Hello all. I actually did the blog from two days ago yesterday, and so I decided to bump posting the latest update to today.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
The world has been shocked and awed by the terrible disasters of the Indian Ocean tsunami and before that, by the earthquake in Niigata, Japan, near where J-List is located. Today Japan solemnly marks the 10th anniversary of another terrible disaster, the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which did an incredible amount of damage to the city of Kobe a decade ago. Before the 7.3 magnitude quake struck on the morning of January 17, 1995, Japan had felt pretty secure that they were safe from strong quakes because of their strictly-enforced building codes. However, the nature of the quake and the age of many of the buildings combined to cause a huge amount of destruction, and over 6400 people lost their lives. I had happened to visit Kobe a few months before the earthquake and made friends with the manager of the Old Spaghetti Factory there. Happily, no one at the restaurant was injured in the quake and they reopened soon after.
When a person learns a foreign language they actually develop a second personality, which takes over when they're speaking that language. In Japanese, my personality is very different, and I'm often surprised at how different both halves are. Japanese tend to be humble, and in Japanese you often use the word sumimasen (excuse me) in situations where Americans would say "thank you." My wife is much more assertive in English than she is in Japanese, since English is just built that way -- you always say the subject of sentences and use "yes" or "no" to clearly indicate your opinion, unlike in Japanese where meanings are often more vague and nuanced. It's been very interesting watching the development of an "English personality" in my children, too. In English, my daughter is cute and feminine, since she usually plays with other girls in English, but in Japanese, she's a pure tomboy, even using the male first person pronoun (boku used by boys, instead of atashi which is used by girls).
I'm enjoying my time here in San Diego. As usual, I'm stocking up on things I can't easily get in Japan, like shoes, clothes, and English books. You don't think about things like cough syrup until you live in a country where you can't find the brands you want. Japan is a great place, but the medicines they have are far too weak to work on a big gaijin like me, so I stock up on Nyquil, Alka-Seltzer, and other things I think I might need in the coming months. Soon I'll go back to freezing Japan, but until then I'm getting as much enjoyment out of the balmy San Diego T-shirt weather as I can.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
Ah, Sunny San Diego
Hello all. I am still in San Diego, enjoying the January warmth, which until I got here was the January Rain, complete with rain so bad that the San Diego river (usually a laughable thing) was threatening to flood big time. I don't know what all the fuss was about though -- it's lovely here now.
I am having so much fun in San Diego, as usual. Lots of shopping, buying things that I can't get in Japan easily, like shoes, clothes, and good American cough medicine. (You don't think about medicines you're familiar with until you can't buy them easily.) Here are some pictures of our favorite mall in San Diego, Fashion Valley (where the Apple store is, too ^_^). Also, my car in San Diego, the spiffy Miata that I let my mother drive when I'm not in town. Great to be able to drive it with the top down in January.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
It never fails -- making the hop from Japan to the U.S. is a prescription for reverse culture shock, as I am reminded again of how different the two countries are. The "small" size of frozen yogurt? Ha, it's huge. Even in Southern California with its high population, there are plenty of wide-open spaces that you don't have in Japan. Crossing over from Japan to the U.S. also feels like traveling through a time warp. In some areas, such as cell phones, televisions, and elements of design in electronics and cars, Japan seems to be five years or more ahead of the States. The Sony PSP handheld gaming system is still months away from release in the U.S. and Europe, but I've had mine since November (lucky me).
Duck! Oh! That's! These are examples of some of the more bizarre English that we see daily in Japan. Since all Japanese study six years of English in school (or up to ten years if they study it in college), most people have a general working knowledge of English, even if they can't always communicate fluently. Duck! is the bizarre message a moving company prints on their trucks. Why? It gets attention, I guess. Oh! is the message printed on a warehouse near us, why we're not entirely sure. And That's! is a line of media products, CD-Rs and videotapes, manufacturered in a factory in our prefecture. Every time I go to my dentist I pass a building that says "Splush is not only the problem of age." I've puzzled over this for hours, and I think it means something like "you're never too old to make a splash in life."
For me, studying Japanese has always been great fun, but there are were difficult patches, to be sure. One area that proved challenging for me while I was studying is an interesting category of four-syllable adjectives (the 2nd syllable is a small pause that counts as a syllable in Japanese) that have interesting meanings that can be quite complex. Sokkuri (soh-KOO-ri) is a word that means "to look exactly like [someone else]," so if you meet a Japanese man and his son, and they look very similar to each other, you can point and say sokkuri! and watch their reactions. A similar word is pittari (pi-TAH-ri) which means "it's a perfect fit," so if you're trying to find the right size shirt and you finally find it, this is the word you'd use. Bikkuri (bi-KOO-ri) means "to be greatly shocked" (sometimes Japanese substitute the English word "shock" for this word), and so on. There are about 50 of these words, all with hard to learn but well-defined meanings.
I am having so much fun in San Diego, as usual. Lots of shopping, buying things that I can't get in Japan easily, like shoes, clothes, and good American cough medicine. (You don't think about medicines you're familiar with until you can't buy them easily.) Here are some pictures of our favorite mall in San Diego, Fashion Valley (where the Apple store is, too ^_^). Also, my car in San Diego, the spiffy Miata that I let my mother drive when I'm not in town. Great to be able to drive it with the top down in January.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
It never fails -- making the hop from Japan to the U.S. is a prescription for reverse culture shock, as I am reminded again of how different the two countries are. The "small" size of frozen yogurt? Ha, it's huge. Even in Southern California with its high population, there are plenty of wide-open spaces that you don't have in Japan. Crossing over from Japan to the U.S. also feels like traveling through a time warp. In some areas, such as cell phones, televisions, and elements of design in electronics and cars, Japan seems to be five years or more ahead of the States. The Sony PSP handheld gaming system is still months away from release in the U.S. and Europe, but I've had mine since November (lucky me).
Duck! Oh! That's! These are examples of some of the more bizarre English that we see daily in Japan. Since all Japanese study six years of English in school (or up to ten years if they study it in college), most people have a general working knowledge of English, even if they can't always communicate fluently. Duck! is the bizarre message a moving company prints on their trucks. Why? It gets attention, I guess. Oh! is the message printed on a warehouse near us, why we're not entirely sure. And That's! is a line of media products, CD-Rs and videotapes, manufacturered in a factory in our prefecture. Every time I go to my dentist I pass a building that says "Splush is not only the problem of age." I've puzzled over this for hours, and I think it means something like "you're never too old to make a splash in life."
For me, studying Japanese has always been great fun, but there are were difficult patches, to be sure. One area that proved challenging for me while I was studying is an interesting category of four-syllable adjectives (the 2nd syllable is a small pause that counts as a syllable in Japanese) that have interesting meanings that can be quite complex. Sokkuri (soh-KOO-ri) is a word that means "to look exactly like [someone else]," so if you meet a Japanese man and his son, and they look very similar to each other, you can point and say sokkuri! and watch their reactions. A similar word is pittari (pi-TAH-ri) which means "it's a perfect fit," so if you're trying to find the right size shirt and you finally find it, this is the word you'd use. Bikkuri (bi-KOO-ri) means "to be greatly shocked" (sometimes Japanese substitute the English word "shock" for this word), and so on. There are about 50 of these words, all with hard to learn but well-defined meanings.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Report from America: Sumo wrestling, annual snowfall and more
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello from a very cold Japan. As usual, January on the Kanto Plain (the large plain around the Tokyo area) is bitingly cold, with cold winds that race down the mountains, called kara-kaze, the harsh "empty wind" that our prefecture is famous for. Except for the snow we got on Dec 31st, which melted soon after, we've had clear skies, courtesy of the Japan Alps, which act as a barrier to the precipitation, if not the wind -- the poor people who live on the Sea of Japan side of the country endure lots more snow than we do. When it's as cold as it is in Japan, there's nothing like going someplace warm, like San Diego, California, which is where I'm off to today. Although Southern California has been getting beat up by bad weather, I'm sure it's warmer than Japan.
Learning a new language means dealing with concepts that can't always be fit into your native language. One of the first examples having to fit a strange linguistic concept my brain came with the words kore, sore and are (koh-REI, soh-REI and ah-REI), which correspond to "this" (something near me), "that" (something new you, or a short distance away) and "that one over there" (something far from both of us) Having three location concepts where there are only two in English was a challenge, and my brain felt uncomfortable with this at first. What was the exact distance in inches where something went from being sore to are? We bugged our teacher with many questions like this. The above three words are demonstrative pronoun, e.g. "this one, that one." Another set -- kono, sono and ano -- are articles and require a noun after them, e.g. kono tamago "this egg," sono hon "that book [near you]" and ano onna no ko "that girl [over there]." If you've ever heard a Japanse person over-using "this one" instead of the word "this" it's because the concepts are different in Japanese.
Sunday was the start of the Hatsu Basho, the first tournament of the New Year. Sumo wrestling is the national sport of Japan, enjoying special sponsorship by the government. There are six tournaments during the year, four in Tokyo's Ryogoku area and one each in Nagoya and Kyushu. Sumo wrestlers from 54 training houses, called heya (meaning "room") but oddly translated as "stable" in English, compete against each other as they try to climb in rank as a wrestler. The six ranks in sumo are Juryo, Hirameki, Komusubi, Sekiwake, Ozeki and Yokozuna, with Yokozuna ("Grand Master") being the top rank. For a time, the sumo world was dominated by American wrestlers from Hawaii, like Konishiki, Akebono and my own favorite, Musashimaru, but one by one they retired as leg injuries and age slowly caught up with them, and they all retired. Currently the only top-ranked wrestler is Mongolian-born Asashoryu, who is one powerful wrestler. He often wins using the yorikiri technique, pushing his opponent straight out of the ring, but is also known for using tsuriotoshi, picking his opponent up and bodily dropping him inside the ring.
Hello from a very cold Japan. As usual, January on the Kanto Plain (the large plain around the Tokyo area) is bitingly cold, with cold winds that race down the mountains, called kara-kaze, the harsh "empty wind" that our prefecture is famous for. Except for the snow we got on Dec 31st, which melted soon after, we've had clear skies, courtesy of the Japan Alps, which act as a barrier to the precipitation, if not the wind -- the poor people who live on the Sea of Japan side of the country endure lots more snow than we do. When it's as cold as it is in Japan, there's nothing like going someplace warm, like San Diego, California, which is where I'm off to today. Although Southern California has been getting beat up by bad weather, I'm sure it's warmer than Japan.
Learning a new language means dealing with concepts that can't always be fit into your native language. One of the first examples having to fit a strange linguistic concept my brain came with the words kore, sore and are (koh-REI, soh-REI and ah-REI), which correspond to "this" (something near me), "that" (something new you, or a short distance away) and "that one over there" (something far from both of us) Having three location concepts where there are only two in English was a challenge, and my brain felt uncomfortable with this at first. What was the exact distance in inches where something went from being sore to are? We bugged our teacher with many questions like this. The above three words are demonstrative pronoun, e.g. "this one, that one." Another set -- kono, sono and ano -- are articles and require a noun after them, e.g. kono tamago "this egg," sono hon "that book [near you]" and ano onna no ko "that girl [over there]." If you've ever heard a Japanse person over-using "this one" instead of the word "this" it's because the concepts are different in Japanese.
Sunday was the start of the Hatsu Basho, the first tournament of the New Year. Sumo wrestling is the national sport of Japan, enjoying special sponsorship by the government. There are six tournaments during the year, four in Tokyo's Ryogoku area and one each in Nagoya and Kyushu. Sumo wrestlers from 54 training houses, called heya (meaning "room") but oddly translated as "stable" in English, compete against each other as they try to climb in rank as a wrestler. The six ranks in sumo are Juryo, Hirameki, Komusubi, Sekiwake, Ozeki and Yokozuna, with Yokozuna ("Grand Master") being the top rank. For a time, the sumo world was dominated by American wrestlers from Hawaii, like Konishiki, Akebono and my own favorite, Musashimaru, but one by one they retired as leg injuries and age slowly caught up with them, and they all retired. Currently the only top-ranked wrestler is Mongolian-born Asashoryu, who is one powerful wrestler. He often wins using the yorikiri technique, pushing his opponent straight out of the ring, but is also known for using tsuriotoshi, picking his opponent up and bodily dropping him inside the ring.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Coming-of-Age Day, Godzilla's end and more
Hello all. It's Monday but because today is Coming-of-Age Day (see below), the kids have school off, even though they should by all rights be in school by now. So my poor wife is spending another day taking care of them insted of getting her own work done. Ah, but that ends tommorrow...
