Advertising Tissues From Japan

It's the end of another San Diego Comic-Con, and as usual it was a blast. We sold tons of J-List T-shirts, kawaii plush toys and bottles of Tentacle Grape, and talked with many avid fans. I've been attending the show since the mid 80s, back when it was small enough to fit in the tiny San Diego Civic Center. I laugh as I look back at how "big" I thought the show was back then, at around 12,000 attendees, less than 1/10 the current number.

If you visited the convention and walked by our booth, one of our staff probably handed you some Japanese pocket tissue with our website information on it. Advertising businesses with printed pocket tissue has been popular in Japan ever since 1969, when a paper manufacturing company in Kochi Prefecture hit on the idea of using inexpensive packets of tissue to advertise products. Just about anywhere you go in Japanese cities, you'll see people standing on street-corners, handing tissues to passers-by and thanking them for considering the business that's being promoted -- usually a bank advertising this week's rates, or in Akihabara, the newest cat girl maid cafe. J-List has been printing these tissues and shipping them with orders for more than 15 years, and also brings them to conventions to hand out to people, sometimes getting ironic laughs for some reason. Of course you don't have to attend a convention to get free J-List tissues: just make an order from our site, and you'll get a packet included with your order, along with our super-cool "anime eye glasses." (Note that J-List tissues aren't included with orders that would be damaged by their inclusion, such as a thin doujinshi comic, and are subject to availability.)

You'll never be without tissue in Japan.

Manga Sale This Month on J-List

A reminder: this month we're having a very nice promotion for you, a 2x points sale on all manga on the site! This includes the gorgeous all-ages manga we have, from Evangelion to Yotsubato to Highschool of the Dead, as well as the ecchi manga products we have, with very genre you can think of and a few you can't. Click to browse all manga volumes on the site now!

Slurping Noodles at the San Diego Comic-Con

We're having loads of fun at the San Diego Comic-Con here in always-sunny San Diego, selling tons of Tentacle Grape and J-List T-shirts and copies of English-translated visual novels, and are saying hi to the many fans who come by the booth to shake hands. Please note that this year we're in a new location, in booth 4929, rather than our normal spot in the dark recesses of the 100 aisle. Hope to see you during the show!

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way of eating Japanese and Chinese noodles like ramen, udon and soba is to slurp them while holding your face near the bowl, sucking in the soup along with the noodles to make both taste delicious. There's no upper ceiling to how loud you're allowed to slurp, and making these noises is one way of letting whoever prepared the noodles for you know that you think they're good. When foreigners come to Japan, they usually eat their noodles without making these noises, prompting Japanese to say 静かですね shizuka desu ne (you eat very quietly, don't you?). There are some other areas where table manners differ between the Japan and the West. In Japan, it's perfectly okay to pick up your ramen bowl and drink the soup from it directly, although drinking out of a bowl might get a child smacked in the U.S. It's okay to slurp Asian noodles, but spaghetti is another matter, and the image of an old Japanese man loudly vacuuming his pasta off the plate is very unsophisticated.

When eating noodles, it's okay to slurp.

The Trouble with Sumo Wrestling

Sumo wrestling is the official sport of Japan, enjoying special status and support by the Japanese government. It's more than a sport, really, since it's closely tied to Shinto religious ceremonies going back centuries, and legendary figures from Japan's history like Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Oda Nobunaga were sumo aficionados. Over the past few years the sport has really fallen from grace due to a series of scandals that have rocked the Japan Sumo Association and its fans and harmed its image with fans. These have included wrestlers who were caught with marijuana and ejected from the sport, officials who were found to have ties with yakuza criminals, a high-profile bar fight in which Mongolian wrestler Asashoryu used his mighty strength against another patron, plus a sad incident in which a young wrestler died as a result of hazing by older wrestlers. Another big problem is 八百長 yaoyacho, the organized fixing of matches between wrestlers since, once one wins 50% of matches in a tournament, he has the same chance of promotion whether he wins 90%, and thus can agree to lose some bouts to his friends to help their scores. Brought to light by the authors of the book Freakanomics, who used statistics to prove the problem existed, it's being dealt with strictly by officials as they attempt to rebuild trust with fans. Fun fact: the way to say arm wrestling in Japanese is 腕相撲 ude-zumou, literally "arm sumo wrestling."

Fun fact: arm wrestling is "arm sumo" in Japanese.

