"Leftover Women" as Seen from Japan

Japan was a very different place when I came here back in 1991. Back then, foreigners were happy if we could received FEN, the U.S. military's A.M. radio station, to hear some news or sports coverage in English. Fast forward to 2013, and I'm able to stream the BBC's news radio channels on my iPhone while at the gym, something that would have seemed like science fiction two decades before. Last night I tuned in to hear a program discussing "leftover women," a term being used in China to put pressure on women who aren't married by the age of 27, no doubt doing unpatriotic things like receiving educations and building rewarding careers. I had to smile at this silliness. Japanese society used to place a lot of pressure on women to marry early, and the term "Christmas cake" was actually used to describe women who hadn't gotten marriage by the age of 25 (since no one would want to buy a Christmas cake after December 25th). Things have really changed, however, and it's far more acceptable for both men and women to get married later in life without a stigma.

There's far less pressure for women to get married in Japan.

Burial Mounds in Japan

Near J-List there's a park I used to frequent with my kids which had two small hills in the center. They weren't actually hills, but kofun (burial mounds), miniature pyramids containing the remains of feudal lords which were built from 250 ~ 590 A.D., before the mainstream arrival of Buddhism and kanji writing from Korea and China. There is a staggering number of these burial mounds around Japan -- more than 161,000 -- but since Japan had no writing system in those days, next to nothing is known about the civilization of the mound builders apart from baked clay statues of soldiers and horses they included in the tombs. Since these burial mounds are protected areas, it makes sense to locate parks for public use around them, both as a logical way to make use of available land and also to bring people into contact with their ancient past. Whenever it snowed I'd take a day off from work and take my kids to the park so they could slide down the graves of their long-dead ancestors on a sled. It was great fun.

There are many burial mounds in Japan.

The Most Popular Products ON J-List Right Now

J-List has thousands of fun and random products from Japan, so many that it might just be a challenge to find stuff you want. One way of browsing the site I like is by viewing products by "wishlisted" order, which tracks overall product popularity based on how many customers are adding it to their wishlists. Click to see all J-List products ranked by popularity now!

Foreign Loan Words in Japanese

One convenient thing about the Japanese language is the high number of foreign loan words that are in use, which reduces the vocabulary words English speakers need to learn to be functional with the language. From virtual to biotechnology to universal barrier-free design and even epoch-making, there's a huge number of English-derived katakana words available for use as-is -- it's essentially our revenge on Chinese students of Japanese, who get to read all the kanji for "free." Still, a funny thing happens when you become more and more fluent in Japanese: you usually end up learning the Japanese versions of these foreign-derived words anyway. For example, the Japanese have used the English word kiss ever since modernizing in the Meiji Era, but you still encounter the original Edo Period word 接吻 seppun, which can have a more archaic but poetic feel to it. The Japanese use the word pink for the color, which is very easy for foreigners to pick up on, but sometimes will use the original Japanese term 桃色 momo-iro (lit. "peach colored") if they're feeling random.

Japanese use many foreign words, like kiss and pink.

Japanese Matchmaking TV

While Japanese television is well-stocked with variety shows, live music shows and contemporary and historical dramas, some of the programs might be hard for us to categorize. Like ダーツの旅 Darts no Tabi, a show that throws a dart at a map of Japan then sends a camera crew to that location to see what interesting people they can find there, or a similar show that will pick a certain train line in Tokyo and get off at every stop, looking for interesting businesses to showcase on TV. There's another popular show called Mote Mote 99 that actually aims to help people find love. As Japan's population falls, it gets harder for men living in rural parts of the country to find women to marry, so this program organizes a hundred or so women who are open to the idea of marrying someone from a rural region of Japan and sets up formal "speed dating" type activities so the bachelors in the town can get to know the women. In addition to being a good excuse for the small towns featured on the program to promote the benefits of rural living on national TV, they show has brought quite a few couples together.

Wanted: women who will marry random men and move to Tohoku.

Juken (Test) Season in Japan

For the average Japanese person, the most difficult thing they'll do in their lives is juken, taking an entrance exam for university and/or high school, which generally requires a full year of intense studying until midnight every night at a special "cram school." (High school is not compulsory in Japan, and functions as a miniature version of the university system, with lots of competition to get into the best high schools.) When my son did his high school juken studies, my whole family rearranged our lives to support him, foregoing all leisure activities and not even going to see the newest Harry Potter movie when it was released. Naturally it'd be crazy to balance a love relationship while studying for the hardest test of one's life, and it's common practice to freeze any relationships you might be involved in before starting your year of study, or break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend to clear away any distractions. Many anime series, including Love Hina, Kimagure Orange Road, KimiNozo, Amagami SS+ and Kiss x Sis, make use of the pressure of studying for an entrance exam to heighten the drama of a love story, showing the sweet pain of two people trying to resolve their feelings for each other despite knowing that not focusing on their all-important entrance exam could impact their lives forever. February is "juken season," and right now tens of thousands of Japanese students are taking their entrance exams, no doubt with Japanese Kit Kats in their pockets, which are thought to bring good luck.

