On stereotypes, how and why words jump from one language to another, and trying to recall the term "gynecologist"

Stereotypes are really not good, since they cause us to make assumptions about people from other countries before we've gotten to know them. When I taught English as a Second Language, I used to do a lot of part-time work, going to people's homes to teach their kids once a week, and I was able to meet a lot of people this way. One family I taught seemed to be a pretty average Japanese family on the surface: bustling mother overly concerned about her kids' education; bright daughter; younger son who loved Pokemon; and a salaryman father who often worked late. The father surprised me one day by showing me pictures of his journey from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Siberian Railroad, which had been a lifelong dream of his, and I was immediately sorry I'd assumed he was such an average guy. On the other hand, sometimes stereotypes can be eerily accurate. When I went to Germany I asked a man to take my picture, and when he couldn't work my camera, he let out a frustrated Ach! just like a parody of a monacled villain from a 1960s spy movie. In Italy, the gentle, matronly mother of a friend of mine punctuated every third sentence with Mama mia! Japanese are famous for saying ah, so (short for ah, so desu ka? or "oh, is that so?"), and they really do say it a lot. I'm always embarrassed when I inadvertently say this in Japanese when my American family is nearby, snickering.

It's common for words to jump from one language to another, and the mechanism of how this works is quite interesting to me. The Japanese have imported many words from other languages, especially technical terms (from English) or medical terms (often from German), and some old reliable Japanese words like tempura are actually foreign in origin (from the Portuguese, in this case). People seem to reach for foreign words when a new concept comes along that current terms don't cover well; for example, the English word address (adoresu) is used to describe an email address, since the Japanese term (jusho) only refers to an actual home address. Sometimes, there seems to be an emotional element in using a term from another language, which provides a certain je ne sais quoi. For example, only the Spanish term aficionado could adequately describe Hemmingway's love of bullfighting, and only the Japanese word otaku can cover the depth of the current generation's fascination with Japanese pop culture. It's common for the meanings of words to shift slightly when imported into a new language, too. For example, English speakers use the word manga to refer to printed comics, but in Japanese the word covers animation you watch on TV as well; the English word "propose" is only used for marriage proposals in Japanese, a potentially dangerous situation for Japanese women who might suddenly blush when you start your next business presentation; and the other day I borrowed my wife's Bvlgari "body shampoo" and, reading the bottle, noticed that the French word for shower is douche, which opens up a whole world of potential linguistic confusion.

One of my favorites from the "YBIJTLW" list: "You've been in Japan too long when it takes you several seconds of deep thought to recall the first name of the President of the United States." It's true -- you'd be surprised what living in a foreign country can do to your ability to recall seldom-used information, or even remember certain English vocabulary words. Try going years without ever hearing or uttering difficult words, like "gynecologist" or "irreplaceable" -- they can be quite difficult to dredge up from the depths of your memory, even if English is your native language. It's a strange feeling, not being able to recall a word you know you should know -- you stand there with a dumb look on your face while your brain googles your hippocampus, trying to find the term. It's especially bad for English teachers in Japan, because you can go for months without hearing any English except the simplified utterances of your students, which invariably begins to affect your language. You find yourself speaking too slowly, pronouncing words too carefully (like clearly annunciating the t in party instead of making it sound like a d), and avoiding some words you know listeners won't be able to understand. Over time, this can change your English, although never fear, it's only temporary.

At J-List, we love to bring cool new things from Japan to you. Today, we're posting some really excellent items to our "traditional" section: famous Kutani Ware teacups (yunomi) and rice bowls (chawan) from Japan, from the Kutani region of Japan, famous for high-quality pottery since 1655. The new items we've got in stock will really allow you to touch and feel Japan in a totally new way. See the items now!

Next, J-List makes dozens of great anime, manga, fashion, toy, sexy idol and other magazines available to you through our revolving magazine subscription service. The magazines J-List offers are colorful, filled with beautiful pictures, and are great for people not lucky enough to live here -- and you can always cancel a subscription at any time, since they're month-to-month revolving subscriptions. Today we're adding two new subscription items for car enthusiasts: Car and Driver Japan, a great all-purpose magazine for fans of Japanese "car life"; and Car Goods Press, a special version of Goods Press that features tons of information on accessories and interior customization options for your wheels.

The Japanese and movies, learning Japanese through songs, and the famous food of Kyoto

The Japanese love movies, and watch a lot of them. Happily for gaijin like myself, they usually prefer watching U.S. movies in English with Japanese subtitles, rather than dubbed into Japanese -- quite different from countries like China, where all films are shown dubbed in the local language. Hollywood films are a staple of Japanese theatres, as you might expect, but except for big-budget productions that aim for global releases, movies often open in Japan several months after their debut in the U.S. -- for example, the Brothers Grim is just opening this week, no doubt repositioned as a Halloween film for the local market. There are always several Japanese films showing in our local theatre, such as the live-action adaption of Nana, a popular shoujo manga about two very different girls who share the same name, and the latest installment of the Masked Rider (Kamen Rider) franchise for the kids. Movies tied to anime are popular, such as the live-action version of Touch and the upcoming second Zeta Gundam movie (I've got to catch both of those). Japan's fascination with Korean film continues, with several films showing right now, including April Snow, which seems calculated to recapture the popularity of Winter Sonata. The trend towards foreign films seems to be widening -- in addition to one film in Cantonese, our local theatre is showing Heinahattu ja Vilttitossu, a film from Finland.

Succeeding at studying a language takes hard work, and one bit of advice I often offer to prospective students is, "find what floats your boat," i.e., try to come up with interests that will help move your study efforts forward a little each day. I worked hard to find Japan-related interests, including reading manga in Japanese, which gave me a constant stream of vocabulary words to absorb. Karaoke was another way to tackle the language -- it's always fun when a gaijin gets up to belt out a song in Japanese, and this feedback gave me a reason to learn more. If you're interested in learning Japanese through songs, I've chosen three excellent classics you might consider: Kampai (an emotional tear-jerker sung at weddings); Namida Sousou (a traditional Okinawan song turned into a pop hit); and the excellent Tsunami, which J-List's own Tomo is pretty good at belting out. See the songs and lyrics here.

If you ever make it to Kyoto, I hope you'll try kaiseki ryori, a memorable Japanese dining experience in which a great deal of care is taken with the presentation of the food, from the shape and color and texture to the elegant dishes everything is served on. The meal is very seasonal, and what you're served will depend on what time of year it is -- in the fall your meal with have a momiji (Japanese maple) motif, while sakura petals will adorn your food in the spring. Kaiseki meals are served in courses, similar to fine French dining, and includes sashimi, tempura, grilled fish, rice, and various other foods. To be honest, it's not uncommon to have no idea what you're putting in your mouth when you eat kaiseki, but don't worry, everything is good.

J-List carries Comic AG, an excellent magazine that brings you the best English-translated H manga ever seen outside of Japan. The publisher really has a passion for manga, and he features many of the most popular artists on J-List, faithfully translated into English. Best of all, he's recently accelerated his publishing schedule, with two issues coming out each month. We want to make it easier for fans to buy backissues of AG before they sell out, so we've created the new "AGSET" which lets you buy sets of 5 issues for a special discount. You can also get a subscription, and we'll send you each issue as they come in.

All about Commodore Perry, more on Japan's culture of "sho ga nai" and our "second house"

Hello again from Japan, the home of "rinse in shampoo" (which means shampoo that contains cream rinse in it).

One of the most dramatic events in Japanese history was the coming of Commodore Matthew Perry and his "Black Ships," who visited Japan in 1852 to demand that the country trade with the U.S. or face war. Perry and his ships forced the Tokugawa Shogun to open the country to the rest of the world, and forever burned themselves into the minds of the Japanese at the same time. Seeing how weak it was against foreign powers like the U.S. and Britain, the military government began a program of modernization with Western help, which caused the domains of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa (now Kagoshima, Yamaguchi and Kochi Prefectures) to rebel. Under the famous slogan sonno joi or "Respect the Emperor and Expel the Foreign Barbarians" (see our line of T-shirts and hoodies with this slogan on them), they defeated the shogun and created a new government around the Meiji Emperor, in effect restoring the power of the Emperor, who had been a figurehead throughout most of Japan's history. It didn't take long for the new government to realize that, oopsie, it needed help from foreign powers too, if it wanted to modernize Japan and become a strong nation that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the world.