Goma-suri

One of the more challenging aspects of learning a foreign language is picking up idiomatic expressions, which can be terribly random and confusing to outsiders. For example, the way to express the concept of "brown-nosing" (i.e. kissing up to your boss or teacher) is ごまをする goma o suru, literally meaning "to grind up someone's sesame seeds for them," since lickspittle underlings would supposedly grind sesame seeds for their boss in order to win points with him. If you want to try this word out on Japanese people you know, just say goma-suri! (which would mean something like "stop trying to flatter me!") when a Japanese person praises you for something, then watch them jump out of their shoes in surprise that you know a word like that. Japanese spend many thousands of hours memorizing the strange idioms and turns of phrase we use in English, never quite sure why it could be possible to "rain cats and dogs," or why something simple is a "piece of cake" or "easy as pie" but not the other way around. As is usually the case with language, asking why something means what it means doesn't get you very far, so encapsulating what you're trying to learn as a defined unit and figuring what situations it works best in is usually the best approach.

Griding up sesame seeds is a piece of cake.

J-List is at San Diego Comic Con + Special Sale

J-List at San Diego Comic Con

The San Diego Comic-Con has become the premier worldwide festival for celebrating all manner of nerd culture, from comic books to sci-fi to anime, and we love attending the show every year. We'll have lots of T-shirts, plush toys, horse head masks and English-translated eroge at the show for everyone, plus our trademark J-List pocket tissues and the new anime eyeglasses, too. Please note that this year we'll be in a new location, in booth 4929, rather than our normal spot in the dark recesses of the 100 aisle (we assume they moved the entire Anime Alley to the other side of the room). This is near the south end of the Convention Center, not against the north wall as in past years.

Learning a Foreign Language with Anime and Manga

I happened to see an article that officially declard anime and manga to be good ways of learning a foreign language. This didn't come as news to me, since I've used this method to assist my Japanese studies ever since the beginning. Manga can be a good tool for studying Japanese because it's mostly spoken dialogue, which gives you lots of input to read and understand and (eventually) to use yourself. The kanji used in manga may seem challenging at first, but in truth only 500-700 characters are used in most manga, often with furigana (hiragana characters written above a kanji character to help with pronunciation), so it's not that hard to get the hang of reading. I also used anime to teach my kids English, "strategically" buying boxed sets of series they wanted to watch then pretending that there was only an English track on the disc. (I also made sure 100% of the movies we watched were imported from the U.S., so they had to get them in English or not watch them at all.) Of course, you have to take the Japanese used in anime and manga with several grains of salt and remember that it's as stylized and unique as the English used in movies. Don't make the mistake I did, learning most of my Japanese from Fist of the North Star and walking around talking like Kenshiro, if you can avoid it!

My kids learned English basically so they could watch my "English only" Rayearth DVDs.

Of Japanese Culture and Potato Chips

I finally made time to finish the second season of Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, aka There's No Way My Younger Sister Is This Cute. The second season was surprisingly good, with lots of "feels" -- especially for fans of Kuroneko and Ayase ♡ -- and more character development than I dared hope for. I like to watch random episodes of anime and see what interesting cultural points I can uncover, like the scene in episode 1 of K-On! when Tsumugi shyly adds her french fries to a pile that Ritsu and Mio are eating from, in order to remove an invisible barrier between herself and the other members of the Light Music Club. In episode 12 of Oreimo, Kyosuke has an impromptu party with all the girls, and there's a shot of various drinks and snacks laid out on a table, including a bag of potato chips that's been split down the center so that its contents are laid out to the air. This is a very Japanese thing to do when entertaining, to open all the snacks so that they will go to waste if guests don't dig in and eat, due to a cultural phenomenon known as 遠慮 enryo. Literally meaning restraint or reserve, or as a verb, to refrain from doing something, enryo is manifested as the Japanese tendency to hesitate to take offered food or drink out of politeness. If anyone is to relax and have any fun, you have to break through these social barriers, and forcing people to eat in order to avoid wasting food is one way to go about it.

Learning about Japanese culture through potato chips.

