The History of Cosplay in Japan

Hello from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! J-List is in full Christmas mode, packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day. Note that we recommend you order by Friday the 13th in order to ensure you get your packages in time for Christmas. What awesome products can J-List send you today during our big EMS shipping sale?

One of my favorite aspects of fandom is cosplay, the act of transforming yourself into your favorite anime character through costume and make-up skills, something that started to get popular in the 1970s as a result of Japan's contact with the costuming culture of Worldcon. The word is an example of 和製英語 wasei eigo or "made-in-Japan English," and it was coined in the June 1983 issue of My Anime magazine, which included a special feature on "hero costume play" that had to be shortened to "cosplay" on one page to fit into the layout. The first anime cosplay is said to have taken place at a science fiction convention in Yokohama in 1978, when a judge mistook a fan cosplaying a character from the cover of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel as being from an anime called Triton of the Sea; the error was never corrected, and suddenly fans got the idea of bringing 2D characters from anime into the 3D world. These days it's not hard to find "cosplay idols" like Kipi or Necoco who create the most amazing costumes for us to enjoy, capturing every minute detail of the characters with remarkable skill. If you like random pictures of cosplay, I recommend J-List's popular Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter feeds, since I've always got something interesting being posted there for fans to check out and comment on.

Some background on the history of cosplay.

Shoes In the Genkan

It's fun to try to understand Japan by thinking about its culture from new directions, for example through the aesthetic concepts of 侘び wabi and 寂び sabi, translatable as "sober refinement and austere serenity," which in practice mean appreciating things that are old and imperfect, like a well-used green tea cup or the sad loneliness of a rural train station in Hokkaido. You can even seek to understand Japan from the bottom up, so to speak, by thinking about shoes. The Japanese famously remove their shoes at a lowered area called a 玄関 genkan before entering a home (or businesses like J-List), which keeps most of the outside dirt from coming in. Shoes are always considered 汚い kitanai (dirty), and if I were to ever wash dirty shoes our family's washing machine I'd be buying my wife a new washing machine in a hurry. Because shoes are always left near the front door, you can tell if a boy has female company over by checking his shoe area. This happened in a recent episode of Kyoukai no Kanata/Beyond the Boundary, when Mirai visited Akihito and noticed a mysterious pair of girl's shoes in his genkan, which led to a very cute misunderstanding.

Shoes in a genkan can give away your secrets.

Before You Get a Kanji Tattoo...

Westerners seem hopelessly taken with the mysteries of kanji characters, often choosing to get exotic tattoos with Chinese characters on their bodies. This is a cool thing to do, though occasionally they find out that a character is printed upside-down or that the characters mean something different than what they intended. Recently one customer asked our native Japanese staff to "translate" something he wanted to get as a tattoo, which was "never forget, never bow, never give up." The translation came out as 忘れず、媚びず、諦めず wasurezu, wabuzi, akiramezu, which is an accurate translation but one that doesn't work well because it lacks any context, e.g. no one ever says these words in this way in Japanese. Another idea was changing the message to 決して諦めない kesshite akiramenai, which has much better balance and sound, meaning "never give up [no matter what happens]." Finally the staff settled on 不屈の精神 fukutsu no seishin, a very beautiful phrase that literally means "indomitable and unyielding spirit," which we felt was going to work much better for the person than trying to force a translation directly from English. If you're interested in kanji but want to think twice before getting any permanent tattoos, why not consider our custom hanko name stamps which allow you to make name stamps with your name in kanji, or our custom Japanese calligraphy message board, with any Japanese phrase you like written for you. Because our staff are native Japanese speakers, there's no worry you'll end up with something embarrassing like "raging diarrhea."

This lovely Japanese tattoo says...tomato?

Make New Year's Cards with your "Sumaho" (Smartphone)

Hello from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! J-List is in full Christmas mode, packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day. Note that we recommend you order by Friday the 13th in order to ensure you get your packages in time for Christmas. What awesome products can J-List send you today during our big EMS shipping sale?

December is a very busy time in Japan, what with buying Christmas presents and other year-end gifts, planning that special romantic date on Christmas Eve and preparing for 大掃除 oh-souji, the year-end "big cleaning" that everyone does here. It's also time to make 年賀状 nengajo, or New Year's greeting cards, which are mailed during December and delivered to everyone on January 1st. While you can have nengajo printed professionally, it's much more fun to make them yourself, and over the years the du joir method for doing this has evolved greatly, from wood blocks and rubber stamps to computer software that lets you choose from various clip art on CD-ROM. Now with the rise of スマホ sumaho (smartphones) you can create nengajo cards using apps on your iPhone or Android phone, which you can then print yourself or have printed professionally by companies like Fuji Film. 2014 is the Year of the Horse according to the Chinese zodiac, and if you want to celebrate it in classic style we've got some fun products you should look at.

Make new year's cards with your smartphone.

Japanese Cuisine Wins UNESCO Recognition

The Japanese like nothing more than to be recognized internationally for their achievements, which is why the popularity of anime/manga creators like Hayao Miyazaki or Shirow Masamune soar in Japan when their works achieve acclaim abroad. One of the highlights of 2013 was when Mt. Fuji was officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which caused all Japan to swell with pride. Now another institution has received special recognition: 和食 washoku, or traditional Japanese cuisine, known for its beautiful presentation as much for its delicious taste. One problem facing modern Japan today is how to maintain interest in traditional food culture in a world where the "mind-share" of Japanese food is shrinking due to globalization and the rise of convenient alternatives. Consumption of fish and rice, two staples of the country for centuries, has fallen by half since the 1960s, and today the most popular foods among children are curry rice, spaghetti and "hamburg" (Salisbury) steak, none of which are Japanese. Hopefully the official UNESCO recognition will cause more people to turn to traditional dishes in the future.