All countries have what the Japanese call kokuminsei, sort of a national personality or set of beliefs and features seemingly shared by all members of that country, which could be thought of as the essence of what is is to be American, Japanese, etc. Whether you're from Germany, Canada, or South Korea, there's a lot that connects to you everyone else from the same place. One facet of the kokuminsei of Japanese people is their ability to endure unpleasantness by using the magic words "it can't be helped" (shikata ga nai, or more commonly, sho ga nai), not unlike the French c'est la vie or the Borg's "resistence is futile." On the one hand, shikata ga nai is a mechanism that makes society operate more smoothly, without getting snagged on every little problem or injustice, and Japan's famous lack of litigious culture is probably directly related to this mind-set. On the other hand, there are many problems with contemporary society that could be handled if they were met head-on.

One of our favorite places in Japan is Karuizawa, a resort town about two hours up the freeway from Tokyo that's quite popular -- so popular, in fact, that you have to sit in a 5-hour traffic jam to get there during the Golden Week holidays. The town features shaded streets that are great for bicycling, lots of nice restaurants and little shops, and my wife's favorite place, an American- style shopping mall with dozens of outlet stores. Well-heeled Tokyo-ites might purchase a bessou (meaning "second home") in Karuizawa and spend their weekends up there, but employees of companies can often enjoy these benefits too, as it's quite common for Japanese companies to maintain facilities that employees are free to use whenever they like. J-List rents a small "resort mansion" (a Japanese-English word meaning a glofied apartment) for our employees with a real hot springs bath, a gym, and plenty of fun mountain activities -- it's a nice place to get away from it all. On our way back from the mountains yesterday, we happened to see one of IBM Japan's bessou for its employees here. I wonder if IBM does this in the U.S.?

J-List strives to bring you an authentic piece of Japan every day, and we carry many wonderful traditional items, from cotton yukata to bento boxes to cool traditional footwear and more. Something we've always wanted to sell are the traditional Japanese wood dolls called kokeshi, which are beautiful hand-painted dolls that are great for collecting and displaying, and now we've gotten some of these great traditional items on the site for you!

Incredibly, we've got another volley of excellent 2006 calendars for you, including artist Haruyo Morita, Famous Castles of Japan, Negima, lovely actress Misaki Itoh, and many more! We also have the Perfect Diary daily planners, which are excellent daily diaries that make it easy to keep track of everything you need to do over the whole year, while enjoying some beautiful photos as the year slides by.

Our "resort mansion" in all its glory.

The mountains are extra beautiful in the fall, when koyo season comes. Let's come to the mountains in koyo! Koyo! (this is a bad Japanese joke, since koyo can also mean "let's come")

Karuizawa is right at the foot of Mt. Asama, as in, the volcanoe that erupted last year. Here it can be seen practicing the Japanese tradition of "smokin' clean."

Karuizawa has lots of interesting shops and other stuff to check out. Here is a U.S. military surplus store selling all kinds of stuff, including Zippos from the Vietnam War era.

The joy of eating Cheetos, new crimes on the rise in Japan, and some really "radical" kanji for you

One of the benefits to living the expat life is coming to value the things from home you used to take for granted. But if you ever live in a place with no Root Beer, no Peter Pan Peanut Butter, and no Rold Gold pretzels (or whatever happens to be dear to you), you will learn to appreciate them in a hurry. The other day I got a care package from my mother which contained our Thanksgiving stuff (since Japan can be quite pumpkin-pie-and-mashed-potato-challenged when it wants to be), and there was a general work stoppage while the J-List staff stopped to check out the various goodies that Mom had sent along. The gaijiin staff of J-List was especially happy with the Cheetos that were in the box, and we eagerly devoured them. Sometimes it's the little things that mean a lot.
There's a new type of crime in Japan. A few days ago, a small battery-powered wireless camera was discovered attached to the wall above an ATM machine in a UFJ Bank in Tokyo. The device was capable of broadcasting out to a receiver located outside the building, where a man watched with a small television, recording the passwords people used to access their bank accounts. Happily, the culprit -- a 36 year old unemployed man -- was caught by police before he could do any damage. There are other types of updated crimes in Japan, one of the most famous being ore ore sagi ("it's me, it's me!" fraud), where a con-man calls an elderly man or woman, pretending to be their grandson and asking them to send money right away because of some trouble they're in. Then there's the related furikome sagi ("pay up" fraud), in which, say, a female con-artist might call the wife of a doctor and say that she'd been touched inappropriately (chikan sareta, for owners of our "Beware of Perverts" T-shirt) by her husband, and that she was about to go to the police. However, she might reconsider if the wife sends 2 million yen to the following account right away.

Kanji may not be the easiest thing in the world to learn, especially those who don't live in kanji-using countries, but neither is it the invention of the devil designed to confound students of Japanese. In fact, it's actually quite logical and organized. When you need to look a character up in a kanji dictionary, you have several ways to go about it, including looking it up based on the total number of strokes (the number of lines it takes to write that character), or using its pronunciation. The most logical way, however, is to use the radical, which are quadrants on the left, right, top, etc. of kanji, which group them together based on meaning. One common type of radical are kanmuri, which means "crown" (aside: Toyota Camry gets its name from this word, based on a strange fixation the company has for making cars with names that mean crown in various languages). One type is take-kanmuri (tah-KAY KAN-moo-REE) or "bamboo crown," and characters that contain radical this are often things made of bamboo, such as fude (writing brush) or hako (box). Similarly, the character for rain (ame, ah-MAY) appears as a radical in related words, such as snow, lightning, fog, cloud, and electricity. (The popular Wordtank electronic dictionaries that J-List sells have full kanji dictionary functions built into them.)

J-List is looking for a webmaster/blogger for our jmate.com review/interview website. If you've got experience with the products we sell, have good web skills and would like to write some interesting content, please contact us through the "contact J-List" link on the site.

On the creativity of children, social change in Japan, and what's up with Steven Seagal

Children are very creative, and it seems there's nothing that a child is incapable of imagining, especially when it comes to inventing new words. When I was learning Japanese in college, I discovered that you don't have to be a child to have a child's creativity with language. As I studied Japanese, I experimented with the language every day, completely mangling the grammar as I got each vocabulary word and useful phrase down, sometimes inventing something new and interesting in the process thanks to the universal phenomenon of "not knowing what can't be done." The process is not unlike the way a child experiments with its first language, often creating ingenious Dr. Seussian words for things. Just as most of us have a special place in our hearts for the things we loved when we were small, be they television shows or comic books or 8-bit video games, I still feel natsukashii (nostalgic) about the anime I was watching in my college years, which represent my childhood as far as learning Japanese is concerned. So if you ever want to enjoy a second childhood, consider learning a second language!

It's said that Japan is between ten and 25 years behind the United States and Europe socially, and viewed from a certain point of view, the statement seems to be eerily true. Various social institutions that you or I might take for granted have taken a while to appear in Japan, such as laws against "seku-hara" (harassment in the workplace) or laws protecting the privacy of individuals. Over the past few years, Japan has been renaming some job titles that had a sexist slant due to the kanji they were written with. For example, the old word for a preschool teacher, hobo (保母, literally "protecting mother") has been updated to hoikushi (保育士, a professional-sounding word that means care-giver), and the former term for nurse (kangofu, 看護婦, written with characters that meant "nursing wife") is now kangoshi 看護士, which makes no reference to male or female. Some words haven't been updated yet, though. A family with only one parent is often called boshi katei 母子家庭, which literally means "household of mother and child," but this word doesn't serve its purpose very well if the single parent is male. And Japanese who spend several years overseas then return to Japan are called kikoku shijo 帰国子女 or "girl-children who have returned to their home country." The term is used for males as well as females, despite the fact that the "girl" meaning is built into the word via kanji characters.