Here are some pictures from Japan, with no theme to them at all. First is a picture of my wife's uncle, who fought in World War II on the battleship Ise. This is what he looked like when he was young. All his other pictures were lost when the ship was sunk in the harbor by the U.S. forces. Next, a New Year's Day shot of Darumas (decorative little Buddhist paper statues that are popular in Japan, especially in Gunma Prefecture where we live), about to be burned since they're from the previous year. Finally, a shot of the recent snow we had, very frosty and cold. As always, snow in the Kanto area (the flat plain around Tokyo) melts right away, so it's lucky we went out to play in the snow before it was gone.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Today is a special day in Japan: Seijin no Hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, when Japanese youths who have reached the age of twenty celebrate their entry into adulthood, since this is considered legal age in Japan. In the morning, they gather at their City Office, the girls wearing beautiful kimonos that their proud parents have bought for them and the boys in smart-looking suits, and endure long speeches by the mayor and other pillars of the community about their futures. In the evening, the new adults will generally smoke, drink and otherwise celebrate their new legal status as adults any way they can. Previously the holiday was held on January 15th, but a few years ago it was changed to the nearest Monday so that people could enjoy a three-day weekend (this is known as "Happy Monday" in Japan).
The Japanese film world is all abuzz these days. Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, Howl's Moving Castle, is playing in theatres now, and we took our kids to see it over the weekend (we had to wait a while for the crowds to die down, which is normal for a Miyazaki film release here). As usual, Japan's most famous animation director has created yet another fabulously original world which thoroughly delighted us. Based on a British novel by Diana Wynne Jones, it's the story of Sophie, an ordinary girl who is changed into a 90-year old woman by an evil witch's spell and seeks the help of the handsome wizard Howl and his magically moving castle. As usual, the soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, the composer who has created the music for every Miyazaki film, is superb.
The other Japanese film getting a lot of attention recently has been Godzilla Final Wars, the "final" Godzilla movie by Toho has they retire the 50-year franchise, at least until they un-retire it at some point in the future. We caught a documentary on television about the making of this film, which features a somewhat Matrix-ified sci-fi story and lots of monsters for Godzilla to cut through. There were more than a few tears as actor Tsutomu Kitagawa got inside the massive Godzilla suit for the final cut of the film, and then it was a wrap. They showed the final shots of Godzilla from each of the films, intercut with comments by the staff who had worked on the movies over the years, including Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects cinematographer for the original film, who went on to create Ultra-Q and Ultraman for television. They then showed the demolishing of the historic Dai Pool, the giant pool of water at Toho Studios where the ocean sequences have been shot for the past half-century, which is being cleared to make way for new studio construction. It was very moving.
Here are some pictures from Japan, with no theme to them at all. First is a picture of my wife's uncle, who fought in World War II on the battleship Ise. This is what he looked like when he was young. All his other pictures were lost when the ship was sunk in the harbor by the U.S. forces. Next, a New Year's Day shot of Darumas (decorative little Buddhist paper statues that are popular in Japan, especially in Gunma Prefecture where we live), about to be burned since they're from the previous year. Finally, a shot of the recent snow we had, very frosty and cold. As always, snow in the Kanto area (the flat plain around Tokyo) melts right away, so it's lucky we went out to play in the snow before it was gone.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Today is a special day in Japan: Seijin no Hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, when Japanese youths who have reached the age of twenty celebrate their entry into adulthood, since this is considered legal age in Japan. In the morning, they gather at their City Office, the girls wearing beautiful kimonos that their proud parents have bought for them and the boys in smart-looking suits, and endure long speeches by the mayor and other pillars of the community about their futures. In the evening, the new adults will generally smoke, drink and otherwise celebrate their new legal status as adults any way they can. Previously the holiday was held on January 15th, but a few years ago it was changed to the nearest Monday so that people could enjoy a three-day weekend (this is known as "Happy Monday" in Japan).
The Japanese film world is all abuzz these days. Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, Howl's Moving Castle, is playing in theatres now, and we took our kids to see it over the weekend (we had to wait a while for the crowds to die down, which is normal for a Miyazaki film release here). As usual, Japan's most famous animation director has created yet another fabulously original world which thoroughly delighted us. Based on a British novel by Diana Wynne Jones, it's the story of Sophie, an ordinary girl who is changed into a 90-year old woman by an evil witch's spell and seeks the help of the handsome wizard Howl and his magically moving castle. As usual, the soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, the composer who has created the music for every Miyazaki film, is superb.
The other Japanese film getting a lot of attention recently has been Godzilla Final Wars, the "final" Godzilla movie by Toho has they retire the 50-year franchise, at least until they un-retire it at some point in the future. We caught a documentary on television about the making of this film, which features a somewhat Matrix-ified sci-fi story and lots of monsters for Godzilla to cut through. There were more than a few tears as actor Tsutomu Kitagawa got inside the massive Godzilla suit for the final cut of the film, and then it was a wrap. They showed the final shots of Godzilla from each of the films, intercut with comments by the staff who had worked on the movies over the years, including Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects cinematographer for the original film, who went on to create Ultra-Q and Ultraman for television. They then showed the demolishing of the historic Dai Pool, the giant pool of water at Toho Studios where the ocean sequences have been shot for the past half-century, which is being cleared to make way for new studio construction. It was very moving.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Yon-sama and variations on the word "Gambarimasu"
Hello all. Finishing a busy week, and am looking forward to taking the kids to the onsen, that is, hot springs.
Here are more pictures from Japan. Before Dec 31st you can have a "End of Year Party" (Bounen-kai, lit. "forget the past year party"), but after Jan 1st you have a New Year Party (Shinen-kai). I had a New Year party with a friend from college, and here are some pics.
The place is an "Izakaya" or a kind of traditional beer restaurant with good food. The food was great -- especially the fish, not an easy thing to say considering we're in the middle of Japan, far from the ocean. Below see my New Year's Beer, the first beer of 2005; a Grapefruit Sour, a drink with alcohol in it which you squeeze fresh grapefruit juice and pulp in to make a delicious drink; and a picture of a Beer Girl, the lovely girls who promote beer drinking in Japan.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
The star of South Korean actor Bae Yong-joon, who appeared in the Korean drama Winter Sonata, just keeps on rising in Japan. The talented actor is on the way to becoming this year's "CM king" (the star appearing most in TV commercials), advertising everything from Lotte chocolate to mobile phones with cross-country calling features to small cars for women. The biggest group of fans of "Yon-sama" (as he's called these days) are middle-aged women in Japan, who apparently have lots of free time and excess income. When he arrived in Narita to promote his photobook, there were so many fans waiting for him that several people were hurt in the crush of bodies. The locations that appeared Winter Sonata are a popular tourist spot for Japanese women these days, with Korean Airlines offering special charter flights to handle the load of Japanese tourists. You can even make folded paper origami of Yon-sama with a book that's been released in Japan.
One word that comes up in anime a lot is gambaru (gahn-BAH-roo, alternately written ganbaru). A happy, cheerful word which means to do one's best, to work hard, to give one's all and so on, it seems to find its way into a variety of situations. Usually heard in its formal form gambarimasu (gahn-BAH-ri-mass, "[I will] do my best!"), or else as a request, e.g. gambatte or gambatte kudasai (gahn-BAH-tay koo-da-sai, "please try hard"), or alternatively in its "command" form, gambare (gahn-BAH-ray, "Do your best!"). Like Turkish, Finnish and some Native American languages, Japanese is an "agglutinating" language, which means it puts a lot of information (past tense, passive voice, polite language etc.) in the forms of the verb being used. The bad news is that students of Japanese have to memorize these forms (informal present, informal past tense, passive, and so on). The good news is that they're not hard to learn, and you never have to mess with confusing helping verbs like "he would have been able to come if he had received the call" in Japanese.
To successfully study a language, one thing you need to do beyond learning the grammar and vocabulary is to craft overall strategies for communication, even if it means using hand gestures or drawing pictures to show meaning. One strategy for communication that's probably used by all speakers of foreign languages is the non sequitur, a reply that can be used as a response to just about any question, whether you understood it or not. Back in my bachelor days, I went to a live orchestra performance and was surprised to hear that the organizers had "randomly" chosen three people from the audience to get up and conduct the musicians: a cute old woman, a little girl, and funny American, namely me. I got up on the conductors podium, trying to ignore the hundreds of people behind me, and lead the Maebashi Philharmonic Orchestra in the first few bars of Beethoven's 5th. When I was done, the MC asked me some questions about where I was from, how I liked my first time conducting an orchestra, and...something else, that I didn't happen to catch. Rather than embarrass myself in front of so many people by asking the MC to repeat herself, I gave her an answer that would fit just about anywhere in Japanese: so desu ne (literally "Yes, that's so"), which in Japanese usage can act as a neutral reply to just about any question.
Here are more pictures from Japan. Before Dec 31st you can have a "End of Year Party" (Bounen-kai, lit. "forget the past year party"), but after Jan 1st you have a New Year Party (Shinen-kai). I had a New Year party with a friend from college, and here are some pics.
The place is an "Izakaya" or a kind of traditional beer restaurant with good food. The food was great -- especially the fish, not an easy thing to say considering we're in the middle of Japan, far from the ocean. Below see my New Year's Beer, the first beer of 2005; a Grapefruit Sour, a drink with alcohol in it which you squeeze fresh grapefruit juice and pulp in to make a delicious drink; and a picture of a Beer Girl, the lovely girls who promote beer drinking in Japan.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
The star of South Korean actor Bae Yong-joon, who appeared in the Korean drama Winter Sonata, just keeps on rising in Japan. The talented actor is on the way to becoming this year's "CM king" (the star appearing most in TV commercials), advertising everything from Lotte chocolate to mobile phones with cross-country calling features to small cars for women. The biggest group of fans of "Yon-sama" (as he's called these days) are middle-aged women in Japan, who apparently have lots of free time and excess income. When he arrived in Narita to promote his photobook, there were so many fans waiting for him that several people were hurt in the crush of bodies. The locations that appeared Winter Sonata are a popular tourist spot for Japanese women these days, with Korean Airlines offering special charter flights to handle the load of Japanese tourists. You can even make folded paper origami of Yon-sama with a book that's been released in Japan.
One word that comes up in anime a lot is gambaru (gahn-BAH-roo, alternately written ganbaru). A happy, cheerful word which means to do one's best, to work hard, to give one's all and so on, it seems to find its way into a variety of situations. Usually heard in its formal form gambarimasu (gahn-BAH-ri-mass, "[I will] do my best!"), or else as a request, e.g. gambatte or gambatte kudasai (gahn-BAH-tay koo-da-sai, "please try hard"), or alternatively in its "command" form, gambare (gahn-BAH-ray, "Do your best!"). Like Turkish, Finnish and some Native American languages, Japanese is an "agglutinating" language, which means it puts a lot of information (past tense, passive voice, polite language etc.) in the forms of the verb being used. The bad news is that students of Japanese have to memorize these forms (informal present, informal past tense, passive, and so on). The good news is that they're not hard to learn, and you never have to mess with confusing helping verbs like "he would have been able to come if he had received the call" in Japanese.
