The Best Time to Come to Japan

One of the cardinal rules for gaijin coming to Japan is, try your best to make it over here as a university student. College life in Japan is a kind of magical time between childhood and adulthood, mercifully free of the stress that normally comes with studying at university, where you can make lifelong friends and see Japan from a viewpoint you won't ever get to enjoy again. I was too poor to come to Japan when I was in college, so I had to come here as a shakai-jin, a "society person" or full-time worker, which colored my experiences in a different way, but I'd have given anything to be able to visit Japan during school. Many universities offer study abroad programs that allow students to spend a semester or a year living in Japan, so if you or a Japan-focused young person you know would like to come to Japan for a year, start looking into what's available. Remember my theory that every young American should be made to live for a year outside their home country, which would do wonders for the way we view our own country and the rest of the world.

If you are lucky enough to come here during your college years, this is what you get to look forward to:

Fun with Japanese Company Names

For some reason, studying the etymologies of Japanese company names is fascinating to me. Like how the founder of Canon got the name for his company from the Bodhisattva Kannon, a kind of Goddess of Mercy revered by Japanese Buddhists, or how the name Epson was formed from "Son of Electric Printer." When you study Japanese, you start to see these famous brands in a new light, for example watchmaker Seiko is written with characters meaning "delicate and minute engineering," while Nikon is an abbreviation of Nihon Kogaku ("Japan Optical"). Yakult got their name from the Esperanto word for yogurt, which was suggested by a Polish researcher working with the company at the time, and Subaru is the local name for the Pleiades star cluster, deemed fitting as the company was formed by merging six smaller companies together. Bandai's name is rather complex: it comes from Bandai Fueki, one of the books in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and the phrase means "forever unchanging," since children's toys should be something that are constant throughout the ages. A lot of Japanese company names have the word ya at the end, such as toy maker Kotobukiya or the bookstore chain Kinokuniya. This is a character meaning "roof" which is used to denote a shop, like hana-ya (a flower shop) or ramen-ya (a ramen shop) in addition to being part of various proper names. There's a new sporting goods store that just opened in our city called Himaraya, which is great since it fits the standard Japanese naming practice yet makes you think of the mighty Himalayas. Their official company slogan is pretty cool, by the way: "We have a fine dream."

And in case you don't know what a Bodhisattva Kannon is, our neighboring city of Takasaki just happens to have a giant (as in 5-story) statue of the goddess, which I'll show you.

4000 Years of Chinese Traditional Medicine

Don't tell anyone, but I'm on a diet. You could call it the "iPhone diet" because I'm using one of the many applications (iTunes link) for my iPhone to track daily calorie intake. My plan is to eat whatever I want while accurately recording everything, which will help me identify the stuff I've been eating that's the most harmful. To help me out, my wife bought some bad-tasting medicine, saying, "Now, this is kampo, so it will definitely work." A word that literally means "Chinese way," kampo refers to the traditional herbal medicine of China, and it occupies an almost mythical place in the minds of the Japanese, in effect being a complete class of medical science that's separate from Western medicine. Many products, from energy drinks to various "enhancers" to Yomeshu (a kind of medicinal sake loaded with Chinese herbs) advertise themselves as making use of the magical power of kampo to relieve symptoms. Many kampo medicines have the full backing of the medical community here, and health insurance even covers them. In the U.S., however, traditional Chinese medicines are completely ignored by almost every major company. It'd be interesting if there were some really effective drugs sitting right under our noses that have been in use in China for thousands of years.

Wither Gaijin?

The most common word for "foreigner" in Japanese is gaijin, written using the characters for "outside" and "person." While ostensibly referring to any non-Japanese person, the term is most often used to mean American and European foreigners, and never to, say, Chinese or Koreans, who are referred to by their own specific nationality (e.g. chugoku-jin, kankoku-jin). Depending on who uses it and in what way, the word gaijin can sound derogatory to some, which is why TV newscasters will always use the more polite gaikokujin or "outside-country-person" instead. Recently there's been some discussion on various blogs about how bad the term gaijin really is, and weather we should be trying to stop its use. My own take is that it's just a word, and no worse than the term "alien," which sounds a little strange when you've grown up watching sci-fi films then realize it can refer to people from other countries, too. The reality is that the majority of the "discrimination" many foreigners get in Japan is positive -- people offering to pay you $40 an hour to speak your native language with their kids, pressing gifts into your hands, and girls writing their phone numbers on the back of chopstick wrappers. Personally, I think that if someone you don't know starts buying you beers in a bar and inadvertantly calls you gaijin, as has happened to me, it's best to not be too quick to take offense -- you are enjoying their beer, after all. Of course, Japan is by no means perfect, and improvements should be made. Still, when I compare my own experiences here with what the reverse situation might be, I really can't find reason to complain.