Japanese cuisine receives recognition by UNESCO.

Japan's New Secrecy Law

Japan is buzzing over the enactment of a new Secrets Protection Act which threatens prison terms for government employees or journalists who divulge information the government deems secret. The law is clearly intended to prevent any local Edward Snowdens from cropping up, but it's worrisome because of the way in which anything can arbitrarily be named a state secret by the government. While there's been much hand-wringing over the new law, I find I'm pretty mellow towards it. First, while Japan ostensibly has a "free press," it's actually pretty dysfunctional, happily censoring itself on topics such as the Japanese Emperor or Google's accidental publishing of historical maps that show where the buraku-min (Japan's version of India's untouchables) lived during the Edo Period, all while proactively protecting the "privacy" of individuals caught in scandals if they happen to be affiliated with AKB48 or the Johnny's Jimusho talent agency, though no one else is afforded such consideration. As a result, net-savvy Japanese increasingly turn to Western news sources like Yahoo or MSNBC, which (being foreign-based) presumably have a more Western-style approach to reporting what the public needs to know. Then there's the grand tradition of 建前 tatemae (ta-tay-mah-eh), lit. "facade," which means the way we pretend things are even though we know it's not the truth; and 本音 honne (hon-neh), lit. "true sound," which means the way things really are, the truth, the actual situation. Whenever a law banning this or that is made in Japan, I know that it will mostly be smoke and mirrors, created for the purpose of projecting an image or enacting an official stance, with very real action taken.

There have been protests against the new secrecy law in Tokyo.

Cool Products Monday, December 9, 2013

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My Can Collection, And Other Puns

The other day I watched the movie Psycho for the first time. The reason was that Tomo, the Japanese staffer who keeps J-List well stocked with anime Blu-rays and import anime PS Vita games, is a hardcore connoisseur of everything from the music of Zed Zeppelin and Bob Dylan to all the major and minor films of Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, and he's regularly shocked at the idea that an American (me) could go through life not knowing much about these things. When he asked me what I thought about the film, my reply was a foregone conclusion: I told him it was 最高 saikoh, a Japanese word meaning "the greatest," which happens to have the pronunciation as Psycho, making it one of the more famous puns in Japanese. The way to say "what is this?" in Japanese is 何ですか? nan desu ka?, and it's virtually impossible to eat Indian naan bread someone joking, "What is this? Is it naan bread?" I've got a window shelf where I put cans that are waiting to be crushed and thrown away, and the other day I referred to it as my "CanColle," e.g. my can collection, a play on the moe WWII ship game Kantai Collection. I thought it was a pretty good joke, but my otaku son didn't laugh -- kids these days have no sense of humor.

One of my favorite places in the world, the Ghibli Museum; I had a blast at the KFC bar in Tokyo.

My Visit to the KFC Bar

J-List is located in Gunma Prefecture, about 100 km northwest of Tokyo, pretty much in the exact center of Japan's main island of Honshu. It's a nice place but not too exciting, though this is usually not a problem since Tokyo is only a train ride away -- between the ridiculously fashionable Japanese females and greater variety of restaurants and drinking establishments, there'll be something worth seeing. This time I managed to find one of the most interesting bars I've ever visited, the world's only KFC Bar. Called KFC Route 25, it's an actual bar operated by the owner of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, allowing you to throw back Jack Daniels or Makers Mark while eating classic KFC chicken, biscuits with honey and so on, which are delivered from the restaurant downstairs. It's located in Shimokita, in Tokyo, near Keio Shimokitazawa Station. Now you have two reasons to visit Tokyo!

I had a blast at the KFC bar in Tokyo.

J-List Loves Studio Ghibli!

The other day my daughter asked me if I'd mind taking her to the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, since she needed to buy something for a friend's birthday and wanted to get something really special. If you've got kids, you probably know of their tendency to grow up way too fast, so I was all too happy to go with her and re-live the hours we'd spent watching the films of Hayao Miyazaki together. The Ghibli Museum is one of the true highlights of a trip to Japan, a monument to everything the company has created over the years, complete with a giant catbus that children under 12 can play inside as well as a scale replica of a Laputa robot. Everything about the museum is meticulously designed for visitors, from the carved wooden trays you put your money in when buying something to the wonky works of art you can discover walking down random hallways. There's also a cafe and restaurant that sells Ghibli-themed treats -- I had omurice shaped like Mei's straw hat from Totoro and a parfait topped with a single Kompeito candy. On top of everything else, you get to see a short film as part of your admission, with a different one showing every month. The best film is the Mei and the Kitten Bus short sequel to Totoro, and if you're ever planning a visit I recommend you check the museum's English homepage for the film schedule to make sure you can see this film. To avoid overcrowding by fans, advance tickets are required to visit the museum. While you can get the tickets through travel agencies, they can be difficult to purchase, so J-List has a Ghibli museum purchasing service available, if you ever need it.

One of my favorite places in the world, the Ghibli Museum.

Remember Our EMS Shipping Sale!

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Nikuman, Japan's Steamed Meat Buns

Hello again from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! We're in full Christmas mode around here, with the hardworking J-List staff packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day, which are picked up in three large trucks by the Japanese post office every morning. What awesome products can J-List send you today?

