Learning Japanese Culture Through Anime

It's interesting to see what kinds of cultural issues you can learn about from anime. I'm currently hooked on Toradora, a series about a short, fierce girl named Taiga Aisaka who's a classic tsundere character, angry on the outside but sweet and vulnerable on the inside. In the story, the main character Ryuji loves a girl named Minori, while Taiga is in love with Ryuji's best friend Yusaku. When Ryuji agrees to help Taiga win his friend's heart, the two become so close that they start calling each other by their first names, something rarely done by high school kids in Japan, who usually address a classmate using their last name (e.g. "Aisaka" instead of "Taiga"). Using first names with each other sends the signal to the other students that they're dating, which causes all kinds of confusion for everyone. In the PC dating-sim games that we translate and sell, we face some of these cultural issues too, for example how to deal with the name suffixes like -san, used to maintain a degree of formality between people; -chan, usually used with females who are younger than you, or with whom you're close friends with; or labels like -senpai, senior in a class or organization. In our games, we've got the cultural context that allows us to preserve these Japanese structures so we can keep the "feel" of the game as accurate as possible, but I'm sure that in dubbed animation intended for broadcast on TV it's much more difficult to maintain the spirit of the original.

No Smorking From April

I often write about how Japan seems to be following behind the U.S. and Europe by about 10-15 years, a belief that's quite common among the Japanese themselves, who perceive that their country is less "advanced," only making major social changes after the ideas have become well-rooted in the West. It was recently announced that a starting in April, smoking will be completely banned in most JR stations in the Tokyo area, good news to those who dislike smelling others' cigarettes but a blow to Joe Salaryman who just wants a quick puff before getting on the train for home. Looking back, it was right about a decade or so ago that smoking bans really came into their own in the States with California's widespread limits on smoking in many public places in 1998, so the timing seems to be holding up pretty well. Incidentally, if you're wondering why everything "official" like government-run programs or the Japanese school year always seem to start in April, the answer is cultural. To the Japanese mind-set, spring represents a new beginning, and it's natural that important changes be timed to start in the season of renewal.

Electronic Toll Gates and Inefficnency in Japan

I finally broke down and got one of those ETC terminals for my car, which lets me get on and off Japanese "freeways" (which aren't exactly free) by driving through the special electronic gate rather than stopping to pay the toll in cash. Naturally, part of the reason I sprang for the system was my desire to feel kakko ii (cool) as I zipped through the toll gate rather than lining up behind other cars to pay the $7 it costs to travel to the next city, or $28 if I'm going the 100 km to Tokyo. But my real reason for getting ETC was that the East Japan Highway Company, which operates the freeways in this part of Japan, was kind enough to put a freeway on-ramp right near my house, saving me a lot of driving in the wrong direction when I want to go somewhere. Since the on-ramp is "ETC only" with no manned toll booth, I counted it as a rare instance of Japan becoming more efficient, an infrequent occurrence in this country that measures the volume of traffic on roads by hiring people to sit for hours and manually count cars with hand clickers as they drive by. Imagine my surprise when I saw that both of the "unmanned" ETC gates had small administrative buildings with 2-3 employees sitting inside, no doubt drinking green tea and watching the latest sumo tournament on TV while cars zip on and off the expressway. I know that Americans might be viewed as often overly concerned with efficiency at the expense of other important factors, but I have to say that if Japan is to flourish in the challenges that lie ahead, it needs to change the way it thinks just a little.

Anime Songs from iTunes Japan

J-List carries the awesome iTunes Japan prepaid cards, which allow you to buy great music from Japan for your iPod, iPhone or Mac/PC, including many great anime themes and related songs. Since there's no cental page for anime-related music on iTunes it can be a bit challenging to find the anime soundtracks you want, but a good place to start is by searching for "anime" in Japanese or English (note, all links open iTunes). Another suggestion we have is searching for songs published by Lantis, the record label that releases many of the best anime soundtracks -- click here for some nice ones. Checking out sets of songs created by users is also fun, like this link featuring the most popular tunes from popular Japanese video site Nico Nico Dougu. Some other suggestions: fans of Shana of the Blazing Eyes should check this out, that dreamy Wolf and Spice OP theme is here, there are plenty of great songs by the red-hot Kotoko here, and a really cool "Heavy Metal Anime Remix" album can be seen here. Our prepaid iTunes Cards are available in 1500 and 3000 yen versions.

