I'm often asked what the Japanese think of foreigners who go out of their way to learn the language. I guess the idea is that Japan, with its long and unique history that included 250 years of isolation from the rest of the world, might not always be happy that "foreign barbarians" are taking in their linguistic secrets. I've found that nothing could be further from the truth, and by and large, Japanese are always pleased to meet a foreigner who has learned their language. Most of them have gotten over the silly idea that Japanese is the most difficult language in the world, and they can even handle the idea of "white boy" foreigners being able to write kanji. Popular variety shows often include a token Japanese-bilingual foreigner who can make witty banter with the other "talents" and add a bit of spice to the show. Some of the more interesting guests include godfather of gaijin Dave "dyes his hair blonde, ha-ha" Spector, the attractive former model Caiya, and Wikki-san, a Sri Lankan who studied so hard he got into Tokyo University using the test that normal students take (not the easier one for us foreigners). Of course there is one downside to learning "too much" Japanese, that more than few gaijin out there will back me up on, I'm sure. It seems that the more nihongo you know, the less mysterious and attractive you can seem to some members of the fairer gender, and I've known foreigners who spoke less Japanese than I do to be more popular with girls than me (although YMMV, of course). Since this phenomenon doesn't seem to have an official name, I'll christen it Peter's Inverse Law of Japanese Learning and see if the label sticks.
Well, the U.S. elections are over, and the dust has been settling all week long. American politics are covered closely in Japan, as they are all over the world, and once again I got a strange out-of-body "gaijin experience" watching the coverage in the local language, not unlike the bizarreness of seeing an American football game with sportscasters giving the play-by-play in Japanese. America's system of government is quite unique in the world, and isn't well understood by most people here, so there was plenty of explanation about how the various aspects of our system works. In Japan, elections called immediately after, say, a vote of no confidence by the Diet, or the Prime Minister dissolving the Diet himself, as he did when he ran into opposition to his privatization of the post office last year. Only familiar with this system, my Japanese father-in-law mistakenly though the election meant a immediate change in President, which would have been the case here.
The decision to allow cell phone users to take their phone numbers with them when they change carriers has had a big effect on the industry, with Japan's "big three" phone companies trying to take market share away from each other. Mammoth NTT DoCoMo has the largest piece of Japan's multibillion portable phone industry, and they're under attack by rivals who are daring to actually compete head to head with them. Newly christened Softbank/Yahoo hired the sexy Cameron Diaz to pimp their new phones, which worked so well that the company had to stop taking new applications, as their system was quickly getting overloaded. But it was AU by KDDI that stole the most users away from competitors, grabbing 200,000 new customers in two weeks by directly touting their leadership in customer satisfaction. However, their choice of a hip rock song by the Stones for their commercials was a little odd, since "I can't get no...satisfaction" has the opposite meaning from what they seem to think it does -- which tells you how carefully Japanese listen to song lyrics. This reminds me of the time I went to a friend's wedding and they were playing "Alone Again, Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan, basically the last song you'd ever expect to hear at such a setting.
You may have noticed those phone straps that we sell on J-List. These are "netsuke" (net-TSOO-keh), a Japanese tradition that started out as hand-carved good luck charms carried on the end of a draw-string money bags back in the Edo Period. When portable electronic gadgets like cell phones came along, Japanese adapted these traditional cute objects for the modern age, attaching them to just about anything from cameras to keys to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Today we've got some attractive "Kimono Netsuke" on the site, in a variety of colors and styles, with a single beautiful printed on each.
We're big fans of Dan Kim, creator of the many quality webcomics over at Clone Army. In addition to his "serious" works like Penny Tribute and Kanami, he does hilarious parody comics his classic take on the relationship between Sakura and Tomoyo from the CLAMP anime, called Tomoyo42's Room. Check out a great tribute to his creative works with two new shirts we've just released, a standard size and fitted girl's cap sleeve, featuring his great art.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The Three Great Views of Japan, howling winds and volcanoes in my prefecture, and my wife's strange link to Monty Python
Quick, do you know how many Great Lakes there are on North America? The answer is five. The reason I know this is, the official name of the Great Lakes in Japanese is Go-daiko or the Five Great Lakes (五大湖 in Japanese). The Japanese can be really organized at times, and they like to codify things into little lists to make them easier to manage, not unlike the classic Seven Wonders of the World ranking. Have you read the Four Great Tragedies of Shakespere (四大悲劇）? I didn't know there only four of them, but this is the term the Japanese use to describe Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear. These "most famous" mini lists are positively legion in Japan, and no matter what subject you're interested in, there's probably a "best three" list for you. If you're planning a trip to Japan, you might want to hit the Nihon Sankei （日本三景）, the Three Most Beautiful Views of Japan, which are the gnarled Japan Pines of Matsushima, the view from the top of Amano Hashidate Mountain in Kyoto and the floating arch at Miyajima. How about the Three Rare Delicacies of the World? Caviar, foie gras and truffles. The Three Great Soups? Bouillabaisse, Shark's Fin and Tom Yan Kung. How about the Three Great Guitarists of the world? Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. There is even an official listing for the Three Great Brands of Ham in the world. There's a Japanese Wikipedia page on this if you want to delve in deeper.
Right now the wind is howling outside my window, as winter lets us know that it's on its way. This wind is called kara-kaze, the dry, cold gale that races across the Kanto Plain this time of year. Gunma is a mostly mountainous prefecture in the center of the country's main island of Honshu, dominated by three large volcanic mountains, Akagi, Haruna and Asama. We're quite thankful for these mountains, since in addition to providing us with beautiful scenery, great skiing and a fun place to drive mountain roads while listening to Initial D background music with track names like "Speedy Speed Boy," they keep the majority of the winter snow on the Sea of Japan side of the country, away from Tokyo. The most active volcano around here is Mt. Asama, a hulking mass that can always be seen venting steam out of its cone. Mt. Asama had a major eruption in 1783, turning the local village of Komochi into "Japan's Pompeii" (and possibly one of the Three Great Volcano Disasters of Japan? I'll have to look that up). It erupted gain two years ago, essentially picking the entire Kanto area up and dropping it a meter or so down. There's something about living in Japan that makes you understand where the Shinto concepts of kami spirits who reside in mountains comes from...
Japan is all about politeness, and there are several linguistic and social mechanisms the Japanese have evolved to make human interaction go more smoothly here. One important concept is modesty (in Japanese, "kenson"), a trait that most everyone here values, which is why complimenting a Japanese person on how good their English is will generally result in strong statements of disagreement by the complimentee. The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop with my wife when we happened to see a neighbor who runs a small toy shop near us. What ensued was a brief war of politeness between my wife and our neighbor, with each side trying to verbally humble themselves before the other. "You have so many cars parked at your company. You must be doing well, to have so many employees," he'd say, and my wife would reply with something like, "Oh, but it's very hard running an online business since the Internet never stops for a holiday." She would then compliment him on the recent renovations to his shop and how nice they looked, whereupon he'd shoot back with, "But there are no customers, since few people pass our store, and every month we operate in the red." It went on for a while, both of them unknowingly channeling Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch while I watched in amazement. The practice of putting one's self down as a way of raising others up is a fine art in Japan, and should only be attempted by skilled professionals -- don't try it at home.
Right now the wind is howling outside my window, as winter lets us know that it's on its way. This wind is called kara-kaze, the dry, cold gale that races across the Kanto Plain this time of year. Gunma is a mostly mountainous prefecture in the center of the country's main island of Honshu, dominated by three large volcanic mountains, Akagi, Haruna and Asama. We're quite thankful for these mountains, since in addition to providing us with beautiful scenery, great skiing and a fun place to drive mountain roads while listening to Initial D background music with track names like "Speedy Speed Boy," they keep the majority of the winter snow on the Sea of Japan side of the country, away from Tokyo. The most active volcano around here is Mt. Asama, a hulking mass that can always be seen venting steam out of its cone. Mt. Asama had a major eruption in 1783, turning the local village of Komochi into "Japan's Pompeii" (and possibly one of the Three Great Volcano Disasters of Japan? I'll have to look that up). It erupted gain two years ago, essentially picking the entire Kanto area up and dropping it a meter or so down. There's something about living in Japan that makes you understand where the Shinto concepts of kami spirits who reside in mountains comes from...
Japan is all about politeness, and there are several linguistic and social mechanisms the Japanese have evolved to make human interaction go more smoothly here. One important concept is modesty (in Japanese, "kenson"), a trait that most everyone here values, which is why complimenting a Japanese person on how good their English is will generally result in strong statements of disagreement by the complimentee. The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop with my wife when we happened to see a neighbor who runs a small toy shop near us. What ensued was a brief war of politeness between my wife and our neighbor, with each side trying to verbally humble themselves before the other. "You have so many cars parked at your company. You must be doing well, to have so many employees," he'd say, and my wife would reply with something like, "Oh, but it's very hard running an online business since the Internet never stops for a holiday." She would then compliment him on the recent renovations to his shop and how nice they looked, whereupon he'd shoot back with, "But there are no customers, since few people pass our store, and every month we operate in the red." It went on for a while, both of them unknowingly channeling Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch while I watched in amazement. The practice of putting one's self down as a way of raising others up is a fine art in Japan, and should only be attempted by skilled professionals -- don't try it at home.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Things that can always freak a gaijin out, the Japanese penchant for talking over songs on the radio and what is a "real house"?
No matter how long a person lives in Japan, there are always things that can bring on what expats here call a "Japan moment," the feeling of utter amazement at something you've just encountered. Maybe it's something cute, like a big truck playing the Main Street Electrical Street Parade song as it backs up instead of a boring beep-beep-beep sound, or that first time seeing the plastic Colonel Sanders in front of KFC wearing his "Santa Wear" (Santa Claus Suit). Maybe it's a food item, like strawberry and whipped cream sandwiches, or one I saw a few days ago, ham and cheese on French Toast, complete with syrup pre-applied to the bread. You never know what will bring on that sense of "only-in-Japan" next -- driving through an extremely rural town and coming across a replica of the American Statue of Liberty? Seeing a nondescript building with "Oh!" carefully painted on it? Meeting someone who has taught English for 30 years yet has never been outside of Japan, and who asks you "Where is your domicile?" instead of "Where do you live?" Of course, it's always important to remember Obi Wan's Law, that our perceptions depend on our point of view. Once we were having a rare feast of fajitas, and we'd invited a friend from Peru. Silly American that I am, I assumed that he'd be familiar with Mexican food, but it was all totally alien to him, and he'd never even seen a Mexican tortilla nor did he have any idea how to eat one.
There's another minor area of "gaijin shock" that has to do with listening the radio. The other day I was driving in my Mazda "Road-star" (Miata), and thought I'd give FM Gunma a listen. The announcer was about to play a famous song by singer Momoe Yamauguchi called Cosmos, supposedly the "most requested song in the Autumn." It was quite a beautiful tune, or it would have been, if the girl on the radio would have been so kind as to shut up and let her listeners hear the song. Instead, she yapped away, giving a detailed background of the song (it topped the charts in 1977), talked about the singer's career (debuted in 1972 on a talent show, retired in 1980, singing her live single "thank you for your kindness, thank you for your tenderness" amid many tears), and read some of the requests from listeners asking to hear the song. Call me a picky foreigner, but if the song's that good I'd like to actually hear it, not some radio personality talking while it's playing. I've asked Japanese people about this, and have been told "the Japanese don't listen to music all that carefully" and no one really cared if someone was talking while a song was playing. This is probably why no one but me takes exception to the Christmas music that invariably plays in February...
Oh goody, I managed to find the song in question in case you're dying to know what kind of song it is. The link is here (WMV and Windows required, it looks like, since I had to run this page in Parallels on my MacBook Pro to get it to work).
All societies go through changes as the decades march by, and Japan is no exception. While the U.S. has wrestled with shifts in the "post" nuclear family due to increases in divorce and single parenting, one rock that has helped Japan's society is the importance of the jikka (JI-kah, pronunced with a small pause between the syllibles, a "small tsu"). Literally meaning "real house," a jikka is the house where one's parents live, or where they lived if they've passed on. It's also the location of the family's Buddhist Altar, a wooden altar with a figure of Buddha inside that's used for saying prayers and lighting incense for dead ancestors and let them know they haven't been forgotten. At certain times during the year, mainly New Years' Day and the August Obon holidays, people return home to be with family at their jikka, and so on, not unlike going home for Thanksgiving but with a lot more cultural formality.
For fans of the interactive dating-sim games published by Hirameki International, we're happy to announce that Yo-Jin-Bo -The Bodyguards- is in stock and shipping now. A great English-translated anime game for your PC or Mac, in this game you take on the role of Sayori, an ordinary high school student who is magically transported back in time to Japan in the feudal ages. Your goal is to save the lovely Hatsuhime, princess of the Mochizuki clan, from assassination, and you'll have three eccentric but loyal bodyguards ("yojimbo" in Japanese) to help. It's an incredibly deep game with a huge cast of interesting characters and a great story. Get your copy now!
Remember, now is the best time to select your 2007 Japanese calendars, since we've just gotten in a huge volley of items in stock, including many calendars that won't be coming in again before they sell out for the season. In case you were wondering what the top-selling calendars are this year, we'll tell you. For anime calendars, the Ghibli calendar is in the lead as usual, followed by the Shirow Masamune offering (the first in several years) and strong showings by Negima and Bleach. For traditional and art calendars, the beautiful kimono paintings of Haruyo Morita is in the lead, followed by Traditional Scroll Illustrations, the Joy of Bento and Famous Castles of Japan. We sell plenty of cute Japanese idol calendars, and this year Aki Hoshino, Yuko Ogura and Yua Aida are all doing great. Finally, "other" calendars that are very popular this year include Domo-kun, Gackt and that old standby, Japanese women in traditional onsen hot springs. Check out our stock of calendars now!
There's another minor area of "gaijin shock" that has to do with listening the radio. The other day I was driving in my Mazda "Road-star" (Miata), and thought I'd give FM Gunma a listen. The announcer was about to play a famous song by singer Momoe Yamauguchi called Cosmos, supposedly the "most requested song in the Autumn." It was quite a beautiful tune, or it would have been, if the girl on the radio would have been so kind as to shut up and let her listeners hear the song. Instead, she yapped away, giving a detailed background of the song (it topped the charts in 1977), talked about the singer's career (debuted in 1972 on a talent show, retired in 1980, singing her live single "thank you for your kindness, thank you for your tenderness" amid many tears), and read some of the requests from listeners asking to hear the song. Call me a picky foreigner, but if the song's that good I'd like to actually hear it, not some radio personality talking while it's playing. I've asked Japanese people about this, and have been told "the Japanese don't listen to music all that carefully" and no one really cared if someone was talking while a song was playing. This is probably why no one but me takes exception to the Christmas music that invariably plays in February...
Oh goody, I managed to find the song in question in case you're dying to know what kind of song it is. The link is here (WMV and Windows required, it looks like, since I had to run this page in Parallels on my MacBook Pro to get it to work).
