Hello again from Japan. I've made the 6760 miles (10,879 km) hop from Baltimore to Japan, and have slipped into my "Japan mode" once again. As always, going from one side of the world to the other brings with it some head spinning, no matter how many times I do it, and I spend a few surreal hours re-adjusting to my new surroundings. I wasn't the only one to return to Japan yesterday -- my kids also arrived at the airport, having flown by themselves for the first time. We'd sent them to the U.S. so they could be immersed in English, and as usual, they soaked up an amazing amount. To celebrate being back together as a family, we went out to eat at our favorite ramen restaurant.
Japan has one of the lowest birth rates among developed countries, with just 1.38 children born per woman, compared with 2.08, 1.66, 1.37 and 1.26 for the U.S., England, Germany and Spain. The difference between Japan and other countries is that Japan is an island nation with a very low level of immigration to pick up the slack, which is causing depopulation at an alarming rate. And now it's looking like Japan's population is going to peak, either this year or next, at around 127.74 million, before starting a long decline as more people die than are born each year. Since fixing the problems of a low birth rate are beyond the capabilities of any government, Japan needs to do something about opening its doors to foreigners who want to come here to work and build lives, as I have done, if its wants to keep vitality in its society. It's a difficult question, both politically and socially, but it must be faced sooner or later. At Otakon, there was a booth sponsored by the Japanese government with a banner that read Yokoso! Japan ("Welcome to Japan"), trying to get the fans at the show to consider taking a trip to Japan to see its many beautiful sights. I think they need to go a step further, and start encouraging people to consider making a permanent move here.
The science of Japanese car names is always interesting to study. Above all, car names must sound kakko ii (cool, stylish), and since nothing sounds cooler to the Japanese ear than English, most cars here get their names from English words -- like Honda Life and Subaru Legend, or Nissan's Sunny and March. But many other names come from slightly altered English, so that they cause the same emotional response while remaining unique. Words like Corolla or Tercel or Sylphy or Premacy sound like English, but car companies can still "own" the original names. In recent years, Japanese car companies have started mining Spanish as a source for car names, resulting in cars like Daihatsu's little van Vamos (I love that name), Nissan's El Grand, Toyota's Carina and Familia, and Mitsubishi's Diamante and Viento, and the oddly named Pajero (which means something strange in Spanish). Japanese cars must never, ever have Japanese names, since that would be kakko warui (un-cool, bad style) -- Japanese are always amused to learn that the Suzuki Jiminy was sold as Suzuki Samurai in the U.S. However, there are some cars whose names started out as Japanese words before being "English-ified." Toyota Camry, for example, gets its name from "kanmuri," which means crown in Japanese -- which is funny, since Toyota sells a higher-priced sedan here called Toyota Crown, and in the past as sold the Toyota Corona, which means crown in Spanish.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
Otakon and comparisons to Woodstock, all about Japanese politics, and Buddhism
Hello again from J-List. Well, Otakon is over, the 20,000+ anime fans have gone home, and I'm headed back to Japan today. It's been great seeing all the fans with their cosplay, brimming with the vibrant energy of the Anime Generation. The only thing I can compare a convention like this to is Woodstock, back in my parents' day, but luckily for us, great anime events like this happen every year.
While I've been away, Japan has been embroiled in debate about the upcoming election, when voters will shake up the allotment of seats to Japan's various political parties in an effort to determine the future of Prime Minister Koizumi's plan to privatize postal services. Japan's system of political parties is quite different from the U.S., and politics in general can be a challenge for gaijin like me to follow. First, there's the mighty Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled almost uninterrupted since it was formed in 1955. Opposition parties include the Democratic Party of Japan (the strongest alternate party, which hopes for big gains this election), the New Komeito (the unofficial political party of the Sokka Gakkai conservative Buddhist movement, although they won't admit to this publically), the Japan Communist Party and so on. But since the LDP is so large and strong, often the real battles take place between the various factions inside the party, which are basically parties within the larger group. The Mori faction (which Mr. Koizumi belongs to) is backing reforming the postal services, while many members of the Hashimoto faction (famously tied to pork-barrel construction projects, which are legion in Japan) are opposing the privatization, even to the point of quitting the LDP and making a new party, the Kokumin Shinto or New People's Party. Incidentally, the word for faction (habatsu) is often shortened to just ha when denoting this or that group. So if you're a Mac user, then you're Mac-ha (pronounced Makku-ha); if you prefer soba noodles over udon, you are soba-ha, and so on. Just a little tidbit of Japanese language for you ^_^
Although the people regularly mix themes from other religions as if they were fashions (Christian weddings, Shinto prayers for good luck on the New Year, and so on), by and large Japan is a Buddhist nation. In many homes, you can find a butsudan, or a Buddhist altar, basically a place where you go to say prayers and revere family members who have passed on (since Buddhism in Japan, at least in the Nichirenshu sect that my wife's family practices, is all about remembering one's ancestors). Once, my kids got into a fight over something, and to change the subject I asked my daughter (who is quite a spiritual girl) to show me how to pray properly at the butsudan, something she does every morning before she goes off to school. I thought, light some incense, how hard can that be? My daughter surprised me by bringing out some small prayer books (she found an easy-to-read one for me since I'm American) and reciting a long prayer to Buddha, which she was very familiar with. I think my eyes had turned into little black manga points as I watched that, but it was really interesting, too
While I've been away, Japan has been embroiled in debate about the upcoming election, when voters will shake up the allotment of seats to Japan's various political parties in an effort to determine the future of Prime Minister Koizumi's plan to privatize postal services. Japan's system of political parties is quite different from the U.S., and politics in general can be a challenge for gaijin like me to follow. First, there's the mighty Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled almost uninterrupted since it was formed in 1955. Opposition parties include the Democratic Party of Japan (the strongest alternate party, which hopes for big gains this election), the New Komeito (the unofficial political party of the Sokka Gakkai conservative Buddhist movement, although they won't admit to this publically), the Japan Communist Party and so on. But since the LDP is so large and strong, often the real battles take place between the various factions inside the party, which are basically parties within the larger group. The Mori faction (which Mr. Koizumi belongs to) is backing reforming the postal services, while many members of the Hashimoto faction (famously tied to pork-barrel construction projects, which are legion in Japan) are opposing the privatization, even to the point of quitting the LDP and making a new party, the Kokumin Shinto or New People's Party. Incidentally, the word for faction (habatsu) is often shortened to just ha when denoting this or that group. So if you're a Mac user, then you're Mac-ha (pronounced Makku-ha); if you prefer soba noodles over udon, you are soba-ha, and so on. Just a little tidbit of Japanese language for you ^_^
Although the people regularly mix themes from other religions as if they were fashions (Christian weddings, Shinto prayers for good luck on the New Year, and so on), by and large Japan is a Buddhist nation. In many homes, you can find a butsudan, or a Buddhist altar, basically a place where you go to say prayers and revere family members who have passed on (since Buddhism in Japan, at least in the Nichirenshu sect that my wife's family practices, is all about remembering one's ancestors). Once, my kids got into a fight over something, and to change the subject I asked my daughter (who is quite a spiritual girl) to show me how to pray properly at the butsudan, something she does every morning before she goes off to school. I thought, light some incense, how hard can that be? My daughter surprised me by bringing out some small prayer books (she found an easy-to-read one for me since I'm American) and reciting a long prayer to Buddha, which she was very familiar with. I think my eyes had turned into little black manga points as I watched that, but it was really interesting, too
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Notes from Otakon in Baltimore, diappearing Japanese buildings, and more on bilingualism
Well, we're here at Otakon in Baltimore, and we're having a great time, surrounded by America's most vibrant young people, all filled with love of Japan and most decked out in amazing anime costumes. If you're at the show, we hope you'll come by booth 509 and say hello to us! (If you are planning on coming to the show but haven't registered yet, do check the convention website here, as at-the-door registration is probably closed already.)
You've been in Japan too long when you walk through your neighborhood, and a house that was there yesterday is gone without a trace, and you don't blink. Yes, among the things the Japanese are especially good at, making buildings disappear almost overnight seems to be one of them. The other day I was driving by our favorite sento (public bath), which had unfortunately gone out of business a couple of months before. The building had disappeared, as if it had never stood, replaced by a perfectly flat empty lot that will hopefully not become yet another pachinko parlor (we've got plenty of those in our city already). Another time a Seven Eleven that had been located up against a large road was suddenly moved back 40 feet or so. The company had apparently bought the parcel of land behind their store and somehow moved the entire convenience store back to leave more room for parking in the front -- it was kind of scary, actually.
When you are fluent in two languages, there are some interesting things that happen to your speech. First, bilinguals will generally engage in what's called code-switching when speaking to other bilingual people, mixing both languages sometimes randomly, or sometimes using words from whichever language seem to fit that situation better. This can lead to another phenomenon, linguistically known as interference, when grammar or pronunciation from one language interfere with the operation of the other. My wife often peppers her Japanese with English words, throwing in terms like arrange and organize and situation instead of the corresponding Japanese words, which causes confusion by her Japanese friends, who aren't always sure what she's trying to say. Her English vocabulary invades the Japanese side of her brain, creating minor confusion.
The Japanese have an interesting sense of things sometimes, which never fails to impress me. A balding man with a comb-over and lines of hair on the top of his said is said to have "bar code hair," which is certainly an interesting way to look at things. On one Japanese TV show I caught, they touched a bar code reader to men's hair to see what amount came up on the register, then they gave that amount of money to each man.
You've been in Japan too long when you walk through your neighborhood, and a house that was there yesterday is gone without a trace, and you don't blink. Yes, among the things the Japanese are especially good at, making buildings disappear almost overnight seems to be one of them. The other day I was driving by our favorite sento (public bath), which had unfortunately gone out of business a couple of months before. The building had disappeared, as if it had never stood, replaced by a perfectly flat empty lot that will hopefully not become yet another pachinko parlor (we've got plenty of those in our city already). Another time a Seven Eleven that had been located up against a large road was suddenly moved back 40 feet or so. The company had apparently bought the parcel of land behind their store and somehow moved the entire convenience store back to leave more room for parking in the front -- it was kind of scary, actually.
When you are fluent in two languages, there are some interesting things that happen to your speech. First, bilinguals will generally engage in what's called code-switching when speaking to other bilingual people, mixing both languages sometimes randomly, or sometimes using words from whichever language seem to fit that situation better. This can lead to another phenomenon, linguistically known as interference, when grammar or pronunciation from one language interfere with the operation of the other. My wife often peppers her Japanese with English words, throwing in terms like arrange and organize and situation instead of the corresponding Japanese words, which causes confusion by her Japanese friends, who aren't always sure what she's trying to say. Her English vocabulary invades the Japanese side of her brain, creating minor confusion.
The Japanese have an interesting sense of things sometimes, which never fails to impress me. A balding man with a comb-over and lines of hair on the top of his said is said to have "bar code hair," which is certainly an interesting way to look at things. On one Japanese TV show I caught, they touched a bar code reader to men's hair to see what amount came up on the register, then they gave that amount of money to each man.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Peter on the other side of the world, uses for the word "kokoro," and Japanese who can't read their own language
I never cease to be amazed at the Internet, which enables a small company like J-List bring so many interesting and wacky products to Japanophiles in every corner of the world, along with our "postcard from Japan" emails. I regularly hop between Japan and San Diego, but now I've gone even further, to Maryland to visit family before attending Otakon this weekend. Right now I'm sitting on a balcony watching the waterbugs zip over the Severn River that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, while the full moon looks down at me. If you'll be at Otakon, we'll see you there! (For info on the show, see this page.)