There are many things to like about winter in Japan. The nostalgic smell of kerosene when you light your space heater for the first time. Drinking hot canned coffee on the train platform. It's also the season to eat one of my favorite foods, nikuman, Chinese steamed buns with seasoned meat inside, also known as pork buns or baozi. Like many things in Japan, nikuman has a rather long history, dating back 1800 years to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in China, which for some reason gets parodied by everything from the Ikki Tousen anime to the Koihime Musou "H" game series. One problem with Japan is that people are used to prices never rising, thanks to two decades of deflation after the bursting of the Japan Asset Bubble in 1989. As a result, the only way shops can increase their revenue is by being creative and inventing "deluxe" new products you'll pay a higher price for. You can buy normal nikuman steamed buns for around $1.10, but there are other variations too, like beef curry-man, pizza-man or the gyoza-man I saw the other day, a giant steamed bun with gyoza dumplings inside. While you can get nikuman at any convenience store during the colder months of the year, the best place to eat really good steamed meat buns is Yokohama. Try some next time you're there!

Kyoko offers you half of her steamed meat bun.

Japanese Sound Words (Giongo and Gitaigo)

When you start to learn a language as separate from English as Japanese as, you naturally expect some things to be different. Japanese has a different word order, uses kanji characters alongside Japanese grammar constructions in a way that's similar to how English is augmented by Latin and Greek loan words, and is "agglutinating," which just means information like past tense, passive voice etc. is often encoded into a verb conjugation rather than using confusing helping verbs. (This means that horrible sentences like "all the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life" can't exist in Japanese.) One thing I was surprised by was Japan's creative use of "sound words." All languages have onomatopoeia, and Japanese is richly stocked with words like ざあざあ zaa zaa, the sound of rain pouring down, or しんしん shiin shiin, what frosty snow sounds like when falling. But they take it up a notch, assigning sounds to abstract things like niko niko, the "sound" of smiling, where Nicodouga gets its name from; paku paku, eating very quickly, the origin of Pac-man's name; pera pera, the sound of someone speaking a foreign language fluently; and kyoro kyoro, the sound of a person's eyes moving from left to right as he looks for something. Some of these sound words can be quite colorful, for example もっこり mokkori is the "sound" of something like a hill sticking up suddenly in the landscape...as well as a certain state men find themselves in in the mornings, and くぱぁ kupaa is the sound of a certain anatomical region opening. (The link is safe for work, though weird as hell).

Kyoro kyoro is the sound of eyes looking around, perhaps at other girls.

Japan is Not the Land of Unspoiled Nature

Japan is a wonderful country full of great people and amazing culture. One thing it's not, however, is a land of unspoiled nature, something I was reminded of when I took my vacation to the Hakone area. Several times I found fabulous views of Mt. Fuji and pulled over to take some pictures, only to find ugly power lines finding their way into my photos. This is not entirely the fault of the Japanese, of course: Japan is a highly industrialized country which manages to fit a little less than half the population of the U.S. into an area the size of Nebraska, so of course it needs to make use of its land in a way that serves the most people. Still, Japan's ruling (and ironically named) Liberal Democratic Party sometimes goes overboard, over-funding the constructions of roads in part to help Japan's construction-based economy move forward, but also to reward political supporters with contracts. Often I'm driving through the mountains and I see they've literally covered the side of a mountain in concrete, ostensibly to keep landslides from happening in the event of an earthquake...but I can't shake the idea that someone here just likes concrete more than mountains.

The beauty of Fuji-san calls to us with the heart of a samurai and GOD DAMN IT NOT AGAIN.

All J-List English Eroge are Now 100% DRM Free!

We have more good news. J-List sells visual novels and eroge which we license from Japanese game companies and translate into English, in order to make them available to fans around the world. In the past we were contractually required to secure certain games with a DRM system, but when the contract was over we ripped the system out, posting the games in DRM-free versions. Still, we had a dozen or so games, including Demonbane, Cosplay Fetish Academy, Cat Girl Alliance and a few others, which required online activation, but we're happy to report that we've removed all DRM from these games now. If you purchased a DRM-enabled game from us before and want to get the DRM-free version, the download code we originally sent you should let you access the new version. Open a support ticket if you need us to look up anything for you. Thanks for supporting our efforts to create a market for these awesome video novels outside Japan!

J-List's Huge EMS Shipping Sale, Get $50 Back!

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Japan's Local "Yuru-chara" Characters

Well it's finally here: the last day of our biggest-ever pre-Christmas sale. If you want to pick up some awesome products from Japan for the Japan-focused people on your list this year, remember that the 12%-off-nearly-everything sale ends at midnight at the end of Cyber Monday, so get shopping now! 

You never know what's going to become popular in Japan next. For the past few years the country has been experiencing a boom in "Yuru-chara," which are cute (?) plush characters with people inside that promote interest in Japan's various prefectures and towns. Yuru-charas are defined as characters who express a strong message of love for different regions of Japan, move in clumsy but lovable ways and take a fundamentally relaxed view of life. The boom got its start back in 1999, when Nikko Edo-mura, a sort of theme park that re-creates the old Edo Period, created a fairly horrifying samurai cat thing called Nyan-mage, and before anyone knew it, these regional characters were everywhere. Most are minor and blend in with the background, posing for photos at local cultural events but not really standing out. A few, however, become quite popular and get licensed for mainstream products, like the official character promoting the city of Kumamoto, Kumamon. Although J-List's home prefecture of Gunma is famous for being the least interesting prefecture in Japan (it's sort of become a meme at this point), our character Gunma-chan (the orange horse in the image) is quite popular, regularly ranking in third place nationally.

Cute "Yuru-chara" promote Japan's various regions.