All societies go through changes as the decades march by, and Japan is no exception. While the U.S. has wrestled with shifts in the "post" nuclear family due to increases in divorce and single parenting, one rock that has helped Japan's society is the importance of the jikka (JI-kah, pronunced with a small pause between the syllibles, a "small tsu"). Literally meaning "real house," a jikka is the house where one's parents live, or where they lived if they've passed on. It's also the location of the family's Buddhist Altar, a wooden altar with a figure of Buddha inside that's used for saying prayers and lighting incense for dead ancestors and let them know they haven't been forgotten. At certain times during the year, mainly New Years' Day and the August Obon holidays, people return home to be with family at their jikka, and so on, not unlike going home for Thanksgiving but with a lot more cultural formality.
For fans of the interactive dating-sim games published by Hirameki International, we're happy to announce that Yo-Jin-Bo -The Bodyguards- is in stock and shipping now. A great English-translated anime game for your PC or Mac, in this game you take on the role of Sayori, an ordinary high school student who is magically transported back in time to Japan in the feudal ages. Your goal is to save the lovely Hatsuhime, princess of the Mochizuki clan, from assassination, and you'll have three eccentric but loyal bodyguards ("yojimbo" in Japanese) to help. It's an incredibly deep game with a huge cast of interesting characters and a great story. Get your copy now!
Remember, now is the best time to select your 2007 Japanese calendars, since we've just gotten in a huge volley of items in stock, including many calendars that won't be coming in again before they sell out for the season. In case you were wondering what the top-selling calendars are this year, we'll tell you. For anime calendars, the Ghibli calendar is in the lead as usual, followed by the Shirow Masamune offering (the first in several years) and strong showings by Negima and Bleach. For traditional and art calendars, the beautiful kimono paintings of Haruyo Morita is in the lead, followed by Traditional Scroll Illustrations, the Joy of Bento and Famous Castles of Japan. We sell plenty of cute Japanese idol calendars, and this year Aki Hoshino, Yuko Ogura and Yua Aida are all doing great. Finally, "other" calendars that are very popular this year include Domo-kun, Gackt and that old standby, Japanese women in traditional onsen hot springs. Check out our stock of calendars now!
Saturday, November 04, 2006
A delicious food that brings people together, naughty words in Japanese, and the tragedy of "ijime" in Japan
Last night we went to a friend's house to have one of my favorite dishes, nabe (NAH-beh), a word that just means "pot" and refers to any kind of food you make in a big open pot and eat with everyone gathered around, conversing while taking things out (boiled meat, fish, tofu, vegetables, etc.). There are many varieties of nabe, from the spicy Kimchee Nabe that our friends made for us last night (as they are wont to do, the Japanese have adopted the national food of Korea as one of their own) to the Kiritanpo variety enjoyed in Northern Japan, and the famous Chanko Nabe from Nagasaki, huge pots containing many different ingredients which are traditionally eaten by sumo wrestlers. Another famous variety of nabe food is Sukiyaki, one of my all-time favorite dishes. Aside from being delicious and a great way to warm up in the colder months, nabe is a genuine "social food" which makes for great conversation, since everyone sits around the pot to take food out of it rather than eating from their own hoarded pile. It also allows uniquely Japanese concepts like enryo, the tendency for people hesitate when taking, say, the last piece of tofu before asking of anyone else would like it, to work in the group. (We do have some great bilingual books on how to make Japanese food like nabe, although most are out of stock due to their popularity. You can backorder any of them and we'll send the when they come in.)
One sad aspect of Japan's society is ijime (ee-jee-MEH), the cruel bullying that happens in school and other situations. We're all human, of course, and various forms of hazing can be found in any group, from college fraternities to West Point to making the new guy at McDonald's count all the pickles in the pickle bucket as an initiation ceremony. There are some reasons why ijime is an especially bad problem in Japan, including the strictness of the top-down senpai-kohai relationship system and the practice of having students sit in the same class with the same members for an entire year rather than giving each student a different hourly schedule, which means that any problem between students is magnified many times. You can see examples of ijime in Japanese animation stories, too, such as the classic tennis show Aim for the Ace, which is closely parodied by Gainax's Aim for the Top: Gunbuster (which we have paid no small tribute to). When the main character is chosen for the tennis team even though she barely knows how to hold a racquet, she becomes the target of teasing by the other members, who do things like put thumbtacks in her shoes. Of course, ijime can happen to anyone, and my wife even had problems with some of her co-workers at a company she used to work at. Once, everyone was going out to eat at a French restaurant, and they told her to dress in plain clothes. When she arrived in jeans, she saw that everyone else had secretly dressed up, just to embarrass her. Sad to say, but my half-American daughter has been the target of ijime in her almost-homogenous school from time to time, for example when the other girls cruelly say "What's that? I can't understand English" when she speaks to them in Japanese. We make sure we're supportive and let her know she shouldn't pay any attention to what some silly kids say. She is Japanese, and American, and has both passports to prove it.
When you learn a foreign language, the first thing you usually learn are the "naughty" words. However, people studying Japanese are often surprised to learn that most of the bad words they're used to in English don't "map" over very well. The most common Japanese insults include baka (BAH-kah, stupid), aho (ah-HO, the Osaka version of the same word), and boke (BOH-kay, basically meaning "nim-wit"). Almost all the anatomical words you may be used to just don't work in Japanese, nor does the "F" word, which doesn't even exist, except occasionally in English as a foreign loan word. The most basic Japanese swear word is probably kuso (KOO-soh), the "s" word, yet it's interesting to note that it's not considered a bad word, as it's used in children's anime like Yu-Gi-Oh quite often and no one thinks anything of it. It addition to the primary meaning, the word kuso can also refer to various bodily products. The stuff that comes out of your nose is hana-kuso (nose-sh--), and ear wax is mimi-kuso (ear-sh--). Sleep in your eyes that builds up while you sleep is me-kuso (MEH-kuso), and plaque on your teeth is called ha-kuso. Now you know some interesting Japanese vocabulary words!
Good news for fans of our Japanese calendars: we've gotten in a huge shipment of our most popular 2007 anime, JPOP, idol/actress, traditional, art and other calendars, and we've posted them to the site, complete with updated photos so you can see how good the insides of these calendars are. There's no better way to spend the coming year than with a slice of Japan on your wall. Since J-List goes far behind carrying merely the top 20-25 releases, instead carrying a huge selection of these great poster-sized glossy calendars, you've got a huge selection to browse through while you decide which you'd like to by. But fair warning: our current stock represents the last stock we'll get of many calendar items, so we recommend that you order sooner, rather than later, to avoid the agony of not getting that Ghibli or Domo-kun calendar you had your eye on disappearing from the site.
J-List would like to remind you that we've got a huge selection of cool and wacky products from Japan, which would make great gifts for the anime fan or general Japan-lover on your Christmas list this year. If you're wondering what to get the anime fan on your list who has everything, we're sure we've got some great products, from our above-mentioned calendars to great toys and Totoro blankets and wacky T-shirts and our patented "wacky things from Japan." It is of course best to buy early so you can take advantage of cheaper shipping -- why not browse the site and make your order now?
One sad aspect of Japan's society is ijime (ee-jee-MEH), the cruel bullying that happens in school and other situations. We're all human, of course, and various forms of hazing can be found in any group, from college fraternities to West Point to making the new guy at McDonald's count all the pickles in the pickle bucket as an initiation ceremony. There are some reasons why ijime is an especially bad problem in Japan, including the strictness of the top-down senpai-kohai relationship system and the practice of having students sit in the same class with the same members for an entire year rather than giving each student a different hourly schedule, which means that any problem between students is magnified many times. You can see examples of ijime in Japanese animation stories, too, such as the classic tennis show Aim for the Ace, which is closely parodied by Gainax's Aim for the Top: Gunbuster (which we have paid no small tribute to). When the main character is chosen for the tennis team even though she barely knows how to hold a racquet, she becomes the target of teasing by the other members, who do things like put thumbtacks in her shoes. Of course, ijime can happen to anyone, and my wife even had problems with some of her co-workers at a company she used to work at. Once, everyone was going out to eat at a French restaurant, and they told her to dress in plain clothes. When she arrived in jeans, she saw that everyone else had secretly dressed up, just to embarrass her. Sad to say, but my half-American daughter has been the target of ijime in her almost-homogenous school from time to time, for example when the other girls cruelly say "What's that? I can't understand English" when she speaks to them in Japanese. We make sure we're supportive and let her know she shouldn't pay any attention to what some silly kids say. She is Japanese, and American, and has both passports to prove it.
When you learn a foreign language, the first thing you usually learn are the "naughty" words. However, people studying Japanese are often surprised to learn that most of the bad words they're used to in English don't "map" over very well. The most common Japanese insults include baka (BAH-kah, stupid), aho (ah-HO, the Osaka version of the same word), and boke (BOH-kay, basically meaning "nim-wit"). Almost all the anatomical words you may be used to just don't work in Japanese, nor does the "F" word, which doesn't even exist, except occasionally in English as a foreign loan word. The most basic Japanese swear word is probably kuso (KOO-soh), the "s" word, yet it's interesting to note that it's not considered a bad word, as it's used in children's anime like Yu-Gi-Oh quite often and no one thinks anything of it. It addition to the primary meaning, the word kuso can also refer to various bodily products. The stuff that comes out of your nose is hana-kuso (nose-sh--), and ear wax is mimi-kuso (ear-sh--). Sleep in your eyes that builds up while you sleep is me-kuso (MEH-kuso), and plaque on your teeth is called ha-kuso. Now you know some interesting Japanese vocabulary words!
Good news for fans of our Japanese calendars: we've gotten in a huge shipment of our most popular 2007 anime, JPOP, idol/actress, traditional, art and other calendars, and we've posted them to the site, complete with updated photos so you can see how good the insides of these calendars are. There's no better way to spend the coming year than with a slice of Japan on your wall. Since J-List goes far behind carrying merely the top 20-25 releases, instead carrying a huge selection of these great poster-sized glossy calendars, you've got a huge selection to browse through while you decide which you'd like to by. But fair warning: our current stock represents the last stock we'll get of many calendar items, so we recommend that you order sooner, rather than later, to avoid the agony of not getting that Ghibli or Domo-kun calendar you had your eye on disappearing from the site.
J-List would like to remind you that we've got a huge selection of cool and wacky products from Japan, which would make great gifts for the anime fan or general Japan-lover on your Christmas list this year. If you're wondering what to get the anime fan on your list who has everything, we're sure we've got some great products, from our above-mentioned calendars to great toys and Totoro blankets and wacky T-shirts and our patented "wacky things from Japan." It is of course best to buy early so you can take advantage of cheaper shipping -- why not browse the site and make your order now?
Thursday, November 02, 2006
The triumphant return of an old Japanese favorite, a milestone for my son, and a source of sadness in Japanese society
Imagine if a food you ate every day were suddenly unavailable, say, hamburgers, just to pick an example. With no more hamburgers available, restaurants would do their best with alternatives, bringing out, say, pork burgers or lamb burgers or veggie burgers. Consumers would probably be bummed about not being able to order their favorite food, but they'd muddle through somehow. This is basically what happened when Mad Cow Disease fears caused Japan to halt all imports of beef from the U.S., which rendered one of Japan's most popular dishes, gyudon or beef bowl, extremely rare. Beef bowl is the quintessential home-grown fast food in Japan, a simple dish of stewed beef and onions on steaming hot rice that costs around $3.50 and can be wolfed down in about two minutes -- I like mine with raw egg poured over it so the rice sticks together nicely while eating with chopsticks. Restaurant chains like Yoshinoya served millions of bowls every day before it all came to a screeching halt two years ago, when the ban went into effect. Finally, though, beef imports have resumed and you can get a delicious bowl of the artery- clogging stuff once again. I was so happy to have my old friend back again, I had to snap a picture for posterity.
Japan is a great country, with beautiful temples and shrines, friendly people and a fascinating culature. Sadly, not everyone can see how wonderful Japan is, and far too many here choose the easy way out by committing suicide. It seems that every day brings bizarre news of people who make this sad choice: a family of four in a strange suicide pact...a woman who lost her fiancee in the terrible train derailment last year and wanted to be with him...one of guards at the Imperial Palace. One terrible source of anguish are students who are the recipients of ijime or bullying, such as one 13-year-old who took his own life as a result of abuse from the other kids on his basketball team. School-related suicides aren't always limited to the students, though. Last week, the principal of a high school in Ibaraki Prefecture, just up the road from us, committed suicide when it was reported that his school was foregoing teaching some required G.E. courses to better prepare students for the specific subjects that they'd need for the upcoming college entrance exams. I'm not sure what's different about Japan and most other countries when it comes to looking out for No. 1. Some odd symptom of post-industrial society? Latent cultural memories from the time when samurai committed seppuku? I personally think the answer lies in the lack of open communication and resistance to adopting a system for counseling people in need.
Now for some good news: my son passed level 2 of the Step Test, the primary test for measuring English ability in Japan. Like the Japanese Language Ability Test (JLPT) that foreigners study for, the Step Test is organized into multiple levels, with levels 4 for elementary school kids, level 3 for junior high, level 2 for high school and level 1 for college-age and professionals. My son hates it when people at his school assume that his English is good because he was born haafu (half), so he went all out to study for the test, despite the fact that he had to cover both English and the kanji for the Japanese parts of the test, as he's only in the 5th grade and hasn't learned high school kanji yet. As is often the case in Japan, the existence of a rival helped motivate him: he wanted more than anything to beat Kimishima-kun, a very smart boy in his class who has been studying at Kumon schools, which have a very good reputation here. Although I have been critical of Japan's reliance on testing and measuring in the past, I've come to see that having a series of goals for self improvement, be it learning a language, mastering typing or learning to use an abacus, is really a good thing. It'd be nice if a universal system of tests like this existed in the U.S. (other than in Boy and Girl Scouts, which is actually somewhat similar, in the way they encourage students to aim for higher ranks).
There's nothing quite as mysterious as kanji, the writing system used in Japan to express ideas, and Westerners are often fascinated with how this aesthetically beautiful pictographic system works. We've posted two new wacky Japanese T-shirt for kanji lovers, a great way to wear something really unique. The first shirt reads "Ganko," which means stubborn and hard-headed and unwilling to sacrifice one's ideals, a cool shirt if this describes you. Then there's "Ore-ryu," a word that literally means "My Style" or "Going My Way" (or alternately, "I'm doing my own thing my own damned way," depending on how deep you want to get with the translation). Two great new Japanese T-shirts for you!
Japan is a great country, with beautiful temples and shrines, friendly people and a fascinating culature. Sadly, not everyone can see how wonderful Japan is, and far too many here choose the easy way out by committing suicide. It seems that every day brings bizarre news of people who make this sad choice: a family of four in a strange suicide pact...a woman who lost her fiancee in the terrible train derailment last year and wanted to be with him...one of guards at the Imperial Palace. One terrible source of anguish are students who are the recipients of ijime or bullying, such as one 13-year-old who took his own life as a result of abuse from the other kids on his basketball team. School-related suicides aren't always limited to the students, though. Last week, the principal of a high school in Ibaraki Prefecture, just up the road from us, committed suicide when it was reported that his school was foregoing teaching some required G.E. courses to better prepare students for the specific subjects that they'd need for the upcoming college entrance exams. I'm not sure what's different about Japan and most other countries when it comes to looking out for No. 1. Some odd symptom of post-industrial society? Latent cultural memories from the time when samurai committed seppuku? I personally think the answer lies in the lack of open communication and resistance to adopting a system for counseling people in need.
