The Ancient Art of Speaking a Foreign Language While Inebriated

Back in my college days at SDSU we had a "Japan-America Friendship Club" that would organize events like beach side bonfires attended by the ESL students from Japan and gaijin who were trying to learn Japanese. It was at events like these that I learned the ancient art of speaking a foreign language while mildly inebriated, which allows you to communicate significantly better than you otherwise would, at least until you pass out. It's as if there's a barrier in the mind that's always trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself, which gets deactivated when you have a beer or two. Of course, the benefits of alcohol on foreign language ability are as fleeting as cherry blossoms in the spring, and you can quickly find things going in the opposite direction if you're not careful. Happily, the Japanese have another tradition I've been known to make use of from time to time: whatever a person says or does while under the influence is generally forgotten about and ignored forever. Isn't this country great?

Alcohol can help your Japanese-speaking ability...and then harm it.

The Socio-Fashion Phenomenon Known as Gal-Mama

Whenever I go to Tokyo, I start to pay more attention to my surroundings when the train hits Omiya, a large city on the outskirts of the sprawling capital. This is the point that all the Japanese females around me start to become extremely fashionable, with expensive name-brand clothes, tall leather boots, expertly styled hair and a general air of elegance I've found nowhere else in the world. While New York or Paris might be ahead of Japan when it comes to setting worldwide fashion trends, I don't believe there's anyplace where females spend more energy on looking oshare (oh-SHA-reh), the catch-all term for being stylishly dressed. One of the most enigmatic groups in Tokyo's fashion world are the gyaru, or "gals," the young women in Shibuya or Harajuku who feel compelled to place fashion before all else. This general social trend has changed and morphed many times, starting out with the Amullers who imitated popular singer Amuro Namie, moving through ganguro or "black face" girls who spent hours at tanning salons, the older and more sophisticated one-gyaru, and finally the current age-jo (ah-gay-joh), named after a butterfly called ageha that's become the symbol of their generation. I'm extremely interested in the socio-fashion phenomenon known as gyaru mama, essentially extremely stylish girls who have gotten pregnant and become mothers, but since they're not willing to relinquish their love of beautiful clothes and make-up, they share this world with their children. It's quite interesting to see these girls, wearing the most flamboyant outfits while they push their baby carriages, and I can tell it really takes an inner strength to resist the never ending pressure from society at large to conform. If you're interested in the Japanese fashion world, be sure and browse the magazines like Egg and FRUiTs and S Cawaii, available either as revolving subscriptions or as single issues.

A Golden Week to Remember

It's shaping up to be a Golden Week to remember here in Japan, as hundreds of thousands of Japanese make use of the extended holiday period to travel to exotic destinations like Guam, Hawaii, Australia or California. Fears of the "new-type influenza virus" (as it's being officially referred in the news) will certainly make things more interesting when they all come home, and Narita Airport is on its highest state of alert, scanning returning passengers with special cameras that show body temperature in case anyone gets infected abroad. There were two reported cases of the new virus here in Japan, but happily both turned out to be the more conventional Hong Kong strain -- whew. The Japanese are already quite at home wearing surgical-style health masks whenever they feel under the weather or during hayfever season, and these masks are even more common nowadays. Anyway, we hope you all have a safe and enjoyable Golden Week, wherever you are in the world!

Mask-sporting Japanese tourists head overseas. Glad I'm not among them.

Hey gaijin! You are "good head"

I've written about how speaking a foreign language requires a special "other" sense, which the Japanese call kan (kahn). If you are kan ga ii (having a good sense about abstract things) you might be able to figure out that someone who compliments you by saying you are "good head" is probably telling you you're smart, since atama ga ii (good head) is how you express intelligence in Japanese. But while a big part of interacting with people from other language groups means understanding what they're saying to you even if it's not communicated clearly -- like when my wife asked for "gross lipstick" for Christmas, meaning gloss -- there are times when you need to get meaning across to others. When my mother was visiting from the U.S., I left her alone with my kids as much as possible so they could have lots of time practicing their English with her. (Apparently I register as a Japanese person to them, since they know I speak Japanese, and they speak almost no English when I'm in the room.) My daughter was saying something about how much fun she'd had at Sea World in San Diego the previous summer, but she couldn't remember the English word for the animals she'd seen. So she used her imagination, flapping her hands together like flippers and barking like a seal until my mother knew what she was talking about.