I was flipping channels while shaving this morning and happened to see Steven Seagal being interviewed in Japanese by Dave Spector, which was funny since they're both Americans. He was talking about his latest projects, including a Japanese detective film and an energy drink with his face on it. Seagal is popular in Japan because he's fluent in Osaka-ben, the dialect of Japanese that more or less corresponds to New York American English, and it seems I can't go a month without one of his action films being shown on Japanese television. For marketing reasons, most of his movies have been renamed into the "silence" series, for example, Under Siege is the Warship of Silence, On Deadly Ground becomes Fortress of Silence, and so on. I guess it makes it easier to sell a boxed set of his movies to Japanese fans.

J-List sells our wacky Japanese T-shirts, with messages like "Support the Emperor, Expel for Foreign Barbarians" (a political slogan from 19th century Japan, just about the most esoteric thing we could think of for a T-shirt). Our shirts are popular for their original wacky designs, but they're also excellent quality T-shirts, hand-screenprinted by our San Diego staff with 16 years of screenprinting. We use top quality 6.1 weight T-shirts, add a white under-layer which prevents the color of the shirt from showing through the design, and cure the shirt at 330 degrees to give it long life (far superior to the quickie heat-transfer printing used by those "other" online shops). Our hoodies are great too, made of 80-20 blends, much softer and luxurious-feeling than the cheap 50-50 blends sold elsewhere. Why not browse our T-shirts and hoodies today?

Community spirit, Japan style, and what to do with old schools you don't need anymore

J-List is based in a small city in central Japan, about 100 km north of Tokyo, and it has a real down-home feel to it. Yesterday the annual Green Festival was held, an all-day event where residents of our city could gather and engage in what's locally known as fure-ai (ふれあい, foo-RAY-aa-II). The word literally means "touching each other," and it calls up images of pleasant interaction with one's neighbors and getting to know each other a little better -- a very nice word (no sexual connotation). At the festival, a dozen groups set up tents with various activities that people could take part in. My daughter is in Girls Scouts, so we sat at their booth helping children make various crafts. Elsewhere, kids hammered away making wooden chairs or tables, learned tea ceremony, practiced outdoor activities with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, ate local foods like yakisoba (the Japanese version of chow mein noodles), and browsed the flea market area (complete with the requisite misspelled sign proclaiming FREE MARKET). There were performances by several local clubs, too, including Japanese taiko drums, a brass band that played anime theme songs (that was pretty interesting to hear) and my favorite, the local Hawaiian Hula Club. It was a fun day of community-building, a regular Amish barn-raising, Japan-style.

At the festival, I was not surprised to attract a lot of attention, as I was the only gaijin present. Everywhere I went I ran into people who knew me, although in a few cases I couldn't remember who they were or where I'd met them -- but I smiled and used the all-purpose Japanese polite phrase, "Domo!" Kids, especially, flocked to me, curious about this strange foreigner who could speak Japanese, and before long I had a good group of Japanese kids trailing me, making me feel like the Pied Piper, or perhaps Jesus on the Mount. It sounds corny, but I'm always careful to present a positive view of America to Japanese children, answering any questions they have and asking what they know about my country. If I find myself around children when I'm wearing sunglasses, I take them off no matter how bright it may be outside. A big foreigner wearing dark sunglasses like a yakuza is likely to be a little scary for Japanese kids, and I'd hate for anyone to get a bad impression of foreigners because of me.

The festival was held in what used to be a local high school, which had been converted into a general-use community center. As Japan's population contracts, they need fewer schools to support the population of students, and so schools are decommissioned all too frequently. While many schools just sit there as creepy reminders of Japan's all-too-low low birth rate, this school had become quite useful, with the interior made available for community meetings and clubs and housing various municipal employees. They also turn it into a voting center on election days.

We've got a great new category of product for you at J-List: various types of traditional kimonos, which are still worn in a variety of places and situations in Japan. We have silky, stylish kimonos for men, great yukata (cotton kimonos) that can be worn anywhere or used as a bathrobe after a hot bath, and short cotton kimonos called happi (sometimes called "happy coats" for the benefit of foreign visitors) with colorful kanji designs on them. If you order with EMS shipping, you can get these items before October 31st, too (but hurry). See all our new kimono items on the newly renamed Traditional Footwear & Kimono category.

We've updated our "top 5" links which appear on the main J-List or JBOX.com pages, increasing the number of top-selling products that display when you click each category link. These links make it easy to browse the best-selling dating-sims, T-shirts, snacks, DVDs, Domo-kun toys, and other items on the J-List site, over the past 7 days. You can also browse all "top" items with the
new link we've placed at the bottom of the box. We'll also be updating the contents every other day, allowing you to browse different categories every time you stop by.

This is the school-turned-community-center. It's a nice use to put a building to. Remind me to post something on Japan's "neo Chernobyl" building style for schools and other public buildings sometime.

The drummers in the taiko group were very good.

One of the sellers warms yaki-manjuu, basically a bun cooked over coals and painted with delicious miso sauce.

They had some interesting food items for sale, including the first shrink-wrapped hamburgers I've ever seen in my life.

There was plenty of cool used stuff for sale. I bought a Tamagotchi for my daughter, a killer Ultraman toy for myself (natch), and I managed to find some Rose of Versailles figures for ten yen each for my wife. Here someone is selling clothes with wacky English messages on them.

My son goes to a "juku," funny English the Japanese create, and various Halloween related stuff

My son has joined the millions of Japanese kids who attend a juku, the famous cram schools where students go in the evenings to take extra lessons. Actually, "cram school" isn't a very good term, since it implies students do nothing but cram for tests, when in fact my son just takes extra lessons in math, social studies, and his worst subject, kokugo (Japanese language). There are tens of thousands of these after-hours-and-weekend schools throughout Japan, with different reasons for the existence of each. Some just help students keep up with their normal classwork, effectively giving them a place to do their homework with a teacher's supervision, while others lay the groundwork for future academic achievement, eventually helping the student get into a high-ranking high school or university. My son mainly wanted to go to juku because his friends were going, but he also enjoys studying. One of the most famous juku systems in Japan is Kumon, which has quite a good track record for helping students raise their academic scores. Kumon has even successfully brought their study method outside Japan, with Kumon Learning Centers (there's even one near my house in San Diego).

Mastering Japanese involves learning hiragaka, katakana, and kanji, but you also have to re-learn some English, since the Japanese sometimes change the language beyond recognition. If you ask your boss for a raise, but he says no, it's "NG," which stands for "no good." A "blooper" on TV is also called an NG. The letter "W" stands for "double" to the Japanese, and there's a TV commercial for a video camera starring Maria Sharapova in which she says "W-OK" ("double okay"), referring to the fact that you can take still pictures and video at the same time. If you want to check your weight, ask for a "health meter" -- the English word "scale" is used in Japanese, but only meaning something's size in relation to something else, not as a way to check your weight. We're putting the finishing touches on an Obi Wan Kenobi costume for my son, and my wife emailed my mother in America asking how to fasten the "magic tape" (she meant velcro). If you want to tell someone to not worry about something, you can say "Donmai, donmai!" which comes from "Don't mind." Similarly, when someone is backing their car up, you can tell them it's okay to come back further by saying "Orai!" which comes from "Alright." Sometimes Americans are confused by strange English that's really British in origin -- for example, the Japanese call the hood of a car a "bonnet" just like the Brits.

Halloween is not too far away, and J-List would like you to think of us when looking for that perfect or wacky costume. In addition to adding some great new costume-themed products to the site today (see below), we've restocked popular items, such as the Hello Kitty kigurumi (full head) mask, the Jizou Buddha mask, the Shinto Shrine Maiden (aka Kikyo from Inuyasha) costume, our tattoo shirt that makes you look like a yakuza, our wacky "unchi" hat and more! Of course we recommend that you order them via EMS to make sure the items arrive in time. We also have excellent stock of Japanese candy if you want to splurge on something special for the neighborhood this year.