To successfully study a language, one thing you need to do beyond learning the grammar and vocabulary is to craft overall strategies for communication, even if it means using hand gestures or drawing pictures to show meaning. One strategy for communication that's probably used by all speakers of foreign languages is the non sequitur, a reply that can be used as a response to just about any question, whether you understood it or not. Back in my bachelor days, I went to a live orchestra performance and was surprised to hear that the organizers had "randomly" chosen three people from the audience to get up and conduct the musicians: a cute old woman, a little girl, and funny American, namely me. I got up on the conductors podium, trying to ignore the hundreds of people behind me, and lead the Maebashi Philharmonic Orchestra in the first few bars of Beethoven's 5th. When I was done, the MC asked me some questions about where I was from, how I liked my first time conducting an orchestra, and...something else, that I didn't happen to catch. Rather than embarrass myself in front of so many people by asking the MC to repeat herself, I gave her an answer that would fit just about anywhere in Japanese: so desu ne (literally "Yes, that's so"), which in Japanese usage can act as a neutral reply to just about any question.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
The Three States of Eye Aversion in Gaijin
Here are today's pictures for all who care to see them. Today I'm showing you some of my recently cleaned-out Star Wars figure display. I have a few hundred figures, bought from 1997 through today, and they're really fun to collect. I tend to go for the well designed figures, and shun the crappier ones -- I'd gladly buy another Gamorean Guard or one of the recently released good Stormtroopers, for example, but I passed on the poorly designed re-issues of the original figures with 1977 Kenner packaging because the figures looked horrible.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
One could write a book studying the psyche of gaijin living in Japan -- for example, the "three states of eye aversion" they seem to go through when it comes to looking at other foreigners around them. There are many gaijin from countries like America, England, and Brazil who appear regularly on Japanese TV speaking fluent Japanese and giving an "outsider's view" on things -- it's common for one of the commentators on a news show to be a foreigner, for example. Foreigners living in Japan often hate these TV personalities, if for no other reason than because their Japanese is better than ours. Among the foreign-born "talents" you can see on TV here are Wikki-san, a Sri Lankan man who passed the entrance exam for the famous Tokyo University even though he's a foreigner and who's become a spokesman for tsunami disaster aid in the past few weeks; Patrick Harlan, who speaks his annoying macho English on NHK's hit English study show "Eigo de shabera-night"; and the eternal Dave Spector, former ABC television producer who become the most famous American in Japan, appearing on hundreds of variety shows (he dyes his black hair blonde because it makes him look more "foreign" on television).
During my time in Japan, I've had certain "gaijin shocks," real out-of-body experiences that you could only have in this country. American Football is followed by some Japanese fans, and I managed to find a game being broadcast late at night -- half an hour into the action, I realized I'd been listening to the sportcasters give the play-by-play commentary in Japanese without even noticing it. There have been other times when I found myself quite surprised by something, such as when I had that first dream in Japanese, or realizing I understood what the opening words to the Mr. Roboto song meant ("Thank you, Mr. Roboto, until we meet again...Thank you, Mr. Roboto, I want to know your secret"). Once, while eating pancakes, I couldn't find a fork so I made do with chopsticks, aware of how silly I'd look to friends back home. Finally being able to read the "sake" (sah-KAY, rice wine) character on Dr. Sane's "spring water" in Yamato/Star Blazers was another enlightening experience for me. Ah, it's fun to live in Japan!
Breakfast cereal is one of the major staple foods in the U.S., and it's slowly growing in popularity here in Japan, too. It was slow going, though -- Japanese consumers preferred Japanese food, like fish, miso soup and natto (fermented soybeans) to what looked to them like "bird seed." Now, several brands of cereal compete for share the Japanese cereal market, lead by Kellogg's, who markets Corn Flake, Corn Frosty, Choko-wa (chocolate loops), Genmai Flakes, and recently, Fruits Loops (the "fruits" is a fluke of Japanese phonetics). Unfortunately, Kellogg's products are very expensive here -- about $4 for a box that contains only 2-3 American-sized bowls of cereal, so I usually choose Ciscorn or Calbee's cereal products when I go shopping. Another option for gaijin living in Japan is to order supermarket cases of American cereal from the Foreign Buyers' Club in Kobe (http://www.fbcusa.com) -- it's a convenient way to buy food from back home, if you don't mind having 12 boxes of Cheerios sitting around for a year.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
One could write a book studying the psyche of gaijin living in Japan -- for example, the "three states of eye aversion" they seem to go through when it comes to looking at other foreigners around them. There are many gaijin from countries like America, England, and Brazil who appear regularly on Japanese TV speaking fluent Japanese and giving an "outsider's view" on things -- it's common for one of the commentators on a news show to be a foreigner, for example. Foreigners living in Japan often hate these TV personalities, if for no other reason than because their Japanese is better than ours. Among the foreign-born "talents" you can see on TV here are Wikki-san, a Sri Lankan man who passed the entrance exam for the famous Tokyo University even though he's a foreigner and who's become a spokesman for tsunami disaster aid in the past few weeks; Patrick Harlan, who speaks his annoying macho English on NHK's hit English study show "Eigo de shabera-night"; and the eternal Dave Spector, former ABC television producer who become the most famous American in Japan, appearing on hundreds of variety shows (he dyes his black hair blonde because it makes him look more "foreign" on television).
During my time in Japan, I've had certain "gaijin shocks," real out-of-body experiences that you could only have in this country. American Football is followed by some Japanese fans, and I managed to find a game being broadcast late at night -- half an hour into the action, I realized I'd been listening to the sportcasters give the play-by-play commentary in Japanese without even noticing it. There have been other times when I found myself quite surprised by something, such as when I had that first dream in Japanese, or realizing I understood what the opening words to the Mr. Roboto song meant ("Thank you, Mr. Roboto, until we meet again...Thank you, Mr. Roboto, I want to know your secret"). Once, while eating pancakes, I couldn't find a fork so I made do with chopsticks, aware of how silly I'd look to friends back home. Finally being able to read the "sake" (sah-KAY, rice wine) character on Dr. Sane's "spring water" in Yamato/Star Blazers was another enlightening experience for me. Ah, it's fun to live in Japan!
Breakfast cereal is one of the major staple foods in the U.S., and it's slowly growing in popularity here in Japan, too. It was slow going, though -- Japanese consumers preferred Japanese food, like fish, miso soup and natto (fermented soybeans) to what looked to them like "bird seed." Now, several brands of cereal compete for share the Japanese cereal market, lead by Kellogg's, who markets Corn Flake, Corn Frosty, Choko-wa (chocolate loops), Genmai Flakes, and recently, Fruits Loops (the "fruits" is a fluke of Japanese phonetics). Unfortunately, Kellogg's products are very expensive here -- about $4 for a box that contains only 2-3 American-sized bowls of cereal, so I usually choose Ciscorn or Calbee's cereal products when I go shopping. Another option for gaijin living in Japan is to order supermarket cases of American cereal from the Foreign Buyers' Club in Kobe (http://www.fbcusa.com) -- it's a convenient way to buy food from back home, if you don't mind having 12 boxes of Cheerios sitting around for a year.
Monday, January 03, 2005
New Years in Japan
Hello all. Had a nice weekend. A friend from Tokyo came up and we had a New Year's Party (Shinenkai, as opposed to a Forget-the-Past-Year Party, which you have in December). I've posted the new update and some pictures of what we did on New Year's, so you can learn about Shintoism in Japan.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello and akemashite omedeto from all of us at J-List! We had a quiet, traditional New Year's here in Japan, getting up and watching the big Oshogatsu Marathon on TV -- by an odd coincidence, a huge nationally televised marathon is held in our city on January 1st, with runners racing past streets near our house while all of Japan watches. In the afternoon we went to the Shinto shrine to pray for happiness and health this year, then did what we do every year, go to my wife's uncle's house to sit around and eat delicious food and play old Japanese card games. My wife's uncle, who is 82, fought on the battleship Ise and has a bullet mark across his face from an American gun, and I like my children to talk with him so they can know what happened in the past between Japan and America. Now it's time for every store to have its hatsu-ichi, the first sale of the New Year, and the streets are clogged with shoppers looking for bargains.
Japan is a small country, with about half the population of the U.S. squeezed into four islands that are about 1/25 the land mass of America. This requires the Japanese to utilize their space more efficiently, and they're very good at coming up with ways of making do with less land. In cities like Tokyo, there often isn't enough space to put a vending machine along the side of the road, so they've developed ultra-thin vending machines that are up to 1/3 as deep as normal ones. Gas stations locate their pumps on the roof, with hoses that can be pulled down to refuel cars, so no space is lost. Japanese futons are also very space-efficient, since they can be folded up and put in the closet during the day. We had so much snow on Friday that I took off work early to play with the kids, and we went to a place that was perfect for our toboggans: a park that had been built around several of the ancient burial mounds (kofun) that dot Japan, in another example of wise use of space. The burial mounds were perfect for sliding down in the snow.
Japanese generally write their names using kanji, Chinese characters, with the family name always written before the given name, e.g. Yamada Hanako instead of Hanako Yamada. When a baby is born, the parents file the paperwork at their local city office, and the child is added to that family's official register. Parents are required to choose characters from a list of "name kanji" that the government has approved, and every few years there are problems because some parents want to use an out-of-date character that's not on the list. Because names in kanji have some meaning that's not necessarily present in Western names, it's often interesting for foreigners to find out what those meanings are. Many Japanese are made up of kanji for some of the simplest words -- ta (rice field, also read da), ishi (stone), naka (inside), yama (mountain), kawa (river), hashi (bridge), and so on. Again and again I find myself amazed at how often Japanese are unable to read some of the more difficult kanji, both names of people and of places. Because each character has at least two ways to read it (the Chinese and Japanese pronunciations), and because readings are often shoehorned into some kanji (for example, Ainu place names in northern Japan have had kanji assigned to them, which no one outside of the region can read), knowing how to read some characters can be a big challenge.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello and akemashite omedeto from all of us at J-List! We had a quiet, traditional New Year's here in Japan, getting up and watching the big Oshogatsu Marathon on TV -- by an odd coincidence, a huge nationally televised marathon is held in our city on January 1st, with runners racing past streets near our house while all of Japan watches. In the afternoon we went to the Shinto shrine to pray for happiness and health this year, then did what we do every year, go to my wife's uncle's house to sit around and eat delicious food and play old Japanese card games. My wife's uncle, who is 82, fought on the battleship Ise and has a bullet mark across his face from an American gun, and I like my children to talk with him so they can know what happened in the past between Japan and America. Now it's time for every store to have its hatsu-ichi, the first sale of the New Year, and the streets are clogged with shoppers looking for bargains.
Japan is a small country, with about half the population of the U.S. squeezed into four islands that are about 1/25 the land mass of America. This requires the Japanese to utilize their space more efficiently, and they're very good at coming up with ways of making do with less land. In cities like Tokyo, there often isn't enough space to put a vending machine along the side of the road, so they've developed ultra-thin vending machines that are up to 1/3 as deep as normal ones. Gas stations locate their pumps on the roof, with hoses that can be pulled down to refuel cars, so no space is lost. Japanese futons are also very space-efficient, since they can be folded up and put in the closet during the day. We had so much snow on Friday that I took off work early to play with the kids, and we went to a place that was perfect for our toboggans: a park that had been built around several of the ancient burial mounds (kofun) that dot Japan, in another example of wise use of space. The burial mounds were perfect for sliding down in the snow.
Japanese generally write their names using kanji, Chinese characters, with the family name always written before the given name, e.g. Yamada Hanako instead of Hanako Yamada. When a baby is born, the parents file the paperwork at their local city office, and the child is added to that family's official register. Parents are required to choose characters from a list of "name kanji" that the government has approved, and every few years there are problems because some parents want to use an out-of-date character that's not on the list. Because names in kanji have some meaning that's not necessarily present in Western names, it's often interesting for foreigners to find out what those meanings are. Many Japanese are made up of kanji for some of the simplest words -- ta (rice field, also read da), ishi (stone), naka (inside), yama (mountain), kawa (river), hashi (bridge), and so on. Again and again I find myself amazed at how often Japanese are unable to read some of the more difficult kanji, both names of people and of places. Because each character has at least two ways to read it (the Chinese and Japanese pronunciations), and because readings are often shoehorned into some kanji (for example, Ainu place names in northern Japan have had kanji assigned to them, which no one outside of the region can read), knowing how to read some characters can be a big challenge.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Bad words in Japanese & the Prefectural System
Hello again. Another update, and another post for you. Can't write much now, I'm off to print my damned New Year's cards. Of course my printer broke when I went to use it, so I was supremely hosed -- had to buy a new Canon Pixus just to print all of 17 stupid cards. Perhaps this is a sign of too much technology?