In other news, did you know that the word for brains in Japanese is noh-miso, lit. the "miso paste of the brain"?

What's better than making an order for some great bento, J-snack, anime or traditional items from J-List? Getting a free give back in return, which is what you get during our "End of Fiscal Year" special sale. For every $100 you spend, we'll give you a cool gift code for $5 to use with your next purchase. Why not see what excellent products from Japan J-List has for you today?

Japan: Land of Exotic Desserts

Before I came to Japan, I fancied myself a bit of a dessert aficionado. Pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream was one of my favorites, and I've always had a soft spot for dipped chocolate soft-serve ice cream from Dairy Queen. I learned how much I'd been missing when I got here, though, as I was introduced to a world of amazing sweets from all over the world. The Japanese have a long history of taking ideas from the outside and improving on them, and many of the exotic desserts found here were brought over during the Meiji Period, like the dreamy Japanese-style custard-filled cream puffs called shu cream, pronounced just like the stuff you clean your shoes with (from the French chou a la creme), which naturally come in Hello Kitty and Totoro-shaped variations, too. Another French dessert the Japanese have embraced are crepes, and my kids have an amazing ability for knowing where the nearest crepe vendor is so they can beg me to buy them the strawberry and whipped cream-filled pastries. While some sweets were imported so long ago they seem uniquely Japanese now, such as the 400-year old konpeito candies and famous Castella sponge cakes from Nagasaki, some are more recent imports, like Nata de Coco, a dessert from the Philippines that's eaten in yogurt. You can often see the exotic side to Japanese desserts in the snacks we sell through the site, like the smash hit of the season, Tiramisu Kit Kat (which will be disappearing from the site soon, fair warning). One side benefit to living in Japan is learning to appreciate that a very small yet very delicious food is superior to something mass-produced and served in large servings.

The Japanese love crafting delicious desserts as much as I love eating them.

Foreigners and the Japanese

The most common word for "foreigner" in Japanese is gaijin, written with the characters for outside + person, although since this word has a slightly negative connotation you'll generally hear the softer-sounding gaikokujin -- outside-country-person -- spoken on the news. Foreigners serve many purposes here, teaching English or translating or working as fashion models or manufacturing goods in factories. Since native English speakers usually work as ESL teachers, the first impression most nihonjin have of non-Japanese is the English teacher who taught him to say "apple" and "banana." To the Japanese, we foreigners often come across as overly outgoing, and very emotional, always expressing our joy or dislike on the surface rather than holding it inside, as is more common here. That's part of the general character of gaijin, though, and if we weren't getting excited and going on about something, they'd probably ask us what was wrong. The Japanese have become quite comfortable with the fact that many gaijin are advanced anime otaku, and are no longer very surprised when they encounter a foreign visitor with extensive knowledge about obscure anime and manga.

Native English teachers provide the first impression of gaijin to most Japanese, and yes, this guy looks creepy

Fun with Japanese Sound Words

One aspect of the Japanese language that's fun to study is onomatopoeia, the words we use to describe the sounds all around us. Naturally, the Japanese have assigned unique words to the physical sounds in their world, for example a dog says wan wan! to the Japanese but woof woof! to us. Some other examples of these sound words are "twinkle twinkle" (kira kira), "drip drop" (potsun potsun) and the sound of rain pouring down (zaa zaa). Some of the sounds they think up can seem quite strange. For example, the "sound" of eyes looking left and right is kyoro kyoro, as in the popular line of bento boxes we sell, which is not something any English speaker would think a sound was needed for. The sound of snow falling has a word, too, shin shin (pronounced "sheen sheen"), which summons up pleasant images of whiteness outside a frosty window. There is a "sound of silence" in Japanese, which is shiiin ("sheen," with a lengthened vowel). When I make a joke that my kids don't think is funny, they'll usually make this sound to highlight how bad my joke was.

The many sound words used in Japanese are fun to learn.

