Back in Japan with culture shock, all about Japanese dialects, perceptions between countries and A-Kon wrap up

Well, I'm back in Japan now, the land of sushi and small cars and very cute things. No matter how often I zip between the U.S. and Japan it always takes a couple hours to get used to my new environment, and I like to sit back and "surf" the various shades of culture shock that wash over me (no doubt helped along by jet lag). As I stepped off the plane this time, I was immediately hit by the sticky, wet heat that is Japan's June rainy season, an unfortunate aspect of living here. There was a small mix-up with one of my packages not appearing on the baggage carousel, which was resolved by three Narita airport employees who did their jobs so professionally I was actually unable to speak, so great was my awe while watching them. The Japanese are big fans of 24-hour time, and as I rushed for my "Limousine Bus" (a very comfortable bus from the airport) I had to mentally convert the military time of 17:15 to 5:15 PM, something I hadn't had to do while in the U.S. Once I was safely on the bus for my home prefecture, I took in my surroundings. Sitting in the seat across from me was a young woman who was dressed so stylishly, with her little hat and color-coordinated nonsensical-English T-shirt and designer sunglasses, that she seemed like some kind of mannequin in a high-class department store. I knew I was back in Japan...

Every language has dialects (in Japanese, hougen, hoh-GEN with a hard "g"), and Japan is no different. I've heard that, since Japanese are more likely to stay in the same place all their lives, or move to Tokyo for work or education then do a "U-turn" back to their home prefecture soon after, Japan's dialects have a lot more variation to them than North American English. Often dialects are used to add a new dimension to a character in anime, and if you have a group of females in a given show, you can bet there'll be one whose "charm point" is speaking some cute but odd-sounding flavor of Japanese. Usually the subject of dialects is discarded when an anime series is dubbed into English, but not always: in Magic Knight Rayearth, a favorite of mine, there's a country called Chizeta where all the people speak Osaka-ben, which was (of course) brought over as Deep Southern ("y'all") in English. Another favorite anime of mine is Studio Ghibli's Ocean Waves, the story of a Tokyo girl who goes to live with her mother in Kochi Prefecture, on the fourth-largest Japanese island of Shikoku, after her parents' divorce. She has trouble getting along with the other kids in school in part because of the differences between Kochi dialect and standard (Tokyo) Japanese, and she offends the boy she likes by saying he talks like he's in a Samurai drama on TV. Beyond the famous major dialects of Japanese -- comical Osaka-ben, eerily polite Kyoto-ben, Gaelic-sounding Tohoku-ben from Northern Japan -- I've noticed an "artificial" dialect of the language. It's not uncommon for radio DJs to use gaijin-ben, speaking English-accented Japanese as if they were foreigners, complete with the over-inflected sentences that gaijin are known for. I guess it sounds "chic" to their listeners.

It's always fun to analyze how perceptions differ between two countries like Japan and the U.S. To me, my eyes are hazel-blue while the eyes of Japanese people are brown, but that same Japanese will tell you that their eyes are "black" (because the center of everyone's eyes are black). In the U.S., we refer to the # key on a phone as the pound key, but in Japan it's known by its musical notation name of "sharp." Up until World War II, many Japanese counted their ages from "1" starting at the point of birth (as opposed to 0), and many older Japanese still report their age according to this system, making their ages a year off from how it's calculated normally. Finally, there's our coffee maker, a large-capacity Mr. Coffee job from the States (since Japanese stores sell wuss coffee makers fit only for Hobbits). The switch to turn it on shows 0 and 1, and it's pretty clear to most of us that 1 means "on" and 0 means "off." However in Japan, a circle ("maru") is the universal symbol for "yes" and our Japanese staff invariably try making coffee by turning the switch to this setting, then wondering why nothing happens.

We've started a new section at J-List: PC Dating-sim Game of the Month, where we'll showcase a certain game and make it available at a special price for that month only. This month's selection is Casual Romance Club, a game that's kind of in a class by itself since it was released in Japan with the ability to choose either English or Japanese game text, as well as English or Japanese voices (love those Japanese-English accents). Featuring a large box and the most beautiful printed manual you'll ever see (a glossy art book featuring character info and game art), this is a superb game with twelve unique characters (each representing a sign of the Zodiac, naturally) and some of the best gameplay ever. It's a very large game, approx. 3 GB, installed on your PC from a DVD-ROM. On sale at a special price ($10 off) for a limited time now! "Suddenly, without warning, love takes you by surprise..."

Few more pics from A-Kon, since it was so much fun.

I've always loved Deed Leet, or whatever her official name is. (I am an old school fan, and we didn't use to have any English names for the characters in our anime.)

A hot girl at the show...

...who was working security for the dealers' room. Do you wonder why we're into anime?

