The possibility of Japan's first "otaku" Prime Minister, various thoughts on bilingualism, and all about Japanese health drinks (and other potions)

The rush is on to choose a successor to Prime Minister Abe after his sudden resignation on Wednesday. I saw that some of the newspapers in the U.K. were calling for a bolder, more dynamic Japanese leader this time, and I agree, although I know what a challenge it's likely to be. The difference between a Prime Minister and a President is, of course, that the former is chosen by his party and the latter is chosen directly by voters, essentially making a Japanese leader's relationship with the other members in his party more important in a way than that of his own people. In group-oriented Japan, it's difficult for any individual leader to stand out too much without being knocked back in line by his peers, an effect known as deru kui wa utareru or "the standing nail will be hammered down." It seems that any show of real imagination in a politician leads to them immediately being opposed by just about everyone, and Japan has gone through 11 PMs since I've been in Japan, where Britain has had just three. That's why Junichiro Koizumi was such a breath of fresh air in Japanese politics -- a charismatic bachelor who liked rock music, a maverick who had the popularity to chop much of the deadwood out of the Old Guard of Japanese politics and reign in Japan's (largely wasteful) public works projects. He even looked like George Washington. Currently the leading candidate to replace Abe looks to be Taro Aso, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the past two governments. Although everything is still very much up in the air, he is an interesting candidate, having studied at Stanford and in London. He's also a big fan of anime culture, and was the force behind the creation of a "Nobel Prize in Manga" to promote Japan's pop culture around the world. He reads thirty manga volumes a week, and I hear he likes Rozen Maiden. Could we be looking at Japan's first otaku Prime Minister? Or will former Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukada, who happens to be from our prefecture of Gunma (Yasu lives in his district) be able to get more support?

After living in Japan for 15+ years, my language skills are as good as I need them to be. But bilingualism is never absolute, a fact I am reminded of whenever I turn the channel and catch Raw Debate Until Morning, a news discussion program broadcast every couple of months in which politicians and economists debate the issues of the day from midnight all the way til the sun comes up on live television -- that show is hard to follow. When you're learning a foreign language, it's important to get input from a variety of sources. I had a Japanese friend who arrived in the U.S. and taught herself English by watching daytime soap operas, and as a result she was really good at any conversation involving romance or adultery, but not much else. Like many anime fans interested in learning Japanese, I got a lot more exposure to anime and manga than from any other source, and I learned at some cost that people don't really speak like Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. It's better to broaden your interest, exploring different kinds of media like Japanese music, Japanese dramas or films, and whatever else seems interesting.

Ever heard of Zena, Yunker and Aspara? They're Japanese energy drinks, a major category of product in Japan that promises to improve your health, remove tiredness and give you the energy you need to be successful in business. Although the small single-serving bottles usually provide nothing more than caffeine and vitamins in a sweet syrup, the marketing muscle behind the drinks has turned them into a consumer sub-culture, Japan style, and Japan consumes more energy and sports drinks than any other country. The first health drink was Lipovitan, released in 1962 by Taisho Pharmaceutical, and it's still the industry leader, with a staggering 2 million bottles sold every day. For four decades Lipovitan's TV commercials featuring a pair of burley men who cry out Faito! Ippatsu! ("Fight! One more push!") as they perform some athletic activity have been as famous as Mr. Whipple (er, is he still famous? I've been in Japan too long to know for sure). Back in the 90s another Japanese energy drink, Regain, served as a symbol of the differences between Japan, Inc. and the U.S., and their current commercial showing Japanese businessmen scaling a building in their eagerness to get to work is one of their best ever. In addition to giving you back your "genki" (pep), some of these energy drinks promise to revitalize men (wink wink) with Chinese herbs, cure your cold symptoms, and remove your hangover in record time.

Speaking of energy drinks, all Japan has been buzzing about the Final Fantasy 10th Anniversary Potion, an extremely limited boxed set that includes a gorgeous potion in a glass and metal container and a commemorative art book, which seemed to sell out completely in Tokyo's otaku mecca of Akihabara today. Although supply has been extremely limited, we've been able to get some stock of this item for J-List customers. Featuring the official logo of the Shinra Company, it's a great item that all FF7 fans should be sure and check out. Get yours before they're gone!

Just some random pics I had in my camera. Does Starbuck's sell a scoop of ice cream in their ice coffee? They're missing out here...

This is from our favorite Kyoto style ramen restaurant. They specialize in matcha stuff, and the matcha ice (meaning matcha ice cream) is just delicious.

In Karuizawa there's this little cafe that (oddly) serves great yakiniku (Korean BBQ) inside. Cooked over actual coals!

In commemoration of the release of the iPod Touch, I thought I'd give you my favorite wallpaper. I love this Haruhi pic.

Or if you're a Heroes fan, this works too...

Frustration at teaching English in Japan, "sorry" to see Prime Minister Abe go, how to pronounce Japanese, and "see you later, bald person"

My wife has decided to volunteer at my daughter's elementary school as an assistant in the English classes they have once a week. I knew it was a bad idea to have her help out, since English education here is not exactly the model of our tax dollars well spent, and I knew it would frustrate her. The lessons are taught by a Japanese teacher rather than a native English speaker, although there is a separate English lesson another day that has a native gaijin -- maybe it's to instill in the kids a sense that "English" and "English conversation" are separate and should never be confused. As with all English classes here, the lesson began with the ubiquitous "How are you? Fine, thanks, and you?" (My daughter likes to throw a wrench into the works there, saying, "Actually, I've got a headache, so I don't feel fine at all" just to see the looks on the teacher's face.) For the first half of the class, the students listened to an audio tape that taught English phonetics ("ba-NA-na, not BA-na-na"). Things went pretty smoothly until the teacher started having the students repeat "I can skating! I can skiing!" My wife desperately wanted to correct the teacher's erroneous English, but could never do so in front of the students, and in the end, she wasn't even able to bring the issue up with after the class was over. Incidentally, the funny English phrase among elementary school kids in Japan is to say "See you hage!", substituting the word for "bald" (HAH-gay) for the English word "again," resulting in "See you, bald person!" Now you can amaze your Japanese friends with this fun phrase.

We've got some breaking news for you today: Shinzo Abe has just announced that he'll be stepping down as Japan's 90th Prime Minister. The issues are many, but in the end his inability to bring about any of his major goals and his party's poor showing at the recent elections caused him to throw in the towel. Japan's youngest-ever Prime Minister and the first born after World War II, he got off to a good start, trying to bring the theme of a "Beautiful Country, Japan" to his administration. Bad luck set in quickly, though, with several scandals, including the problem of missing National Pension payments (which stemmed from the 1980s, so it's not really his fault) and some impropriety with public funds on the part of his Minister of Agriculture that resulted in the man committing suicide. One of the biggest defeats was the fight with the opposition parties over the continuing participation of Japan's support for the U.S. War on Terror, especially supplying oil to U.S. ships off Afghanistan. Mr. Abe's timing is odd since he just gave a speech to the Diet two days ago in which he outlined many of his new ongoing policies, then he quits two days later. One interesting thing about Japanese politicians: they never really leave. Even after major scandals that cause Prime Ministers to step down, they often hold onto their Diet seats, sometimes for a decade or longer. So if you need Abe-san for any reason, he'll probably still be around.

Every once in a while I like to revisit the rules of Japanese pronunciation, since I distinctly remember looking at at a book called Flying Origami as a child and wondering how the heck I was supposed to pronounce this incredibly alien word. First, understand that Japanese is a syllable-based language, meaning that sounds always come in consonant + vowel syllable pairs (e.g. ka, ki, ku, ke, or ko, never just a "k" sound by itself), or as a single vowel syllable. The exception is the letter "n," the only consonant that can appear by itself, without which we wouldn't have the word "ramen" (and that would be a travesty). Vowels are easy as pie in Japanese -- there are only five, identical to the ones in Spanish. They are:

A - "ah" rhyming with "fall"
I - "ee" rhyming with "feel"
U - "oo" rhyming with "fool"
E - "eh" rhyming with "let"
O - "oh" rhyming with "go"

Some things to keep in mind. First of all, discard if you can the spelling rules of English, like double "o" being read like "soon" and the "silent e" on the ends of words. Every syllable is pronounced, so that beach volleyball idol Miwa Asao's last name would be pronounced "ah-sah-oh." Although America had a famous president named Honest Abe, the current Japanese Prime Minister (for a few more days anyway) is pronounced "AH-beh." There is no short "a" sound (as in "cat") in Japanese, so if you find yourself saying words like kanji (Chinese characters) or the final syllable of ichi man (the number 10,000) like the word "at" or "fan," try to say "KAHN-ji" and "ee-chi MAHN" instead. If you're interested in learning Japanese, I always recommend textbooks and study guides that force you to work in the "native" Japanese writing system, hiragana, as its much easier to pronounce well if you move away from Romanized Japanese. The Kanji Practice Flashcards from White Rabbit are an example of a really good system for learning, as they avoid writing any Japanese words in the Roman alphabet, forcing you to learn to read and pronounce correctly.