J-List works hard to bring you great original T-shirts with wacky designs on them. One of our favorite recent designs is our "Japanese words" shirt that presents fifteen educational Japanese words of cultural value. To compliment this shirt, we've made a new limited edition design which teaches you every "naughty" Japanese word you've ever wanted to know. The shirt is designed so that people who have no idea what the words mean won't be offended, but those who do will laugh their butts off.

Problems in Japan's business world, boneheaded moves by Seven-Eleven Japan, and all about futons

There's a fight brewing in Japan's business world, as investment fund Murakami Asset Management, the largest shareholder of the popular Hanshin Tigers baseball team, tries to take the team public. His goal is to allow Tigers fans to show their support by becoming shareholders, and of course earn his fund a nice return in the process. He's encountering significant resistance from the directors of the team, who don't want to see their crown jewel mishandled, and purist fans in Osaka are also angry about the cold world of business intruding on their love of baseball. The situation is similar to that of T-shirt-wearing president of Livedoor, Takafumi Horie, who had difficulties executing a leveraged buyout of Fuji TV, something that isn't done very often in Japan. The fact that there can be a controversy about something like this at all brings into question concept of "ownership" of a stock in Japan. The Hanshin Tigers won the Japan World Series this year and has been incredibly popular with Japanese fans.

In other business news, a staple of the Japanese retail industry is falling on hard times. Ito Yokado Group, the company that operates the national chain of department stores Ito Yokado as well as owning all Seven-Eleven and Denny's in Japan, has been having a bad couple of years. Sales at the company's flagship department stores have been falling, and 80% of the profit the $6 billion group earns comes from the 10,000 Seven-Eleven stores in Japan. There is nothing more finicky and hard to satisfy as a Japanese consumer, who demand both exceptional quality and low prices in everything they buy, and Ito Yokado is having a tough time of finding the right mix of fashion and value to delivery to its customers. It may be just me, but I think part of their problem might have to do with the boneheaded idea of changing the company name to "Seven & I Holdings" and replacing the famous dove logo on their department stores with the Seven-Eleven image. "Holdings" sounds like so much corporate felgercarb, and the idea of buying clothes from a building with a Seven-Eleven logo on the outside is just bizarre. Jack in the Box restaurants used to be operated by Ralston Purina, but if they put the famous dog food maker's logo on their restaurants, sales would fall pretty fast, I think.

Do you sleep in a bed or on a futon? Both are popular in Japan, although the trend is definitely towards Western beds among young people. Futons are sleeping mats large enough to sleep one person comfortably. They fold up into three sections for easy storage, and are useful to keep around when guests drop by unexpectedly -- just pull a spare futon out of the closet. Futons must be hung out to dry every few days or they'll accumulate moisture inside, which is unhealthy, and the Japanese believe the sun shining on your futon kills germs (they're certainly nice to sleep in after they've been hung out to dry). The Western "futon" is usually comprised of a large stuffed pad and a wooden frame, but like California Rolls, this is a completely made-in-the-the-West concept.

We've got another big volley of 2006 calendars in stock, with 40 or more anime, swimsuit idol, traditional and cultural, and men's calendars in stock and ready for your immediate order. Browse our stock right now!

December tests in Japan, my favorite place in my prefecture, and a cool Japanese artist

The month of December means many things: Christmas, spending time with loved ones, and what the Japanese call "shiwasu," that extra-busy two weeks at the end of the year when no one has enough time to do the things they need to do. December is also the month tens of thousands of foreigners will go to Tokyo or one of several other large cities in and outside of Japan to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (in Japanese, Nihongo Noryoku Shiken, 日本語能力試験). There are four levels to the JLPT, starting with level 4 (hiragana, katakana and around 100 kanji) all the way to level 1 (2000 "general use" kanji, along with listening, reading and grammar), and level 1 is what you need to get if you want to go to a Japanese university. I got level 1 a couple years after arriving in Japan, and it was nice to achieve that particular goal. I used to think of getting level 1 of JLPT was the ultimate goal a learner of Japanese could have, but I've had to revise this estimation as I encountered other challenges in the course of living in Japan. Currently, the most difficult thing I've had to do in Japanese is give the first (and longest) speech at the weddings of J-List employees, but one day I happened to witness what must truly be the ultimate test of a gaijin's Japanese ability, when I saw a foreign reporter asking a question of Emperor Akihito in Japanese at a press conference. Sadly, the poor gaijin didn't phrase his question well enough, and the Emperor had to ask him to repeat it in front of everyone. I could really feel that poor reporter's pain! (For anyone wanting to study for the JLPT, see our site as we have many resouces for you.)

Whenever I have friends visit from overseas, I take them to one of my favorite places, the Gunma Prefectural Museum of History, which takes visitors through the 50,000-or-so-year history of our little corner of Japan. Crane-shaped Gunma is located smack in the center of the main Japanese island of Honshu, and while the lion's share of the cultural points of interest can be found in the Kyoto/Nara/Osaka area, our prefecture can hold its own when it comes to stuff that's a little more old school. Back in the Jomon Period, when the inhabitants of Japan were using flint knives and making the first pottery, Gunma's culture was very strong, and a nearby town called Iwajuku contains the oldest human artifacts found yet in Japan. Gunma was also very big on burial mounds back during the centuries before Chinese characters were imported from Korea, and often as not, when you see a small hill in our prefecture it's really an 1800 year old burial mound.

I've always been fascinated by the art of Mitsuo Aida (1924-1991), who created beautiful poetry using Japanese calligraphy. He crafted his amazing works using Chinese writing brushes, making creations which are pleasing to the eye and which express Zen-inspired short observations and messages about life, the universe and everything. We've got the Mitsuo Aida Museum's 2006 calendar on the site right now and hope you'll consider this beautiful example of his unique art!

What ordering a "tako" in Japan will get you, fun ways to learn Japanese, and our new kanji T-shirts

There are many interesting foods in Japan. One of our favorite treats is takoyaki, especially popular in the Osaka region. In stark contrast to the English word taco, tako is is Japanese for octopus; to differentiate the crustacean from the Mexican food, the Japanese always use the plural word "tacos" (takosu) for referring to the latter, even if they're talking about just one taco. Takoyaki are basically fried balls of batter that contain a piece of cooked octopus meat inside, painted with a delicious sauce. If you ever find yourself in Osaka, be sure to go to Otakoya, a takoyaki shop near the famous Glico neon sign in the Dotonbori area. Be warned though: you may have to stand in line for a couple of hours to be served -- that's how popular takoyaki is. Once in rural Japan we happened across a takoyaki vendor who decided to call his shop Tako Bell. My wife and I were completely floored with laughter at this unexpected sight. (Incidentally, we have some takoyaki making supplies on the site today.)

There are many ways to learn a foreign language: the Grammar-Translation method, the Communicative Approach, the Natural Method, Total Physical Response, and so on. Another time-honored way to learn a language is to "get attention" method, which I've labeled the Social Feedback Method to give it a cool-sounding name. Using this method, you learn enough phrases and words to passably communicate with the target group in such a way that you always get positive feedback, be it getting laughs from Japanese at a party, impressing cute Japanese girls, what have you. I had a friend who had taught English as a Second Language all around Asia, and he got incredible mileage from the phrase Shumi wa nan desu ka? which means "What is your hobby?" Another phrase you might try out is naruhodo, which means "I see" or "that's right" and implies having been convinced that the opinion of the person you're listening to has just made an impression on you. Another staple is honto (HONE-toh), which means "really" and can be used as a question (Honto?) or as an affirmation (Honto!). Another phrase that can be fun to know is "hen na gaijin" (lit. "strange foreigner"), but more on that below...

