language: the の particle is so convenient to write it caught on with the Taiwanese, who started substituting it for 的 teki, the character that performs the same grammatical function in Chinese.

It's also Azusa-no-Tanojobi today.

Japan, Karuta and Culture

The Japanese are masters when it comes to committing information to memory, like the man who memorized pi to 100,000 decimal places by using mnemonic hooks that made it easier for his brain to visualize each successive number. My wife regularly amazes me by being able to call up archaic information from her mind, such as the square root of 5 or the first two dozen or so elements in the periodic table, which she's able to do thanks to phrases all Japanese memorize in school. For example, the square root of 5 is 2.2360679 which maps out somehow to 富士山麓にオウム鳴く Fuji-sanroku ni ohmu naku, or "at the base of Mt. Fuji, a parrot squawks." Another fun information memorization tool is a 500-year-old game called Karuta (from the Portuguese word for "card") in which players will line up cards with phrases on them, and when a "reader" starts to speak that phrase the players will try to grab the corresponding card before anyone else. It's used to teach hiragana to small children, though you can teach just about any information using the game -- my kids learned the vocabulary of music notation using a version called Musical Karuta, for example. The most famous Karuta game is 百人一首 Hyakunin Isshu ("100 people, 100 poems"), a collection of waka poems based on historical figures from the Heian Period (794-1185) making it something like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but there's a local version for J-List's home prefecture of Gunma called Joumou Karuta, which teaches respect for the various cultural treasures of our prefecture. Before switching to computer games, Nintendo manufactured these cards, and until 1963 they were known as the Nintendo Karuta Corporation.

Karuta, a game for learning hiragana and culture.

Japan and Mexican Food

When you come to a country like Japan, it's normal that you'll give up some things you might be used to having back home. This includes having access to ridiculously cheap buy-1-get-1-free delivered pizzas, having more than two varieties of cheese to choose from at the supermarket and enjoying things like turkey, Nutella or American-style peanut butter, all of which are difficult to find here. The joy of walking into a bookstore and leisurely browsing for something to read in your native language is generally denied to you, and certain rare drinks like Mountain Dew are all but nonexistent here, though availability of Dr. Pepper has improved steadily thanks to Steins;Gate. You also have to say goodbye to pretty much all Mexican food, as it's just something the Japanese never got the hang of eating. I'm from San Diego, where no one goes a week without getting delicious Mexican food from Roberto's or one of the other copycat chains, and it was surprisingly hard to give that up. The closest thing to Mexican food in Japan is Taco Rice, an Okinawan dish consisting of taco mean and salsa eaten over white rice, or possibly the chicken wraps from KFC, which aren't too bad if you close your eyes while you eat.

One does not simply eat Mexican food in Japan.

Happy Pocky Day from J-List!

Today, November 11, is a special day for Pocky fans, designated by the Glico company as Pocky Day, since 11/11 looks like four Pocky sticks lined up, ready to be eaten. Let's all enjoy some delicious Pocky today, or better yet, find someone cute and try "the Pocky Game" with them. J-List carries all varieties of Pocky (and Pretz) from Japan, including the exotic seasonal kind you've never seen anywhere else. Why not browse our lineup of Japanese Pocky right now and see the new flavor offerings?

Japan and Entrepreneurs

I caught an interesting show on Japanese TV the other day called 子供に聞かせたい Kodomo ni Kikasetai! or "I Want to Tell This to the Children!" which featured some of Japan's most visionary business leaders talking about how they became successful. First Toshio Suzuki, the "business arm" of Studio Ghibli, talked about the challenges of managing the financial side of an animation studio and of securing the financing that made Hayao Miyazaki's amazing works possible. Another speaker was Kazuki Morishita, president of the company behind Pazudora (Puzzles and Dragons), the mobile game that took Japan and the world by storm and rocketed his company past Nintendo in market cap. Finally we heard from Kohzoh Takaoka, the head of Nestle Japan, which has been hugely successful in its 100 years of doing business here. He came to his superiors' notice when he thought up the innovative idea of promoting Kit Kat (which sounds like きっと勝つ kitto katsu or "you will surely win") to students preparing for university entrance exams, and he's also the guy responsible for all those incredible flavors of Kit Kat you love to buy from J-List. After the guests spoke there was a question-and-answer segment in which smart young people, including a girl who started a company making YouTube videos for fashion-related companies at the age of 15, received advice on how to succeed in the future.