Two nice costumes.

There were several Asuka's in the room. I liked this one, although there does come a time when cosplaying a 13 year old girl pushes the envelope.

Darling no baka!

Happy customer makes a purchase.

The J-List Mobile prepares to head home after a job well done.

And now, I bring you various quotes from the convention that I thought were notworthy...

"So you're saying, he's permanently cosplaying Tetsuo from Akira?" - said by a friend in reference to, well, nevermind.

"Douche-baggery!" - said by another friend in response to something, I forget now.

"Remember when you're going to sleep tonight, we'll still be in Texas." - friend who was slightly bitter that I was flying home instead of driving back with them.

A-Kon 17 wrap up, Peter's musings on anime cons in general, and who to watch in the World Cup

Well, A-Kon 17 is over and done, and all the fans have gone home. Tomorrow the J-List San Diego staff, aka the J-List Away Team, will start their long 24-hour drive home, while I (bastard that I am) fly out, since I've got to get back to Japan. As usual, this has been an incredibly fun weekend in which we met a lot of our customers, took pictures of a lot of great people in anime costumes, and breathed in the great culture that the 12,000 or so fans at the show had helped create. If you were among the many who came by to say hi to us, thanks for stopping by!

It occurs to me that not everyone reading this will have had the fortune of attending a really good Japanese animation convention, so I wanted to give you my own take on, say, a show like A-Kon, which is the oldest anime convention in the U.S. I'm a really old school fan, having been around when the first anime clubs in universities were organizing back in 1985. Back then, anime was so "edge" that practically no one knew what it was, and there certainly were no products available in English -- to be an anime aficionado back then was to be at peace with watching a video and understanding 0-5% of what was going on. When we stroll the halls of the convention and see all the changes that have taken place since then, we feel a bit like shepherds walking amid our flock, secure in the knowledge that we have, in some tiny way, helped bring about a healthy shift in the ecosystem of young people in the U.S., making them a little more open to ideas they wouldn't have encountered otherwise. We always love to hit the dance floor at a good anime convention, although one girl (dressed like Rei Ayanami) had the audacity to actually tell us we were too old to be there. Other fun things to do at a good convention include hitting the 24-hour anime rooms, trying your hand at some karaoke, or going to the anime game room (with plenty of good old games from bygone eras). We had a lot of fun at this A-Kon, and learned a few things too -- ramune soda and vodka go pretty well together, after all. We'll be back next year!

The eyes of most of the world are on Germany for the World Cup, and Japan is a country that really appreciates a good soccer match (yes, they call it soccer in Japan, not football). Japanese fans are getting very excited at their upcoming first game against Australia. Japan's head coach is the famous Brazilian Zico, regarded by Japanese fans as the "God of Soccer," who came to the country in 1992. While I've not always been a fan of Zico, mainly for his appearances in those awful high-interest loan ads on late-night TV ("I did it all by myself!" he says, showing how easy it is to use a faceless cash machine to borrow money at a 30% interest rate), he has done good things for the Japanese national team. Stars on the Japanese team include midfielders Nakata (a great player who speaks Italian fluently), Ono (known for his passing, he's played in the Netherlands), and Nakamura (he didn't get on with his manager because he's a "team player" but Zico prefers "creative players" who take more initiative). About the only time I see real patriotism and pride in the Japanese is during international sports events, and I think it's very healthy for the country to cheer their national team. We hope they do well!

Nice costumes. There were so many costumes it was impossible to grab pics of more than a handful.

These Yu-Gi-Oh guys were great.

Two guys named Peter. I was so thrilled, and got his autograph for my son.

No con is complete without its share of silliness.

She looks great.

Impossible to take pictures in the dance (or "rave" to use an alternate term that the young people certainly understand). But it was fun to try.

Japan's education and going to school on Saturdays, the Protestant Work Ethic in Japan, and all about Japanese dentists

I've always been impressed with Japan's dedication to education, the great amount of national resources that are put into teaching young people. I remember my very first day in Japan, a Saturday, and the kids of the family I was staying with got their school backpacks on and dutifully trotted off to school. I was confused -- school on Saturday? Yes, Japanese students did go to school (a half day, typically) on Saturdays. This is in addition to the after-hours schools, called juku, that most students attend to help them keep up with their studies (both of my elementary school-age kids attend juku schools now). Over the past fifteen years Japan's educators decided to let up on the kids, abolishing Saturday school attendance and adopting a policy of yutori kyoiku (translatable as "unhurried education") which aims to teach Japan's young people without placing so much pressure on them, leaving more free time for friends, outings with the family, and so on. The goal is laudable, but in reality, Japan's educational performance compared to other countries in Asia has taken a sharp dive, especially in areas like science and math, and now many are reexamining the relaxed educational goals. I doubt we'll see a return to Saturday school attendance, but it's important for a country like Japan with few natural resources to maintain its edge when it comes to educating its people.

