Gaijin World Problems

While it's generally fun to be a foreigner living in Japan -- the people are nice, the sushi is cheap and vending machines thank you politely after dispensing your can of hot corn coup -- there are of course certain unique challenges that we gaijin face. So in the tradition of the #FirstWorldProblems Internet meme, here are some #GaijinWorldProblems for you.

• Slippers are half the size of your feet, but your guest offered them to you, so you have to wear them.
• Search engines default to Japanese language on new computers, making you spend several minutes figuring out how to force the browser to search in English.
• Can't go skiing or bowling, the shoes they rent out are way too small for big gaijin feet.
• Bumps head all the time, needs surgery for loose cataract every few years.
• Takes a shot at using keigo (formal polite Japanese), gets exalting and humble verbs reversed.
• Is slightly above average weight, so Japanese assume he's a famous Pro Wrestler and ask for his autograph.
• The girl handing out pocket tissues advertising high-interest credit card loans has been told not to bother handing tissues to foreigners.
• Someone compliments your Japanese ability, you feel insulted all day.
• Can't find the "open" and "close" buttons inside the elevator because they're written in English.
• Spends several months with no English speakers around except ESL students, now talks like Forrest Gump.
• Too tall to fit in a kigurimi full-body costume.
• Policeman asks to see your gaijin ID card, turns out he just wants to practice his English with you.
• Enjoys motsu nabe until he learns what motsu means (beef tripe, e.g. beef intestines).
• Goes for all-you-can-eat pizza at Shakey's, the only pizza they have out is corn and mayonnaise.

Another minor challenge for foreigners is learning to sit on the floor. While Western-style furniture like comfortable sofas and chairs are common in Japan, most homes have one or more washitsu (Japanese style rooms) complete with tatami mats and little cushions to sit on called called zabuton (literally, "sitting futon"). In my house, we often eat with my wife's parents, with everyone sitting around the kotatsu heater grabbing from a large pot of food boiling away in the center (naturally not motsu nabe). Even after living for so long in Japan, an hour or so of sitting on the floor starts to get uncomfortable, and I'll usually switch to a nearby chair when no one is looking. I remember when I met my future mother-in-law for the first time: she took me out to experience a really traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which requires that you sit in seiza ("correct sitting") position with your entire body's weight resting on your knees and feet for about 10,000 hours. Japanese always expect that foreigners won't be able to sit for long in that position, so of course I had to prove her wrong, gritting my teeth as the blood stopped flowing through my legs. I guess I made a good impression since she let me marry her daughter.

Sitting seiza style is not easy for foreigners.

J-List's Official New Year Party is Tonight

Today is the day of J-List's official New Year Party, and when we're done with work we'll all gather at an izakaya (traditional Japanese bar-restaurant) to officially mark the start of another year for our company. I write a lot about how you can understand Japan through kata, a word that can mean shape or mold but in this case refers to pre-defined social forms that everyone adheres to, and formal get-togethers like this are definitely important in Japanese organizations. While most companies might prefer to hold a Year-End Party in December as a way of saying otsukaresama deshita ("thank you for your hard work") to employees over the past year, J-List is too always too busy filling hundreds of orders per day (thank you!) to do this. Instead we have our annual get-together in January as a New Year Party, when things have calmed down a bit. After we re-dedicate ourselves to covering the world with Japanese Kit Kat and ridiculously cute cat products from Japan, we'll probably go out for a few hours of karaoke.

A scene from the 2013 J-List New Year Party (artist's conception).

Good News from J-List: Lower Shipping Rates!

J-List has some good news that customers will be happy to hear: we've lowered our shipping rates for products shipping from Japan, so you can now order all the awesome anime artbooks and cosplay products and delicious Japanese snacks you want from Japan and pay less for them. All rates have been reduced, from the speedy and fully trackable EMS, the affordable first-class airmail, economy airmail (SAL) and so on.