One Japanese word I like a lot is kokoro, which can be a little difficult to translate into English. Basically, kokoro means the heart, but the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of it -- it's often translated into English as as soul, spirit and mind. Kokoro is your inner self, similar to your soul, although there's a more complex word for that particular idea (tamashii). The kokoro is thought to reside in the chest, in contrast to most Westerners, who would probably put the mind's physical location as being inside the head. The concept of reading one's mind is expressed in Japanese as kokoro o yomu (to read one's heart), and if something really hurt you you might say kokoro ga itamu (my heart hurts). There are other words in Japanese that correspond to other meanings of the English word heart, such as shinzo (the heart that's beating in your chest right now) and haato (the English word rendered with a Japanese accent, which describes the classic heart shape). Learning a language is fun because it makes you realize that complex ideas can't be simply brought over on a 1-to-1 basis all the time, which makes you reflect more on what language is all about.
A strange aspect of written Japanese is that many people cannot read their own language. While the vast majority of Japanese can read the 1900+ joyo kanji (the so-called "general use" characters that all Japanese must learn by the time they graduate from high school), there are many very difficult characters that fall outside of the "official" lists, and thus, people aren't sure how to pronounce them. I was reminded of this fact when we told my daughter to write a postcard to her Japanese teacher, but my wife didn't know how to read her teacher's name -- names of people are some of the hardest kanji to read, since there are so many ways to write them, just as there are many alternate spellings for names in the West. Place names are also difficult, unless you happened to grow up in that area. All the place names in Northern Japan, which was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people for thousands of years, have odd names can't be written with standard characters -- and as a result, most Japanese often can't read the names.
Remember that Halloween is coming soon. J-List offers many fun items that can make for a unique costume, from the amazing high school uniforms from Matsukameya to great cosplay reference books like Layers and Cosmode. Plan your Halloween surprise and order early at J-List -- we're ready for your order!
One Japanese word I like a lot is kokoro, which can be a little difficult to translate into English. Basically, kokoro means the heart, but the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of it -- it's often translated into English as as soul, spirit and mind. Kokoro is your inner self, similar to your soul, although there's a more complex word for that particular idea (tamashii). The kokoro is thought to reside in the chest, in contrast to most Westerners, who would probably put the mind's physical location as being inside the head. The concept of reading one's mind is expressed in Japanese as kokoro o yomu (to read one's heart), and if something really hurt you you might say kokoro ga itamu (my heart hurts). There are other words in Japanese that correspond to other meanings of the English word heart, such as shinzo (the heart that's beating in your chest right now) and haato (the English word rendered with a Japanese accent, which describes the classic heart shape). Learning a language is fun because it makes you realize that complex ideas can't be simply brought over on a 1-to-1 basis all the time, which makes you reflect more on what language is all about.
A strange aspect of written Japanese is that many people cannot read their own language. While the vast majority of Japanese can read the 1900+ joyo kanji (the so-called "general use" characters that all Japanese must learn by the time they graduate from high school), there are many very difficult characters that fall outside of the "official" lists, and thus, people aren't sure how to pronounce them. I was reminded of this fact when we told my daughter to write a postcard to her Japanese teacher, but my wife didn't know how to read her teacher's name -- names of people are some of the hardest kanji to read, since there are so many ways to write them, just as there are many alternate spellings for names in the West. Place names are also difficult, unless you happened to grow up in that area. All the place names in Northern Japan, which was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people for thousands of years, have odd names can't be written with standard characters -- and as a result, most Japanese often can't read the names.
Remember that Halloween is coming soon. J-List offers many fun items that can make for a unique costume, from the amazing high school uniforms from Matsukameya to great cosplay reference books like Layers and Cosmode. Plan your Halloween surprise and order early at J-List -- we're ready for your order!
Monday, August 15, 2005
Anniversary of the end of the war, the holiest of Japanese holidays, and all about babies in Japan
Today is the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender, ending the terror that was the War in the Pacific, as it's usually called here. During my fourteen years in Japan, I've travelled quite extensively and have talked with many people here about the war, whenever I could do so tactfully. Almost all Japanese I've talked with are glad that Japan lost the war, since it paved the way for equalization of Japanese society and real democracy. My mother-in-law especially reveres General MacArthur for his efforts to equalize Japan, taking land away from large estates and zaibatsu business cartels and distributing it to those who had no land. Sometimes these conversations can get a little weird -- in rural Toyama Prefecture, I was eating with the family of a friend when their (somewhat inebriated) uncle started sobbing, "Why did giant America bring war to little Japan?" The question of why a country with the land area of Nebraska and no meaningful natural resources thought they could take on the world and somehow win is a complex one -- what was Japan thinking? I think part of the answer lies in what's known as seiyo suhai shugi (西洋崇拝主義, literally meaning "worship of the West-ism"). Ever since Japan began modernizing in the 1870s, it's looked with great respect at the powers of Europe and America, especially the grand British Empire, another tiny island nation that managed to exert influence over the entire world. Japan wanted more than anything to become a country that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those great nations, and I believe its terrible march to war and imperialism was a case of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" taken to its most horrific extreme.
We're in the middle of the Japanese Obon ("oh bone") holidays, something similar to Thanksgiving in the U.S., a time when millions of people return home to their inaka (ee-NAH-KAH, their rural hometowns) to see loved ones and pay visits to the graves of family members who have passed away. Tokyo becomes a ghost town during this season, with almost every company closed for business. Unfortunately, anyone trying to use the roads during this special holiday season has to plan around the massive "U-turn," when everyone turns around to head back into Tokyo. Already there are traffic jams of up to 40 km snaking back to the capital, and today is only the second to last day of Obon -- it will be three times as bad tomorrow.
We've got more happy news around here: Yasu's daughter was born this morning, a strong and healthy baby girl named Riko-chan. In Japan, babies are usually born in small "maternity hospitals" that only deliver babies, rather than maternity wards of large hospitals. There are several of these clinics in each city, and competition between them can be quite fierce -- the place where our children were born lured us with full-course French cuisine for my wife while she was recuperating, and a complimentary video featuring Ultrasound footage of each of our kids as they grew in utero, and of us holding them after they were born. Japan has a lot of strong beliefs about childbirth -- I might use the word "superstitions" but my wife would get mad at me. For example, for the first week after giving birth a woman is not allowed to touch water at all or it will make her blood boil (or something like that). I remember my mother-in-law bustling around the house making sure the dishes and laundry were done so my wife didn't have to worry herself with it.
Our newest region-free DVD player, the AMW M-280 which features a 7" screen for viewing DVDs anywhere you like, is a smash hit. The fully region-free player features long playing time on battery, and includes such extras as 32X rewind and fast forward, full remote with all controls replicated on the player itself (in case you don't have the remote handy), the ability to output to a TV and also accept video input from another video source and display it on the screen (mobile PS2 anyone?), and more. I've updated the description to reflect one feature I forgot to list on Friday, a "disc memory" function that plays the disc from the last position you were watching when you turned the player off (a feature I am personally quite fond of).
We're in the middle of the Japanese Obon ("oh bone") holidays, something similar to Thanksgiving in the U.S., a time when millions of people return home to their inaka (ee-NAH-KAH, their rural hometowns) to see loved ones and pay visits to the graves of family members who have passed away. Tokyo becomes a ghost town during this season, with almost every company closed for business. Unfortunately, anyone trying to use the roads during this special holiday season has to plan around the massive "U-turn," when everyone turns around to head back into Tokyo. Already there are traffic jams of up to 40 km snaking back to the capital, and today is only the second to last day of Obon -- it will be three times as bad tomorrow.
We've got more happy news around here: Yasu's daughter was born this morning, a strong and healthy baby girl named Riko-chan. In Japan, babies are usually born in small "maternity hospitals" that only deliver babies, rather than maternity wards of large hospitals. There are several of these clinics in each city, and competition between them can be quite fierce -- the place where our children were born lured us with full-course French cuisine for my wife while she was recuperating, and a complimentary video featuring Ultrasound footage of each of our kids as they grew in utero, and of us holding them after they were born. Japan has a lot of strong beliefs about childbirth -- I might use the word "superstitions" but my wife would get mad at me. For example, for the first week after giving birth a woman is not allowed to touch water at all or it will make her blood boil (or something like that). I remember my mother-in-law bustling around the house making sure the dishes and laundry were done so my wife didn't have to worry herself with it.
Our newest region-free DVD player, the AMW M-280 which features a 7" screen for viewing DVDs anywhere you like, is a smash hit. The fully region-free player features long playing time on battery, and includes such extras as 32X rewind and fast forward, full remote with all controls replicated on the player itself (in case you don't have the remote handy), the ability to output to a TV and also accept video input from another video source and display it on the screen (mobile PS2 anyone?), and more. I've updated the description to reflect one feature I forgot to list on Friday, a "disc memory" function that plays the disc from the last position you were watching when you turned the player off (a feature I am personally quite fond of).
Friday, August 12, 2005
The latest crime wave in Japan, wholesome words by concerned Japanese parents, and beer made specially for kids
There's a minor crime wave going on in Japan right now: serial petnapping. Japan has been in the midst of a huge "Chihuahua boom" for the past few years, thanks in part to a popular TV commercial for high-interest loans about a man who had to borrow money so he could buy a tiny dog tuxedo for his Chihuahua to be by his side at his daughters wedding. With the little dogs fetching $3000 and up these days, they've become targets of thieves who steal them and resell them on the Internet. Dogs are extremely pampered in Japan, and are treated like a member of the family in many homes, especially in Tokyo, where having a small furry companion can make existing in the concrete jungle just a little easier.
One thing I've noticed about Japanese parents: they are usually quite concerned about the well-being of their kids, and many involve themselves with their children's education more than I've seen in the U.S. Whenever I drive somewhere in my city I pass many signs that have been put up by the local junior high school PTA, which basically encapsulate a lot of the joshiki (universal common sense) that Japanese usually share on subjects like how to raise kids right. The slogans are usually general statements like "overprotective parents are the cause of weak children" and "those who don't show respect to their own mother and father won't receive it from their children." Recently I came across another interesting slogan, which used the four syllables of the English word "OASIS" (pronounced oh-AH-shi-su in Japanese) to remind readers of four phrases children should always be taught to say. They are ohayo gozaimasu ("good morning," as it's always important to greet others cheerfully in Japanese society), arigato gozaimasu ("thank you very much"), shitsurei shimashita ("excuse me," said when leaving a teacher's room as a sign of respect) and sumimasen deshita ("I'm sorry," said in apology when you've done something wrong). One of my life's goals is to drive down every street in my city and make notes on all these PTA signs, and compile them for the web, but I can't seem to find the time.
It seems Japan can always surprise you. Now a small brewery in Tokyo has created a non-achoholic beer for kids, called Kodomo no Beer, so kids can enjoy the fun of drinking a frosty one with Dad after a dip in the hot springs. See it here.
