The history of the Pocky company and Japan's tiny land mass

Hello again from Japan, the home of such products as Mapple (map book), Crunky (crunchy chocolate) and Quickle Wiper (floor cleaner).

Since Japan is such a small country, with half the population of the U.S. yet only 1/25 the area, people here have to be somewhat innovative when it comes to how they use their land. I see this smart use of space quite often: building a baseball field in the floodplain of a river or creating gas stations with pumps built into the roof, with a long hose reaching down to the car. They also have these funky tall parking garages that are basically giant elevators which store cars vertically. Graves are very space-saving, too: a small plot can hold the bones and ashes of dozens of family members. Think of old castles or temples and Kyoto might come to mind, but the culture of Gunma, where J-List is based, is ancient, too. Gunma has the highest number of "kofun," or burial mounds, which were built between the 3rd and 7th century, before kanji and Buddhism entered Japan through Korea. Since it's forbidden to build on land occupied by a burial mound, the Japanese often erect parks around them, which provide children with a fun place to play while instilling them with a sense of their country's past, another innovative way to make use of land.

The history of Japanese companies can be interesting. One famous company is Glico, purveyors of Pocky, Pretz and many other delicious snacks from Japan. At the start of the 20th century, the son of Riichi Ezaki died suddenly. Saddened, Ezaki went a seaside fishing village where he happened upon some children playing. They were exceptionally healthy, which caused Ezaki to look into the reason for their good health. He determined that a compound found in oysters called glycogen was a factor, and in 1919 he resolved to found a company that would manufacture sweets for Japan's children that would improve their health, to be named Glico, after the glycogen compound. The now-famous image of the Glico Running Man was adopted because one piece of candy contains the energy you need to run a 100 meter dash. He had trouble gaining traction against the other two large confectionery companies, Meiji and Morinaga, until he thought of an idea: package an omake (oh-MAH-kay) or small toy with the candy, which greatly increased sales. Pocky was created in 1965 and was in instant hit. The name comes from the sound the biscuit sticks make when broken (pokki!). J-List sells over 100 varieties of snacks including all flavors of Pocky (at least until Japan's humid summer arrives, when we temporarily remove them from stock).

J-List loves to bring you hard-to-find products from Japan, and we've been happy to make the DVD films of Hayao Miyazaki available to you over the years, like My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Spirited Away. Now there's a great new Ghibli DVD that features a documentary of the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, interviews with the creators, and shows the actual locations in Europe that the director has based his films in. The DVD is fully subtitled so you can enjoy all the great information. The disc is region 2, another great excuse to get a region free DVD player if you don't have one already ^_^

The nature of competition in Japan, and all about Japanese bathing

One unique aspect of Japan is how many industries have to deal with competition from the government, which interferes with the private sector in ways that wouldn't be acceptable in the U.S. When you think of your local post office, you probably think of stamps and mail delivery, but the government-run Japanese Post Office does a lot more: it's the world's largest bank with some $3.2 trillion in cash deposits in postal savings accounts. The Post Office has so much money sloshing around that it uses it to build subsidized entertainment facilities around the country, like hotels and a giant sprawling indoor pool near Nikko which never has anyone using it. It also sells life insurance, something that's totally unnecessary in Japan, a country with a strong and competitive insurance industry. Prime Minister Koizumi aims to convert the Japan Post Corporation into a private company, hopefully repeating the successful privatizations of the Kokutetsu railroad monopoly (now known as the six JR companies), Japan's largest tobacco company JT (once operated directly by government, ugh) and Japan's old telephone company (now known as NTT, one of Japan's most vibrant businesses).

My son just finished with his final tests, his last of the third grade. He did really well in his science final, only missing one question, which was about the shadow cast by a stick in the ground. Over the course of several hours, the position of the shadow moves -- why? My son, who is no fool, wrote that the Earth is moving, but he was disappointed to find this marked wrong, however -- "the sun moves in the sky" was what was in the textbook, and that's what he was expected to write. We took the teacher to task on this, which surprised him, since questioning educators is seldom done in Japan. In the end, I think we taught our son an important lesson about not automatically accepting what he hears.

I love Japanese public baths (sento) and hot springs (onsen, pronounced OWN-sen), and take my kids almost every week -- sometimes twice a week. Public baths hail back from the Edo period when people didn't have private baths in their homes, and had to go to community facilities to bathe. Volcanic hot springs also have a long history, and popular onsen towns like Kusatsu, located in the mountains near J-List, have been in use as resort towns for hundreds of years. Once my son saw a young boy in the bath and asked me why he had a blue bruise on his rear end. This is the Mongolian Spot (mokohan in Japanese, "the Old Spot of Mongol"), a blue bruise-like spot which is found on Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian children, including my own kids when they were young. The spots go away when the children reach age five or so. In Japanese, the word for someone who is still a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn is ao ni-sai (AH-oh NEE-sai, "still blue 2-year-old"), which probably has something to do with this spot.

White Day in Japan, and the many ways to learn Japanese

Today is White Day, the day that Japanese confectioners and retailers have decreed that men give a return gift (o-kaeshi) to women who gave them chocolate on Valentines Day, one month ago. While white chocolate is a favorite, other popular items include candy, cute character goods that say "thank you" and more. As with many aspects of gift giving in Japan, there's often a lot of giri (obligation, what you're expected to do) and very little kimochi (feeling, what you earnestly want to do), so that there's a built-in falseness to the whole thing -- but of course, no one is supposed to take a day like White Day too seriously. If you're a man and got some chocolate from a woman on Valentines Day, be sure and give her something today to show your gratitude!

Ever since the first steam locomotive started operating between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872, trains have been a large part of Japan's transportation system and economy. Rail lines run everywhere in Japan, and if you live in a large city, it's usually quite easy to forego owning a car entirely. During my time as a teacher, I've taught English to many young people who were huge train otakus, who loved to travel around Japan to take photos of and ride on famous trains, like the famous Yufuin no Mori express in Kyushu, the Tsubasa, the only shinkansen that can also run on normal tracks, or the Nozomi 800, the fastest train in Japan. Like all boys here, my son went through a phase when he decided that he loved trains more than anything else, and I had a lot of fun learning all the names of Japan's famous trains with him. Our favorite one of all is the double-decker MAX, which stands for "multi amenity express" in case you were wondering.