Announcing the return of Pocky to J-List! Every summer we're forced to remove all chocolate items from the site, due to the heat and humidity of Japan in the warmer months. Now that it's cooled off some, we're happy to announce that Pocky is back! We're posting delicious Marble Pocky, brand new for the season: see Green Tea and and Mild & Bitter on the site now. As always, you can buy shrinkwrapped boxes of 10 and get an extra discount.

2008 Calendar Season continues at J-List, as we add even more great anime, JPOP, Japanese bikini idol, and other large-format 2008 Japanese calendars posted for you to check out now. From pretty faces like Yuko Ogura or Maki or the cute girls of Morning Musume to the all-new Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex calendar by Shirow Masamune to great animation calendars like Gintama, Inuyasha and more, J-List has a great way to bring a little bit of Japan to your wall all year long. Calendars can be preordered now, and will start shipping in October. Check out our great lineup now!

More about "standing out in a crowd," what Steven Spielberg has to do with learning Japanese, and ways that Japanese people save space

I talked last time about how the dynamic of "standing out in a crowd" can work a little differently when 98.5% of the people around you are of similar genetic and cultural stock. It may be hard for Westerners to believe, but the idea of being futsu (foo-TSOO), meaning usual or normal or the same as everyone else, has a much more positive image here than it might in the U.S. and Europe. It's interesting to see how advertisers pay attention to the delicate balance between Japanese consumers' natural desire to fit in with society at large with the yearning to be a little "unique." While few in Japan would like to think of themselves as strange (hen) or even different (chigau), I've seen the term chotto kawatteru ("just a little different") used to promote products aimed at young people -- if you use this eyeliner or lip gloss, you'll be a tiniest shade different from your classmates. You can almost feel the copywriters straining to find just the right word that will appeal to viewers without alienating them by going too far. During one of Kodak's attempts at making market share gains in the Japanese film market, they hired pretty actress Asuka Seto who brandied a bright yellow Kodak camera around while walking through a Japanese temple. "What's so bad about standing out?" she proclaimed in the commercial.

That Steven Spielberg, he's really good at making movies. You could say he's "Jaws." In Japanese, the word for being "good at" something is jozu (JOH-zoo), which happens to be how the English movie title Jaws is pronounced, hence making a fun (?) little pun. Making word connections like this is one of the ways I helped myself learn the language -- I still remember doodling a little shark coming out of the water in my textbook next to this word -- and it's one way to help "trick" your brain into remembering new information. Coming up with mnemonic ways to learn Japanese is quite helpful. For example, you might picture famous Beatle Ringo Starr eating an apple (which is ringo in Japanese), or the classic shinu (to die), which I memorized using the sentence "She knew he was going to die." Having trouble remembering the word yurasu, to shake? Well, get out on the dance floor and shake yurasu! The word nobiru means to stretch, to extend, but if you don't reach out for the frosty mug on the counter, you'll get no beer. The word for duck in Japanese is ahiru, but a duck with a cape might just be a hero. And so on. Learning languages is fun because it gives you insight into how your own brain works. I'll bet that when we all learned our first language, something similar was going on in our own brains, and "baby talk" is just the verbal expression of this.

How would you feel if the owner of the Round Table Pizza in your neighborhood lived on the second floor of the restaurant with his family, and as you went in to eat you could catch a glimpse of his wife hanging their laundry on the balcony above? This wouldn't be rare in Japan at all, a country where usable land is scarce and people must be more efficient with it. As a result, a whole range of businesses from beauty parlors to convenience stores to the liquor shop that my Japanese family runs are built with the shop and the living area in the same unit. There are even koban (police boxes) which feature a small police station below and a space for the officers stationed there to eat and sleep upstairs. In cities like Tokyo, it's common to see family restaurants like Denny's raised off the ground, so that the entire restaurant occupies the second floor, leaving a cavernous parking lot for customers underneath. Although Western-style beds are getting more and more common (my wife's parents just bought the first beds they've ever owned in their lives), traditional futons, which fold up and slide into the closet when not in use, are a great space-saver. If you've ever been to Japan, you might have noticed those toilets with a faucet at the top, which lets you wash your hands with the new water as it flows into the tank, eliminating the need for a separate sink.

2008 Japanese Calendars Season started two weeks ago with the initial posting of the gorgeous Japanese photography, sushi, bento, and traditional calendars we bring you every year. Today we're happy to a announce the second big volley of great calendars, including our most popular anime, JPOP/JROCK, idol and other offerings. As usual, it's interesting to see which Japanese entertainer will grab the coveted "CL-1" slot, reserved for the most popular "talent" in Japan that year. In past years its been singers Amuro Namie, Kumi Koda and Ayumi Hamasaki, actress Aya Ueto, and so on. This year the top slot was grabbed by Masami Nagasawa, the cute-as-a-button actress who was voted the girl most Japanese men would like to marry. We've posted 40+ new 2008 calendars for you today, including red-hot anime calendars (Bleach, Naruto, Death Note), new anime you may not have discovered yet (D.Gray-Man, Katekyo Hitman), true classics (Totoro, Studio Ghibli), JPOP calendars (BoA, Ayumi Hamasaki), beautiful idols (Aki Hoshino, Satomi Ishihara), and more. There's even a great 2008 Domo-kun calendar this year. Browse our extensive selection now!

A big typhoon pummels Japan, thoughts on the concept of "standing out" and a fun word of Japanese for you

September is storm season in Japan, as we were reminded when Typhoon Fitow -- designated boringly as Typhoon No. 9 here in Japan -- gave the country a good pummeling yesterday. While the majority of typhoons tend to threaten the southern islands like Okinawa and Kyushu, this strong storm landed smack in the Kanto area, bringing buckets of rain and winds of up to 108 kph/67 mph right into Tokyo and moving up the main Japanese island of Honshu. Throughout the country, flights were cancelled, Shinkansen stopped running, and even several subway lines had to be closed down due to strong winds, which stranded thousands. Our house shook like a continual earthquake, but aside from downed branches and scattered debris, there was no major damage.

In a monocultural place like Japan, the idea of "standing out" is viewed a little differently than how it would be in America or Europe, and living as a foreigner here means being at peace with sticking out a bit. As a general rule, whenever I go to the movies, head to the public bath or participate in some activity with my daughter's Girl Scout Troop, I'm likely to be the only foreigner around, and that means I'll often be getting more than my share of attention. This will take the form of a general awareness of my being there, so I go out of my way to use polite Japanese in public to make a good impression, and I make sure my kids use polite Japanese too, or speak English. There are times my unique status in Japan can work to my advantage, since most people who meet me once will remember my name, as I'm the only foreigner they've talked with all year, or perhaps in many years. While adults are polite about not staring, children often don't know better, and I've had gaijin friends who really couldn't handle having kids watching them all the time. (I find its better to strike up a conversation with the kids in Japanese to reassure them that I'm not from Mars.) It's not like there are so few foreigners in our city that Japanese people are shocked when they see one; rather, it's that the bulk of the gaijin population here, which are from countries like Brazil and Peru and Pakistan, don't cross into straight "Japanese" territory as much as I do, and hence I find myself in situations where there are no other foreigners around me more often than not.

When you study Japanese, you have to learn more than just grammar, vocabulary and the writing systems -- you need to get used to the subtlety of the language, of what is said directly and what is simply assumed. This can sound impossibly hard at first, but with practice and experience students can pick it up. One word that describes the famous vagueness of Japanese is nantonaku, which can be translated as "by feeling" "for some reason" or "without thinking about it." Often, comprehending Japanese is a mixture of considering what is said and what is silently understood, for example, picking up the subject of a sentence even though it's omitted. I found the best way to expose myself to the vagueness of spoken Japanese was to read lots of manga, which gave me a constant source of input of spoken language, since manga is almost entirely dialogue. If you want to surprise a Japanese person, memorize this word. If they ask you why you know something they don't expect foreigners to know, just answer "Nantonaku." ("Don't ask me, I just know.")