One thing I've noticed about Japanese parents: they are usually quite concerned about the well-being of their kids, and many involve themselves with their children's education more than I've seen in the U.S. Whenever I drive somewhere in my city I pass many signs that have been put up by the local junior high school PTA, which basically encapsulate a lot of the joshiki (universal common sense) that Japanese usually share on subjects like how to raise kids right. The slogans are usually general statements like "overprotective parents are the cause of weak children" and "those who don't show respect to their own mother and father won't receive it from their children." Recently I came across another interesting slogan, which used the four syllables of the English word "OASIS" (pronounced oh-AH-shi-su in Japanese) to remind readers of four phrases children should always be taught to say. They are ohayo gozaimasu ("good morning," as it's always important to greet others cheerfully in Japanese society), arigato gozaimasu ("thank you very much"), shitsurei shimashita ("excuse me," said when leaving a teacher's room as a sign of respect) and sumimasen deshita ("I'm sorry," said in apology when you've done something wrong). One of my life's goals is to drive down every street in my city and make notes on all these PTA signs, and compile them for the web, but I can't seem to find the time.
It seems Japan can always surprise you. Now a small brewery in Tokyo has created a non-achoholic beer for kids, called Kodomo no Beer, so kids can enjoy the fun of drinking a frosty one with Dad after a dip in the hot springs. See it here.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
New election and the hullabuloo over the Japanese post office, and the "joy of satori"
It's once again that time most feared by foreigners living in Japan: election season, when white-gloved Japanese politicians drive around in trucks with loudspeakers mounted on top, shouting their name and saying things like "I will work hard for you!" and "Thank you for your support on election day!" When Prime Minister Koizumi lost an important vote on his administration's goal of privatizing Japan's sprawling postal system on Monday, he disbanded the Diet and called for new elections, which will be held on September 11. Until then, we'll have to put up with lots of noisy politicians shouting at us through our windows, speaking through bullhorns in front of train stations in Tokyo, and so on.
The issue at hand is the privatization of Japan's postal apparatus, which would basically create four mostly-private corporations to manage the various postal activities more efficiently than they are at present. Japan's post office does much more than just deliver the mail in rain or sleet or snow: it's also the world's largest savings bank, holding a vast amount of money in deposits by Japanese households, and it also operates a life insurance business, too. These two businesses hold a mind-boggling $3 trillion in cash reserves, which is far too much money for politicians to resist touching, so they use it for various "economic revitalization" projects, such as a government-subsidized hot springs hotel near Nikko, with a massive indoor pool complex next to it that no one uses. The post office is Japan's largest employer, with 24,000 post offices, frankly far more than it needs for a country that's about the same size as Italy or California. Opponents of the privatization plan warn that if Japan Post starts actually seeking profits, it will close down thousands of these smaller post offices, leaving rural areas with less convenience, and this is a sensitive issue here in Japan, not unlike base closings in the U.S. Another issue is, will a privatized Japan Post be on the same playing field (or as they say in Japanese, in the same sumo ring) as Japan's private delivery companies like Yamato and Sawaga, or will receive a lot of winks and special treatment like NTT (which started out as a government-run utility before being privatized in 1985). Considering that it costs 75 cents to send a first-class letter inside Japan, about twice the rate of the U.S., I'd say there's room for more efficiency in Japan's postal system.
One of the things I've liked about my years of learning Japanese is what I've come to call the "joy of satori," a sort of thrill that jumps through your brain when you make a difficult connection, solve a puzzling kanji problem, or intuit a correct answer without really knowing why. Satori means understanding or comprehension, or written with another kanji, enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and I believe our brains are hard-wired to feel joy when a difficult solution is finally comprehended. You can't learn a foreign language without getting lots of input in that language, and I went out of my way to read plenty of manga to learn kanji and vocabulary words, one of them being the Rumiko Takahashi classic Maison Ikkoku, the story of a man living in an apartment who's in love with his apartment manager, the widowed Kyoko. There's a secret code embedded in the series, a number system based on the names of the characters and the ten apartments in the apartment building: for example, the main character is Godai and he lives in room number 5 since go is 5 in Japanese; his neighbor Yotsuya lives in room 4 since yotsu represents that number; and so on, with Kyoko being zero, since her last name contains the character nashi (meaning "nil"). I'll never forget how I felt when I puzzled this system out for the first time -- it was a small piece of enlightenment, but it was my own.
The issue at hand is the privatization of Japan's postal apparatus, which would basically create four mostly-private corporations to manage the various postal activities more efficiently than they are at present. Japan's post office does much more than just deliver the mail in rain or sleet or snow: it's also the world's largest savings bank, holding a vast amount of money in deposits by Japanese households, and it also operates a life insurance business, too. These two businesses hold a mind-boggling $3 trillion in cash reserves, which is far too much money for politicians to resist touching, so they use it for various "economic revitalization" projects, such as a government-subsidized hot springs hotel near Nikko, with a massive indoor pool complex next to it that no one uses. The post office is Japan's largest employer, with 24,000 post offices, frankly far more than it needs for a country that's about the same size as Italy or California. Opponents of the privatization plan warn that if Japan Post starts actually seeking profits, it will close down thousands of these smaller post offices, leaving rural areas with less convenience, and this is a sensitive issue here in Japan, not unlike base closings in the U.S. Another issue is, will a privatized Japan Post be on the same playing field (or as they say in Japanese, in the same sumo ring) as Japan's private delivery companies like Yamato and Sawaga, or will receive a lot of winks and special treatment like NTT (which started out as a government-run utility before being privatized in 1985). Considering that it costs 75 cents to send a first-class letter inside Japan, about twice the rate of the U.S., I'd say there's room for more efficiency in Japan's postal system.
One of the things I've liked about my years of learning Japanese is what I've come to call the "joy of satori," a sort of thrill that jumps through your brain when you make a difficult connection, solve a puzzling kanji problem, or intuit a correct answer without really knowing why. Satori means understanding or comprehension, or written with another kanji, enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and I believe our brains are hard-wired to feel joy when a difficult solution is finally comprehended. You can't learn a foreign language without getting lots of input in that language, and I went out of my way to read plenty of manga to learn kanji and vocabulary words, one of them being the Rumiko Takahashi classic Maison Ikkoku, the story of a man living in an apartment who's in love with his apartment manager, the widowed Kyoko. There's a secret code embedded in the series, a number system based on the names of the characters and the ten apartments in the apartment building: for example, the main character is Godai and he lives in room number 5 since go is 5 in Japanese; his neighbor Yotsuya lives in room 4 since yotsu represents that number; and so on, with Kyoko being zero, since her last name contains the character nashi (meaning "nil"). I'll never forget how I felt when I puzzled this system out for the first time -- it was a small piece of enlightenment, but it was my own.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Japanese summer festivals, the drama of high school baseball, and update on Hiroshima
It's August in Japan, and to millions of Japanese sports fans that means -- high school baseball! High school baseball is really big in Japan, and teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures try all season long to win the right to go to Koshien (koh-SHE-en) Stadium near Osaka, where the national championships are being held right now. To go to Koshien is the dream of every young ball player, and it has a positive effect on the future careers of thousands of young men every year, whether they go on to play professional baseball or not. The drama of a Koshien race is captured in manga and anime such as the classic Touch, a comic I used to study Japanese with while at college. By an amazing coincidence, J-List is based in the city where Touch creator Mitsuru Adachi was born, and this year our prefecture is represented at Koshien by Maebashi Commercial High School, Mr. Adachi's old alma mater (and also the school that our own Yasu graduated from). We'll be rooting for them this year!
August is also the season of matsuri, or festivals, and each town in Japan hosts at least one wild festival, closing off streets to allow its citizens to dance through the town in celebration of summer. I went down to check out our city's festival, which was on last night, and had a great time. There were a dozen floats filled with children playing taiko drums and banging on gongs, and groups of men carrying omikoshi, which are portable Shinto shrines that you parade around on your shoulders while shouting washoi, washoi, washoi. All around us were young people wearing new yukata, cotton kimonos for summer, while they enjoyed the chaos all around them. Beer flows quite freely at these festivals, and more than once we were approached by inebriated Japanese men who wanted to practice their English with us. Although I could do without the heat, I sure like summer in Japan because of the festivals.
On a sadder note, Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a very solemn ceremony was held in the city to honor those killed on August 6, 1945. In April, I took my mother and kids to Hiroshima to see the city and experience the Peace Park, the area above ground zero that has been converted into a beautiful place to reflect on the past. The museum was especially moving, filled with displays of objects recovered after the blast, such as melted glass bottles, children's tricycles, and the famous Hiroshima Watch, stopped forever at 8:15 am. Since my children are part of both Japan and America, I wanted them to see the images or Hiroshima and know how different things had been during that terrible time. Despite being completely destroyed, the city of Hiroshima has been rebuilt into an amazing and vibrant city that all Japan can be proud of.
J-List carries hundreds of hard to find items from Japan, including cool accessories for your iPod made by Elecom, a popular maker of computer peripherals. From cool cases with carabiner clips to interesting headphones and speakers, if you've got an iPod or similar music player, there are some really unique products on our site for you. See the newly created iPod products page (under Computer Peripherals)
August is also the season of matsuri, or festivals, and each town in Japan hosts at least one wild festival, closing off streets to allow its citizens to dance through the town in celebration of summer. I went down to check out our city's festival, which was on last night, and had a great time. There were a dozen floats filled with children playing taiko drums and banging on gongs, and groups of men carrying omikoshi, which are portable Shinto shrines that you parade around on your shoulders while shouting washoi, washoi, washoi. All around us were young people wearing new yukata, cotton kimonos for summer, while they enjoyed the chaos all around them. Beer flows quite freely at these festivals, and more than once we were approached by inebriated Japanese men who wanted to practice their English with us. Although I could do without the heat, I sure like summer in Japan because of the festivals.
On a sadder note, Saturday was the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a very solemn ceremony was held in the city to honor those killed on August 6, 1945. In April, I took my mother and kids to Hiroshima to see the city and experience the Peace Park, the area above ground zero that has been converted into a beautiful place to reflect on the past. The museum was especially moving, filled with displays of objects recovered after the blast, such as melted glass bottles, children's tricycles, and the famous Hiroshima Watch, stopped forever at 8:15 am. Since my children are part of both Japan and America, I wanted them to see the images or Hiroshima and know how different things had been during that terrible time. Despite being completely destroyed, the city of Hiroshima has been rebuilt into an amazing and vibrant city that all Japan can be proud of.
J-List carries hundreds of hard to find items from Japan, including cool accessories for your iPod made by Elecom, a popular maker of computer peripherals. From cool cases with carabiner clips to interesting headphones and speakers, if you've got an iPod or similar music player, there are some really unique products on our site for you. See the newly created iPod products page (under Computer Peripherals)
Saturday, August 06, 2005
The Otaku Standardized Test and origin of the word, Japan's hot summer, and aloe flavored yogurt
Hello again from Japan, and a special weekend update to J-List!
I've written before about how the Japanese like to take tests, and there are national qualification exams for just about everything, from English to kanji to using an abacus to preparing sashimi, and even a test for people who like to memorize train schedules. Getting these qualifications is one way to get ahead in Japan, and having a lot of them under your belt can help you get a better job. Now several companies in Akihabara have gotten together to create the first Otaku Standardized Test, which allows fans of anime and manga to test their knowledge and see if they make the grade as uber-fans. The test is hard -- with questions like, of the following anime shows of the 1960s and 1970s, which was not directed by Tetsuo Imazawa? -- and is of course only in Japanese. The official page of the Otaken can be found at http://www.otaken.jp. The word otaku originally is a polite term for "you" or "your family" but has come to stand for anyone with a strong interest in anime, manga, model trains, or any other aspect of Japan's popular sub-culture. There are several theories about how this everyday Japanese word attained this unique alternate meaning. According to one, the fact that "otaku" was spoken frequently by characters in the original Macross series caused fans to start using it, creating the beginnings of the otaku movement. Alternately, many of the employees of General Products, the model company that would go on to become the mighty Gainax, hail from Tottori Prefecture (the only part of Japan to sport its own mini-desert), and in the local dialect, "otaku" is the most commonly used second-person pronoun.