Now for some good news: my son passed level 2 of the Step Test, the primary test for measuring English ability in Japan. Like the Japanese Language Ability Test (JLPT) that foreigners study for, the Step Test is organized into multiple levels, with levels 4 for elementary school kids, level 3 for junior high, level 2 for high school and level 1 for college-age and professionals. My son hates it when people at his school assume that his English is good because he was born haafu (half), so he went all out to study for the test, despite the fact that he had to cover both English and the kanji for the Japanese parts of the test, as he's only in the 5th grade and hasn't learned high school kanji yet. As is often the case in Japan, the existence of a rival helped motivate him: he wanted more than anything to beat Kimishima-kun, a very smart boy in his class who has been studying at Kumon schools, which have a very good reputation here. Although I have been critical of Japan's reliance on testing and measuring in the past, I've come to see that having a series of goals for self improvement, be it learning a language, mastering typing or learning to use an abacus, is really a good thing. It'd be nice if a universal system of tests like this existed in the U.S. (other than in Boy and Girl Scouts, which is actually somewhat similar, in the way they encourage students to aim for higher ranks).
There's nothing quite as mysterious as kanji, the writing system used in Japan to express ideas, and Westerners are often fascinated with how this aesthetically beautiful pictographic system works. We've posted two new wacky Japanese T-shirt for kanji lovers, a great way to wear something really unique. The first shirt reads "Ganko," which means stubborn and hard-headed and unwilling to sacrifice one's ideals, a cool shirt if this describes you. Then there's "Ore-ryu," a word that literally means "My Style" or "Going My Way" (or alternately, "I'm doing my own thing my own damned way," depending on how deep you want to get with the translation). Two great new Japanese T-shirts for you!
It's here! It's here!
Ahhh, delicious, stewed beef on rice...
Time to show you some of the pictures from the Halloween bash that I've been forgetting to post. This girl was so cute!
The one on the right is Mozart.
Other students show off their costumes.
Here are my own. Anakin and Leia.
Here my son reinacts an exciting scene from Star Wars Episode II.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Foreign accents and how they work in Japan, daylight savings time in Japan, and the joy of root beer
A recent commercial featured a voice saying, nihon-jin wa urusai! which means that Japanese are loud and obnoxious and fussy. Was this an insult to Japanese consumers? Not at all -- the commercial, for Nescafe instant coffee, was actually saying that Japanese were picky when it came to how their coffee tasted, a good thing from their point of view. The voiceover was done using a foreigner speaking accented Japanese, which results in an interesting "otherness" that's just what the doctor ordered for advertisers looking for a way to subliminally tie their product to the image of exotic foreign lands. Just as different dialects can bring up different emotional responses in listeners -- the Imperial officers in Star Wars wouldn't seem so evil if they weren't speaking with British accents -- Japanese pronounced in a non-standard way can create unique settings for listeners. Another example is Suntory using a Chinese-accented voice to talk about how authentic its oolong tea is, or Lotte using a little girl speaking Finnish-accented Japanese to promote its gum with xylitol (which comes from Finland). It's quite common for radio DJ's to speak a strange English-influenced form of Japanese that makes them sound like foreigners, inflecting the usually flat tones with emotional highs and lows that makes the ear think it's listening to English even though the content is in Japanese. In this way, they've essentially created an artificial dialect of the language to go along with traditional ones like Osaka-ben, Kyoto-ben and so on.
There are two kinds of people, those who drink root beer and those who don't. Generally, Japanese fall into the second category, as the venerable American beverage tastes to them like Salonpas, a muscle cream similar to Bengay. My family loves the stuff, even my Japanese wife, who got tired of being teased by her kids and me as a nakama-hazure (nah-kah-mah HA-zoo-ray), or outsider, because she was the only one who couldn't drink root beer. Thanks to a company Kobe, the Foreign Buyers' Club, gaijin who live in Japan can get access to just about anything from the U.S., from Rice Crispies to Campbell's Soup to American peanut butter (they have Brit and Aussie stuff too). The only catch is, you have to buy in supermarket cases, which usually means buying 12 cans of refried beans, sixteen boxes of Hamburger Helper, that sort of thing. We just got our most recent order in, so we've got plenty of Raisin Bran, Aunt Jamaima pancake mix, and A&W for making root beer floats. Like most Asian countries, the Japanese are fond of their pickles, which include such varieties as pickled daikon radish, eggplant and the pickled kimchee octopus I had for dinner last night (really). Still, there's just no replacement for good old Vlassic dill spears from home, so I'm very happy to have a supplying my refrigerator right now.
If you're in North America you probably set your clock an hour back on Sunday. Most people grumble about having to remember to set their clocks forward and back in the spring and autumn, this isn't a problem in Japan, the only industrialized country that has not adopted the Daylight Savings Time system in one form or another. Instead, we have to deal with the other extreme -- if I stay up past 3 a.m. watching Japan's bizarre late-night TV or downloading the new episode of Battlestar Galactica from iTunes, I often get to go to sleep with the rising sun peeking in through the curtains.
There are two kinds of people, those who drink root beer and those who don't. Generally, Japanese fall into the second category, as the venerable American beverage tastes to them like Salonpas, a muscle cream similar to Bengay. My family loves the stuff, even my Japanese wife, who got tired of being teased by her kids and me as a nakama-hazure (nah-kah-mah HA-zoo-ray), or outsider, because she was the only one who couldn't drink root beer. Thanks to a company Kobe, the Foreign Buyers' Club, gaijin who live in Japan can get access to just about anything from the U.S., from Rice Crispies to Campbell's Soup to American peanut butter (they have Brit and Aussie stuff too). The only catch is, you have to buy in supermarket cases, which usually means buying 12 cans of refried beans, sixteen boxes of Hamburger Helper, that sort of thing. We just got our most recent order in, so we've got plenty of Raisin Bran, Aunt Jamaima pancake mix, and A&W for making root beer floats. Like most Asian countries, the Japanese are fond of their pickles, which include such varieties as pickled daikon radish, eggplant and the pickled kimchee octopus I had for dinner last night (really). Still, there's just no replacement for good old Vlassic dill spears from home, so I'm very happy to have a supplying my refrigerator right now.
If you're in North America you probably set your clock an hour back on Sunday. Most people grumble about having to remember to set their clocks forward and back in the spring and autumn, this isn't a problem in Japan, the only industrialized country that has not adopted the Daylight Savings Time system in one form or another. Instead, we have to deal with the other extreme -- if I stay up past 3 a.m. watching Japan's bizarre late-night TV or downloading the new episode of Battlestar Galactica from iTunes, I often get to go to sleep with the rising sun peeking in through the curtains.
Friday, October 27, 2006
American-style shopping in Japan, the shadow of MC Hammer in TV commercials, and what does baseball have to do with ham?
Last weekend my son and I decided to stop by Aeon, a sprawling American-style shopping mall that recently opened near us, featuring 150 shops and a large-scale department store filled with good things for consumers to buy. We were sorry we'd bothered, though, since 25,000 people or more were also converging on the place, resulting in huge traffic jams for miles around. The shopping center follows the U.S. model so closely that my son and I felt we had been transported back to San Diego, and I was tempted to pull out a $20 bill to pay for our Starbucks, instead of Japanese yen. One of the most important rules for success in business is, wait for the next inevitable paradigm shift to come along and take advantage of it it when it does, advice which American companies seem to be taking, judging from the number of stores like Gap and Body Shop that were chasing a new type of Japanese shopper. How land is allotted and used in Japan is a very complex subject, and the new Aeon shopping center had been plunked down in the middle of an area designated for rice-farming, supposedly forbidden to all construction. No doubt the developers got special permission from the city in the interests of economic development.
The Japan Series, Japan's national baseball championship, is over, with the Nippon Ham Fighters beating the Chunichi Dragons 4-1 in the 5th game. It was a big win for the Hokkaido-based team, which hadn't claimed a championship in 44 years, but also very big for Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who played for the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants a few years back. The flamboyant baseball player, who has amused fans by dressing in costumes like Darth Vader, Spiderman and the Power Rangers, announced that he would be retiring this season, and yesterday's win was his last game as a professional ball player. By the end of the game he was in tears, so much so that his last at-bat was an easy strike-out. It was interesting to see the many changes that have taken place in Japanese baseball during the time I've been here. In addition to the standard two foreigners that the team fielded -- never more than two, by unofficial agreement among the teams, to preserve the Japanese-ness of the game -- the Fighters' star pitcher was young Yu Darvish, a lanky half-Iranian half-Japanese with a killer fastball, and the manager that brought the team to victory is Thomas Brad Hilton, formerly of the Texas Rangers.
When that old Pepsi commercial featuring rapper M.C. Hammer singing "Feelings" when he's given a Coke was shown here, it created problems for Pepsi, since Japan is among the many nations that doesn't allow companies to compare their products directly to competitors ("our product is better than brand X"). When companies do make a statement that a product is better, lasts longer, etc. you invariably see the words "compared with this company's previous products" on the screen in small letters. It seems like the tendency for companies to avoid direct comparisons might be lessening somewhat, though. Recently the government has required that cell phone companies allow users to keep their phone numbers when they change companies, allowing consumers to flit between providers at will, and as a result, Japan's #2 phone company ("au by KDDI") has started a big push for market share, touting their #1 customer satisfaction and actively courting switchers. Maybe we'll see those Mac vs. PC commercials on the air in Japan someday?
Do you dig JPOP music? Apple's iTunes music store is a great way to gain access to thousands of Japanese artists. There's just one problem: unless you happen to have a credit card registered in Japan, you can't buy from the store. There is one great way that people around the world can get in on these Japanese tunes, however: buy the prepaid iTunes music cards that J-List sells, which make it a snap to surf over to the iTunes Japan store with the iTunes you've already got installed, browse their offerings, and make your purchases with your Japanese account. Music purchased at the iTunes Japan store is fully compatible with iTunes and iPod, no matter where you live. It's a great time to try the iTunes Japan store, because BMG/Sony has just added their catalog to the Japan store, so there's more cool music to choose from than ever before.
The Japan Series, Japan's national baseball championship, is over, with the Nippon Ham Fighters beating the Chunichi Dragons 4-1 in the 5th game. It was a big win for the Hokkaido-based team, which hadn't claimed a championship in 44 years, but also very big for Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who played for the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants a few years back. The flamboyant baseball player, who has amused fans by dressing in costumes like Darth Vader, Spiderman and the Power Rangers, announced that he would be retiring this season, and yesterday's win was his last game as a professional ball player. By the end of the game he was in tears, so much so that his last at-bat was an easy strike-out. It was interesting to see the many changes that have taken place in Japanese baseball during the time I've been here. In addition to the standard two foreigners that the team fielded -- never more than two, by unofficial agreement among the teams, to preserve the Japanese-ness of the game -- the Fighters' star pitcher was young Yu Darvish, a lanky half-Iranian half-Japanese with a killer fastball, and the manager that brought the team to victory is Thomas Brad Hilton, formerly of the Texas Rangers.
When that old Pepsi commercial featuring rapper M.C. Hammer singing "Feelings" when he's given a Coke was shown here, it created problems for Pepsi, since Japan is among the many nations that doesn't allow companies to compare their products directly to competitors ("our product is better than brand X"). When companies do make a statement that a product is better, lasts longer, etc. you invariably see the words "compared with this company's previous products" on the screen in small letters. It seems like the tendency for companies to avoid direct comparisons might be lessening somewhat, though. Recently the government has required that cell phone companies allow users to keep their phone numbers when they change companies, allowing consumers to flit between providers at will, and as a result, Japan's #2 phone company ("au by KDDI") has started a big push for market share, touting their #1 customer satisfaction and actively courting switchers. Maybe we'll see those Mac vs. PC commercials on the air in Japan someday?
Do you dig JPOP music? Apple's iTunes music store is a great way to gain access to thousands of Japanese artists. There's just one problem: unless you happen to have a credit card registered in Japan, you can't buy from the store. There is one great way that people around the world can get in on these Japanese tunes, however: buy the prepaid iTunes music cards that J-List sells, which make it a snap to surf over to the iTunes Japan store with the iTunes you've already got installed, browse their offerings, and make your purchases with your Japanese account. Music purchased at the iTunes Japan store is fully compatible with iTunes and iPod, no matter where you live. It's a great time to try the iTunes Japan store, because BMG/Sony has just added their catalog to the Japan store, so there's more cool music to choose from than ever before.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Checking one's cultural preconceptions at the door, all about Tokyo and surrounding areas, and J-Drama update
When you come to a place like Japan, it's always best to check your cultural preconceptions at the door and keep an open mind, since you're sure to encounter things that don't mesh with your "cultural reality." We like driving around with our handy Alpine Navi, or GPS car navigator, which is nice to have if you find yourself lost or get the sudden urge to find the nearest sushi restaurant. The clever map shows small and large roads, indicates traffic jams, and marks hospitals, schools and convenience stores clearly. It also shows the many Buddhist temples that dot Japan with the universal icon, the swastika. Seeing swastikas on maps does take some getting used to, but in reality the icon is thousands of years old, used since prehistoric times and found in ancient Rome, Persia, and throughout the Hindu and Buddhist world today (in China the symbol denotes vegetarian food). In the end, encountering these little differences in culture is good for everyone since it makes us understand the world better.
Since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the official capital of Japan has been Tokyo, a name which means "East Capital" in homage to the Chinese cities of Beijing ("North Capital") and Nanjing ("South Capital"). It's a sprawling mesh of trains, roads, and concrete, with a population of 12 million, a number which rises significantly during the day as people come in from the surrounding regions to work. Tokyo isn't a city at all, but a prefecture unto itself, with 23 "special wards" as well as cities, towns and (don't ask me why) villages established inside its borders, like New York's boroughs carried to a bizarre extreme. Tokyo is so massive that it spills out of its borders, creating one unbroken urban continuum around it. Japan's capital is bordered by Yokohama to the south, home the best Chinese food in the country; Yamanashi Pref. to the West, a nice place to take in Mt. Fuji; Chiba Pref. to the East, home of Tokyo Disneyland and the setting of the seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer; and poor Saitama Pref. to the North. For some reason, it seems that regions that live in the shadow of famous cities can get negative reputations, like New Jersey or the Orange County area of California ("living behind the Orange Curtain" a friend from Garden Grove used to say to me). Poor half-rural, half-urban Saitama has certainly been cursed in this way, so much so that the main slang word meaning "dorky" or "uncool" in Japan -- dasai, pronounced dah-SAI -- comes from this prefecture's name.
Yesterday was the funeral of Takuya Fujioka, the actor who played the grandfather on the long-running Japanese drama "Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari" (translatable as "Nothing but Devils in the World" although the official English title seems to be "Making It Through"), who passed away at the age of 76 last week. One of the most popular shows on TV today, the drama follows the (usually unhappy) life and times of the Okakura family, who run a ramen shop, focusing on the five grown Okakura daughters. The plots are absolutely mundane, dealing with issues like wives not getting along with their mothers-in-law, headstrong kids who refuse to go to school or show respect to their elders, and so on. I positively hate this twisted Japanese take on the Brady Bunch, since just crossing through a room with the show on TV is enough to trap you for the next hour, like a fly in molasses. The show has been running off and on for fifteen years, a rarity the J-Drama scene, where series are usually limited to 15 weekly episodes with a climactic resolution at the end.