There are many approaches to learning a foreign language -- the Army Method (stress on learning through memorization), the Grammar Translation Method (learning a language by parsing its grammar), the Communicative Method (leaning by speaking and listening in the target language), and the Natural Approach (trying to replicate the steps that children go through when they learn a language). Then there's the "get attention" method, which I'll label the Social Feedback Method to give it a proper name. Basically, you learn whatever vocabulary and phrases that will make you the life of the party among your new linguistic group, be it cute ways to begin conversations with attractive Japanese girls or interesting phrases that will amuse people around you. I have a friend who worked his way across Asia using this method, learning just enough of the local languages to be social and have fun with his hosts, and he swears by it. For myself, I learned Japanese at the excellent language program at SDSU, and added to my studies by reading manga, transcribing songs to memorize them for singing at karaoke bars, and making friends at the Japanese-American Friendship Club at our university.

What the month of March means to the Japanese

The month of March means different things to different people. In Japan it's a time of partings (wakare no kisetsu), the end of the school year, when young people who are going on to different schools make teary farewells to their friends. It's also the time of year that drivers have to endure Japan's "road construction hell," as local governments hurry to use up their budgets before the end of Japan's fiscal year. Everywhere I drive, I know I'll face constant delays as roads are torn up and put down again, in an eternal cycle of government-sponsored inefficiency. The main problem is a law that dictates that 100% of the taxes collected on cars and gasoline must be used to build more roads, with no exceptions, despite the fact that Japan already has plenty of roads that work just fine. It's a major political issue here, with most of the old guard in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party supporting the ongoing wasting of resources because of effective lobbying by construction companies. Japan spends a whopping $9 billion a year on its roads, an amazing sum considering that the U.S. spends $11 billion yet is 25 times as large. The idea that Japan's leaders are so ineffectual that they can't fix this terrible situation makes me grieve for my adopted country.

Besides Akihabara, Japan's electronics and "otaku culture" hub, there are other parts of Tokyo that are popular with foreign visitors. Akasaka is one such place, the home of one of the most famous Shinto shrines in the area, the Hie Shrine. A fun corner of the city that sports hundreds of shops and restaurants, it's a good place to visit if you're coming to Tokyo. Another famous shrine is Meiji Jingu, a beautiful and solemn island oddly located in Harajuku, a hip playground for the FRUiTs generation. Finally, one of my favorite spots in the Kanto area is Kamakura, a small city south of Yokohama that features the second largest statue of Buddha in Japan (the largest is in Nara). The capital of Japan during the Kamakura Era (1185-1333), the city is just beautiful, with many fabulous shrines and temples to explore. Make sure you ride the Enoshima train line, an old-style train from the early Showa era that's as famous as the cable cars in San Francisco.

Japanese love to wear American brands on their clothes, because sporting corporate logos for U.S. companies is very kakko ii (cool). Now you can do the reverse, with our latest wacky Japanese T-shirt, an elegant parody design based on the "i-Mode" mobile telephone service of NTT Docomo -- one of the most famous corporations in Japan -- with the kanji for the love (pronounced the same, ai) in place of the capital "I." We've got a beautiful gold men's shirt and stylish pink-and-sparkly fitted tee for girls. Gaijin usually seem to be especially fascinated with the kanji character for "love" (which is one of the most complex and aesthetically beautiful characters), and we hope you like this new original design.

Reflections on Japanese TV, and the history of Loose Socks

One of our favorite Japanese TV shows is Trivia no Izumi (the Fountain of Trivia, a title that sounds similar to the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome), which brings totally unnecessary knowledge to viewers every Wednesday night on Fuji TV. Originally a late-night show with a large cult following, the show hit it big when it was moved to "golden time" (9 pm), reaching incredibly high ratings of over 20%. The trivia they present is always fun and always useless. Which Japanese snack would world-class pastry chefs in Paris choose as the most delicious? (Lotte "March of the Koalas") How fast does a piece of fingernail fly when you cut your nails? (39 km/hour) If you shot a Smith & Wesson .44 bullet at a samurai sword, which would win? (the sword cut the bullet in half every time, until they used a machine gun on it) Every week a panel of celebrities that includes popular swimsuit idol Megumi, half-Japanese/half-British actress Becky, and of course the Chairman, aka famous comedian Tamori, gives points to each bit of trivia by pressing buttons that make a sound like "hey!" (but in reality, heeh is a sound that Japanese say when they're told something thought-provoking, meaning, "You don't say?"). Incredibly, the show is showing in the U.S. as Hey! Spring of Trivia on Spike TV on Thursdays at 10 pm ET, and we recently caught our first episode on video. My son was thrilled to see the show in English, although he said the voice-overs were a little dasai (dorky). The official page for the show is here.

Another program we often watch is NHK's Eigo de Shaberanaito ("I've Got to Speak English"), an interesting show that helps Japanese trying to learn English stay motivated. Every week, actress Yumiko Shaku and (slightly annoying) American talent Patrick Harlan take up various topics related to language learning, usually featuring Japanese guests interviewing stars from the U.S. like Jodie Foster, Julie Andrews and Matt Damon. Because the show is produced by NHK, they're able to get many interesting guests, like former undersecretary of the U.N. Yasushi Akashi, and Natsuko Toda, the "Queen of Subtitles" who translates all the top American films into Japanese. It's always an interesting program for anyone interested in learning a language.

Loose socks are the bulky, oversized socks that are worn by millions of high school girls in Japan every day, which look sort of like leg warmers to the untrained eye. They were invented by Akira Tokita, the "God of Socks" whose created the trend at the beginning of the 90's, and they were an instant hit. The socks are so bulky and heavy that they'd fall down unless held up some way, so Japanese use water-based glue called "socks glue" to glue the top of the socks to their legs. J-List sells 70 and 120 cm length versions of these socks, which are very warm in addition to being a cool pop culture item from Japan. We've even got socks glue.

Japanese dentists and the food people in Japan eat

We woke up to a world of white this morning, as the Kanto area (the flat plain where Tokyo is located) got its third snowfall of the season. It was actually only a few centimeters of snow, but it managed to cause a minor panic, since snow is rare enough here that people aren't used to it. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you like snow like I do), most of it has melted away.

Ask any gaijin living in Japan about dentists here, and you'll be sure to hear some complaints. While Japanese dentists are good at fixing teeth, they're famous for making you come back dozens of times to finish your dental work, instead of getting it out of the way in a few visits. I've finally finished having three teeth worked on, which somehow managed to take 18 months. 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. Like men whose job it is to stand by the road and wave a flashlight to let you know there's road construction going on and NHK employees who knock on millions of doors to collect the $20 monthly fee from households in person, Japanese dentists are an unfortunate symbol of Japan's lack of efficiency in some areas.

Since I'm very busy with J-List, I don't get time to watch television as much as I'd like, especially the news. One show I try to catch on weekends is Broadcaster, a show which encapsulates the news events of the past week by ranking how many minutes of coverage each received. Last week's show included such news items as Princess Aiko (the 3-year-old daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito) learning how to ski for the first time; the father of sumo wrestler Takanohana's battle with esophageal cancer; the tragic suicide of South Korean actress Lee Eun-joo; the latest on Michael Jackson, which is followed carefully here; and all the current goings on with maverick Livedoor president Takafumi Horie, whose recently separated wife was found working in a supermarket for $6 an hour to make ends meet despite the fact that her husband is incredibly wealthy.