Just as America has always had the Protestant Work Ethic to serve as a model for what hardworking people should aspire to, Japan has always valued kinben (keen-BEN), diligence and hard work, as an excellent trait for a person to adopt. By and large, this diligence is usually measured in terms of time rather than raw effort. Doing an hour or two of overtime each day is probably the norm for most Japanese companies, where employees show their hard work to their colleagues in a unit that everyone can easily recognize, time. The highest point of evolution for the concept of kinben is the tetsuya, the all-nighter, working so hard that you work all night long to finish your important project. If an employee in Japan works all night on a project, he will probably gain a lot of respect from his boss and coworkers.

Ask any gaijin living in Japan about dentists here, and you'll be sure to hear some complaints. By and large, the dental and medical world in Japan is quite advanced, but sometimes you see some things that give you pause. I knew a dentist who sterilized his instruments over an open flame, a giant candle that was burning while he was working on my teeth, and a friend had a dentist use a normal box cutter to drain an infection in his mouth, in lieu of a medical scalpel. These experiences are worrying, but the biggest problem with dentists in Japan is that it can take dozens of visits to complete routine dental work. Last year I had some dental work done that managed to take a full 18 months of regular visits to complete. I believe Japan's dentists take so long to work on teeth because of the way insurance is structured here -- they're only allowed to charge a certain amount to the system each day, so they spread it out as much as they can. It's horribly inefficient, but then, it's sad to say that inefficiency is an industry unto itself, which you can see in many areas, including parking attendants who direct you to parking spaces you could have found on your own, NHK employees who go around to every house in the neighborhood each month to manually collect the 2000 yen NHK fee, and so on.

If you're in the Dallas area, we hope you'll be attending A-Kon, one of the most vibrant and enjoyable anime conventions that has ever been. With an amazing 17 year history, you can experience a lifetime of fun compressed into three very enjoyable days of cosplay, anime and Japanese popular culture. The con is from June 9-11 this year and you can see more information on it here

Right before A-Kon I'll be at another interesting place: the Sex in Video Games conference in San Francisco, where I'll be speaking at one of the panels on Thursday, discussing Japan's unique bishoujo games, which we've been involved with since the beginning. If you'll be in the neighborhood, we hope see you at the conference, which will really be interesting. For information, see this page.

At J-List, we bring you our amazing Japanese T-shirts with original messages in kanji, which are aesthetically beautifully and cool to wear. We have a new T-shirt just for the girls today. which is great for anyone with a unique interest in Japan that they're proud of. The shirt says, "I like what I like, so get off my back!" (alternate translation, "I like what I like, and there's nothing I can do about it"), which is a slogan from a yaoi manga that we liked the sound of, so we put it on a T-shirt. A great design in American Apparel's "Vintage Soft" style, this is a great new offering for girls who are into some aspect of Japan that others may not be able to understand. On the site now, and really cute!

Election comparisons in Japan and California, Marie Antoinette's anime connection, and wow, a dollar buys so much!

It certainly is nice to be back home in San Diego for a brief vacation in between anime conventions, and it gives me a chance to compare the U.S. with life in my adopted country. Whenever it's election time in Japan, I usually do a post about how strange the country's democratic processes can seem to a foreigner -- candidates in loudspeaker cars, driving all around the city shouting "I will work hard for you!" and "Thank you for your support!" to the great annoyance of everyone, although this somehow manages to get them votes. California's primary elections are next week, so I'm getting a rare chance to experience the current trends in America's electoral system, and it's nearly as annoying. All week long we've been getting phone calls from very important people like Newt Gingrich, John Kerry and Gov. Schwarzenegger, telling us about important issues that we should be aware of for next Tuesday. The voices are just recordings, of course, although it's nice to imagine that we're important enough for all these famous politicians to call us and give us their opinions...

A wise gaijin once said, you've been in Japan too long when, on a visit home, you say "Wow, a dollar buys so much!" and are surprised to find everyone looking at you funny. I'm kind of having that experience now. Last night I went to Vons to get some beer, limes and various munchies -- I threw in some celery since it's very hard to get in Japan -- and proceeded to the cash register. A similar purchase back home would probably set me back 3000-4000 yen, so I pulled out two $20 bills, expecting it to cost about the same, but I was pleasantly surprised when the total came to under $15. Everything is relative, of course, but it's nice to be able to feel that things are priced moderately for a change.