In Japan, instead of signing documents, you usually stamp them with a red "name stamp," called a hanko, that features your name in kanji, or in the case of a corporation, the company's name in kanji. While these name stamps can seem pretty odd to foreigners -- after all, what's to stop someone from stealing your stamp and taking all your money out of the bank? -- all in all the name stamp system seems to work pretty well. We've made two cool Japanese T-shirts that feature the unique name stamp design. The first shirt is for everyone who secretly wishes they had been born in Japan: Nihonjin ni naritai, "I Wish I Were Japanese." The second T-shirt features a phrase that all foreigners who come to Japan manage to learn within 24 hours, Hen na gaijin, "I'm a strange foreigner." Both shirts are in stock in standard sizes and ready for your order!

What ordering a "tako" in Japan will get you, fun ways to learn Japanese, and our new kanji T-shirts

There are many interesting foods in Japan. One of our favorite treats is takoyaki, especially popular in the Osaka region. In stark contrast to the English word taco, tako is is Japanese for octopus; to differentiate the crustacean from the Mexican food, the Japanese always use the plural word "tacos" (takosu) for referring to the latter, even if they're talking about just one taco. Takoyaki are basically fried balls of batter that contain a piece of cooked octopus meat inside, painted with a delicious sauce. If you ever find yourself in Osaka, be sure to go to Otakoya, a takoyaki shop near the famous Glico neon sign in the Dotonbori area. Be warned though: you may have to stand in line for a couple of hours to be served -- that's how popular takoyaki is. Once in rural Japan we happened across a takoyaki vendor who decided to call his shop Tako Bell. My wife and I were completely floored with laughter at this unexpected sight. (Incidentally, we have some takoyaki making supplies on the site today.)

There are many ways to learn a foreign language: the Grammar-Translation method, the Communicative Approach, the Natural Method, Total Physical Response, and so on. Another time-honored way to learn a language is to "get attention" method, which I've labeled the Social Feedback Method to give it a cool-sounding name. Using this method, you learn enough phrases and words to passably communicate with the target group in such a way that you always get positive feedback, be it getting laughs from Japanese at a party, impressing cute Japanese girls, what have you. I had a friend who had taught English as a Second Language all around Asia, and he got incredible mileage from the phrase Shumi wa nan desu ka? which means "What is your hobby?" Another phrase you might try out is naruhodo, which means "I see" or "that's right" and implies having been convinced that the opinion of the person you're listening to has just made an impression on you. Another staple is honto (HONE-toh), which means "really" and can be used as a question (Honto?) or as an affirmation (Honto!). Another phrase that can be fun to know is "hen na gaijin" (lit. "strange foreigner"), but more on that below...

In Japan, instead of signing documents, you usually stamp them with a red "name stamp," called a hanko, that features your name in kanji, or in the case of a corporation, the company's name in kanji. While these name stamps can seem pretty odd to foreigners -- after all, what's to stop someone from stealing your stamp and taking all your money out of the bank? -- all in all the name stamp system seems to work pretty well. We've made two cool Japanese T-shirts that feature the unique name stamp design. The first shirt is for everyone who secretly wishes they had been born in Japan: Nihonjin ni naritai, "I Wish I Were Japanese." The second T-shirt features a phrase that all foreigners who come to Japan manage to learn within 24 hours, Hen na gaijin, "I'm a strange foreigner." Both shirts are in stock in standard sizes and ready for your order!

Foreigners and Japanese living in Japan, all about name suffices, and more

Hello everyone! It's time for another slice of life from J-List.

It's fun living in Japan and observing Japanese life and society, and some days I like nothing better than to sit and watch the Japanese people around me while pretending to work on my Powerbook in a Famires (a "family restaurant"). It's also interesting to observe other foreigners living in Japan, and study the psyche of this "lost gaijin generation." First of all, it's been my experience that foreigners here are often jealous of other foreigners, especially of those who speak better Japanese than they do; hence, most are always willing to badmouth Dave Spector, an American "talent" who's been on TV for two decades and who speaks perfect Japanese (bastard). Lafcadio Hearn, one of the first Western writers about Japan, also had to endure more than a little criticism by other foreigners living in Japan at the time. There seem to be three or more "stages of eye eversion" that foreigners go through when meeting another foreigners on a train, which I haven't been able to understand. I've stuck up some interesting conversations with people from Ecuador to Iran to Sri Lanka, speaking Japanese when the gaijin in question didn't know English. As Japan's population continues to decline, the share of foreigners working in Japan can only go up, and I wonder how the dynamics of society will change when that happens.

You probably know some of the suffixes that are used at the end of names. The most famous is -san (SAHN, rhyming with "one") which is added to the last names for politeness (e.g. Fujita-san), and sometimes to the first name (Tomo-san) to show a little, but not too much, informality. The -san suffix is used in business settings, too: for example, when we call Canon to order more Wordtank electronic dictionaries, we refer to them as Canon-san, and they call us J-List-san. Two other suffixes that are heard often are -kun and -chan, for boys and girls respectively (e.g. Taro-kun, Hanako-chan). Someone who is older (senpai, or upperclassman) would generally use one of these with someone who was younger than him (kouhai, or underclassman); the younger person would use -san when speaking to the older person. One suffix that comes up in anime frequently is -sama, for addressing high-ranking persons, samurai lords and so on. Actually, -sama is rarely used in regular Japanese life except in certain situations (addressing letters, for example). There are several polite phrases that have the -sama suffix in them, though, such as otsukare sama deshita ("thank you for your hard work," said at the end of the work day) and gochisou sama deshita (lit. "it was a feast," said when you're finished eating).

One of the most popular category products in Japan right now are "candy toys," miniature models and figures that usually come with some kind of candy inside the box. Today we've got a great item for Star Trek fans everywhere: Star Trek Alpha, a new set of Federation and alien ships from Furuta, the premier miniature maker in Japan. We've got full sets of these amazing toys for you.

The new Download Editions of our PC dating-sim games are proving to be very popular with J-List customers, which makes us very happy. We've posted the rest of the download versions of the popular G-Collections titles, allowing you to choose between shrinkwrapped CD-ROM or download versions (whichever you prefer). All titles are ready for your immediate order!

All about weddings and wedding capitalism in Japan, and what it is to be "good head"

One interesting area of life in Japan is weddings, and Japanese really take the subject of getting married seriously. One of my first instances of culture shock in Japan happened when I was riding my mountain bike (gaijiin always ride mountains bikes here) and came across a sprawling palace that looked like it had fallen out of a time warp from Czarist Russia. Turns out it was a wedding hall, a giant facility created solely for marriage ceremonies and receptions, which are quite common in all corners of Japan. In our prefecture, various companies compete ferociously to capture the largest share of the local wedding market, coming up with interesting themes such as Georgia House, which recreates an Antebellum plantation house from the American South; Lockhart Castle, an authentic castle that was imported from Scotland; and Sharon Gospel Church, a U.S. style Baptist church in Japan.

Japanese weddings are divided into the ceremony (shiki) and the reception (invariably called a "wedding party"). The ceremony is usually either Western style, often with a gaijin minister reading the vows in heavily accented Japanese, or a traditional Shinto wedding with kimonos and ceremonial sake. The reception is usually a two-hour affair, which begins with a speech by the groom's boss and features speeches, karaoke or other performances by friends of both bride and groom. During the party, the happy couple disappear to change clothes several times, reappearing to show off new kimonos or beautiful wedding dresses, a custom called iro-naoshi (ee-ROH na-OH-shi, "fixing the colors"). In Star Wars Episode I, Queen Amidala has a new outfit for most every scene, which is clearly taken from this Japanese tradition. A Japanese wedding will always end with the tearful bride reading a letter to her parents, thanking them for raising her, apologizing for being so selfish, and promising to be happy with her new husband ("shiawase ni narimasu").

Has a Japanese person ever told you are "good head"? If so, it's a complement, although it might not sound like one. In Japanese, the phrase for "smart" (intelligent) is "good head" (atama ga ii), which sometimes gets carried over into English by Japanese still learning the language. The English word "smart" (sumaato) is used in Japanese to mean slender, well proportioned (as in, "That girl is very smart and stylish"). If someone says you have a bad head (atama ga warui), they're saying that you're stupid, the same meaning as that ubiquitous Japanese insult, baka. Some other phrases that make use of the word head include atama ga katai (hard-headed, stubborn), atama ga yawarakai ("head is soft" which means someone who is flexible and open-minded), and atama ga furui ("head is old," i.e. someone whose thinking is old-fashioned).