A Discovery in the Village of the World! Japanese Living in a Place Like This

One thing I like about TV in Japan is the variety of shows they broadcast. From popular dramas to educational quiz shows to something called World's Greatest TV in which stories from around the world are shown, like a turtle enthusiast who recreates famous scenes from Hollywood movies using turtles, there's always something interesting on to watch. One show I like is called Sekai no Shaso Kara, or From The Train Window of the World, which sends camera crews to places like Norway, the Czech Republic, the U.S. and China to document the beautiful sights seen from trains. I caught an interesting program recently called "A Discovery in the Village of the World! Japanese Living in a Place Like This," which was about Japanese people who happen to live in unique places. First there was the story of a Japanese girl who had fallen in love with a student from Sweden and married him, and they were living in Iceland, about as far from Japan as you can get in the world. Then there was another Japanese girl who'd decided to put down roots in a village along the Amazon river in Bolivia, an unexpected place to find a nihonjin. Although these Japanese people were far from home, you could feel the cultural connection they still felt with their home country.

Japan Thinks of the Children

I recently saw that Japan had topped Save the Children's annual Child Development Index, which ranks nations on how well they care for their children. I wasn't surprised in the least: I've seen first-hand how good the country is at providing care for its kids, from offering free health care to children under 6 (costs for doctor visits and medicines are covered entirely by the health insurance system) to a structured schedule of vaccinations provided free by each city, which has helped Japan attain one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world (Japan was #3, America was...#180). Care for a child starts with the first visit to an obstetrician, where the new mother-to-be is issued a boshi techo, or "Mother-and-Child Notebook" in which everything about the child will be recorded: size and estimated weight during each stage of gestation, the results of various tests at birth, the complete history of all vaccinations, development of speech and motor skills, and so on. Japan's desire to care for its children well shows in education, too, with a much higher level of participation by parents in PTA-like organizations than I've seen in the U.S. I've never heard of school budgets being cut, either, and the subject of education seems pretty sacrosanct among Japanese politicians. As Japan tries to battle its "famine" of children brought on by the country's low birth rate, it's good to see that each child is being cared for well.

This game appears to be a DS title developed to teach new mothers the things they need to do when their babies, arrive, e.g. how to put them in the bath, etc.

Hidden Gems in Anime

Japanese animation is fun for people from all over the world because the stories appeal to us even though we may not have the same cultural background as Japanese viewers. While anime is usually bouncy and fun, it's amazing how often you can find depth in unexpected places when you dig beneath the surface. One of the students at the school for magic in Zero no Tsukaima is named Tabitha, a cool meta reference to the daughter of Samantha from Bewitched, one of the original inspirations for the "magical girl" genre of anime. The infamous Dirty Pair, known to blow up a planet or two in the course of fulfilling an assignment, turns out to be an obscure (to gaijin) reference to the 1970s-era pro wrestling team Beauty Pair...and celebrated manga-ka Beauty Hair gets his name from the same source. American science fiction crops up in anime from time to time. In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki gives a book to Kyon which (if you freeze the frame at the right moment) can be seen to be The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, which provided some of the inspiration for the time-travel parts of the story. Similarly, the Gainax classic Aim For the Top: Gunbuster borrows heavily from two of my favorite SF novels, Ender's Game (kids being trained for interstellar combat with space bugs) and The Forever War (the drama created when people are separated by relativistic time dilation). Even the saucier side of the genre has its deep areas. H-game artist Seishojo is most famous for creating the Bible Black franchise, but did you know that every one of his game titles is actually a reference to the British progressive rock band Crimson King, whose albums include Starless and Bible Black and Discipline? Well, now you do.