Exceptions in the Japanese Language

When you study Japanese, you have to come to grips with the fact that, while the rules that govern how the grammar and writing system work are surprisingly straightforward and logical, there are also lots of exceptions to these rules. Japanese sentences are marked with easy-to-understand "particles" that denote the subject, object, predicate and so on, which is all very nice…except for that fact that many of these words are omitted in actual use since they're clear from the context. If you watch anime in Japanese you'll quickly learn that -chan is a name suffix for girls and -kun is for boys...and yet, when Sugo chains Asuna in the second arc of Sword Art Online he calls her "Asuna-kun," which probably confused some viewers. (The -kun name suffix is gender-neutral in certain settings, including formal, military etc.) While the standard way to write Japanese is to use hiragana for basic words (grammatical particles, etc.), kanji for more complex words, and katakana for foreign loan words like "anti-aging" (a health-related term that's been repurposed to describe Japan's efforts to update its aging infrastructure). However, there are some English words that have been in use in Japan for so long, they've gone and gotten kanji assigned to them, in violation of those neat-and-clean rules. Three examples of these somewhat archaic words are 珈琲 koh-hii for coffee, 煙草 tabako for tobacco/cigarettes, and 倶楽部 kurabu for club.

Writing "coffee" in outdated kanji gives shops a "ye old shoppe" old timey feel.

Peter's Unified Theory of Japan, Part 33

Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that the Japanese greatly desire to be seen in a favorable light by other nations, especially the countries of the West. A lot of what the Japanese do, such as the creation of Japan's high-speed Shinkansen train system in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics or the massive renovation of Narita Airport right before the 2002 World Cup, were largely done so foreigners who visit the country would oo and ah about how advanced Japan is. There is no higher honor for Japan than to have one of its own attain fame around the world, and various men such as writers Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki and illustrator Shirow Masamune have become legendary inside Japan in part for attaining fame in the world stage. The Japanese are also fascinated with the interest foreigners take in their culture, and it's common to see TV shows featuring gaijin who know more about certain subjects, say history or anime, than Japanese people do themselves. France has really embraced Japan's culture of bento, and the other day I caught a show detailing the popularity Japanese boxed lunches have found in Paris, with customers ordering them in Japanese restaurants, making beautiful works of bento art and so on.

The Japanese are tickled when foreigners embrace their culture.

Popular Varieties of Green Tea in Japan

Before coming to Japan, I knew the Japanese drank "green tea," but naturally it was destined to be more complicated than that. It turns out that there are a dozen or more varieties of Asian and Western teas the Japanese consume, and during my time here I've worked hard to embrace them all. The most general word for green tea is お茶 o-cha, the o being the "honorific particle" that's placed before words that have extra respect in Japanese society, and the type of tea most familiar to us would be 煎茶 sen-cha, a weak green tea that's good for casual drinking hot or cold. Some other major varieties of tea include ほうじ茶 houji-cha, a delicious green tea that's been roasted, 玄米茶 genmai-cha, roasted green tea that contains unpolished rice, 麦茶 mugi-cha, delicious cold barley tea for the summer months and 抹茶 matcha, the dark green tea made from matcha powder, used in tea ceremony. This covers most of the major types of tea that are considered "Japanese," but Chinese teas are also popular here, especially oolong and jasmine. Of course the Japanese love Western black tea (called 紅茶 koh-cha, lit. "red tea"), and you can find all the major varieties here. Tea is nearly always drunk without sugar, and when Japanese go to Chinese-speaking countries like Taiwan or Malaysia, they're flabbergasted to see bottled oolong tea with added sugar in it. J-List stocks some great types of Japanese tea and related products, if you want to browse.

Tea is king in Japan.

Japan Loves Tea

J-List has lots of interesting tea-related products on the site for you, whether you'd like to sample popular varieties of Japanese tea, view traditional products related to tea ceremony etc., or browse our selection of interesting tea cups from Japan. What interesting things can J-List show you today?