Announcing the return of Pocky to J-List! Since the summer is so hot and humid in Japan, J-List is forced to remove all chocolate items like Japan's popular chocolate-covered stick snacks when the heat is on. Now that it's starting to cool off, we've got Pocky back on the site in a big way, and we've got many of the new flavors for 2006 in stock for you!

We're also happy to announce that we've gotten our first batch of 2006 calendars in, and have posted them to the site now. These large-format calendars are printed exclusively for the Japanese market, and feature beautiful glossy printing and fantastic original art. We've got more than 50 different calendars featuring all the best anime, JPOP, Japanese idol and Race Queen, and more, on the site now! We're also going through adding pictures to the calendars, so you can see how good they look. Remember, calendars are a very limited-time item, and when they're gone, they will be gone for good. They make great Christmas gifts!

All about coffee in Japan, where cheap "low mileage" engines come from, and the psyches of students of Japanese

Have you ever strolled into a coffee shop an ordered an "American"? Although green tea seems as popular a drink as ever, the Japanese do enjoy their coffee, too. Traditionally, coffee is something you drink in a dim kissaten (key-SA-ten), or Japanese-style coffee and tea shop, where they serve coffee that's been hand-brewed by pouring boiling water over the grounds. Many coffee shops still do it this way, letting you enjoy the smell of the freshly brewing aroma while you wait ten minutes for it to be ready. If you don't like strong coffee, order an American, which is brewed less strongly. Of course, the local coffee scene has changed a bit since the coming of Starbucks, which opened its first store in Japan in 1996 and has 450+ currently. In contrast to the slowly savored coffee of most traditional Japanese establishments, Starbucks will get you your drink in a hurry, a convenience which has proved popular with many Japanese, especially Tokyoites who don't mind drinking their coffee while standing up (yes, there are tiny hole-in-the-wall Starbucks in Tokyo so small there's not even a place to sit down). Personally, I like a slow-brewed cup most of the time...

I remember back in college, I needed a new engine for the broken-down car I was driving. My mechanic sold me a "low mileage" replacement engine from Japan, which was very affordably priced yet had only something like 12,000 miles on it, making me wonder how such a thing was possible. I was living in San Diego, a place where you regularly put 150,000 or more miles on a car during its life, but Japan is very different from the U.S. Although it isn't exactly a small country -- it would take a week to drive its length -- the reality is that in Japan, you almost always find yourself driving on city roads, with lots of stop lights, one-way streets, and of course fumikiri, or train crossings, which everyone is required to stop at. Sometimes we take 45 minutes to drive somewhere then calculate how far we've driven, and see how long it would take us to drive that distance on the efficient freeways in San Diego. We take freeways whenever possible, of course, but they usually don't go where we need to be, and they're also not free (it costs $25 for us to drive to Tokyo, for example).

You've been in Japan too long when you get a nihongo ga jozu ("your Japanese is very good") and feel really insulted. It's an odd fact of life in Japan, but foreigners who are learning Japanese strive for that magic moment when Japanese will finally stop complimenting them on their Japanese. Being complimented on your language ability is a sign that your Japanese is good, but not quite good enough for the person to just shut up and talk to you normally. After four years of study at SDSU and almost fifteen years living in Japan, I am hopefully as bilingual as I'll ever need to be -- I can go the places I want and communicate with people as needed, although there's always the chance I'll encounter a specialized vocabulary word that I've never seen before, usually at the time and place that is most embarrassing to me.

One of the most popular 2006 calendars is always the Totoro desktop calendars, which always sell very well. This year's Totoro desktop calendar is especially nice, featuring PVC figures of all three Totoro creatures with Mei looking playfully at them over the top of the calendar. Best of all, when 2006 is behind you, you can still use this amazing and durable item as a photograph stand, putting pictures of your loved ones. It's in stock now!

J-List has been involved with bringing Japan's unique dating-sim games -- interactive games for PCs in which you interact with virtual on-screen girls and try to find virtual love -- for years, and we've got an amazing lineup of English-translated games for you. We're happy to announce that Ai Yori Aoshi, a great interactive game about two star-crossed lovers. Kaoru Hanabishi has been betrothed to marry Aoi Sakuraba since childhood, but now he's penniless while she's incredibly rich. A cool interactive PC game for all ages, based on the popular anime and manga, and one of the most well-known games of its type to be ported to English!

More on language and values, and a bunch of Japanese words that are fun to learn (?)

The study of language is never merely about learning vocabulary words and grammar -- if done right, those who acquire a second language will also learn plenty about the beliefs and ideas of speakers of that language. The Japanese tend to have a strong sense of the way things should be done, and often these convictions are reflected in the words that they use. In Japan, people seem to have a shared "common sense," called joshiki (JOH-shki、常識) that they can all access, which is one reason Japanese are more in harmony with each other than people in other parts of the world. In Japan, it's quite an insult to say joshiki ga nai 常識がない about someone -- saying that a person lacks common sense that everyone should have. There's usually a "right" way to do things here, and this is embodied in the words chanto ちゃんと (properly, as it should be) or chanto shita ちゃんとした (proper, correct), as seen in sentences like, chanto shita shigoto ni tukinasai ちゃんとした仕事に就きなさい (find yourself a proper job) or, chanto benkyo shite kudasai　ちゃんと勉強してください (please study [like you're supposed to]). Finally, one of the best compliments you can make of a person is that they are shikkari shiteiru　しっかりしている (she-KAR-ree sh-TE-ee-ru), which means someone who is steady, hardworking, and does what is expected of them.

The word shikkari しっかり (stable, reliable) is actually one of a complex class of very descriptive words that can be quite challenging for foreigners to learn because they're all so similar to each other, yet their meanings are so different. Another word from this group is sappari さっぱり (sa-PAH-ree, fresh, clean), as in the phrase "Sappari shita!" さっぱりした！ (I feel so refreshed!), said after you get out of a hot bath. If you closely resemble someone else in your family, you could use the word sokkuri そっくり to describe how similar you are, for example anata wa John ni sokkuri desu　あなたはジョンにそっくりです (you are the spitting image of John). Other words from this group include gakkari がっかり (gah-KAH-ree), the feeling of being let down or disappointed; kossori こっそり (koh-SOH-ree), doing something secretly; and pittari　ぴったり (pi-TAH-ree), describing a perfect fit.

For all fans of our new G-Collections Download Edition games, we're happy to announce that even more titles are now available for purchase as downloads. Now you can opt to buy six more titles either as downloads (with Virtual Mate 2.0) or on CD-ROM (with no online registration requirement at all). The new download versions are great for people with broadband connections, and are designed to be easily backed up on CD-R so you can keep your game securely for years to come. And the convenience of download your game directly can't be beat!

Leaving Tokyo now. I like to take the Shinkansen (i.e. the Bullet Train) when I can, since it's so fast and comfortable.

This was soon after the London bombings, and Japan had carefully closed all trash cans to keep people from putting bombs inside them.

These trash cans were still in use on the platform. They have been augmented somewhat to make it easy to see inside them, to improve security.

The stability of the Japanese people, and how words from English are "plugged into" Japanese

Japanese have always impressed me as a very stable people, often living their entire lives in the same area and having strong local communities. My wife's family has been living in our city for as long as records exist, and she grew up knowing everyone in our neighborhood. There's a word that describes a close friend you've had since childhood, osana-najimi 幼なじみ (oh-SAH-NAH NAH-gee-mee) and now our children play with the kids of neighbors my wife used to play with when she was small. When our kids started elementary school, they went to the school that my wife went to 30 years ago...which was also the school that her mother went to before that, something that totally boggles my American mind. I've moved many times during my life, living on the East Coast of the U.S., New Zealand, San Diego and ultimately Japan, and the idea of having roots that go back that far is really amazing to me.

