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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This guy was getting Glomped, but good.

Nice Sakura from Tsubasa Chroniclr.

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

Ah, anime conventions are so much fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool shirt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures from our trip to Ueno, Tokyo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Japan is always fun when speeding along at 150 kph.

Lady with the food cart.

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

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

The subject of international marriage in Japan, how foreigners live in Japan, and fully perceptions of other countries

One subject of interest in Japan is kokusai kekkon, or international marriage involving a Japanese and a person from another country. The fact that there's a defined word for this concept indicates that it's treated as a rather "special" idea, seemingly separate from normal marriage between two Japanese despite its increasing frequency. As Japan's society progresses, more and more men and women here seem open to the idea of finding spouses from other countries, especially in cities like Tokyo, where the rate of international unions can reach as high as 1 in 10. There are, of course, various hurdles to overcome when choosing to marry someone from another culture, be it Japan or anywhere else: you've got language issues, cultural barriers, and many other factors that must be kept in mind. The question of finding someone with compatible values is perhaps the biggest challenge, and keeping an open mind about alternate opinions and ways of doing things is important. An American woman I went to SDSU with married a Japanese man and ended up living very close to me here in Japan (small world). When she got pregnant, she made plans to go back to work soon after having the baby, which isn't uncommon in the U.S. but is quite rare here, and she was surprised at how strongly her Japanese husband and his family opposed her plan. A male friend of mine from the U.K. married a Japanese girl from Iwate, Japan, far to the North of Tokyo. After their wedding, his bride wanted him to try out the hot springs at the hotel, but he wasn't too keen on the idea of group bathing with other males (which no one thinks twice about here), and this caused some strain. Of course, there's no such thing as getting married a "country" -- every person is unique, and when you find someone you want to be with, each side must be flexible and open to new ideas.

There's an interesting show on TV every week that follows the life and times of a married couple, perhaps intended as a subliminal message to single people about the joys of being married in order to boost Japan's sagging birthrate. Recently they've been focusing on couples made up of Japanese husbands and foreign wives, and seeing how they went about their daily lives. One American woman who'd been here for ten years was quite interesting: she'd organized her apartment building into a co-op group so that they could buy food in bulk and save money, which is not something the average Japanese housewife would do. The show followed the couple around, discovering what subtle differences there were in their household compared to a normal Japanese one, how they did the shopping, what kinds of meals the wife prepared, and what friction she experienced with her Japanese husband (she hated his smoking). Language issues were also covered, including one that I could really feel for, how do you make your bilingual kids speak to you in English when they know you understand both languages?

It's funny how a person's perceptions work. Growing up in the 1970s, I knew nothing about Japan, except that Japanese people's lips didn't sync up with their mouths when they talked (this was due to the English dubbing of Godzilla and Gamera movies I watched). I distinctly remember thinking that Kimba the White Lion (Osamu Tezuka's Jungle Emperor Leo) must have been produced in Africa, not in Japan, because of copyright issues related to the animals, or something like that. Japanese people form some interesting perceptions about the U.S., too, and I've enjoyed learning about these during my time here. Japanese eat white rice with most every meal, and there's even a word that means "the main course of meat or vegetables that you eat with your rice" (okazu, also used to describe the main course you bring with your bento). The J-List Japanese staff reports that when they were kids, they thought Americans ate bread the same way, taking a plate of rolls or sliced bread with all three meals a day, no matter what you were having. It's common for famous American professional wrestlers to tour Japan, and J-List's Tomo says that his first impression of all Americans was based on those big gaijin wrestlers (it made no difference Andre the Giant was from France and Abdullah the Butcher was Canadian). I had a friend who was sure that Sony was an American company because of its English-sounding name, and once a housewife asked me in total seriousness if we had McDonald's in the USA. As always, it's fun to compare cultural differences.

J-List is proud to be cosponsoring the upcoming MusicFest 2006 at Fanime Con in San Jose this coming Memorial Day weekend (May 26-29). It's really a great event: six Japanese indies bands who will be performing on a live stage for fans at the show, several for the first time in the U.S. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear some great cutting-edge Japanese music live, a micro-Woodstock for the otaku generation, with all musical genres represented. If you want to hear some great JPOP/JROCK/JRAP, we hope you'll make it to the show. For information on this great convention, see this page.

We stopped off at a PA, which is a Parking Area on the freeway, an enclosed place where you can buy gas, hot udon, or shop for omiyage, souvinirs for friends. Here are some Gunma limited dry ramen noodles. Sounds yummy.

Hello Kitty cream cakes, officially called Yokohama Chiffon Cakes.

Rice cakes with baked soybeans on them.