My Favorite Japanese Foods

One reason I'm able to live happily in Japan is that I love the food here, and while I'm always happy to scarf down some sushi, sashimi, soba, udon, sukiyaki and other famous examples of Japanese cuisine, my favorite foods are often much simpler. First, I truly love a dish called soboro, which is scrambled egg and teriyaki-flavored hamburger eaten over rice, equally great for dinner or in bento form. I could literally eat this every day for the rest of my life without complaint. Then there's omurice, the classic omelet eaten over ketchup-rice, preferably with a heart drawn on top in ketchup by someone special. Finally there's "tuna maki," one of the simplest meals in Japan. Just take sheets of nori, spread on some vinagered rice, add tuna mixed with mayonnaise, cucumber and a few strips of tamago-yaki (scrambled egg), and roll it up for a delicious treat my family loves...it's sort of like the Japanese equivalent of taco night back home. Since a lot of our customers are interested in trying these unique Japanese foods, we've got a new handy Roll Sushi Making Set, with everything you need right in one package, plus a great selection of Japanese/English bilingual cookbooks that can teach you how to make it all.

(In case you were curious, the Japanese use the English "tuna" to describe cooked, white tuna fish from a can, and maguro to describe the fish in sushi or sashimi form. The word "sushi" refers to the vinagered rice, not to raw fish, which is why kappa-maki, rolled sushi with cucumber inside, is still sushi.)

One of my favorite Japanese foods is "tuna maki."

Narita is a Drama Queen

If you ever go to Narita Airport, the international airport serving the Tokyo area, you might not be surprised by security personnel who check your passport carefully before letting you into the airport, even if you're not going anywhere near the planes. These security measures weren't in response to 9/11 or any other recent terrorist attack -- they've actually been in place for almost 40 years. Back in 1966, when the Japanese government announced that the tiny village of Narita, Chiba Prefecture, about 30 km from Tokyo, would be the site of Japan's grand new airport, locals were totally surprised -- no one had consulted them on the matter. Over the next decade, the farmers who lived on the land where the airport was to be built organized staunch resistance, refusing to be evicted from their land and getting help from the student movements of the late 60s and early 70s. The violent clashes between the demonstrators and Japanese police claimed several lives and were called "Japan's Vietnam" by the worldwide press. Yesterday the last protester who'd refused to sell his land for so many years died at the age of 93. For decades he'd hung on to his land, peacefully farming rice while airplanes landed all around him, but that chapter is finally closed.

Who'd have thought Narita Airport could be such a drama llama?

Learning New Skills in Japan

When you live in Japan, you naturally develop a new set of skills in order to survive. Very few streets are named in Japanese cities, and when I arrived here I had to actually teach my brain to think in more spatial terms, e.g. turn left at the beauty shop then right at the pachinko parlor, rather than using street directions. Japanese homes lack central heating, and a common way to heat a room is to use a kerosene-based "fan heater." There's a sensor inside that turns off the power if the unit is bumped or overturned, something that fills the room with unpleasant kerosene fumes, and foreigners living in Japan learn very quickly not to place the heater in a place where it'll get kicked, and get good at smoothly moving it across the floor without setting off the sensor. Because Japan packs slightly less than half the population of the U.S. into a space the size of Nebraska, there's naturally less room for people and their cars, and if you drive here you'll develop the ability to back into a tiny parking space like a pro. While learning Japanese isn't fundamentally harder than any other language, some areas seem difficult for foreigners, like the way Japanese people write kanji for each other by drawing the character in the air -- my brain just isn't equipped to process invisible finger strokes like that. Also, the Japanese like to attach sounds to numbers, for example 084 becomes ohayo (good morning), 3476 is sayonara (goodbye) and 39 is san-kyu (thank you). Back in the dark ages of the early 1990s, everyone carried around "pocket bells" (beepers) that could only display numbers, and my students would send messages of surprising complexity to each other.

Living in Japan will teach you new skills.

Cookbooks & Bento Books from Japan

J-List has a great lineup of cookbooks, bento books and related resources to help you learn about Japanese food, from the popular Book of Basic Japanese Cooking 110 Recipes (this book has the recipe for soboro) to The Original "Point And Speak" Food Phrasebook and a Guide to Japan with Hello Kitty in both English and Japanese. There's even a book all about how to make rolled sushi (makizushi). Click to see all Japanese bento and cooking books now!