Japan's oh-so-hot summer continues, with temperatures hovering around 35 degrees (95 Farenheit, although I had to look that up, since I've lived in Japan so long). It's so hot that the plastic in my Star Wars figures starts to get soft, which makes them fall over easily. As bad as it is out here in Gunma (about 100 km northwest of Tokyo), it's much worse in Japan's capital, thanks to the "heat island" effect. With all those people running their air conditioners, and all that black asphalt and reflective glass, Tokyo is often 3-4 degrees Celsius hotter than other parts of the country. It's hotter at night, too, since the heat is stored in the concrete and can't be radiated away because of all the other buildings. The average temperature in the capital has gone up a full 3 degrees Celsius over the past century, a pace far higher than global warming, mainly due to the heat island effect. Which is just one more reason why I'm glad I don't live in Tokyo.
Our English-translated PC dating-sim games are a fun way to interact with Japan on a new level. Several of our games are backordered right now while we reprint them, but we've gotten two titles back in stock today, Chain and Tsuki - Possession. Also, we've posted our popular "Special Set" of G-Collections games (DOR plus any 2 or 3 games) to the site, by customer request. We did have a problem with two titles recently reprinted titles, Come See Me Tonight and Crescendo. If you bought these games but had issues installing them, please contact us and we'll make arrangements for replacement discs to be sent to you right away.
I've written before about how the Japanese like to take tests, and there are national qualification exams for just about everything, from English to kanji to using an abacus to preparing sashimi, and even a test for people who like to memorize train schedules. Getting these qualifications is one way to get ahead in Japan, and having a lot of them under your belt can help you get a better job. Now several companies in Akihabara have gotten together to create the first Otaku Standardized Test, which allows fans of anime and manga to test their knowledge and see if they make the grade as uber-fans. The test is hard -- with questions like, of the following anime shows of the 1960s and 1970s, which was not directed by Tetsuo Imazawa? -- and is of course only in Japanese. The official page of the Otaken can be found at http://www.otaken.jp. The word otaku originally is a polite term for "you" or "your family" but has come to stand for anyone with a strong interest in anime, manga, model trains, or any other aspect of Japan's popular sub-culture. There are several theories about how this everyday Japanese word attained this unique alternate meaning. According to one, the fact that "otaku" was spoken frequently by characters in the original Macross series caused fans to start using it, creating the beginnings of the otaku movement. Alternately, many of the employees of General Products, the model company that would go on to become the mighty Gainax, hail from Tottori Prefecture (the only part of Japan to sport its own mini-desert), and in the local dialect, "otaku" is the most commonly used second-person pronoun.
Japan's oh-so-hot summer continues, with temperatures hovering around 35 degrees (95 Farenheit, although I had to look that up, since I've lived in Japan so long). It's so hot that the plastic in my Star Wars figures starts to get soft, which makes them fall over easily. As bad as it is out here in Gunma (about 100 km northwest of Tokyo), it's much worse in Japan's capital, thanks to the "heat island" effect. With all those people running their air conditioners, and all that black asphalt and reflective glass, Tokyo is often 3-4 degrees Celsius hotter than other parts of the country. It's hotter at night, too, since the heat is stored in the concrete and can't be radiated away because of all the other buildings. The average temperature in the capital has gone up a full 3 degrees Celsius over the past century, a pace far higher than global warming, mainly due to the heat island effect. Which is just one more reason why I'm glad I don't live in Tokyo.
Our English-translated PC dating-sim games are a fun way to interact with Japan on a new level. Several of our games are backordered right now while we reprint them, but we've gotten two titles back in stock today, Chain and Tsuki - Possession. Also, we've posted our popular "Special Set" of G-Collections games (DOR plus any 2 or 3 games) to the site, by customer request. We did have a problem with two titles recently reprinted titles, Come See Me Tonight and Crescendo. If you bought these games but had issues installing them, please contact us and we'll make arrangements for replacement discs to be sent to you right away.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
iTunes Music Store comes to Japan, on Japanese drinking culture, and some happy news at J-List
After a long wait, Apple's iTunes Japan music store has finally opened, allowing customers here to download Japanese and international music for around $1.75 per song. Despite the large number of digital-savvy users in Japan, it's not at all surprising to me that it took so long for Apple to get the iTunes store up and running. Japan can be a very conservative place, and to big companies with established businesses, nothing is more terrifying than change, any change at all. Apple has had to navigate between greedy record companies who have kept the prices of CDs at the artificially high price of $30 for decades, and industry groups like the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and the Recording Industry of Japan (RIAJ), who have closed ranks against any kind of digital distribution of music that doesn't guarantee more profits for them than conventional CDs. A big problem was JASRAC's insistence that Apple follow "Japan's rules" when it came to selling music online, which apparently meant that the industry group was to receive 7.7% of every song sold in addition to what the actual copyright holders receive. It's all very silly when you think about the fact that in Japan, you can go into any one of thousands of CD rental shops and rent a whole album for $3 or less. Sadly, Japan's copyright-happy record industry lacked the vision to allow Apple to sell Japanese music to customers outside of Japan, so worldwide fans of JPOP are shut out from participating in the Japan iTMS. Apple isn't the first company that's had to endure pressure from the establishment in Japan: Amazon was blocked from selling products below list price on their site here, since price fixing is still allowed for some products, like books and CDs. If there's one good thing that's come from the past decade of recession in Japan, it's that many of Japan's closed economic doors have been forced open, letting the light of competition and common sense flood in. If you want to see a hilarious commercial that marries the iPod with Sazae-san, one the most popular anime in Japan's history, check this out (Quicktime required).
The Japanese do drink a lot, from beer to sake to harder stuff. Letting alcohol act as a lubricant in human relationships is a time-honored social practice in Japan, and one of the first words I learned when I came here in 1991 was nomunication, a word that combines nomu (to drink) with the English word communication. Japanese drinking establishments differ somewhat from those in the U.S., of course, with different mixes of atmosphere and menu. One of the most popular places to throw some back with friends at are izakaya (ee-ZA-ka-ka, roughly meaning "a place to sit and drink in"), comfortable Japanese-style restaurants that serve beer in large glasses along with various Japanese meals, from sashimi to squid pizza to yakitori. Back in the old days I used to frequent small bars called "snacks" (an odd word which came from the fact that they sell light meals along with alcohol), where you can sing karaoke and get a "bottle keep" (i.e. your own private bottle) for drinking with friends. There are also places that pattern themselves after American and European models, which use English words like "bar" or "pub" to describe themselves. Last week I was in Tokyo with friends, and we found the cutest Irish pub in Shibuya that served a good range of beers we can't usually find in Japan. Japanese usually learn to drink in college, where in the past they would be cheered on by friends while they chugged a huge class of beer. This practice, called ikki nomi (beer chugging) became a problem when a college freshman drank too much too fast and died. Now saying ikki! ikki! ikki! while someone drinks is quite taboo.
Congratulations to J-List's own Daisuke, who's baby boy was born yesterday. We're having quite a population explosion around here -- Yasu's wife is pregnant with their second daughter and is ready to pop any day now, Jun's wife has their first bun in the oven, and Dawn in San Diego (whose important job it is to cut the paychecks) also has a little bundle of joy coming too. If you want to see what we look like, check the About J-List page.
Are you in or near Louisiana and looking for an anime convention to go to? If so, then we recommend Mechacon, held on Aug 26-28. We won't be at the show, but some friends of our will, so please go and say hello to them.
The Japanese do drink a lot, from beer to sake to harder stuff. Letting alcohol act as a lubricant in human relationships is a time-honored social practice in Japan, and one of the first words I learned when I came here in 1991 was nomunication, a word that combines nomu (to drink) with the English word communication. Japanese drinking establishments differ somewhat from those in the U.S., of course, with different mixes of atmosphere and menu. One of the most popular places to throw some back with friends at are izakaya (ee-ZA-ka-ka, roughly meaning "a place to sit and drink in"), comfortable Japanese-style restaurants that serve beer in large glasses along with various Japanese meals, from sashimi to squid pizza to yakitori. Back in the old days I used to frequent small bars called "snacks" (an odd word which came from the fact that they sell light meals along with alcohol), where you can sing karaoke and get a "bottle keep" (i.e. your own private bottle) for drinking with friends. There are also places that pattern themselves after American and European models, which use English words like "bar" or "pub" to describe themselves. Last week I was in Tokyo with friends, and we found the cutest Irish pub in Shibuya that served a good range of beers we can't usually find in Japan. Japanese usually learn to drink in college, where in the past they would be cheered on by friends while they chugged a huge class of beer. This practice, called ikki nomi (beer chugging) became a problem when a college freshman drank too much too fast and died. Now saying ikki! ikki! ikki! while someone drinks is quite taboo.
Congratulations to J-List's own Daisuke, who's baby boy was born yesterday. We're having quite a population explosion around here -- Yasu's wife is pregnant with their second daughter and is ready to pop any day now, Jun's wife has their first bun in the oven, and Dawn in San Diego (whose important job it is to cut the paychecks) also has a little bundle of joy coming too. If you want to see what we look like, check the About J-List page.
Are you in or near Louisiana and looking for an anime convention to go to? If so, then we recommend Mechacon, held on Aug 26-28. We won't be at the show, but some friends of our will, so please go and say hello to them.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Lightning strikes, space-faring Japanese astronauts, and interesting tips on learning kanji
Lightning strikes! Twice before the J-List office has had the bad luck of being struck by lightning, frying our main air conditioning unit and causing us to spend a week or so sweltering in the heat and humidity of Japan's high summer. Well, it's happened again, and currently the J-List staff is trying to work in near-sauna conditions. Fortunately the lightning also knocked out the ice cream freezer at my parents' liquor shop, so we had an excuse to eat all the ice cream before it melted.
One thing I've learned about the Japanese: nothing makes them more pleased than when one of their own attains international recognition, and writers like Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, and athletes like Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki all occupy a special place in the hearts of their fans at home for this reason. So you can imagine that Japan is pretty proud of its latest hero, astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who went up in the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery. Every time I turn on the television I see footage of Noguchi-san, making jokes while floating in zero-g or talking to his fans on the ground. As a former English teacher, I'm happy to see men like him become the new heroes to kids in Japan, and I hope it encourages more young Japanese to try harder to master English. Yesterday morning the crew of the shuttle was awakened with a broadcast of Japanese children singing the theme song to My Neighbor Totoro ("Let's Take a Walk") because it was the day of his first spacewalk outside the ship. Urayamashii! (OO-ra-ya-ma-SHE, which means "[I am] so envious [of him]!")