2009 Japanese Calendar Sale!

Since J-List is physically located here in Japan, we're able to offer all kinds of items that'd be hard to find outside the country, including all the gorgeous Japanese anime, music, swimsuit idol, men's and traditional photo calendars that are sold here. We're having a special sale to move our stock of calendars out, so it's a great time for you to browse our selection and see what awesome calendars you want. Every year we get emails from customers who waited too long to get a certain calendar, so we advise you to check our calendar selection early. Buy 3 or more calendars and get an additional discount!

Trillions and Trillions of Yen

I see that Prime Minister Aso is set to release a 23 trillion yen stimulus package to help deal with the economic downturn in Japan's export-dependent economy. If you have no idea how much 23 trillion yen is, join the club, since I don't either. Because the individual value of the yen is so low against most other currencies, requiring 120 yen for a can of Coke, 80,000 yen to rent a small apartment or 2,500,000 yen to buy an average car, living in Japan means getting used to dealing with very high numbers. Values beyond ten million yen or so start to get really fuzzy in my mind, so when the government kicks around numbers involving trillions of yen, they might as well call it "infinity+1" as far as I'm concerned. The only hope I have of understanding large numbers is thinking about them in Japanese, thanks to the odd phenomenon that makes numbers at least comprehensible when thought of in kanji units, e.g. man (mahn) for 10,000, oku for 100 million, cho for 10 billion, and so on. For the record, 23 trillion yen is around USD$250 billion.

Interesting 4-Character Kanji Words: Yuju Fudan

There's an interesting category of vocabulary words made up of four kanji characters, which probably represents a grammatical construction left over from the distant past when Japan was still adapting the Chinese writing system for its own use. They're fun to study since the meaning of the compound words often goes far beyond the actual characters themselves. One such word that anime fans may be familiar with is ikki tousen, written with characters for "one knight" and "hitting one thousand" and literally meaning a warrior so strong he can defeat a thousand opponents. One word I had fun learning about is yuju fudan (yuu-juu foo-DAHN), written with the characters for "kindness" "softness" and "indecision." The term describes just about every male character in a romantic or "love comedy" anime series, the main character who's surrounded by beautiful females, but he can't make up his mind which girl he's in love with, so he ends up being nice to everyone. On the surface it's just a word meaning someone who can't make up his mind about something, but in the context of anime it becomes the lynchpin to many of the most dramatic character-driven stories. Some of the classic yuju fudan characters include Tomoya from Clannad, Kaoru from Ai Yori Aoishi, Makoto from School Days, and Kyosuke from the classic 80s romantic esper anime Orange Road. (Among the many Japanese study aids we offer on J-List, there's a nice book that teaches these 4-character compound words through manga.)

Japanese Anime Eyes

The word for "eye" in Japanese is me (pronounced "meh"), although there's a more poetic-sounding alternative word, hitomi, which is used in songs and other romantic settings. (Useless trivia: Humphrey Bogart's famous line from Casablanca in Japanese is kimi no hitomi ni kampai, "I raise a glass and toast to your beautiful eyes.") All Japanese have brown eyes, although they'll always tell you their eyes are "black" if asked because they think you're asking about the center part of the eye rather than the iris. Eye color is something the Japanese are quite fascinated with when it comes to gaijin, and I've had many students who wanted to talk about my eyes, ask what color my parents' eyes were or see if I perceived the world through a blue tint. One of the more interesting aspects of Japanese animation is how characters are portrayed with a veritable rainbow of eye (and hair) colors despite being 100% Japanese ethnically. Essentially, the designers are using the medium of animation to create characters that go beyond the perceived limitations of "Japanese" facial features, incorporating colors and styles without limitation. While anime characters might be perceived as looking "Caucasian" by some, they actually surpass even the most flamboyant Western features, creating an idealized world in which any type of beautiful facial attribute can be expressed.