We Stock the Excellent Indies Game Charge! Human Tanks

We love to bring unique Japanese games to our customers, and today we've got a new one to tell you about. It's called Charge! Human Tanks, and it's an excellent doujin game from Japan that was licensed, translated and published by FruitBat Factory. In the game you guide cute moe tank girls across strategic maps and engage in combat with your opponents, creating a new plan of attack for each level. The game, which works in all versions of Windows, is DRM free and just $9.95, or $11.95 for the version with the soundtrack included.

How to Save Japan: Inflation?

If you follow news in Japan at all, you might have seen that Prime Minister Abe has announced a target of 2% inflation for Japan, and is directing the Bank of Japan to assist in increasing the money supply to make this happen. The idea of a country willingly embarking on a policy that creates inflation must sound very strange, but then Japan isn't like most other countries. I came to Japan in 1991, right at the end of the Tokyo Asset Bubble, during which the land in Tokyo was worth more than the entire United States on paper, and since that time Japan has experienced zero inflation, and even some deflation. Except for the price of gasoline -- currently 155 yen per liter, the equivalent of €1.32/liter or $6.65/gallon, in case you were curious -- the only thing that's risen in price since 1991 is Coca-Cola, which went from 100 yen to 120 yen in 1994. It must sound nice, living in a country where things don't get more expensive year-to-year, but it's actually unhealthy for an economy, as it leads to economic stagnation, low wage growth and people putting off purchases today because they might be cheaper tomorrow. Having prices rise a little probably won't hurt Japanese families much -- incredibly, Japanese households have between $130,000-$180,000 saved in cash, nearly always in bank accounts bearing zero interest.

Captain Abe prepares to save Japan using...inflation?

Good Job! Perceptions of Americans by the Japanese

Forming stereotypes about others is part of being human, and sometimes it's a fun subject to explore. Since Westerners make up only a tiny fraction of Japan's population, the only chance most Japanese have to meet a real gaijin is in English glass, where an energetic ESL teacher bounces around the room as he teaches grammar and vocabulary words. Americans are always thought of as being tall even if we're of average height, and we've always got "tall, proud noses" even if we don't, and all Western women are considered blonde even if they're brunette or redhead. Certain English phrases gaijin use become famous among the Japanese, like "unbelievable!" and "oh my God!" and "good job!" (My students used to giggle with delight every time I dropped my pencil and said, "oops!" which is apparently a very American phrase to say.) Perhaps the most unique image of America to the Japanese is Texas, and there's nothing quite like visiting a Texas-style steakhouse in Japan, with its exaggerated interior design and cowgirl waitresses. A couple weeks ago I went to Tokyo, and at the "parking area" (the rest stop inside the freeway system) there was a hilarious "American" burger shop called Good Job Burger, with an American (?) giving you the thumbs-up gesture as he tempts you with an extra-large Juicy Salsa Burger.

Good Job Burger, a parody of an American hamburger joint.

New Fashion Trend in Japan? Anime!

Japan is a land of fast-moving fashion trends, and you never know what the next fad will be. One week all the girls in Tokyo might be sporting tops with the British Union Jack and extremely cute "Absolute Zone" socks, and the next they'll be dressing like pandas and rabbits. This year the trend seems to be for the world of anime to influence mainstream fashion in interesting ways. The new issue of the popular fashion magazine Smart features a cool "photo shoot" of Asuka from Evangelion, lounging around wearing exotic fashions while being "photographed." It's part of the Chingcame (chin-kah-may) series of photobooks that were popular a decade or so ago, which featured beautiful pictures of Japanese models wearing fashionable clothing, or no clothing at all. This first-ever 2D version of the Chingcame "photo" series caused a big splash in Japan, and every fan had to buy a copy of the magazine, making it hard for J-List to secure stock for the site (we did get a few issues though). The anime-meets-fashion trend seems to be continuing. There's a fashion magazine called Mode Evangelion in which Eva girls show off the latest fashions in lieu of photographed models, and Sanae Dekomori from Chu2koi made her debut as a fashion model on the cover of a mainstream magazine for girls.

Asuka makes her fashion debut.

More Awesome Chocolate from Japan Posted

Last time we posted lots of fun chocolate molds that enable you to make your own Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma and One Piece chocolates. But there's one problem -- not everyone wants to make their own handmade chocolates. For these people, we've posted some great new Hello Kitty, Evangelion and other ready-made chocolates that are great for giving! See all new Japanese Chocolate products here, or browse the most popular chocolate items from Japan as ranked by our customers!