Buddhism vs Shinto

There are many things that American houses have which their Japanese counterparts lack, and vice-versa. A Japanese home will generally have a recessed area by the front door for people to leave their shoes, hardwood floors with unusually steep stairs, and at least one washitsu or "Japanese room" with traditional tatami mats and paper doors and other cool things like that. Homes in America are different, with big ovens for baking (very rare in Japan), a garbage disposal for getting rid of uneaten food (not allowed here because rice would gum up the pipes), and central heating (unthinkable in this country where rooms are heated one at a time). Another thing you'll find in Japanese homes but not in most American ones is a butsudan (boo-tsoo-dahn), or Buddhist Altar, the centerpiece of Japanese family life, and afterlife, if you will. Every morning, my mother-in-law takes the first bowl of rice out of the rice cooker and offers it at the altar along with three sticks of incense, so so her mother and father know they're not forgotten. Strictly speaking, only the head of a household will have one of these altars; other family members such as children who have moved out will return to their "base home" to participate in family events at various times during the year, which binds the family together in ways that are difficult for Westerners to comprehend. To my unfamiliar eyes, the Buddhist altar in my house is very similar to the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark, a radio for talking with one's dead ancestors.

While Buddhist icons like temples or home altars focus attention on those who have gone on ahead, the other side of Japanese religious imagery is Shinto, which celebrates kami or spirits in natural objects like a mountain or a stream. While the austere imagery of Buddhism provides comfort during times of sadness such as funerals, Shinto ceremonies are happy and life-affirming: weddings, naming a new baby, breaking ground on a house to be built, praying for good luck on the New Year or carrying a mikoshi, a kind of portable shrine, around at the summer festivals. For cultural reasons that I can't quite understand, it's much more common for those of us who became interested in Japan through its popular culture to be more familiar with Shinto imagery than Buddhist. Whether you're talking about the manga stories of Rumiko Takahashi or watching the many anime characters who wear the now-famous garb of a Miko-san (Shrine Maiden), it's far more common for the themes found in Shinto to find their way to the minds of outsiders like us than Buddhist imagery. I wonder why that is?

A Buddhist Altar is a radio for talking with one's ancestors; some otaku have fun carrying a mikoshi in Akiba.

Government Stimulus, or, How To Take Six Months To Distribute $120 To People

Japan's export-driven economy is in the doldrums because of the recession, but don't worry -- the Japanese government is ready to help again, this time with its new "fixed-amount stimulus package" for all taxpayers, including legally registered gaijin like me (yay). Although the paltry $120 per adult doesn't go very far, families also get $200 per child, so the overall amount wasn't too bad. Since elderly Japanese are notoriously susceptible to "it's me, it's me"-type frauds in which a stranger calls up pretending to be a son or grandson in dire need of a quick $30,000 to get out of some trouble, the government is running advertisements warning people about the potential for stimulus-related shenanigans. "No one from the government will ever ask to borrow your ATM card or bank passbook, or require that you surrender any private personal information," say the ads. I hope they're effective, but considering that there were more than 17,000 reported cases of bank fraud last year, I'm sure some people will get duped.

The Japanese government is taking steps to guard against stimulus-related fraud.

Golden Week 2009

It's nearly time for Japan's Golden Week, a semi-accidental clustering of holidays that usually fall near each other, which the Japanese government has latched onto as a great way to stimulate the economy, since people are theoretically spending more money when doing leisure activities with family than while at work. The holidays are Showa Day on April 29, the birthday of the old Emperor; Constitution Day on May 3, commemorating Japan's postwar constitution; Green Day on May 4, a day to celebrate nature; and Children's Day on May 5. While Golden Week is a nice break from the daily grind, it's all but useless as a holiday, since the other 126,999,999 Japanese in the country also have the week off, and trying to drive anywhere is a fool's errand. This year will be especially insane thanks to a new economic stimulus plan enacted by the Japanese government which lets people drive anywhere on Japan's highways for a flat rate of $10, a big reduction from the $25 it used to take me to drive 100 km into Tokyo, or the cool $130 I'd have to part with to take a trip to, say, Osaka. The only thing worse than leaving the Tokyo area during Golden Week is coming back, and the "return rush" traffic jam that happens the day before the holidays are over is not something I want to contemplate.

The rush to return to Tokyo after Golden Week is terrible to even think about.

The J-List Website is Back Up

First, we had server issue that made it impossible to access the site for several hours -- very sorry for the inconvenience. The problem has been taken care of, and J-List is up and ready to serve you now! Since it was a DDOS attack, we had to block certain IP ranges, mostly in Korea and Russia, where these bad computers seem to be located. If you find that you can't access the site for any reason, contact us and we'll fix it for you.