A New Anime Season + Genshiken

It's time for a new anime season, even though I still haven't caught up with the previous one. There are some nice new shows starting up this time, including a "second season" of Bakemonogatari, more High School DxD. a reboot of the Rozen Maiden gothic doll series, and an anime based on the popular (and ecchi) Cho Jigen Game Neptune games for the PS3. I'm also happy to report that, for the first time in six years, we've got new Genshiken to watch. Genshiken is a slice-of-life series about a "circle" (what a club at a university is called) dedicated to the study of Modern Visual Culture, mostly related to anime, manga, games and cosplay, and along with the Daikon IV opening animation, Gainax's seminal Otaku no Video and Welcome to the NHK, it's really come to define what being otaku is. What I like best about the series is its realism, the way different types of fans (Gundam plamo builders, 'layers, BL loving fujoshi, ) interact with each other in realistic ways, and nitty-gritty details like how they go about getting jobs after college are part of the story. The new series features all your favorite characters plus some new ones, and updates the story nicely...though how is it they're making Bakemonogatari and Oreimo jokes if the story is supposed to be set in 2004-2005?

It's great to have new Genshiken to watch.

J-List @ San Diego Comic-Con, And a Sale!

J-List at San Diego Comic Con

The San Diego Comic-Con has become the premier worldwide festival for celebrating all manner of nerd culture, from comic books to sci-fi to anime, and we love attending the show every year. We'll have lots of T-shirts, plush toys, horse head masks and English-translated eroge at the show for everyone, plus our trademark J-List pocket tissues and the new anime eyeglasses, too. Please note that this year we'll be in a new location, in booth 4929, rather than our normal spot in the dark recesses of the 100 aisle (we assume they moved the entire Anime Alley to the other side of the room). This is near the south end of the Convention Center, not against the north wall as in past years.

Thinking About "Love" in Japan

Do the Japanese say "I love you"? It's an interesting question that touches on cultural issues as well as linguistic. There are several ways to express the concept of love in Japanese, with the most casual being 好きです suki desu ("I like you") or 大好きです dai-suki desu ("I 'big-like' you"), both of which imply romantic love when used with a person as the object; or the phrase 愛してる ai shiteru, which specifically means "I love you." As a general rule, Japanese couples verbally express love for each other a lot less than is done in the West. Part of this is just the culture -- strong feelings like love are not displayed openly since (I've been told) saying a thing over and over again can rob it of its real meaning. Instead, Japanese couples in love rely on a concept baffling to foreigners called 無言了解 mugon ryoukai, or "wordless communication," a kind of telepathic text-messaging that enables an idea to be perfectly understood by both parties even though it's never stated overtly. The concept of love can seem quite abstract in Japanese, and there are multiple Japanese words for the term. The word 恋 koi usually describes romantic love, while 愛 ai is a higher kind of love that is used for family or anyone who's very dear to you, or the steady, slow-burning love of marriage. These two words are combined into a compound word to make a general word for love that marries both sides, which is 恋愛 ren'ai.

The concept of "love" is rather deep in Japan.

Riding Trains in San Diego

I've been enjoying the last quiet weekend before the chaos of Comic-Con descends on us all, after which time I head back to Japan. One thing I like to do is play tourist in my own hometown, picking up coupon books intended for visitors and going on sightseeing trips like the bike-and-kayak tours they have in La Jolla, which really give me an appreciation for my own city that most San Diego locals never get. I realized I'd never ridden the San Diego Trolley, so I decided to take the train over to Old Town to do some sightseeing, though it was mostly of margaritas (funny how that tends to happen). On the train ride back, the trolley stopped for a few minutes, and my Japan-honed train riding instincts made me concerned. In Japan, when the trains stops suddenly it nearly always means there's been a 人身事故 jinshin jiko or "human injury accident," which is a polite way of referring to a person who decided to check out of the rest of their life by jumping in front of a train, usually during rush hour on Tokyo's busy Chuo line. Happily, the train had only stopped because of a traffic signal and got moving again after a few moments.

A train stopping in Japan is cause for concern.

Hot Summer is Hot

The poor staff of J-List is sweating in Japan this summer as temperatures climb above 40°C/104°F, with correspondingly yucky humidity. This year the high temperatures have claimed at least 12 lives, mostly elderly Japanese who didn't remember to drink lots of extra water and avoid doing extraneous activities outdoors. Happily, most homes and offices in Japan have strong air conditioning units to combat the hottest part of summer, though there are downsides to this, including the sore throats I always seem to get when sitting in an air conditioned room for too long, as well the "air-con wars" I have to have with my wife, as we battle to set the appropriate temperature for the living room. (Naturally, the closer to freezing, the happier I am.) If you want to enjoy summer Japan style, we recommend drinking authentic Japanese mugi cha (refreshing barley tea), using these various innovative ways to keep cool, plus authentic jinbei kimono-pajamas for keeping comfortable at night!