Since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the official capital of Japan has been Tokyo, a name which means "East Capital" in homage to the Chinese cities of Beijing ("North Capital") and Nanjing ("South Capital"). It's a sprawling mesh of trains, roads, and concrete, with a population of 12 million, a number which rises significantly during the day as people come in from the surrounding regions to work. Tokyo isn't a city at all, but a prefecture unto itself, with 23 "special wards" as well as cities, towns and (don't ask me why) villages established inside its borders, like New York's boroughs carried to a bizarre extreme. Tokyo is so massive that it spills out of its borders, creating one unbroken urban continuum around it. Japan's capital is bordered by Yokohama to the south, home the best Chinese food in the country; Yamanashi Pref. to the West, a nice place to take in Mt. Fuji; Chiba Pref. to the East, home of Tokyo Disneyland and the setting of the seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer; and poor Saitama Pref. to the North. For some reason, it seems that regions that live in the shadow of famous cities can get negative reputations, like New Jersey or the Orange County area of California ("living behind the Orange Curtain" a friend from Garden Grove used to say to me). Poor half-rural, half-urban Saitama has certainly been cursed in this way, so much so that the main slang word meaning "dorky" or "uncool" in Japan -- dasai, pronounced dah-SAI -- comes from this prefecture's name.
Yesterday was the funeral of Takuya Fujioka, the actor who played the grandfather on the long-running Japanese drama "Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari" (translatable as "Nothing but Devils in the World" although the official English title seems to be "Making It Through"), who passed away at the age of 76 last week. One of the most popular shows on TV today, the drama follows the (usually unhappy) life and times of the Okakura family, who run a ramen shop, focusing on the five grown Okakura daughters. The plots are absolutely mundane, dealing with issues like wives not getting along with their mothers-in-law, headstrong kids who refuse to go to school or show respect to their elders, and so on. I positively hate this twisted Japanese take on the Brady Bunch, since just crossing through a room with the show on TV is enough to trap you for the next hour, like a fly in molasses. The show has been running off and on for fifteen years, a rarity the J-Drama scene, where series are usually limited to 15 weekly episodes with a climactic resolution at the end.
Monday, October 23, 2006
The social problems of "hikikomori," a Japan population update, and budding awareness of a scary holiday
One social problem that's being talked about more and more in Japan is hikikomori (hee-kee-KOH-MOH-ree, 引きこもり), a Japanese term that refers to young shut-ins who withdraw from society, preferring to stay cooped up in their rooms and refusing to leave the house for months at a time. A strange phenomenon that's becoming more and more prevalent in countries like Japan and South Korea, aided by the growth of the Internet and vibrant all-online communities, the problem is a growing national concern. The topic of shut-ins has been cropping up more and more in anime these days, as the medium matures and is able to express itself in new ways. One show called Rozen Maiden centers around a hikikomori main character who refuses to go to school, instead spending his days ordering occult goods from the Internet (he accidentally buys an animated gothic doll who enslaves him to her will). Another anime that's likely to bring Japan's shut-ins together as a generation just as Gainax's Otaku no Video did with otaku fifteen years before is Welcome to the N.H.K. In this popular manga and anime, the story isn't about Japan's famous public broadcasting station (also known as the Domo-kun people), but the Nihon Hikkomori Kyokai, or Japan Shut-in Association, which figures into the story. I wonder if it'll be shown on Cartoon Network someday?
As Japan's population continues to decline, especially in rural areas, smaller towns and villages are doing what they can to respond to the problem. In many cases, this takes the form of gappei (GAH-peh), or merging, combining regions to form new communities to hopefully spur economic growth. This is what happened where J-List's own Tomo lives, when the former town of Omama, population 22,000, combined with several surrounding areas to form Midori City, with three times the population and a cool, urban-sounding name. Near his house, there's an elementary school with 35 students -- not 35 students per class or per grade, but 35 students in all six grades. Hopefully the new status as part of a larger city will enable municipal leaders to combine the school districts into larger units where kids can have friends and a more normal school life. Towns with shrinking populations are trying to deal with their predicament another way, by closing redundant hospitals and other public facilities, moving their functions elsewhere. In one small town in Mie Prefecture near Osaka, residents lost the only hospital where they could give birth, requiring an hour's journey to the nearest facility instead.
Halloween is neigh, and all through Japan you can see the devilish grin of Jack-o-Lanterns, as decorations in stores at least, if not on display in front of homes. Halloween isn't exactly a part of the normal Japanese cultural fabric, but year after year this unique Celtic-and-American export finds its way into the hearts of kids here, who learn about the holiday as an extension of learning English, and sometimes get to dress up. When we enrolled my son at the experimental English school, we didn't know that we were putting full-blown Halloween back into our expat lives, but since the school hosts a giant Halloween party every year where everyone comes in costume, we've had reason to go all-out. This year my kids are going as Anakin Skywalker and Princess Leia.
Happy news for Shirow fans: his popular 2007 calendar, the first one issued in several years, is in stock and shipping now. This calendar features all-new art created by the talented illustrator who created Ghost in the Shell, the anime that inspired the Wachowski Brothers to make The Matrix. His calendar is proving very popular this year -- we ordered more than a hundred but sold half of those just on pre-orders.
As Japan's population continues to decline, especially in rural areas, smaller towns and villages are doing what they can to respond to the problem. In many cases, this takes the form of gappei (GAH-peh), or merging, combining regions to form new communities to hopefully spur economic growth. This is what happened where J-List's own Tomo lives, when the former town of Omama, population 22,000, combined with several surrounding areas to form Midori City, with three times the population and a cool, urban-sounding name. Near his house, there's an elementary school with 35 students -- not 35 students per class or per grade, but 35 students in all six grades. Hopefully the new status as part of a larger city will enable municipal leaders to combine the school districts into larger units where kids can have friends and a more normal school life. Towns with shrinking populations are trying to deal with their predicament another way, by closing redundant hospitals and other public facilities, moving their functions elsewhere. In one small town in Mie Prefecture near Osaka, residents lost the only hospital where they could give birth, requiring an hour's journey to the nearest facility instead.
Halloween is neigh, and all through Japan you can see the devilish grin of Jack-o-Lanterns, as decorations in stores at least, if not on display in front of homes. Halloween isn't exactly a part of the normal Japanese cultural fabric, but year after year this unique Celtic-and-American export finds its way into the hearts of kids here, who learn about the holiday as an extension of learning English, and sometimes get to dress up. When we enrolled my son at the experimental English school, we didn't know that we were putting full-blown Halloween back into our expat lives, but since the school hosts a giant Halloween party every year where everyone comes in costume, we've had reason to go all-out. This year my kids are going as Anakin Skywalker and Princess Leia.
Happy news for Shirow fans: his popular 2007 calendar, the first one issued in several years, is in stock and shipping now. This calendar features all-new art created by the talented illustrator who created Ghost in the Shell, the anime that inspired the Wachowski Brothers to make The Matrix. His calendar is proving very popular this year -- we ordered more than a hundred but sold half of those just on pre-orders.
Okay, some random pictures for you. This is probably the only Ham and Cheese on French Toast sandwich you're likely to see today.
It was moving day for us in Karuizawa. This is my son, insisting that I squoosh him in the car with the other stuff.
Like I always say, "Stay it with Flowers."
Anakin Skywalker prepares to conquor a galaxy.
Meanwhile, back at the Tantive IV... I had to train her to say "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope," since she doesn't know the films as much as Kazuki and me.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Conflicting themes in the medical industry in Japan, all about convenience stores, and how our brain names objects
Japan is a land of conflicting themes, of high tech phones and glittering gadgets alongside abandoned pachinko parlors and that old guy who drives around selling baked sweet potatoes (a local delicacy), where no one gives a second thought to undressing in front of strangers in the public bath but where a women would die before sunbathing with her top off like they do in Europe. The medical industry in Japan can be confusing, too, a thought that occurred to me watching a show on the other night in which famous TV entertainers ask hard-hitting questions of medical professionals. On the one hand, Japan has an effective network of large and small hospitals that promote good health and regular medical check-ups. There are two systems to ensure that full-time employees of large companies and workers in smaller companies/self employed people have health insurance, which has contributed to the Japanese having the longest life expectancy of any nation. Not everything is rosy, however. Since medical costs are tightly controlled, salaries for doctors are low compared to the U.S., and American companies that provide expensive drugs and medical equipment are frequently unwilling to invest in the local market. Japanese hospitals are consistently 20 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to things like organ transplants, and patients are often better off going overseas for some kinds of treatments. Going to the hospital involves a bit of Russian Roulette, since you never know what quality of care you'll receive, as with the recent case of a pregnant woman who died of a stroke while waiting for a hospital to accept her (happily, her baby was saved). Partially for this reason, patients make heavy use of the shokai or "introduction" system, asking a trusted general practitioner to formally introduce you to a specialist or hospital rather than just taking your chances.
How the brain assigns names to objects and how we categorize these objects in our world is something you might not think about much, but living in Japan, I notice some interesting things. In the movie Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis's character makes a sharp distinction between a motorcycle and a "chopper" (a motorcycle with an elongated front end), which is silly on the one hand since there's very little difference between the two, but is nevertheless something we all do in language. In my own dialect of English, at least, a thumb is not considered a finger, and a pickup truck is defined as being a separate concept from a car, despite their similar function. Naturally, the Japanese have their own list of language quirks, such as concepts of "leg" and "foot" both represented by the same word (ashi) or the tendency for Japanese to insist that green and yellow-green are completely separate colors. While talking with my son, he'll use the word "tire" referring to the wheels on a plastic car (to me, a tire must be made of rubber), or "string" when asking where the wire for the Powerbook is, which make sense to him but sound odd to me. Language is interesting because it's a way to reflect on how our brains work, to read a little of the source code that makes up our own internal firmware.
As a foreigner, it's always fun to see what they have at the local convenience store (conbini in Japanese). There are dozens of convenience store chains here, dominated by Seven Eleven Japan, which created the category in 1974 by adapting an American concept with Japanese-style distribution practices and eventually grew to be Japan's largest retailer, much larger than the parent company. Convenience stores offer many products, including Japanese-style food (bento, noodles and onigiri/rice balls), various bread products (both sliced white bread and various specialty breads like Melon Pan and Curry Pan), drinks like canned coffee and bottled green tea, all manner of candy and gum, and lately, iPods and iTunes music cards. The concept of personal checks doesn't exist in Japan at all, and most people pay their monthly bills by taking them to their local convenience store where they can be read by the cash register. In the winter, I love to go to a convenience store and get niku-man, a Chinese bun which is basically meat inside steamed bread -- yum. There are microwave burritos to be had here, but be warned: with ingredients like scrambled egg & ham or pizza and sausage, the might not be what you're used to. Like Japanese banks, convenience stores here compete by trying to appear as similar to each other as possible (a concept that could only work in Japan), and by and large, you won't find something in one chain that's not available everywhere. The newest trend in convenience stores is Natural Lawson, a chain of shops that go out of their way to carry health-conscious items, organic vegetables, and so on.
The art of Shirow Masamune, the creator of Ghost in the Shell, is really amazing to behold, and preorders for his 2007 calendar (the first issued in several years) are already more than half sold out at J-List. Today we've posted his dynamite Togihime Zoushi 2, a book containing dozens of his incredible artistic creations that no Shirow fan will want to be without. Please note that stock is limited and the work is permanently out of print -- if you're a fan of Shirow's artwork, don't delay in picking up this new item!
Remember that Christmas is not too far off, and J-List is a fabulous place to look for unique and special gifts for that special someone on your list. Whether they're a card-carrying member of the otaku generation or merely like fresh and new concepts that only the Japanese could come up with, we've got the perfect gift ideas right here. Calendars are an especially nice gift, and we've got hundreds of amazing anime, JPOP, swimsuit idol and other calendars to browse through. Why not consider giving a J-List gift certificate, which can be issued in any amount and can either be sent in an attractive physical box, or as a printable PDF gift certificate sent through email.
How the brain assigns names to objects and how we categorize these objects in our world is something you might not think about much, but living in Japan, I notice some interesting things. In the movie Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis's character makes a sharp distinction between a motorcycle and a "chopper" (a motorcycle with an elongated front end), which is silly on the one hand since there's very little difference between the two, but is nevertheless something we all do in language. In my own dialect of English, at least, a thumb is not considered a finger, and a pickup truck is defined as being a separate concept from a car, despite their similar function. Naturally, the Japanese have their own list of language quirks, such as concepts of "leg" and "foot" both represented by the same word (ashi) or the tendency for Japanese to insist that green and yellow-green are completely separate colors. While talking with my son, he'll use the word "tire" referring to the wheels on a plastic car (to me, a tire must be made of rubber), or "string" when asking where the wire for the Powerbook is, which make sense to him but sound odd to me. Language is interesting because it's a way to reflect on how our brains work, to read a little of the source code that makes up our own internal firmware.
As a foreigner, it's always fun to see what they have at the local convenience store (conbini in Japanese). There are dozens of convenience store chains here, dominated by Seven Eleven Japan, which created the category in 1974 by adapting an American concept with Japanese-style distribution practices and eventually grew to be Japan's largest retailer, much larger than the parent company. Convenience stores offer many products, including Japanese-style food (bento, noodles and onigiri/rice balls), various bread products (both sliced white bread and various specialty breads like Melon Pan and Curry Pan), drinks like canned coffee and bottled green tea, all manner of candy and gum, and lately, iPods and iTunes music cards. The concept of personal checks doesn't exist in Japan at all, and most people pay their monthly bills by taking them to their local convenience store where they can be read by the cash register. In the winter, I love to go to a convenience store and get niku-man, a Chinese bun which is basically meat inside steamed bread -- yum. There are microwave burritos to be had here, but be warned: with ingredients like scrambled egg & ham or pizza and sausage, the might not be what you're used to. Like Japanese banks, convenience stores here compete by trying to appear as similar to each other as possible (a concept that could only work in Japan), and by and large, you won't find something in one chain that's not available everywhere. The newest trend in convenience stores is Natural Lawson, a chain of shops that go out of their way to carry health-conscious items, organic vegetables, and so on.
The art of Shirow Masamune, the creator of Ghost in the Shell, is really amazing to behold, and preorders for his 2007 calendar (the first issued in several years) are already more than half sold out at J-List. Today we've posted his dynamite Togihime Zoushi 2, a book containing dozens of his incredible artistic creations that no Shirow fan will want to be without. Please note that stock is limited and the work is permanently out of print -- if you're a fan of Shirow's artwork, don't delay in picking up this new item!