I thought the program was important because one of the biggest problems in Japan is its lack of entrepreneurial spirit, especially among women. Although some of the most respected names in Japan's history are those who created companies, such as Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita or Souichiro Honda, who turned a tiny company making machine parts for Toyota into a famous worldwide brand, in reality there's often little respect for people with crazy dreams of starting a business. The Japanese are a very conservative people who tend to value security, and Japanese as a group aren't generally forgiving of failure, even though to try something and fail at it is an important part of life, especially for an entrepreneur. Then there's the fact that if you try to start a company and fail, your status is "reset" if you go to work at a new company, making you kohai (underling) to employees who are younger and have less experience than you. Having a TV show that put entrepreneurs in a positive light while showing young people interested in the idea of making their own businesses someday seemed to be to be a really good step forward.

A Japanese TV show to inspire young entrepreneurs.

The Moe Algorithm of Infinite Straos

Somewhere in Japan there's a computer that runs an algorithm for generating "harem" anime stories, which I believe was used by Media Factory to create Infinite Stratos. It's a future in which warfare is dominated by powered exoskeletons which conveniently can only be piloted by women, though when a boy named Ichika is discovered to be able to control the devices, he's sent to the Infinite Stratos Academy where he's surrounded by fabulously beautiful girls. All the classic moe character elements can be found in the series: the tsundere childhood friend who's also a shrine maiden, the British ojosama who speaks in an aristocratic way, a plucky girl from China who's self-conscious about her flat chest, a "reverse trap" (a girl who pretends to be a boy), an eyepatch-moe warrior girl from Germany, and of course the "generic everyman nice guy" Ichika, who's not even aware he's at the center of a harem. At its core, moe is about the little imperfections and personality flaws that make the characters charming, whether it's extreme jealousy or shyness or yandere tendencies, and this anime has plenty to explore. If you like Infinite Stratos, you might like our English combat ero-RPG Pretty Soldier Wars A.D. 2048, which has a similar story.

The moe-tastic girls of Infinite Stratos. Which is your favorite?

Psst, Need Any Anime Figures?

In addition to our pre-Christmas sale on all bento and kitchen items, we're having a nice 2x J-List Points sale on all in-stock anime figures. There's no otaku in the world who wouldn't want to get hands on a special Super Sonico figure or perhaps one of those Link or Metroid figmas. The sale covers all figures that are currently in stock, so it's great for grabbing items you want to give this Christmas...even if it's to yourself.

The Joy of Anticipation

Buying a new car in Japan is a bit different from what you might be used to. First of all, rather than buying from a third-party dealer, you nearly always go to an official car dealership operated by Toyota, Nissan, Mazda etc. (The direct-from-manufacturer sales model was emulated by GM's now-defunct Saturn brand.) You never drive off with a car that day, but instead choose which model, color and options you want then wait three weeks while they make it in the factory. While having to wait for your new car can be a bummer, I've come to appreciate the slow taste of anticipation quite a lot, looking forward to the day your new car will finally show up. I'm a Star Wars collector, and I was able to enjoy this feeling of anticipation as I searched for a rare poster from a Star Wars movie exhibition in Kyoto, which I was finally able to find after several years. It's a feeling I'm experiencing right now as I wait for my new iPad to arrive from San Diego (I have to get them from the U.S. as iPads sold in Japan are all carrier locked, making them useless for international travel), and also one Sailor Moon fans are likely feeling as they await the new series that's set to air in January 2014.

A poster that took me 4+ years to finally find, and searching for it was a joy.