Here are some pictures from Japan. First, there's OFF!, a store that sells rubber stamps and, since this is Japan, hanko stamps, which are what people carry around to stamp document, which you do in place of signing them. Supposedly, no one thinks of stealing someone's name stamp and selling their house out from under them. Then, I've posted the Nimbus 2000 that Santa brought my 9 year old daughter. She was so happy to see it, even though Santa forgot to put magic in it to make it fly. Kids are so cute on Christmas.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
The clock is ticking down to the end of 2004. Today we did our oh-soji (big cleaning), stopping work for a few hours to scrub the J-List office from top to bottom. I even found time to rearrange my Star Wars figures, which had collapsed after the earthquake in Niigata (amid jokes of a "disturbance in the Force"). We're getting ready for a nice, quiet oshogatsu (oh-SHO-ga-tsu, New Year's Day) and we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday, wherever you are in the world.
Going to live in a new country can be a stressful experience, the proverbial paradigm shifting without a clutch. Something I was quite surprised at upon coming to Japan was the lack of street names, which made it very difficult to learn my way around in my new city. The Japanese layout, which is supposedly based on the French prefectural system, separates the country into 47 prefectures (ken), which includes the Tokyo metropolitan area, the special prefectural areas of Osaka and Kyoto (fu) and the island of Hokkaido, a system which was created after the Meiji Restoration and the elimination of the old feudal system. Inside each prefecture, there are three kinds of incorporated areas: cities (shi), towns (machi or cho, two readings for the same kanji character) or villages (mura). Inside the large city areas, such as the city we live in, there are small "town" areas designated, so that a person may live in Sakura Town, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. In lieu of a numeric address on a street, houses are assigned a number for the "town" it's located in, like 2-19-15. If you think it's terribly confusing to have a whole country with no named streets or numbered houses, you're right -- it's virtually impossible to find any location in Japan without a written map or directions using plenty of landmarks. As populations rise and fall in Japan (usually fall, it's sad to say), areas sometimes merge with each other to create new cities (called gappei), to try to attract investment and tourism. Our prefecture is currently engaged in gappei mania, with several smaller towns combining to form new cities. The towns that J-List's Tomo and Jun live in are going to disappear next year, joining part of the newly established Midori [Green] City.
Whenever you study a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the "bad" words -- that's just plain human nature. Most students of Japanese are surprised to find that there are almost no really bad words in the language -- if you define bad as in, words that kids aren't allowed to use. Kuso (the "s" word) is used regularly on children's anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing with nary a rebuke from their parents. Baka (stupid) is the catch-all insult, used in almost any situation (people from the Osaka region say aho instead). Variations on the above two words include baka-jijii (stupid old man) and kuso-babaa (sh--ty old woman). The various applications of the "F" word don't translate into Japanese at all -- the word doesn't exist in Japanese, although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word sekkusu. The only really "bad" word in Japanese is manko (referring to a woman's reproductive organ) -- a word as embarrassingly close to "mango" as election and another word are for Japanese speakers of English. As always, exercise caution when using these words so that you don't offend any Japanese around you. For more information on Japanese terms, see the J-List glossary (link on the left of the main page).
We continue to be shocked at the terrible destruction in Asia after the earthquake and tsunamis, and are very saddened at the loss of life. Thailand's Phuket island is especially popular with tourists from Japan and Europe, and my wife and I spent an enjoyable honeymoon there ten years ago. Among the thousands of tourists feared dead in the disaster were hundreds of Japanese tourists who had gone to escape the freezing weather in Japan. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this terrible international tragedy.
Here are some pictures from Japan. First, there's OFF!, a store that sells rubber stamps and, since this is Japan, hanko stamps, which are what people carry around to stamp document, which you do in place of signing them. Supposedly, no one thinks of stealing someone's name stamp and selling their house out from under them. Then, I've posted the Nimbus 2000 that Santa brought my 9 year old daughter. She was so happy to see it, even though Santa forgot to put magic in it to make it fly. Kids are so cute on Christmas.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
The clock is ticking down to the end of 2004. Today we did our oh-soji (big cleaning), stopping work for a few hours to scrub the J-List office from top to bottom. I even found time to rearrange my Star Wars figures, which had collapsed after the earthquake in Niigata (amid jokes of a "disturbance in the Force"). We're getting ready for a nice, quiet oshogatsu (oh-SHO-ga-tsu, New Year's Day) and we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday, wherever you are in the world.
Going to live in a new country can be a stressful experience, the proverbial paradigm shifting without a clutch. Something I was quite surprised at upon coming to Japan was the lack of street names, which made it very difficult to learn my way around in my new city. The Japanese layout, which is supposedly based on the French prefectural system, separates the country into 47 prefectures (ken), which includes the Tokyo metropolitan area, the special prefectural areas of Osaka and Kyoto (fu) and the island of Hokkaido, a system which was created after the Meiji Restoration and the elimination of the old feudal system. Inside each prefecture, there are three kinds of incorporated areas: cities (shi), towns (machi or cho, two readings for the same kanji character) or villages (mura). Inside the large city areas, such as the city we live in, there are small "town" areas designated, so that a person may live in Sakura Town, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. In lieu of a numeric address on a street, houses are assigned a number for the "town" it's located in, like 2-19-15. If you think it's terribly confusing to have a whole country with no named streets or numbered houses, you're right -- it's virtually impossible to find any location in Japan without a written map or directions using plenty of landmarks. As populations rise and fall in Japan (usually fall, it's sad to say), areas sometimes merge with each other to create new cities (called gappei), to try to attract investment and tourism. Our prefecture is currently engaged in gappei mania, with several smaller towns combining to form new cities. The towns that J-List's Tomo and Jun live in are going to disappear next year, joining part of the newly established Midori [Green] City.
Whenever you study a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the "bad" words -- that's just plain human nature. Most students of Japanese are surprised to find that there are almost no really bad words in the language -- if you define bad as in, words that kids aren't allowed to use. Kuso (the "s" word) is used regularly on children's anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing with nary a rebuke from their parents. Baka (stupid) is the catch-all insult, used in almost any situation (people from the Osaka region say aho instead). Variations on the above two words include baka-jijii (stupid old man) and kuso-babaa (sh--ty old woman). The various applications of the "F" word don't translate into Japanese at all -- the word doesn't exist in Japanese, although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word sekkusu. The only really "bad" word in Japanese is manko (referring to a woman's reproductive organ) -- a word as embarrassingly close to "mango" as election and another word are for Japanese speakers of English. As always, exercise caution when using these words so that you don't offend any Japanese around you. For more information on Japanese terms, see the J-List glossary (link on the left of the main page).
We continue to be shocked at the terrible destruction in Asia after the earthquake and tsunamis, and are very saddened at the loss of life. Thailand's Phuket island is especially popular with tourists from Japan and Europe, and my wife and I spent an enjoyable honeymoon there ten years ago. Among the thousands of tourists feared dead in the disaster were hundreds of Japanese tourists who had gone to escape the freezing weather in Japan. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this terrible international tragedy.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Culture shock in Japan - Yamato Nadeshiko
Hello all. Back to work for the J-List crew, although it's time for the nenmatsu rush of people taking days off, so not everyone is here. Japan really slows down during New Year's, which is the big holiday in the country. Everything is closed, except for convenience stores. Just two more updates after today before 2004 is history.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
I experienced many forms of culture shock when I first came to Japan, and one area that surprised me a lot was the place of women in Japanese society. While women do enjoy equality in terms of legal rights here, it is true that Japan is definitely a very male-dominated country in which the roles of men and women are very different than they are in the West. Here, women tend to occupy a slightly lower tier than men, and this is not, as far as I can see, due entirely to any sexist maneuverings on the part of Japan's males. When a company hires a 23-year-old girl to work at a full time job, it's joshiki (common sense) that she'll quit within a few years to get married, and the number of career-minded women in Japan is far fewer than in the U.S. This tendency on the part of Japan's females to defer to men seems to be the root of much of the famed Japanese social stability. It's certainly true that, while the man in the family is the daikoku-bashira or the big, black pillar that supports the family, the woman of the house will handle all finances, expertly putting money away for when it's needed and ensuring the family's future happiness. There's a Japanese word that describes the "perfect woman," called yamato nadeshiko, which represents the traits that are ideal for a wife and mother to have: femininity, chastity, loyalty to her husband, the skill to change her husband's mind when he's wrong, and inner strength. Both men and women buy into this image of the ideal Japanese woman to some degree.
In Japan, there are various first- and second-person pronouns, and which word a person uses says a lot about their social roles. For example, for the word corresponding to "you," Japanese men will usually use a name with -san or -kun after it (polite), the word kimi (somewhat familiar, used among friends) or the masculine word omae (oh-MAI-eh), depending on who they're talking to. This third word is quite interesting to study. It's generally only used by men (or in anime, ultra-Tomboy type females), and generally from a superior to someone below him, i.e. senpai/upperclassmen to kouhai/underclassman, parent to child, dog owner to pet, etc. Choosing to use omae to refer to a person verbally reinforces a certain relationship, i.e. that you are above them in status, so the potential to offend someone by using it improperly is great. If a man says omae to a woman he's romantically involved with, he's basically implying that she belongs to him, in effect saying omae wa ore no mono da, or "You belong to me." Some Japanese women find this term very romantic and get all fluttery inside when they hear it, while others -- Japanese women who've lived in America or Europe, I am told -- dislike having men refer to them with this word.
It's often said that Japanese society follows behind the U.S. by 25 years or so, and this seems to be true quite a lot of the time. The divorce rate in Japan is currently around 2.2 people per thousand people, about half the rate of 4.1 in the U.S., but still higher than countries like Italy (0.6). Japan lacks a "no fault" divorce system, and courts often assign blame to one party, especially if one side can prove unfaithfulness on the part of the other. Usually when a couple lands in splitsville, the women will go back to her jikka, her "real house" where her parents live, and go back to using her maiden name. It's common for the former couple to never see each other again for the rest of their lives, and fathers are often separated from their children forever, too, especially when the woman gets remarried. As Japan ages, an increasing number of older couples are calling off their marriages, once children grow up and move away. When a woman gets divorced, she may not get married again for the next six months, to avoid problems with determining the father of any children she may be carrying.
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
I experienced many forms of culture shock when I first came to Japan, and one area that surprised me a lot was the place of women in Japanese society. While women do enjoy equality in terms of legal rights here, it is true that Japan is definitely a very male-dominated country in which the roles of men and women are very different than they are in the West. Here, women tend to occupy a slightly lower tier than men, and this is not, as far as I can see, due entirely to any sexist maneuverings on the part of Japan's males. When a company hires a 23-year-old girl to work at a full time job, it's joshiki (common sense) that she'll quit within a few years to get married, and the number of career-minded women in Japan is far fewer than in the U.S. This tendency on the part of Japan's females to defer to men seems to be the root of much of the famed Japanese social stability. It's certainly true that, while the man in the family is the daikoku-bashira or the big, black pillar that supports the family, the woman of the house will handle all finances, expertly putting money away for when it's needed and ensuring the family's future happiness. There's a Japanese word that describes the "perfect woman," called yamato nadeshiko, which represents the traits that are ideal for a wife and mother to have: femininity, chastity, loyalty to her husband, the skill to change her husband's mind when he's wrong, and inner strength. Both men and women buy into this image of the ideal Japanese woman to some degree.