New Game Posted: Charge! Human Tanks

We love to bring unique Japanese games to our customers, and today we've got a new one to tell you about. It's called Charge! Human Tanks, and it's an excellent doujin game from Japan that was licensed, translated and published by FruitBat Factory. In the game you guide cute moe tank girls across strategic maps and engage in combat with your opponents, creating a new plan of attack for each level. The game, which works in all versions of Windows, is DRM free and just $9.95, or $11.95 for the version with the soundtrack included.

Coming of Age Day 2013

Yesterday I had a nice day with my daughter, taking in a movie at a local shopping mall then grabbing some crepes at a shop with the awesome name of "Dessert Kingdom." While we were on our way out of the mall, we ran into a wall of young people coming the opposite direction, smartly dressed young men in new suits and young women in beautiful kimonos. It was Seijin-no-hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, and the young people had just gotten done with their Coming-of-Age Ceremony, officially celebrating their arrival as full-fledged adults in Japanese society. Every year in early January, Japanese cities hold official ceremonies in which hundreds of new 20-year-olds gather to hear congratulatory speeches by the mayor and other wise members of the city, pose to take pictures with friends they haven't seen since junior high school, then usually go off to buy their first beer as legal adults. (Residents of Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, are extra lucky -- they get to have their ceremony at Tokyo Disneyland.) Of course, Japan's population is facing a sharp decline, and every year the number of newly-minted adults is lower -- this year there were just 1.2 million new adults, down about half what the peak was in 1970. While it seems that most Japanese customs have a history going back 1200 years or more, the Coming-of-Age day got its start in 1946, when a city in Saitama Prefecture, looking to forget the devastation of World War II, started celebrating new adults with an official ceremony.

Japanese 20-year-olds come of age...with Micky Mouse.

Japan Cares what Foreigners Think

Japan has been called "the only country that cares what its foreigners think," and judging from the large number of Japanese Twitter users who seem interested in my random observations about their country, I think it's a true statement. It certainly is common to turn on the TV and find a program dedicated to listening to what gaijin think about various Japan-related issues, and engaging in a discussion about how Japanese culture compares with other countries. One show I caught the other day is called Sekai Banzuke World Ranking, which takes a topic -- say, Korean music and popular culture -- and ranks its popularity in different countries, while Japanese-bilingual foreigners give their thoughts. In the episode I watched they were discussing what foreign visitors like best about Japan, and the people they polled were full of praise for the country's convenience stores ("so much interesting stuff to see, I could live there"), the quality of service in Japanese business establishments, and of course for Japan's high-tech toilets. One woman from Finland said, "My favorite thing about Japan are the pens, erasers and notebooks sold in stationery shops, and whenever I go home I buy these as gifts for friends and family. They're so advanced and well designed, everyone loves them." These shows aren't all about gaijin praising Japan, however, and the foreigners get their chance to ask hard questions about why Japan is the way it is. For example on a similar show, a woman from a conservative country wanted to know why mainstream news magazines like Friday felt compelled to include a few pages of nude models in every issue.

The Japanese are interested in the opinions of foreigners.

Keep Warm During Japanese Winter

Winter is here, and although this has been a relatively mild one so far, any winter is a cold when you're from San Diego like me. Happily, Japan has some innovative ways of keeping warm, for example curling up in a kotatsu -- the low tables with a blanket over the top and a heater inside you've probably seen in anime -- with some mikan oranges and a good book. When out and about, I like to carry one of those Japanese kairo pocket heaters, cloth packets that contain some kind of magic sand that stays toasty for hours in your pocket -- I recommend you give them a try. If you don't have one handy, you can keep warm by buying a hot canned coffee from a vending machine and hold it in your hands, or else go to a convenience store and get one of those steaming nikuman meat buns, such a treat in the colder months. When it's time for bed, many Japanese use water bottles called yutanpo to keep the bed toasty all night long, and naturally the Japanese make cute plush versions.

Some unique ways to keep warm in Japan.