There's no doubt about it: the most complex part of learning Japanese is kanji, unless you're fortunate enough to already be fluent in Chinese. An educated Japanese person generally uses around 2000 kanji, compared with 3500-5000 for the same person in China. Because the Chinese writing system was basically grafted onto the existing Japanese language in the 5th century, there are fundamentally two ways to read any character, the on (rhymes with bone) or Chinese reading, and the kun (rhymes with spoon) or Japanese reading, the latter being an existing Japanese word that's been assigned to a kanji based on the character's meaning. As a general rule, you use the Chinese reading for compound words made up of two kanji (for example, the word for hibernation, toumin, written with the characters for winter + sleep), and there are quite a few Chinese and Korean words that are the same in Japanese for this reason. The Japanese reading is usually used for kanji words that appear by themselves (e.g. the character for winter written all by itself, fuyu), or in special cases like names of people or places. It's hard to believe, but it's easier to memorize Japanese vocabulary words through kanji than, say, learning from a book which prints Japanese in romaji (the Roman alphabet) For example, the kanji for "most" can be combined with a variety of other kanji to describe ideas like tallest, shortest, etc. Examples above are, from left, saikou (most + high = highest, also meaning the best), saitei (most + bottom = the lowest, meaning a real jerk when applied to a person), saisho (most + begin = the first), saigo (most + after = the last), and saishin (most + new = the newest). The rightmost example is the above mentioned kanji for hibernation. Memorizing these words in kanji only takes two "bytes" of your brain's memory once you've gotten used to the characters themselves, but memorizing the words in the Roman alphabet would be harder since they're just a jumble of letters.
J-List loves DVDs, and we sell hundreds of unique DVDs from Japan. While most of our titles are region free, so you can play them on any standard DVD player, Japanese anime, specialized "indies" and some other discs are published as region 2, meaning you need a special player to play them. We've got two great region-free DVD players from Lasonic, the karaoke-enabled DVD7880K and the amazing DVD7050, which plays DIVX movies burned onto DVD-R, DVD-RW, you name it. We've lowered our prices on these players to just $78 and $98, so why not pick one up today?
One thing I've learned about the Japanese: nothing makes them more pleased than when one of their own attains international recognition, and writers like Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, and athletes like Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki all occupy a special place in the hearts of their fans at home for this reason. So you can imagine that Japan is pretty proud of its latest hero, astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who went up in the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery. Every time I turn on the television I see footage of Noguchi-san, making jokes while floating in zero-g or talking to his fans on the ground. As a former English teacher, I'm happy to see men like him become the new heroes to kids in Japan, and I hope it encourages more young Japanese to try harder to master English. Yesterday morning the crew of the shuttle was awakened with a broadcast of Japanese children singing the theme song to My Neighbor Totoro ("Let's Take a Walk") because it was the day of his first spacewalk outside the ship. Urayamashii! (OO-ra-ya-ma-SHE, which means "[I am] so envious [of him]!")
There's no doubt about it: the most complex part of learning Japanese is kanji, unless you're fortunate enough to already be fluent in Chinese. An educated Japanese person generally uses around 2000 kanji, compared with 3500-5000 for the same person in China. Because the Chinese writing system was basically grafted onto the existing Japanese language in the 5th century, there are fundamentally two ways to read any character, the on (rhymes with bone) or Chinese reading, and the kun (rhymes with spoon) or Japanese reading, the latter being an existing Japanese word that's been assigned to a kanji based on the character's meaning. As a general rule, you use the Chinese reading for compound words made up of two kanji (for example, the word for hibernation, toumin, written with the characters for winter + sleep), and there are quite a few Chinese and Korean words that are the same in Japanese for this reason. The Japanese reading is usually used for kanji words that appear by themselves (e.g. the character for winter written all by itself, fuyu), or in special cases like names of people or places. It's hard to believe, but it's easier to memorize Japanese vocabulary words through kanji than, say, learning from a book which prints Japanese in romaji (the Roman alphabet) For example, the kanji for "most" can be combined with a variety of other kanji to describe ideas like tallest, shortest, etc. Examples above are, from left, saikou (most + high = highest, also meaning the best), saitei (most + bottom = the lowest, meaning a real jerk when applied to a person), saisho (most + begin = the first), saigo (most + after = the last), and saishin (most + new = the newest). The rightmost example is the above mentioned kanji for hibernation. Memorizing these words in kanji only takes two "bytes" of your brain's memory once you've gotten used to the characters themselves, but memorizing the words in the Roman alphabet would be harder since they're just a jumble of letters.
J-List loves DVDs, and we sell hundreds of unique DVDs from Japan. While most of our titles are region free, so you can play them on any standard DVD player, Japanese anime, specialized "indies" and some other discs are published as region 2, meaning you need a special player to play them. We've got two great region-free DVD players from Lasonic, the karaoke-enabled DVD7880K and the amazing DVD7050, which plays DIVX movies burned onto DVD-R, DVD-RW, you name it. We've lowered our prices on these players to just $78 and $98, so why not pick one up today?
Friday, July 29, 2005
Japanese food for the summer including delicious eel, and a little on the nature of fame in Japan
The Japanese can be very seasonal people, going out of their way to enjoy each season for what it has to offer. Food is the same, with different meals eaten at different times of the year. Japan's summer is hot and humid, so people naturally like to eat things that keep them cool, like cold soba (buckwheat noodles) and soumen (angel hair noodles dipped in sauce and eaten). A favorite of ours is hiyashi chuka, a popular dish that's basically cold ramen noodles served in a plate of tangy sauce, with various ingredients piled on to taste, and many restaurants serve this dish in the hot summer months. Another famous food eaten in the summer is unagi, or Japanese eels, which are cooked over an open flame, painted with teriyaki sauce and served on rice. Eating eel in the summer is thought to help give you stamina to deal with the heat, and this practice has been around for a while -- summer unagi is mentioned in the Manyoshu, a collection of poems dating back to the 8th century. The traditional day for eating unagi was yesterday, and all through Japan restaurants prepared hundreds of servings of the popular dish.
One of the more interesting aspects of Japan are the geinojin (entertainers), a sprawling class of actors, singers, comedians, swimsuit idols, talk show hosts, and anyone else who appears on TV for one reason or another. Everyone wants to be in the public eye, and there are many schools set up around Japan to train young people so they can have a chance at making it big someday. As with most other aspects of Japanese life, there is a strict system of senpai (senior) and kouhai (junior), with stars who have been in the business longer having a higher status than the newer members, although this system breaks down somewhat when a given person's popularity starts to wane. Sometimes it seems that, as long as you have a genuinely original angle that no one has thought of before, just about anyone can end up on Japanese TV. Bobby is a man from Nigeria who's turned into quite a popular tarento ("talent") on Japanese television these days, popping up on various variety, comedy and even cooking shows. He's not very good at Japanese, and always seems to mess up in funny ways, although I think he's doing it on purpose.
Because I'm American and my wife is Japanese, we want our kids to grow up bilingual, but it can sure be a challenge. To help them learn more English, we send them to the U.S. every summer, where they go to various summer camps and interact with our family over there. For the next two weeks I'll be on my own, as my wife and kids will all be in the U.S. I'll have fun, driving around our prefecture in my Miata, taking myself out to Japanese onsen (hot springs), playing video games in my underwear, and running the air conditioner on full blast.
J-List is honored to be able to sell Domo-kun, the lovable brown monster that is the official spokesmonster of NHK, Japan's version of the BBC. We've got dozens and dozens of really cool Domo-kun items, from plush toys to pens to keychains and more, including the "really big Domo-kun" stuffed toys for your room. Browse our excellent selection of Domo-kun products today! "Domo" is a useful Japanese phrase that can mean almost anything, from thank you to excuse me.
One of the more interesting aspects of Japan are the geinojin (entertainers), a sprawling class of actors, singers, comedians, swimsuit idols, talk show hosts, and anyone else who appears on TV for one reason or another. Everyone wants to be in the public eye, and there are many schools set up around Japan to train young people so they can have a chance at making it big someday. As with most other aspects of Japanese life, there is a strict system of senpai (senior) and kouhai (junior), with stars who have been in the business longer having a higher status than the newer members, although this system breaks down somewhat when a given person's popularity starts to wane. Sometimes it seems that, as long as you have a genuinely original angle that no one has thought of before, just about anyone can end up on Japanese TV. Bobby is a man from Nigeria who's turned into quite a popular tarento ("talent") on Japanese television these days, popping up on various variety, comedy and even cooking shows. He's not very good at Japanese, and always seems to mess up in funny ways, although I think he's doing it on purpose.
Because I'm American and my wife is Japanese, we want our kids to grow up bilingual, but it can sure be a challenge. To help them learn more English, we send them to the U.S. every summer, where they go to various summer camps and interact with our family over there. For the next two weeks I'll be on my own, as my wife and kids will all be in the U.S. I'll have fun, driving around our prefecture in my Miata, taking myself out to Japanese onsen (hot springs), playing video games in my underwear, and running the air conditioner on full blast.
J-List is honored to be able to sell Domo-kun, the lovable brown monster that is the official spokesmonster of NHK, Japan's version of the BBC. We've got dozens and dozens of really cool Domo-kun items, from plush toys to pens to keychains and more, including the "really big Domo-kun" stuffed toys for your room. Browse our excellent selection of Domo-kun products today! "Domo" is a useful Japanese phrase that can mean almost anything, from thank you to excuse me.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Ways to learn a foreign language, and on receiving complements about your use of chopsticks
Attempting to master a foreign language is a big undertaking, and if you want to become fluent someday you need to jump in with both feet. Nearly all Japanese I've met who have learned English really well were able to do so because they embraced not just the language itself, but the culture behind it, from music to movies to sports and more. When I was studying Japanese at SDSU, I went out of my way to use the language as much as I could, finding activities that helped make my studies more fun. I read a lot of manga, which are much easier to read than normal books and which provide lots of input of spoken Japanese, since comic books contain lots of dialogue between characters. I also learned about Japan through its popular music, listening to tapes my Japanese friends made for me and learning to sing Japanese songs at karaoke bars in San Diego. I probably overdid it a little -- when I was dating my wife in the early 90s, she was amazed that there could be an American who hadn't heard of singer Michael Bolton (who was at the top of his career at the time). I had listened to so much Japanese music I had missed him entirely.
Although Japanese kitchens are well stocked with spoons, forks and knives, most meals in Japan are eaten with chopsticks. Children usually learn to use chopsticks around the age of 4, when they start attending preschool, and this is quite possibly the first of many adjustments to the larger Japanese group that children have in their school lives. Every foreigner living in Japan knows the anguish of being told by a Japanese person hashi ga jozu ("you use chopsticks very well"). While one popular response is to compliment the speaker on their use of a knife and fork, I've found you can have more fun telling them okagesama de (oh-KA-gay sah-mah deh). This is a complex phrase which literally means "Yes, thanks to you," almost as if you had leaned how to use chopsticks from the person, even though you've never met them before. The phrase is a useful way of showing Japanese-style humility whenever someone compliments you on something, and since few would expect a gaijin to know it, it's fun to see their surprised expressions.
J-List offers many cool magazines from Japan via our revolving reserve subscription service, making it easy to get the newest anime, manga, JPOP, toy, and mature magazines sent to you every month. Some of the most popular monthlies are fashion magazines that let you keep your finger on contemporary Tokyo style, like FRUiTs (Harajuku street fashion), Kera (urban + gothic), Egg ("kogal" fashions for free-spirited Tokyo girls), and Super Cawaii (the newest fashion trends, worn by Japan's top models). Men in Tokyo can be quite fashionable too, and for guys who want to be in sync with Japan's trends we recommend the newly-posted Men's Egg, which reports on what's hot and what's cool in Japan. All magazines we offer via our direct subscription service are loaded with beautiful color photographs, so you can enjoy them even if you don't read Japanese.