Taking a university exam is very important to Japanese people.

Ramen in Japan

There are certain benefits to being in Japan, including the ability to go almost anywhere by train and toilets that wash your butt for you. Another thing I love about living in Japan is having access to "real" ramen. Though ramen is ostensibly considered a Chinese dish (it's usually written ラーメン, using the katakana writing system reserved for foreign words), modern ramen supposedly dates back to 1910, when a shop owner in Tokyo's Asakusa created a dish based on noodles popular in cities with Chinese populations like Yokohama, though ramen noodles are cut as with soba and udon, not pulled like Chinese noodles. As with things like "green tea" -- a label that could be applied to a half-dozen different kinds of tea, all quite different from each other -- the world of ramen proved a lot deeper than it first appeared. The most important part of ramen is the soup, with shoyu (soy sauce), miso (soybean paste) aid shio ("salt," though we'd call it chicken base) being the main three varieties; other ingredients include a slice of pork called chashu and the swirly thing that's called a naruto, in case you didn't know. Different regions of Japan love to brand themselves as being famous for different kinds of ramen, including Sapporo (miso), Fukushima (basic soy sauce), Yokohama (thick noodles and lots of pork pieces), and Hakata, Kyushu (a pork-based white soup ramen).

Ramen in Japan is pretty darned delicious.

We Love Hatsune Miku

J-List loves the virtual idol Hatsune Miku, and carries all the Vocaloid products we can find. Whether you're looking for the popular dancing games for PSP, PS Vita and now PS3, would like Miku-chan's shimapan for cosplay or other uses, or just want to find some cute Hatsune Miku figures to collect, we've got lots of random items for you. See all Hatsune Miku products ranked by popularity!

Japan Imports from the UK: Pantsu

One thing I had to get used to as an American living in Japan was how British things could be here. There's a long list of concepts the Japanese borrowed from the Great Britain, including driving on the left, the way trains are called nobori (up) or kudari (down) depending on whether they're headed towards or away from Tokyo, plus major institutions like the postal service and NHK, which were heavily inspired by their British counterparts. The Japanese use many British words (bonnet/dustbin/water closet), have imported the tradition of eating Christmas Cake on December 24, and even have 3 o'clock tea, at least for people with a lot of time on their hands. England has influenced fashions in Japan over the years, too. The famous Japanese "sailor suit" school uniform was imported from England, and the Japanese word for a Western-style business suit (背広 sebiro) is thought to be a contraction of Savile Row, London's famous men's tailoring district. The Japanese have borrowed another word from the British, "pants" (pantsu) which always refers to underwear rather than outer trousers (as it generally does in North America), leading to some potential confusion when Americans first arrive here.

Speaking of pantsu, you may have seen posts on various websites over the weekend about the "latest trend in Japan," girls wearing panties on their faces. "Wearing Women's Panties On Your Face Is All The Rage In Japan," reports Buzzfeed with a straight face, while MSN tells us that "Japanese women have taken to putting panties on their heads, obscuring their faces." While we're big fans of pantsu and sell many interesting types from Japan, the fact is that this Japanese "trend" is just a clever marketing ploy by the publishers of the admittedly awesome Kaopan photobook to promote an upcoming tongue-in-cheek superhero film, and no one is actually doing this, unless it's professional models being photographed. This is not unlike the time a street art performer created a costume that looked like a Coca-Cola vending machine and walked around crowded areas of Tokyo. A New York Times reporter misunderstand and concluded that "fearing crime," Tokyo-ites had taken to disguising themselves as vending machines in order to feel safe in public.

Japan imports many ideas from the UK, including pantsu.

Just A Few Photobooks From Japan...

In addition to the fun Kaopan photobook written about above, J-List has been on a troll posting outstanding glossy photobooks from Japan. Whether you want to see the private rooms of otaku girls, learn to draw "moe" military girls, explore the world of girls with "twin tail" hair or check out some really cute Japanese cats, we've got some great books to check out. Click to see all our glossy photobooks from Japan, sorted by popularity!

Sadness in Guam

I write a lot about how Japan is one of the safest and most peaceful countries in the world. Murders do happen here, but they're rare enough that, whenever one does occur, it's talked about afterwards for months. Japanese become so used to the peace and safety of their country that they develop what's known as heiwa-boke (literally "becoming dull-witted from too much peace") and assume the rest of the world is the same. A group of Japanese tourists learned the truth of this to their cost when they were attacked while visiting the tropical island of Guam by a deranged knife-wielding local, who killed three before he was subdued. Guam, a U.S. possession, is a fabulous place, like a miniature version of Hawaii but without the jet lag (when coming from Japan). It's also an island that counts its local economy by the number of jumbo jets ferrying tourists from Japan, South Korea and China, and everyone there is in shock that something so terrible could have happened.