Keeping Warm in Japan

Winter is here, and for this San Diego boy this means a constant battle to keep from freezing to death, although happily there are some innovative ways to keep warm in Japan. Japanese homes lack central heating, meaning that you're generally heating one room of your house at a time, which while economical is still hard to get used to. The most traditional way of keeping warm is a kotatsu, essentially a short table with a blanket over it and a heater inside -- just put your legs under the blanket and you'll be toasty in no time. The most popular heating method is a kerosene heater called a "stove," or a similar unit called a "fan heater" which has a computerized fan to improve air circulation; these two methods provide the most energy for your heating dollars, although the portable kerosene tank always manages to run out of fuel at the worst possible time, meaning that I have to stand by the front door at midnight with a hand pump and refill the kerosene, while trying not to get the stuff all over everyone's shoes (since there are many shoes by the front door of a Japanese house). A better option is a gas heater that uses natural gas stored in large tanks, which we switched to at J-List last year -- no more kerosene tank to fill up on cold winter mornings. There are some other options, too, including a "hot carpet" (essentially a carpet that gets hot when you turn it on) and in-floor heating based on the traditional ondol floor heating, in use for centuries in Korea. My other favorite way to keep warm is are the amazing kairo heating pads, which keep you warm for hours just sitting in your pocket, which we just happen to sell.

Japanese New Year's Comedians

The shows on Japanese TV around New Year's are especially interesting to watch. I was fascinated with a Japanese variety show special that pit various teams (professional athletes, comedians, sexy idols like Aki Hoshino and Maki Horikita) against each other doing silly sports, including one event in which participants wore a suit of velcro and had to launch themselves against a wall, to see who could stick to the wall at the highest point. New Year's is also a good time to catch some anime specials, and there are always some cool shows on, including stuff for old school fans like me. New Year's in Japan is also time to watch manzai, a kind of stand-up comedy routine from the Kansai region of Japan that usually consists of a team of two comedians, a straight man (tsukomi) and a dumb partner (boke, boh-kay). The two spar off against each other, with the straight man getting angry and short-tempered at the mistakes his dumb-witted friend makes. This year one of the most popular manzai teams is Hige-danshaku, aka "Bearded Baron," a silly comedy team consisting of two dapper-looking gentlemen who hold glasses of wine, which they clink together in celebration whenever one of them makes a joke. These two guys are everywhere this year.

New Year's and Giving Children Money

Akemashite omedeto from J-List! We had a nice New Year's Day in Japan, writing our family's nengajo (New Year's Cards) and getting a lot of relaxing in. After hitting a Shinto shrine, which appears to be protected by an anime-like fox deity from the statues of foxes all around it, it was time to head to our uncle's house to eat a ton of food and listen to him talk about his World War II days. My wife and I were going straight there, but the kids wanted to go with their grandparents who were going to stop by some other relatives' houses first. I knew exactly what they were after: otoshi-dama, the "yearly coin" that adults give to children on New Year's, usually $20-30 per child depending on the relationship and the child's age. Visiting more relatives means getting more money, and it's a great way to motivate children to spend time with family without complaining. They managed to pull in around $150 each this year, which is quite a good haul.

These are the little envelopes they sell for putting the money you give to children in. There is of course a post-New Year's toy shopping season as kids to to buy their own favorite toys with the money they received

Please Have a Safe and Happy New Year

Today is New Year's Eve, known in Japan by the odd-sounding name of o-miso-ka, which sounds like it means "Big Miso Day," although the miso here actually refers to the number 30, the number of days in most months under the old Lunar Calendar. Today is the day to eat Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles, which supposedly helps everyone enjoy long lives because the noodles are long, and December 31st is the busiest day for restaurants that serve noodles. Another big activity for the last day of the year is watching Kohaku, the "Red and White Song Battle," a live show put on by NHK every year since 1951 in which female singers (the red team) battle male singers (the white team) to see which side can put on the most extravagant performances. Kohaku is "the" music event of the year, comparable to the Academy Awards in the U.S. in the buzz it generates, and virtually every top star will be there, from the venerable Saburo Kitajima to the red-hot R&B artist Thelma Aoyama, and even Jero, the first black enka singer in Japan, who really proved himself this year. (Fans of J-List's prepaid iTunes Japan cards can browse this year's Kohaku music on iTunes via this link.) After the Kohaku show ends at 11:45 pm, NHK broadcasts Yuku Toshi, Kuru Toshi (Year Going, Year Coming,) showing solemn images of people making their way to beautiful Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and Muslim mosques to do hatsu-mode (ha-tsu MOH-day), the first prayer for good luck and happiness of the New Year, overlaid with the sound of a bell that chimes 108 times, a Buddhist tradition tied to the 108 sins that mankind is subject to. Then, the TV display flashes "0:00," letting you know the New Year has silently arrived