It's always nice to check out what movies are showing here in the States as well, since, by and large, it will take 6-9 months for most of them to be released in Japan, except for some blockbusters that get distributed everywhere at the same time. I see that Lost in Translation creator Sofia Coppola (who played one of the handmaids to Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I, amazingly) had a new film at Cannes portraying the life of Maria Antoinette as a young girl. I immediately wondered if Sofia, who has had a lot to do with Japan during her life, might not have gotten some of her ideas for the film from the animation masterpiece The Rose of Versailles. One of the great classics of Japanese animation from the 1970s, it follows the history of the French Revolution as seen through the eyes of Oscar, one of the Palace Guards safeguarding the young Austrian queen. Oscar is a woman who was raised by her father as a boy since birth, and she is the bravest soldier in France. The bubbly character of young Marie from the anime series seems similar to the one portrayed in the new film, and it'd be interesting to know if Sofia Coppola is a closet fan of the anime series.

Way late, I know. But here are some pictures from the show in San Jose. Here is brand new J-List Mobile, a replacement for the also brand-new trailer that was so dishonorably stolen from our parking log a couple months ago.

Do you like our logo? On the other side, the rivets are accidentally placed in, er, an embarrassing place.

Pics from the con. This is Tatsuya Uesugi from Touch, a great costume that, sadly, fewer people will probably get than my Beru-Bara reference above. But Touch is the shit, man.

It's an anime show, there must be Stormtroopers present.

This guy was getting Glomped, but good.

Nice Sakura from Tsubasa Chroniclr.

A picture of Black Jack, and two smart-ass friends of mine in the background.

Ah, anime conventions are so much fun.

I really liked the video game corner. I tried my hand at the drum game, since I've played it and I live in Japan and all. 13 year old girl handed my ass to me, I was so embarrassed.

The first Japanese person to visit the USA, new tragedy of Japan's society, and all about Japanese culture shock

The first Japanese person to visit America was Manjiro Nakahama, a 14-year-old fisherman who was rescued in 1841 by an American whaling vessel and brought to the U.S., where he received a full education in English. This was during the era of sakoku ("closed country"), when Japan was officially shut off from contact from the outside world, except for a Dutch trading outpost on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, and it was death for a Japanese person to travel abroad or have contact with foreigners. After 12 years of living outside Japan, "John" Manjiro returned, determined to try to convince the Shogun to end the sakoku policy. When Admiral Perry's Black Ships arrived in 1853, John Manjiro became an important figure, acting as translator and interpreter between the two parties. He went on to teach English, mathematics and ocean navigation, and was a major inspiration to Japan's future reformers like Ryoma Sakamoto (the Che Guevara of the Meiji Restoration) and Yukichi Fukuzawa (founder of Keio University, and the man whose face is on the 10,000 yen note).

Once again, the number of people who opted out of the rest of their lives through suicide in Japan topped 30,000, according to the National Police Agency. A total of 32,552 Japanese took the tragic step of ending their lives, about the same number as in the U.S. despite the fact that America's population is double Japan's. As usual, people over 60 and those with health problems were the largest group, with unemployed people also highly represented. The number of students of all ages makes up an all-too-tragic percent of the group, a likely indicator of the extra stresses that Japanese society can put on young people. It's not a problem that's easy to solve, but one area I think they should work harder in is counseling -- it's extremely rare for a Japanese to seek some kind of psychological help for a problem, and even if they do that kind of help is very hard to find in Japan.

Whenever you go to live in a new country, you're bound to have your share of culture shock, and I was no different when I first arrived in Japan. A wide range of professions, from the men who guide you past road construction to train station employees, have uniforms that looked to my eyes like police uniforms, so I was constantly wondering why there were so many police walking around in Japan. Every gas station, it seemed, had a big flashing light that looked like police lights, which are really there to attract customers -- but I kept thinking there were accidents ahead of me on the road when it was just a "gasoline stand." I was amazed at the beautiful ceramic tiles on Japanese houses, which made them look, well, very Japanese. And the vending machines -- you couldn't drive a kilometer without passing twenty or thirty of them on either side of you. But one of the biggest shocks was that all but the largest streets in a Japanese city have no names. To give directions in Japan, you tell someone to turn left at the beauty shop, go straight, then turn at the pachinko parlor, or you draw them a map. I distinctly remember wanting to get my other gaijin friends together and name all the streets in our city.

Kanji is cool, and J-List popularized Japanese-themed T-shirts with our best-selling "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" and other original designs. Today we've got a great new T-shirt for you: the austere cover of a Japanese passport. A great design that's both elegant and uniquely Japanese, the shirts come in red (standard men's size) and navy blue (fitted girl's shirt), the colors that Japanese passports are made in. Get one of each and go for what's known as the "pair look" (when a couple wears matching shirts) -- kawaii!