Remember, you can now get your very own custom-made kanji name stamp from J-List, with our Custom Hanko Service. Choose one of three Japanese name stamps and let us know what kanji characters or message you'd like printed on the stamp, and the J-List staff will work with you to come up with the best kanji for you, then make your stamp. Stamps can be made using hiragana, katakana, kanji, or even the Roman alphabet.

This is the inside of a Japanese hospital. I couldn't take pictures with all the old people there, so I chose this hallway.

What kind of stomach do YOU have?

Uh, that's me. Now you know more about me than my wife.

An advertisement for Japanese nurses. I guess they don't have enough of them. As with the U.S. Japan is importing nurses from the Philippines.

My car, during the typhoon.

I happened to see some guy's Cadillac Escalade. Can you imagine what cojones it takes to drive one of those giant cars in Japan?

A trip to a Japanese doctor's office, insights into Japanese home remodeling, and differences between Gaijin and Japanese

I was feeling a little under the weather the other day so I went for a visit to our local medical clinic. Japan's medical system is quite good, and there are many places to get care when you're sick, from large hospitals to more specialized medical clinics. As usual, I was struck by what a social place waiting rooms of doctor's offices are, as a half dozen people aged 60 and up engaged in warm conversation with each other, since they come see the doctor most every day, probably to talk with their friends as much as to treat some ailment. Doctors in Japan all seem to have a complex about English, since they've studied an extra four years or so of medical terminology, and they're often disappointed to learn that the average English speaker doesn't know the complex terms for this condition or that. Like universities and elementary/ junior high schools in Japan, public hospitals can really surprise you when you go there the first time. Most are old, built in the style I like to call Late Modern Chernobyl, with few niceties or decorations. The buildings are old, but the equipment inside is modern, so I guess they get the job done.

Our house is finally done with the long "reform" (as home remodelling is called in Japan), and we're enjoying being able to sit in our living room again after almost three months. Our house is quite interesting, a traditional Japanese home built in the 1970s, with a liquor shop in the front and a traditional bo-TON toilet, which is to say, a seatless Japanese toilet which makes a bo-TON (er, splashing) sound when something is deposited into it (trust me, you don't want to know more). The second floor was added 15 years ago when I came to live there, and they put in regular plumming just for their new American son, and we've remodeled twice as our family grew. We're what's called a nisetai jutaku (二世帯住宅) or dual-household residence, since both my wife's parents and our family live there, quite a common thing in a country where the oldest child generally lives with their parents for life. During the most recent construction, I learned a lot about how the still-traditional world of craftsmen in Japan works, watching the daiku, or Japanese carpenters, who have to be as adept at working with 2x4 wood imported from overseas as with installing tatami rooms and shoji paper doors. Incidentally, the word "2x4" is not one Japanese carpenters like, since it smacks of cheap, standardized construction, something unimaginable in Japanese home building before modern times, but sho ga nai ("it can't be helped") today.

One of the more unique aspects of Japan is the homogeneous nature of its people, officially known as Yamato Japanese. Of course, Japanese people are not all that similar -- if you pay attention you can see a wide variation in features, skin type, hair color, facial shape and so on -- but one of the pillars of Japanese society is to not acknowledge any of these individual differences when dealing with other Japanese people. When I worked as an ESL teacher, a lot of my students were fascinated by my gaijin features like my blonde hair and hazel eyes, and by the fact that my eyes changed color depending on what I was wearing. (All Japanese eyes are brown, although for some reason they will insist that they are "black.") The golden hair on my arms attracted kids, too, who would pull on the hairs during lessons. Japanese are also amazed at how large the feet of Westerners can be. My shoe size here is 26.5 cm (I've long forgotten what it is in the American system) so I can usually find shoes here, but my friends with 33 cm and larger feet usually had a hard time when trying to rent ski boots.

Learning about Japan through traditional calligraphy, interesting trends on Japanese television, and all about the word "Domo"

One way to learn about Japan is through its traditional calligraphy, which uses a writing brush called a fude (FOO-day) to write beautiful characters on paper. Japanese brush calligraphy is called "shodo," the Way of Writing, one of the Japanese arts that gets the character for "road" or "way" on the end, like Judo, Aikido, Kendo, and Nintendo (just kidding about that last one). Shodo is taught in Elementary School to encourage appreciation of the art, and it's common for kids to attend an evening "calligraphy school" to get better and writing with a brush. Even if you don't read Japanese it can be interesting to learn about how brush calligraphy works -- even the lowly kanji for the number '1' (just a horizontal line, e.g. 一) can be fun to learn to write in correct shodo style. Since assembling a writing brush, ink tray and ink can be quite a chore, the Japanese have invented the fude pen, with a flexible brush-like tip that lets you write as if you were using a traditional writing brush. J-List just happens to have these pens freshly restocked, along with books that help you get started, a Magic Calligraphy Practice Sheet that lets you write with water, calligraphy calendars for 2008, wacky Japanese T-shirts featuring calligraphy designs, and more!

Japanese television is always interesting, with a broad mix of entertaining things to watch. You can see variety shows featuring popular "talents" being cute or funny on camera, documentaries about various topics such as ways that rural towns are dealing with declining populations, or travel shows where famous people drive around rural Japan, bathe in hot springs and eat delicious food while viewers watch. The most popular genre of television is the drama, and the TV listings are filled with various shows aimed at different groups of viewers. It's quite common for dramas to be based on popular manga stories, such as the currently running live-action serialization of Hana-Kimi, the story of a girl who falls in love with a boy she sees at a track-and-field competition; she decides to go to the same high school as him, although since it's a boy's school it means she has to disguise herself as a male. Another sub-group of dramas involves Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries in which unlikely female characters must solve murder cases the police can't crack. One humorous show I caught was called Stewardess Deka, about three JAL flight attendants who flew around the country solving crimes. Anime is also popular, of course, with children's shows like Sazae-san and Pocket Monster DP at the top of the ratings. Oddly, "prime time" for more involved anime series like the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is...2 am? Apparently most otaku don't keep very normal hours.

If you ever need to communicate with Japanese people but don't know the language, just remember Domo. Domo is an all-purpose Japanese term that essentially means "very" and is found in such phrases as Domo arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much), Domo sumimasen (excuse me [very much]), and even Domo otsukaresama deshita (thank you for working so hard), said at the end of the day when you leave work. If you can't memorize these phrases, just remember the word Domo, since Japanese people use this word all the time, leaving the rest of the words unsaid (since they're picked up from the context anyway) -- the Japanese just love to keep their language as vague as possible. So when in a situation where it might be handy to have a Japanese word at hand, just whip out your Domo and you'll probably be okay. NHK's popular Domo-kun character, which has become a phenomenon all over the world, essentially exists to teach kids to bow to people they meet and say domo, promoting good manners.

Speaking of Domo, we're happy to announce a youth size version of our popular "Domo-kun face" T-shirt, a super item for smaller fans of Japan's cutest spokesmonster. Now your young ones can proudly sport our cool Domo-kun designs, with standard youth size S, M and L in stock. We've also lowered the price of all youth size T-shirts as well as our youth-size "tatami sandals" from Japan, which will surely be appreciated by anyone looking for things for today's Japan-focused kids.

2008 Calendar season has started, and that means soon J-List will be loaded to the gills with gorgeous large-format glossy calendars soon. We've posted another volley of fabulous Japanese calendars that are usually only available in the domestic market, including fabulous calendars of traditional Japanese art, Japanese gardens, bonsai, Japanese proverbs written in beautiful calligraphy, and more. Want to see the most beautiful temples in Japan? We've got several great calendars. Like bento or sushi? We've got calendars for those too. Lovely Yuko Ogura in a kimono? Got it. Oh, our Japanese calendars make great gifts as well!

Summer fireworks and reflections on language, the poor plight of Sumo's most famous wrestler, and what's up with those Japanese name stamps?