They also sell ice cream, since you can buy ice cream anywhere in Japan, in any season. Note Lotte's Crunky, Morinaga's Monaka, and my favorite, Suica Bar, a watermelon ice cream bar with chocolate seeds. Mmm!

I talked about pro wrestlers today, and this is the most famous one of all, Antonio Inoki, who (among other things) is credited with introducing Tabasco sauce to Japan. I happened to meet him at LAX once, and politely asked if I could take my picture with him. He was awfully surprised to see a foreigner speaking to him in Japanese (since he's fluent in English and Portuguese).

The subject of patriotism in Japan, bilingualism and the mystery of translation, and J-Culture in H-Games

One debate going on in Japan right now is what role patriotism should play in society. Currently, Japanese are perhaps the least patriotic people on the planet, with 47% of respondents answering that they didn't feel any particular sense of pride in, or love for, their country. This is something the government wants to change, but it's a sticky wicket, since an overabundance of patriotism coupled with a runaway desire to emulate Great Britain is what lead to the country running roughshod over its Asian neighbors seven decades ago. I caught an interesting TV show on this topic hosted by Japanese director Beat Takeshi, which featured Japanese-bilingual foreigners from a dozen countries including Korea, China, the U.S., Canada and Europe, who explained their own views on what patriotism meant to them. The show compared "patriotic" education in each country, including the lengthy steps countries like Korea and China take to produce loyal citizens who love their countries (including museums dedicated to Japanese attrocities). All nations do this to some extent, of course -- think of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree or throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac, for example -- but Japan has almost no mechanisms in place to make its people feel a reasonable sense of love-of-country, no Pledge of Allegiance. The Japanese flag and Japanese national anthem were only given official status by the Diet in 2000, and the national anthem isn't played regularly at sporting events like baseball and sumo wrestling, only at major events like the end of a championship or the last day of a sumo basho. I wonder what Japan can do to make its citizens feel more patriotic?

When you become bilingual in a language, you learn a lot about how your own brain works. Every act of learning involves a physical change in your brain, the creation of a new synaptic bridge from one cell to another, and sometimes it seems you can feel this at work in your head. The "mystery of translation" is also fascinating: the act of moving from one language to another takes place deep inside your brain, on a level below your conscious thoughts, almost like a background process in a computer. When I'm translating something from English into Japanese, I mentally place the phrase into my internal "translation buffer," wait half a second for the processing to complete, and then retrieve the result, without really being aware of how it's actually accomplished. The act of translation is actually quite separate from being able to speak a language, and really must be developed in tandem with general language skills. My daughter is quite fluent in both English and Japanese, and the other day I thought it'd be fun to ask her to translate some of the sentences from the book we're reading, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Although she understood the English sentences I read to her, she was unable to render them in Japanese -- it wasn't a skill she'd ever had to develop in her nine years on the planet.

One reason I like the PC dating-sim games that we sell is that they offer an alternate window into Japan's culture that can't be experienced any other way, since the games are quite long and involved and are interactive -- you're in control of the story. In the soon-to-be-released Doushin - Same Heart, there's an amusing scene in which Cham, a girl from Thailand, comes over to see Maki, the middle of the three Suruga sisters. Ryoko, the youngest sister, is totally shocked to see a "gaijin" at the door, and tries to speak broken English to her despite the fact that Cham is speaking Japanese -- something that happens quite a lot here. One of our favorite restaurants in our city is La Bodeguita, great ethnic place run by Peruvians of Japanese descent, and the spit-roasted chicken they serve is to die for. We like to go for the international atmosphere, to enjoy beers from South America and eat food that's very different from what's normally eaten in Japan. Although the restaurant is popular with our city's foreign population, we seldom see Japanese people eating there, and whenever we invite Japanese friends to go with us, they're invariably nervous about trying anything as exotic as Peruvian cuisine. This timidness on the part of Japanese people to take life by the horns and try new things is captured in another scene, also in Doushin, in which one character is inviting another to eat ethnic food, but the person is nervous to try it. It's fun to see what interesting cultural elements you can find even in Japan's bishoujo games.

J-List strives to show you a new side of Japan every day -- if we didn't, we wouldn't be J-List! We stock some cool DVDs that help you learn about the country and its language and people. If you've ever wanted to visit the country but didn't have the opportunity, why not check out Seven Days in Japan, a documentary about one man who realized his dream of coming to Japan. Or if you'd like to learn some fun Japanese phrases (including "how to be annoying in Japanese" and "Date with Keiko" episodes), we recommend the Best of YesJapan, a 4 hour DVD of fun topics related to Japanese that's very approachable for people with no Japanese skills at all.

