You, Too Can Whore Your Native Language in Japan...Maybe

I get a lot of questions from readers interested in working in Japan, usually as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), and I do my best to guide them to useful information, although I haven't been in the field for years. Teaching ESL is a potentially good option for people wanting to work for a few years in Japan, as long as you have realistic goals and know that it's not the healthiest of industries (there were some major bankruptcies of ESL school chains a few years ago). First of all, you need a four-year degree in order to get a working visa, so if you don't have one yet, that'd be the logical place to start. One popular choice for teaching in Japan is the Japan English Teacher (JET) program, operated by the government to get native English speakers into the country to teach and also facilitate "grass roots Internationalization" of Japan. While getting accepted into the JET system can be a challenge since there are so many applicants, Japan's ruling LDP party recently announced an expansion of the program, which might help your chances. There are two types of JET jobs, Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) who do the actual teaching, and Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs), who help guide the program and who need a minimum amount of Japanese, usually 2-3 years. As a rule, I generally recommend people with a deeper interest in Japan to consider trying for the latter job, which will contribute more to your understanding of the country and could help you build コネ kone, or connections which will help you in the future. There are plenty of alternatives to JET, too: for example, most cities have "sister cities" in Japan, like our city's relationship with Springfield, Missouri, and often there are ALT jobs or exchange study opportunities open through these connections. There are also programs like the Lion's Club International Camp and Youth Exchange Program to look into. If you're interested in researching how to live and work in Japan, we've got some books that might help.

Some advice for those considering teaching ESL someday.

Anime is a Big Tent

This may not exactly come as a surprise, but I love anime fandom. It's a warm and comfortable place filled with cool people who are all pretty much on the same wavelength about what's important in life. Thanks to the Internet, anime has experienced a "golden age" of sorts, allowing fans in all corners of the world to become part of the same extended "meme group," sharing ideas and pop culture freely. If I were to visit Russia or Mexico or Spain or South Africa, I might not be able to speak the local language…but if I can locate a group of anime fans, I know we'll be able to communicate in the language of manga, Vocaloid and Touhou. One thing I love about fandom is the way it's really a "big tent," composed of many smaller related groups. Aficionados of Gundam model building are quite different from fans of the latest moe cuteness from Kyoto Animation, and serious cosplayers might have different priorities from fujoshi geeking out over girl-centric games and BL manga. While our individual obsessions might each be different, in the end we're all part of the same family, or -- to borrow the Gaelic term -- clannad.

I love fandom because it's a "big tent" full of smaller groups.

Time Travel, Steins;Gate and Anime

Besides being a dedicated fan of all things Japan-related, I'm also card-carrying lover of time-travel and related science fiction stories. I've read all the classics, including H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (and its "official" sequel, The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter), the Hyperion Saga which all Haruhi fans should read, and of course the alternate history classic Guns of the South. There's a rich tradition of stories about time travel in anime, too, starting with the archetypcal "person from modern Japan is transported back to the country's 'Warring States' historical period" genre (of which The Ambition of Oda Nobuna is the most recent example), along with various Groundhog Day/Endless Eight style repeating time loops, convenient wormholes that cause characters to "timeslip" if they encounter one, plus films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. One of the best stories time travel stories in years has been the visual novel and anime Steins;Gate, about Rintarou Okabe, a "mad scientist" who discovers how to send messages, and later himself, into the past, which naturally results in a lot of bad stuff happening that he has to fix. Last night I went to the movie theatre to see the new Steins;Gate movie, which was just about as awesome as it could have been. I want to go see it again tonight...

Steins;Gate is a story about love, time travel and Dr. Pepper.

Big News for English Eroge Fans: PRICE DROP!

We've got some big news today for fans of our English-language eroge and dating-sim games: a huge price drop! We've permanently lowered prices on almost 50 of our great visual novels, from classics like Amorous Professor Cherry or Heart de Roommate to legendary titles like Hitomi Stepsister and Family Project. Prices have been lowered by $5 or $10 on a huge number of games, so it's a great time to browse the reduced-price visual novels and eroge and see which you'd like to pick up!