Remember that Christmas is not too far off, and J-List is a fabulous place to look for unique and special gifts for that special someone on your list. Whether they're a card-carrying member of the otaku generation or merely like fresh and new concepts that only the Japanese could come up with, we've got the perfect gift ideas right here. Calendars are an especially nice gift, and we've got hundreds of amazing anime, JPOP, swimsuit idol and other calendars to browse through. Why not consider giving a J-List gift certificate, which can be issued in any amount and can either be sent in an attractive physical box, or as a printable PDF gift certificate sent through email.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Commomorating Karaoke Culture Day, a cruel joke on the population front, and all about mixed bathing in Japan
Japan is a big fan of naming special days to create awareness about things we take for granted, like Sweet Potato Day (Oct. 13) or Rubber Manufacturing Day (May 6) or Teddy Bear Day (Oct. 27, the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, from who the name originates). Why do I know these silly dates? Because every time I start my car, a computerized voice greets me and tells me what special day it is. Today happens to be Karaoke Culture Day, a day to pause and think about the beneficial effects karaoke has had on all or our lives, or something like that. Karaoke sprung into being in 1971, created by musician/inventor Daisuke Inoue, who had been asked by customers at a live house he performed at to record instrumental versions of his songs so they could sing them at company events. With the recent invention of high-tech 8-track tape players, stereos were getting smaller, and Daisuke got the idea for a portable song machine with a microphone jack that would allow people to sing their own songs. The company he founded to market tape-based karaoke machines launched the modern karaoke industry, but it fell on hard times when Laserdisc-based karaoke came along and stole the marketplace, causing Inoue to step down as president to take responsibility for not leading the company more effectively. Unfor- tunately for Daisuke, it never occurred to him to patent the idea or trademark the name "karaoke," mistakes which would cost him hundreds of millions. The name, incidentally, comes from "kara" (empty, as in karate, which means "empty hand") and "orchestra." Since I learned Japanese in part by hanging out at Japanese karaoke restaurants in San Diego and reading the words as they appeared on the screen, I tip my hat to Mr. Inoue, and hope he's enjoying his retirement.
The population of the United States has just hit the 300 million mark, an event that seems like a grim joke considering that Japan's population has probably reached its peak of 127 million at just about the same time, and has started to decline as deaths outstrip births. I guess I'm not quite sure how to feel about the issue of population shrinkage. On the one hand, Japan has a high population compared its small size, with 327 people per square km, compared with 383, 27 and 3 for England, the U.S. and Canada, respectively, so it seems that the idea of a lessening of population pressures could be a good thing. But does a falling population mean that an eternally shrinking GDP is in Japan's future? Some people suggest this, but I don't buy it, since Japan is currently an extremely inefficient place, and if they can manage to copy just a fraction in productivity gains seen in the U.S. in recent years, the economy can grow even if the overall population declines. In reality, the macro-level changes that Japan is facing on the population front are likely to affect the average person far less than more localized trends, such as the tendency for young people to flee the extreme rural parts of the country for larger cities. During my bachelor days I travelled from one end of Japan to the other, visiting places like Aomori Prefecture at the top of Japan's main island of Honshu, known for its apples and sad enka songs, and Tottori Prefecture, home of Japan's only desert. These regions are very sparsely populated, with lonely train stations that have so few passengers passing through that it isn't feasible to keep even one employee there -- hence, you buy your ticket and give it directly to the train conductor when you got on the train. As usual, I'm sure the changes Japan is going through are things that will just be dealt with as we go forward in human history.
Bathing in public baths (sento) and hot spring spas (onsen) is a fun part of life in Japan, and something my family and I are big fans of. By and large, being in the buff in front of others is something you don't give a second thought to -- it's just part of the culture here, like beer vending machines and aloe flavored yogurt. While Japan is famous for images of men and women bathing together, kon'yoku or mixed bathing is actually very rare these days -- I've only found one mixed bathing bath, and believe me, I've looked hard. Although men are strictly forbidden from entering the womens bathing area, there's an unwritten rule that female staff may enter the men's bath to clean at any time, despite the natural state of all the men bathing inside. Usually the women are obasans (older women in their 50s or so), but every once in a while an attractive younger woman will come in to straighten the buckets or check the bath temperature, causing the occasional dash to hot water by gaijin who shall not be named.
Calling all fans of Japanese calendars! We've gotten a huge volley of 2007 calendars in stock, and have posted them to the site for you to browse. Among the calendars we have on hand and ready to ship out to you are Domo-kun (a great item for fans of NHK's famous brown spokesmonster), gorgeous idols like Mihiro, Yukie Kawamura, and Sonim, super anime characters like Boy Detective Conan, Negima, My Neighbor Totoro, beautiful images of Japanese castles and gardens, and more. We also have two items that I can't recommend highly enough: this year's outstanding Ghibli Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service 3-D calendars, which feature Totoro standing by the famous bus stop and Jiji the Cat, both of which are great for displaying photos in when 2007 is behind us.
Last time we officially announced that our new yaoi PC dating-sim game, Absolute Obedience, was in stock and shipping, and now we've got another announcement for fans of this popular genre from Japan: J-List's San Diego staff will be attending the upcoming Yaoi Con in San Francisco, October 20-22 in the heart of San Francisco. We'll have our great English-translated BL games as well as other fun stuff for you to browse, and our famous J-List tissue, of course. If you'll be at the show, please come by and say hello to us! You can see more information on the convention here.
The population of the United States has just hit the 300 million mark, an event that seems like a grim joke considering that Japan's population has probably reached its peak of 127 million at just about the same time, and has started to decline as deaths outstrip births. I guess I'm not quite sure how to feel about the issue of population shrinkage. On the one hand, Japan has a high population compared its small size, with 327 people per square km, compared with 383, 27 and 3 for England, the U.S. and Canada, respectively, so it seems that the idea of a lessening of population pressures could be a good thing. But does a falling population mean that an eternally shrinking GDP is in Japan's future? Some people suggest this, but I don't buy it, since Japan is currently an extremely inefficient place, and if they can manage to copy just a fraction in productivity gains seen in the U.S. in recent years, the economy can grow even if the overall population declines. In reality, the macro-level changes that Japan is facing on the population front are likely to affect the average person far less than more localized trends, such as the tendency for young people to flee the extreme rural parts of the country for larger cities. During my bachelor days I travelled from one end of Japan to the other, visiting places like Aomori Prefecture at the top of Japan's main island of Honshu, known for its apples and sad enka songs, and Tottori Prefecture, home of Japan's only desert. These regions are very sparsely populated, with lonely train stations that have so few passengers passing through that it isn't feasible to keep even one employee there -- hence, you buy your ticket and give it directly to the train conductor when you got on the train. As usual, I'm sure the changes Japan is going through are things that will just be dealt with as we go forward in human history.
Bathing in public baths (sento) and hot spring spas (onsen) is a fun part of life in Japan, and something my family and I are big fans of. By and large, being in the buff in front of others is something you don't give a second thought to -- it's just part of the culture here, like beer vending machines and aloe flavored yogurt. While Japan is famous for images of men and women bathing together, kon'yoku or mixed bathing is actually very rare these days -- I've only found one mixed bathing bath, and believe me, I've looked hard. Although men are strictly forbidden from entering the womens bathing area, there's an unwritten rule that female staff may enter the men's bath to clean at any time, despite the natural state of all the men bathing inside. Usually the women are obasans (older women in their 50s or so), but every once in a while an attractive younger woman will come in to straighten the buckets or check the bath temperature, causing the occasional dash to hot water by gaijin who shall not be named.
Calling all fans of Japanese calendars! We've gotten a huge volley of 2007 calendars in stock, and have posted them to the site for you to browse. Among the calendars we have on hand and ready to ship out to you are Domo-kun (a great item for fans of NHK's famous brown spokesmonster), gorgeous idols like Mihiro, Yukie Kawamura, and Sonim, super anime characters like Boy Detective Conan, Negima, My Neighbor Totoro, beautiful images of Japanese castles and gardens, and more. We also have two items that I can't recommend highly enough: this year's outstanding Ghibli Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service 3-D calendars, which feature Totoro standing by the famous bus stop and Jiji the Cat, both of which are great for displaying photos in when 2007 is behind us.
Last time we officially announced that our new yaoi PC dating-sim game, Absolute Obedience, was in stock and shipping, and now we've got another announcement for fans of this popular genre from Japan: J-List's San Diego staff will be attending the upcoming Yaoi Con in San Francisco, October 20-22 in the heart of San Francisco. We'll have our great English-translated BL games as well as other fun stuff for you to browse, and our famous J-List tissue, of course. If you'll be at the show, please come by and say hello to us! You can see more information on the convention here.
Monday, October 16, 2006
What's up with those big eyes and colored anime hair, and, understanding Japan's great Meiji Restoration adventure
Many people first experience Japan through its animation, which has been a staple of entertainment here since Astro Boy was first broadcast back in 1963. I remember being surprised at the oversized eyes in the shows I loved as a child -- although in comparison, the eye-to-face area ratio is much higher now than in the old school shows of the 1970s. I was similarly surprised at the rainbow of hair colors found on most anime characters. Creating characters with hair in colors of green and blue and pink allows animation designers to be as expressive as possible and come up with characters who contrast sharply with the somewhat drab concrete-and-power-lines reality of modern Japan. There are subliminal messages embedded in the hair color choices, too. For example, red-haired characters are usually fiery and spirited, while the stereotypical refined girl from a wealthy family will often have blue hair. Black or brown are often used to represent the hair color of "Japanese" characters, who are more likely to be identified with by local viewers, and are generally more conservative (compare Amuro Rei to the flamboyant Char Aznable from the original Gundam series). While anime characters might sport bright shades of the rainbow on their heads, people in Japan don't actually have such colorful hair, do they? The answer is yes: despite the inability of hair-dye companies like Gatsby to make colorful hair "cool" among young people, many older Japanese seem perfectly happy to wear blue, purple and pink tints in their hair. Why this fashion trend is limited to people aged 80 and older is a mystery to me.
I love to study the Meiji Restoration, an event that probably has no equal in the history of the rest of the world. During the Edo Period (1603-1867), the line of Tokugawa Shoguns ruled Japan and kept it closed to outsiders. This changed with the arrival of Admiral Perry and his Black Ships, who forced Japan to trade with the United States and the rest of the world. A movement of young revolutionaries who opposed any contact with foreigners rallied around the Emperor, traditionally a powerless figurehead, and sonno joi (son-NOH JOH-ee) was their famous slogan, meaning "Respect the Emperor, expel the foreign barbarians" (it's one of our most popular T-shirts). As soon as they actually gained power, the leaders of the movement realized they couldn't very well go along ignoring the rest of the world forever, so they started negotiating with foreign powers. This displeased Saigo Takamori, a powerful member of their group, and he rebelled against the new government (these were the events in The Last Samurai, if you saw it).
During this intense period of change, Japan had to make some interesting and difficult choices. First of all, the government had to eliminate the annual stipend that anyone in the old samurai class was entitled to, which was a major political issue back then -- they mostly traded the stipends for government jobs. The government needed to do more to ensure that progress wasn't erased by disgruntled anti-reformers, so in 1871 they abolished the old system of "han" domains in favor of the current network of 47 prefectures, organized along totally new lines and with all-new names. Because of this, every part of Japan has two names, its modern one and its old name, such as Kozuke for our prefecture of Gunma, Ezo for Hokkaido, and so on. (Can you imagine all of the U.S. states being erased and redrawn along alternate lines?) Another important event of the early Meiji Era was the Iwakura Mission, when many of the Founding Fathers of the Meiji Government such as Hirobumi Ito and Toshimichi Okubo -- as famous as Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere to the Japanese -- toured the United States and Europe as Japan's first official diplomatic contact with the outside world. They negotiated treaties and observed how advanced the rest of the world was technologically, and what they saw formed the basis for Japan's long road to modernization.
(Small aside, I found a killer photo of Edo taken in 1865 or 1866, here. Is this not the coolest thing you've ever seen? A photograph of Tokyo from the Edo Period!)
J-List has long been a pioneer of PC dating-sim games, a fun genre of character- and story-based games for PCs in which you interact with cute anime girls as you move through the story, trying to find the keys to unlock their hearts. This year we released the first-ever yaoi PC dating-sim, Enzai - Falsely Accused, for the many fans on the other side of the aisle, and we've been really happy with the response we've gotten. Now we're happy to announce that our second English-translated "BL" game is in stock and shipping, the long-awaited Absolute Obedience by Langmaor, a unique game set in a highly stylized version of post-war West Germany. Featuring a great game system with twelve chapters and the ability to play either as the dapper Louis Hardwich or his uncouth sidekick Kia WelBehenna, this is an outstanding title that anyone interested in the genre should pick up. Check it out now!
I love to study the Meiji Restoration, an event that probably has no equal in the history of the rest of the world. During the Edo Period (1603-1867), the line of Tokugawa Shoguns ruled Japan and kept it closed to outsiders. This changed with the arrival of Admiral Perry and his Black Ships, who forced Japan to trade with the United States and the rest of the world. A movement of young revolutionaries who opposed any contact with foreigners rallied around the Emperor, traditionally a powerless figurehead, and sonno joi (son-NOH JOH-ee) was their famous slogan, meaning "Respect the Emperor, expel the foreign barbarians" (it's one of our most popular T-shirts). As soon as they actually gained power, the leaders of the movement realized they couldn't very well go along ignoring the rest of the world forever, so they started negotiating with foreign powers. This displeased Saigo Takamori, a powerful member of their group, and he rebelled against the new government (these were the events in The Last Samurai, if you saw it).
During this intense period of change, Japan had to make some interesting and difficult choices. First of all, the government had to eliminate the annual stipend that anyone in the old samurai class was entitled to, which was a major political issue back then -- they mostly traded the stipends for government jobs. The government needed to do more to ensure that progress wasn't erased by disgruntled anti-reformers, so in 1871 they abolished the old system of "han" domains in favor of the current network of 47 prefectures, organized along totally new lines and with all-new names. Because of this, every part of Japan has two names, its modern one and its old name, such as Kozuke for our prefecture of Gunma, Ezo for Hokkaido, and so on. (Can you imagine all of the U.S. states being erased and redrawn along alternate lines?) Another important event of the early Meiji Era was the Iwakura Mission, when many of the Founding Fathers of the Meiji Government such as Hirobumi Ito and Toshimichi Okubo -- as famous as Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere to the Japanese -- toured the United States and Europe as Japan's first official diplomatic contact with the outside world. They negotiated treaties and observed how advanced the rest of the world was technologically, and what they saw formed the basis for Japan's long road to modernization.
(Small aside, I found a killer photo of Edo taken in 1865 or 1866, here. Is this not the coolest thing you've ever seen? A photograph of Tokyo from the Edo Period!)
J-List has long been a pioneer of PC dating-sim games, a fun genre of character- and story-based games for PCs in which you interact with cute anime girls as you move through the story, trying to find the keys to unlock their hearts. This year we released the first-ever yaoi PC dating-sim, Enzai - Falsely Accused, for the many fans on the other side of the aisle, and we've been really happy with the response we've gotten. Now we're happy to announce that our second English-translated "BL" game is in stock and shipping, the long-awaited Absolute Obedience by Langmaor, a unique game set in a highly stylized version of post-war West Germany. Featuring a great game system with twelve chapters and the ability to play either as the dapper Louis Hardwich or his uncouth sidekick Kia WelBehenna, this is an outstanding title that anyone interested in the genre should pick up. Check it out now!