The Cup Ramen Museum in Osaka

Next time you're in Osaka, consider visiting the Monofuku Ando Memorial Ramen Museum, a sprawling facility commemorating the achievements of the Taiwan-born Japanese inventor of instant ramen. In the postwar years, Japanese were eating bread made with wheat flower brought in by the occupying U.S. military, and Momofuku (then operating a small business extracting salt from seawater) wondered why they didn't eat noodles instead, which were more familiar to the Japanese people. In 1957, a bank he was director of went under, taking his personal finances down along with it. In order to get out of debt, he returned to his idea about noodles, trying to find a more convenient way to prepare them. The result was Chikin [sic] Ramen, a delicious chicken flavored raman that's still being sold after fifty years. (I had some for lunch today.) At the museum, you can see different varieties of Cup Ramen from around the world, like broccoli ramen from Germany or curry flavored noodles from India, which are made without the soup base so that the noodles can be eaten with the hands, as is the custom in that country. Cup Ramen in all Western countries have noodles that are shorter than in Japan, to make them easier to eat with a fork. The museum sports a virtual reality room showing what happens as ramen is made, from the viewpoint of the raman itself, and afterwards you can mosey up to the Instant Ramen Bar and order some ramen with custom toppings that you can specify. (One of the most popular flavors is Seafood Milk, ugh...)

Prime Minister "Baton Touch"

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda surprised everyone by suddenly announcing his resignation on Monday. He's stepping down, he says, to take responsibility over the political stalemate that's grown between his ruling Liberty Democratic Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which has control of half the Japanese legislature and which is stubbornly resisting working with the LDP to resolve various issues. Incredibly, this is the 10th leadership change since I came to Japan in 1991, compared with only three in the U.S. and Britain during the same period, which illustrates a real problem with Japan: the near total lack of long-term quality leadership. Of all the recent head honchos in Japan, only the popular Junichi Koizumi was able to overcome the strange phenomenon of Japanese politicians withholding their support for their own leaders the minute they try to lead long enough to enact any reforms -- I really have to feel sorry for Fukuda-san, who was never given a break by anyone. The anime-watching world is all aflutter with the hopes that Fukuda's second-in-command Taro Aso will become the next PM. Aso-san is famous for being an otaku, known for carrying volumes of manga with him onto the Diet floor and calling for the government to support artists and companies exporting manga and anime to the world. In addition to his appreciation for Japan's popular culture, Aso-san is a maverick in other ways, being Roman Catholic in a very Buddhist nation, and fluent in English after studying at Stanford and the London School of Economics as well as spending two years mining for diamonds in Africa.

Japan's Prince of Tennis

Japan has a new Prince of Tennis, by the name of Kei Nishikori, who is kicking butt in the U.S. open right now after his big win against David Ferrer over the weekend, making him the first Japanese tennis player to advance to the 4th round since 1937. Born in in rural Shimane Prefecture in 1989, he took up a racket at the age of five and would hit balls against the side of his house for many hours, showing a remarkable aptitude for the sport. He took the incredible step of leaving Japan behind, crossing over to the U.S. at the age of 13 to be trained at the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, which caused quite a lot of buzz at the time. As usual, Japanese who compete in the world stage and raise the image of Japan in the eyes of foreigners become overnight sensations in here, and suddenly his name is on everyone's lips. I certainly hope that Nishikori-kun can follow stars like Ichiro, Hideki Matsui and soccer player Hidetoshi Nakata in redefining the international image of Japan through sports. Ganbatte, Nishikori!

Understanding Star Wars through Anime

I finally got to see the new Clone Wars computer animated film, which just opened here. One of the minor agonies of being a Star Wars fan in Japan is having to wait an extra long time for films to open, because George Lucas likes Japan and always wants to personally be here for any of his film releases. Whenever a new Star Wars film comes out, my son and I pick through it to see what character names were obviously inspired by Japanese words, like Count Dooku's name from doku meaning poison, or the obi in Obi-Wan meaning a kimono belt. The new character in this film was Anakin's padawan Asohka, which seems like it can only have come from the phrase ah, so ka? meaning, "Oh, is that so?" The new film was obviously inspired by Japanese animation to a certain degree, and I noticed the animators even followed the recent convention of including an okama or gay character, in the form of the makeup-wearing Ziro the Hutt, nephew to Jabba. It's quite common for recent anime series to feature one effeminate male character, called okama kyara in Japanese, to provide comic relief and act as a foil for the main characters. Some examples of these fabulous characters include Leeron, the capable and flamboyant engineer from Gurren Lagann, and Bobby Margot, the helmsmen of the Macross Quarter from Macross Frontier, so manly and yet so girlish. Heck, Gonzo's gorgeous Romeo x Juliet anime remix even featured an okama character: it was William Shakespeare himself, repurposed as a mentor to the starcross'd lovers.