When I came to Japan to live, I knew about the famous foods like sushi, sashimi and ramen, but I had a lot to learn about the finer points of Japanese home cooking. As with other Asian countries, noodles are eaten frequently, with soba (thin grey noodles) and udon (fat white noodles) being the most popular. Many dishes commonly served at home aren't Japanese at all, such as curry rice, a version of the mild, thick curry brought here by the British, or spaghetti, really good with tuna fish and asparagus on top (my Japanese father-in-law can't eat spaghetti because it looks too strange to him). A lot of Chinese foods like chow mein (yakisoba) and fried wonton dumplings (gyoza, known in English as "pot stickers") have been a part of Japanese kitchens for so long they're not thought of as having come from anywhere else. Soy-based dishes are also very popular, with miso soup, tofu and natto at the top of the list. While the Japanese have come to eat quite a lot of bread and even adapt it in interesting ways (curry-pan, bread with curry inside), when all is said and done, rice is a big part of the their daily life. The basic unit of "fast food" in Japanese homes is the rice ball, called omusubi or onigiri, basically a triangle shaped ball of white rice with nori on the outside and different good stuff (ume, salmon) inside. We have some cool new products celebrating Japanese food on the site today -- check them out.

Japanese Universities, and the Michael Dell of Japan

There are two types of universities in Japan, public (operated on a national or prefectural level) and private, and as you'd expect, public universities cost a lot less to attend than private ones. One big difference between Japan and the U.S. is that the top schools in the States are venerable private institutions like Harvard and Princeton, which cost a lot to get into. In Japan, however, the most popular universities are public ones like Osaka or Kyoto University, because the education is so much cheaper, and getting into one is such an accomplishment that it brings a halo you carry with you all your life. In the Japanese test-based system, the universities with the most applicants are the hardest to get into because of increased competition, and it can take years of preparation to get ready for your test. Although the system of "entrance exam hell" certainly has a lot of drawbacks, one big benefit is that it's almost completely meritocratic -- only students who study very hard will be able to get into the legendary Tokyo University, regardless of how much money your family has. There are probably some big changes in store for Japanese universities over the new decade or so. First of all, Japan's national universities are increasingly being administered as private institutions, forcing them to be more creative and competitive if they want to survive into the future. Also, despite the sharp drop-off of children in Japan, new public universities are being constructed every year.

Every country is unique, and each country's economy is unique, too. While the multi-tiered distribution system Japan is famous for has gone through a lot of changes over the past decade, resulting in the removal of many layers of unneeded distribution, the route that goods take from producer to consumer can still be hard for Westerners to comprehend. While efficiency has increased greatly during Japan's painful decade-long quasi-recession, many products, such as toys, books, CDs and computer software are still bought and sold through a strict system of distribution that adds significantly to the price to the end user. The distribution system for beer and alcohol is also very inefficient, with products changing hands two or three times before they come to the small liquor shop that my wife's parents run. In industries where inefficient middlemen have been removed, allowing, say, Hitachi to sell its products directly to electronics stores rather than through several distributors, I've noticed some other problems. Without a third party between supplier and reseller, the manufacturers are able to put restrictions on shops that would probably not be legal in other countries, such as forcing them to buy huge amounts of stock, requiring that they purchase unpopular products if they want to get the popular ones, and so on.

There's another difference between Japan and the rest of the world -- hostile takeovers of companies just aren't done here. But that's what up-and-coming Internet provider Livedoor is attempting as it makes a bid for controlling interest in Nippon Broadcasting and through its holdings, Fuji TV, the most influential television network in Japan. The brainchild of Japanese whiz kid Takafumi Horie (ho-REE-eh), a Michael Dell-like persona who started his first company in his Tokyo University dorm, Livedoor has been buying Internet startups left and right as it elbows its way into the business headlines. Horie, whose nickname is Horiemon (ho-REE-eh-mon) in parody of the anime character Doraemon, is famous for working alongside his employees at a desk that's placed in a long row of identical desks, the Japanese version of a cubicle farm. He also doesn't even own a suit -- my wife hates him because he's a multi-millionaire yet dresses worse than I do.

Bullying in Japanese schools, and the giving of gifts

One of the biggest problems facing Japanese schools is ijime (EE-gee-may), or bullying, when a group of kids gangs up on weaker kids to torment them. The bullying can be open, like hiding a person's shoes so he can't go home or putting a sharp push-pin on his chair for him to sit on, or more subtle and psychological, like group ignoring. Every school in every country probably has some of this going on, but there are special reasons why ijime is so bad in Japan. First of all, students stay in the same classroom all year long -- teachers come for one hour to teach, then leave, but the students are always together. Also, the concept of counselors who listen to students' problems is quite alien here. My own daughter, who stands out because she looks very American, has been the target of more than a few incidents of bullying by bigger kids, so my wife and I are always trying to come up with proactive ways to handle problems. Hurdle, an anime movie that discusses the causes of ijime with kids, is playing in Japan right now, and we took my daughter to see it. Seeing the story of boy from Yokohama who moves to a rural city, only to be picked on by the local kids because he is so different, was a very moving one, and I hope that the film helps bring about changes for the better in schools here.

Gift giving is a highly developed custom in Japan, and there are many subtle rules about how gifts are exchanged. Gifts are given at happy events, such as at the birth of a child, when a new house is built, or when someone gets out of the hospital after an illness. The money that guests take to weddings -- $200 per person and up -- is also part of this gifts-as-congratulations system. Gifts are sometimes given to those who are helping you in some way, such as from parents to juku (private school) teachers who want extra attention paid to their children, although it's against the rules for licensed teachers, doctors and politicians to accept such gifts. Whenever you receive a gift from someone, it's customary to give them o-kaeshi, a return gift that's worth approximately half the amount of what you received. A major time for gift-giving is in August and December, when people and companies exchange seasonal gifts, everything from soy sauce to canned coffee to frozen lobster. Re-Ment, the amazing company that makes miniature versions of Japanese food, has a new series that captures the spirit of Japanese seasonal gift-giving with miniatures of popular gifts given in Japan, rendered in every detail (right down to the cardboard box). Full sets are in stock now!