Handing a Letter to the Emperor

The Emperor of Japan is the ceremonial leader of the nation, defined by the 1947 postwar constitution as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." His name is Akihito, though he's always referred to by his era name (Emperor Heisei for the current era, Emperor Showa for his father) in Japanese, and he's 125th in an unbroken line going back to the founding of the original Yamato Kingdom. For centuries a powerless figurehead, the Emperor's role was figuratively "restored" during the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which began as a movement to force Japan to close itself off to the outside world again -- their slogan was sonno joi or "Revere the Emperor and Expel the Foreign Barbarians," and we've totally got a T-shirt of that for you -- though once the pro-Emperor reformers won power they realized foreigners had cool things like railroads and reconsidered their closure policy. Throughout Japan's history there's been a custom called 直訴 jikiso which involves a soldier, minister or other unauthorized person handing a petition to the Emperor directly, usually after getting his affairs in order as this often led to his imprisonment and execution. Last week Taro Yamamoto, a member of a new breed of actor-and-comedian-turned-politician, got in hot water when he presented a letter to the Emperor directly, asking him to intercede in the question of whether Japan would continue to use nuclear power or not. This was a huge breach of protocol, as asking the Emperor to get involved in politics is strictly forbidden.

Former comedian Yamamoto made a big faux pas when dealing with the Emperor.

Toilets in Japan

When you come to Japan for the first time, you'll encounter many strange things, like square watermelons (which are grown inside wooden frames), avocado flavored Doritos and Colonel Sanders standing outside every KFC to greet you as you go in. You'll also discover some really interesting toilets, some of which are good (when they clean your butt for you after you're done), while others present challenges for gaijin. The biggest problem is figuring out how to use a 和式トイレ washiki toire or Japanese-style toilet, which you squat over rather than sit on, and the first time you use one you never know which direction to face, how to balance without falling over, etc. While Japanese still prefer the seatless toilets in public (since you can do your business without touching anything delicate), they're on their way out in homes, as Japanese style toilets aren't that pleasant or easy to use, especially for the elderly. If you'd like to learn more about Japanese toilets, we just happen to have a photobook on the subject in stock today.

Japanese toilets can present challenges to foreigners.

Have You Started Your Holiday Japan Shopping Yet?

Christmas is in the air, and J-List is already getting busy with the rush of holiday sales. If you've got a Japan-obsessed person on your list this year, now is a great time to browse the site and get your first orders into us, while you can still take advantage of less expensive shipping options. In addition to free J-List anime eyes, we're sending out a cute season-limited holiday pocket tissues, in case you've got a collection going.

J-List Figure Sale in November

In addition to our pre-Christmas sale on all bento and kitchen items, we're having a nice 2x J-List Points sale on all in-stock anime figures. There's no otaku in the world who wouldn't want to get hands on a special Super Sonico figure or perhaps one of those Link or Metroid figmas. The sale covers all figures that are currently in stock, so it's great for grabbing items you want to give this Christmas...even if it's to yourself.

Korean BBQ and Birthdays in Japan

My wife's parents' birthdays both fall around this time of year, and we usually celebrate by getting in the car and heading to our favorite 焼き肉 yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, which is kind of like going out for Italian in the U.S. -- it sort of qualifies as eating ethnic, but just barely. Just as the production of cardboard boxes can indicate which way the U.S. economy is headed (this is called the Cardboard Box Economic Indicator and it's real), you could track the general health of Japan's economy by how many families feel confident enough about their economic situation to splurge on a big meal of Korean BBQ...and based on the crowds we saw, it looks like Japan's economy is finally improving. At a Korean BBQ restaurant you order large plates of beef, chicken and various vegetables then cook it on a gas or charcoal grill right at the table, and everyone stuffs themselves until you can smell the meat coming out of your pores. If you want to be a little more authentically Korean, order some lettuce leaves and wrap a piece of meat, some steamed rice and a dab of miso paste in the lettuce before you pop it all in your mouth -- yum. If you'd like to try Korean BBQ, there are likely some restaurants in your city, but make sure you never imply to the staff that you think kimchee comes from Japan and not Korea. Trust me on this.

Yes, Korea and Japan have a long history of cultural and economic sharing, of which the Japanese love of Korean BBQ is just one example. Several large industries such as pachinko are dominated by zainichi ("residing in Japan") Koreans, who are born here yet maintain South or North Korean citizenship for cultural reasons. Many top names in Japan's entertainment world are Korean, and former South Korea president Lee Myung-bak was actually born in Osaka. Sometimes when we post "Japanese" products like Black Black Caffeine Gum or those cute March of Koala cookies to the site, I'll get an email from a Korean reminding me that Lotte is a Korean company, not Japanese...and yet the international conglomerate got its start in Tokyo in 1948 before moving over to South Korea when relations were normalized in 1965. It's quite interesting that the richest and most successful man in Japan isn't Japanese but zainichi Korean. Masayoshi Son (Korean name Son Jeong-ui) received business advice at a young age from the legendary Fujita Den, the founder of McDonald's Japan, who told him to go to the U.S. and study electronics and microchips at Berkeley. He was able to use the his American business education to "think outside the box" and build a fabulous portfolio of businesses, and he's the president of Softbank and Sprint and chairman of Yahoo Japan.