Then comes Oshogatsu, New Year's Day, the most important day of the year in Japan. On that day we'll all sit around the house relaxing, eating mikan oranges with our legs in the kotatsu heater table and watching the big New Year's Marathon that's held every year in our prefecture, which is broadcast nationally on TV, since sitting around watching people run in the cold is apparently a good way to start the year. Part of the route for the marathon happens to go down the street we live on, so we can see our house on TV every year, which is always fun. It's important to relax as much as possible on New Year's Day because if you're busy on that day, it's said you'll be busy all year. Just as kids rush downstairs to see what presents Santa brought them in the U.S., Japanese children hurry to get the mail so they can see who sent them a nengajo or New Year's Card, a huge custom in Japan. These postcards are decorated with images of the Chinese zodiac animal for the new year, so this year's cards will feature many images of cows.

Of course we'll be making a trip to our favorite Shinto Shrine to pray for good luck in the new year. 2009 is my yakudoshi, my unlucky year according to a complex Japanese superstition that crossed over from China millennia ago, so I need to pay some money to have the Shinto priests say extra prayers to keep my bad luck away. According to this system, the ages of 25, 42 an 61 (for men) and 19, 33 and 37 (for women) are extremely unlucky, and you should avoid doing certain things like building a house, starting a business or otherwise making a major change in your life during these years. (The years before and after each unlucky year are also somewhat unlucky.) The tricky thing is that these years are calculated according to the old Japanese system of figuring ages, whereby a newborn baby was considered "1 year old" at birth. In other words, you should subtract a year from these dates when figuring your yakudoshi, hence the age of 41 for me (next year) is my big unlucky year. Of course, I privately laugh at some of the superstitions the Japanese come up with, like don't cut your fingernails at night or you won't be able to be with your parents when they die, but the yakudoshi belief is pretty much the primary superstition in Japan, so in the interests of experiencing Japanese culture to the fullest, I'll avoid building any houses in 2009.

 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, J-List's wonderful customers, for making 2008 such a wild ride for all of us. We genuinely love bringing our unique brand of Japanese popular culture to the world, and we hope to do a lot more in the new year. The way to wish someone a Happy New Year before January 1st is yoi o-toshi o (yo-ee oh-toh-shi o, lit. "please have a good new year"), and when you meet them for the first time in January, you say akemashite omedeto (ah-kay-mash-tay oh-meh-deh-TOH, lit. "congratulations on opening the new year"). So, please have a very nice New Year's celebration with friends and family, and we'll see you next year. Yoi o-toshi o!

Time For Big Cleaning, Buddhist Temple Style!

As December draws to a close, Japan is getting ready for Oshogatsu (New Year's Day), by far the most important holiday in the country. But before we can start the new year there's plenty of work to do, beginning with osoji (oh-SOH-jee), the year-end "big cleaning" that everyone does here, scrubbing their home from top to bottom, re-papering the shoji doors, replacing the family toothbrushes with new ones, and washing the car so it's spic and span for the new year. This year-end cleaning isn't just a way to make the house presentable for company: it's based on a Japanese custom called susuharai, a year-end cleansing of dirt and cobwebs that's been done at Buddhist temples for centuries. Companies do "big cleaning" too, and tomorrow is the day when all J-List employees will stop work and spend several hours sweeping, vacuuming and wiping every inch of the office, washing the windows and even the front door. Between cleaning, Year End Parties and stocking up on food for the first few days of January when most stores are closed, people are extra busy this time of year. In fact, the old name for the month of December is Shiwasu (she-WA-su), which literally means "the month when Buddhist Priests are running around being very busy."