J-List also sells many unique items from Japan that are great for the upcoming "back to school" season, including Japanese pencil cases with interesting characters, notebooks with funny English on them, study tools for getting better grades, and pens, pencils and other stationery items from Japan, always a pleasure to use. We're adding more and more of these items to the site this month, for anyone looking to have something unique in school this fall, either for themselves or their kids. We also humbly recommend our wacky Japanese T-shirts and hoodies for the coming fall.
Although Japanese kitchens are well stocked with spoons, forks and knives, most meals in Japan are eaten with chopsticks. Children usually learn to use chopsticks around the age of 4, when they start attending preschool, and this is quite possibly the first of many adjustments to the larger Japanese group that children have in their school lives. Every foreigner living in Japan knows the anguish of being told by a Japanese person hashi ga jozu ("you use chopsticks very well"). While one popular response is to compliment the speaker on their use of a knife and fork, I've found you can have more fun telling them okagesama de (oh-KA-gay sah-mah deh). This is a complex phrase which literally means "Yes, thanks to you," almost as if you had leaned how to use chopsticks from the person, even though you've never met them before. The phrase is a useful way of showing Japanese-style humility whenever someone compliments you on something, and since few would expect a gaijin to know it, it's fun to see their surprised expressions.
J-List offers many cool magazines from Japan via our revolving reserve subscription service, making it easy to get the newest anime, manga, JPOP, toy, and mature magazines sent to you every month. Some of the most popular monthlies are fashion magazines that let you keep your finger on contemporary Tokyo style, like FRUiTs (Harajuku street fashion), Kera (urban + gothic), Egg ("kogal" fashions for free-spirited Tokyo girls), and Super Cawaii (the newest fashion trends, worn by Japan's top models). Men in Tokyo can be quite fashionable too, and for guys who want to be in sync with Japan's trends we recommend the newly-posted Men's Egg, which reports on what's hot and what's cool in Japan. All magazines we offer via our direct subscription service are loaded with beautiful color photographs, so you can enjoy them even if you don't read Japanese.
J-List also sells many unique items from Japan that are great for the upcoming "back to school" season, including Japanese pencil cases with interesting characters, notebooks with funny English on them, study tools for getting better grades, and pens, pencils and other stationery items from Japan, always a pleasure to use. We're adding more and more of these items to the site this month, for anyone looking to have something unique in school this fall, either for themselves or their kids. We also humbly recommend our wacky Japanese T-shirts and hoodies for the coming fall.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Peter's new cell phone, and the roles of men and women in Japan
One of the benefits from living in Japan is having access to cool keitai denwa, cellular phones. The three main providors of cell phone service in Japan are giant NTT Docomo, KDDI's stylish au, and European-owned Vodafone, and they duke it out in the marketplace trying to provide the best service area, phones and features. NTT is the Microsoft of Japan, and their phones are all top of the line, however you pay for the privilege of using them. I much prefer the stylish phones that au makes, and recently upgraded my phone to the brand-new W31T, a slim phone which sports Bluetooth, 2.4 Mbps remote web surfing, support for Qualcomm's Brew applications, a camera so good I've thrown away my digital camera forever, and a web browser that can display normal websites. Although it's only been 8 months since I've upgraded, I was floored by all the new features that hadn't been in existence when I checked last time, including a phone with a TV receiver on it, a "tough phone" with stylish plastic guards that you can submerge in water without problem, a phone with stero surround sound speakers, and more. And of course they all play music like the iPod.
One could write a book on the subject of women in Japan, and quite a few have, I'm sure. As with many aspects of Japan, it's common for Westerners to see the country as being "behind" America and Europe with regard to social equality between men and women, but I'm not sure that this is really the case. Oh, it's true that the roles of women in Japan seems to be somewhat below that of men, and there are fewer well-known female business and political leaders in the public eye. In nearly all households, the majority of income is brought in by the husband, who is the daikoku bashira or the "big, black pillar" that supports the family, while the household and its finances are managed expertly by the wife (as it is in my household). There are women with careers to be sure, but it's more common for women to concern themselves with the household and children more and with work less, at least until the kids are grown. It might be incomprehensible to many, but by and large Japanese females seem to prefer things the way they are -- so rather than being behind the West, I like to think that Japan is just "striking a different balance" between men and women that suits the way its people are.
We love to bring you interesting things from Japan that you never knew exited, a concept which is pretty much embodied in the OH! Mikey series, a bizarre but hilarious comedy show about the Fuccon family, who moved from America to Japan . The show is acted out with mannequins who never change their poses at all, and it will have you in stitches all the way through. In addition to the latest OH! Mikey release (disc 7), we're happy to have the original volumes back on the site, including vol. 1-3 which had gone out of print temporarily. The discs are all fully subtitled in English, however since they're region 2 discs you'll need a region free player to view them on (we humbly recommend the two excellent Lasonic players we stock).
We also feel it's part of J-List's mission to promote the study of Japanese, and we sell many items that help you learn the language. We've got a great new item for you today: the Best of YesJapan, a DVD with over 4 hours of the best episodes of YesJapan's originally produced TV show George & Keiko, which helps you not only learn Japanese but pick up fun information about the country and language. The DVD includes some of the best episodes, including "Tricks to sound good in Japanese," "Techniques to impress your Japanese friends," and the infamous "Date with Keiko" episodes. See this item, and all items in fact, on the J-List or JBOX.com sites.
One could write a book on the subject of women in Japan, and quite a few have, I'm sure. As with many aspects of Japan, it's common for Westerners to see the country as being "behind" America and Europe with regard to social equality between men and women, but I'm not sure that this is really the case. Oh, it's true that the roles of women in Japan seems to be somewhat below that of men, and there are fewer well-known female business and political leaders in the public eye. In nearly all households, the majority of income is brought in by the husband, who is the daikoku bashira or the "big, black pillar" that supports the family, while the household and its finances are managed expertly by the wife (as it is in my household). There are women with careers to be sure, but it's more common for women to concern themselves with the household and children more and with work less, at least until the kids are grown. It might be incomprehensible to many, but by and large Japanese females seem to prefer things the way they are -- so rather than being behind the West, I like to think that Japan is just "striking a different balance" between men and women that suits the way its people are.
We love to bring you interesting things from Japan that you never knew exited, a concept which is pretty much embodied in the OH! Mikey series, a bizarre but hilarious comedy show about the Fuccon family, who moved from America to Japan . The show is acted out with mannequins who never change their poses at all, and it will have you in stitches all the way through. In addition to the latest OH! Mikey release (disc 7), we're happy to have the original volumes back on the site, including vol. 1-3 which had gone out of print temporarily. The discs are all fully subtitled in English, however since they're region 2 discs you'll need a region free player to view them on (we humbly recommend the two excellent Lasonic players we stock).
We also feel it's part of J-List's mission to promote the study of Japanese, and we sell many items that help you learn the language. We've got a great new item for you today: the Best of YesJapan, a DVD with over 4 hours of the best episodes of YesJapan's originally produced TV show George & Keiko, which helps you not only learn Japanese but pick up fun information about the country and language. The DVD includes some of the best episodes, including "Tricks to sound good in Japanese," "Techniques to impress your Japanese friends," and the infamous "Date with Keiko" episodes. See this item, and all items in fact, on the J-List or JBOX.com sites.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
My return to Japan, and little things that bothered me along the way
Hello again from J-List! I've made the hop from California back to Japan, and have once again slipped into my "Japan self." As usual, there was a day or so of culture shock as I got used to being in Japan again -- at Narita I found myself staring at the tiny rear ends of the stylish Tokyo girls walking in front of me, wondering how they could sit on something so small. Yep, I'm back in Japan now!
I've lived in Japan since 1991, a very long time indeed. After you've lived here a certain number of years it's possible for foreigners to apply for permanent residence status (the equivalent of a green card), which I obtained in 2001. Some gaijin who love living in Japan opt to go all the way and apply for Japanese citizenship, but I've decided that this path isn't for me -- it's more fun being an American who can speak Japanese than to be a blonde Japanese who talks kind of funny. Every time I go to through Narita I encounter two of my pet peeves, though. The first is the little card visa holders have to fill out when going through immigration: "Reason for returning to Japan?" Since I consider Japan to be my true home, having to write a "reason" is always annoying, and I leave it blank on purpose every time. The second minor annoyance are the Japanese signs that say Okarinasai (oh-KA-eh-ree-na-SAI), which means "welcome home," next to English signs that say "Welcome to Japan." The unwritten implication is that only Japanese people live in Japan, whereas anyone who speaks English as his native language is just visiting here, which is always mildly offensive to me.
While going through the airport I was reminded again of how much Japan takes its cues from the United States. When going through customs, you're required to declare any cash amount over US$10,000, just as when entering the U.S., and the amounts of how much wine, tobacco and coffee you can bring in without paying duties are also very close to the rules that apply in America. Compared to Japan, it seems that Europe is a lot more comfortable with breaking with the U.S., as seen in the recent "no" vote on software patents (which I cheered).
I'm happy to be back in Japan, but I'm happy for another reason as well: today is "D Day" for our hikari fiber (fiber optic) Internet line, which was installed this morning. It's taken us five years of hard lobbying including involving our city's mayor, but we finally have a decent Internet connection at J-List, with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps. J-List is located in a small city that's not exactly known for its tech companies, and what's worse, we're in the middle of the agricultural part of town (our office is surrounded by rice paddies), so it's been a lot of work getting NTT to bring fast internet to us. But our patience has finally paid off, and things are much faster now!
I've lived in Japan since 1991, a very long time indeed. After you've lived here a certain number of years it's possible for foreigners to apply for permanent residence status (the equivalent of a green card), which I obtained in 2001. Some gaijin who love living in Japan opt to go all the way and apply for Japanese citizenship, but I've decided that this path isn't for me -- it's more fun being an American who can speak Japanese than to be a blonde Japanese who talks kind of funny. Every time I go to through Narita I encounter two of my pet peeves, though. The first is the little card visa holders have to fill out when going through immigration: "Reason for returning to Japan?" Since I consider Japan to be my true home, having to write a "reason" is always annoying, and I leave it blank on purpose every time. The second minor annoyance are the Japanese signs that say Okarinasai (oh-KA-eh-ree-na-SAI), which means "welcome home," next to English signs that say "Welcome to Japan." The unwritten implication is that only Japanese people live in Japan, whereas anyone who speaks English as his native language is just visiting here, which is always mildly offensive to me.
While going through the airport I was reminded again of how much Japan takes its cues from the United States. When going through customs, you're required to declare any cash amount over US$10,000, just as when entering the U.S., and the amounts of how much wine, tobacco and coffee you can bring in without paying duties are also very close to the rules that apply in America. Compared to Japan, it seems that Europe is a lot more comfortable with breaking with the U.S., as seen in the recent "no" vote on software patents (which I cheered).
I'm happy to be back in Japan, but I'm happy for another reason as well: today is "D Day" for our hikari fiber (fiber optic) Internet line, which was installed this morning. It's taken us five years of hard lobbying including involving our city's mayor, but we finally have a decent Internet connection at J-List, with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps. J-List is located in a small city that's not exactly known for its tech companies, and what's worse, we're in the middle of the agricultural part of town (our office is surrounded by rice paddies), so it's been a lot of work getting NTT to bring fast internet to us. But our patience has finally paid off, and things are much faster now!