Eating Korean BBQ and talking about Korean influence on Japan.

Favorite Desserts of the Japanese

There are many reasons to like Japan. Hot towels handed to you at most every restaurant. Trucks that warn you they're backing up by playing the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade song. Walking behind a convenience store and finding a beautiful hundred year old Shinto shrine. Japan is also the land of some amazing desserts, and if you come here you'll probably discover some new taste treats. Japan's dessert world can be divided into two groups: 和菓子 wagashi, Japanese sweets such as taiyaki or kompeito and Kyoto candy; and 洋菓子 yohgashi or Western sweets, a word which covers everything from baumkuchen cakes to Kit Kat to the cutest doughnuts in the universe. There's an amazing sponge cake from Nagasaki called Castella with about 500 years of history behind it; unique local versions of flan egg custards, which the Japanese confusingly call プリン purin (pudding); and something called Marugoto Banana that's extremely simple, just a round piece of sponge cake with a banana and whipped cream folded inside, sort of like a dessert taco. Another favorite of mine is shu cream (pronounced like the stuff you polish your shoes with), a Japanese version of French custard-filled cream puffs (chou a la creme), which naturally come in Hello Kitty and Totoro-shaped variations. Yet another French dessert the Japanese have embraced are crepes, and it's not uncommon to see a truck selling 40 varieties of the delicious treat with long lines of people waiting to buy.

Japanese love to eat Western sweets like crepes.

Holiday Shopping Starts at J-List

Christmas is in the air, and J-List is already getting busy with the rush of holiday sales. If you've got a Japan-obsessed person on your list this year, now is a great time to browse the site and get your first orders into us, while you can still take advantage of less expensive shipping options. In addition to free J-List anime eyes, we're sending out a cute season-limited holiday pocket tissues, in case you've got a collection going.

Bento Boxes + Kitchen Stuff On Sale This Month

This month J-List is having a sale on all bento and kitchen items, including our huge selection of excellent bento boxes from Japan, our always kawaii bento accessories, plus cool products like our fun coffee and tea cups, Totoro and Spirited Away-themed miso soup bowls and more. Christmas is just around the corner, and these products would make great gifts for the special people on your list!

Japan Culture Lesson

It's funny the way culture reflects language and vice-versa. One phrase you'll hear sometimes in Japanese is 天下の tenka no~, which literally means "having received the blessing of Heaven and the Emperor to rule Japan." During the sengoku or "Warring States" period of Japanese history, that's what the various warlords were trying to do: win enough power that they could go to the Emperor in Kyoto and receive his blessing to become the designated military ruler of the country (Shogun), which is what Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually did, ushering in the Edo Period and 264 years of peace. In modern usage, tenka no~ is used to refer to companies that receive special status from the government, and someone might cynically complain about tenka no NTT ("NTT, the company anointed by heaven to provide telephone service to the Japanese people") when their phone connection is bad. Another word that seems uniquely Japanese is 新米 shinmai (pronounced SHEEN-mai), which means "new rice" that's just been harvested. A person who starts a new job will often be referred to with this term, e.g. shinmai salaryman for someone who's just started their first 9-5 job, or a shinmai idol singer who has just made her singing debut and is still green and inexperienced.

IdolMaster is a game in which you must guide the careers of inexperienced idols.