Japan is having a very hot summer this year.

J-List Is Coming to the San Diego Comic-Con

J-List at San Diego Comic Con

The San Diego Comic-Con has become the premier worldwide festival for celebrating all manner of nerd culture, from comic books to sci-fi to anime, and we love attending the show every year. We'll have lots of T-shirts, plush toys, horse head masks and English-translated eroge at the show for everyone, plus our trademark J-List pocket tissues and the new anime eyeglasses, too. Please note that this year we'll be in a new location, in booth 5028, rather than our normal spot in the dark recesses of the 100 aisle (we assume they moved the entire Anime Alley to the other side of the room). This is near the south end of the Convention Center, not against the north wall as in past years.

Tanegashima, Gateway to Japan

Japan, of course, is a volcanic archipelago made up of four main islands, which are Honshu, the largest, about the half the size of California; Hokkaido in the North, famous for dairy products and potatoes; Kyushu in the south, always first to be exposed to new ideas from the outside world, from Buddhism to Christianity to American movie theatre chains; and Shikoku, where Ehime pearls come from. Being an archipelago, there are thousands of smaller islands (6000+ actually), including Sado, where heretical Emperors were banished back in the day; Yakushima, the unspoiled tropical island that served as the basis for the jungles of Princess Mononoke; plus a few silly rocks that are causing much drama and rending of garments between Japan, China and South Korea.

Another interesting Japanese island is Tanegashima, a 57 km long island south of Kyushu that's unique for several reasons. First, it's the site of the first contact between Japanese and Europeans, and it was here the first Portuguese trading ships landed from Macau to establish the nanban ("southern barbarian") trading network. I like to imagine what it must have been like when the two worlds touched for the first time -- something akin to a UFO landing, I'm sure. Since the Portuguese brought the first guns into Japan, the island's name became synonymous with firearms, and for centuries the Japanese flintlock rifle was known by the name of Tanegashima. The island is also the home of Japan's space program, which has caused it to enter popular culture as Japan got better at launching sattellites into space. At least two recent anime productions, the gorgeous 5 Centimeters Per Second and Robotics;Notes, have been made with Tanegashima as the exotic setting.

Tanegashima is an island with a fascinating history.

Tipping Culture in Japan

It's the calm before the storm as J-List gets ready for the San Diego Comic-Con next week, preparing the T-shirts, plush toys, horse head masks and English-translated eroge we'll be offering at our booth. We hope to see you at the show this year!

One of first cultural differences between Japan and the U.S. we encounter is the difference in tipping culture. While we're often expected to pay gratuities in restaurants, hotels and taxis in the U.S., there's no custom of tipping at all in Japan, despite the fact that the service you receive in shops and restaurants is nearly always excellent. There are times when I'd like to be able to leave a tip to reward especially helpful service in Japan, but if you tried to give tip a Japanese person they'd be confused and possibly even insulted, since it would feel dishonest for them to take any money other than their normal hourly wage. While giving a fair tip for good service is certainly reasonable, sometimes there can be problems. A couple years ago I took our Anime Expo booth staff out to a restaurant called Trader Vic's, and we all ate a pretty large meal. Not noticing the fine print on the bottom of the receipt that said "a 20% gratuity will be added for parties of six or more," I left a large-ish tip in cash for the staff, who seemed to be smiling more than usual for some reason. I noticed the automatic gratuity later and was saddened the restaurant staff hadn't had the honesty and integrity to tell us that a tip had already been added to the bill and nothing further was needed, which would have ensured that I return to the restaurant every year rather than boycotting them. The Japanese staff members who were with us shook their heads sadly, since restaurant staff angling to get a double tip would have been inconceivable in Japan.

Tipping culture is nonexistent in Japan.

Manga Sale on J-List This Month!

This month we're having a very nice promotion for you: a great 2x points sale on all manga on the site! This includes the gorgeous all-ages manga we have, from Evangelion to Yotsubato to Highschool of the Dead, as well as the ecchi manga products we have, with very genre you can think of and a few you can't. Click to browse all manga volumes on the site now!