More pics from Joyful Honda, the big store that has lots of art related stuff, and also home interior related products as well. These are name plates that you have custom made and stick outside your front door. For some reason, I find them absolutely fascinating to look at.

There are many different kinds, some etched in stone or steel, some carved out of glass. This one is cute.

That's how you write Toyota in kanji, in case you were wondering.

They have acitate sheets for artists, too, for all the old school guys out there who aren't doing their shading in Photoshop.

Styrafoam hemispheres, for various art projects. I was of course compelled to wear obe on my head and walk around like a Buddhist priest, which I can get away with since I'm a gaijin...

Ways to save the Japanese from extinction, the darling of figure skating, and cell phones for kids?

With Japan's population having already peaked, the country is undergoing a national debate about how to raise its brith rate. There are a lot of reasons why Japan's birthrate is so low, at just 1.38 children born per couple, including the pressures of urban society and those "rabbit hutch" apartments in Tokyo, a less-than-optimal environment for kids, the general march of social attitudes and of course, the costs involved with raising a child. Add to these factors the reality that people no longer need to have eight kids to ensure that some will survive to take care of them in their old age, and you've got a crisis. The ruling LDP is suggesting paying all birth-related costs for couples and giving an additional $50-per-child monthly stipend to families. These might be good ideas, but I have another one: an American-style day-care system. The time-honored way for working parents to raise a child in Japan is to have Obaachan (grandmother) babysit during the day, since many families live with their parents, or else put your child in your city's municipally-run pre-school, if you can get in. Adding an American-style private day-care system to the country would give people more choices about how and when to have children. Although U.S. day-care system might not be perfect, it's still better than the nonexistent system here.

The Japanese have a great interest in sports, especially in international events where they can compete on the world stage and show their best to other nations. With Shizuka Arakawa's gold medal in Torino Olympics, figure skating has become hugely popular, and many Japanese skaters are featured on TV almost daily. Leading the pack is the charming and talented Mao Asada (no relation to the former Chinese leader or to a Carne Asada Burrito), who at just 15 has already won a huge number of accoladaes for herself. In yesterday's Japan Open 2006 skating event she aced her program, helping put Japan over the top to beat out Team Europe and Team North America. Competing on the ice since the age of 5, she and her older sister Mai (who is also an accomplished skater) are the current darlings of the Japanese media. In addition to her cute face and incredibly graceful style on the ice, she has oversized ears, which (according to my Japanese wife) means that she'll be very successful and wealthy in her life, since money is meant to pour into large ears, or something like that.

As with most other countries, cell phones have become ubiquitous in Japan, and more than 90% of high school students carry a "keitai" (portable phone) everywhere they go, with even higher rates of adoption in other age groups. The market has gotten so saturated that Japan's major cellphone companies have turned to elementary school-age children as the next potential area for growth. The idea of kids carrying phones around with them takes some getting used to, of course, but companies like KDDI have done a good job thinking up features that are important to parents, such as GPS sensors that let parents find where their children are by viewing a website, or a function that sends a parent an IM when their child reaches a preset destination, like home. A big reason for the popularity of phones by younger students is related to Japan's group-oriented culture -- there's nothing worse than being nakama-hazure (na-kah-mah ha-zoo-rey), excluded from the larger group by, say, being the only one unable to exchange emails with friends. One side effect of Japan's widespread use of keitai phones is that people think of email or instant messages as something you do with a phone rather than with a computer. I wonder if this will have have a long-range effect on Japan's technical skills down the road?

Manga is a big part of Japan's culture, and J-List carries the popular Comic AG, the leading English-language magazine of "H" manga. Each issue is a treat, with 80 pages of English-translated manga, faithfully produced from the artist's original pages (not scanned from the printed Japanese editions, like many translated works), and will full detail on all art. Each issue is jut $4.99, perhaps the best bargain in the manga world. In addition to offering regular subscriptions to AG, you can buy blocks of back issues at a special price with our AGSET offering. We've updated the AGSET with the next five issues of AG, making it easy to pick up the back issues you need and save.

After waiting, like, a year, I finally took my Star Wars posters to the store to be framed. The store we like to go to is Joyful Honda, basically a massive sprawling store that sells anything art related. Plus it's fun to say "Joyful Honda."

If something's worth hanging in your office, it's worth getting a nice frame for it, I always say.

Here they're selling massive slabs of beautiful wood for various projects. I guess most people would make tables out of these.

Artistst sit inside the store and hand-create stuff while you watch. Here a guy was carving stone wells for use in Japanese calligraphy.

Among other things, they had a corner where they sold replicas of old keys and locks ("key" and "lock" are the same word in Japanese) which was not something I expected to exist in the world.

A bunch of old stuff, some of it pretty cool.