All about Japanese girl & guy idols

One of the more interesting aspects of Japan is the effect Japan's "idol culture" has on everyday life. You can't turn on the television or go into a CD store without coming into contact with Japan's various idols, which are also known as "talents" (a generic term for a popular actor/singer/comedian). Whether it's Yuko Ogura appearing in the new commercial for Georgia Coffee Morning Shot, Harumi Nemoto guest-starring on my son's favorite show in which people have to live for a month on just $100, or a cardboard cut-out of Aya Ueto selling the latest Panasonic products in an electronics store, the culture of "cuteness" that Japan has refined to an exact art is a major source of pop culture imagery in Japan. The idea of stars being pre-packaged for national consumption is often hard for Westerners to accept, but Japan's idol world is refreshingly open and honest about how the popularity of top stars is created. Resistance is futile when you live in Japan -- no matter how you try to resist, your eyes will lock on to one pretty face or another, and you'll soon belong to them.

Male idols are big business in Japan, too, and the primary force behind this profitable corner of the industry is Johnny's Entertainment, the management agency started by Johnny Kitagawa to promote male stars. In the same way that the "Komuro Family" of music producer Tetsuya Komuro -- the man responsible for such English lyrics as "Body Feels EXIT" and "Get Chance and Luck" -- defined a chunk of the 1990s with singers that he discovered, Johnny's has created a slew of popular male stars that have universal popularity. The list of Johnny's-kei (Johnny's affiliated) JPOP bands include V6, TOKIO, the oddly-named Kinki Kids, a duo who hail from the Kinki region, where Osaka is located, and SMAP, whose lead singer Takuya Kimura is regularly voted the sexiest man in Japan. (He did the voice of Howl in Howl's Moving Castle, which matches his personality quite well.) The planners at Johnny's have made careful use of the popularity of yaoi in Japan today, promoting stars that are very close to the image of bishounen ("beautiful boy") that are especially popular with female fans.

Japan's in a minor uproar over an incident in which a deranged man with a baseball bat started chasing police officers, who ran for their lives while cameras watched on. Then man then took over their police car and tried to start it before being overpowered and taken away. The comical image of police fleeing the man they're supposed to capture was very humiliating, and Prime Minister Koizumi criticized the police force openly, asking for a review of all training procedures.

Japanese period dramas and Yoshitsune, and how to say "Nostalgic"

Hello from J-List! We're hearing the first rumblings of Spring here in Japan, a time that's called Haru Ichiban. On the Kanto plain that means strong, dusty winds blowing everywhere as high pressure and low pressure zones fight it out for control of the skies. The J-List office is shaking so much it seems like another earthquake, but it's just the wind outside.

When I was a boy, I lived for a year in New Zealand, and one of the things I remember about my time there was watching historical dramas on the BBC about the kings and queens of England. Japan also has a strong tradition of reliving history through jidai-geki (period dramas). Last year, everyone was buzzing about Shinsengumi, the popular NHK drama that detailed the struggle between the old Shogunate and the rebellious reformers who would eventually go on to modernize Japan. The new show everyone's watching now is Yoshitsune, about the charismatic young warrior Yoshitsune (1159-1189) who lived during the Kamakura Period, as told in the Tale of the Heike, one of Japan's historical records. One episode I watched featured a famous battle between young Yoshitsune and a 7-foot-tall warrior monk Benkei on Kyoto's Gojo Bridge. Yoshitsune beat the larger Benkei by whacking him in the shin, and to this day that part of the body is known as Benkei no Nakidokoro or Benkei's Crying Place -- kind of like a Japanese version of the Achilles Heel.

The subject of Japanese group dynamics never ceases to amaze me. In general, the Japanese tend to prefer harmony to confrontation, and getting along is important to people here. From time to time, I've noticed that Japanese will often have a spirited discussion about a subject that everyone already agrees on, with each person adding comments that echo what everyone has already said. I often see my wife's mother doing this with her obatarian (middle-aged female) friends -- they'll be debating, say, the shortcomings of the woman that someone's son has married, with each person throwing in their opinion even though they are all already in perfect agreement with each other. Another odd tendency I've seen is the putting down of family members in front of others as a way of showing humility, since politeness in Japanese is based on raising up the status of those you want to be polite to while pushing your own status lower. For example, my mother-in-law might say to her friends that our kids are stupid (baka) and never study. We've had to go out of our way to forbid this kind of negative talk in our house.

Expensive to live in Japan, but expensive to die too

Japan can be an expensive place to live, but it can also be an expensive place to die, as well. In a crowded country like Japan, it can be very difficult to purchase a burial plot and gravestone for your future resting place, especially in the cities where population is concentrated. Many people are eager to find rest in famous places, and the most popular burial sites have been transformed into "brand graveyards" which fetch incredibly high prices, like Aoyama Reien, a graveyard dating back from the Edo Period which will set you back an incredible $1.1 million for an average-sized family plot -- but since there are 61 applicants for every available space, good luck getting in. There are even "grave mansions" or buildings that are basically multi-level apartments for the dead (the word mansion has come to mean a high-rise apartment in Japanese). When it comes time for haka-mairi, or making a visit to your family grave, you press a button and the box storing your family's remains and gravestone is delivered by a computer-controlled hydraulic system.

Graves work a little differently than they do in the U.S., too. For one thing, a grave is really part of a household, and there's only one for the whole family. When a woman gets married and comes to live with her husband, she's erased from her father's family register and moved to her husband's. When she dies, she'll be buried in her new family's grave (unless she gets divorced), and a famous if old-fashioned way to propose to a woman is to say "Let's be buried in the same grave together" (onaji ohaka ni hairimasho). Part of the complex system of customs that kick in when a person dies involves cremation, and in each city there is a municipal crematorium to handle this important job. When a person's body is cremated, it's common to include items that were important to the person, such as a beloved book, photographs of loved ones or his favorite brand of cigarettes, so that the ashes are mingled together; some items, such as golf clubs, can't be cremated because they give off dioxin when burned. After the cremation, the bones are removed using long chopsticks by family members and placed in a special box, with the nodo-botoke or Buddha-of-the-throat, the Adam's Apple, removed last. Recently, the graves of famous people are being outfitted with strong locks to foil thieves who seek to steal the bones or ashes of their favorite celebreties. Yasu's family grave has had pieces chipped off -- because his grandfather fought in World War II and came back safe, his grave is considered to be lucky, so people chip off pieces so they can take some of the good luck with them.

When you learn a language, some things are hard and others are easy. To study Spanish or French, for example, I'd have to deal with feminine and masculine nouns, which may be difficult for English speakers. Poor Japanese have to memorize the names of the twelve months in English, but in Japanese, the months are very easy to learn: just use the number (ichi, ni, san) and the character for moon (gatsu). The Japanese get their revenge for this linguistic ineqality though: in English, we use the simple words "wear" or "put on" for clothes and other items, but the Japanese have several different words for this concept. For anything going on your legs or feet (shoes, pants, etc.) the verb for to wear is haku. For shirts or dresses, the verb is kiru (the "ki" from this verb is part of the word kimono, which really just means "thing that you wear"). Put something on your hands, like a ring or gloves, and you use suru (which means "to do"), and anything worn on the head is kaburu. Gaijin invariably get these words wrong, to the quiet amusement of everyone around us.