In Japan, there are various first- and second-person pronouns, and which word a person uses says a lot about their social roles. For example, for the word corresponding to "you," Japanese men will usually use a name with -san or -kun after it (polite), the word kimi (somewhat familiar, used among friends) or the masculine word omae (oh-MAI-eh), depending on who they're talking to. This third word is quite interesting to study. It's generally only used by men (or in anime, ultra-Tomboy type females), and generally from a superior to someone below him, i.e. senpai/upperclassmen to kouhai/underclassman, parent to child, dog owner to pet, etc. Choosing to use omae to refer to a person verbally reinforces a certain relationship, i.e. that you are above them in status, so the potential to offend someone by using it improperly is great. If a man says omae to a woman he's romantically involved with, he's basically implying that she belongs to him, in effect saying omae wa ore no mono da, or "You belong to me." Some Japanese women find this term very romantic and get all fluttery inside when they hear it, while others -- Japanese women who've lived in America or Europe, I am told -- dislike having men refer to them with this word.
It's often said that Japanese society follows behind the U.S. by 25 years or so, and this seems to be true quite a lot of the time. The divorce rate in Japan is currently around 2.2 people per thousand people, about half the rate of 4.1 in the U.S., but still higher than countries like Italy (0.6). Japan lacks a "no fault" divorce system, and courts often assign blame to one party, especially if one side can prove unfaithfulness on the part of the other. Usually when a couple lands in splitsville, the women will go back to her jikka, her "real house" where her parents live, and go back to using her maiden name. It's common for the former couple to never see each other again for the rest of their lives, and fathers are often separated from their children forever, too, especially when the woman gets remarried. As Japan ages, an increasing number of older couples are calling off their marriages, once children grow up and move away. When a woman gets divorced, she may not get married again for the next six months, to avoid problems with determining the father of any children she may be carrying.
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Merii Kurisumasu
Hello all. Actually this is a repost because I deleted this post somehow. GRRR...
Here are some pictures from Japan. One is the Christmas Cake my kids baked this year. The other is the computer room of a Japanese friend. As you can see, he really likes America ^_^
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello and the warmest holiday greetings to everyone! We hope that everyone has a very "merii kurisumasu," wherever you are in the world. Since we're seventeen hours ahead of California, we've already finished our Christmas morning, and are enjoying a nice calm day with the kids, playing with all the great stuff we got.
Christmas in Japan is a lot different from the rest of the world. Without a genuine tradition of celebrating yuletide, the Japanese often choose to import some of the more "fun" elements of the season, with Santa-san (yes, they really call him that) and presents and fun Christmas songs, and few of the solemn, pleasant themes found in America and Europe. Christians do celebrate Christmas, attending a special mass after they get off work (Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan). For my first Christmas in Japan, I attended mass at the local Baptist church, and was surprised at how similar everything was to what I'd seen back home, except that the Bible was in Japanese. But by and large religious themes play a small part in Christmas here -- instead, Christmas is something for kids, for couples to go on that special date, and for friends to have a fun Christmas party with lots of loud music and maybe firecrackers. This is a major difference between Japan and the U.S.: we are usually solemn on Christmas and have a blast on New Year's, but this is done in reverse here.
Now that Christmas is beyond us, Japanese will be looking forward to the most important holiday in Japan, New Year's Day. New Year's is a time to visit the Shinto shrine and pray for happiness in the new year, and reflect on what kind of year you want to have. Over the next week, Japanese will rush to finish their nengajo or New Year's cards, which are sent out to friends and family as a greeting and to wish everyone a happy new year. People like me, who wait til the last minute, always have a problem getting their nengajo printed in time. We'll also be cleaning the house from top to bottom (oh-sohji or "big cleaning), so that we can start the new year with a clean slate.
We're extremely happy to announce that Little My Maid, the long-awaited dating-sim game from Peach Princess, is finally in stock and shipping now. This is one of the best-ever Japanese bishoujo games to be released in the English language, and we're very happy to finally have it in our hands, ready to ship out to everyone. Featuring a great story based on a centuries-old Japanese tale, memorable female characters, beautiful art and full mouth animation when characters talk, we hope everyone will try this fantastic new game. We've also got lots of cool free stuff to give out with each copy sold, while supplies last.
It's still not too late to send that special someone a J-List gift certificate, which can be delivered within hours to anyone with an email address. J-List gift certificates are a great way to gift wacky and fun things from Japan to anyone on your list. We'll be processing gift certificates every few hours, so if there's someone you forgot to get a gift for, they can take their pick from the over 2000 cool products we have on the site.
Well, that's all for now. Once again, have a super-duper Christmas holiday!
Here are some pictures from Japan. One is the Christmas Cake my kids baked this year. The other is the computer room of a Japanese friend. As you can see, he really likes America ^_^
Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Hello and the warmest holiday greetings to everyone! We hope that everyone has a very "merii kurisumasu," wherever you are in the world. Since we're seventeen hours ahead of California, we've already finished our Christmas morning, and are enjoying a nice calm day with the kids, playing with all the great stuff we got.
Christmas in Japan is a lot different from the rest of the world. Without a genuine tradition of celebrating yuletide, the Japanese often choose to import some of the more "fun" elements of the season, with Santa-san (yes, they really call him that) and presents and fun Christmas songs, and few of the solemn, pleasant themes found in America and Europe. Christians do celebrate Christmas, attending a special mass after they get off work (Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan). For my first Christmas in Japan, I attended mass at the local Baptist church, and was surprised at how similar everything was to what I'd seen back home, except that the Bible was in Japanese. But by and large religious themes play a small part in Christmas here -- instead, Christmas is something for kids, for couples to go on that special date, and for friends to have a fun Christmas party with lots of loud music and maybe firecrackers. This is a major difference between Japan and the U.S.: we are usually solemn on Christmas and have a blast on New Year's, but this is done in reverse here.
Now that Christmas is beyond us, Japanese will be looking forward to the most important holiday in Japan, New Year's Day. New Year's is a time to visit the Shinto shrine and pray for happiness in the new year, and reflect on what kind of year you want to have. Over the next week, Japanese will rush to finish their nengajo or New Year's cards, which are sent out to friends and family as a greeting and to wish everyone a happy new year. People like me, who wait til the last minute, always have a problem getting their nengajo printed in time. We'll also be cleaning the house from top to bottom (oh-sohji or "big cleaning), so that we can start the new year with a clean slate.
We're extremely happy to announce that Little My Maid, the long-awaited dating-sim game from Peach Princess, is finally in stock and shipping now. This is one of the best-ever Japanese bishoujo games to be released in the English language, and we're very happy to finally have it in our hands, ready to ship out to everyone. Featuring a great story based on a centuries-old Japanese tale, memorable female characters, beautiful art and full mouth animation when characters talk, we hope everyone will try this fantastic new game. We've also got lots of cool free stuff to give out with each copy sold, while supplies last.
It's still not too late to send that special someone a J-List gift certificate, which can be delivered within hours to anyone with an email address. J-List gift certificates are a great way to gift wacky and fun things from Japan to anyone on your list. We'll be processing gift certificates every few hours, so if there's someone you forgot to get a gift for, they can take their pick from the over 2000 cool products we have on the site.
Well, that's all for now. Once again, have a super-duper Christmas holiday!
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Japanese Corporate Fashions & More
Hello all. Another slice of life from Japan for you. It will be nice to have Christmas again, and my kids are looking forward to it, as kids are wont to do. My wife, who never celebrated Christmas until she married me, always goes through a period where she pooh-poohs it all, but she comes around when the time comes.
Here are some pictures for you to check out. These are pictures I had handy from Daisuke's wedding a month or two back. Japanese weddings are BIG affairs and this one probably cost $50,000. It was great fun. The glasses seen below are interesting glasses we were given which turn any pinpoint of light (such as a candle) into a heart in your vision. If people tell me they like the pictures I'll try to post them every post. I got a much improved phone with a camera in it, so the ability to go somewhere and say, hey, I should take a picture of this, is greatly improved.
Today's J-List post is below:
Hello from all of us in Japan. We hope everyone is having a great holiday season. We're all getting ready for a nice Christmas here in Japan, with presents under the tree and our Christmas Cake reserved from our favorite bakery. We thank everyone for your kind support this past year and wish you all the best holidays ever.
Japan can take the strangest things and turn them into a fashion trend. Over the past few years there's been a bizarre minor trend towards wearing corporate symbols on clothes, usually famous companies like Texaco and British Petroleum which aren't active in the Japanese market at all. The mini-boom in corporate casual wear is attributed to Japanese pro wrestler Sakuraba, who made a shirt that replaced the famous Union 76 logo with "39," numbers which stand for "saku" according to a Japanese number code that I have yet to figure out, the first two syllables of his name. Today, it's quite common to see people sporting the "76" logo on their clothes here, despite the fact that they probably have no idea what the company sells (since Union 76 doesn't exist here).
One concept that comes up a lot in anime or dating sim games is the childhood friend, called osana-najimi (oh-SA-NA NA-ji-mee), a word which seems impossible to remember until you break it down (osanai means young, and najimu is a verb meaning "to become friendly with"). At least in rural parts of the country where we live, Japanese tend to not be very mobile, and my wife's family has lived on the same land for generations, since the Edo Period at least. My son goes to the same elementary school that my wife went to when she was a child...which is the same elementary school her mother attended, too, back during World War II. Because everyone in our city has been here for years, my wife has many osana-najimi friends who she's grown up with, people she's known for years and years. In my family, we moved frequently whenever my mother got a new job or bought a new house, living in several states and in New Zealand before settling down in San Diego, so the concept of having roots that go back that far is really staggering to me.
Are you looking for the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy person on your list? We humbly recommend J-List gift certificates. The spiffy J-List gift certificate system allows you to gift the gift of cool things from Japan to anyone with an email address. We'll send them their gift certificate, complete with a warm message from you and a PDF file that they can print out, or send it to yourself, print out the gift certificate, and present it to them in person. It's the perfect last-minute gift for the Japanophile who has everything. We'll be processing these gift certificate orders every 8 hours as we get close to December 25th.
Here are some pictures for you to check out. These are pictures I had handy from Daisuke's wedding a month or two back. Japanese weddings are BIG affairs and this one probably cost $50,000. It was great fun. The glasses seen below are interesting glasses we were given which turn any pinpoint of light (such as a candle) into a heart in your vision. If people tell me they like the pictures I'll try to post them every post. I got a much improved phone with a camera in it, so the ability to go somewhere and say, hey, I should take a picture of this, is greatly improved.
Today's J-List post is below:
Hello from all of us in Japan. We hope everyone is having a great holiday season. We're all getting ready for a nice Christmas here in Japan, with presents under the tree and our Christmas Cake reserved from our favorite bakery. We thank everyone for your kind support this past year and wish you all the best holidays ever.
Japan can take the strangest things and turn them into a fashion trend. Over the past few years there's been a bizarre minor trend towards wearing corporate symbols on clothes, usually famous companies like Texaco and British Petroleum which aren't active in the Japanese market at all. The mini-boom in corporate casual wear is attributed to Japanese pro wrestler Sakuraba, who made a shirt that replaced the famous Union 76 logo with "39," numbers which stand for "saku" according to a Japanese number code that I have yet to figure out, the first two syllables of his name. Today, it's quite common to see people sporting the "76" logo on their clothes here, despite the fact that they probably have no idea what the company sells (since Union 76 doesn't exist here).
One concept that comes up a lot in anime or dating sim games is the childhood friend, called osana-najimi (oh-SA-NA NA-ji-mee), a word which seems impossible to remember until you break it down (osanai means young, and najimu is a verb meaning "to become friendly with"). At least in rural parts of the country where we live, Japanese tend to not be very mobile, and my wife's family has lived on the same land for generations, since the Edo Period at least. My son goes to the same elementary school that my wife went to when she was a child...which is the same elementary school her mother attended, too, back during World War II. Because everyone in our city has been here for years, my wife has many osana-najimi friends who she's grown up with, people she's known for years and years. In my family, we moved frequently whenever my mother got a new job or bought a new house, living in several states and in New Zealand before settling down in San Diego, so the concept of having roots that go back that far is really staggering to me.