Monday, July 18, 2005
The end of Comic Con, and all about the Japanese concept of "enryo"
Whew! Well, we've just finished the final day of the San Diego Comic Con 2005, and boy was it was a lot of fun. There were something like 100,000 people at the show, and I think we met almost all of them at our booth. If you stopped by, thanks! Now my three week vacation in the USA has finally come to an end, and it's time for me to head back to Japan. I don't mind going home, but I will sure miss the wonderful weather we've had in San Diego -- it's in the high 90s there now, with plenty of humidity.
A week after I head back to Japan, my son will be coming to the States for his annual dose of American culture and English. In addition, a school friend of his will be coming for his first ever homestay in the U.S., along with his mother, who will be staying in our house, while both boys attend various summer camps and other activities. Knowing Japanese people the way I do, I made sure to teach my mother one important phrase of Japanese: enryo shinaide (en-RYO shi-NAI-day), which literally means "don't hesitate [to make yourself at home]." A key concept that's important to understanding Japan and Japanese people, enryo literally means to hesitate or to refrain from doing something. The concept comes up often in normal Japanese daily life, for example when eating pizza with friends. What do you do with the last slice? Japanese will almost let it sit there, denying that they want it, out of deference to the others who might like to eat it -- quite different from my college days when we'd fight each other to the death over the last slice of pizza. Enryo also comes up when you enter someone else's house: immediately, Japanese will start acting very polite, declining offers of food or drink, making statements like okamai-naku (o-ka-MA-ee NA-ku), "please don't trouble yourself." It's closely related to the Japanese sense of humility (kenson), something that is very important in Japan. In moderation, concepts like enryo are a pleasant aspect of the Japanese character, but of course, if someone were to visit your house for two weeks but be shy about eating, showering, doing laundry and so on, it would get awfully tedious. And so I made sure my mother knew the magic words enryo shinaide.
We had a treat for the attendees at the show: a new hooded sweatshirt version of our popular Totoro T-shirt, which looks and feels great and can now be found on the website. Our high quality hoodies are the best you can buy, 80-20 cotton-polyester blends that stay soft no matter how many times you wash them, much nicer than many of the cheaper 50-50 blends we see in stores. Enjoy our great new Totoro hoody in sizes S through 2XL now!
For the new update, the J-List staff in Japan has plenty of cool stuff for you, a bizarre DVD of a unique toy line (Maywa Denki), cute San-X toys for fans of plush toys that are cuter than Hello Kitty, cool fans with kanji on them, delicious Japanese snacks, more traditional Japanese sandals, a great Story! Image! Figure! series for fans of Trigun, cute Nattou Chan plush, Hidamari no Tami solar-powered relaxation toys, and more. See all new products on the J-List site here.
(yes, it's another "Peter is too busy to post actual pictures blog entry, sorry!!!)
A week after I head back to Japan, my son will be coming to the States for his annual dose of American culture and English. In addition, a school friend of his will be coming for his first ever homestay in the U.S., along with his mother, who will be staying in our house, while both boys attend various summer camps and other activities. Knowing Japanese people the way I do, I made sure to teach my mother one important phrase of Japanese: enryo shinaide (en-RYO shi-NAI-day), which literally means "don't hesitate [to make yourself at home]." A key concept that's important to understanding Japan and Japanese people, enryo literally means to hesitate or to refrain from doing something. The concept comes up often in normal Japanese daily life, for example when eating pizza with friends. What do you do with the last slice? Japanese will almost let it sit there, denying that they want it, out of deference to the others who might like to eat it -- quite different from my college days when we'd fight each other to the death over the last slice of pizza. Enryo also comes up when you enter someone else's house: immediately, Japanese will start acting very polite, declining offers of food or drink, making statements like okamai-naku (o-ka-MA-ee NA-ku), "please don't trouble yourself." It's closely related to the Japanese sense of humility (kenson), something that is very important in Japan. In moderation, concepts like enryo are a pleasant aspect of the Japanese character, but of course, if someone were to visit your house for two weeks but be shy about eating, showering, doing laundry and so on, it would get awfully tedious. And so I made sure my mother knew the magic words enryo shinaide.
We had a treat for the attendees at the show: a new hooded sweatshirt version of our popular Totoro T-shirt, which looks and feels great and can now be found on the website. Our high quality hoodies are the best you can buy, 80-20 cotton-polyester blends that stay soft no matter how many times you wash them, much nicer than many of the cheaper 50-50 blends we see in stores. Enjoy our great new Totoro hoody in sizes S through 2XL now!
For the new update, the J-List staff in Japan has plenty of cool stuff for you, a bizarre DVD of a unique toy line (Maywa Denki), cute San-X toys for fans of plush toys that are cuter than Hello Kitty, cool fans with kanji on them, delicious Japanese snacks, more traditional Japanese sandals, a great Story! Image! Figure! series for fans of Trigun, cute Nattou Chan plush, Hidamari no Tami solar-powered relaxation toys, and more. See all new products on the J-List site here.
(yes, it's another "Peter is too busy to post actual pictures blog entry, sorry!!!)
Monday, June 27, 2005
Lack of rain in Japan, methods for teaching English to our kids, and how I met Yoko Ono, sort of
Something's wrong with Japan's summer. This is supposed to be rainy season, a time of heavy rains that helps the newly planted rice to grow, but so far we've had very little rain and record-high temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius (98 Fahrenheit), unheard of for June. As usual, Japanese companies are putting out many refreshing products to help people beat the summer heat, including new types of ice cream (my favorite is Coolish, a foil pack that contains ice cream that you squeeze out to eat), delicious Asian teas, traditional shave ice, and more. One new product we've enjoyed so far this summer is Water Jelly, basically a fruit drink that contains gelatin inside. It's somehow satisfying to suck the cold gelatin out of the bottle and let it slide down your throat when it's hot.
Every language is unique in some way, with its own interesting grammatical and phonetic structures. In Japanese, there are two kinds of vowels, short and long, and if you ever seen the Japanese family name Sato written as Satoh or Satou, this is because the second sound in the name is really a long vowel, which is often expressed by adding an "h" or a "u" to the English spelling. Back when I taught English as a Second Language, I had a student named Yoko Ohno (whose last name meant "big field"). I made the obvious joke about what a thrill it was to have a famous person in my class and consoled her on the loss of her husband John, but she had no idea what I was talking about. It turns out that the more famous Yoko Ono's last name uses a short vowel, meaning "small field," and in the minds of Japanese, the two vowels are so different that my student never once made any kind of connection between the two names. And so, one of my best jokes of the day fell flat...
Because my family lives in Japan, my kids have Japanese down pretty well, between learning kanji in school and using Japanese on a daily basis. Teaching them English can be more of a challenge, since my kids know I'm pulling their leg when I pretend not to understand what's being said to me in Japanese. One fun game we hit on recently to help force my kids to use English is to take long car trips and play Twenty Questions. The kids love it, and repeating questions like "Is it alive?" "Is it a fictional character?" "Is it something in our house?" helps their English. I also managed to get my kids hooked on the old Schoolhouse Rock shorts, and everywhere we go I've got the songs on my iPod.
Every language is unique in some way, with its own interesting grammatical and phonetic structures. In Japanese, there are two kinds of vowels, short and long, and if you ever seen the Japanese family name Sato written as Satoh or Satou, this is because the second sound in the name is really a long vowel, which is often expressed by adding an "h" or a "u" to the English spelling. Back when I taught English as a Second Language, I had a student named Yoko Ohno (whose last name meant "big field"). I made the obvious joke about what a thrill it was to have a famous person in my class and consoled her on the loss of her husband John, but she had no idea what I was talking about. It turns out that the more famous Yoko Ono's last name uses a short vowel, meaning "small field," and in the minds of Japanese, the two vowels are so different that my student never once made any kind of connection between the two names. And so, one of my best jokes of the day fell flat...
Because my family lives in Japan, my kids have Japanese down pretty well, between learning kanji in school and using Japanese on a daily basis. Teaching them English can be more of a challenge, since my kids know I'm pulling their leg when I pretend not to understand what's being said to me in Japanese. One fun game we hit on recently to help force my kids to use English is to take long car trips and play Twenty Questions. The kids love it, and repeating questions like "Is it alive?" "Is it a fictional character?" "Is it something in our house?" helps their English. I also managed to get my kids hooked on the old Schoolhouse Rock shorts, and everywhere we go I've got the songs on my iPod.
Friday, June 24, 2005
On different regions of Tokyo, sources of Japanese drama, and funny Japanese English usage
I've written before about how different regions of Japan go out of their way to establish meibutsu (famous local speciality), some food or product that they hope will come to represent them and bring in tourist dollars. This trend is common in Japan's sprawling capital of Tokyo, too, and different parts of the city are well-known for different things. Looking for ramen? Just go to the bustling Ikebukuro district, and you'll find dozens of shops there. Ochanomizu, where Meiji University is located, has made a name for itself with guitar shops, while down the road you can find many used bookstores. Take a trip to Roppongi if you want to find some interesting bars and clubs, often employing Nigerians who hand out discount coupons to people on the street while pretending to be American (but no one is fooled). The Tsukishima area is famous for monjayaki, a pancake-like dish cooked on an open griddle, while you can find good unagi (Japanese eels) in Asakusa. And of course, everyone knows that Akihabara is the place to go for electronics in Tokyo. While Tokyo is a big concrete jungle that can really tire you out, it's also very much alive.
Each country is different, and the kinds of subjects that make good drama or comedy on television are probably just as unique. In Japan, one popular topic for depicting human drama is juken jigoku, the college entrance exam hell that eighteen-year-olds who want to go to university must endure. A story about a love story that comes to its resolution during a young person's juken study would be a very interesting Japanese story. A popular long-running drama is Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari ("All Who Pass in this World are Ogres" although the official English title seems to be "Making It Through") which details the life and times of an extended Japanese family with five daughters. The problems they encounter range from the mundane, like fights between Nagako and her heinous mother-in-law, to issues far more serious like divorce and how to take care of aging parents.
The Japanese use a lot of English, but it's not always easy for gaijin to figure out what what's being said. "Punk" doesn't mean a tough-looking guy, but a flat tire (from the word puncture). If someone is "cunning" in Japan, it means they're cheating on a test. For some reason, the English word "glamor" has come to mean women who are well endowed. The "number" of a car refers to its license plate, something that threw me when I first heart it while hitchhiking in Northern Japan. If you "rinse" your hair, you're applying cream rinse, and if you live in a "mansion" it means you live in a nice townhouse that you own yourself. Living in Japan can be wacky!
J-List specializes in wacky Japanese T-shirts, high quality 6.1 lb 100% cotton shirts with fun messages in kanji. Now that summer is upon us, we've got some new shirt designs for girls that will make you look super. First, by customer request, we've got a "looking for a Japanese boyfriend" shirt in the same style as our best-selling "girlfriend" design, with block kanji surrounding a pink circle. We've got a fitted cap sleeve tee as well as a stylish spaghetti top. We've also got a new black "Ai-Mode" tank top for girls with sparkly pink lettering that looks great. Great limited edition T-shirts for the summer!