As for the Clone Wars film, hrrm, it was a nice extension of the Clone Wars animated shorts, that's for sure. As long as you hypnotize yourself into pretending you're a 12 year old boy again, it was great.

Things a Japanese City Will Definitely Have: Hanabi Taikai

There are certain things that every self-respecting Japanese city will be sure to have. For example, a large central Culture Hall, or bunka kaikan, to hold important events like concerts, piano recitals and taiko drum performances put on for parents by the local kindergarten kids. In April, Japan's cherry blossoms explode with color, and virtually every Japanese city has an established park or two lined with cherry trees for their citizens to sit under, as they try pretend that their city alone is famous for sakura. If a city has more than a million residents, it starts to pine for a large tower in the center of town, and almost every major city from Tokyo to Kyoto to Fukuoka sports a tall Space Needle-like tower. Then there are big fireworks festivals, large displays of color put on for everyone's enjoyment on a specified day during the summer. Our city's fireworks festival was on Sunday, and the entire city oo'd and ah'd as the sky was lit up with beautiful "fire flowers," as they're called in Japanese. Fireworks, of course, go back a long way in Japanese history, and you have to wonder what it was like seeing a fireworks display back in the Edo Period.

Thoughts on Reading Kanji

When you can't read or write kanji, the idea of being able to recognize hundreds or thousands of the symbols probably seems daunting, but as with most things in life, it's not as difficult as it first looks. Kanji characters are built quite logically, with different quadrants of many characters organized around the meanings for that character. For example, the kanji for words like to speak, to read and to translate all feature the same left section, a radical which happens to look like a stack of books on a shelf, which is the character for "to say" (iu), indicating that all these characters are related to communication in some way. While Chinese might need around 3500 characters to read and write their language properly, Japanese is a bit more manageable, with 1006 characters taught in Elementary School and another 939 in Junior High, which are collectively known as the joyo kanji or "general use" characters. One of the most interesting thing that happens when you learn a language that's as different from English as Japanese is the moment you find yourself "reading" normally, without subvocalizing or translating into English -- nothing but your eyes, passing over the page and reading in the chunks of kanji, hiragana and katakana directly. The brain is amazing, really -- it can do anything.

Small "K" Cars in Japan: J-List's New Suzuki Every Wagon

Our new warehouse construction is nearly done, and we hope to be able to move in soon. To help us transport all the cool products that J-List is going to be bringing you, we bought a new company van yesterday. The one we got is an Every Wagon by Suzuki, and no, I didn't choose the car because of the wacky English name, although that was an added bonus. With its small 660 cc engine, the car belongs in a class of Japanese vehicles known as kei cars and trucks, meaning "light weight," identifiable by a special yellow license plate. These "K" vehicles are great for Japan -- inexpensive, easy to drive cars with small engines that are able to do just about anything a larger one can do, even drive on the freeway, although it takes a while to get up to full speed. Our van gets great gas mileage, too, around 16 kpl / 39 mpg, and because there are no newfangled hybrid features involved, it was very inexpensive to buy. With gas prices hitting the equivalent of $6.80 a gallon here, these small cars are more popular than ever, even without the tax benefits the Japanese government gives for owning more efficient cars. For some reason, these small "K" cars seem to feature names that are extra strange, like the Suzuki Carry, the Honda Acty, the Mazda Scrum, the Toyota Deliboy and the Daihatsu Applause. Sadly, these ultra-small cars are not generally sold in the U.S., although they're legal for non-freeway use in some more rural states and for specialized uses, like on college campuses.

Rain, Rain, Rain in Japan

Rain, rain, rain: this has been the wettest summer I can recall in Japan, and we've had wet weather off and on for weeks. The especially heavy rains this week brought Japan's famous Shinkansen trains to a stop, stranding thousands, and an evacuation warning was issued for the entire city of Okazaki, near Nagoya, as rivers that ran through the city overflowed, killing at least one. It was even more tragic in July, when rain-fed flash floods whipped through a riverside play area the city of Kobe had constructed to give children a place to play in the water, washing away a mother and three children. Summer in Japan brings thunderstorms almost daily, and last week lightning started a fire that damaged the Daigoji Temple in Kyoto. We're especially nervous about lightning around here -- twice J-List's building has been struck, killing our main air conditioning unit and causing us to go a week in the sweltering heat as we waited for it to be repaired. The extra wet summer is all the more puzzling because typhoon season isn't supposed to start until September -- which means we might have another month or so of pummeling and rain to look forward to.