Friday, October 13, 2006
Japanese tricks to memorize anything, fun with "companions" in Tokyo, and thoughts on evangelical Buddhism
Hello again from Japan, where it's believed that only good things happen on Friday the 13th.
There was a lot of buzz last week about Akira Haraguchi, the Japanese man who recited 100,000 digits of pi from memory, breaking his previous record of 83,431 digits. It seems incredible that the human brain could memorize so many numbers, but when I heard the story I knew exactly how he did it. The Japanese are very adept at coming up with phrases which help them learn important information, especially dates, which in Japan's test-centric educational system are far more important than issues like, why did this historical event take place and how did it affect future events? Whether it's memorizing that the Kamakura Military Government was established in 1192 by using phrase ii kuni o tsukuro (lit. let's make a good country), remembering that the Treaty of Versailles was made in 1919 with iku iku, pari wa berusaiyu (Go! Go! Versailles is in Paris, translatable other ways if you like since iku can mean something sexual), or storing the date of the Reformation of 1517 as ichigo, ii na (I love strawberries), the Japanese can memorize just about anything thanks to the ability of their language to tie numbers to syllables. The English translation of the classic phrase to help memorize pi starts out like this: "Okay, let's go. According to the husbands of good girls, who take their crying selves down to the pier, insects in the rocks are chirping loudly in the darkness." And so on, carried to a Herculean extreme. To this day, my wife can rattle off thirty or forty of the elements on the Periodic Table thanks to memory phrases she learned more than twenty years ago, but I can't get past Helium. (Small note: we recommend the Zebra Check Set for those who want to try out Japanese study methods, it's a great system.)
When I first came to Japan I happened across an advertisement recruiting girls to work as "companions." I was shocked, since this seemed like a very immoral career path indeed, but I was misunderstanding the term. In Japanese, a companion is a girl who works certain events to promote products, smile and generally look pretty. Also called "campaign girls" or "event girls" they're a variant of the creature known in the West under the scientific name boothbabus attractivus, and you don't have to go far in Tokyo to bump into some. I went drinking with a friend last weekend, and in the hip Shibuya district there was an island of beautiful girls, showing off the latest Panasonic music player and getting lots of attention from passers-by. With the rise of moe culture (pronounced mo-E and referring to the burning, happy feeling when you look at super-cute anime characters), there's been more than a little joining of these companions with cosplay, and in Akihabara I encountered pretty girls handing out tissues while wearing maid outfits, costumes from Evangelion, you name it.
Before I came to Japan in 1991, I had many pre-conceived notions about what I would find, and one was that I would not encounter many Japanese with strong religious beliefs. Although this has held true for the most part, I was surprised to find that there were many religions active in Japan, including Baptists (I was asked to play "Santa-san" at the local Baptist Church my first Christmas here), Catholics (there's a Catholic church in Maebashi that was mysteriously saved when the city was bombed in the final days of World War II), Mormons (they give free English lessons), even Jehova's Witnesses (who hand out a Japanese version of the Watchtower). Another powerful group that has its roots in the Nichiren school of Japanese Buddhism is Soka Gakkai, the only "evangelical" Buddhism I've seen, in that adherents actively try to sign new members up. Being a "new" religion (founded in 1930), I've always felt that the church was similar to the Mormon Church in the U.S. in many ways. Since the end of World War II, Soka Gakkai has expanded into all corners of Japan, and grown so influential that they even formed their own political party, the Komeito, which is the third largest party in Japan (although there are supposedly no longer any ties between the party and the group anymore, and it's taboo to mention the two together in the Japanese press). There are quite a few high-profile members of Soka Gakkai religion, including Orlando Bloom. There is criticism of some of the tactics the group has used to get and keep members, and a quick search on Google brought up pages that were both very much for and against the group. The URL for the group's international site is here if you want to take a peep.
J-List brings the best magazines in Japan via our reserve subscription system, with great offerings like Megami Magazine (apparently dedicated to going out of business by giving cool posters and other items to readers), Goth-Loli Bible (gothic cosplay culture), Hiragana Times (bilingual articles on Japan), FRUiTs and Kera, Shoxx and Cure, Newtype and Animage, and of course popular classics like Urecco. We've added two new magazines today, for people who want to stay on top of the Japanese gaming scene: Playstation Magazine which follows all things on the Sony gaming front including PS3 and PSP, and killer Famitsu DS, with loads of information on the DS front in Japan. Sign up now!
There was a lot of buzz last week about Akira Haraguchi, the Japanese man who recited 100,000 digits of pi from memory, breaking his previous record of 83,431 digits. It seems incredible that the human brain could memorize so many numbers, but when I heard the story I knew exactly how he did it. The Japanese are very adept at coming up with phrases which help them learn important information, especially dates, which in Japan's test-centric educational system are far more important than issues like, why did this historical event take place and how did it affect future events? Whether it's memorizing that the Kamakura Military Government was established in 1192 by using phrase ii kuni o tsukuro (lit. let's make a good country), remembering that the Treaty of Versailles was made in 1919 with iku iku, pari wa berusaiyu (Go! Go! Versailles is in Paris, translatable other ways if you like since iku can mean something sexual), or storing the date of the Reformation of 1517 as ichigo, ii na (I love strawberries), the Japanese can memorize just about anything thanks to the ability of their language to tie numbers to syllables. The English translation of the classic phrase to help memorize pi starts out like this: "Okay, let's go. According to the husbands of good girls, who take their crying selves down to the pier, insects in the rocks are chirping loudly in the darkness." And so on, carried to a Herculean extreme. To this day, my wife can rattle off thirty or forty of the elements on the Periodic Table thanks to memory phrases she learned more than twenty years ago, but I can't get past Helium. (Small note: we recommend the Zebra Check Set for those who want to try out Japanese study methods, it's a great system.)
When I first came to Japan I happened across an advertisement recruiting girls to work as "companions." I was shocked, since this seemed like a very immoral career path indeed, but I was misunderstanding the term. In Japanese, a companion is a girl who works certain events to promote products, smile and generally look pretty. Also called "campaign girls" or "event girls" they're a variant of the creature known in the West under the scientific name boothbabus attractivus, and you don't have to go far in Tokyo to bump into some. I went drinking with a friend last weekend, and in the hip Shibuya district there was an island of beautiful girls, showing off the latest Panasonic music player and getting lots of attention from passers-by. With the rise of moe culture (pronounced mo-E and referring to the burning, happy feeling when you look at super-cute anime characters), there's been more than a little joining of these companions with cosplay, and in Akihabara I encountered pretty girls handing out tissues while wearing maid outfits, costumes from Evangelion, you name it.
Before I came to Japan in 1991, I had many pre-conceived notions about what I would find, and one was that I would not encounter many Japanese with strong religious beliefs. Although this has held true for the most part, I was surprised to find that there were many religions active in Japan, including Baptists (I was asked to play "Santa-san" at the local Baptist Church my first Christmas here), Catholics (there's a Catholic church in Maebashi that was mysteriously saved when the city was bombed in the final days of World War II), Mormons (they give free English lessons), even Jehova's Witnesses (who hand out a Japanese version of the Watchtower). Another powerful group that has its roots in the Nichiren school of Japanese Buddhism is Soka Gakkai, the only "evangelical" Buddhism I've seen, in that adherents actively try to sign new members up. Being a "new" religion (founded in 1930), I've always felt that the church was similar to the Mormon Church in the U.S. in many ways. Since the end of World War II, Soka Gakkai has expanded into all corners of Japan, and grown so influential that they even formed their own political party, the Komeito, which is the third largest party in Japan (although there are supposedly no longer any ties between the party and the group anymore, and it's taboo to mention the two together in the Japanese press). There are quite a few high-profile members of Soka Gakkai religion, including Orlando Bloom. There is criticism of some of the tactics the group has used to get and keep members, and a quick search on Google brought up pages that were both very much for and against the group. The URL for the group's international site is here if you want to take a peep.
J-List brings the best magazines in Japan via our reserve subscription system, with great offerings like Megami Magazine (apparently dedicated to going out of business by giving cool posters and other items to readers), Goth-Loli Bible (gothic cosplay culture), Hiragana Times (bilingual articles on Japan), FRUiTs and Kera, Shoxx and Cure, Newtype and Animage, and of course popular classics like Urecco. We've added two new magazines today, for people who want to stay on top of the Japanese gaming scene: Playstation Magazine which follows all things on the Sony gaming front including PS3 and PSP, and killer Famitsu DS, with loads of information on the DS front in Japan. Sign up now!
Okay, I have extra time today so I'll throw up some pics.
This is Shibuya on a Saturday, at the famous "scramble intersection" (so named because you have to scramble across or get hit by a taxi). By the way, there's a 90% chance this guy got lucky with the girl he's nampa'ing.
Walking towards the HMV.
Talk about an advertising budget. The upcoming remake of "A Sailor Suit and a Machine Gun" is really getting the big plug. This is one of the most iconic buildings in Tokyo, the Shibuya 109 building.
Mind-bending advertising for some department store.
Gorgeous event girl at the Panasonic booth. It's fun to play with their minds, like trying to get them to speak to you in English like they do on TV shows here. Is she not lovely?
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
More on the concept of "senpai" including "gaijin seniority," and the cutting edge of the female pachinko market
I talked last time about the invisible lines drawn between the three social groups in a Japanese school or organization, senpai (upperclassmen, seniors), persons who are on the same level as you seniority- or age-wise, and kohai (lowerclassmen, juniors), three concepts which can be tricky for non-Japanese to grasp. Social rules require that you speak with (slightly) polite language when addressing a senpai, whereas you can speak informally with people on the same or lower level. While we use the word "friend" in a wide range of situations in English, the corresponding Japanese word tomodachi is generally reserved for people who are the same age as you, while the terms senpai/kohai are used to refer to older/younger friends, even if you hang out with them all the time. Since the bursting of Japan's bubble economy in 1989, the vaunted lifetime employment system has all but disappeared, and it's quite common for a person to change jobs 2-3 times in his adult life. This causes a bit of a challenge to the Japanese system of seniority -- if a man in his 50s goes to work at a company with a boss in his 20s, which is the senior? The answer is, the employee with more seniority in the new company, which means that the tidy system of politeness based on age starts to look pretty strange in the Japan of today. It's an interesting example of social forces bringing about changes in language, right before our eyes.
Foreigners in Japan unconsciously pick up on the senior/junior system, too, and when I used to meet new English teachers while drinking at the local bar "AIUEO" (what a great name), we'd ask each other how long we'd been in Japan to establish the proper invisible order of "gaijin seniority." Of course, to be a senpai to someone doesn't just mean a one-way ticket to getting respect from them. You've got to earn it by providing help and guidance to your kohai, doing things like picking up the tab at restaurants and generally assisting them in their jobs. Just as various kind souls helped me get my "Japan legs" when I first arrived here, it was my responsibility to help out newer foreign teachers I encountered, and I did my best to fulfill this responsibility. In our town there's a guy who had everyone beat when it came to gaijin seniority, an American who came to Japan during the Vietnam War and stayed ever since. He writes articles for the Japanese newspaper about how the country has changed since he arrived, and has a kind of mythical status a "First Foreigner" in our prefecture.
The national past time of the Japanese isn't singing karaoke, or writing haiku poems, or taking in the beauty of Mt. Fuji while the cherry blossoms fall all around. For many, it's playing pachinko, essentially a vertically oriented pinball machine which you shoot metal balls into, hoping that enough balls happen to fall into one of the special holes in the machine so that more balls are released, eventually giving you more than you started out with. Although generally viewed as a hobby of middle-aged men, many women play the game, too, and since women have more money (they traditionally control the family finances in Japan), pachinko parlor operators are scrambling to attract this more profitable market segment. The newest theme in pachinko is machines that feature The Rose of Versailles, an anime series about the French Revolution that millions of females in Japan have fallen in love with over the last four decades. While you play, various scenes from the show are displayed on the LCD screen, with updated animation so it looks really nice. If you play well, you get to view special scenes with Oscar and young Marie Antoinette. Other recent pachinko trends include machines centered around enka singer Hibari Misora, and good old Yon-sama, aka South Korean heart-throb Bae Yong Joon, much beloved by middle-aged Japanese women.
Foreigners in Japan unconsciously pick up on the senior/junior system, too, and when I used to meet new English teachers while drinking at the local bar "AIUEO" (what a great name), we'd ask each other how long we'd been in Japan to establish the proper invisible order of "gaijin seniority." Of course, to be a senpai to someone doesn't just mean a one-way ticket to getting respect from them. You've got to earn it by providing help and guidance to your kohai, doing things like picking up the tab at restaurants and generally assisting them in their jobs. Just as various kind souls helped me get my "Japan legs" when I first arrived here, it was my responsibility to help out newer foreign teachers I encountered, and I did my best to fulfill this responsibility. In our town there's a guy who had everyone beat when it came to gaijin seniority, an American who came to Japan during the Vietnam War and stayed ever since. He writes articles for the Japanese newspaper about how the country has changed since he arrived, and has a kind of mythical status a "First Foreigner" in our prefecture.
The national past time of the Japanese isn't singing karaoke, or writing haiku poems, or taking in the beauty of Mt. Fuji while the cherry blossoms fall all around. For many, it's playing pachinko, essentially a vertically oriented pinball machine which you shoot metal balls into, hoping that enough balls happen to fall into one of the special holes in the machine so that more balls are released, eventually giving you more than you started out with. Although generally viewed as a hobby of middle-aged men, many women play the game, too, and since women have more money (they traditionally control the family finances in Japan), pachinko parlor operators are scrambling to attract this more profitable market segment. The newest theme in pachinko is machines that feature The Rose of Versailles, an anime series about the French Revolution that millions of females in Japan have fallen in love with over the last four decades. While you play, various scenes from the show are displayed on the LCD screen, with updated animation so it looks really nice. If you play well, you get to view special scenes with Oscar and young Marie Antoinette. Other recent pachinko trends include machines centered around enka singer Hibari Misora, and good old Yon-sama, aka South Korean heart-throb Bae Yong Joon, much beloved by middle-aged Japanese women.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Reasons why we hate living next to North Korea, all about the word 'kawaii' and a complex social concept
Japan is buzzing about North Korea's reported underground nuclear test, which took place a few hours ago. The news comes just as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Seoul for his first meeting with South Korean President Moo-hyun to begin work on some of the problems that stand between the two countries, including Yasukuni Shrine and Takeshima, an island that both sides are claiming as theirs. As if we needed another reason to dislike living next to one of the world's scariest nations, now we've got confirmed nukes within range of Tokyo, with my home prefecture right in the line of fire. Um, would any country out there be willing to trade places with Japan and live next to North Korea? We'd really appreciate it.