Japan and Sarcasm

Although I sometimes wish otherwise, my personality can be a little on the sarcastic side. For example, if I saw a movie that didn't meet my expectations for some reason, I might describe it as the best movie I'd seen all year just for the sake of irony. Or if my wife praised me for helping her aunt who runs an export business and who loves having an American in the family to check her terrible English for free, I might channel Homer Simpson: "Oh, look at me! I'm making someone happy! I'm the Magical Man from Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!" That brand of humor doesn't exist in Japanese at all, and when I started dating my wife we actually had to go through a period of "humor training" where she learned not to take my American sarcasm at face value. My style of wry humor naturally influences my kids, since children are constantly watching their parents and subconsciously copying them. When my son was suffering through a particularly boring lesson at his school, he remarked to his friend what an "interesting" lesson it was, and how the information they were learning was something they'd all treasure throughout their lives. His friend didn't understand him at first, and it took several seconds for them to realize that he was making a joke, but one that was culturally alien to Japan.

Wither Moé?

Moé (pronounced mo-EH) is one of the primary concepts driving much of the anime world today, essentially occupying an entire sub-section inside the larger genre of Japanese animation, manga and games. Written with the character for "sprout" or "bud," it has the same pronunciation as the word moeru "to burn," and in many ways the meaning is closer to this word, essentially being translatable as "burning with passion for my favorite two-dimensional anime character." Some consider the beginnings of moé -- of anime characters so lovely they become the focal point for fans, beyond the wider setting and plot of a series -- to be the character Claris from the classic Lupin III film Castle of Cagliostro by Hayao Miyazaki, and I agree: this is pretty much the point when venerable anime magazine Animage started increasing the number of color pages so they could print beautiful artwork featuring the popular female characters that fans demanded to see. It's interesting to compare Claris with the current high-water mark of the genre, Clannad After Story, the second series based on the popular PC dating-sim game by Key, a "harem" type story about a circle of girls who are all secretly in love with the main character, Tomoya. Just look into the eyes of the character Nagisa -- you can literally see galaxies swirling in them, and the emotions conveyed by the characters, including joy, sadness, love and anger, is really something to experience. Animation creators have never been better at pushing the emotional buttons of fans, and I hope they never stop.

Beat Takeshi x Hideki Tojo

On Christmas Eve Japanese television viewers got to see a rare historical drama in which internationally famous director and comedian Takeshi Kitano played Hideki Tojo, the Japanese general and former Prime Minister who is generally seen as the main force behind many of the actions Japan took during World War II, including both in China and Korea as well as Pearl Harbor. The drama, which also contained documentary portions including interviews with some still-living individuals from the era, was called "What Was That War All About Anyway? The Japan-American War and Hideki Tojo" and told the story of the general in the months leading up to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. I was surprised to see such a touchy subject as this taken up in a mainstream media channel since the name of Hideki Tojo and the topic of the war in general is an all but taboo, and only a director of Takeshi's stature could have made the project possible. I certainly hope for more open discussion of some of these events in the future.

Takeshi *totally* looks like Hideki. The resemblance is scary!

Sprawling Tokyo and Standing Soba

Japan's capital city of Tokyo is a sprawling mass of concrete, asphalt and steel that holds 35 million people in its greater metropolitan area (the city itself including three surrounding prefectures), which is slightly less than the population of California. Because there are so many people living in close proximity, things are a little different in Tokyo compared with most other parts of the world. I'd never been in a McDonald's with multiple floors until I came to Japan, but in Tokyo it's quite common to see fast food restaurants with three stories, with the ground floor for the kitchen and two floors for patrons to eat on. Family restaurants are often built with the parking lots occupying the ground level and the restaurant essentially raised up on stilts allowing the cars to fit under the building, while convenience stores with apartments built over them for the owners to live in are common, too. The idea of "personal space" doesn't mean much in Tokyo, whether it's trying to squeeze behind the tiny tables at a coffee shop or traveling on a train so packed that breathing becomes difficult. J-List is located in a fairly small city about 100 km from Tokyo, so we're spared much of the stress of having too many people around us. But even our spacious city is quite different from back home, something I'm reminded of whenever I stop at the train station for a bowl of tachi-kui soba, the "stand-and-eat noodles" that are consumed while standing at a counter, since there's no room for seats in the tiny restaurant.