The Japanese Mess Up English

What kind of juice would you like, cola or tea? The Japanese sometimes take liberties with words when they import them from English, adjusting their meanings to suit their needs. In Japan the word "juice" （ジュース）is often casually used to mean any canned or bottled beverage, and it's common for the term be applied to things like a can of iced tea or a carbonated drink, although we wouldn't think of these things as juice in English. Some other words the Japanese use with slightly altered meanings include "rouge" for lipstick, "manicure" for nail polish, "hair manicure" for hair coloring, and "milk" for powdered creamer to put in your coffee. If your house gets cold in the winter, you can turn on a "stove" (a kerosene heater), and if you want to check your weight, just step onto the "health meter" in your bathroom. The large number of differences between the meanings of "English" words as the Japanese use them and what they mean to native speakers can certainly get confusing: I remember a conversation I was having with a student about a shortcut I'd found while exploring the city that day, but she thought I was complimenting her on a short haircut she'd recently gotten.

Mmm, look at all that delicious juice.

Gunma History Lesson from Iwajuku

J-List's home prefecture of Gunma isn't as famous as Kyoto or Nara, but it can hold its own when it comes to ancient history. For example, there are more than 8000 burial mounds from the Kofun Period (250-538 A.D.), indicating a high level of civilization in the past, even though Tokyoites consider us to be a quaint place only useful for hot springs and skiing. But our prefecture's history goes a lot farther back. By an amazing coincidence, J-List is located only a few kilometers from the Iwajuku Archeological Dig, which happens to contain the oldest record of human habitation in all Japan. In 1949, an archeology enthusiast named Aizawa Tadahiro was digging for pottery shardswhen he hit on something much older: hand-made tools of obsidian and flint. At first, Mr. Tadahiro's discovery was mocked by the establishment, but his findings were verified, essentially pushing the timeline of humans living in the Japanese islands from 10,000 years ago to more than 30,000. Sadly, almost nothing else is known about the previous residents of Iwajuku, due to the fact that the area lies at the foot of Mt. Akagi, an active volcano that spits out highly acidic ash, but it's interesting that such a famous place is only a stone hammer's throw away from us. By another amazing coincidence (there are a lot of them in Japan for some reason), when J-List's own Tomo was in the 4th grade, he was in the hospital getting his tonsils out, and the man in the next bed over was Tadahiro-sensei himself. So Tomo got to hear all about the discovery at Iwajuku first-hand.

Useful Skills to Bring to Japan

If you want to live in Japan, there are certain skills you'll need to acquire. For example, you should be okay with popping something in your mouth without stopping to ask what it is, as food that's placed in front of you won't always be something you can identify. ("That can't really be a baby octopus, can it? OM NOM NOM.") If you're taller than 5'9" (175 cm) or so, you'll probably need to learn to duck or else bang your head in doorways a lot. There might also come a time when you want to let your friend know he should check out the pretty Japanese girl standing nearby, but do it in a way that the girl can't understand. This is where speaking extremely difficult English comes in handy, since most Japanese won't be able to pick up on intentionally complex words, like, "Hey John, I recommend that you examine the specimen of the opposite gender standing off your starboard bow. A delightful and tantalizing example of the human form, wouldn't you say?" I've had extensive conversations in front of members of the opposite sex, cloaking my conversation in this way, although the longer you live in Japan, the harder it becomes to recall really difficult words. Another suggestion is to use Pig Latin, a great way to obfuscate anything you want to say, since Japanese people don't know what it is. "Ook-lay at-tay at-thay ueaituful-bay irl-gay!" You never know what skills you'll need in Japan.

More Fun With Chopsticks

It's known that the Japanese eat with chopsticks with almost every meal, deftly picking up even the tiniest morsels of food without a second thought. There are some important of chopstick manners that are practiced here, which you should be aware of if you ever find yourself eating with Japanese people. First, as you may know if you've seen our famous Japanese Manners T-shirt, you should never stick chopsticks standing up in rice, since this is done only at funerals as an offering of "last rice" for the dead. Similarly, don't hand food to someone else's chopsticks using your own -- always put the food down on a plate or something first for the other person to take. Finally, when sharing food with others, it's nice to turn your chopsticks around, using the back of your chopsticks to eat from a dish that others are also going to eat from, which keeps germs away from them. Using chopsticks isn't hard at all by the way, and J-List offers a wide range of authentic chopsticks from Japan with handy features for gaijin like us, such as rough patches at the tips to make it easier to grasp that last grain of rice, or training chopsticks that are great for starting out with. Why not browse J-List's chopstick, bento and other items now?