All About Japanese Futons

Before you left for work today, did you hang your bed out of the window to dry in the sun? That's what millions of Japanese do each morning, if they sleep on a 布団 futon, the traditional fold-away bedding that's been used for centuries. A Japanese futon is basically a soft sleeping mat, a separate foam mat that goes below that, and a thick blanket on top (there's never any wood frame involved as in the U.S.). Futons are enormously convenient for living in small spaces because they can be folded up and put away in a closet during the day, which allows a room to fulfill two separate roles. Because the sleeping mats absorb sweat, they can become damp, which is why they're hung from the balcony to dry and kill germs; there's almost nothing nicer to sleep on than a Japanese futon that's been hung and dried during the day. While traditional futons are nice, it can be a chore to put them away each morning and lay them out again at night, so many older Japanese end up switching to Western style beds, something my wife's parents did recently. Even if they opt for conventional beds for themselves, most every household in Japan has a "guest" futon for use when unexpected visitors need to sleep over, which is great because it takes up almost no space when not in use. If you would like to own a futon but don't have room in your office, why not consider the wacky Japanese Futon Mouse Pad we posted to the site, which is heated via USB!

A futon is a unique aspect of life in Japan.

Anime Lesbians, Cthulhu and the Kanji for "Child"

You never forget your first, they always say. My first anime shower scene was the Macross "Do You Remember Love?" movie, and my first anime lesbians were Cobalt and Sepia from the classic Cthuloid robot anime Fight! Iczer-One. I also remember the first kanji character I became aware of, which was 子, pronounced ko, which means "child," commonly found in names of Japanese girls, like Keiko, Kumiko or Yuko. (An alternate reading for the character is is shi.) Most "baby" names of animals can be made by putting 子 ko in front of the name, like 子犬 koinu (koh-ee-noo) for puppy or 子猫 koneko for kitten. The ko word is often used to define different groups of people, for example 江戸っ子 Edokko is a label proudly worn by families who have lived in the Tokyo area since the days when it was named Edo, or 鍵っ子 kagikko ("key child"), the Japanese term for a "latchkey kid" whose parents work. My wife was a 店っ子 misekko or "shop child," a child whose parents ran a shop (their liquor store) and were thus too busy to play with her or take her places, and she's also a 眼鏡っ娘 meganekko or a girl who wears glasses, which is fine by me. The 子 kanji is quite flexible, being found in scientific words like 電子 denshi ("child of electricity," i.e. an electron) or 原子 genshi ("child of origin," or an atom), as well as words like キノコ kinoko ("child of tree" e.g. a mushroom). Another of these words I like is 龍の子 tatsu no ko, the "child of dragon" which is what seahorses are called. 

Iczer-One taught me about Cthulhu and anime lesbians.

Last Day of J-List's Big Pre-Christmas Sale

Remember, J-List has extended our unprecedented Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday, California time. So for four more days, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered.)

Western Influence on Japan Through Europe

We hope everyone in the U.S. enjoyed a warm and pleasant Thanksgiving with family and friends. It's not a holiday you can easily get into the spirit of while living in Japan, a country in which few homes have an oven large enough to cook lasagna, let alone a large meal with all the fixings. I did manage to have a turkey sandwich from Subway, making it one of my more traditional thanksgivings since coming to Japan.

One of the themes I write a lot about is the way Japan likes to pretend it's part of Europe instead of Asia. There are many "homages" to Europe to be found here, from Tokyo Tower (a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower) to the "Japan Alps" to the stylish corner of Shibuya dubbed スペイン坂 Spain-zaka, e.g. Spanish Hill, in tribute to/parody of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The Japanese go crazy for beaujolais nouveau every year, too -- Japan is the largest market for the wine outside of France, and there's an onsen where you can actually bathe in the stuff. For some reason, the Japanese have chosen to fixate on mannekin pis, the famous peeing boy statue in Belgium, as a symbol representing all of Western civilization, and when Honda wanted to promote its new hydrogen-powered car it created Hydrogen Boy, a statue of a boy that "pees" pure water to show how clean the technology is. (You can also get a peeing statue earphone mascot for your phone, if you want one.)

Of course American culture is not without its influence. Friday, the biggest shopping day in the U.S., and I happened to notice that some companies are starting to promote Black Friday sales in Japan, despite there being no custom of Thanksgiving here. Incidentally, we've got good news for anyone looking to give the gift of fun products from Japan this year: we're extending our popular Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday, with 12% off nearly everything on the site. So get shopping and score some awesome products from Japan! 

Pre-Christmas Sale through Monday, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

Don't Cause "Meiwaku" (Inconvenience) in Japan.

We're currently finishing up some construction on the land behind J-List, erecting a concrete wall to keep rainwater from running from our land to the neighboring field, which is owned by a local farmer. A few months ago the farmer came to tell about the drainage problem and ask us to fix it, so we called a construction company and had them give us a bid. If there's a "golden rule" to Japanese society it's that everyone should avoid causing 迷惑 meiwaku -- a word which means inconvenience, nuisance or bother -- to others, and once it became apparent we were causing meiwaku to our neighbor, we were required by unwritten Japanese social rules to fix the problem, even though it cost us $6000 to have the wall built. This "don't cause inconvenience to others" system is one of the fundamental building blocks of Japanese society, and one reason they can get along with one lawyer for every 5000 people compared with one for every 250 people in the U.S. By and large, Japanese go their entire lives without ever encountering a lawsuit in any form, in part thanks to this proactive social rule that encourages people to avoid inconveniencing others and to take responsibility for causing problems when asked to do so.

Actually I'd be okay with someone putting on yuri-play on the train.

J-List's Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale Continues!