Sadness in the tropical paradise of Guam.

The Way of Kanji

You never, as they say, forget your first, and I've found this goes for studying kanji, too. While the first kanji I was consciously able to read was 子 ko meaning child, commonly seen in girl's names like Keiko or Aiko, I'd been exposed to another famous kanji character from a very young age without realizing it. In Star Blazers, the (pretty awesome) 1979 English dub of the classic space opera Space Battleship Yamato, the character Dr. Sane sits around drinking "Captain Avatar's spring water" while laughing, dancing and otherwise making merry, but it wasn't until I started studying Japanese that I could read the 酒 sake character clearly printed on his bottle. Another kanji that I learned early on became one of my favorites: 道, michi with its Japanese reading and doh using its Chinese reading. Literally meaning "road" "way" or "path," this character is used in such names as Hokkaido ("the northern sea route") and Tokaido (the great road from Edo/Tokyo to Kyoto). The 道 character is also used in traditional Japanese arts like 茶道 sa-doh ("the way of tea," e.g. tea ceremony) and 書道 sho-doh ("the way of writing," or brush calligraphy) as well as martial arts like 柔道 judo ("the gentle way") and 空手道 karate-do ("the way of the empty hand"). In the new moe anime Girls und Panzer, they create a fictional 戦車道 sensha-do, or the Way of the Tank, the ancient art of piloting a WWII era German tank. (Why not?) If you like kanji, we've still got stock of our 2013 kanji character, one of my favorites.

Girls und Panzer and the "Way of the Tank."

Viewing Japan Through the Internet

Before the Internet, Japan was a truly mysterious place, and it was difficult to access information about the country from the outside world. (Maybe if you were really lucky you could find a friend who'd send you third-generation VHS tapes of Japanese TV once in a while.) Now, of course, getting access to Japan is much easier, thanks to websites like YouTube and J-List. Still, while it's great to be able to find out about the latest in Gothic Lolita cat-ear fashions in Tokyo, viewing Japan through the lens of the Internet is not without its problems, because the stranger aspects of the country will tend to be magnified while the less-flamboyant details are lost. A good example of this phenomenon is ice cream, which can be found in bizarre flavors like miso, squid ink and basashi (that is, horse sashimi, try not to think about it too deeply) if you visit specialty shops in parts of Japan frequented by tourists. And yet 99% of the ice cream actually consumed by anyone is vanilla or possibly green tea. But since blog posts about the popularity of vanilla in Japan wouldn't be interesting to anyone, we're far more likely to be influenced by messages like, "OMG OMG the Japanese have seaweed ice cream!!!11!" when in fact hardly anyone here even knows this exists.

This is similar to the signs that say "no foreigners allowed" which are supposedly everywhere in Japan, at least according to the Internet and activists like Ardou Debit (who wrote a useful book for considering a move to Japan). And yet, in 21 years of living here I only managed to have service declined only once, at a video rental store that had unfortunately had a large number of videos stolen by a foreigner the week before, and when I calmly explained I would never do something like that to them they apologized and let me rent videos from them. The issue isn't about whether or not there's discrimination in Japan -- of course there is some everywhere, though gaijin enjoy a better situation here than foreigners in their own home countries -- but instead, why are certain aspects of Japan magnified so disproportionately when viewed through the Internet? Bottom line, while we all love fun and wacky tidbits of news about Japan, like the bacon and scrambled egg onigiri I saw in Seven-Eleven last night, a lot of the information about Japan we receive needs to be taken with several grains of salt.

The most popular ice cream flavor in Japan is...vanilla.

Our Chocolate + Tenga Sale Continues!

Valentine's Day may be over, but J-List chocolate-and-stress-toy sale is going on all month long! Whether you need some awesome Japanese Kit Kat or Evangelion Chocolate to pick yourself up or would prefer something more physical, J-List has a huge stock of extra-special items for you. Click to see all Japanese chocolate and personal stress toys now!

Slurp Your Noodles! Louder!