Keigo, or Polite Japanese

In Japanese, there's a whole subset of polite language called keigo which can be quite a challenge for foreigners to learn, since we don't have anything like "exalting" and "humble" verb forms for raising up the person you're speaking to while lowering yourself in comparison to them. I recently had instance to write an email to a certain company in Japanese, and to make sure I hadn't made any serious mistakes -- I'm sure there's nothing more amusing to Japanese people than foreigners screwing up their language -- I asked Yasu to check the email. He made quite a few changes, making the overall tone of the letter more formal and catching some of the little things I'd missed, but before I sent it out, I found myself replacing some of the extremely polite and accurate language he'd added with what I'd originally written. I think that gaijin have a certain reputation as being passionate and emotional, and I wanted to preserve some of that spirit in my email, even if it meant the Japanese I was writing wasn't as "proper" as it should have been. One important part of learning this strange and wonderful language is developing a personal balance between the various aspects of it.

The use of polite language between human beings is an interesting side of Japan.

My Favorite Food: Yaki-Manju

My wife bought me a great present the other day: a book featuring all the places to buy yaki-manju in our prefecture. A traditional food that's essentially balls of bread on wooden skewers cooked over charcoal while being painted with a sauce of miso and brown sugar, yaki-manju is one of my favorite foods, but since young Japanese are generally not interested in taking over these family businesses, more and more shops close every year -- something the our prefectural government is trying to stop by publishing the guidebook. I intend to spend the next few weekends zooming around discovering some of these great shops, since the owners are always so happy to talk with a foreigner. Other things Gunma is famous for include mountains, a really firm gelatinous food called konjac or Devil's Tongue, strong winds in the winter, and strong-willed women all year round.

Note that Yaki-Manju dosn't have the sweet beans inside that foreigners usually dislike (but which I have also come to appreciate).

You can buy yaki-manju at really cool-looking old shops like this.

The Newest Keyword in Japan is Konkatsu, or "Marriage Activities"

Japan is a fast-moving place, and you never know what new boom is just around the corner. One year, women might be flocking to fortune-tellers who promise to divine the future based their blood type, then it might be educational quiz shows in which famous TV personalities sit in "class" and answer questions about various subjects, then get graded as if they were students. One word that's on people's lips a lot these days is konkatsu, meaning "marriage-related activities," i.e. the various things that women and men do to to find the right person to marry. The idea comes from a book called The Age of Konkatsu which argues that people should put as much effort into finding the right marriage partner as they do in finding employment. As a result of this "marriage boom," a lot of single Japanese are thinking about the best way to find Mr. or Ms. Right, and are using the various services that exist for this purpose, such as omiai (formal arranged meeting) introduction companies and even various online services. Considering Japan's low birthrate -- currently the lowest in the world at 1.34 children born per female, compared with 2.1 in the U.S. -- I certainly am happy about this new trend, and wish everyone many happy babies.

Be sure and check the title of the book this girl is reading:

Japan is currently having a boom in konkatsu or "marriage activities."

Twitter in Japan

I've started using Twitter, the famous "micro-blogging" tool that lets you make short observations and send them out in real-time. I like it because the conversations you can have with people on the other side of the world are fascinating, and it's a useful way of trading information back and forth on the fly. For example, if I'm writing about English words the Japanese use that are based on British terms and want to check some facts before I push out an update, I've got several hundred really cool people who are happy to shoot me a quick reply when I post a question. Twitter is also starting to catch on with Japanese users, too, who probably appreciate its simpler learning curve compared with sites like Facebook or Mixi.jp (there isn't one). Although Japanese users have the same 140 character limit as the rest of us, they've actually got a big advantage: because of the way kanji compresses a lot of meaning into a single (two-byte) character, you can fit a lot more information into the same space, allowing them to express themselves more freely. As a test, I googled a Japanese translation of the famous "To be or not to be" scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet to see how much of it would fit into one tweet. Nearly half of it made it in, all the way up to "...and by a sleep to say we'd end..." If you'd like to follow me on Twitter and read my random thoughts, by all means please do!

Twitter is slowly building popularity with Japanese fans, who type confusing things like "wwww" to mean laughter.