Great news: J-List has decided to extend our unprecidented Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday. So for four more days, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)

America to China: Love is War

China has caused an international stir by unilaterally declaring a chunk of the East China Sea as its exclusive "Air Defense Identification Zone," and requiring that all other countries file flight plans ahead of time lest they trigger a "defensive" military response. The area includes the islands claimed by both China and Japan, and essentially promises more confrontations if Japan and other nations don't support China's growing claims for lebensraum. Several countries have denounced China's actions as a dangerous move that will destabilize the region, and America has come down solidly on the side of its ally Japan by flying two B-52s in a "training mission" through the region without informing Beijing ahead of time. As China has grown in economic strength it's become more belligerent, issuing territorial claims against several neighbors including South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and India, and it's even fought several limited wars. China has even made noises that Japan should "return" Okinawa to China based on the fact that the island kingdom paid tribute to China centuries ago. It's a dangerous situation, and I hope things calm down soon.

Googled Pixiv for images of B-52 bombers, was not disappointed.

Some New Words for 2013

Every year the Oxford English Dictionary chooses to bless a few new words by adding them to its hallowed pages, and every year people react, often strongly, because most of us make a distinction between "proper" language and the latest slang words we use when speaking. In the past words like tweet, hashtag, app and Googlegänger were added to the official listing of English words, and this year the word "selfie" joins them. There's a similar listing of influential words popularized this year in Japan, too. This year's words include アベノミックス Abenomics, the economic policies of Prime Minister Abe, also known as The Man Who Makes Our Anime Cheaper; パズドラ pazu-dora, the popular Puzzles and Dragons game that my son can't stop playing for five minutes; and 今でしょ！ ima desho! ("the time to do that is right now!"), the catchphrase of famous prep school teacher Osamu Hayashi which became so popular Toyota hired him to do a car commercial ("When are you going to buy a new Toyota? The time to do it is right now!"). Another word I've been hearing a lot is バカッター bakattaa, rendered in English spelling as "bakatter," which means "to do something really stupid on Twitter." Like the planking boom of a few years ago, it's become quite a thing, with people posting pictures of themselves sleeping in convenience store freezers, eating ramen in restaurants while naked or standing on top of police cars just for the lulz.

Some new words for 2013, from "selfie" to bakatter.

Pacific Rim vs Anime

The other day I watched Pacific Rim, a movie I'd not managed to catch in theaters due to my convention schedule during the summer. It was a great film, a well executed love letter to the classic Japanese kaiju (monster) movies of decades past, and it was a lot of fun to watch. Of course you can't make a serious movie featuring giant robots without a lot of comparisons with anime, and it was fun to observe the influence of classic robot series like Great Mazinger and Giant Robo on the film design. The ending especially felt like an extended homage to Aim for the Top: Gunbuster, which suited me just fine, old school Gainax fan that I am. I thought the film was great for another reason: having an actual Japanese actress (the lovely Rinko Kikuchi) play a Japanese character. All too often "Japanese" characters in mainstream American media are played by Koreans (Heroes, The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Star Trek Enterprise, the new Star Trek film remakes), with the unspoken implication being that Japanese are so bad at English they can't perform the roles themselves. Pacific Rim went the extra mile and found a Japanese actress who was great for the part, and I appreciated the extra connection to Japan this brought to the film.

I enjoyed the Japanese pop culture references in Pacific Rim.

J-List's Pre-Christmas Sale Continues

Christmas is racing towards us, and as we do every year, J-List has prepared thousands of awesome items for our customers around the world. But there's a special problem this year: the traditional start of hardcore shopping season (Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.) is a week later than normal, meaning that our customers wouldn't be able to to take advantage of more affordable shipping options when purchasing, like First Class Airmail. We did the only thing we could: we're starting the sale a week early! Through November 29, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)

Did You Grab a Japanese Grab Bag Yet?

Remember that Fuku-bukuro Season has started at J-List, too. Every year J-List prepares traditional Japanese 福袋 fukubukuro grab bags filled with great products for you to discover, from random Japanese figures and plush toys to bento boxes and related products to some very ecchi items. This year we've got a great lineup, along with new San Diego-based grab bags posted today. Each grab bag contains a value of up to 2x its price, so why not grab some grab bags now and enjoy cool random stuff from Japan?

The Anime Industry as Seen from Inside Japan

The anime industry has certainly gone through changes over the years. You could break it down into different eras, perhaps with the Golden Age being when early shows like Space Battleship Yamato and Speed Racer were laying the groundwork for the future popularity of the genre; the Silver Age, as Macross, Sailor Moon and Akira (a.k.a. "the first anime guys could talk about with girls") exploded onto the scene; and the modern period, defined by the bursting of the licensing-for-broadcast-and-DVD-sales bubble, the rise of the Internet and the move from manual cel animation to digital production. The changes keep coming, of course, and these days anime companies have to learn to work with business models that didn't exist a few years ago, for example distributing new series through legal streaming sites and the future prospect of crowd-funding anime projects. One thing the great sci-fi franchises of the 70s like Planet of the Apes and Star Wars showed us was that the licensed goods related to a property are worth more than direct sales (movie tickets etc.) of the property itself, and animation studios have been embracing this, licensing their characters in new and innovative ways...including advertising everything from Lawson convenience stores to horse racing and Mitsubishi cars.