There's nothing more interesting than studying a foreign language, of learning the way its unique grammatical rules work so you can form sentences and ideas and communicate with others. Language is always rule based, and even dialects like Ebonics and Cockney which may sound "wrong" to speakers of standard English are formed around their own suites of unique grammatical rules. The Japanese make heavy use of foreign loan words, usually borrowed from English, but since the grammar of the two languages is different, something is needed to "bridge" the two. Conveniently, there are two such grammatical aides built right into Japanese. The first is the adjective particle na which allows an adjective to be plugged into a Japanese sentence without breaking any rules, and you can hear phrases like surimu na onna スリムな女 (a slim, slender woman), dandii na otoko ダンディーな男 (a "dandy" or handsome man), and torendii na dorama トレンディーなドラマ (the latest trendy drama on television). I've even heard the word "epoch-making" used in this fashion -- as in, epokkumeekingu na ibento エポックメーキングなイベント (in case you are wondering, the word also comes up automatically in the Japanese input method), presumably meaning an event that is truly Earth-shattering in nature. The other tool to help foreign words be used in Japanese is the catch-all verb suru which means "to do." Words you might hear in Japanese include getto suru ゲットする (GET-toh suru, to get or find something), doraibu suru　ドライブする (doh-RAH-ee-bu suru, to go for a drive), kamingu auto suru カミングアウトする (kah-min-GU ah-OO-toh suru, lit. to do "coming out" or to come out of the closet about something), and of course, sekkusu suru セックスする (to have, well, you know). The staff at J-List uses lots of English in their Japanese, too, and you can hear terms like sukyan suru　(to scan something), pikku suru (to pick products in preparation for shipping) being used everyday.

Remember, J-List now sells our English-translated dating-sim games by direct download, allowing you to get great interactive H games right on your computer, without waiting for the CD-ROM to be delivered in the mail. See our extensive selection of downloadable games today.

Hanging around Akiba. This is an advertisement for a pachinko machine company. His hair is a big pachinko ball, see?

An ad for AU's newest service, auctions you can participate in with your keitai (cell phone). They were posting some Star Wars items that people could bid on.

This is something I'm interested in reading. It's the story of how Char Aznable (formerly known as Casval Rem Daikun) and his sister survived the assassination of their father by the Zabi Family, by Yasukazu Yoshikazu. It's up there with Char's Deleted Affair, the story of Char's secret love with Hamaan Kahn. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not an old school anime fan.

I went to Shibuya with some friends. This is one of the top ten famous buildings in Tokyo, the Shibya 109 building. We were hunting for...

Guinness, at a very nice Irish pub we found. The beer was good, the fish and chips were tasty, and we were among friends.

On the inability of people living in Japan to fix their own cars, and days of the week in Japanese

For some reason, living in Japan robs a person of the ability to open the hood of their car. When I lived in the U.S., I was quite comfortable giving my car a tune-up, changing spark plugs and so on, but since coming to Japan I find I haven't touched my car's engine in over a decade. My wife is indicative of most Japanese on the subject of auto maintenance -- she recently said to me, "I opened my hood once, but I didn't know which one was the engine." This is partially due to excellent Japanese service -- a helpful uniformed employee will cheerfully check your oil and air when you buy a tank of gas -- but another reason is "sha-ken," a government-mandated automobile maintenance check-up you have to get every two years. Since sha-ken is expensive, costing $800 or more, which includes various road taxes, foreigners generally hate it, but the upside is that cars are safer and you get your regular maintenance done for you as part of the deal. The sha-ken check-ups have a somewhat cynical purpose too: since new cars get three years without having to get the check-up, it provides a useful excuse for Japanese to buy a new car sooner than they otherwise would, and no doubt contributes millions to car manufacturers' bottom lines. Motorcycles also have sha-ken, although those with 250 cc and smaller engines don't, which creates more demand for small-engine motorcycles than would exist in other countries.

One of the most respected positions in Japanese life is that of shacho 社長, or company president, and like some other terms such as sensei 先生 (which literally means "the one who was born before me" and is said to teachers, doctors and politicians), it indicates a high level of respect. As in America, business leaders are looked up to, and the news media regularly reports on leaders like Goshn-shacho (the man who turned Nissan around), the hardworking Masayoshi Son-shacho of Sofbank, and of course charismatic Livedoor president Takafumi Horie, who recently tried to win his first seat in the Japanese Diet but failed in the last election. The term shacho is sometimes thrown around with little care for its actual meaning. If you go into a Japanese bar, the lady who pours your drink will likely call you shacho to make you feel good.

Memorizing the names of the months in English must be difficult for Japanese, but it's easy going the other way -- the months in Japanese are all just numbers followed by the kanji for month (e.g. ichi-gatsu 一月　is January, ni-gatsu 二月 is February, etc.). They get their revenge, though: although the days of the month in Japanese are expressed with numbers, just like in English, there are special names for the first ten days of the month, which must be memorized, always a chore for gaijin learning Japanese. The days of the week are interesting, too -- each is associated with a kanji that represents the original European origin. The days of the week are getsu-yobi (月曜日, lit. "moon day"), ka-yobi (火曜日, "fire day" since the first character for Mars is "fire"), sui-yobi (水曜日, "water day," from the Japanese name for the planet Mercury), moku-yobi (木曜日, "wood day," from the name for Jupiter), kin-yobi (金曜日, "gold day," from Venus), do-yobi (土曜日, "earth day," from Saturn), and nichi-yobi (日曜日, "sun day," from good old Sol).

Scenes from a Japanese convenience store. This is the famous aloe yogurt, yogurt made with the fully edible plant aloe. It's nice, not to sweet, and prevents dryness and cracking in the stomach lining.

Another fave of mine, Nata de Coco yogurt, made with bits of nata de coco, a firm geletin-like food from the Phillippines. It's so much fun to chew on the bits as you eat the yogurt.

Lest you think aloe is just a fluke, here's another company's brand of aloe yogurt.

Yogurt with...marshmallows? I thought the Japanese were supposed to eat healthy food?

Japan's latest boom: Akiba-kei, Otaku Culture and "Densha Otoko"

Japan is the land of the "boom" and every year something new seems to come out of left field and become really popular here. One of the keywords for 2005 so far has been Akiba-kei, which literally means "related to Akihabara" and refers to Tokyo's mecca for electronics and, increasingly, for general otaku culture. "Otaku" are people who love anime and manga, can appreciate beauty in a bishoujo game character (the dating-sims that J-List sells), and may know something about the subtleties of maid uniforms. As Akihabara has lost its importance as the place to buy electronics in Tokyo, it's been morphing into a haven for fans of doujinshi (Japan's famous amateur comics), high-end anime shops and maid cafes, where beautiful girls in Gothic maid costumes will bring you coffee. It seems everywhere you turn these days, people in Japan are talking about good, wholesome geek culture.

Part of the reason for this new interest in otaku-dom is the hit drama Densha Otoko, or Train Man, the story of an introverted man who loves anime and video games. When he saves a beautiful woman from a drunkard on a train, she shows her thanks by giving him an expensive Hermes tea set. He's smitten by her beauty, but too shy to do anything about it, so he goes online and asks for help on a popular Internet BBS. Before long, their budding love is being followed by a million otaku throughout Japan who take part in the discussions about their relationship. The drama, which is a few episodes from its end, is based on a true story -- a real member of the popular Japanese BBS 2ch did find love by getting help from thousands of otaku. The show is incredibly popular, commanding upwards of 20% of viewers here.

Otaku culture has also made its mark on a popular Japanese television show, TV Champion, which normally challenges teams of artists to create amazing works out of trash, or design sprawling creations using legos, or bake cakes in the shape of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. This week's episode was Akiba-kei all the way, though, with geeky contestants doing things like listening to clips from anime and identifying who the voice actor/actress was, answering obscure trivia about anime, and dressing normal Tokyo girls up like their favorite anime characters. In the end, the contestant with the most votes was awarded the title "King of Otaku."