Each country is different, and the kinds of subjects that make good drama or comedy on television are probably just as unique. In Japan, one popular topic for depicting human drama is juken jigoku, the college entrance exam hell that eighteen-year-olds who want to go to university must endure. A story about a love story that comes to its resolution during a young person's juken study would be a very interesting Japanese story. A popular long-running drama is Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari ("All Who Pass in this World are Ogres" although the official English title seems to be "Making It Through") which details the life and times of an extended Japanese family with five daughters. The problems they encounter range from the mundane, like fights between Nagako and her heinous mother-in-law, to issues far more serious like divorce and how to take care of aging parents.
The Japanese use a lot of English, but it's not always easy for gaijin to figure out what what's being said. "Punk" doesn't mean a tough-looking guy, but a flat tire (from the word puncture). If someone is "cunning" in Japan, it means they're cheating on a test. For some reason, the English word "glamor" has come to mean women who are well endowed. The "number" of a car refers to its license plate, something that threw me when I first heart it while hitchhiking in Northern Japan. If you "rinse" your hair, you're applying cream rinse, and if you live in a "mansion" it means you live in a nice townhouse that you own yourself. Living in Japan can be wacky!
J-List specializes in wacky Japanese T-shirts, high quality 6.1 lb 100% cotton shirts with fun messages in kanji. Now that summer is upon us, we've got some new shirt designs for girls that will make you look super. First, by customer request, we've got a "looking for a Japanese boyfriend" shirt in the same style as our best-selling "girlfriend" design, with block kanji surrounding a pink circle. We've got a fitted cap sleeve tee as well as a stylish spaghetti top. We've also got a new black "Ai-Mode" tank top for girls with sparkly pink lettering that looks great. Great limited edition T-shirts for the summer!
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
On uniformity of public works, fast food in Japan, and a cool blending of old and new
I wrote last time about Japan's use of uniforms for many professions, which can sometimes look odd when seen through the eyes of a foreigner. Japan actually goes a step further but making sure many aspects of the country are equally uniform, so that public works like roads and schools nearly always look exactly the same from one end of the country to the other. Japan's highly centralized government sets many guidelines that prefectures and cities must follow, with the end result being that a telephone pole in Tokyo will look exactly the same in Kyushu. There are some regional differences, of course -- stoplights are horizontally oriented in most of the country, except for northern Honshu and Hokkaido, where they're hung vertically to avoid damage from the weight of heavy snow. Also, the massive population density of Tokyo requires that roads and other spaces that would be too cramped for the rest of Japan be permitted. Other aspects of Japanese life, from education to the rest stops throughout the nations freeways, are largely directed by the central government and are virtually the same throughout Japan.
Despite this tendency for top-down conformity throughout the various regions of the country, Japanese cities do manage to preserve a unique charm of their own. Virtually all of the cities in our prefecture are former castle towns, and usually go out of their way to build parks that incorporate old ruins, which is very nice. Whether or not a city was bombed in World War II can play a part in determining what kind of place it is today: Maebashi, the prefectural capital, was mostly destroyed ten days before the end of the war, but this has the hidden benefit of allowing the residents to rebuild the city into a more modern, beautiful city. One place I like a lot is nearby Kiryu, a small city that was an early center of silk production when Japan began to modernize in the 1870s. There are many historic buildings still standing in the city which give it a lot of Meiji-era charm. Last weekend, we went to a jazz performance held in an 100-year-old warehouse that had been converted into a "live house" (a small space for concerts). The mixture of old Japanese and modern jazz was pretty cool!
Japan has plenty of fast food, from U.S. chains like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken to home-grown outfits like Freshness Burger, First Kitchen and MOS Burger. But the original fast food of Japan is gyudon, or beef bowl, basically a bowl of rice with steamed beef and onions on top (it's really good with raw egg, too). For the past two years, Japan's beef bowl industry has been struggling with a ban on U.S.-imported beef due to the mad cow scare. While many restaurants switched to selling similar dishes like buta-kimu bowl (pork and kim-chee on rice), Yokohama-based Sukiya has kept on selling gyudon using stock from Australia, which some say doesn't taste the same as beef from America (although I can't tell the difference). In the past, beef bowl restaurants were the sole territory of salarymen and male "freeters" (young people who work part-time jobs rather than finding full-time employment), but some chains have been redesiging their stores to be more family-friendly.
At J-List, we love to promote an interesting kind of software from Japan: English-translated dating-sim games, which allow you to interact with beautiful anime girls and try to win their hearts. We've posted our latest game to the site for preordering: Yin-Yang! -Another X-Change-, a totally new game of accidental sex change by Crowd, which we're translating now. A great all-new story that takes poor Kaoru, an average Japanese youth, and changes him into a girl, to the great shock of his circle of friends.
Despite this tendency for top-down conformity throughout the various regions of the country, Japanese cities do manage to preserve a unique charm of their own. Virtually all of the cities in our prefecture are former castle towns, and usually go out of their way to build parks that incorporate old ruins, which is very nice. Whether or not a city was bombed in World War II can play a part in determining what kind of place it is today: Maebashi, the prefectural capital, was mostly destroyed ten days before the end of the war, but this has the hidden benefit of allowing the residents to rebuild the city into a more modern, beautiful city. One place I like a lot is nearby Kiryu, a small city that was an early center of silk production when Japan began to modernize in the 1870s. There are many historic buildings still standing in the city which give it a lot of Meiji-era charm. Last weekend, we went to a jazz performance held in an 100-year-old warehouse that had been converted into a "live house" (a small space for concerts). The mixture of old Japanese and modern jazz was pretty cool!
Japan has plenty of fast food, from U.S. chains like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken to home-grown outfits like Freshness Burger, First Kitchen and MOS Burger. But the original fast food of Japan is gyudon, or beef bowl, basically a bowl of rice with steamed beef and onions on top (it's really good with raw egg, too). For the past two years, Japan's beef bowl industry has been struggling with a ban on U.S.-imported beef due to the mad cow scare. While many restaurants switched to selling similar dishes like buta-kimu bowl (pork and kim-chee on rice), Yokohama-based Sukiya has kept on selling gyudon using stock from Australia, which some say doesn't taste the same as beef from America (although I can't tell the difference). In the past, beef bowl restaurants were the sole territory of salarymen and male "freeters" (young people who work part-time jobs rather than finding full-time employment), but some chains have been redesiging their stores to be more family-friendly.
At J-List, we love to promote an interesting kind of software from Japan: English-translated dating-sim games, which allow you to interact with beautiful anime girls and try to win their hearts. We've posted our latest game to the site for preordering: Yin-Yang! -Another X-Change-, a totally new game of accidental sex change by Crowd, which we're translating now. A great all-new story that takes poor Kaoru, an average Japanese youth, and changes him into a girl, to the great shock of his circle of friends.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Beautiful girls wearing Swatches, uses of the word "wa" and the concept of style in Japan
Sometimes you don't know what Japan will throw at you next. Once I was shopping in Tokyo, checking out the Tokyu Hands department store, when at least fifty beautiful girls appeared and started marching past me in a military-style line. They all had on Swatch T-shirts and sported attractive Swatch watches on each arm as they marched around advertising the famous brand name while I looked on. Trains in Tokyo are filled with advertisements for various products and services, and sometimes a company will reserve every single ad in a train to ensure that passengers see its message. Once I got into a train on the Yama-no-te (the convenient loop line that runs around Tokyo) and was surprised to see hundreds of Apple "Switcher" ads hung everywhere. When I first came to Japan, I didn't know about Coming-of-Age day, a ceremony for young people who have turned 20 to celebrate their new status as adults. It's common for females to show up in a beautiful new kimono, and when I saw about 500 kimono-clad girls walking past me to attend the ceremony, I nearly fell off my mountain bike in surprise.
One of the most enigmatic Japanese words out there is wa, which is generally translated as "harmony" and often used in English in sentences like, "Hey man, you're messin' with my wa." The character has other meanings, too, including "peace" as well as referring to Japan itself. It can be combined with other characters to form words like heiwa (peace), washiki (Japanese-style, as in a Japanese-style toilet), washitsu (Japanese room, e.g. a tatami room), and wagyu (Japanese beef, e.g. the famous beer-fed Kobe beef). If you put the character for big in front of wa, you've just written Yamato, the name of the first civilization to emerge in Japan and the term that refers to the main branch of the Japanese people, as well as the famous battleship from World War II.
Japan can be a very style-oriented place at times, and it seems that everyone is concerned about looking good. The universal word for "cool" in Japanese is kakko ii (KAH-koe EE, lit. "good style"), while the opposite is kakko warui (KAH-koe wa-roo-EE, "bad style," e.g. dorky). Another word that describes an absence of coolness is dasai (dah-SAI, out of fashion, uncool), which supposedly started out as a derogative word for people from half-rural, half-urban Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo. Not unlike the relationship between Los Angeles and Orange County, there's a perceived lack of sophistication among Saitamans as seen by Tokyoites.
We have another cool Japanese T-shirt for you today, one that we're quite proud of: it's a collection of interesting Japanese words that you encounter every day when you live in Japan, things like futon (Japanese bed) and hashi (chopsticks) and takoyaki (octopus-filled batter balls), with fun pictures of the words along with what they're called. We've posted a standard sized shirt for men along with a sexy fitted cap-sleeve for girls. It's a cool shirt that will teach you something you didn't know about Japan!
Do you have a website? If so, why not sign up for the Friends of J-List affiliate program, and help us spread our unique form of Japanese pop culture to others. Our program is very flexible, allowing you to link only to products you want to show people. For more details, see http://www.jlist.com/affiliates.html
One of the most enigmatic Japanese words out there is wa, which is generally translated as "harmony" and often used in English in sentences like, "Hey man, you're messin' with my wa." The character has other meanings, too, including "peace" as well as referring to Japan itself. It can be combined with other characters to form words like heiwa (peace), washiki (Japanese-style, as in a Japanese-style toilet), washitsu (Japanese room, e.g. a tatami room), and wagyu (Japanese beef, e.g. the famous beer-fed Kobe beef). If you put the character for big in front of wa, you've just written Yamato, the name of the first civilization to emerge in Japan and the term that refers to the main branch of the Japanese people, as well as the famous battleship from World War II.
Japan can be a very style-oriented place at times, and it seems that everyone is concerned about looking good. The universal word for "cool" in Japanese is kakko ii (KAH-koe EE, lit. "good style"), while the opposite is kakko warui (KAH-koe wa-roo-EE, "bad style," e.g. dorky). Another word that describes an absence of coolness is dasai (dah-SAI, out of fashion, uncool), which supposedly started out as a derogative word for people from half-rural, half-urban Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo. Not unlike the relationship between Los Angeles and Orange County, there's a perceived lack of sophistication among Saitamans as seen by Tokyoites.
We have another cool Japanese T-shirt for you today, one that we're quite proud of: it's a collection of interesting Japanese words that you encounter every day when you live in Japan, things like futon (Japanese bed) and hashi (chopsticks) and takoyaki (octopus-filled batter balls), with fun pictures of the words along with what they're called. We've posted a standard sized shirt for men along with a sexy fitted cap-sleeve for girls. It's a cool shirt that will teach you something you didn't know about Japan!
Do you have a website? If so, why not sign up for the Friends of J-List affiliate program, and help us spread our unique form of Japanese pop culture to others. Our program is very flexible, allowing you to link only to products you want to show people. For more details, see http://www.jlist.com/affiliates.html
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