Squatting "Yankee Style"

Although I've been in Japan for more than 20 years, there are some things I've never really mastered, like eating nattou, the famous fermented soybeans that my kids love to have for breakfast. I can't read "air kanji" Japanese people write with their finger, and I have trouble perceiving the secret messages Japanese see in numbers, such as April 4 being "Yo-yo day" beause the number 4 can be read as yo in Japanese. I was also never able to master the Japanese art of yankii-zuwari, literally meaning "squatting like a Yankee." In Japan there's a class of semi-delinquent young people who like to show their rebellious nature by dying their hair blonde (which usually comes out orange), and these people came to be called yankii, no doubt because they looked like Americans with their interestingly colored hair. (Another theory holds that they came from a part of Osaka nicknamed America-mura.) There's a certain squatting pose these tough boys are famous for which is especially difficult for foreigners to pull off without rolling over like a daruma. It's normal squatting, but somehow they can do it with their feet perfectly flat, not balanced on their toes, and they're able to squat like that for hours without discomfort. The reason the Japanese can sit comfortably like this is Japanese style toilet seats, seatless toilets which you squat over to use, and Japanese develop muscles for this pose from an early age.

I still can do the flat-footed squatting thing that Japanese can all do easily.

New Gaijin Card GET

Yesterday I took a trip to Takasaki to visit the local branch of the Tokyo Immigration Office. I was there to trade my old Alien Registration Card in for one of the new "residence cards" that were launched a year ago. The new card system represents a major effort by the Japanese government to make the country more "gaijin friendly" by eliminating little frustrations foreigners sometimes experience here, like the need to pay $60 for a "re-entry stamp" if you want to leave Japan and return again, and having a strange, specialized registration card with that makes people think of Xenomorphs and facehuggers. As usual, it was interesting to be sitting in a waiting room with other gaijin from so many countries. There was a nice married couple from Bolivia who helped me figure where to go to get a passport photo taken (they didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish, so we conversed in Japanese), a few couples who had emigrated from South Korea and China, a family of nikkei ("of Japanese descent") Brazilians who had come to register their baby's birth, and one lady from either France or Belgium, I couldn't tell. We made quite an interesting group: about 40 people in all, each with varying levels of Japanese language ability and (this being the year 2013), all of us pecking away on smartphones.

The Japanese government has good news for gaijin.

Hard Core SF vs Water World Moe Cuties

The spring 2013 anime season is an especially good one, and it's definitely been a chore to keep up with all the episodes that are coming in each week. One standout show this season is Suisei no Gargantia, or Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, a high-quality "hardcore SF meets moe water world" concept with gorgeous production values. It's the story of Red, a lieutenant in the Galactic Alliance of Humankind, who fights in a great space battle against an enemy known as the Hideauze. He's attacked while passing through a wormhole and ends up on Earth, a planet which had been completely frozen but has since thawed into an ocean world, now populated by humans who live atop fleets of rusting ships. The show is created by Urobuchi Gen, whose work you've seen in Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass and our own brand-new eroge Saya no Uta, and our favorite company Nitroplus is also involved in the anime's production, so we like it a lot. The story and writing are outstanding, and you'll like the fan-service, too.

I'm enjoying the new Suisei no Gargantia, are you?

New Lower Prices on iTunes Japan Prepaid Cards

There are many great reasons to get the iTunes Japan prepaid cards J-List sells. There's a huge number of anime songs available, from the new Railgun OP to music from the Steins;Gate movie to the Suisei no Gargantia theme sung by the seiyuu for Nagato Yuki for extra awesomeness. You get full access to all Japan-only iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, too. many of which are made for promotional purposes and are thus free as long as you have your iTunes Japan account set up. Everything you buy from the iTunes Japan store -- music, apps, even light novels -- are fully compatible with all your iStuff no matter where you are in the world. Best of all, we've just lowered our prices on the iTunes Japan cards, so why not grab one now?

A Fresh Anime Concept: Hataraku Maoh-Sama

In a world where so many anime series follow the adventures of yet another high school club trying to assemble enough members to avoid being disbanded, it's enjoyable to encounter something truly fresh and original, which I found in Hataraku Maoh-sama (English title The Devil is a Part-Timer!, though Working Devil King would be a more accurate translation). It's the story of a demon king named Sadao who's about to win a major victory and rule his kingdom of Entre Isla when he's suddenly sucked into another world, modern-day Tokyo, with one of his generals. In the human world they must learn to survive like we do, finding a job and getting an apartment, making monthly budgets for food, etc., and the show hilariously captures the irony of a magical god eating cucumbers pickled in miso sauce because he ran out of money before the end of the month. Watching the show I can't help thinking that the creators are trying to send a message to viewers about the joy of working and earning money. Japan has a big problem with ひきこもり hikikomori, aka NEETs or people who have dropped out of society to live on the Internets without bothering to hold down a job, and shows like Hataraku Maoh-sama and Working! seem to try to get these people to re-think their lives a bit.