Right wingers in Japan, and what is the most popular anime?

Hello all. I'm running later than usual because my dentist needed to fix my teeth today, Wednesday, rather than Tuesday, my normal dentist day. The good news is, the two plastic caps are off my teeth and I've got real ceramic teeth that look great. Those guys in Sweden know how to make teeth!

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

For the past week we've been treated toa little freedom of speech, Japan-style: the local right-wing group, angry for some reason at our city's major, has been driving their loudspeaker truck up and down the street calling for his resignation and generally howling bloody murder. By unhappy chance, we live right next to the mayor, which means we've gotten to hear all the ruckus. Exercising one's freedom of speech by broadcasting through loudspeakers is a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, and right wingers (closely associated with the yakuza) can often be seen rolling through Japanese cities playing patriotic World War II songs to the general amusement/annoyance of everyone. During election season, politicians spend hours giving speeches from cars with loudspeakers mounted on top, and in Tokyo, political groups opposing anything from higher taxes to Japan's participation in Iraq park their speaker trucks on a streetcorner and voluminously share their political views with everyone else.

I receive a lot of questions from people interested in living in Japan someday. While it certainly is difficult to come to a country as different from the U.S. or Europe as Japan is, it's certainly doable if you are determined. Many foreigners come to Japan on a tourist visa (3 months) and use that time to look for a job. When you find one, you have to leave the country once to process your working visa then re-enter on that visa -- most gaijin travel to nearby South Korea and do some sightseeing. Alternately, citizens of some lucky nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand can come on "working holiday" visas instead. Westerners are usually shocked by the difficult system of "key money" you must pay when renting an apartment. Between a security deposit (2 months), a finders-fee (paid to the company that got the apartment for you), first months' rent and "thank you money" (a move-in bonus for your landlord), it can cost $2000-4000 just to move into a small apartment. Of course, any discussion of how to work in Japan is precluded by the fact that to get a working visa at all, you must have a degree from a four-year university. So whenever young people interested in Japan ask me how they can come here, I invariably advise them to find a good, well-rounded university and get a degree -- do that, and you'll be surprised how easily the rest can fall into place.

The most popular anime in Japan isn't Inu Yasha and it isn't Naruto. The anime Japanese identify as their favorite year-in and year-out is Doraemon (do-RAH-ey-mone), the blue "robot of cat type" who came who came from the 22nd century to modern-day Japan to save his friend Nobita-kun, a bit of a slacker, from marrying a different girl than history intended. Together they have many adventures, usually using the many magic items that Doraemon carries in his fourth-dimensional pocket, like the Dokodemo Door ("anywhere door") that lets him teleport to any place, a "small light" that shrinks anything it shines on, and his trusty time machine, the cause of many Back to the Future-style plot twists. The current staff of the long-running series including legendary Nobuyo Oyama, the voice of Doraemon since 1973, is due to retire soon, ending an era for Japanese fans of the show.

Valentines Day in Japan, and dialects

Hello all. Finished the update a little late today. I'm in a hurry to get home (see below for the reason why) so I'm rushing.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

Hello and Happy Valentines Day from Japan! Today is the day that men of all ages look forward to, when they get chocolate from wives, girlfriends or daughters. My son and I caught the smell of something delicious cooking in the kitchen last night, and we're both looking forward to eating some hand-made chocolates when we get home. There are many customs that have to do with gift giving in Japan, and one of them is that you must always give a gift in return (o-kaeshi) when you receive something. March 14th has been designated White Day by Japan's chocolate-and-gift industry, the day that men can return the favor to women who gave them chocolate on Valentines Day by giving them something in return. If you've got someone special to give a gift to, why not consider a J-List gift certificate? It's not chocolate, but it's almost as good.

In the same way that English spoken in New York or Boston can be quite different from California or Texas, the dialects used in the various parts of Japan can be quite unique, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Japanese tend to be less mobile than Americans, often living all their lives in the same region. Standard Japanese is defined as the dialect spoken in Tokyo, and Tokyo Japanese corresponds to "boring white guy English." Far more colorful is Kansai-ben, the dialect of the Osaka area, spoken by entertainers in Japan for the same reason that Jerry Seinfeld wouldn't be Jerry Seinfeld without his New York accent. Other famous dialects include Okinawa-ben with its unique intonation, the elegant-sounding Kyoto-ben, and Tohoku-ben, the impossible-to-understand Japanese spoken in the cold land north of Tokyo. Another well-defined dialect is "gaijiin-ben," the oddly over-intoned Japanese spoken by foreigners, which sounds cute to Japanese ears. It's common for DJs and TV announcers to speak with "gaijin" accents in order to sound cool to young people, and foreigners speaking oddly-accented Japanese are a staple in TV commercials.

When a person learns a foreign language, they tend to be very creative in that language because they lack the inhibitions that native speakers have developed over time. After all, the famous Swatch brand name was created by Swiss who didn't realize that it sounded dorky in English until it was a household name. I've seen this tendency to be creative using English time and time again in Japan, for example in the many products that use English to invoke an emotional response, like Melty Kiss (chocolate fudge sold only in the winter). The other day I was eating some Triscuits which I had brought from the U.S., and offered one to my son. He turned up his nose, though, saying that he didn't want to eat a "tatami cracker" (since it looked to him like a Japanese tatami mat), which struck me as an interesting observation. Back when I taught ESL, I used a list of road signs to create a discussion with some students about what the signs might mean. One sign, a picture of a footprint over a leaf, was giving them trouble, but one student came up with a possible meaning: "Don't despise Canada." The correct answer was "nature walk" but his answer was a lot more creative.

Desserts in Japan: from Coffee Jelly to Purin and beyond

Hello all. If it isn't one thing, it's something else. Today the update is working fine, but the mail server is down with a dead hard drive. I've got our tech in Edmonton, Canada working on it now. Heh, I love the Internet -- I live in Japan, work with my staff in San Diego, have a programmer in Las Vegas and a web designer in Sweden.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

Desserts in Japan can be a little different from what you might expect. One popular dish in Japan is coffee jelly, coffee flavored gelatin that's really good with cream poured over it -- Starbucks sells a Coffee Jelly Frappe in the summer which is delicious. Another popular dessert in Japan is purin, basically egg custard flan with caramel sauce on top, popular in Spain and Mexico. If you've ever seen that yellow/brown dog character from Sanrio named Purin and wondered what that was, he represents flan and his brown hat is the caramel sauce. Nata de Coco is a well-known dessert in the Philippines with firm, chewy squares made from coconuts, and it's popular in Japan, really good in yogurt. Cake is big here too, and most cake shops are small, highly professional outfits who bake fabulous delicacies and sell them for $5 a piece (you almost never buy a whole cake in Japan, it'd be too expensive). Finally, there are many kinds of ice cream in Japan, from matcha (green tea) and azuki (sweet Japanese beans) to variations on Italian gellato and "soft cream" (what soft-serve ice cream is called here). We even have a 31 Flavors in our small city.