Are you looking for the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy person on your list? We humbly recommend J-List gift certificates. The spiffy J-List gift certificate system allows you to gift the gift of cool things from Japan to anyone with an email address. We'll send them their gift certificate, complete with a warm message from you and a PDF file that they can print out, or send it to yourself, print out the gift certificate, and present it to them in person. It's the perfect last-minute gift for the Japanophile who has everything. We'll be processing these gift certificate orders every 8 hours as we get close to December 25th.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Fun at Disneyland and beyond
We had fun at Tokyo Disneyland. It was threatening to rain the whole time, but it didn't, so we knew we had gotten away clean. As told in the post below, we went on a Monday, on the 21st, assuming that the really big crowds would be there on the 23rd, which is the Emperor's Birthday and hence a holiday. The best time to go to Tokyo Disneyland, if you're wondering, is the non-holiday after a 3-day holiday, e.g. a Monday after a 3 day weekend. Then you'll have the whole place to yourself.
Today's post is below. It was cool sharing about a Dog of Flanders, which is a really cool movie. By all means, please go to Amazon and get this great anime. The link is here.
The Japanese believe a person's blood type foretells a lot about his personality, and Japan is having a "blood type boom" right now, with regular variety shows that report on what characteristics each blood type group share. In one recent show, they placed hidden cameras and watched a group of people eating all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue, in which you cook your food together on a big grill in the center of the table. A type people tend to be organized and neat, and the A types took just enough food and cooked it in a small corner of the grill. Type B people, who are "going my way" (a word the Japanese use for anyone who is in their own little world, like me), took too much food and hoarded it from everyone else. AB types, known for doing things differently from others, chose things like vegetables when everyone else was eating meat. In another experiment, they showed the last episode of one of the most moving anime shows of all time, A Dog of Flanders, based on a famous Belgian children's story, to rooms full of people separated by blood type. In the last minutes of the show, as young Mello goes into the St. James's Church to see the three famous Rubens paintings uncovered, allowing him to gaze at them for the first time, he finally knows happiness. As angels come to take him and his faithful dog Patrache up to heaven, the camera cuts back to the roomful of people who were watching the scene. 7 out of 8 of the type O people were bawling over the touching scene, while only 2 out of 8 of the type A and type AB people were in tears. For most of my life I didn't know my own blood type, something which is unthinkable in Japan, where the address book functions on cell phones have a place to record the blood type of the people you're calling.
We wanted to do something special for the kids this winter, so we took them down to Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland has been one of the most successful amusement parks in the world since it opened in 1983, raking in tons of money for the Disney empire. It recreates the original Disneyland in almost every way, although there's no Matterhorn and there actually seems to be more room to walk than at the California park. Knowing how bad the crowds can be during weekends and holidays, we went on a Monday, and were rewarded with a moderately pleasant Disneyland experience -- the longest wait was an hour or so. Of course we were obliged to buy lots of omiyage (oh-mee-YAH-geh) for people back home -- the ubiquitous souvenirs that prop up the Japanese economy. Disneyland's nickname is "nezumi-land" (nezumi = mouse) among Japanese fans.
There are some classic jokes in Japanese that I'll pass along to you. One stems from the words "oneesan" which means older sister but can also refer to a woman aged 18-25 or so, and "obasan" which means aunt but also any middle-aged woman. A classic joke in anime or manga features an innocent child who calls a woman "obasan" even though she's still young, and how she reacts to the label -- kind of like my reaction at being called "sir" for the first time in my life. Another classic joke you encounter every once in a while is a cow saying mou yamete (lit. "please stop it already"), which is amusing because the "moo" sound a cow makes sounds like the word mou ("already") in Japanese. Finally, the equivalent of the stale old joke "roadkill on the information super highway" in Japanese is dohto komu which means "...gets very crowded" but sounds like dot-com. So you can say, Amazon wa dohto komu, "That Amazon site sure has a lot of users." If you want to make a really stupid joke in Japanese, that is.
Today's post is below. It was cool sharing about a Dog of Flanders, which is a really cool movie. By all means, please go to Amazon and get this great anime. The link is here.
The Japanese believe a person's blood type foretells a lot about his personality, and Japan is having a "blood type boom" right now, with regular variety shows that report on what characteristics each blood type group share. In one recent show, they placed hidden cameras and watched a group of people eating all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue, in which you cook your food together on a big grill in the center of the table. A type people tend to be organized and neat, and the A types took just enough food and cooked it in a small corner of the grill. Type B people, who are "going my way" (a word the Japanese use for anyone who is in their own little world, like me), took too much food and hoarded it from everyone else. AB types, known for doing things differently from others, chose things like vegetables when everyone else was eating meat. In another experiment, they showed the last episode of one of the most moving anime shows of all time, A Dog of Flanders, based on a famous Belgian children's story, to rooms full of people separated by blood type. In the last minutes of the show, as young Mello goes into the St. James's Church to see the three famous Rubens paintings uncovered, allowing him to gaze at them for the first time, he finally knows happiness. As angels come to take him and his faithful dog Patrache up to heaven, the camera cuts back to the roomful of people who were watching the scene. 7 out of 8 of the type O people were bawling over the touching scene, while only 2 out of 8 of the type A and type AB people were in tears. For most of my life I didn't know my own blood type, something which is unthinkable in Japan, where the address book functions on cell phones have a place to record the blood type of the people you're calling.
We wanted to do something special for the kids this winter, so we took them down to Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland has been one of the most successful amusement parks in the world since it opened in 1983, raking in tons of money for the Disney empire. It recreates the original Disneyland in almost every way, although there's no Matterhorn and there actually seems to be more room to walk than at the California park. Knowing how bad the crowds can be during weekends and holidays, we went on a Monday, and were rewarded with a moderately pleasant Disneyland experience -- the longest wait was an hour or so. Of course we were obliged to buy lots of omiyage (oh-mee-YAH-geh) for people back home -- the ubiquitous souvenirs that prop up the Japanese economy. Disneyland's nickname is "nezumi-land" (nezumi = mouse) among Japanese fans.
There are some classic jokes in Japanese that I'll pass along to you. One stems from the words "oneesan" which means older sister but can also refer to a woman aged 18-25 or so, and "obasan" which means aunt but also any middle-aged woman. A classic joke in anime or manga features an innocent child who calls a woman "obasan" even though she's still young, and how she reacts to the label -- kind of like my reaction at being called "sir" for the first time in my life. Another classic joke you encounter every once in a while is a cow saying mou yamete (lit. "please stop it already"), which is amusing because the "moo" sound a cow makes sounds like the word mou ("already") in Japanese. Finally, the equivalent of the stale old joke "roadkill on the information super highway" in Japanese is dohto komu which means "...gets very crowded" but sounds like dot-com. So you can say, Amazon wa dohto komu, "That Amazon site sure has a lot of users." If you want to make a really stupid joke in Japanese, that is.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Greetings from J-List 12/15/04
Japanese television is always interesting, with a broad mix of entertaining things to watch. Variety shows, which feature popular "talents" (entertainers) like cute-as-a-button Yuko Ogura, are a major staple of the airwaves. One show, called World's Greatest TV, brings clips of television from around the world, including bizarre TV commercials from America, Europe and Asia, and has famous people try to guess what will happen next. Another popular genre of television here is the "trendy drama," and love stories starring top stars like Yuji Oda and Akiko Yada are always near the top of the ratings charts. With the opening of cultural ties between South Korea and Japan, this year has also seen a huge explosion of interest in tear-jerking South Korean soaps, as well. Another popular genre of television here are classic Agatha Christie-style mysteries in which detectives have to solve a murder. There are many twists on the standard mystery formula, such as "Stewardess Deka" (a trip of crime-solving flight attendants) and one series in which they tell you who committed the murder right at the beginning, and then let you watch as the expert detective follows the trail right to the killer.
Like Cherry Blossoms in the Spring, words are fleeting things, and it can be surprising how their meanings change when they're imported into other languages. Many of the English words the Japanese use don't match up perfectly with their Japanese counterparts. When I had to replace a cooling fan in one of our Macs the other day, I went to the local computer store ("Power Up Computing Life") and asked for a fan, using the English word. Other concepts that we use the word "fan" for go by very different names in Japanese, such as senpuuki (an electric fan), uchiwa (a fan you use to fan yourself, non-folding) and sensu (a traditional folding Chinese fan). There are some other English words that the Japanese use, but only in limited ways. If there's a girl you're secretly in love with, a Japanese might advise you to "attack" her (meaning, go and win her love). The English word "camouflage" often refers to a gay man and woman marrying to hide this fact from others. And the English word "propose" is used in Japan only to mean a proposal of marriage, which certainly presents the potential for confusion in international work settings.
For whatever reason, Japanese men are fond of urinating outdoors. When driving around Japan, it's not at all uncommon to happen on an older man relieving himself by the side of the road -- even walking from my home to J-List, a mere 100 meters or so, I sometimes see one of our neighbors peeing in the ditch. It's partially a rural thing -- with a population of 140,000, our city is not large, and there's a lot of agriculture -- but I've seen friends from Tokyo and Yokohama do it when the need took them. It can get so bad that people occasionally put signs that say "It is forbidden to urinate here" (tachi-shon kinshi) in front of their homes. This bizarre and uniquely Japanese message is captured on one of our wacky T-shirts, too - a little piece of Japan for everyone.
Do you love the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki? Remember that J-List stocks all the excellent region 2 DVD releases for Studio Ghibli movies like Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky Laputa, Princess Mononoke and his Lupin the 3rd classic, The Castle of Caliostro (a favorite of mine). These DVDs are released in Japan directly by the studio and include many features that make them great for collectors. All discs feature English subtitles and/or dubbed tracks and are great for fans who want the definitive versions of these anime classics overseen by Mr. Miyazaki himself. The only catch is, they're Japanese releases (region 2), so you need a region free DVD player to watch them -- and J-List humbly recommends the three excellent units we currently sell.
Like Cherry Blossoms in the Spring, words are fleeting things, and it can be surprising how their meanings change when they're imported into other languages. Many of the English words the Japanese use don't match up perfectly with their Japanese counterparts. When I had to replace a cooling fan in one of our Macs the other day, I went to the local computer store ("Power Up Computing Life") and asked for a fan, using the English word. Other concepts that we use the word "fan" for go by very different names in Japanese, such as senpuuki (an electric fan), uchiwa (a fan you use to fan yourself, non-folding) and sensu (a traditional folding Chinese fan). There are some other English words that the Japanese use, but only in limited ways. If there's a girl you're secretly in love with, a Japanese might advise you to "attack" her (meaning, go and win her love). The English word "camouflage" often refers to a gay man and woman marrying to hide this fact from others. And the English word "propose" is used in Japan only to mean a proposal of marriage, which certainly presents the potential for confusion in international work settings.
For whatever reason, Japanese men are fond of urinating outdoors. When driving around Japan, it's not at all uncommon to happen on an older man relieving himself by the side of the road -- even walking from my home to J-List, a mere 100 meters or so, I sometimes see one of our neighbors peeing in the ditch. It's partially a rural thing -- with a population of 140,000, our city is not large, and there's a lot of agriculture -- but I've seen friends from Tokyo and Yokohama do it when the need took them. It can get so bad that people occasionally put signs that say "It is forbidden to urinate here" (tachi-shon kinshi) in front of their homes. This bizarre and uniquely Japanese message is captured on one of our wacky T-shirts, too - a little piece of Japan for everyone.