Many anime series, of course, create parody brands both to avoid getting into trouble with the original companies and also to create humor, and you get used to seeing on-screen gags like "Somy" electronics or "Sudohbucks" coffee on a regular basis. Sometimes the jokes are a bit deeper, for example Family Mart is changed to Sister Mart in Oreimo, or the AT/MT convenience store in our own Initial D-esque racing eroge trilogy Moero Downhill Night, a nice car pun on AM/PM. McDonald's is well parodied, and you always see variations like WcDonald's, WacDonald's, EcDonald's and so on. Hataraku Maoh-sama has an even better version of this meme, having the characters work at "Maguro-donald's," a great joke because まぐろ maguro means tuna fish -- either the fish itself or maguro sushi; tuna fish in a can is referred to with the English word "tuna" -- which is the last thing you'd associate with that chain.

Hataraku Maou-sama is a great new series.

Pika pika! And Other Japanese Sound Words

All languages use onomatopoeia, words based on sounds, and some examples in English are bark, oink, crash, click, snap, clap, and tick-tock. Japanese uses onomatopoeia, too, and part of the fun of learning the language is discovering how the many sound-based words work, and getting used to cats saying nyan nyan instead of "meow meow." Many Japanese slang words are based on sounds, for example no one bothers to call "capsule toys" (small toys sold in egg-like capsules in vending machines) by their official name of gashapon; instead everyone refers to them as gacha gacha, which is the sound of turning the handle to make a toy fall down after you've deposited your money. Then there's チン chin! (pronounced cheen, with a long vowel), the sound word for the ding! you hear when microwaved food is done cooking. In a recent episode of A Certain Scientific Railgun Kuroko says something ecchi to Mikoto, who promptly fries her with her signature lightning attack, and this chin! sound is heard to signify that Kuroko is "done being cooked." The Japanese go beyond English at thinking of creative sound words, into the realm of the "ideaophone," which are sounds that capture a situation or an abstract idea. For example there's an onomatopoeia for someone staring intensely (じいいーっ pronounced jiiiiii!), and one for sparkling, as in vampires or stars twinkling at night (きらきら kira kira). Some of these sound words will probably be known to anime fans, like どきどき doki doki, the sound of a rapidly beating heart, and no one who grew up watching Pokemon will be surprised that the sound of lightning crackling is ピカピカ pika pika. If you are interested in Japanese sounds you can now put them in your favorite drink, with cool Japanese sound word ice cube trays.

Pika pika! Kuroko gets 10,000 volts of punishment.

Get Free Japanese Tissues with Every Order

When you order from J-List, you get the promise of an order that is packaged accurately and speedily by the soft, warm hands of our Japanese packing girls. You'll also get Japanese pocket tissue enclosed free with your order, something J-List has become quite famous for. A popular method of advertising for businesses in Japan, Japanese pocket tissues are really useful since you never know when you'll need tissues. We've updated our tissue packet designs for 2013, so feel free to make a new order so your collection of Japanese pocket tissues can grow. * Note that tissue isn't sent it your order would be damaged by the inclusion of the tissue, such as a thin magazine or doujinshi, and we're obviously dependent on the tissue being available in our Japan and San Diego offices.

Coming Soon: If My Heart Had Wings

Here's some great news: one of the best visual novels in recent years is coming out in English, called If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この大空に翼を広げて Kono Ohzora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete), a great story about youth and love and dreams. The game will be out in June, and you can preorder either the package or download edition now.

China, Japan, and Okinawa

Everyone has encountered extremely frustrating individuals who hold opinions so bizarre that it makes us wonder how they could be from the same planet as us. They're usually trolling discussion boards online, spouting the strangest views and (in accordance with Godwin's Law, which states that in any Internet discussion, someone will inevitably bring up Adolf Hitler) generally being as annoying as possible. I once had a discussion with a passionate Gundam fan who insisted that Gundam F91 was the "best" U.C. Gundam ever, which was perplexing to me since most fans would probably rank it at or near last place, and I reached the conclusion that some people were placed on Earth for the sole purpose of perplexing me. (Remember, this kind of contrarian is called an amanojaku in Japanese, after a mischievous Buddhist deity). This week I had a similar sensation while reading the news. First I saw a headline about China blasting Japan for "refusing to apologize" for World War II, which was funny because there have been no less than 50 official statements of apology by Japan, including several to China. (Maybe Wikipedia is blocked there, so they can't see this information?) The humor continued when China's leading newspaper posted an extensive article suggesting that Okinawa actually belonged to China and not Japan, based on the fact that the Ryukyu Kingdom used to pay tribute to China before being annexed by Satsuma in 1611 and by Japan proper in 1879. Based on that logic, all of Europe should still belong to Rome, and China might have to return itself to Mongolian rule, no matter who's living there now and what nation they consider themselves to be part of.