One Japanese concept that was quite hard for me to get down was aisatsu (AI-sa-tsoo), which means "greetings" and is quite a multifaceted idea. Before I started J-List, I worked at our local City Office as an "Officer of Inter- nationalization," doing things like helping other gaijin who didn't speak Japanese when they had problems or needed to use city services. The world of Japanese public employees is a very formal one, and greeting everyone with "ohayo gozaimasu" in the mornings was a strict requirement. Children are raised to greet others too, especially their teachers and upperclassmen, and this symbolic showing of respect is an important part of Japan's "vertically oriented" social system which draws lines between seniors in a school or organization (senpai), students in the same level as you (dokyusei) and juniors/lowerclassmen (kohai). One concern that many of the parents at my son's special elementary school have is, because the students are in the first graduating class of the school, there are no senpai for them to interact with, which some fear would handicap them socially when they get out in the real world. The word aisatsu is applied to some other situations, too, such as when you move into a new apartment and give a small towel to your neighbors as a way of introducing yourself, or the long, drawn out speeches given by the head of any organization at any formal event, like a wedding. The other day, a neighbor brought us a package of manju cakes (rice cakes with sweet beans inside, which I've lived in Japan long enough to love). He was about to start construction on a new house, and had brought us the gift to apologize in advance for the inconvenience and noise that the construction would cause.
One word that has fast becoming a part of English seems to be kawaii (ka-wah-EE, 可愛い written properly), the Japanese term that corresponds to the word "cute" as applied to puppies, kittens, anime characters and most Japanese girls. Grammatically, it's an "i-adjective," like the words oishii (delicious、 美味しい) or takai (tall, expensive、高い), meaning that it ends in a hiragana 'i' (い) sound. Some similar words are kirei (pretty in an elegant way; can also mean clean、奇麗) and utsukushii (beautiful、美しい), and my wife and I have long debates about whether a given actress on TV is cute, pretty or beautiful. Some examples of expressing 'cute':
Kawaii!
[That is] cute!
(the subject is usually omitted, it's whatever you've just been talking about)
Kawaiku nai
[That is] not cute
'i' changes to 'ku' + nai for negative, used in anime a lot
Kawaiku naru
to become cute
'ku' functions as 'ly' in English, changing adjective to advert
Bonus point! Can you extrapolate how to say "not delicious" or "not expensive"
in Japanese? If so, you'll have taken your first step into a larger world.
One Japanese concept that was quite hard for me to get down was aisatsu (AI-sa-tsoo), which means "greetings" and is quite a multifaceted idea. Before I started J-List, I worked at our local City Office as an "Officer of Inter- nationalization," doing things like helping other gaijin who didn't speak Japanese when they had problems or needed to use city services. The world of Japanese public employees is a very formal one, and greeting everyone with "ohayo gozaimasu" in the mornings was a strict requirement. Children are raised to greet others too, especially their teachers and upperclassmen, and this symbolic showing of respect is an important part of Japan's "vertically oriented" social system which draws lines between seniors in a school or organization (senpai), students in the same level as you (dokyusei) and juniors/lowerclassmen (kohai). One concern that many of the parents at my son's special elementary school have is, because the students are in the first graduating class of the school, there are no senpai for them to interact with, which some fear would handicap them socially when they get out in the real world. The word aisatsu is applied to some other situations, too, such as when you move into a new apartment and give a small towel to your neighbors as a way of introducing yourself, or the long, drawn out speeches given by the head of any organization at any formal event, like a wedding. The other day, a neighbor brought us a package of manju cakes (rice cakes with sweet beans inside, which I've lived in Japan long enough to love). He was about to start construction on a new house, and had brought us the gift to apologize in advance for the inconvenience and noise that the construction would cause.
One word that has fast becoming a part of English seems to be kawaii (ka-wah-EE, 可愛い written properly), the Japanese term that corresponds to the word "cute" as applied to puppies, kittens, anime characters and most Japanese girls. Grammatically, it's an "i-adjective," like the words oishii (delicious、 美味しい) or takai (tall, expensive、高い), meaning that it ends in a hiragana 'i' (い) sound. Some similar words are kirei (pretty in an elegant way; can also mean clean、奇麗) and utsukushii (beautiful、美しい), and my wife and I have long debates about whether a given actress on TV is cute, pretty or beautiful. Some examples of expressing 'cute':
Kawaii!
[That is] cute!
(the subject is usually omitted, it's whatever you've just been talking about)
Kawaiku nai
[That is] not cute
'i' changes to 'ku' + nai for negative, used in anime a lot
Kawaiku naru
to become cute
'ku' functions as 'ly' in English, changing adjective to advert
Bonus point! Can you extrapolate how to say "not delicious" or "not expensive"
in Japanese? If so, you'll have taken your first step into a larger world.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Staying healthy with "Ningen Dock," being tormented by images of Kyoto, and the Japan-Helen Keller connection
Yesterday was time for my annual top-to-bottom physical, called Ningen Dock, a name that implies a human (ningen) "drydock" where you get checked from head to toe for potential problems. The check-up was quite thorough, including blood and related tests, tests for vision, hearing and lung problems, an ultrasound check of internal organs, and the always fun barium X-ray machine, which tilts your body at different angles while internal pictures are taken, a common test done here due to the high percentage of stomach and esophageal problems among Japanese. The hospital the tests were done at is quite an interesting place, dedicated entirely to efficient testing for problems, from the standard one that I had done to a "Brain Dock" test that checks your brain for possible problems, and important regular tests for women. There are many reasons why the Japanese enjoy the longest lifespans in the world on average, including diets with lots of fish and soy products, smaller food portions and maintaining healthy lifelong relationships, but without a doubt a big factor is a medical system that promotes regular, prophylactic check-ups like the Ningen Dock.
It's interesting to see the myriad of ways that Japan has had an effect on the the West over the years. Charlie Chaplin's manager for two decades was a Japanese man named Kono Totaichi, and Chaplin came to Japan several times, gleaning some aspects of his unique acting style from watching Kabuki performances here. Vincent van Gogh went through a period where he was fascinated with the ukiyo-e paintings from Japan, and made imitations of different works. Albert Einstein spent several months in Japan in the 1920s, giving lectures on his theories and doing things any tourist in Japan would do, including the hot springs circuit (I can picture him trying on a yukata). If you've ever seen an Akita dog, it might have been descended through one given by the Japanese government to Helen Keller, who visited Akita Prefecture (near the northern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu) and showed an interest in Hachiko, the loyal dog who waited patiently for his deceased master to come home for ten years. Of course, Akira Kurosawa's films have had a huge influence on many directors, not least being George Lucas. Whole sections of the Star Wars films, from the bushido-influenced Jedi to the drunk comic relief samurai character (Jar Jar) are taken from Japan's films and culture. The bottom line? If you're as fascinated with Japan as I've been all my life, you've in good company.
It's autumn, and that means that everyone living in Japan must endure a very subtle form of torture. I'm talking, of course, about TV commercials by JR (Japan Railroad) tempting us with fabulous scenes of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and bidding us to drop everything and head down there on the next Shinkansen. "I know what we should do! Let's go to Kyoto" (そうだ！京都へ行こう） the slogan goes, and they always employ a variation on the "My Favorite Things" song that never fails to fill you with desire to visit the city as soon as possible. Fall is an especially fine time to be in Kyoto, as the leaves look beautiful in shades of red and yellow and brown, the season called Koyo ("crimson leaves") in Japanese. Unfortunately, it costs about the same for us to go to Kyoto as it does to fly to Rome, so it's not something we get to do very often.
We have yet another wacky Japanese T-shirt for you: a new "warning" shirt to go with our "Death from Overwork" and "No Foreigners Allowed" shirts, this time featuring a message that might serve a few college students out there. "Warning: Extremely Hung Over Now," our newest T-shirt proclaims, showing the image of a person having an out-of-stomach experience at the porcelain altar. Our unique Japanese T-shirts are a fun way to add a little kanji in your daily life, and maybe start up a conversation or two with any Japanese people you run into on the street. All our kanji shirts are printed in San Diego and all sizes are full U.S. standard sizes.
It's interesting to see the myriad of ways that Japan has had an effect on the the West over the years. Charlie Chaplin's manager for two decades was a Japanese man named Kono Totaichi, and Chaplin came to Japan several times, gleaning some aspects of his unique acting style from watching Kabuki performances here. Vincent van Gogh went through a period where he was fascinated with the ukiyo-e paintings from Japan, and made imitations of different works. Albert Einstein spent several months in Japan in the 1920s, giving lectures on his theories and doing things any tourist in Japan would do, including the hot springs circuit (I can picture him trying on a yukata). If you've ever seen an Akita dog, it might have been descended through one given by the Japanese government to Helen Keller, who visited Akita Prefecture (near the northern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu) and showed an interest in Hachiko, the loyal dog who waited patiently for his deceased master to come home for ten years. Of course, Akira Kurosawa's films have had a huge influence on many directors, not least being George Lucas. Whole sections of the Star Wars films, from the bushido-influenced Jedi to the drunk comic relief samurai character (Jar Jar) are taken from Japan's films and culture. The bottom line? If you're as fascinated with Japan as I've been all my life, you've in good company.
It's autumn, and that means that everyone living in Japan must endure a very subtle form of torture. I'm talking, of course, about TV commercials by JR (Japan Railroad) tempting us with fabulous scenes of Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, and bidding us to drop everything and head down there on the next Shinkansen. "I know what we should do! Let's go to Kyoto" (そうだ！京都へ行こう） the slogan goes, and they always employ a variation on the "My Favorite Things" song that never fails to fill you with desire to visit the city as soon as possible. Fall is an especially fine time to be in Kyoto, as the leaves look beautiful in shades of red and yellow and brown, the season called Koyo ("crimson leaves") in Japanese. Unfortunately, it costs about the same for us to go to Kyoto as it does to fly to Rome, so it's not something we get to do very often.
We have yet another wacky Japanese T-shirt for you: a new "warning" shirt to go with our "Death from Overwork" and "No Foreigners Allowed" shirts, this time featuring a message that might serve a few college students out there. "Warning: Extremely Hung Over Now," our newest T-shirt proclaims, showing the image of a person having an out-of-stomach experience at the porcelain altar. Our unique Japanese T-shirts are a fun way to add a little kanji in your daily life, and maybe start up a conversation or two with any Japanese people you run into on the street. All our kanji shirts are printed in San Diego and all sizes are full U.S. standard sizes.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Lessons we could learn from Japan about "safety driving," pointing with the middle finger, and trivia on Japanese toilets
I've often thought that there are some really good ideas in Japan that the rest of the world could learn from. Right now it's the Autumn Traffic Safety Week, a special time when different groups come together to promote traffic safety, like the Lions Club gathering in front of shopping centers to hand out leaflets reminding drivers to buckle up and put kids in child safety seats (still somewhat rare in Japan). The police have an increased presence during this season, and do spot inspections of drivers on major roads. Drunk driving has become a big topic this year due to a tragic spike in alcohol-related deaths, and authorities are doing their best to combat the problem -- they even caught an off-duty police officer who had been drinking. Other ways of getting the message out to drivers include posting slogans like "Giving the right-of-way to others is a pillar of safe driving" and dressing up famous idols like Yuko Ogura in a police woman's uniform to bring attention to their cause. Using a bit of marketing dazzle to get people to think about "safety driving" (as its invariably called here) is something I'd love to see carried to an international level. Considering that 40,000+ people are killed annually in auto accidents in the U.S. alone, even making a small difference could save a lot of lives. Heck, we could un-do the 9-11 deaths by doing just a few things right on the traffic safety front!
No matter how long I live in Japan, there are some things I can't quite get used to. When Japanese point at something, they will often use their middle finger rather than their forefinger, since the middle finger has no particular meaning here, but it always feels odd. Having a Japanese person apologize for not being able to speak English even though I'm talking to them normally in Japanese is hard to get used to, as is having a vending machine bow to me to thank me for my purchase, by way of a little LCD screen (I try to avoid bowing back). The are many other odd things, too. Men in tailored suits riding a bicycle in the rain while holding an umbrella with one hand. Buying a six-pack of beer for 6x the price of a single can, or picking up a loaf of bread that has all of three slices in the package. Yes, one thing you can say for sure is that living in Japan is never the same old thing.
One of the great mysteries of living in Japan, as any gaijin will tell you, is those kanji for "small" and "big" (小 and 大, pronounced sho and dai) written on most toilet flush handles. Japan is incredibly wasteful of its natural resources, for example plastering the sides of mountains with concrete to guard against rockslides, but it also has a green side, taxing less efficient car engines at a higher rate, recycling many types of paper products, selling refill versions of products to cut down on trash volume and promoting low-energy lighting in homes and businesses. Japanese toilets are set up to conserve resources, too: you can turn the handle to the right to perform a normal flush ("big"), or hold it to the left for a few seconds to just let out a little bit of water ("small"). It took me a few years to make the connection, but of course the "small" character stands for shoben (小便, meaning number 1, literally translated as "small convenience"), while the other turn of the handle stands for daiben (大便、number 2, or "big convenience"). Apologies to Britain's most famous clock, whose sounds rather funny to the Japanese.
We've got some news for fans of our here
2007 calendars today: a huge volley of calendars have come in and are being posted to the site right now. The newly posted calendars include beautiful views of Japan in all four seasons, visually pleasing sushi, lovely idols like Jun Natsukawa and Aki Hoshino, cool calendars for students of kanji, the fantastic art works of Haruyo Morita, Japanese girls in traditional "onsen" hot springs, and more. Browse all our new calendars now!
This month's "Dating-Sim Games of the Month" are I'm Gonna Nurse You 1 & 2, two outstanding PC dating-sim games from Trabulance that blend cute female characters, nurse uniforms, hilarious stories and plenty of good, clean fun in a school for nurses-in-training. Special pricing on both titles this month, above and beyond Monday's price drop in our dating-sim games.
No matter how long I live in Japan, there are some things I can't quite get used to. When Japanese point at something, they will often use their middle finger rather than their forefinger, since the middle finger has no particular meaning here, but it always feels odd. Having a Japanese person apologize for not being able to speak English even though I'm talking to them normally in Japanese is hard to get used to, as is having a vending machine bow to me to thank me for my purchase, by way of a little LCD screen (I try to avoid bowing back). The are many other odd things, too. Men in tailored suits riding a bicycle in the rain while holding an umbrella with one hand. Buying a six-pack of beer for 6x the price of a single can, or picking up a loaf of bread that has all of three slices in the package. Yes, one thing you can say for sure is that living in Japan is never the same old thing.
One of the great mysteries of living in Japan, as any gaijin will tell you, is those kanji for "small" and "big" (小 and 大, pronounced sho and dai) written on most toilet flush handles. Japan is incredibly wasteful of its natural resources, for example plastering the sides of mountains with concrete to guard against rockslides, but it also has a green side, taxing less efficient car engines at a higher rate, recycling many types of paper products, selling refill versions of products to cut down on trash volume and promoting low-energy lighting in homes and businesses. Japanese toilets are set up to conserve resources, too: you can turn the handle to the right to perform a normal flush ("big"), or hold it to the left for a few seconds to just let out a little bit of water ("small"). It took me a few years to make the connection, but of course the "small" character stands for shoben (小便, meaning number 1, literally translated as "small convenience"), while the other turn of the handle stands for daiben (大便、number 2, or "big convenience"). Apologies to Britain's most famous clock, whose sounds rather funny to the Japanese.
We've got some news for fans of our here
2007 calendars today: a huge volley of calendars have come in and are being posted to the site right now. The newly posted calendars include beautiful views of Japan in all four seasons, visually pleasing sushi, lovely idols like Jun Natsukawa and Aki Hoshino, cool calendars for students of kanji, the fantastic art works of Haruyo Morita, Japanese girls in traditional "onsen" hot springs, and more. Browse all our new calendars now!