Japanese vs. Gaijin

I'm often asked how Japanese view the gaijin that live in their midst, disrupting the harmony the country is so famous for. It's quite a complex subject, which reaches deep into the Japanese psyche and across Japan's 470-year history of dealing with these smelly, tall and hairy barbarians from across the sea. For the most part Westerners in the Japan of today exist in a special place where the rules don't apply, at least the same way they do for the natives. Western foreigners are mysterious, physically different from Japanese in obvious ways, and every time an American or a Brit or Australian enters an electronics store to inquire about a product, the Japanese staff get a little nervous. In addition to being fearful they'll be called upon to use English (even if we are speaking fluent Japanese to them), from the point of view of straight-laced Japanese people, we foreigners are awfully good at doing things no one expects, which is a source of stress for them. Often the first (and sometimes only) contact a Japanese person will have with a Westerner over the course of their lives is the happy, outgoing eikaiwa (English conversation) teacher they had in school, and often the image of Westerners is defined by this first cross-cultural exchange. As a result, the Japanese generally go through life expecting foreigners to be happy, energetic and positive, expressing their emotions openly...which pretty much matches my own personality.

Japanese feel some anxiety when it comes to dealing with gaijin.

Anime Expo 2013 Wrap-up Post

Well, we're done with another Anime Expo, and this one was loads of fun as usual. We greeted many fans who stopped by our booth to say hello, sold a ton of our English-translated eroge and visual novels, moved more than a few pairs of shimapan striped panties ("for cosplay or other uses"), and sold a bunch of our popular anime grab bags. Our customers were happy to receive our trademark J-List pocket tissues, as well as the new J-List anime glasses, which you can also get when you make an online order shipped from our Japan or San Diego offices. Thanks to everyone who came by!

At the show, we had an official panel where we introduced our wonky little company to fans and also made some announcements of visual novels we'll be releasing in English. These included the future release of the Steins;Gate PC edition; the upcoming third volume in the Lightning Warrior Raidy yuri dungeon crawling series; Shiny Days, the gorgeous sequel (prequel actually) to the smash hit game School Days; the fandisc for My Girlfriend is the President; two very ecchi new games by Code Pink; and a gorgeous witch training game Little Witch Romanesque. The panel was a big success, except for a snafu with the convention staff that caused us to be given a much smaller room than in previous years (sorry again to the fans who were not able to get into the room). You can read the complete list of newly licensed visual novels on the JAST USA development blog, and if you want to get your hands on our newest game catalog, which features one of three new posters on the back, just make an order from our Japan or San Diego offices and we'll send you one with your order.

Anime Expo is my favorite fan event for various reasons. First, everyone is in the room is the same "tribe," largely on the same wavelength about anime and Japan despite the fact that some may be passionate about Touhou while others are off in an entirely different genre, cosplaying Attack on Titan. (Some of them might just be a little punch-drunk.) While I also love more general shows like the San Diego Comic-Con, the reality is that only a small subset of the attendees there are focused on Japan and its various forms of popular culture, and as a result many of the people who stop by our booth there have no idea what that "fat gray kitty" is (his name is Totoro, he's not a kitty). During the show I had some deep discussions with friends and fans who tagged along after our panel on the most existential of questions, how to properly pronounce names like Evangelion and Madoka Magica. In Japanese, both names contain a hard 'g' sound, Evan[geh]lion Madoka Ma[gi]ka, despite the tendency for the human brain to apply the rules of English spelling and soften the 'g' sound. This one reason it's a good idea to make sure you learn the hiragana and katakana writing systems, even if that's all the Japanese language you ever study: it will help you read and pronounce the Japanese you see more accurately, and it's also kind of cool to learn to read a writing system other than the English alphabet. We have great Japanese study tools like the Moekana and White Rabbit flashcard sets in stock if you want to browse them.

Anime Expo was a blast, with lots of cool fans; fans were happy to see Steins;Gate is coming.

Do You Want Some Anime Glasses?

Remember, we've got a new set of J-List Anime Glasses designs for 2013, which are free with any purchase! When we brought out the first set of fun cardboard glasses two years ago, our customers loved them, and now we've got a whole new set of glasses for you with awesome new designs. You'll receive one random set of anime glasses with each order (either shipping from the U.S. or Japan), while supplies last of course.