Ueno Park is a beautiful sprawling park in Northern Tokyo. I'd actually never been there in 15 years of living in Japan, so I was surprised so much "vibrant greenery" (to use a Japanese phrase) around me. It was the scene of some big battle during the Meiji Restoration when pro-Emperor/pro-reform troops battled the Shogun.

Lining up for the Nasca museum event. There were a zillion people there and the sun was baking.

The Japanese, bless their hearts, had all signs dutifully presented in Japanese...and Spanish. Kind of hard on a "regular" gaijin like me.

We were quite taken with the gift shop on our way out. Here they are selling replicas of hominid skulls for $900 or so. This would not be the last thing I'd think of buying, actually.

Cool shirt.

Another item in the gift shop, a replica of the human brain. Hmmm, yeah.

The most famous point in Ueno Park is, of course, the giant statue of Saigo Takamori, who is the guy portrayed in The Last Samurai.

Buddhism and Japan's identity, an air-raid siren at noon, and

Japan is a Buddhist nation, and despite many other influences such as the indigenous animistic Japanese religion of Shinto, Confucianism from China and Christianity from the West, Buddhism is really what's at the country's core. One observation foreigners who come to live for a time in Japan is that "everything is about death" -- and there are quite a few customs, such as avoiding giving gifts in sets of four since the number can be read as "shi" which also means death in Japanese, or lighting incence at the Buddhist altar each morning, that seem to show a fixation on the subject. One word I've always found interesting is Hotoke-sama (ho-toe-kay sah-mah). Ostensibly the word is a reverent term for Buddha, but in practice, it's used to refer to any deceased spirit, since Buddhism in Japan is largely about revering one's ancestors, without whom (my wife has pointed out to me) you wouldn't exist at all. Once, my daughter saw beautiful sakura blooming near a graveyard, and she said, "That's so nice, the flowers are so pretty, the people buried here (the Hotoke-sama) will be so happy."

Every day while working in Japan, I immediately know when noon has rolled around because a siren located in the center of town goes off. It's not just any siren -- it's essentially the same type of air-raid siren that sounded half a century ago when Japan was being bombed by Allied B-29's. The siren sounds every day at noon to let people know that it's lunch time, but it serves some other purposes as well. First of all, it's used to let people know when there's a local disaster such as a fire, and hearing the siren at night means everyone should check their neighbors to make sure everything is okay. In this way, it kinds of provides a little "community glue" for the people living in our city, unconsciously making everyone feel a part of the same happy group unit, since practically everyone in our city is within hearing distance of the loud siren. When I first heard it, it was somewhat un-nerving, since it's not a sound you normally hear outside of movies about World War II. But now it's just a part of life in my home in Japan.

The Japanese drink a lot of tea: hot green tea, thick matcha, refreshing Chinese oolong tea, an array of Western black teas, and an endless number of blends. In the summer, perhaps no tea is consumed more than mugi cha, or Japanese barley tea, refreshing beverage made with barley that's always served cold to combat the heat and humidity outside. When businessmen call on a client, they will be served mugi tea to refresh them while they wait, and in the J-List kitchen downstairs, barley tea is what you'll find in the fridge (we drink it all summer long). Naturally caffeine-free, Japanese barley tea is a refreshing and totally healthy drink that's popular throughout Japan. We just happen to have this year's mugi cha on the site for you, which make it easy to keep barley tea handy any time, with easy to use cold-water tea bags. We hope you'll try some!

J-List carries a great item for fans of yaoi / bishonen and all fans of great gothic style art, Animamundi - Dark Alchimist, the newest release by Hirameki International. A superb interactive game with 12 fascinating game scenarios to explore, it comes packaged with a great soundtrack/movie disc. Best of all, you can enjoy this great game not just on any standard Windows PC, but on Macs, too, since the game is fully compatible with Mac OS X. It's in stock -- order now!

We interrupt whatever I was going to show yu last time with....kittens! Our beloved cat Mimi-chan (who J-List's Kaori had found, and named Nyanko Sensei) died recently (hit by a car, and yet she trekked very far to come say goodby to us). Happily, we were given two very cute kittens to replace her.

Their names keep changing, but last time I checked they were Shiro and Kuu-chan.

This is Shiro. She's kind of rambunctious, and likes to play...then sleep.

Kuu-chan is more mature, and was able to use the litterbox right away -- very smart. If you ever want to bond a cat to you forever, get a good brustley brush and brush them, and they'll be as loyal to you as dogs

Coming soon...more on Pete's trip to Tokyo and Ueno Park.