Japan is probably the only country where eating too quietly will get comments from people around you. The correct way of eating Japanese and Chinese noodles like ramen, udon and soba is to slurp them while holding your face near the bowl, sucking in the soup along with the noodles to make both taste delicious. There's no upper ceiling to how loud you're allowed to slurp, and making these noises is one way of letting whoever prepared the noodles for you know that you think they're good. When foreigners come to Japan, they usually eat their noodles without making these noises, prompting Japanese to say shizuka desu ne ("you eat very quietly"). There are some other areas where table manners differ between the Japan and the West. Here, it's perfectly okay to pick up your ramen bowl and drink the soup from it directly, though this would be frowned upon in the U.S. It's okay to slurp noodles, but spaghetti is another matter, and the image of an old Japanese man loudly vacuuming his pasta off the plate is very unsophisticated. Some table manner no-no's are related to Buddhism, including the taboo against sticking chopsticks straight up in rice or handing food to someone else chopsticks-to- chopsticks (both of which are part of funeral ceremonies here).

Do you slurp your noodles properly?

Low Tech Japan (And Japanese Police)

While quaint shopping arcades are certainly nice, the flip-side of life in Japan is that things can be rather backwards technologically, despite the image some may have of Japan as an advanced nation of gleaming glass and steel. My wife discovered this when she volunteered as a parental representative at our daughter's school, which entailed maintaining contact lists and doing simple document creation. She was shocked to find that none of the other parents had any computer skills, and several didn't even own computers, forcing her to do all the work herself. There are other examples of Japan's lower level of technology, including Yahoo Japan's still-thriving Geocities community and the way whenever we do a major print job in Japan, we know we'll be asked to save our Illustrator file in a format from 12 years ago so the printer can work with it. Last year Japanese police made several arrests of people making online death threats, including the director of Gundam 00. It turned out that the threats had actually been sent via a computer virus created by a lonely guy who really liked cats, yet the police had not been aware that knowing the IP address associated with a certain crime was not iron-clad proof of guilt.

Japan can be surprisingly low-tech.

Tamako Market, an Anime About Rice Cakes on Nostalgia

One thing about the Japanese is that they seem hard-wired to appreciate nostalgia, whether it's eating the traditional candy they grew up with during the Showa Period or appreciating the wabi and sabi (translatable as "the tranquil simplicity and beauty found in the old and imperfect") of an old sento public bath. The new Kyoto Animation series Tamako Market draws on this tendency for people to feel natsukashii (nots-ka-shee, meaning nostalgic) about the good old days, centering around a family selling mochi rice cakes in an old-timey shopping street of the type that were popular two decades ago but which are now generally quite deserted. It's kind of K-On! meets Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi with a touch of Angry Birds thrown in, and it's an entertaining snapshot at a simpler side to Japan, back when there were talking birds. If you're interested in seeing what Japan was like back in the Showa Period, we've got some great photobooks and 2013 photo calendars you might like to explore. And we even have mochi.

Tamako Market is an anime about rice cakes and nostalgia.

Children of Men: Japan Edition

My Japanese mother-in-law once remarked that, "I sure don't see many women with big stomachs these days." At first I thought that women were getting thinner, but my wife said no, her mother had been referring to the lack of pregnant women in Japan. It's true -- the birthrate here is among the lowest in the industrialized world, just 1.39 children per couple, and it's more and more common to see companies offering products and services to those over 65 rather than baby-related items. While the falling population is felt most in less-populated parts of Japan -- in rural Mie Prefecture, for example, the maternity wards of three separate hospitals were combined into one location to more efficiently utilize resources, which caused no small inconvenience for expectant mothers in the area -- now it's starting to affect Tokyo, which posted the first-ever drop in population since 1956, as deaths outpaced births for the first time. Last week my wife visited her gynecologist for a check-up, and got a shock. "It's totally different from when I was pregnant with the kids. Back then there were about ten pregnant women in the waiting room, but now there were only two. There were more women there getting fertility treatments than having babies."

"Children of Japan," now a major motion picture.

The "Indirect Kiss" Meme

It's fun to analyze different memes (anime-related or otherwise) as they evolve and change. While some have wide appeal no matter where you're from, like shimapan or the always-goofy horse head mask, some memes are tied to langauge and don't necessarily translate well across borders. Two good examples would be the Dragonball Z "over 9000" meme, which is totally unknown to Japanese fans since they're not watching the English version, and the classic Amuro line from the original Gundam, "You hit me! N- Not even my own father hit me!" well-known in Japan yet not so much among international anime fans. One gag you see in anime a lot is the 間接キス kansetsu kisu or "indirect kiss," which is what happens when a character drinks from a glass or can that someone else has used, or shares the same spoon, chopsticks etc. It's a silly joke, of course, which only elementary schoolers would actually be concerned with, yet in anime it pops up as a plot device quite often.

One long-running anime meme is the "indirect kiss."

Amazing Cat-Related Products from Japan

If, like the Japanese, you really love cats, then J-List has some interesting products to show you, from plush cat toys to cute cats that live in your iPhone or Android phone to awesome cat-related cosplay and fashion items, to those brain-activated Necomimi Neurowear cat ears (now just $69.95!). Click to see the most popular cat-related products from Japan!