Do you love the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki? Remember that J-List stocks all the excellent region 2 DVD releases for Studio Ghibli movies like Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky Laputa, Princess Mononoke and his Lupin the 3rd classic, The Castle of Caliostro (a favorite of mine). These DVDs are released in Japan directly by the studio and include many features that make them great for collectors. All discs feature English subtitles and/or dubbed tracks and are great for fans who want the definitive versions of these anime classics overseen by Mr. Miyazaki himself. The only catch is, they're Japanese releases (region 2), so you need a region free DVD player to watch them -- and J-List humbly recommends the three excellent units we currently sell.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Greetings from J-List 12/13/04
Before I started J-List I was an English teacher, and taught ESL to a wide range of Japanese students, from kids to the elderly and everyone in between. Although my students tried hard to learn, the sad reality is that most of them won't become really good at the language in their lifetimes. There are dozens of reasons why Japanese usually don't attain proficiency at English despite six years of education (more if they study English in college), but some major ones stand out. First, the Japanese draw a line between "English" (grammar and vocabulary) and "English conversation" (an ethereal thing which can't be defined), and since only the former can be measured in tests, students tend to be more concerned with demonstrable English skills rather than communication. Second, Japan's system of education is very rigid, and most teachers in the system aren't that capable at speaking themselves, which creates resistance to reform. Finally, just as a computer needs a "killer app" to justify its existence, Japanese need a consuming reason to study English if they're to attain real fluency. If you're in the U.S., you probably don't need German to get through your day, and it's the same for most Japanese -- there's little actual need to use English in their daily life. Currently, Japan's Ministry of Education, which decides the curriculum from for the entire nation, is trying to promote English and "internationalization" (an buzzword that gets thrown around a lot in official circles) by having kids start learning English from the third grade. However, I'm not hopeful that this will have any meaningful effect on English education in Japan.
When I was growing up, I remember thinking that they had arranged marriages in Japan, probably something I got from watching the episode of Happy Days where Arnold gets married in a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. In reality, they have "arranged meetings" called omiai, a kind of formal meeting between prospective partners, usually organized by busybody aunts who can't leave well enough alone. At an omiai, both parties talk about their interests and background and if they hit it off, they go out on more conventional dates to see where things lead. Before my wife met me, she had had omiai meetings with a few men, for example the son of a sake distributor that our liquor shop buys from, hence she couldn't refuse -- fortunately for me she didn't hit it off with any of them. As time marches on, the old-style formal omiai meeting is giving way to more modern methods, with companies that organize "omiai parties" (gatherings of marriage-minded people who interact with each other in a fixed space) and services that are like online dating but with a Japanese twist.
Like most gaijin, I had a fixation with Japanese vending machines when I came to live here, and took many silly pictures of them. Vending machines are quite advanced here, and often accept 10,000 yen notes (the equivalent of a $100 bill) and give change, verbally thanking you for your purchase. In Tokyo, where land is scarce, there are vending machines that are incredibly slim, so you can fit them in small spaces. You can buy just about anything from vending machines here, including canned coffee (hot in the winter, cold in the summer), canned corn soup, and cigarettes. Eggs and rice are sold in areas where there are no shops around, and I've seen machines that sell frozen meals and microwave it for you. Beer has been sold in vending machines for decades, and I have many fond memories of sitting in front of the local vending machine with friends, throwing a few back and talking with people who came by on their way to the station. Beer vending machines are being phased out, though, due to concerns about minors buying alcohol -- although the machine we have at our liquor store features a slot which reads your drivers' license for verification. Adult products are sometimes sold in vending machines, too, since customers like the privacy a machine affords.
We couldn't be happier with how popular the Japanese 2005 calendars have been this year. We've moved tons of these unique and beautifully printed calendars to people all over the world. Every day, a few more calendars sell out forever. We still have 80+ different items in stock, including the really cool Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service desktop calendars, other gorgeous anime items, popular swimsuit and JPOP idol calendars, and cool traditional offerings like kimono idols, sushi and bento. Remember, buy 4 or more and get 15% off automatically.
Remember that J-List carries dozens of amazing Domo-kun products for you, more than any other company in the world, we're pretty sure. Domo-kun is the ultra-cute spokesmonster for the "BS" (broadcast satellite) TV network operated by NHK, the BBC of Japan, and he's as cute a monster as you could ever hope to see. We've got tons of amazing Domo-kun toys on the site, from the famous classic plush toys to the limited-edition Shinsengumi Domo-kun toy and much more.
When I was growing up, I remember thinking that they had arranged marriages in Japan, probably something I got from watching the episode of Happy Days where Arnold gets married in a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. In reality, they have "arranged meetings" called omiai, a kind of formal meeting between prospective partners, usually organized by busybody aunts who can't leave well enough alone. At an omiai, both parties talk about their interests and background and if they hit it off, they go out on more conventional dates to see where things lead. Before my wife met me, she had had omiai meetings with a few men, for example the son of a sake distributor that our liquor shop buys from, hence she couldn't refuse -- fortunately for me she didn't hit it off with any of them. As time marches on, the old-style formal omiai meeting is giving way to more modern methods, with companies that organize "omiai parties" (gatherings of marriage-minded people who interact with each other in a fixed space) and services that are like online dating but with a Japanese twist.
Like most gaijin, I had a fixation with Japanese vending machines when I came to live here, and took many silly pictures of them. Vending machines are quite advanced here, and often accept 10,000 yen notes (the equivalent of a $100 bill) and give change, verbally thanking you for your purchase. In Tokyo, where land is scarce, there are vending machines that are incredibly slim, so you can fit them in small spaces. You can buy just about anything from vending machines here, including canned coffee (hot in the winter, cold in the summer), canned corn soup, and cigarettes. Eggs and rice are sold in areas where there are no shops around, and I've seen machines that sell frozen meals and microwave it for you. Beer has been sold in vending machines for decades, and I have many fond memories of sitting in front of the local vending machine with friends, throwing a few back and talking with people who came by on their way to the station. Beer vending machines are being phased out, though, due to concerns about minors buying alcohol -- although the machine we have at our liquor store features a slot which reads your drivers' license for verification. Adult products are sometimes sold in vending machines, too, since customers like the privacy a machine affords.
We couldn't be happier with how popular the Japanese 2005 calendars have been this year. We've moved tons of these unique and beautifully printed calendars to people all over the world. Every day, a few more calendars sell out forever. We still have 80+ different items in stock, including the really cool Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service desktop calendars, other gorgeous anime items, popular swimsuit and JPOP idol calendars, and cool traditional offerings like kimono idols, sushi and bento. Remember, buy 4 or more and get 15% off automatically.
Remember that J-List carries dozens of amazing Domo-kun products for you, more than any other company in the world, we're pretty sure. Domo-kun is the ultra-cute spokesmonster for the "BS" (broadcast satellite) TV network operated by NHK, the BBC of Japan, and he's as cute a monster as you could ever hope to see. We've got tons of amazing Domo-kun toys on the site, from the famous classic plush toys to the limited-edition Shinsengumi Domo-kun toy and much more.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Greetings from J-List 12/10/04
Pachinko is a popular past-time in Japan, especially with men. It's basically a vertical pinball-style machine, with the object being to shoot metal balls at just the right angle needed to make them go into certain holes inside the machine, which makes more balls come out, so that you end up with more balls than you started out with. Although gambling is illegal, you can exchange the balls for "prizes" which you turn into "sell" back to the pachinko parlor. Gunma prefecture, where we live, happens to be the Detroit of the pachinko world -- virtually all major manufacturers are based here, and there are more pachinko parlors than in other parts of Japan. As with all industries, pachinko companies must work hard to come up with ways of attracting customers, and it's common for new machines to sport LCD screens and slot machine displays and innovative cabinet designs. Recently pachinko parlors are turning to famous anime shows to attract customers. Leiji Matsumoto has redesigned his famous anime Space Cruiser Yamato (aka Star Blazers) as Great Yamato II, a line of pachinko machines designed to capture the hearts of a new generation of players. I've posted some scans from a recent newspaper flyer advertising some new pachinko establishments in our area -- the art is pretty cool. See them here: http://www.jlist.com/pachinko/
Transliteration is the act of moving a word from one writing system into another, and with languages like Chinese and Japanese, there are always different approaches to this problem. This is why you get variations like Peking and Beijing for the capital of China or an alternate spelling of "Leon" for photo idol Reon Kadena's first name. Japanese is a syllable-based language, and has a system of syllabary sounds built into its structure. For example, you can express the sounds ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko in Japanese, but not "k" all by itself. One point of contention is how to Romanize three syllables that don't fit easily into this pattern, pronounced "shi" "tsu" and "chi." Should they be written as they're pronounced (called the Hepburn method), or should the "consonant + verb" pattern be preserved even if it results in written words that foreigners can't pronounce correctly (called the Nihon method), e.g. writing the word pronounced "tsuchi," meaning earth or ground, as "tuti." As with computer platforms, students of Japanese are usually willing to fight over the system of Romanization they think is best (whichever one they happened to learn first).
Among the many interesting products from Japan we carry, J-List also stocks all English-language dating-sim games in print, which allow you to interact with cute anime characters in interesting and uniquely Japanese stories. While most of the titles we carry are for those 18 and older, we do sell a line of non-adult "H games without the H," which allow everyone to you play through exciting the multi-ending stories on any DVD player, Playstation, Xbox or Mac or PC with a DVD-ROM drive. The newest interactive DVD game we have for you is Ishika & Honori, a great new game in which you must assist a cute-but-bumbling pair of Paranormal Defense Force investigators as they try to unlock a terrible mystery. Enjoy this great new game, in stock now!
Remember, J-List has hundreds of great gifts for your loved ones (or you!) this season. If you run out of time or want to add something cool at the last minute, consider a J-List Gift Certificate, which makes it easy to give the gift of wacky Japanese pop culture to anyone. Because you can choose either a physical gift certificate in gift box (mailed from San Diego) or an email-only gift certificate which is delivered instantly, these gift certificates are great for anyone looking for the perfect gift for the Japanophile on your list.
J-List carries many delicious snack items from Japan. Japan is famous for delicious chocolate-covered stick snacks like Pocky and Fran, and this year's flavors are really amazing. In addition to a larger package of original Pocky, our favorites this winter are Cocoa-Powder Rich Pocky and Strawberry and Chocolate Pocky Decorer ("the Pocky that's like eating a decorated cake").
Transliteration is the act of moving a word from one writing system into another, and with languages like Chinese and Japanese, there are always different approaches to this problem. This is why you get variations like Peking and Beijing for the capital of China or an alternate spelling of "Leon" for photo idol Reon Kadena's first name. Japanese is a syllable-based language, and has a system of syllabary sounds built into its structure. For example, you can express the sounds ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko in Japanese, but not "k" all by itself. One point of contention is how to Romanize three syllables that don't fit easily into this pattern, pronounced "shi" "tsu" and "chi." Should they be written as they're pronounced (called the Hepburn method), or should the "consonant + verb" pattern be preserved even if it results in written words that foreigners can't pronounce correctly (called the Nihon method), e.g. writing the word pronounced "tsuchi," meaning earth or ground, as "tuti." As with computer platforms, students of Japanese are usually willing to fight over the system of Romanization they think is best (whichever one they happened to learn first).
Among the many interesting products from Japan we carry, J-List also stocks all English-language dating-sim games in print, which allow you to interact with cute anime characters in interesting and uniquely Japanese stories. While most of the titles we carry are for those 18 and older, we do sell a line of non-adult "H games without the H," which allow everyone to you play through exciting the multi-ending stories on any DVD player, Playstation, Xbox or Mac or PC with a DVD-ROM drive. The newest interactive DVD game we have for you is Ishika & Honori, a great new game in which you must assist a cute-but-bumbling pair of Paranormal Defense Force investigators as they try to unlock a terrible mystery. Enjoy this great new game, in stock now!
Remember, J-List has hundreds of great gifts for your loved ones (or you!) this season. If you run out of time or want to add something cool at the last minute, consider a J-List Gift Certificate, which makes it easy to give the gift of wacky Japanese pop culture to anyone. Because you can choose either a physical gift certificate in gift box (mailed from San Diego) or an email-only gift certificate which is delivered instantly, these gift certificates are great for anyone looking for the perfect gift for the Japanophile on your list.
J-List carries many delicious snack items from Japan. Japan is famous for delicious chocolate-covered stick snacks like Pocky and Fran, and this year's flavors are really amazing. In addition to a larger package of original Pocky, our favorites this winter are Cocoa-Powder Rich Pocky and Strawberry and Chocolate Pocky Decorer ("the Pocky that's like eating a decorated cake").