Random Questions About Japan

There are many things about the Japanese that can cause foreigners to scratch our heads in confusion, and I thought I'd throw a few of them out to you, along with answers. Why are cherry blossoms such a famous image of Japan yet there are no cherries here? (The cherry trees in Japan are of a type that don't bear edible fruit.) Why do the Japanese love making the "peace" sign so much? (There are several theories, but the best is that an actor in a 1972 Konica camera commercial made the gesture spontaneously, causing it to become associated with photography.) Why do the Japanese say 'yes' when they mean 'no'? (It's common for Japanese to give verbal feedback when someone is talking to them, which often includes the word hai, which means "yes, I am following what you're saying," not necessarily "yes, I agree with you and will do what you suggest.") Why are the teeth of Japanese so crooked? (Orthodontic standards are improving, but many Japanese find crooked teeth, represented in anime by a single "fang" in the mouth, to be cute and endearing.) Why do the Japanese eat green tea and squid ink flavored ice cream so much? (Actually the most popular flavor of ice cream in Japan is vanilla, but that's not very interesting so you never hear about that on the Internet.) Do Japanese girls always rush out the door with a piece of toast in their mouth, like in anime? (No, it's just a visual meme anime creators propagate because it's fun.) Why do the Japanese sometimes point at things with their middle fingers? (They only learned the American usage of this gesture 10-15 years ago, and many people still find it natural to point at things using the middle finger, which would be very rude in the U.S.) We often have interesting discussions about Japanese culture and other issues on the J-List Facebook Page, so why not give us a "like"?

Questions about crooked teeth and cherry blossoms answered.

Japan and Train Otakus

Yesterday I drove to the other side of town to obtain a precious resource: a Subway sandwich. Depending on where you live in the world, you may not think that Subway sandwich shops are particularly rare or special, but in rural Japan where you're less likely to have interesting food choices, we really appreciate the Subway that recently opened. On the way I crossed over some train tracks and stopped my car for three seconds, which you're required to do here, and just then noticed an interesting thing: a dozen or so young-ish Japanese men lined up beside the railroad crossing with fabulously expensive cameras mounted on tripods, preparing to take a picture of a train that was passing by soon. Because there are so many trains in Japan, it's natural the country would have more than its share of 電車オタク densha otaku, aka railfans or rail buffs. When I was an English teacher I had several students who loved to travel around Japan seeking out rare trains to take pictures of, like the Chichibu Steam Locomotive, which has been re-purposed to promote ota-tourism as it's based out of the city where the AnoHana anime was "filmed," or the romantic Enoshima Line that runs from Kamakura to Shonan Beach, my personal favorite train. The train otakus I saw yesterday were lined up to photograph a rare sight: the passing of a "Dr. Yellow," which is what the Japanese call the yellow-colored trains designed to test tracks for damage and wear.

Japan is home to many densha otaku, who are usually not as cute as these girls are.

Tentacle Grape @ J-List

In addition to hundreds of fun Japanese snacks, J-List stocks wacky and fun Japan-related drinks, and one of our favorites is Tentacle Grape, the official drink of hentai fans at anime conventions, which we stock in San Diego for your ordering convenience. Now the creators of Tentacle Grape have a cool new plan to re-formulate the iconic drink to be healthier, easier to ship and generally be more awesome, and they've got an Indiegogo campaign set up for fans who want to pledge their support and score some free limited swag. Let's give them some love now!

Big Bento + Kitchen Sale This Month

This month J-List is having a sale on all bento and kitchen items, including our huge selection of excellent bento boxes from Japan, our always kawaii bento accessories, plus cool products like our fun coffee and tea cups, Totoro and Spirited Away-themed miso soup bowls and more. Christmas is just around the corner, and these products would make great gifts for the special people on your list!

Wayo Setchu: Blending Japan with the West

One important concept in Japan is 和洋折衷 wayoh-setchu, which means "a blending of Japanese and Western" and which describes describes the country's long tradition of trying to pair the best of Japan with Europe and America. The term comes up in such areas as architecture that blends both Japanese and European elements and weddings designed to incorporate both Christian and traditional Shinto themes, and this Japanese Sexy Maid Kimono thing. There are many kinds of foods that are both "Western" (because they arrived in Japan after 1868) yet still uniquely Japanese somehow, too. Japanese companies will also blend Western and Japanese themes in advertising. BUB is the company that makes those fizzing bath tablets which are so delightful when placed under your body so that the bubbles travel up your back while sitting in the bath. They just released a new bath powder product called Bubuccino (designed to sound like cappuccino). In the TV commercial, a woman opens a door to find a handsome male model who puts her in a giant bath that looks like a coffee cup while speaking ridiculous Italian to her.

Parody Italian man sold separately.

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?