Hanabi (花火), meaning "flower fire" or fireworks, are part of summer in Japan, and you can't watch three hours of anime without an episode involving yukata-clad characters bent over a bucket of water (Japan is very safety-conscious when it comes to fire hazards) as they light fireworks together. Virtually every city, town or village sponsors a big annual fireworks festival sometime during the summer as a way to bring the community together, and to promote our fireworks show the city government distributes posters to local businesses. The other day we were eating at our favorite ramen restaurant and we noticed this year's poster, which proclaimed the ISESAKI A FIREWORKS DISPLAY 2007. My son wondered what the "a" was doing there when the name of the event was just "Isesaki Fireworks Display," but I knew immediately what had happened. The city office employees, ever fearful of making an error in English, decided to trust the dictionary's translation of hanabi taikai as "a fireworks display" verbatim, and that's what made it onto the poster. I wonder if this is the same reason that New Year's cards always seem to say "a Happy Near Year!" in English? (Note, if you ever want to be cruel, ask Japanese people how many years of English they've studied.)

Sumo wrestling is quite famous as a symbol of Japan, although it's been around since prehistoric times. The current top wrestler in Japan's professional league is the celebrated Mongolian Asashoryu (ah-sa-SHO-ryu, "morning blue dragon"), a powerhouse who has won no less than 21 tournaments in his stellar career since attaining the rank of Yokozuna (Grand Champion) in 2003. Unfortunately, things just haven't been going his way lately. First, he ducked out of the summer exhibition bouts in Northern Japan citing an injury but was mysteriously well enough to play in a soccer game with Hidetoshi Nakata for charity, which caused a big uproar in Japan when it was reported. Convinced that Asashoryu had over-stated his injury in order to take a vacation, the Sumo Association called him back to Japan to explain himself. In the end they banned him from playing in the next two sumo tournaments, a first for a Yokozuna, and docked his pay for four months (ouch). As the official national sport of Japan, sumo is taken very seriously, and sumo wrestlers are expected to have "the deepest commitment, the most serious mind..." . Asa has rubbed Sumo Association officials the wrong way in the past, daring to be seen in public in a Western suit instead of the traditional sumo garb, arguing with judges over their calls, and showing elation and frustration after bouts rather than appearing emotionless like the pillar of bushido that he's supposed to be. He also once pulled the top-knot of an opponent a few years ago, which was quite the scandal. As a fellow foreigner I can really sympathize with the poor guy -- it's hard to be something you're not, and seeing the way the press is ganging up on him makes me feel sorry for him. Hopefully he'll be able to hansei (reflect) on things and be a better wrestler for it in the future. (I wish I could give him one of our Yokozuna T-shirts to make him feel better.)

When a gaijin goes to live in Japan, one of the first things he has to do is get a hanko (name stamp) made and get it registered with the city office. These name stamps are used in lieu of signing your name on documents, filling out forms at the bank, and signifying agreement to any kind of contract. A custom imported from China ages ago, name stamps are a big part of contemporary Japanese life, and even companies like Apple and J-List have them, being legal entities. For foreigners fascinated with Japanese characters, there are several ways to write your name. For example, you could choose the most orthodox route and write your name in katakana, the writing system specifically used for that purpose. If this is too boring, you can find kanji that can be read like your name. For my own last name, I might choose the "peh" sound from Peking (北京） since there's no official way to write that sound in Japanese, and the "in" character from Byodoin (平等院), my favorite Buddhist temple in the Kyoto area. Or I could pick a kanji that meant roughly what my name means and "force" a reading onto it, which is called ateji. Since last name comes from the French "pan," something similar to the English last name Baker, I could dig up an archaic kanji for "bread" and declare that this kanji is now pronounced "Payne." No one would be able to read it, but it'd be my kanji nevertheless. Incidentally, J-List has started a great custom name stamp service, allowing up to get the kanji you'd like on one of three cool Japanese stamps. They're fully registrable as legal hanko stamps, too -- order your kanji name stamp now!

Announcing the start of 2008 Calendar Season! Every year about this time, J-List starts taking preorders for the outstanding calendars from Japan, which are printed exclusively for the Japanese market. The calendars we sell every year come in two volleys: first, we post dozens of amazing calendars that capture the natural beauty of Japan; the delicate imagery of a tea garden; the aesthetic beauty of Japanese sushi or bento; kanji calendars for students; lovely idols in kimono and more. Most of the JPOP and anime calendars will be posted in a couple weeks. Browse the amazing 2008 calendars we've got on the site for you now and get your preorders in!

Masi Oka of Heroes visiting Japan, contemplating Japanese culture through its food, and more dogs in Japan than babies

I knew it would happen: Heroes is starting to get popular in Japan. This morning I turned on the TV and caught that gaijin-that-other-gaijin- love-to-hate Dave Spector (we dislike him because his Japanese is so much better than ours, and because he dyes his black hair blonde to look more "foreign" on camera, poser). He was interviewing none other than Masi Oka, the Star Wars CG-programming uber-geek with an IQ of 189, who plays the time-bending salaryman Hiro Nakamura in the NBC show. Japan is extremely sensitive to the opinions of people in the West, and any Japanese who raises the reputation of the country in the eyes of the world, such as manga-ka Shirow Masamune, baseball star Ichiro or the pop group Pizzicato Five, gets enormous street cred at home. Dave Spector seemed almost giddy as he interviewed "the most famous Japanese man in the world today" despite the fact that, you know, he's not even Japanese. When one of Dave's jokes fell flat, Masi calmly said, "You just made time stop for me. I think you might have super powers." The newscasters seemed thrilled to see that the word "Yatta!" ("I did it!") had apparently entered the English lexicon through the show.

Although the Japanese have a strong food culture, with various types of noodles, nabe (nah-beh) dishes like sukiyaki that are cooked in a central large pot in the middle of the table, and various good things from the sea like sushi and sashimi, they also embrace cuisine form the West. When we go out to dinner, we've got many choices, including American chains like Denny's (which has carved a niche selling extremely traditional Japanese dishes, go figure), Italian (a dozen or more choices in a 5 km radius), and our personal favorite, Indian naan. Although famous for eating rice, which they usually consume three times a day, they've taken pan (bread) and adopted it into many forms beyond the normal sliced type. If you're hungry for a snack, grab some curry-pan, baked with curry inside, or maybe some yakisoba-pan, a long roll with chow mein noodles inside. Many types of Japanese bread are sweet, which we'd consider to be something like a doughnut, like melon-pan (said to make you smarter, since it sort of looks like a shriveled brain) or cornet (a Japanese version of a French roll with chocolate cream inside, and there's much debate about which end you should eat first). One of the most famous types of bread is is an-pan, a kind of round piece of bread containing sweet Japanese beans. Whenever I go to the bakery, I buy a loaf of French bread with camembert cheese baked inside -- yum.

Japan has a famously low birthrate of about 1.29 children per female, and the country's population is now on its way down, having officially peaked sometime in 2006. The situation is made worse than it would otherwise be by the lack of immigration into the country -- while the population of the United States and Europe is augmented by new people coming in to live, the number of new foreigners in Japan doesn't rise appreciably from year to year. In fact, I saw the other day that the population of dogs has now passed the number of children aged 10 and under, so there are now more poodles, dachunds and chihuahuas being walked by their owners in parks than kids playing there. While I'm not sure sure how serious the problem of a slowly declining population really is -- it's not like the country is going to cease functioning tomorrow or anything -- it is a problem that future generations will have to deal with. Japan does do what it can to make it easy for people to come here -- it's usually possible for a foreigner to get a permanent residence visa in five or six years -- but given the cultural and linguistic differences between the rest of the world, it's unrealistic to expect immigration to turn things around. Hopefully, they'll come up with a way to keep their race from dying out between now and the year 3000, when the number of Japanese in the world is projected to be...27.

My weekend trip to Akiba, times when Japanese do or don't apologize, and the history of the stapler in Japan

I took the train into Tokyo on Sunday to meet a friend in Akihabara, the area of Tokyo famous as the electronics and all-around underground pop culture capital of Japan. I hadn't been there on a Sunday in a while and was bowled over by the sea of people I saw, from otaku of every stripe doing their their shopping to middle-aged men headed home with computer purchases under their arms. Part of the reason it was so crowded was that the majority of Japanese get their monthly pay on the 25th, so people were flush with cash to go shopping with. Every Sunday they close off the main street and let people take it over for their own purposes. I caught an interesting "guerilla live" or street concert where singers will appear out of nowhere with a portable karaoke machine and start singing natsukashii (nostalgic) anime theme songs while a crowd of listeners gathers around and cheers. It was pure fun.