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Greetings from J-List 12/8/04
Japan is very technically advanced, and no where is this more evident than in the market for portable phones, called "keitai" in Japanese. Japan's keitai market has really matured, with the various companies that compete for market share each claiming different niches for themselves as they try to survive and flourish. The Microsoft of Japan is NTT, and their Docomo line is the top-selling cell phone, although they're expensive and don't really work any better or worse than their competitors. Next is "au by KDDI," the phone service run by NTT's main competitor. They've chosen phones with GPS, cameras that take beautiful pictures, and Bluetooth as their primary areas to compete in. J-Phone, which was renamed Vodafone after the European company bought them, has staked out cheap per-packet charges as its main battleground, for users who surf the web and send and receive lots of email on their keitai phones. And Tu-ka has built a name for themselves around the concept of "simple," making phones that have only bare-bones features, including a phone for elderly people that's as easy to use as a household cordless phone.
Yes, there seems to be no end to the features they won't think of to put into these things. Yesterday we went shopping for new phones for our entire family, including our nine year old son, who will be commuting to his new school next year. I was bowled over by the number of handsets I was presented with -- at least 200 different models and colors. Would I like 2G or 3G? How about the karaoke option for the phone? A phone with an extra-wide screen and Opera web browser built into it? A 3.2 megapixel camera with mini-SD slot? Of course they play MP3s. One phone had an interesting feature: a reflective mirror body, so ladies could check their makeup while they read their email. We finally went with the au phones, since we like the GPS feature that allows us to see where our son is via the web in case we can't find him for some reason. My phone came with songs and pictures of lovely South Korean pop star Boa, who is very much in demand in Japan these days. See a TV commercial for the phone I bought, here: http://www.jlist.com/phones
Japan is a great place, with friendly people, beautiful sights and a strength of culture that is really amazing. And while it's true that the Japanese revere the beauty to be found in the passing of the seasons or in the sight of Mt. Fuji in the morning, it can't really be said that Japan is at harmony with its environment. When I first came to Japan, I was surprised at the stagging amount of concrete and asphalt there was, even in the small rural city I live in (pop. 140,000). Signs of Japan's mastery over nature can be seen everywhere. In most every river, there are concrete breakwaters and graded slopes to guard against flooding, and when you take a drive in the mountains, be prepared to see heavily landscaped roads, often with chain link fences embedded in the sides of mountains to protect against falling rocks. Parks often feature concrete walkways, with concrete going right up against the trees. I have a theory on why this is: because Japan didn't have a cold war to fight, they invested massive sums in WPA-style public works rather than a huge base of military technology like the U.S. did. A silly law that requires that 100% of gasoline taxes be spent on roads whether they're needed or not is another part of the problem, and the reason drivers know they're going to be stuck in traffic from January to March, as municipal governments try to use up their budgets as quickly as they can. Some differences in how Japan manages its natural resources are to be expected, considering that Japan has to fit half the population of the U.S. into an area just 1/25 as large, but it's still surprising to the uninitiated.
Remember that almost all of the DVDs that J-List carries are zoned for "all" regions, meaning that you can view them on any DVD player in North America, or on any computer with a DVD drive in it. The exceptions to these are anime DVDs issued in Japan (such as the Studio Ghibli DVDs like Totoro), Japanese films released in Japan, and most "indies" DVD titles by companies like Moodyz and Wanz Factory. If you wish to view Japanese region 2 DVDs in the U.S., including European region 2 PAL titles, we humbly suggest the feature-packed region free DVD players we carry in San Diego. Our most reliable ever model is in stock and costs just $78!
Yes, there seems to be no end to the features they won't think of to put into these things. Yesterday we went shopping for new phones for our entire family, including our nine year old son, who will be commuting to his new school next year. I was bowled over by the number of handsets I was presented with -- at least 200 different models and colors. Would I like 2G or 3G? How about the karaoke option for the phone? A phone with an extra-wide screen and Opera web browser built into it? A 3.2 megapixel camera with mini-SD slot? Of course they play MP3s. One phone had an interesting feature: a reflective mirror body, so ladies could check their makeup while they read their email. We finally went with the au phones, since we like the GPS feature that allows us to see where our son is via the web in case we can't find him for some reason. My phone came with songs and pictures of lovely South Korean pop star Boa, who is very much in demand in Japan these days. See a TV commercial for the phone I bought, here: http://www.jlist.com/phones
Japan is a great place, with friendly people, beautiful sights and a strength of culture that is really amazing. And while it's true that the Japanese revere the beauty to be found in the passing of the seasons or in the sight of Mt. Fuji in the morning, it can't really be said that Japan is at harmony with its environment. When I first came to Japan, I was surprised at the stagging amount of concrete and asphalt there was, even in the small rural city I live in (pop. 140,000). Signs of Japan's mastery over nature can be seen everywhere. In most every river, there are concrete breakwaters and graded slopes to guard against flooding, and when you take a drive in the mountains, be prepared to see heavily landscaped roads, often with chain link fences embedded in the sides of mountains to protect against falling rocks. Parks often feature concrete walkways, with concrete going right up against the trees. I have a theory on why this is: because Japan didn't have a cold war to fight, they invested massive sums in WPA-style public works rather than a huge base of military technology like the U.S. did. A silly law that requires that 100% of gasoline taxes be spent on roads whether they're needed or not is another part of the problem, and the reason drivers know they're going to be stuck in traffic from January to March, as municipal governments try to use up their budgets as quickly as they can. Some differences in how Japan manages its natural resources are to be expected, considering that Japan has to fit half the population of the U.S. into an area just 1/25 as large, but it's still surprising to the uninitiated.
Remember that almost all of the DVDs that J-List carries are zoned for "all" regions, meaning that you can view them on any DVD player in North America, or on any computer with a DVD drive in it. The exceptions to these are anime DVDs issued in Japan (such as the Studio Ghibli DVDs like Totoro), Japanese films released in Japan, and most "indies" DVD titles by companies like Moodyz and Wanz Factory. If you wish to view Japanese region 2 DVDs in the U.S., including European region 2 PAL titles, we humbly suggest the feature-packed region free DVD players we carry in San Diego. Our most reliable ever model is in stock and costs just $78!
Monday, December 06, 2004
Greetings from J-List 12/6/04
It's funny how a language reflects the people who speak it, and vice versa. Much of famously nuance-filled indirectness of the Japanese people has its roots in the language itself, although it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg question of which came first. For starters, Japanese speakers often leave off the subject when speaking, since it's almost always clear from the overall sentence. If I ask Yasu if he's posted the latest manga to the website, I'd just say, Atarashii manga wo dashimashita ka? (lit. "New manga [object marker] put out [question marker]") without adding a subject ("you") since I'm obviously asking about something Yasu did. Sentences can get even shorter -- if the rest of my meaning is clear from the context, maybe because I'm holding the manga in question in my hand at the time, I might just say "Dashimashita?" and he'd know what I was asking about. Also, Japanese makes use of passive forms of verbs to express concepts without specifying who did the action, with sentences like "it has been decided" rather than "my boss decided it," which serves to soften statements and smooth the creation of consent in groups. Passive voice is usually not used that much in English, but in Japanese, making a statement while leaving the subject unspecified is quite common.
Another interesting grammatical tidbit which reflects the character of the Japanese people is the verb ending "masho" which corresponds to "let's..." as in "let's eat" (tabemasho), "let's go" (ikimasho) or "let's not smoke" (tobacco wo yamemasho). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (don't smoke, don't ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, making statements like "let's put our telephones into vibration mode" (manner mode ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). These statements subtly create a warm and fuzzy "let's all cooperate" atmosphere that make people want to do their part for the good of everyone. Every year, the Japanese tax office sponsors commercials featuring famous TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms -- "Let's fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly," is the verbalized message. It's quite different from the way things are usually done in the U.S.
Many aspects of life in Japan can be different from America and Europe, and marriage is one of them. For centuries, Japan's entire population has been recorded in "family registers" which are kept on file at city offices throughout the country. When a woman marries a man and goes to live in his house (called yome ni iku or "go as a bride"), she is completely erased from her father's register and joins her husband's, taking his last name, and when she dies, being buried in her husband's family grave. This system works both ways: males often join their wife's families households, too, called muko ni iku or "go as a son-in-law"), legally taking their wife's last name. Males sometimes join their wife's households but keep their own last names, a rarity called "Masuo-san" (MAH-soo-oh-san), named after the husband of Sazae-san in Japan's most popular and longest-running anime -- if you ever want to floor Japanese people with your knowledge of Japan, pull this term out and watch their eyes go wide. Since I keep my own last name even though I've joined my wife's household, I am a Masuo-san as well.
Japanese calendar season continues, and once again I'm amazed at the speed with which our unique 2005 calendars are selling out. A week ago we had 180+ different anime, JPOP, traditional, swimsuit idol and other great calendars, and now we're down to 130 or so. We still have lots of these excellent calendars, which are beautifully printed on large sheets of paper and sold in the Japanese market only. Check out our still-amazing selection of calendars before the ones you want disappear forever.
J-List is really humming, both in Japan and our San Diego office, as we ship hundreds of packages a day to everyone. We've got 24 hour turnover on shipping EMS orders, and the San Diego office is also working very hard to get all DVD player, bishoujo game and T-shirt orders out the next day. We hope we can serve you in some way!
Remember that you can see dozens of great gift ideas by clicking the "Looking for gift recommendations?" link on the right side of the site. We've gone through the entire site and selected some excellent items you might want to consider giving to others this year. And everything in the list is in stock and ready to be shipped out right away!
Another interesting grammatical tidbit which reflects the character of the Japanese people is the verb ending "masho" which corresponds to "let's..." as in "let's eat" (tabemasho), "let's go" (ikimasho) or "let's not smoke" (tobacco wo yamemasho). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (don't smoke, don't ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, making statements like "let's put our telephones into vibration mode" (manner mode ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). These statements subtly create a warm and fuzzy "let's all cooperate" atmosphere that make people want to do their part for the good of everyone. Every year, the Japanese tax office sponsors commercials featuring famous TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms -- "Let's fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly," is the verbalized message. It's quite different from the way things are usually done in the U.S.
Many aspects of life in Japan can be different from America and Europe, and marriage is one of them. For centuries, Japan's entire population has been recorded in "family registers" which are kept on file at city offices throughout the country. When a woman marries a man and goes to live in his house (called yome ni iku or "go as a bride"), she is completely erased from her father's register and joins her husband's, taking his last name, and when she dies, being buried in her husband's family grave. This system works both ways: males often join their wife's families households, too, called muko ni iku or "go as a son-in-law"), legally taking their wife's last name. Males sometimes join their wife's households but keep their own last names, a rarity called "Masuo-san" (MAH-soo-oh-san), named after the husband of Sazae-san in Japan's most popular and longest-running anime -- if you ever want to floor Japanese people with your knowledge of Japan, pull this term out and watch their eyes go wide. Since I keep my own last name even though I've joined my wife's household, I am a Masuo-san as well.
Japanese calendar season continues, and once again I'm amazed at the speed with which our unique 2005 calendars are selling out. A week ago we had 180+ different anime, JPOP, traditional, swimsuit idol and other great calendars, and now we're down to 130 or so. We still have lots of these excellent calendars, which are beautifully printed on large sheets of paper and sold in the Japanese market only. Check out our still-amazing selection of calendars before the ones you want disappear forever.
J-List is really humming, both in Japan and our San Diego office, as we ship hundreds of packages a day to everyone. We've got 24 hour turnover on shipping EMS orders, and the San Diego office is also working very hard to get all DVD player, bishoujo game and T-shirt orders out the next day. We hope we can serve you in some way!
Remember that you can see dozens of great gift ideas by clicking the "Looking for gift recommendations?" link on the right side of the site. We've gone through the entire site and selected some excellent items you might want to consider giving to others this year. And everything in the list is in stock and ready to be shipped out right away!
Sunday, December 05, 2004
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