Looking back on 15 years of anime fandom, Japan's culture of flowers, and pouring your own drink

Hello from beautiful San Jose. We've been enjoying the vibrant anime fans here at Fanime Con, and if you're in the area we hope you were able to attend the show (and the great music concerts held over the weekend). During the show, a convention-goer came by wearing a T-shirt from Anime Con '91, the very first anime convention held in the U.S., which we also attended right here in San Jose. We suddenly found ourselves waxing natsukashii (nostalgic) over all that had happened in the last fifteen years to anime culture and general awareness of Japan by the West. 1991 was very different from 2006, and no one was sure if Japanese animation was popular enough to support an actual convention all on its own -- the show attracted just 1600 fans, compared to 33,000 at the last Anime Expo. There were many top-named Japanese guests of honor at the first Anime Con, including Macross character designer Mikimoto, Nadia/Evangelion artist Sadamoto and Bubblegum Crisis artist Kenichi Sonoda (who ate breakfast with us every morning). Those were great days to be interested in Japan, and we all learned so much.

For myself, I've never really been that much of a flower person, aside from buying roses or carnations on Mother's Day, that sort of thing. But by and large, Japan is a very flower-centric place, with a lot of attention paid to flowers in many ways. There are many customs related to enjoying the various flowers that bloom in each season. In March, there are ume (plum) flowers, then sakura in April, and right now, irises are in bloom. Japanese have been known to eat flowers in kaiseki ryori, the traditional meals of Kyoto. Japan is a Buddhist nation, and many solemn flowers such as white lillies are featured in funerals. Once I committed one of the most embarrassing faux pas a gaijin could make: I went to a flower shop to pick out some flowers for my wife, and the ones I asked for turned out to be chrysanthemums, which in Japan are only used for placing on graves in memory of the dead. I was quite embarrassed after my wife picked herself up off the floor from laughing and explained it all to me.

You know you've lived in Japan too long when you're incapable of pouring your own beer. It's true -- in Japan it's customary for friends to pour beer or sake (sah-KAY, never "saki") for each other, and "lifer" gaijin like me get so used to this that anything else becomes impossible. Pouring your own drink is called tejaku, and it's rarely done in mixed company -- although in enka, the traditional sad music of Japan that fills the same niche as country music in the U.S., the image of a broken man pouring his own sake while he cries his eyes out over his lost love, is quite common. Back in the U.S., I've run into a little culture shock when drinking with friends as I wonder if it's okay to pour my own drink in their presence, or if we should the everyone-pour- drinks-for-each-other thing they do in Japan. Ah, it's fun to live with one foot in Japan and the other in the States.

Aya Ueto's hit drama in Japan, how my son perceives English grammar as music, and what a "cat's tongue" means

The most popular "unit" of television in Japan is the drama, which usually run for 15 weeks of hour-long episodes, with a clear-cut finale that resolves all the issues and love triangles in the story. Dramas star famous faces like lovely actresses Misato Itoh or Akiko Yada or national heart-throb Hayami Mokomichi, and the most successful shows get very high ratings of 20% or more and are usually watched all throughout Asia. Currently one of the most popular dramas on TV is "Attention, Please," starring cute teen idol-turned- serious-actress Aya Ueto, who is attending stewardess training to become a flight attendant. Produced in cooperation of Japan Air Lines (no doubt eager to turn their sagging fortunes around by being affiliated with the popular star), the show follows the adventures of the lead heroine as she goes from being a headstrong girl to someone who really understands what it is to be a professional flight attendant. We've always wanted to get our daughter interested in this career and we've been watching the show with her, dropping subliminal hints about airlines must surely be eager to find flight attendants who can already speak English and Japanese well, like her.

I continue to watch my kids grow up, fascinated at how they go about acquiring English and Japanese. My wife is helping my son study for the Step Test, level 2, a test that's usually taken by students in their third year of high school (and for students who aren't putting a special effort into learning English, not at all). Like most Japanese, my wife has learned English in a very analytical way, memorizing the grammar as if it were a collection of complex formulas. Verbs in English come in three varieties, present tense, past tense and past participle, and Japanese have perfected the memorization of these verbs into a science, spitting out "go, went, went" "eat, ate, eaten" "drive, drove, driven" very easily. My wife naturally tries to impart this to my son, but he refuses to learn English in this way -- he can usually "sense" the correct answer on a test and doesn't need to make it more complex by trying to understand the grammar like his mother does. When she asked him how he was able to get the right answer without consciously knowing the rules of English, he replied, "I can just see the patterns. It's like music." Kids sure are amazing things.

Do you have a cat's tongue? If so, it means that you can't eat hot food or drink hot drinks, just like a cat. The Japanese say that anyone who avoids hot food has a cat's tongue (neko jita). What is you have a lazy eye? If so, then you are rom-pari which is Japanese for "London, Paris" -- i.e. one eye is looking at London and the other is looking at Paris. If you're thinning on top, you might have "bar code hair," as the Japanese say. And if you sneeze, the Japanese say that someone must be gossiping about you (this comes up in anime quite often).