Learning About Keigo (Polite Japanese) and Anime

Each language is special, with its own set of interesting features. Romance languages, for example, have nouns that come in male and female genders, which can be difficult for native English speakers to pick up -- why is a pen la puma but a pencil is el lapiz? In Japanese, there are some interesting features, too. As I often point out here, the subject and object are sometimes left off of sentences if the speakers know what is meant. Thus a girl might say to her friend "Iku?" which literally means "Go?" Who is going, and where are they going, and when are they going, are all implied (let's head out to lunch now). Another interesting aspect of the language is keigo, or formal polite language, which splits some verbs into "exhaulting," for use when referring to someone you want to show respect to such as an honored guest or your boss, and "humble," used to lower yourself or your organization, thus raising the person you're being polite too even higher. This polite form of Japanese can be quite removed from everyday life here, and when Japanese go to university or a trade school, part of their education will include training in how to use this higher level of polite language, so they don't embarrass themselves when they enter the workforce. One thing I've found interesting is how a Japanese person can angrily berate someone even while they maintain this careful keigo language mode. In the anime Gurren Lagann, there's a scene in which Nia, princess and daughter of Lord Genome, demands to know why her father has been forcing humanity to live underground. She's extremely angry as she speaks, yet her Japanese is polite the whole time. This is probably something that'd be impossible to recreate accurately in English.

Kandora: Korean Dramas in Japan

My wife is hooked on Kandora, short for Kankoku dorama or South Korean soap operas, and it seems every time I walk through the living room she's got another one on the TV. When I ask her what's so interesting about the shows, she gets very animated. "Oh, they're nothing like Japanese dramas," she says. "They're more intense, and the stories are much more involved and interesting. The characters really change and grow." It struck me that she sounded like me back in the 80s, describing why Japanese animation was so superior to whatever else was on TV back then for people to watch (I actually can't remember at this point). It seems to me that the human brain is wired to appreciate things that are fresh and new, and when a concept comes along that is totally unique, people are drawn to it irresistibly, which goes a long way towards explaining the revolution that Japanese animation has brought to the world over the past 20 years. My wife is finding that Korean series like Time Between Dog and Wolf, Spring Waltz and Something Happened in Bali are offering her a higher level of drama and depth, sometimes moving her to tears with their (often sad) stories. The Japanese soaps, with their lighter and more formulaic stories that you can usually guess ahead of time, don't seem to be doing it for her.

This is a magazine for fans of Korean dramas living in Japan. Yes, there are kandora otaku here too, mostly women in their 40s so it's kind of scary.

Thoughts on Japanese Food

It's funny how so many of the foods eaten by the Japanese on a daily basis aren't very Japanese at all. Sure, people here eat plenty of things that are associated closely with Japan, like soba and udon noodles, sushi and sashimi, or donburi ("big bowl") dishes like gyudon (beef bowl) or oyakodon, the "parent and child" rice bowl consisting of chicken and egg cooked together and put over rice, but there are many non-Japanese foods consumed here, too. Of course, there are many dishes that have been imported from China, like gyoza (pot stickers) or ramen, although the Japanese don't consider the stir-fried yakisoba noodles to be Chinese in origin, much as they look like chow mein to me. The Japanese have internalized foods from many other countries, including Italian spaghetti, French croquetes (which go so well with that Japanese Tonkatsu sauce) or American "hamburg steak" (steak made from ground beef). The single most popular food in Japan might just be that ubiquitous curry rice, the thick curry sauce served over steaming rice, which was imported from India via Britain during the Meiji Era. We probably eat it 4-5 times a week at our house.

Jiko Shokai: Japanese Self Introductions

One interesting concept I learned about soon after coming to Japan was jiko shokai, which just means "self introduction" but which seems to have a special cultural significance here. In almost any situation where people will be interacting, be it a classroom, a part-time job or the local PTA board, a new member will always stand and make a formal self introduction, telling the others their name (including how to write it in kanji), where they're from, what their hobbies are, and so on. Giving this information to the other members of the group allows everyone to categorize the newcomer properly, and afterwards the others will do their own jiko shokai in turn. These self introductions are also heavily used in ESL teaching, too, since formal self introductions are seen as the "most basic" form of human communication in Japan. Back when I was an ESL teacher, I taught children a lot, and I made sure to spend a lot of time teaching self-introductions, since I knew that the parents of my students expected that their kids have this ability before anything else and would complain if their kids couldn't recite basic information about themselves to others.