Treating the anime world as a proper industry to be tracked and analyzed like any other is very much in vogue in Japan these days -- there's even a new quarterly magazine called Anime Busience [sic], which features articles on how Japanese companies can profitably export anime and related "contents" (though I really hate that word) to other countries, how different regions of Japan might market themselves through anime as Hakone has done, etc. Because Japan's population has already started to contract, there's a lot of fear that the domestic market for anime and related pop culture will also contract, and if it continues, Japan will eventually see its "Gross National Cool" eroded by South Korea or China. So anime creators need to look overseas for new revenue streams, though this is often difficult for various reasons, including differences in culture, language, and of course 常識 johshiki, or "common sense." Taking a page from South Korea, which provides government money for marketing K-POP music and K-doramas around the world, the Japanese government is starting to be more supportive of anime creators, in part through NHK's "Cool Japan" TV series.

Anime is popular all over the world, though making it profitable can be a challenge for companies.

Ghosts and the Japanese

Last time I talked about how my Japanese wife didn't want to visit the Mt. Fuji area in part because she was scared of going near Japan's "suicide forest," sure she'd hear the spirits of the dead calling out to her. Japan can seem a very death-oriented place to outsiders -- several holidays here started out as Buddhist days of remembrance for the dead -- so perhaps it's not surprising that Japanese have a higher awareness of ghosts and the supernatural than people in other countries. Some individuals are said to be 霊感のある人 reikan no aru hito, that is, people with a greater than average sensitivity of ghosts and apparitions, and in our family my wife and daughter believe themselves to be part of this group. Once after my father passed away, my daughter (who was about five at the time) turned to empty air and shouted, "Stop watching me!" My wife thought I'd gotten out of bed and was standing there looking at my daughter while she ate her breakfast, but I was still asleep, and the general consensus was that she was "sensing" the spirit of my father who had come to visit us. There was another time when my daughter saw a man dressed in a dark suit who nodded politely to her, though no one else could see him. I have no reikan sense at all, and my wife often tells me how lucky I am to be so unaware of spirits all around me.

My wife and daughter seem more aware of ghosts than me.

Japanese Grab Bag Season is Here

Remember that Fuku-bukuro Season has started at J-List, too. Every year J-List prepares traditional Japanese 福袋 fukubukuro grab bags filled with great products for you to discover, from random Japanese figures and plush toys to bento boxes and related products to some very ecchi items. This year we've got a great lineup, along with new San Diego-based grab bags posted today. Each grab bag contains a value of up to 2x its price, so why not grab some grab bags now and enjoy cool random stuff from Japan?

J-List's Pre-Christmas Sale Has Started Early!

Christmas is racing towards us, and as we do every year, J-List has prepared thousands of awesome items for our customers around the world. But there's a special problem this year: the traditional start of hardcore shopping season (Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.) is a week later than normal, meaning that our customers wouldn't be able to to take advantage of more affordable shipping options when purchasing, like First Class Airmail. We did the only thing we could: we're starting the sale a week early! Through November 29, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)

The Holy Land of Evangelion

I took a couple of days off this week to travel with an Italian friend of mine to Hakone, a pleasant mountain town famous for hot springs and onsen tamago, eggs boiled in natural hot spring water. Hakone is the setting of Evangelion, of course, and part of the fun of going there is doing 聖地巡礼 seichi junrei, "making a pilgrimage to the holy land," e.g. visiting the actual places seen in the anime series, which was super easy thanks to the official Evangelion Instrumentality Map app. The trend of setting anime series in real places isn't really new: many shows of the 1980s were set in the Tokyo's hip Shinjuku district, and the first thing I did after arriving in Japan in 1991 was visit the famous Studio Alta TV from Megazone 23. The trend got moving in earnest when series like Please Teacher/Please Twins and Lucky Star showed that rural regions of Japan could find significant economic benefit by promoting "otaku tourism," allowing their towns to be used as the settings for anime series then profiting from the increase in tourists. (In some cases, including Hanasaku Iroha and Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne, municipalities actually provided funding to the animation studios in the hopes that otaku tourism would prove a boon to the region later.) So the next time you come Japan, you can spend some time relaxing at the coffee shop visited 15,527 times during the Endless Eight arc in Haruhi, search for Menma while exploring the town from AnoHana, or have a picnic in the park where Kyosuke and Kuroneko went on their first date.

We were staying at a nice hotel with several traditional onsen baths, which is of course something gaijin love to experience when in Japan. When I asked my Japanese wife to find a good hotel for us, a funny thing happened: she kept suggesting modern hotels with sleek lines and steel-and-concrete construction to us, which looked more like art galleries than traditional ryokan inns. All we want, I told her, is a fantastic experience with tatami mats and yukata to wear and traditional sashimi to eat, but as a Japanese her idea of what would be a good hotel was different from ours. One of the attractions of the Hakone area is the beautiful views of Mt. Fuji you can discover as you drive around Lake Ashinoko, and it was great getting to see Japan's most famous mountain from so close. Though I love Mt. Fuji, I've never been able to interest my wife in a trip to this part of Japan. Part of it is that she's more fascinated with the U.S. and Europe than she is of her own country -- she'd rather visit Los Angeles or New York, while I'd prefer to go to Kyoto. Then there's a the Aokigahara Forest, called 樹海 jukai or "Sea of Trees" in Japanese, which sadly became a famous suicide spot after a novel published in 1960 featured the area as its setting. She doesn't want to go anywhere near the place, sure that she'll hear the spirits of the dead calling to her or something.