I've talked before about how an important trait among Japanese is kenson (KEN-son), meaning humility or modesty. It's much better for a person to be self-effacing -- for example, to deny a compliment on how good their English is -- than to appear boastful and proud, which is why it can be difficult to say something nice about a Japanese person without them disagreeing with you. For all the noise made about Japan not apologizing for certain past events, Japanese people pretty much apologize at the drop of a hat, and there are many situations where the Western concept of "thank you" would be expressed as sumimasen ("excuse me for inconveniencing you") instead. This isn't always the case, of course. For example, most people will refrain from apologizing after a car accident as it could imply accepting fault. Another example of not apologizing would be our bank, the largest in our prefecture, famous for their haughty attitude because they're #1. No matter what small mistake their staff might make -- forgetting to credit a money transfer, say, or improperly filling out a document requiring it to be done over -- the bank's employees are trained never to apologize. This is called tonosama shobai (toh-no-sah- mah SHO-bai), roughly translatable as "running your business as if you're a feudal lord in ancient Japan," and I guess it's a way to show your customers that you are an extremely strong leader in your field, since no other company could get away with that kind of crap. If you've ever wondered at some of the bizarre actions taken by Sony over the years -- the hubristic attitude that nothing could assail their strong position in video games, the Sony-only media formats, the rootkit DRM scandal of last year -- now you know what the concept is called in Japanese.

When English speakers come to Japan, we're generally pleased to hear familiar words being used around us. Although phrases like "after service" (service after a purchase), "plus alpha" (meaning "a little extra something"), "unit bath" (a bathroom designed as a single unit) and "recycle shop" (any shop that sells used items) might sound a little odd, at least they're easy to figure out without too much trouble. Not all foreign loan words come from English: there are words like arbeit (part-time job, from German), enquette (questionnaire, from French) or pan (bread, from Portuguese) that we must get used to. Then there are words whose origins can be incredibly confusing, such as why the Japanese word for stapler is hochikisu. It turns out that the E.F. Hotchkiss company made fine "paper fasteners" (staplers) at the beginning of the 20th century, and a shipment made it to Japan around 1910. The Japanese were fascinated with this ingenious device and, not knowing it was called, dubbed it a "Hotchkiss." If you think something as boring as a stapler can't be innovative, you should check out the TAMAHOTCHI, the cute new egg-shaped stapler that's shaped like an egg, but one that staples papers for you quite handily. Winner of the Good Design Award!

Welcome to Akihabrara, abbreviated Akiba since it's hard for Japanese people to say too,

Basically, there are lots of electronics stores, including some very old school places that frankly don't like all the otaku types who have been taking over the area. DVD stores, manga stores, an Animate, a few dozen Maid Cafes. You know, all the good stuff.

Walking along the man Chuo Dori road. To the left was a huge line of people waiting to get some idol's autograph.

Oo, gotta watch that.

This is the first live (i.e. live performance) I sat in on. She was singing 1980s stuff, which is the best (to me). Yes, I am old school... Interesting to note that she's wearing a U.S. made anime shirt.

This was another performance, but the girls were handing out advertisements for a shop while they sang, so it felt rather spammy.

Headed back. I saw this and wondered if they have any idea what the hell Esperonto is?

My daughter's summer art project. "Drinking and driving, don't ever do it!" Recently my wife and both kids were hit from behind by a drunk driver. The strength of the BMW she was in saved them, but it was a scary, scary thing. Try to see the detail on the guy drinking a bottle of bourbon inside the blue car.

I conclude this blog post with a picture of my stupid cat displaying his "fuzzy dice."

On psychology and jealousy of gaijin living in Japan, thinking about Japanese grammar while in the bath, and using the Far Side in English class

I've written before about the psychology of ex-pats living in Japan, such as the the Three Stages of Eye Aversion we foreigners seem to go through when encountering other gaijin on the train the first few times, or our distaste for foreigners who do something rude then take the polite silence of the Japanese around them as a sign that it's okay to keep doing it. Then there's that odd built-in resentment of other gaijin who have been here longer than us and/or who speak Japanese better than we can, which I learned about when I came here after studying the language at SDSU for four years. This confused the Americans, Canadians and Brits I hung out with, since most of them started studying after arriving here, and they weren't sure how to categorize me. Foreigners living in Japan can be especially jealous of the annointed "gaijin talents" who get to to be on TV just because they can be funny and/or insightful while speaking Japanese. A good example is the Egyptian fortune-teller Fifi-san, who has gotten quite a following of fans with her appearances on variety shows lately. For a wedding present my father gave me the autobiography of Donald Keene, an American translator who came to Japan soon after World War II ended and got to hob-knob with all the great Japanese writers of the postwar period, from Yasunari Kawabata to Dazai Osamu to Yukio Mishima -- lucky bastard. As a general rule, any given foreigner will tend to be mistrustful of the theories put forth by other gaijin (hence, whenever someone disagrees with me I can defend myself based on this principle).

When you go to an onsen (OWN-sen), a public hot springs bath, it's important to have all the essentials with you, and in my car I keep a basket with all my bath-related stuff in it -- toothbrush, razor, large rubber bands that let me keep the shower nozzle from shutting off every 10 seconds, and a notepad for writing down all the ideas for J-List posts that come to me while soaking. I recently bought new toothbrushes, changing my normal one from blue to purple, which prompted my son to comment on my "Mace Windufication," after the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films who uses a purple lightsaber. When I started learning Japanese, I wondered how some of the linguistic concepts we use all the time in English would be represented. Japanese is based on kanji for its higher vocabulary functions in much the same way that English is based on Latin and Greek, and complex ideas like "capitalism" or "carbon dioxide" can be rendered in kanji quite logically (資本主義 and 二酸化炭素 in case you were curious). One useful character is bakeru (化ける, to change, to transform), which is read ka in its Chinese form, and this character corresponds to the concept of "-ification" or "-ization" (i.e., a change from one state to another). Some examples of words that make use of this character are kyouka (強化、KYO-ka, strong + change) meaning "strengthen"; oubeika (欧米化, oh-BEI-ka, Europe + America + change), essentially meaning "Westernization"; and the big problem in Japan these days, shoushika (少子化、sho-SHE-ka, few + child + change), or the declining number of children throughout the country. So when my son noted the change in my toothbrush color, the word he used was "Mace Windu-ka." Can you guess how you'd say "otaku-ification" in Japanese?

Before I got into the business of writing about Japan to people all over the world I taught ESL, and I had rather a decent horde of teaching materials accumulated, from workbooks for teaching elementary school age kids to dozens of textbooks and also a game called "English Baseball" where students were asked questions in English and would make a "hit" if they were able to answer correctly. One pre-lesson activity I liked to do was bring my favorite Far Side comics into class and start a discussion around them. As you might imagine, the jokes I thought was hilarious -- "Shocking the anthropological world, a second 'Lucy' is discovered in Olduvai Gorge" (it's Lucy Van Pelt), or "Great moments in evolution" (a bunch of fish have just hit their baseball up onto land and must now evolve legs if they want their ball back) received puzzled looks from my students. Clearly, what Japanese (or Germans, or Koreans) find funny won't necessarily be viewed the same way by Americans, and I suspect Japanese would be more amused by character-based humor that blends unexpected situations for that character. The one Far Side joke that always got a laugh with my Japanese students was "Cat Showers" (a cat in a shower with a giant tongue licking his body).

Interesting foods Japanese eat in the summer, a Japanese gadget that washes your butt for you, and why Japan might need more lawyers

Japan is a country that's definitely in touch with its seasons, and they celebrate each time of year with many different traditional events, from cherry blossom viewing in April to enjoying the turning of the leaves in the Fall. It's summer now, the time of festivals and wearing yukata cotton kimonos and geta wooden shoes while enjoying fireworks, and there are many foods that help people survive the sweltering temperatures. Having a long tradition of eating noodles, many Japanese naturally enjoy cold soba or udon noodles during this season, as well as "angel hair" udon noodles called somen. One of our favorite summer foods is called hiyashi chuka (hee-YA-shee chuu-KAH), essentially a plate of cold ramen noodles in a tangy sauce served with tomatoes, cucumbers and strips of scrambled egg on top. Watermelon is always a treat but it can be such a mess, so I usually reach for Watermelon Bar, a delicious brand of watermelon ice cream with chocolate "seeds" that tastes so good. One of the most famous of all summer foods is not one I'm too fond of: unagi (oo-NAH-gi), or Japanese eel, which is broiled over an open flame and served on rice with teriyaki sauce. It's considered "stamina food" here in Japan, and many restaurants offer the dish to their customers in August to help them beat the heat. Unagi-don (Eel Rice Bowl) actually looks delicious, but I just can't get past the "eel-ness" of it all.