It's well known that the Japanese can be quite group oriented, with more awareness of in-group (uchi) and out-group (soto). A lot of this seems to come about through the Japanese education system, which exists not only to teach information to students, but also to create Japanese citizens who can all identify with society on the same level, more or less. In my schools in California, each student had a different schedule, with math this period, English the next, and P.E. after that, so we never had all the same kids in our classes with us. But in Japan, classes are together all day long over the course of the school year, with the teacher coming and going each period, which creates a strong sense of being a part of the class as a group, although it has downsides too. Clubs are another machine for creating a sense of being in a group, and in junior high school, students are usually required to join one of the clubs at the school, even if they don't want to, as a chracter-building excercise.

Today is a holiday in Japan, Kenkoku no Hi or National Founding Day, one of many holidays that come and go without anyone realizing here what the heck they were all about. Established in the Meiji Era as the coronation day of the first Emperor of Japan, Jimmu, the day used to fall on the first day of the year according to the Lunar calendar. Commemorating the start of Japan's Imperial line was frowned upon after World War II as the wrong kind of patriotism, but the holiday was reestablished in 1966.

Manga Cafes in Japan, and the Green Tea Belt

Oopsie -- once again I see I've forgotten to post my after doing the J-List update. Sorry!

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

One type of business that's sprung up over the past decade is the manga kissa, or manga cafe, a place where you can get coffee and kill a few hours leisurely reading through all the comics on the shelves, for a per-hour fee. Manga cafes have adopted to the age of the net, offering the functionality of an Internet Cafe too, with computers and wireless LAN. I went to an interesting place the other day that offered just about all the leisure you could want: each customer was assigned a private cubicle with a comfortable chair, which contained a computer with broadband connection and Playstation in addition to a desk. There were manga to browse, DVDs to watch, and online games to play, all within my personal leisure space. It felt like something out of a William Gibson novel, come to life.

The U.S. is divided up into various sections, which reflect the industries that are strongest in those areas. Idaho is potato country, and the midwest is the grain belt that feeds most of the nation, for example. This exists in Japan, too. First of all, the northernmost island of Hokkaido (ho-KAI-doh) is the breadbasket of Japan, providing corn, potatoes, and delicious dairy products, many of which use the shape of the island to sell themselves. Niigata is famous for rice, and companies advertise the fact that they use rice from the prefecture to get customers to buy. Shizuoka Prefecture, next to Mt. Fuji, is the Green Tea capital of Japan, but there are also factories and industry there. If there's a Bible Belt in Japan, it'd have to be the westernmost island of Kyushu, which was the first to be Christianized back in the 16th century, and is home to some of the oldest churches in the country. And I've always though that the Tohoku region of Japan, the prefectures north of Tokyo on the main island of Honshu, was sort of parallel to the American South -- it's strongly identified with enka, the "country music" of Japan.

Whenever you learn a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the "bad" words -- that's just plain human nature. Most students of Japanese are surprised to find that there are almost no really bad words in the language, if you define bad as in, words that kids aren't allowed to use. Kuso (the "s" word) is used regularly on children's anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing with nary a word from their parents. Baka (stupid) is the catch-all insult, used in almost any situation (Japanese from the Kansai region say aho instead). Variations on the above two words include baka-jijii (stupid old man) and kuso-babaa (sh--ty old woman). The various applications of the "f" word don't translate into Japanese at all -- the word doesn't exist in Japanese, although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word "sekkusu." The only really "bad" word in Japanese is manko (referring to a woman's reproductive organ) -- embarrassingly close to "mango," not unlike the word election for Japanese speakers of English. This word is so bad, it's usually written with a circle or "X" or a circle in place of the middle letter. As always, exercise caution when using these words so that you don't offend any Japanese around you. For more information on Japanese terms, see the glossary (link on the left side of the J-List site).

At J-List, we love to promote interest in Japan with everything we do, including the study of the language. We have a new "reserve subscription" magazine for those who want to try their hand at reading Japanese, as well as anyone who wants to read news and topics on life in Japan: Hiragana Times. As with all our revolving magazine subscriptions, we'll send each issue to you automatically until you tell us to stop. We carry more than 30 popular anime, manga, fashion, toy and other magazines.

About the Japanese word "about," and an update on robots in Japan

Hello all. I remembered to do the blog posting this time!

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

Japan invests heavily in robotics, and it's common to see TV shows about robots, often with competitions or "robot battles" with machines created by university engineering students to promote the growth of the technology. Last night we had a special treat: a fight to the death between the original Gundam mecha and Tetsujin 28, aka Gigantor, both highly advanced remote-control robots with the ability to balance themselves and stand up if they fall over. Despite an amazing rolling attack by Tetsujin 28, the Gundam, which had the weight advantage, managed to push his opponent off the table and win the match.

The Japanese have adopted the English word "about" as an adjective meaning vague or inexact, e.g. kare wa abauto na hito desu ("he is a very vague person"). The term applies perfectly to the Japanese language itself, which can have a lot of nuances, unspoken words, and omitted meanings. Subjects are regularly left off of sentences, since the meanings are usually clear to both parties, and other parts can be omitted as well. When my wife comes into my office at 12:30 and says "Iku?" (lit. "Go?"), I know she means "Shall we go to lunch now?" Some of the vagueness of Japanese comes from the way that the kanji writing system has been grafted onto the language. As a general rule, kanji have two pronunciations, the Japanese one and one based on Chinese. The words hara-kiri and seppuku (both terms for ritual disembowelment practiced in Japan) are actually written with the same kanji, although switched around; the former is the Japanese reading and the latter is the Chinese one, but the meaning is exactly the same. Names can be very vague, too, with different ways to read them, just as there are alternate spellings for names in the West. To this day, I'm not sure if a family we've known for years is named Kimishima or Kimijima, since both are valid ways to read their kanji. My Japanese wife admits she's not sure which it is, either.

After four years, the residents of Miyakejima, an island 150 km from Japan that's little more than a massive volcano rising out of the sea, have been allowed to return to their homes. The entire population was forced to evacuate when Mount Oyama erupted in 2000, but are being returned now, despite sulfur gas still erupting from the mountain. Much of the island has been damaged by falling ash and mud, but the residents are hopeful they can rebuild and eventually reclaim their status as a popular tourist spot for the Tokyo area.