As we explored the area, we stopped at Hakone Shrine to pray for good luck and freedom from Angel attacks. Japan, of course, has two main cultural traditions: Shinto, the original religion of Japan, which sees 神 kami (spirits) in trees, rocks and mountains; and Buddhism, the religion of writing and culture, which entered through China and Korea in the 6th century A.D. and which now is largely associated with funerals and honoring the dead. Of the two, Shinto is definitely the more happy and upbeat tradition, and it's not surprising that 90% of the imagery brought to Westerners through Japanese popular culture is from Shinto, making it much more familiar to us -- an unintended gift from Rumiko Takahashi and the other creators of anime and manga. One happy tradition related to Shinto is writing wishes on a wooden "wish board" called an 絵馬 ema (which we happen to have in stock here), and we saw hundreds of these hanging up at the shrine, including many prayers to pass a university entrance exam. Reading through the messages, we saw many of them were written in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Thai, posted by foreigners who had visited the shrine. It occurred to me that Shinto is really a gateway for people all around the world to become closer to Japan, since we're often more familiar with its imagery than many other aspects of the country.

I had a relaxing couple of days at the "holy land" of NERV headquarters in Hakone.

The J-List Pre-Christmas Sale is Starting Early!!

Christmas is racing towards us, and as we do every year, J-List has prepared thousands of awesome items for our customers around the world. But there's a special problem this year: the traditional start of hardcore shopping season (Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.) is a week later than normal, meaning that our customers wouldn't be able to to take advantage of more affordable shipping options when purchasing, like First Class Airmail. We did the only thing we could: we're starting the sale a week early! Through November 29, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)

Fuku-bukuro Grab Bags at J-List!

Remember that Fuku-bukuro Season has started at J-List, too. Every year J-List prepares traditional Japanese 福袋 fukubukuro grab bags filled with great products for you to discover, from random Japanese figures and plush toys to bento boxes and related products to some very ecchi items. This year we've got a great lineup, along with new San Diego-based grab bags posted today. Each grab bag contains a value of up to 2x its price, so why not grab some grab bags now and enjoy cool random stuff from Japan?

Japanese Girls Who Refer to Themselves in the Third Person

One of the cuter -- or possibly creepier -- things that Japanese girls do is refer to themselves in the third person, done by Fuko from Clannad After Story, Katyusha from Girls und Panzer and Misaka's clone sisters from A Certain Scientific Railgun. Usually, Japanese girls will use their own names in place of a first-person pronoun at a young age, then when they start school and begin interacting with other girls will switch to atashi, a feminine version of watashi, the most common word for "I" in Japanese. (Some will opt for the slightly masculine-sounding boku, and the Japanese word for "tomboy" is bokukko or "girl who uses boku to refer to herself.") My daughter is almost 17 and still refers to herself by her own name. When I asked her about this, she told me, "Well, I can't go around calling myself atashi [I]. It would sound too grown-up, and it wouldn't go with my personality at all." It's really amazing how the Japanese have been able to make a simple concept like "I" so incredibly complex.

Whatever you do, don't get this song stuck in your head for 10,000 hours.

Onsen Culture in Japan

Like many people in Japan, I am a 風呂人 furo-bito, or a person who likes taking baths in natural hot springs (onsen in Japanese, pronounced own-sen), and wherever I drive I've got a bath kit with towel, razor and toothbrush in the car with me. Just as saunas are important to people in Nordic countries in Europe, volcanic hot springs are almost a national treasure in Japan, and many existing onsen towns have a history that goes back 1000 years or more. Most hot spring baths have a official-looking sign posted somewhere describing the chemical make-up of the water and affirming that it is a true volcanic hot spring, since some establishments have gotten in trouble buy promoting boiler-heated baths as natural. It's also common to see signs boasting of all the ailments that will be cured by a sitting in a given bath, including rheumatism, chills, muscle or joint pain, skin problems, cramped shoulders, sleeping disorders, and even anemia. One famous image associated with Japan's culture of bathing is the "onsen mark," the official icon used to denote the presence of a public bath on maps.

I'm a big fan of Japan's bathing culture.

The Return of Sailor Moon

One of the more welcome developments in the anime world has been the return of Sailor Moon merchandise after an absence of more than a decade. Despite its huge impact on the world of anime, calling millions of new fans into the genre and introducing more than a few to the concept of "cousins with benefits," the franchise was allowed to die completely in Japan as Toei moved on to other shows like Ojamajo Doremi and Pretty Cure. Like fans of the original Star Trek series, which was snatched away unkindly in 1969, Sailor Moon's fans both in Japan and around the world kept the faith, expressing their love of the characters with fanart and, ahem, doujinshi. I might have helped the cause of Sailor Moon in some small way, when I visited an industry convention two years ago and happened to see a young employee from Toei. I buttonholed him, and explained about how there's a worldwide generation of fans in their 20s who want to have cool Sailor Moon products to buy and new Sailor Moon to watch on TV. Many of these fans have becomes mothers by now, I explained, and they want to share their love of Sailor Moon with their daughters, making costumes and memories together. (Nothing warms me more than the thought of mothers and daughters become closer thanks to Sailor Moon.) J-List's buyer for bento products and traditional Japanese products is Mai-chan, and she's in charge of stocking Sailor Moon products, too. It's a real joy for her because she grew up loving the show, and never dreamed there could be thousands of fans all over the world who feel the way she does.

We're very happy to see the return of Sailor Moon products!

A Great All-Ages Visual Novel!

We love visual novels in all their forms, and one game we like a lot is If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この空に翼を広げて Kono Sora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete), a great story about youth and love and dreams. The game is available in convenient download or shrinkwrapped package editions.

Fuku-bukuro Return to J-List!!

Announcing the start of Fuku-bukuro Season! Every year J-List prepares Japanese "grab bags" filled with great products for you to discover, from random Japanese figures and plush toys to bento boxes and related products to some very ecchi items. This year we've got a great lineup, including Anime & Toy, Bento & Traditional, Doki Doki Random and the always popular 18+ Grab Bags. Each grab bag contains a value of up to 2x its price, so why not grab some grab bags now and enjoy cool random stuff from Japan?