This month's "Dating-Sim Games of the Month" are I'm Gonna Nurse You 1 & 2, two outstanding PC dating-sim games from Trabulance that blend cute female characters, nurse uniforms, hilarious stories and plenty of good, clean fun in a school for nurses-in-training. Special pricing on both titles this month, above and beyond Monday's price drop in our dating-sim games.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Returning to my Otaku roots, my adventures in a "capsule hotel," and what the Japanese really eat
Time was, people would go to the Akihabara (ah-ki-HAH-bah-rah, meaning "field of autumn leaves") area of Tokyo to buy some cool electronics, browse a wide selection of computers, or maybe hunt for vintage console game software. Today, "Electric Town" is still the single best place to find cool gadgetry in Japan -- although the Internet probably fills this need for a lot more customers than in the past -- but the region is also becoming a "Mecca" of otaku culture for everything from anime figures to doujinshi to cosplay pubs and more. Over the weekend I spent a day rediscovering my own otaku roots, waiting in line with a thousand or so fans of Gainax's "Aim for the Top" series, trying to get tickets to a special mash-up of the original Gunbuster and the new FLCL-ified sequel, complete with the voice actors from both series at the showing. I didn't get in to see the show, so I drowned my sorrows at a maid cafe and headed home.
While in Tokyo, I enjoyed the uniquely Japanese experience of staying in a "capsule hotel," one of the most affordable ways of staying in a crowded Japanese city you can find. Instead of a normal hotel room, you sleep in a "capsule," a closet-sized bed that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie set in deep space. Inside your capsule is everything you need: a small TV, clock radio, pillow and blanket, and a plug for charging your tech stuff. Before retiring to your capsule for the night, you can get clean in the large bath and sauna, great for removing the day's sweat and stress. When it's time to sleep you crawl into your personal capsule, pull the curtain down and start snoring. It's quite fun, and allows you to stay in hip parts of Tokyo like Shibuya for $30 a night, compared with $150-250 for a normal hotel room. On the other hand, it is a tight squeeze in there, and even though I'm just 5'9" (175 cm) I sometimes have to sleep at an angle inside the capsule to create enough space. Back during my bachelor days I went on an extended Capsule Hotel Tour of Japan, riding the cheapest trains and staying in capsule hotels to save money. It was a lot of fun.
I've heard that it's impossible to live in a country unless you truly enjoy the food there, and it's certainly true in my case -- I couldn't be happy in Japan if I didn't love eating here. Although most people probably imagine that the Japanese eat, well, Japanese food all the time, in reality the diet here is quite varied. Some popular dishes aren't very Japanese at all, like the honorary national food of Japan, curry rice, a thick curry stew eaten over steamed rice that was introduced by the British around 1860. Many foods that we consider "Chinese," like chow mein or fried rice, have intertwined with Japanese dishes for so long that the two are almost impossible to separate, but some foods do maintain a separate Chinese feel to them, such as gyoza ("pot stickers"). Various forms of American food exist here, from fast food chains to "fami-res" outfits like Denny's and Coco's, and although you can't find a really outstanding example of the archetypal hot dog or hamburger, at least they have "American Dogs" (what a corndog is called). Popular foods that the Japanese each every day include sushi and sashimi (the latter is raw fish without the rice part), or rice bowl meals like beef bowl or "Parent-and-Child Bowl" (chicken and scrambled egg cooked and served over rice). Noodle-based dishes, from ramen to cold soba noodles or satisfying udon, are also quite common. One of my favorite dishes is Katsudon, a fried pork cutlet ("katsu") served over a bowl of rice ("don"). Because "katsu" also means "to win" in Japanese, it's common for parents to serve this to their kids before a big test or sporting event. Tomorrow my son is representing his school in the city marathon, and so we're off to eat Katsudon tonight, to help him "win."
This month marks a very special time for J-List: our tenth anniversary! It October of 1996 when I officially retired as an ESL teacher to start J-List, which we envisioned would be a kind of "magical toybox from Japan" that anyone could visit, thanks to the mystery of the World Wide Web. We've had an incredibly wild ride over the past ten years, and have loved nearly every minute of it. More than anything, we've been blessed with a broad base of great customers who are genuinely interested in learning more about Japan, and we're very happy to serve you. Thanks for ten great years, and please look forward to ten more!
To commemorate the past ten years and to thank everyone for their support we've got an announcement: we're permanently dropping the prices of nearly all English-translated PC dating-sim games from G-Collections and Peach Princess, bringing the price to many games down to just $29.95 for most CD-ROM versions, or $24.95 for download versions (which require Virtual Mate 2.0), or more. We think these PC dating-sim games, which blend beautiful characters and dramatic interactive stories, including some that can make you cry, are one of funnest ways you can interface with Japan interactively, and we've got big plans for these games in the future. We hope fans will take advantage of the new lower prices and show their support for PC dating-sim games from Japan!
While in Tokyo, I enjoyed the uniquely Japanese experience of staying in a "capsule hotel," one of the most affordable ways of staying in a crowded Japanese city you can find. Instead of a normal hotel room, you sleep in a "capsule," a closet-sized bed that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie set in deep space. Inside your capsule is everything you need: a small TV, clock radio, pillow and blanket, and a plug for charging your tech stuff. Before retiring to your capsule for the night, you can get clean in the large bath and sauna, great for removing the day's sweat and stress. When it's time to sleep you crawl into your personal capsule, pull the curtain down and start snoring. It's quite fun, and allows you to stay in hip parts of Tokyo like Shibuya for $30 a night, compared with $150-250 for a normal hotel room. On the other hand, it is a tight squeeze in there, and even though I'm just 5'9" (175 cm) I sometimes have to sleep at an angle inside the capsule to create enough space. Back during my bachelor days I went on an extended Capsule Hotel Tour of Japan, riding the cheapest trains and staying in capsule hotels to save money. It was a lot of fun.
I've heard that it's impossible to live in a country unless you truly enjoy the food there, and it's certainly true in my case -- I couldn't be happy in Japan if I didn't love eating here. Although most people probably imagine that the Japanese eat, well, Japanese food all the time, in reality the diet here is quite varied. Some popular dishes aren't very Japanese at all, like the honorary national food of Japan, curry rice, a thick curry stew eaten over steamed rice that was introduced by the British around 1860. Many foods that we consider "Chinese," like chow mein or fried rice, have intertwined with Japanese dishes for so long that the two are almost impossible to separate, but some foods do maintain a separate Chinese feel to them, such as gyoza ("pot stickers"). Various forms of American food exist here, from fast food chains to "fami-res" outfits like Denny's and Coco's, and although you can't find a really outstanding example of the archetypal hot dog or hamburger, at least they have "American Dogs" (what a corndog is called). Popular foods that the Japanese each every day include sushi and sashimi (the latter is raw fish without the rice part), or rice bowl meals like beef bowl or "Parent-and-Child Bowl" (chicken and scrambled egg cooked and served over rice). Noodle-based dishes, from ramen to cold soba noodles or satisfying udon, are also quite common. One of my favorite dishes is Katsudon, a fried pork cutlet ("katsu") served over a bowl of rice ("don"). Because "katsu" also means "to win" in Japanese, it's common for parents to serve this to their kids before a big test or sporting event. Tomorrow my son is representing his school in the city marathon, and so we're off to eat Katsudon tonight, to help him "win."
This month marks a very special time for J-List: our tenth anniversary! It October of 1996 when I officially retired as an ESL teacher to start J-List, which we envisioned would be a kind of "magical toybox from Japan" that anyone could visit, thanks to the mystery of the World Wide Web. We've had an incredibly wild ride over the past ten years, and have loved nearly every minute of it. More than anything, we've been blessed with a broad base of great customers who are genuinely interested in learning more about Japan, and we're very happy to serve you. Thanks for ten great years, and please look forward to ten more!
To commemorate the past ten years and to thank everyone for their support we've got an announcement: we're permanently dropping the prices of nearly all English-translated PC dating-sim games from G-Collections and Peach Princess, bringing the price to many games down to just $29.95 for most CD-ROM versions, or $24.95 for download versions (which require Virtual Mate 2.0), or more. We think these PC dating-sim games, which blend beautiful characters and dramatic interactive stories, including some that can make you cry, are one of funnest ways you can interface with Japan interactively, and we've got big plans for these games in the future. We hope fans will take advantage of the new lower prices and show their support for PC dating-sim games from Japan!
Here's the World Famous Otaku lining up for the Gunbuster event. He woke up at 7 am, he's there fairly early, right? And look, there are only 40 or so people in front of him.
But no! There is another pocket of 500 or so otakus in another part of the building, there to cause me much trouble. Shields failing...hull breach, imminent...
We moved forward to get these little papers with numbers on them, which was the lottery.
In an hour or so, it was time to go see if we were chosen, but my number was not on the list. I felt like an anime character, checking to see if he'd passed the college entrance exam. While I edged forward, I peered out the window to see Yuko Ogura, apparently having been selected as the current "be careful of fire" girl from the post office.
ごめん、紀美子。もう、会えない！ (I'm sorry, Kimoko, I'll never see you again!) Part of my anguish is that Noriko Hidaka, the voice of Noriko, is also the voice of Minami Asakura of Touch fame, who was "moe" before they had a term for it (hell, before the word otaku had been coined, back in 1986 when Komiket only only up to 22 or so). Man, I would have loved to been in her presence even though she's a 60 year old woman who can play 15 year old girl roles. But it was not to be...
Friday, September 29, 2006
What they teach in a Japanese "morals" class, smart tricks for studying a foreign language, and Japan's newest otaku boom
It's always interesting to observe the large and small differences between schools here and back in the States. Both my daughter's Japanese public school and my son's semi-private English school have regular classes called "morals" (in Japanese, 道徳 which signaled to me a Taoist origin, as that's the characte for Tao), which aim to make kids better people. Because I'd never attended a class on moral education in my own years in school, I've always paid close attention to the lessons whenever Parents' Day rolls around. Each lesson features a different topic related to moral education, of course presented in a totally secular fashion, designed to make kids think about issues and be kinder to others. In one lesson I sat in on, the teacher told a story about a boy who asked his mother for money whenever he did something around the house. He got a big shock when his mother presented him with an itemized bill for everything she did for him, from cooking and cleaning to making his bento lunch and kissing him goodnight -- which made him realize he'd been taking his mother for granted. One big topic the lessons cover is ijime, or bullying, which is an especially dire problem in Japan and one reason for a high rate of young suicides. Japan's society is fortunate because it has a large pool of "common sense" (in Japanese, joshiki, as in the line from the famous song Odoru Pompokorin, "Edison was a great man, oh, everyone knows that...") that all Japanese can draw from, and much of what is taught in morals class are things that everyone would agree with (and hopefully, always act on) such as, if you find a wallet full of money you should turn it in to the police department, or, always give you seat to an elderly person when riding on a crowded train.
I talked last time about one way I'd come up with to study English with my son, by seeing what vocabulary words we could plug into the Star Wars universe together. Really, being inventive and coming up with effective ways to study is something that students of any subject should strive to do. One good method I found while on my Japanese literature kick was "read while listening" -- reading Dazai Osamu's "Run, Melos!" while listening to the audio book was much easier than doing just one or the other. It can be difficult to memorize new vocabulary words, so give your brain a hand by coming up with mnemonic hooks, such as learning the word shinu (shee-nu, "to die") by memorizing the phrase "she knew he was going to die." Back when I was studying, I made heavy use of Nihongo Journal, a monthly Japanese study magazine that we're fortunate to be able to offer now, and I found that covering the English translations in the book with duct tape was a good way of keeping my eyes from wandering away from the section I was working on. I learned some interesting memory tricks too, such as memorizing JPOP songs which allowed me to recall words later by singing the song in my head, or staring at a page in my textbook until I could bring it up in my mind during tests.
It's hard to keep up with anime trends in Japan, since they're always in motion. The newest boom in otaku culture seems to be tsundere (ツンデレ, TSOON-deh-reh), a word that describes girls who are cranky and quick to anger (in Japanese, tsun-tsun) on the surface, yet loving and vulnerable when it suits them (known as dere-dere, pronounced deh-reh deh-reh). A staple in anime and PC dating-sim games, some famous tsundere characters include Asuka from Evangelion, Akane from Ranma 1/2, Sanae from The Sagara Family (who has a tendency to punch the main character violently at any provocation), and if you ponder it long enough, Princess Leia from Empire (go on, think about it for a while). Like cat girls, waitress uniforms and French Maid costumes, tsundere is closely tied to the Cult of Akihabara and moe (mo-EH) culture that has become such a big part of modern Japanese life. Now instead of passively watching your favorite rough-around- the-edges character in anime, you can experience her in the flesh at a new "Tsun-Cafe" which features beautiful waitresses who insult customers, acting frustrated when they take too long to order and yelling things like, "Here's your coffee. Drink it quickly and get out of here, will you?" But when it's time to leave, the girls look sad, and say, "Oniichan, I'm sorry I said those awful things to you. You will come again, right?" Here's the video:
I talked last time about one way I'd come up with to study English with my son, by seeing what vocabulary words we could plug into the Star Wars universe together. Really, being inventive and coming up with effective ways to study is something that students of any subject should strive to do. One good method I found while on my Japanese literature kick was "read while listening" -- reading Dazai Osamu's "Run, Melos!" while listening to the audio book was much easier than doing just one or the other. It can be difficult to memorize new vocabulary words, so give your brain a hand by coming up with mnemonic hooks, such as learning the word shinu (shee-nu, "to die") by memorizing the phrase "she knew he was going to die." Back when I was studying, I made heavy use of Nihongo Journal, a monthly Japanese study magazine that we're fortunate to be able to offer now, and I found that covering the English translations in the book with duct tape was a good way of keeping my eyes from wandering away from the section I was working on. I learned some interesting memory tricks too, such as memorizing JPOP songs which allowed me to recall words later by singing the song in my head, or staring at a page in my textbook until I could bring it up in my mind during tests.
It's hard to keep up with anime trends in Japan, since they're always in motion. The newest boom in otaku culture seems to be tsundere (ツンデレ, TSOON-deh-reh), a word that describes girls who are cranky and quick to anger (in Japanese, tsun-tsun) on the surface, yet loving and vulnerable when it suits them (known as dere-dere, pronounced deh-reh deh-reh). A staple in anime and PC dating-sim games, some famous tsundere characters include Asuka from Evangelion, Akane from Ranma 1/2, Sanae from The Sagara Family (who has a tendency to punch the main character violently at any provocation), and if you ponder it long enough, Princess Leia from Empire (go on, think about it for a while). Like cat girls, waitress uniforms and French Maid costumes, tsundere is closely tied to the Cult of Akihabara and moe (mo-EH) culture that has become such a big part of modern Japanese life. Now instead of passively watching your favorite rough-around- the-edges character in anime, you can experience her in the flesh at a new "Tsun-Cafe" which features beautiful waitresses who insult customers, acting frustrated when they take too long to order and yelling things like, "Here's your coffee. Drink it quickly and get out of here, will you?" But when it's time to leave, the girls look sad, and say, "Oniichan, I'm sorry I said those awful things to you. You will come again, right?" Here's the video:
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