Ever since the coming of the Sony Walkman the Japanese have been known for their gadgets, which is a good thing for all of us, as the world would be less interesting if it weren't for all those fun electronic devices. From massage chairs that take the stress out of your muscles and squeeze your body from several directions at once to cell phones that let you pay for train tickets and convenience store purchases by waving the phone at a sensor, it's always fun to see what new inventions lie over the horizon. One of the most famous of all Japanese gadgets are those toilets which wash your butt when you're done, which are known as "washlets" (wash + toilet, get it?). Based on the European bidet, Japanese washlets were first introduced by ubiquitous toilet maker Toto in 1980, and have grown in popularity ever since. Most of these washing toilets share the same basic features, including a selector for which er, part or the body you want to wash, a warm air dryer, and a control to set the desired temperature of the toilet seat. Some of the more advanced models freshen the air with negatively charged ions, contain sensors that check your blood sugar as you pee, and (great families with boys) raise and lower the seat as needed hydraulically. The other day I found a washlet with a fully functional remote control that allowed you to control the cleaning functions or flush the toilet from a remote location. This seemed useless to me, as the only possible use for a remote controlled toilet would to play practical jokes on people you didn't like, turning the functions on and off at random while they did their business.

I talked recently about the current scandal over missing national pension payments and how having a few thousand more lawyers might help the situation. It may be odd to hear someone wish for more lawyers, but in the case of Japan it might not be a bad idea. Japan is quite different from the U.S., and some services that we take for granted in America are not provided to people who need them because the legal system seems so distant from the average person. In Japan lawyers are quite rare -- I have yet to meet one in my sixteen years of living here, and have no idea where a courthouse might be located in my city. Part of the reason for this is that the test to become a lawyer is about as difficult as the entrance exam for Tokyo University, but the way Japanese society is sewn together is quite different as well. In Japan, for example, no one needs a will because how their estate will be passed on to survivors in the family is governed according to the rules of "common sense" (joshiki), and you do most paperwork filing that might normally require a lawyer for free at your your City Hall. In Japan, lawyers are extremely respected, being among the professions addressed with the honorific word "sensei." Some other professions that receive this polite term are doctors, teachers, politicians, artists and -- I am not kidding -- Certified Public Accountants.

We've got a great announcement for fans of our popular Japanese T-shirts today: by massive customer request, we're making youth sizes of our most popular shirts! Now you can get kids' sizes of our cool Domo-kun (Three Circle and Black Outline) and Totoro (both blue and grey) in standard youth sizes S, M and L, which is great news to the many younger fans of Totoro and Domo-kun who couldn't wear our standard-sized offerings before. Whether you're buying for the Back to School season or looking beyond, our new kids-size T-shirts are great!

About Japan's most famous (only?) charity, all about the word "genki," and my kids re-adjusting to life in Japan

This past weekend saw the broadcast of "24 Hour TV," an annual charity drive broadcast by the Nippon TV network each year. Like the big "Kohaku Red and White Song Battle" held on December 31st it's quite a media event, and all the biggest names in entertainment lend their star power to help raise money from viewers for various good causes. Over the course of the broadcast the hosts put on many events, including a marathon and various other sports-related segments. The theme of this year's show was "An Event That Changed Your Life," and former baseball star Shinjo (who played in the U.S. for three years) went on a "Darts Trip," throwing a dart at a map of Japan then traveling to that prefecture to interview people while the cameras watched. In one segment I caught, Shinjo visited a rural part of Okinawa to interview people about what events had changed their lives. One mango farmer told him it was when he tasted mangos for the first time thirty years ago; he knew people would come to love the exotic fruit, although at the time Japanese were used much blander fare. Considering that they now sell for up to $100 apiece (in special packages, for giving as traditional gifts in the summer), I'm sure he's not regretting his decision to take a chance on growing mangos.

One of the first words learners of Japanese come across is the word genki, so I thought I'd revisit this fun term. The word is quite flexible, and can mean anything from healthy to energetic to "fine thanks, and you?" The first greeting you usually learn in Japanese is often Ogenki desu ka? （お元気ですか？） which corresponds to "How are you?" (although it can be more accurately translated as "Are you fine?"). The reply is Hai, genki desu (Yes, I am fine). Some other situations where the word might be used include to describe a child with lots of energy, running around a room; to describe an elderly person who is still active and healthy; and when trying to cheer someone up, asking them to "show their genki." (In another context, a man becoming genki can refer to the common phenomenon that happens in the morning.) Whenever you learn a foreign language, you're confronted with words that don't quite "match up" with words you use in your native language, such as the two words for "cold" in Japanese (samui and tsumetai), which refer to coldness in the air and something that's cold to the touch, respectively.

The kids are safely back from their long stay in the U.S. They had a lot of fun doing lots of "American kid" things and are now groaning about returning to Japan, with its cramped spaces and harsh August humidity. As usual, it's fun to observe the changes as they get used to Japan again after a month in an English environment. For example, my daughter Rina was trying to talk about a comb she'd bought in the U.S, but her brain temporarily forgot the word for "comb" in Japanese (kushi), so she substituted the English term although her grandparents didn't know what she was talking about. When she's in the U.S. she goes to the local branch of Score! to study her English reading and spelling, and when her grandmother asked her how that went, she found herself unable to discuss the subject in Japanese, and had to switch to English -- the "wiring" for thinking about an English-related subject like spelling in Japanese had not been created in her brain yet. When you think of summer vacation, you probably don't think about doing lots of homework, but that's just what my kids have to do now with their last week before school starts. To keep kids from totally forgetting everything they learned during school, teachers give them 20+ hours of homework from all subjects, and my kids are quite busy getting it all done.

Japanese High school baseball update, things I've learned from teaching ESL, and the next "boom" to hit Japan -- Vinegar Beer?

You never know where the next interesting "boom" will come from in Japan. Maybe it'll be a strange new fashion trend, like the Bob Marley craze a few summers ago when young Japanese thought they should dress in Jamaican colors, or the more recent Brit-Punk fashion trend inspired by the popularity of the manga Nana. (I'm hoping for the return of the heso-dashi summer, when all the cute girls wore half-shirts that showed their belly buttons.) Or maybe it'll be a food-related explosion in popularity, like when everyone was lining up to buy Belgian Waffles, or this summer's boom in mango-flavored foods of every type. With our house being renovated, I've been hitting the local onsen (hot spring public baths) pretty hard, and in one I happened across a poster advertising what might just be the next big thing: a cocktail of beer and delicious vinegar. There were two flavors for you to try, made with apple and grape vinegar, and both looked like they might actually be reasonably tasty, as far as those things go. Vinegar is considered quite healthy in Japan, and most mornings my wife presents me with a glass of diluted "black vinegar" (kurozu) made from unpolished rice, to reduce the acid content in my body, or something. Next to the Vinegar Beer was a poster advertising another new item: Ramune flavored "soft cream" (soft-serve ice cream), with the taste of that famous Japanese marble-in-a-bottle soft drink. Sounds delicious!

It's August, and that means it's time for another report on the High School Baseball Championship going on right now at Koshien (koh-she-en) Stadium near Osaka. High school baseball is really big in Japan, and teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures try all season long to win the right to go to the championships. To go to Koshien is the dream of every young ball player, and it has a positive effect on the future careers of thousands of young men every year, whether they go on to play professional baseball or not. The high school baseball championships are followed closely on TV and in Japan's many sports-only newspapers (my father-in-law manages to read three of them every day), and fills a similar role as college sports in the U.S. The drama of a Koshien race is captured in manga and anime such as the classic Touch, a comic I used to study Japanese with while at SDSU. Thanks to one of the many bizarre coincendences that seem to happen only in Japan, the city I came to live in just happens to be the birthplace of Touch creator Mitsuru Adachi, and my wife has the same birthday as him -- go figure. This year our prefecture is once again represented at Koshien by Maebashi Commercial High School (abbreviated "Maesho"), Adachi-sensei's old alma mater (and also the school that our own Yasu graduated from). They're doing well, too -- if they win today's game they'll be in the top 8. Go, Maesho!