Strange Things You Might Hear in Japan

There are some things you say when you live in Japan that you'd certainly never utter back home. For example, when you give someone a gift it's common to be self-effacing and say つまらない物ですが tsumaranai mono desu ga ("please accept this boring gift") as you hand it to them, something you'd never do in English. (If it's food you might say, "I'm not sure if you'll find this delicious or not, but please eat it anyway.") Asking a person's blood type then having a deep conversation the implications raised by them being a certain blood type is odd, as is hearing someone ask "Where is your domicile?" instead of "Where do you live?" since Japanese people sometimes think the most complex and difficult English word is the "best." When a member of the J-List staff goes home for the day, I'll usually tell them 気をつけて ki o tsukete, which means "please be careful [driving home]," but this farewell greeting might sound a bit strange if said in English. Then there's, "At what age did you stop bathing with your parents?" In Japan, parents will generally take baths with their kids up to a certain age, usually fourth grade a few years later. It's a wholesome time for parent-child communication which the Japanese call "skinship," and something I liked a lot back when my kids were small enough to do it. A common joke in anime is a character who's embarrassed when his friends find out that he was taking baths with his mother well into junior high school.

"Please accept this boring gift, you imouto-loving pervert."

All About Wasabi

There's a lot of food to love in Japan, from sushi and sashimi to large nabe (pot dishes) like sukiyaki to delicious tonkatsu (breaded and fried pork cutlet) topped with Kirino's sauce. While the Japanese aren't generally into eating food that's very spicy -- Indians and Koreans secretly laugh at them for being unable to eat really hot curry or kimchee -- they do love to flavor certain foods with wasabi, a spicy green paste that's often called Japanese horseradish. Wasabi is very good with sushi and sashimi, as well as cold noodle dishes like soba and udon, and nothing cleans out the old sinuses like using a little too much wasabi in your food. The wasabi root is cultivated in different parts of Japan, most notably Shizuoka Prefecture near Mt. Fuji, but it's very hard to grow as it requires perfectly clean water and a specific type of climate. As with most interesting things you encounter in Japan, wasabi has a long history, being first mentioned in official documents in the Nara Period, 1300 years ago. If you're curious, we've got some great wasabi-related products on the site today, along with cookbooks in English for you to get cooking ideas for Japanese foods.

I'm a big fan of spicy wasabi on sushi and sashimi.

Beyond Maid Cafes

Maid cafes have become one of the more famous images of modern Japan, and when foreigners visit Akihabara they'll often make a point of visiting one of these establishments and ordering omurice with a heart drawn on top in ketchup. But no industry can survive without evolving, and the basic maid cafe concept often shows up with interesting variations, such as Imouto Cafe Nagomi (the girls all pretend to be your younger sister, calling you oniichan as they serve you coffee and cake); a "role playing cafe" where customers and staff all pretend to be attending a school in a fantasy kingdom; St. Gracecourt, a "sister cafe" where the waitresses pretend to be nuns; at least one "trap" cafe based on this game; and various "butler's cafes" for girls, including one staffed by handsome gaijin men who say "yes, my princess" to female patrons. There are other fun "concept cafes" to explore, such as the now-famous cat cafes where you can play with friendly cats while enjoying some slow time for yourself, a "planetarium cafe" at Haneda Airport where you can drink coffee while looking at the stars, and Capcom Bar, an official bar celebrating the company's contributions to pop culture. The place I want to go to is the Thunderbirds Cafe, which is filled with classic memorabilia from the 1960s British sci-fi series by Gerry Anderson.

Some interesting "concept cafes" in Tokyo.

Fuku-bukuro Season has Started at J-List!

Announcing the start of Fuku-bukuro Season! Every year J-List prepares Japanese "grab bags" filled with great products for you to discover, from random Japanese figures and plush toys to bento boxes and related products to some very ecchi items. This year we've got a great lineup, including Anime & Toy, Bento & Traditional, Doki Doki Random and the always popular 18+ Grab Bags. Each grab bag contains a value of up to 2x its price, so why not grab some grab bags now and enjoy cool random stuff from Japan?

Some Japanese Grammar: Iru and Aru

I often talk about the various unique aspects of the Japanese language, in part because I just think languages are cool, but also in the hopes of helping anyone interested in learning Japanese get their bearings. Naturally Japanese is very different from English, featuring a different word order (SOV instead of SVO as we use in English), the ability to casually omit the subject and object in sentences if the meaning is clear from context, and so on. One aspect of Japanese grammar that proves challenging for students early on are the verbs います imasu and あります arimasu, which both mean "to exist [in a place]." The catch is that imasu (pronounced ee-mahs) is used for animate objects, anything that's alive ike a person or a cat, and arimasu (ah-ree-mahs) is for any inanimate object. A good basic sentence might be, 私は東京にいますが、家は大阪にあります watashi wa Tokyo ni imasu ga, ie wa Osaka ni arimasu, which means "I am in Tokyo, but my house is in Osaka." I remember tormenting my teacher with questions about these verbs, asking which I should use if referring to an android that was indistinguishable from a human, or an undead zombie, or a Venus Fly Trap, as my brain sought to define the boundaries of the new concepts I was learning. When I came to Japan I happened to meet a small child who mistakenly referred to cars driving down the road with imasu instead of the correct arimasu (the cars move, though they're not alive). I felt a strange kinship with her, since I might have made the same error myself. (For the record, the Japanese staff of J-List reports that zombies and robots would use imasu since you can interact with them, but all plants would use arimasu.)

Another example: Where is the scary clown? He's standing right behind you.