We've got a new announcement for fans of our English-translated PC dating-sim games: many titles are now available via Internet download! Now you have a choice when you purchase selected G-Collections games, ordering them on CD-ROM as you've always done, or downloading the new Download Editions. As always, CD-ROM versions will be standard packaged games that you can install in your PC normally. The Download Editions make use of Virtual Mate 2.0, which is an updated activation system that requires an Internet connection when you load the game. G-Collections has worked hard to improve V-Mate with the new version -- you get a license to install on up to five computers, with the ability to manually "de-register" a machine, for when you upgrade to a new computer. Best of all, V-Mate is optional, since you can opt to buy the full CD-ROM version instead which has no internet connection requirement. There are currently fourteen games available for download.

The availability of the new download versions means that several of the popular games we've been out of stock of for a while are available again, including The Sagara Family, Come See Me Tonight, and Do You Like Bunnies? 2. All are on the site and available for immediate purchase as download versions (and the Virtual Mate-free CD-ROMs will be posted as soon as they're back from the duplicators).

Time for lunch. There's nothing really good to eat in Akiba -- you'd think they'd have at least a Starbucks with all the google-eyed foreigners who go there. I went for beef bowl. Here it is before I poured raw egg all over it...

Back on my way to the embassy. This is some Japan Foundation official logo, which seemed incredibly cute to me.

Advertisement for promoting awareness of Heat Island Syndrome, a big problem in over-urbanized Tokyo in which all the asphalt and all the air conditioners cause a much higher temperature than would have occurred normally. Does anyone else think she looks like Aoi Sora? Maybe I've been doing this too long...

Finally, another ad I caught going for my train, featuring Chiaki Kuriyama. Man I love her, and am happy that she's been rewarded for her fame overseas with promotion deals. The girl next to her is Ryoko Shinohara, a former singer in the Komuro Family who sang the opening theme song to the Street Fighter II movie, which really ruled (I once rode my bicycle to no less than 11 shops to track that single down).

The Fall season in Japan, touching Japanese TV commercials, and a cosmic rule about pickles

Hello again from Japan. We're very sorry with the problems with the site after the last update -- we had reset the products on the server, but many of them had images that were missing throughout the site, causing them to fail to appear. Also, T-shirt sizes weren't being displayed, which caused some confusion. We're happy to report that everything's working again now.

Fall is coming to Japan, my favorite time of the year hands-down. Before long, the leaves will start to change to beautiful shades of red, yellow and brown in a beautiful display of colors second only to the cherry blossoms in April. The most popular tree in the autumn is the momiji-no-ki (紅葉の木）, or Japanese maple, with small, delicate leaves that are really beautiful. The changing of the leaves is called koyo (紅葉), and it's especially nice to head up to the mountains to enjoy the colors up close -- we often have barbeques up there with friends in October. The coming of Autumn is a chance for advertisers to sell products themed for the season, such as Kirin's season-limited Aki-Aji ("Taste of Autumn") beer, which is best enjoyed during an evening of tsukimi or moon-viewing. Autumn is also the season for school sports festivals, held from one end of Japan to the other. Kids run relays, perform synchronized dances, and generally celebrate sports while their parents look on with pride. Makers of home electronics don't miss the opportunity to sell sell video cameras to mothers and fathers who want to record these events for posterity. This year's Panasonic TV commercial is especially nice, capturing a bittersweet moment. See it here (Flash required).

While living in Japan is fun, there are an awful lot of things you have to learn to do without. The local version of peanut butter here is nothing like what's sold in the U.S., so when I run out of Skippy or Peter Pan at home, I have to learn to eat something else on my bread. Tortillas are very hard to find in Japan, and the closest thing to a burrito here are the Twisters at Kentucky Fried Chicken, which are actually not that bad as a substitute if you bring your own hot sauce. Other staples like Campbell's soup, macaroni and cheese and root beer are absent from an expat's life in Japan. For some cosmic reason, living in another country seems to make people yearn for the traditional pickles of their homeland. Although the Japanese have a long tradition of pickling vegetables (including making kim-chee, delicious Korean spicy pickles), they're not just a replacement for good, crunchy Vlassics that I am used to from home. Likewise, J-List's Daisuke (the guy who keeps us stocked with Domo-kun toys) tells me that when he was living in Chicago he yearned for various pickled Japanese foods, including ume-boshi, Japan's tart pickled plums. We've got some ume related products on the site for you if you want to try some.

J-List carries thousands of amazing and rare products from Japan, including a lot of cool traditional Japanese items that are hard to find outside of Japan. We've added a huge stock of our popular Japanese sandals, including "tatami" sandals (called zori in Japan) of various sizes, including our largest sandals for the guys. Come browse our great Japanese traditional footwear!

My trip to Tokyo. I had to go to Tokyo to get something stamped in my passport. It was raining, since a typhoono (not named Katrina) was coming to the Kanto area for a visit. This is Akihabara, Japan's electronics mecca.

As a Mac user, I'm mildly insulted that Laoxx's old Mac-kan (Mac only store) has given way to a NTT DoCoMo store selling cell phones (and this is a 7 storey building selling nothing but phone stuff, wow.) Now the only place to buy Macs and get a good selection is Sofmap's store, located farther from the station (and thus, having lower status).

However, they had a big poster of the beautiful Chiaki Kuriyama, aka GoGo Yubari, so it was okay.

I'm sure an Apple store is coming to Akiba soon, but in the meantime, there's a Bose store that seems to be cut from the same cloth.

Japanese postal politics, all about Japanese political parties, and stupid jokes in Japanese

Hello again from J-List, your friend in Japan!

Well, the Japanese election is behind us, and it was a landslide for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister Koizumi, who successfully chased the anti-reform Diet members from his party and got a mandate for change from the voters. It was a very interesting election in that it was a lot more "American" than those of the past -- the heads of each Japanese party campaigned directly to the people, presenting their ideas on the main issue at hand, the privatization of the Japanese post office along the lines of Japan's privatizing of the old national railroad system during the 1980s (which became the current six Japan Railroad companies). Japan is a parliamentary democracy based on the government of the U.K., with a Prime Minister elected by the party that holds the most seats in the Diet. Since the leaders are not chosen directly by the people, as in countries with presidential elections, it creates a different dynamic between the voters and the head honcho. This time around, there was the sense that people were voting for the leader directly, rather than just casting votes for their local representative in the Diet.

Now that the LDP has gotten the go-ahead, they'll be putting their plan to reform Japan's massive postal apparatus into action. The problem with Japan Post isn't how they deliver the mail, of course -- they're extremely polite and hardworking, and J-List wouldn't be able to function without the efforts of several post offices in our area. (J-List sends so many packages, we once received a special thank-you plaque presented by the director of the postal service.) The biggest problems with the post office are the convenient but unnecessary Kampo life insurance and postal savings accounts, which operate under different rules than private insurance companies and banks in Japan and which effectively keep the private sector on an inferior level compared to these government-backed enterprises. Japan could also afford to shed a few thousand of the 24,000 post offices that dot the country -- it'd ridiculous how many I pass when driving around my town. Maybe they can combine some of them and put some real parking lots in?

Japanese humor can be quite interesting, and watching anime can teach you some words and phrases that are fun to know. At the age of 37, I'm passed the oniisan phase and am well on my way to being a true ojisan (two words which mean older brother and uncle, respectively, but in more general context refer to young-ish men in their 20s and men starting their silver years). For whatever reason, middle-aged men in Japan make the stupidest puns, which are called dajare (dah-JAH-rey), but when I make puns my kids use the word dadajare, combining "dada" (Daddy) with dajare, which is rather deep as that's a dajare right there. Here are some stupid Japanese phrases you can use if you know any Japanese people. One comes from a commercial for Listerine which combined the English words "bye bye" with the word for bacteria (baikin) to make bye bye-kin (bai bai-KEEN) which caught on and was said by everyone for a while. Another involves a phrase you might have heard in anime, sonna bakana, which means "what a stupid..." and is said to express shock, but if you change it to sonna banana ("what a banana!") it's mildly amusing. (The word "banana" is pronounced in Japanese with the stress on the first syllable, e.g. BAH-na-na.)