I've always been fascinated with the artistic works of Mitsuo Aida, who took traditional Japanese calligraphy and turned it into a beautiful medium for poetry and fascinating observations on life. I've used his works to study Japanese, and find his insight into life, the universe and everything very interesting. Now we've gotten in two great collections of his unique calligraphy works, complete with English translations, a super item for anyone interested in seeing a new side of Japan. It's something I'm really happy to have on the site.

If you're at San Jose, we hope you'll come to Fanime Con, a great anime convention that runs from May 26-29. We're proud to co-sponsor a great collection of JPOP bands, with five indies bands performing live music at the show, a great way for you to experience some fantastic cutting-edge music from Japan. For more information, go to http://www.fanime.com/

More pictures from our trip to Ueno, Tokyo.

This is right outside Ameyoko, the former black market area of Tokyo, now transformed into a wild bazaar of shops and import companies.

Freshness Burger, the best burger in all Tokyo (well...the best chain food burger). Plus the name is cool.

What's this? The famous Trevi Fountain of Rome in the heart of Tokyo?

No, it's just a picture and mini-fountain outside a restroom.

All about Pizza in Japan, how Japanese social relationships work smoothl, and things I've learned about my brain

I remember my first time ordering Pizza over the phone in Japan. I'd studied four years of the language at SDSU and figured this was a linguistic challenge I was up to, but to my surprise I couldn't make myself understood to the person on the other end of the phone line. Could it be that a pizza delivery company employee didn't understand the word "pepperoni," that most universal of all pizza-related concepts? It turns out I needed to be asking for "pepperoni sausage" instead, and that subtle difference, no doubt coupled with my gaijin-accented Japanese, caused the breakdown. The varieties of pizza that are sold in Japan are always, ah, interesting from a foreigner's perspective. Among the toppings I spied on a recent trip to Pizza Hut (which everyone thinks is Pizza Hat, but I digress) were Gorgeous Salmon, Sea Urchin Glory, and Queen of Crab & Shrimp. Thankfully, more conventional pizza toppings are readily available, too (like the much more reasonable tuna, mayonnaise and corn pizza).

There are some interesting concepts at work in social relationships in Japan. One is enryo, a word which means restraint or as a verb, to refrain from doing something. My Japanese teacher at SDSU explained it to us like this: a Japanese person comes for a visit to your home. You offer them a drink, and they say no thanks, they're fine. You offer again a few minutes later, and again they decline your offer. Finally you make your offer a third time, and they gladly accept. It may sound odd, but enryo is a kind of politeness that's important for getting along in a country with so many people crammed into a small space. It seems to be related to Japanese humility (kenson) -- if you tell a Japanese woman how pretty she is or compliment her English, she'll probably disagree with you strongly, a way in which Japanese avoid being boastful. There are many phrases in Japanese that illustrate this tendency to show humility in front of others. For example, when you give someone a gift, you usually say "Here's something that's not interesting" (tsumaranai mono desu kedo...) or if you bake someone a cake, you say, "I'm not sure if it tastes good or not..." (Oishii ka dou ka wakaranai kedo).

When you use another language you learn a lot about how your own brain works. I've noticed someting interesting -- no matter how much Japanese I've studied, my eyes will naturally lock onto English on a sign full of Japanese, no matter what the content. When traveling throughout Japan it's rather useful to know the place names in kanji, since it's easier to memorize and visualize. Yokohama takes just two memory "units" to memorize if you know kanji (yoko meaning horizontal, and hama meaning beach), whereas the name in English takes eight letters. And yet, if I see a sign with both kanji and English on it, my eyes will go for the English, even if it's written in small characters. The brain is just too used to dealing with the familiar to do anything else.

We've got some good news for fans of bishoujo games, the fascinating interactive dating-sim games for Windows PCs. The long-awaited Doushin - Same Heart is finally in stock and shipping now! This is really a special item from Crowd, a game in which you play the interactive story through the eyes of the three Suruga sisters, Ryoko, Maki and Miho. The three sisters have a special power: when one feels a sensation such as pain, the feeling is broadcast to the other two sisters immediately. And if one of them should start to get turned on...well, let's just say that amazing things will happen. The most deep and complex game released by Crowd yet -- and it's finally shipping!

Pictures from a Pizza Hut. Hmm, salmon pizza...

Sea urchin in sushi form I can handle. On pizza?

Crab on pizza...hmm. Honestly, I couldn't see this, but tuna and mayo pizza isn't that bad.

Some other varieties. Pizza Hut Gourmet (a bunch of toppings), Bacon Mushroom, Tuna Mild and Hawaiian. I love Hawaiian pizza, but most people here hate it more than root beer... Incidentally, the sliced, baked tomatoes they have on pizza here really are to die for.