Before I started J-List, I did what many English-speaking foreigners before me have done, working as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) and imparting my native language to students of all ages. Once thing I've noticed, at least when dealing with junior high and high school age students, is that they view English has having two sections that are only casually related. "English" is an important scholarly study, consisting of grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension, and it's needed to succeed in school and pass university entrance exams. This English is rather similar to mathematics, and there's only way "correct" answer to any given question, one "right" way of translating a given paragraph. The touchy-feely "English conversation," on the other hand, is optional, and only needed by Japanese who plan to live overseas or do a lot of traveling. Since the Japanese are so precise about their English, they take it for granted that all native speakers know every single English word ever, including complex medical terminology. They're also mistrustful of native English-speaking teachers who can't answer the question "why?" Why does this sentence need a gerund instead of an infinitive verb? Why do you say 'on a ship' when you're actually inside it? Being a teacher in Japan really led me to come to understand my own language on a new level.

Large and small forms of taste-related culture shock, why do the Japanese live so long, and how you can come live in Japan

There are naturally many large and small forms of culture shock a person experiences when they go go live in a foreign country, and I've had my share in Japan. One was getting used to the new tastes that were waiting for me. Right off the bat, Japanese milk tastes...different when you're used to American milk, at least at first. It's not bad or anything, but something about the Japanese cows or how the milk is processed took me time to get used to. Some other familiar products, such as Oreos, also taste slightly different (not as much sugar in them), although humans can adapt to anything. Then there were familiar products that came in "odd" taste variations, like milk flavored bread, salt flavored ramen (which is really chicken flavored), or -- it's really delicious, trust me -- "coffee jelly," coffee-flavored gelatin, excellent on a hot summer's day. Unlike America, where companies tend to think in terms of their next big national product roll-out, Japanese companies are more comfortable releasing short-run products on a more limited scale, which sometimes leads to some really interesting taste experiments, like Cucumber Ice Pepsi. Readers of J-List's snack pages know that you can always find something interesting in the taste department, from sukiyaki-flavored furikake to sprinkle on rice to rose-flavored gum and candy to the delicious Green Tea Butterscotch from Chealsea, we've got lots of fun stuff for you to try.

I noticed that the world's oldest woman passed away at the tender age of 114 the other day, and I wasn't surprised at all to see that she was Japanese. Mrs. Yone Minagawa was born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1893 when Grover Cleveland was in office, and was already in her 50s at the end of World War II -- wow. Thanks to healthy diets, social networks of lifelong friends and a generally competent national medical system, Japanese females are the longest lived people on the planet, with an average life expectancy of 85.8 years. Although it probably didn't get much mention in Michael Moore's "SICKO" documentary -- I've long stopped expecting the government and media in America to look at the various systems at work in Japan -- I think the country's medical system could be studied as a model that obviously works (since people are living a long time). It can best be described as a "blend" of private hospitals, clinics and related companies and a publically-guided insurance system, which imposes a framework that companies must work within. When you go to the doctor or dentist you bring your insurance card, and in general 70% of the costs will be covered. There are trade-offs, of course. Because of the cost caps instituted by the two health insurance systems -- Social Insurance for employees of medium-to-large companies, and Citizen's Insurance for everyone else -- not all types of care are available, so if you want to get the really good ceramic caps on your teeth as opposed to the ugly silver ones, you may need to pay for that yourself. Also, expect to go to the dentist 8 times to fix those two fillings, since they're not allowed to charge you more than a certain amount per day. Since there are more limitations on the Japanese medical system, some companies don't see the same amount of profit as in the U.S., and as a result, there's less investment in technology here (although I've never known of a hospital that needed an MRI scanner and didn't have one).

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

Thoughts on e-books and other "revolutions," the worst-run government program in history, and why you don't want to be in a car in Japan now

Imagine what would happen if a quarter of all Americans lived in the Washington D.C. area instead of spread out around the country from sea to shining sea. That's essentially the case in Japan, where 27% of the nation's population lives in the Greater Tokyo Area, including Tokyo, Kawasaki, Yokohama and neighboring cities. When a long holiday like the current Obon break rolls around, everyone naturally tries to get out of Dodge at the same time, which can cause frightful congestion. This morning the snaking traffic jam out of the Tokyo area was 55 km (34 miles) long, as people tried to get back to their inaka (ee-NAH-KAH, home town), or anywhere out of the concrete jungle. One of the most popular destinations for Tokyo-ites is Karuizawa (ka-roo-ee-za-wa), the charming little town in the mountains that was discovered by a Canadian Priest in 1886 as a getaway spot for foreigners and which has enjoyed a special appeal ever since. Unless you like sitting in your car for 12 hours, however, I don't advise going there right now. The rush back into Tokyo Wednesday will be even worse, as hundreds of thousands hurry home so they can get back to work on Thursday.

One smart rule of thumb is that whenever a new product is pushed as "revolutionary," it probably won't be -- true revolutions, like TCP/IP, open email standards and Salad-in-a-Bag sort of sneak in through the back door when no one is looking. On my last flight back from the U.S. I happened to be seated next to a medium-level Sony executive, who seemed to be on a mission to show everyone on the plane his cool Sony e-book reader, which let him flip through pages of "virtual" books. If its e-books you're looking for, they may be here in Japan right now, available on the phones that people are already using. Just point your keitai (cell phone) browser to websites like EZ Book Land or Gokko and you can buy thousands of books from "light novels" aimed at the anime-and-manga crowd to steamy Harlequin Romances (yes, they have those here). There's even a whole category of novels actually written by authors using cell phones, due to a quirk of the syllabically-structured Japanese language that makes it as fast or faster to input text using a 10-key pad than on a computer keyboard. (Using a phone keypad, "arigatou" (ありがとう) would be 1992*44444111, which looks confusing but it's quite easy once you know how hiragana works.) Even major companies like Yahoo Japan are getting into the electronic novel business, adding services top help readers find this week's top-selling titles.

If there was an award for poorest administration of a government program ever, I'd like to nominate the Japanese National Pension System. The equivalent of Social Security in the U.S., the program is designed to guarantee Japanese a minimum income after requirement, but it's got a lot wrong with it. First of all, workers are "required" to make their premium payments, but since there's no mechanism to force employees of smaller companies and the self-employed to do this, millions never bother -- including some well-known politicians, a scandal which brought down a few careers when it came to light in 2004. Then there were the many wasteful projects built with pension money to "foster economic activity," like a government-built resort that no one ever uses called Green Pier. Finally, there are the estimated 50 million payments that were mishandled by the National Pension System during the computerization of the records in the 1980s, which has resulted in a huge number of people losing credit for real money they parted with years ago. The government is trying to fix the problem, but with the old records thrown away, many citizens are reciting that famous Japanese phrase, shikata ga nai (it can't be helped). This is one of those rare times when having more lawyers would really help, since Japan lacks the basic legal framework to force the government to take action and fix things before, say, pensioners start dying of old age. Taxpay- ers have found one effective way to vent their anger at the situation, at the voting box, and the election last month saw the ruling Liberal (not) Democratic (not) Party go from 64 to 37 seats. I still have to check and make sure the 4+ years I paid into the system as a salaryman teacher were counted or not.

View of Mt. Asama, the really big volcano.

My breakfast was less than traditional, being comprised of Miso Soup and Count Chocola that I'd brought back from the States.

Time to head back. We always try to buy somethiing from the old couple who runs this little shop (really, they fill the vending machine out front), since they look like they could use the business.

Always nice to have a "Navi" when taking a road trip.

This is my favorite drink in the world, essentially a carbonated health drink by Coca-Cola that tastes like vitamins, but I like it for some reason anyway.

The end of an era in driving convenience, Japan's Obon Buddhist holidays, and everything you wanted to know about what a kimono is

The end of an era for this particular gaijin has come. In the past, foreigners were permitted to drive in Japan with an International Drivers' License as long as they physically returned home at least once a year to get it renewed. Then a few years ago, the Japanese government started requiring that every resident change over to a Japanese license -- a very reasonable requirement, and I'm going through that process now. No one likes making a trip to their local DMV, but doing driving-related paperwork in a foreign language is a real drag. To make matters worse, I have to take the driving test because the U.S. isn't on the list of "blessed" countries whose residents can change from a foreign license automatically (too many differing standards for driving in the 50 states). Because the foreign population of my prefecture is a hodge-podge of people from around the world, I found myself taking the test alongside gaijin from Brazil, Peru, Vietnam, and a really big guy from Bangladesh. By the time we were done with the drivers' test we were all good friends, babbling to each other in various accents of Japanese about how hard it was while we waited for the results to be announced. Japan is a very rule-oriented country, and there's exactly "one" correct way to do most things, including driving a car -- one correct order of adjusting your seat, mirrors and fastening your seat belt, one correct way to hold your hands on the wheel while you make turns. Predictably, I failed the driving portion of the test this time around -- rats. (This little guy is Traffic Safety Horse, proof that even boring government offices can be "kawaii" in Japan.)