We've been asked by the chairman of the Lions Youth Exchange to mention their excellent Youth Exchange Program, which sends students aged 17-21 on international exchange programs to many countries, including to Japan. They're especially interested in finding young people who want to visit Japan because they usually have trouble filling all the slots for the Japan program. If you or someone you know is interested in applying for the Youth Exchange Program, contact the Lions Club in your area and ask for details and an application. The deadline for applications is March 31st.

Everything you wanted to know about shoes and the Japanese

Hello all. Apologies on posting this late -- I plum forgot to post the blog on Friday when I finished the J-List update, because I was in a hurry to take my kids to the onsen (Japanese hot springs) on Friday before it got too late. Boy is my face red!

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

When you learn a language, you also learn a lot about how your own brain works, especially how vocabulary words and concepts are accepted by the mind. I'm sure that most people have trouble memorizing Japanese names, as they can have a lot of letters and look strange to you if you're not used to them. As I studied Japanese I found that this got easier partially because I was able to "store" the names in my mind first as Japanese syllables, and later as kanji. If you learn a name like Matsushima, it looks like a jumble of letters, and this is very hard for the brain to fit into memory. All words in Japanese are made up of syllables, and if you're familiar with kana writing systems this name goes from ten symbols to just four: MA TSU SHI MA. Once you can read the actual kanji ("pine tree" and "island"), it's down to two, which is much easier for the brain to file away. So all you need to do to memorize a Japanese name is study the language for a couple of years. ^_^ Here's an example of how two common names look in romaji (the Roman alphabet), hiragana and kanji.

The Japanese do remove shoes before entering a house, but like other aspects of Japan, it's not quite as simple as that. Two core concepts in Japanese society are uchi (in-group, or inside a person's home) and soto (outside of the group, or outside of one's home); shoes are removed when you enter a house because you don't want to bring the dirt and mud from the outside into your uchi. Indoors, slippers are usually worn as a kind of "indoor shoes," but if crossing from a western-style room (with wood flooring, the Japanese can't get enough of wood flooring) to a tatami room, the slippers are removed, in effect making a Japanese-style room inside a modern house a kind of "uchi within an uchi" or a special place that's somehow more "inside" than the rest of the home. The toilet is also a special area, and there are special toilet slippers which you put on when you enter the bathroom, usually with little pictures of Cupid peeing printed on them. In Japanese schools, students arrive from home and put their shoes in their assigned shoes box, changing into special shoes for wearing inside the school. At my kids' school there's a place where kids must go from one building to another, and to solve the problems of having them change their shoes so often they cleverly covered the sidewalk with a roof, in effect defining the outdoor concrete walk as part of the "inside" of the two buildings. Students who play indoor sports like basketball always have two pairs of shoes: one for walking outside and a pair they only wear inside the gym.

The Japanese language has a great many kotowaza or old proverbs, recounting the wisdom of past generations. It's fun for gaijin to study these proverbs, because no one expects a foreigner to know archaic Japanese sayings. One of my favorite kotowaza is ningen banji saiou-ga-uma which means "All things are like Saiou's horse." This refers to an old Chinese story about a man named Saiou whose horse broke his leg -- making everyone say how unfortunate he was. Because he had no horse, though, he didn't have to go off to battle to be killed, so this was a good thing. The moral of the story is, when something good or bad happens, no one can say for sure if it is truly a good or bad thing in the end. Another proverb you hear a lot is ishi no ue ni mo san-nen which is translatable as "Three years sitting on a stone makes it comfortable." In other words, if you're going to try something new, keep at it for at least three years before you give up, so you know if you really liked it or not. If you want to see more Japanese proverbs, here's an interesting page.

Let's build a space station with Legos!

Hello all. All is going well here in Japan, although it's on the cold side. I finally have a good connection between my home and work, so I can get work done at home almost as efficiently as when I'm at work, which saves me hauling my cookies out to J-List at midnight to do some database work. Every little bit helps.

One of the fun aspects of living in Japan is getting to watch Japanese television, which is always entertaining. One show we like is TV Champion, which pits contestants against each other to show off their amazing talents, whether it's remodeling a home using things people have thrown away, baking bread in the shape of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, showing off knowledge of Disney trivia or creating works of art with origami. Last week's show was a special treat, with three dedicated "Lego artists" making amazing creations with Lego blocks, everything from a Phoenix with flames coming out of its tail to a 3-D aquarium. For the finale, the winner created a giant car-shaped kid's meal found at family restaurants in Japan (it's called BuuBuu Lunch, BuuBuu meaning "zoom zoom"), which opens up into a complex underground world for little Lego children to play in. My own favorite entry was a 3-D space station made with Legos, with docking ports for the Space Shuttle, working lights, and compartments where Lego spacenoids could play "zero gravity soccer." See the fabulous creations here (the page is in Japanese).

Convenience stores (combini in Japanese) are fun to check out when you come to Japan. There are dozens of convenient store chains here, dominated by Seven Eleven Japan, which created the category in 1974 by adapting an American concept with Japanese-style distribution practices. Some other popular convenience stores are Lawson, MiniStop, Circle K Japan, Sunkus (the name is a merging of "sun" and "thanks"), and Yamazaki Daily Store. Convenience stores offer many products, including Japanese-style food (bento and onigiri/rice balls), various bread products (both sliced white bread and various specialty breads like Melon Pan and Curry Pan), drinks like canned coffee and bottled tea, all manners of candy and gum, aloe yogurt, and inexpensive toys for kids. The concept of personal checks doesn't exist in Japan at all, and most people pay their monthly bills by taking them to their local convenience store where they can be read by the cash register. In the winter, I love to go to a convenience store and get niku-man ("niku-mahn"), a Chinese bun which is basically meat inside steamed bread -- yum. There are microwave burritos to be had here, but be warned: with ingredients scrambled egg & ham or pizza and sausage, they might surprise you. Like Japanese banks, convenience stores here compete by trying to appear as similar to each other as possible, and by and large, you won't find something in one chain that's not available everywhere. Recently, Japan's combini industry has been moving towards large, customer-friendly parking lots, closing stores with smaller plots of land and creating dozens of dry cleaners, used car dealerships and "late night bookstores" located in buildings that obviously used to house convenience stores.