Sale Reminder!

Remember that right now J-List is having a great "Fiscal Year is Ending" sale, in which we'll give you a $5 gift certificate code for every $100 you spend on the site, since we'd much rather sell the many amazing bento, toy, traditional, snack and other items we've got in stock to you rather than count it on inventory day. This means you've got an excuse to add another few items to your cart if you're just under the next $100 level, and save money. The gift coupons will be issued as your order is processed, and never expire -- you can use them any time.

The Future in Capsule Hotels?

When humans one day live in space, I'm sure we'll make use of the experience Japan has gained with fitting people into smaller spaces. Since Japan has a little less than half the population of the U.S. crammed into an area the size of California, they've come up with some interesting ways of making do with less elbow room, such as constructing restaurants up off the ground so that cars can park underneath or building businesses with homes attached, like my own house with its small liquor shop built into the ground floor. Another example is the classic 4 1/2 tatami sized apartment that serves as standard living quarters for poor college students in Tokyo, which can be surprisingly livable thanks to well designed storage compartments and a fold-down loft area for sleeping. Another famous example of fitting a lot of people into a small space can be seen in Japan's capsule hotels, honeycomb-like capsules that contain everything you need including TV, clock, and a plug to power your laptop, quite a bargain at around $30 a night even in the heart of Tokyo. Now a new company is experimenting with the capsule hotel concept, creating luxurious "First Class Capsules" that are more like very small hotel rooms, offering a place to stretch out in privacy while still keeping the cost low, around $48 per night.

A new company is experimenting with "first class" capsule hotels.

That 100% Authentic Real Gaijin Feeling

Over the weekend I went up to Karuizawa, the charming town in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture that serves as a popular getaway for Tokyoites (and appears in quite a few anime series). While walking by an Italian gelato shop I was surprised to see a real live Italian young man, who greeted me with a very authentic-sounding buongiorno as he handed out a sample of green tea flavored gelato, something I'm pretty sure they don't have in Italy. It was an innovative idea by the shop owner to beat the recession: get an Italian to greet customers and get them into the store, and it certainly seemed to be working. There are certain times that Japanese just expect a "real" foreigner and aren't happy with anything less. A visit by "Santa-san" will certainly be appreciated by children if it's a real gaijin in the Santa suit rather than a Japanese person, and if you didn't see a real Indian chef preparing your naan in the tandoori oven you wouldn't feel like you were eating authentic Indian curry. Western-style weddings are quite popular in Japan, and no wedding would be complete without a real gaijin minister to perform the ceremony, accented-Japanese and all, and this is actually a lucrative side-job for several English teachers I know. The ultimate spot to see real live foreigners in Japan, though, would have to be Tokyo Disneyland, where a small army of performers from various countries fill roles like Alice in Wonderland while the Japanese visitors fawn and snap photos.

Sometimes there's no substitute for a real-live gaijin.

The 2009 J-List Mail Server Is Broken Sale, or the J-List End of Fiscal Year Sale If You Like

J-List has been having some issues with our mail server, making it difficult for some customers to receive our little cultural postcards from Japan. We're getting a new mail server built, but in the meantime we thought we'd have a sale! J-List's end-of-fiscal-year is approaching, so we're doing like Japanese companies do and having a special sales event, since we'd much rather sell our cool anime and other products to you rather than count it at inventory time. During this event, we'll send you a gift code (store credit) worth $5 for every $100 you spend for your next purchase, with both actual purchase price and shipping used for the calculation. It gives you a good excuse to throw an extra few Kit Kats or a case of your favorite Japanese gum to your cart if you're only a few dollars under the next $100 amount. The gift codes never expire and can be used any time.

Fast Food, Japan Style

Another good option if you're trying to eat in a hurry is to hit a konbini, or convenience store, where you can find anything from healthy onigiri to ready-to-eat bento lunches and even salads. My own favorite fast food would have to be gyudon, or beef bowl, basically a bowl of rice with steamed beef and onions on top, with raw egg poured over it, if you like. Recently there's been a trend of beef bowl restaurants emulating McDonald's and their giant-sized Mega Mac by offering extremely large portions with 3x the normal amount of beef piled on. They seem to be quite popular with customers.

The most popular fast food in Japan is gyudon (beef bowl).