Next week starts Japan's Obon ("oh, bone!") break, which is a three-day Buddhist holiday to remember the souls of one's ancestors. Much of Japan shuts down on August 13, 14 and 15th as people journey to their "jikka" (real home, i.e. their parents' home or wherever their family's Buddhist altar is located) to spend time with family members and pay a visit the family grave, or maybe attend a festival and do the Bon-Odori ("bone odor-ey") traditional dance. Living in Japan for the past 15 years has taught me a lot about what the Japanese are all about spiritually. While I have to admit that I don't know much about Buddhism itself, not being able to tell a Bodhisattva from a Bodhi tree or Amida from Queen Amidala, I have known the Japanese to really care about their ancestors, aka family members who have gone on ahead, to use a less cliched phrase. My wife regularly looks to her dead grandmother for guidance and protection, and every morning my wife or my daughter will burn a stick of incense at the family altar to let the dead known they haven't been forgotten. Just as Christmas has grown into a big part of the culture of the West beyond its original meaning, many of these Buddhist traditions are practiced by all Japanese, even if they may of other religions. The Obon holidays are also a popular time to travel, and the rush of people headed for Narita International Airport officially started this morning. If you live in a place that receives many Japanese visitors like Hawaii, prepare to see a lot more of them over the next few days.

As you might imagine, what we call a kimono in the West has many variations here, such as yukata, a cotton kimono worn in the summer; happi, the short kimonos worn at summer festivals, often marketed to foreigners as "happy" coats; "hakama," a formal kimono that's similar to a tuxedo; or juunihitoe, the 12-layer kimonos worn in the Heian Period 1300 years ago. The word kimono is written with the characters ki (to wear, 着) and mono (thing、物), so it just means "something you wear," and there are many similar words in Japanese, like tabemono (something to eat, e.g. food), nomimono (something to drink, e.g. a beverage), and so on. Only Japanese-style clothes are called with the name kimono; dresses, shirts and other Western imports are always called yofuku, or "Western clothes." There's a Japanese grammatical rule that makes unvoiced sounds (like ki) change to voiced (gi) when they are on the end of a compound word, which can be seen in words like karate-gi or judo-gi, what you wear when doing Japanese martial arts (often just called gi in English, which is a little weird sounding if you must know). One of my favorite flavors of kimono is the jinbei (JIN-bei), essentially a short- sleeved cotton kimono that's equally good for use as Japanese-style pajamas (how I wear mine) as for wearing to your favorite festival or anime convention. J-List stocks several of these cool kimono varieties for our gaijin customers, including a great jinbei we got in stock today.

Here's the world famous gaijin, studying for his test...

Don't ask me why they're trying to make you avoid driving your car off the top of a building. It can't happen that often, even here.

I'm probably breaking some law by showing you the written part of the test. Oo, I'm a rebel.

This is the course we had to memorize. It never changes so it's just a matter of learning to do what they expect, but what a frustrating thing to have to take the actual driving test at my age.

I failed the first attempt, possibly because I went to fast, or maybe it was them trying to bring me down a peg, cocksure American that I was. The Vietnamese girl who was nearly in tears who went before me passed, even though she kept stopping in the middle of the road for no reason. Oh well...

Japan as a "Matrix of Strange English," on the strong-willed (and unattractive?) women of our prefecture, and language error "best hits"

Japan is, of course, the home of funny English. It's everywhere, like a bizarre Matrix of Strangeness that pervades the very air around a foreigner living in the country, despite the inability of Japanese people to perceive it. You can see funny English when you look out your window and there's a big truck with DUCK! printed on the side, or when you go to shave and notice that your shaving cream says "shake a can well," or when you visit the public bath and notice that the air conditioner is called "Clean Poo." You can feel it when you address a letter to a friend who lives in an apartment building called "Maison Cream Soda"... when you go to a coffee shop that advertises "flavorous and delicious communication"... when you crack open a beer and notice that it contains "esteemed quality with fine barley, malt, aroma hop and natural water." Often funny English comes from marketing products to people, like the Paradise Hair Resort I happened across the other day, or the famous Pocari Sweat, designed to elicit the image of light clouds on a hot day (pokkari is a Japanese word that describes floating on air). Sometimes the funny English in question isn't even made up of words, as in the case of a shirt I saw the other day that featured the famous "I (heart) NY" design, with the heart replaced by the GOP Elephant for no reason that we could comprehend. The Japanese are unique in that they generally learn a lot of English grammar and vocabulary -- important for passing college entrance exams -- but since it's such an isolated country, there's no real need for the language in day-to-day life. I guess is what leads to Japanese wanting to display English in so many odd ways.

Women from J-List's home prefecture of Gunma have received a slap in the face from an article in the weekly magazine Shinkan Shincho which asked readers to rank females from Japan's 47 prefectures according to beauty -- and they came in last. Each part of Japan is famous for something, whether it's soba noodles from Nagano or white rice and sake from Niigata or "Akita Bijin," the beautiful girls from frigid Akita Prefecture, whose skin is so white because it's too cold to go outside most of the time there. Gunma is famous for several things too, including yaki-manju, bread-like cake that's coated with sweet miso sauce and cooked on a stick; daruma, those red round little things that bring good luck to your home or business; and really strong winds in the winter called kara-kaze (empty winds). Rather than being renowned for their beauty, Gunma's females are famed for being extremely strong-willed, usually able to make their husbands do what they tell them to. These bossy Japanese females are known as kakaa-denka (kah-kah-ah DEN-kah), and this concept is such a staple of life in Gunma that there is -- I am not kidding -- a shopping street in our city called Kakaa Town where all the strong-willed housewives supposedly do their shopping. There are some theories about how Gunma women got to be so forceful, including the lack of a fishing industry in land-locked Gunma and the early growth of a silkworm cultivation which placed women in the role of primary breadwinner of the house. Or according to another theory, the strong winds caused women have to yell really loud to be heard, which made them lose their feminine characteristics.

Making errors when speaking a foreign language comes with the territory, and smart language learners will do what they can to embrace their own screw-ups as a positive way of moving forward with their language studies. At the very least, it's important to avoid being so scared of making an error that you never open your mouth, which is a problem a lot of Japanese learners of English have. Wanting to avoid linguistic slip-ups, they prefer to pre-load their "brain cache" before speaking rather than just opening their mouth and letting the words fall out naturally. I've made plenty of large and small errors over the years, for example there was the time I confused the word hinan (to evacuate) with hinin (to use a contraceptive) in mixed company, and the standard problems of the word "mango" and a similar term that refers to the female reproductive parts, but everyone can make errors. Before I married my wife, we were planning what photographs we wanted taken at the wedding, and she kept asking us to take pictures of her standing on "the glass." I couldn't understand what she was saying -- did she want a picture of herself standing on a reflective surface while wearing her dress? -- but it turned out she was talking about the grass lawn in front of the chapel in San Diego. Poor Jun, J-List's toy-and-snack buyer, had an embarrassing experience, too, while in Chicago ordering espresso from a Starbucks. The coffee was very bitter, so he shouted niga! (nii-GA), which means bitter in Japanese. All in all, this wasn't the best thing to shout in the middle of a coffee shop in Chicago, considering the potential for misunderstanding. (A more standard word for bitter is nigai, "nii-GA-ee"; niga is a slang form of this word.)

Since J-List is physically located in Japan, we're able to bring many amazing products to fans all over the world, and our revolving monthly magazine subscriptions are among our most popular items. Today we're posting two new "Reserve Subscription" magazines for our otaku brethern, the popular Dengeki Maoh super-thick monthly manga magazine, and Dengeki Hime, a great mag about Japan's oh-so-cute anime characters with just a little bit of "H." Both are loaded with free stuff in each issue, from posters to mousepads and more. As with our other magazines, you can always get them on a month-to-month revolving basis, which means you can quit or switch from one magazine to another at any time, and there's never any obligation. (You can also pre-pay for a year's worth of issues and get one month free.) Why not give Japan's most famous anime, fashion, toy, hobby or men's magazines a try today?