When we went to Tokyo, we found a more traditional (to Italy, not to the USA) pizza restaurant. The margarita pizza was quite good.

Our trip to Tokyo, Japan's strange connection with Peru, alcoholic green tea, and what Jabba the Hutt can teach you about linguistics

We wanted to do something fun with the kids over the weekend, so we shinked (gaijin-speak for "took the Shinkansen," e.g. the Bullet Train) down to Tokyo to check out the special exhibition on the mysterious lines and geoglyphs in Nazca, Peru at the National Museum of Science. The strange shapes, which form images of a spider, a hummingbird, a condor and so on, were made 1500-2000 years ago, and are a big mystery. It was quite an interesting display -- we looked at many pieces of well preserved pottery with beautiful designs, and even a real mummy they'd brought over. I've always been amazed at the special interest the Japanese seem to take in Nazca, which is featured in some television show or another just about every month here. Maybe it has something to do with the twin connection Japan has with the region, due to the little diaspora of Japanese to South America at the start of the 20th Century, and in prehistoric times, since the same Mongolian stock that colonized Japan also made it to South America. Any trip to Tokyo with kids in tow is a potential stress-fest considering the sheer number of people around you, but it was so crowded at the museum we were all beside ourselves with claustrophobia. As always, going to Tokyo makes me appreciate living in a smaller, slower-paced part of Japan.

As a card-carrying Star Wars fan, I've heard my share of alien languages from all corners of the Lucasverse. I remember watching Return of the Jedi back in 1983 and wondering at a line of Jabba the Hutt's dialogue, "You weak-minded fool! He's using an old Jedi mind trick." The line was spoken in Huttese, an invented language, but the phrase "Jedi mind trick" was in English, and I believe it's the only instance of mixing of languages in Star Wars. Language mixing is known in linguistic terms as "code switching" and if you have two bilingual individuals it's quite natural for them to jump back and forth between the two languages, depending on the ideas they want to express, the environment they're in, and so on. I've got a American friend who recently got his doctorate in Cultural Studies from a Japanese university, and whenever we hit the onsen together, we naturally mix quite a lot of Japanese in with our English conversation, usually to the amazement of Japanese in the bath, who try not to be too obvious as they eavesdrop on us. Of course, part of learning a foreign language is separating the two languages in your mind, easy for adults but a challenge to bilingual children -- my son and daughter got confused when neighborhood kids in America didn't understand their Japanese. There's a great deal of experimentation that goes on in the mind of a child during the separatation process, and it can be fascinating to observe. When he was two or so, I went to a bath with my son, and he commented to me that the cold bath (which you go in after you get heated up in the sauna) sure was "cold-katta." This amused me, since he was mixing the English word cold with the Japanese past tense ending katta.

If Japan had a national drink it would have to be green tea, which is consumed in massive amounts and rivals coffee in popularity. Green tea is a major crop here, with Shizuoka Prefecture claiming it as its meibutsu (lit. "famous thing"), building its tourism industry in part around the stuff like Napa or Sonoma do with wine in California. Green tea is very healthy and has been shown to be effective in various areas including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, cholesterol control and weight loss, but in Japan its popularity is based on its wholesome and mildly bitter taste, which people find delicious. More and more, green tea is finding its way into other products, from caramels to cookies to bath salt ("green tea...it's not just for ice cream anymore"). Kirin has even pioneered the first alcoholic drink using green tea: Ocha no Chuhai, a blend of cold green tea and shochu, a traditional Japanese spirit distilled from anything from rice to barley to sweet potatoes. In the picture above, the one on the right is Green Tea Chuhai, and the one on the left is genmai cha, er, unhusked rice tea.

Summer is coming, and that means summer anime conventions! If you're looking for a super costume to wear, J-List humbly recommends the excellent uniforms that we sell in an exclusive arrangement with Matsukameya of Japan. Each uniform is sewn just for you, to the sizes you specify on our detailed chart, and the quality is unbelievably -- honestly, I've never received anything but lowing praise and feedback from J-List customers who have purchased these uniforms. Several styles available, from girl's summer and winter uniforms to the excellent male "gakuran" school uniforms.

We're off to Tokyo. We took an Asama, the red-white-and-blue trains, but I was hoping for a Max (the double-decker trains), which are much cooler.

Japan is always fun when speeding along at 150 kph.

Lady with the food cart.

Finally, we were in Ueno Station. This is a really old, really large station that I usually just pass through. But today, this was our destination. It's pronounced "oo-EH-no" by the way, and you can tell a gaijin who learned Japanese in romaji, rather than kana, because he will pronounced the "U" in Ueno as "you."

Homeless man...check. Yes, we're in Ueno alright.