Most people know that in Japan, shoes are removed before you enter a house. This is done because to the Japanese, there's nothing dirtier than things associated with feet. Japanese houses always have a lowered section near the front door called the genkan, a convenient place to leave your shoes so they'll be there when you need to go out again (we built one into our house in America). Japanese know that Americans leave their shoes on inside the house from watching American television, and it looks very funny to them. While watching Shrek with my son, he commented on the fact that Princess Fiona was in bed with her shoes on, something unthinkable in Japan. Inside the house, Japanese usually wear slippers, and if a gaijin goes to a Japanese person's house, the Japanese person will give him slippers to wear, even if they're much too small for his feet. Although we try to "live like Americans" when we go to the U.S., most of my Japanese family (including myself) quietly leave our shoes near the front door when back home -- it just feels to odd to walk on carpet with shoes.

Just another Manic Monday

Hello all. It's a cold Monday today, and we're all very busy at J-List, counting stock. Today is our inventory day, the last day of our fiscal year, so we had to count...everything. That means counting every gumball, every pack of Black Black, every bukkake DVD. It's quite a lot of work, although I had the update to take myself away from it.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

February is almost upon us, and that means one thing to retailers in Japan: time to push chocolate molds, cake decorations and other Valentines Day products. Valentines Day in Japan is a little different from what you might be used to: here, women give chocolate to men, and February 14th is a day when a girl who has a crush on a boy can confess her feelings while giving him some home-made chocolates, a popular plot in anime. It's also a kind of day of giving thanks, when daughters and wives give something special to fathers and husbands as a way of saying otsukare-sama (oh-TSKA-rei-sah-mah, "thanks for working so hard for us"). In companies, women often feel the pressure to give chocolate to the males in the office, which is called giri choco (obligation chocolate). Starbucks jumps on the chocolate wagon, too, this year offering a limited Marshmallow Mocha Latte, with fluffy white marshmallows shaped like hearts. Men who receive chocolate must give a gift in return on March 14, dubbed White Day. J-List stocks a large variety of delicious things to eat, including many varieties of chocolate. Check out what we've got in stock!

February is also test-taking time in Japan, when millions of Japanese take juken, the dreaded entrance exams for high schools and universities. Because high school isn't part of compulsory education, students must apply there just like universities, with competition for the better schools very fierce. For the past year, students in their third years of junior high school and high school, respectively, have been cramming information into their heads as quickly as possible, usually attending juku (night schools) to help their studies. The juken tests are a big part of the reason why Japanese are often seen as intelligent but not always able to express themselves abstractly, since memorizing raw facts is what's important on entrance exams, not how they're linked together. My wife, for example, can tell you the date the Kamakura shoganate was founded (1192), but she can't explain what its overall importance in Japanese history (it was the first time Japan was unified under a feudal military society, which planted the seeds for the structure of the Edo Period later). On the other hand, I know first hand the motivational power of having a fixed goal can have, and got a lot out of passing each level of the Japanese Ability Test, even if it was a Japanese-style test.

Although most Japanese aren't fluent in English, the English language does play a big part in daily life, a source of new vocabulary, slang, and cute names for products like "Melty Kiss." When Japanese import words from English, they often simplify them so they're easier for them to digest. An athlete in Japan is a "sportsman," and a photographer is a "cameraman," even if he's using a still camera -- very logical if you think about it. Want to enjoy driving with the wind in your hair? Buy an "open car" like the Mazda Miata, called Roadster in Japan, although 100% of Japanese think the car is called Road-Star from the way it's pronounced. In 1999, Japan passed its first automobile child seat law, requiring that all parents put their child in a "baby chair" while driving a car. Cellular phones are everywhere in Japan now, but not so long ago most people carried "pocket bells" or pagers. And in the summer, I like to eat "soft cream" (soft-serve ice cream) and enjoy a trip with the kids in a "camp car" (RV). These words are dangerous for foreigners because we get too used to using them and then go home and embarrass ourselves by pulling them out in mixed conversation.

Various ways to say "Menstruation" in Japanese

Hello all. Kind of tired today, as it's Friday and a rough one at that. But the weekend is near, so near...

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

It's been said that Japan is the only country that cares what its foreign population thinks, and I've definitely seen this to be true. Books about Japan written by foreigners who live here are often translated into Japanese and sell briskly, and the nightly broadcast of World Business Satellite wouldn't be complete without the nerdy gaijin analyst from Morgan Stanley giving his view of the recent movements in the market to round out the Japanese commentators. I've definitely seen that my own comments seem to carry a lot more weight than those of the average Japanese. Smoking is common in Japan, and it's not rare for restaurants to not even offer non-smoking sections, but two restaurants we frequent recently converted part of their space, almost definitely (according to my Japanese wife) because of polite comments I, being a foreigner, had made to the staff about cigarette smoke. Another time, I went to a restaurant and found the restroom to be a little on the smelly side. I carefully mentioned this to the manager, and when I went back a month later, I was surprised to find the restroom had been completely renovated (or as they say in Japan, "reformed"). Maybe my comment had nothing to do with this, but I have my doubts. Japanese people usually seem to hold the concept of gaman (patience, tolerance) to be a good one, stoically enduring a bad situation rather than trying to change it. Personally, I prefer to try to make the world a better place when I can...

Tokyo is the sprawling capital of Japan, home to 12 million people, a number which rises by several million during the day as people commute to their jobs from the surrounding areas. It's not a city at all, but one of Japan's 47 prefectures, although it's got a special status as a "metropolis," not unlike the District of Columbia in the U.S. Inside Tokyo there are 23 ku (wards), 26 shi (cities), 5 machi (towns) and 8 mura (villages), and my Tokyo friends tell me it's cooler to live in one of the wards since you get a phone number that starts with 03, not one of the inferior ones that start with 04. Some of the more famous areas of Tokyo are Shinjuku, a shopping and business area with many famous anime landmarks; Shibuya, a hip area for young people and home of Japan's most famous dog statue; Harajuku, where people dress like they do in FRUiTs magazine; stylish Ginza, home of Japan's only Apple Store; and Akihabara, where people come to buy electronics and eat in "cosplay cafes" (where the waitress dress in interesting costumes).

One of the interesting features of Japanese are the numbers of euphemisms they use for embarrassing things. Cute slang words are usually substituted for terms referring to various parts of the body, or else kanji characters are created to make a stand-in word, like combining the characters for "shadow" and "stem" to refer to that part of a man. There are so many ways to refer to woman's gekkei (menstruation) that I've actually never heard the normal term used even once. They include seiri (which simply means "biology"), okyakusama ga kiteiru ("I've got a guest staying with me"), hatabi ("flag day," in reference to the Japanese flag), and from a few years back, anne no hi or Anne's Day, something to do with the Diary of Anne Frank. A useful catch-all euphemism for just about anything is are (ah-rei), which literally means "that one over there" but can refer to any object you don't want to name openly. Another famous Japanese euphemism, as any anime fan knows, is the letter H, pronounced with a Japanese accent (ecchi), which refers to anything to do with sex.