China made Hibiki cry. Bad China!!

Mother's Day 2013

Sunday is Mother's Day, a day to think of your okaasan and do something nice for her if you can. Mothers are a big part of anime, and when I asked J-List's Facebook fans to name their favorite anime mothers, I got hundreds of interesting responses. Some are the simple "good mother" types, like Akiko from Kanon, while others can be well fleshed-out and quite interesting, like Sosuke's awesome mom from Ponyo or Madoka's down-to-earth (but so tragic) mother from Madoka Magica. Some mothers have a childish side (Sanae from Clannad, Yasuko from Toradora) which causes problems for their children, while others are bad-ass, like Saya Takagi's Luger-toting mom from Highschool of the Dead, or Mahiro's fork-wielding mother from Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, who is a professional monster hunter. One core element of many anime stories is that a mother must die dramatically in order for her child to go on a journey towards adulthood, as seen in Attack on Titan and many others. No discussion of anime mothers can be complete without considering the popular 1976 series 母を訪ねて三千里 Haha no Tazunete Sanzen-ri, or 3000 Leagues In Search of Mother, which helped launch the career of Hayao Miyazaki. It tells the story of Marco, who travels from Italy to Argentina to find his sick mother. In one scene that's broadcast on natsukashii (nostalgic) anime programs at least once a year, Marco encounters a dying woman and kindly lets her believe he is her son so she can be happy at the end of her life, which never fails to bring on the tears.

3000 light-years in search of Mother. Happy Mother's Day, mom!

Japanese Love Foreigners Who Love Japan

One subject I write about a lot is the great interest the Japanese seem to take in what foreigners visiting from other parts of the world think about their country. This is a topic that shows up on Japanese TV a lot, such as a popular show called YOUは何しに日本へ？ YOU wa nani shini Nihon e? or "Why did you come to Japan?" in which camera crews hang around the arrival lobby of Narita Airport and interview random foreign visitors, asking them why they've come to Japan. The answers are always interesting, from a collector of Japanese swords on a buying trip to an experienced cosplayer arriving in Japan to show off his skills at a fan event to a group of French visitors who were in Tokyo to study ninjutsu, the art of the Ninja. There was one family from Texas who had spent ten days doing various things in Tokyo, and the Japanese interviewers were amazed that Americans could visit a country with no detailed plan of what they wanted to do, hitting Tokyo Disneyland one day and the temples of Nikko the next depending on their mood -- Japanese people love to plan every hour of every day when they take a vacation. The finale of the show came when the family was invited into the studio, which is kind of a cliché at this point -- come to Japan, find yourself on a Japanese game show -- but they certainly had fun.

Japanese are interested in foreigners who are interested in Japan.

New Game Coming: If My Heart Had Wings!

Here's some great news: one of the best visual novels in recent years is coming out in English, called If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この空に翼を広げて Kono Sora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete), a great story about youth and love and dreams. The game will be out in June, and you can preorder either the package or download edition now.

The Japanese Love Lists

Quick, do you know how many Great Lakes there are in North America? The answer is five. The reason I know this is, the official name of the Great Lakes in Japanese is 五大湖 go-daiko or the Five Great Lakes. The Japanese love to codify the things around them into little lists to make them easier to manage, not unlike the classic Seven Wonders of the World ranking. These "most famous" mini lists are positively legion in Japan, and no matter what subject you're interested in, there's probably a "best" list for you. Have you read Shakespeare's 四大悲劇 yondai higeki or Four Great Tragedies? I didn't know there were only four of them, but this is the term the Japanese use to describe Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear. How about the 世界三大珍味 sekai sandai chinmi or Three Rare Delicacies of the World? They're caviar, foie gras and truffles. How about 世界三大スープ sekai sandai soup, or the Three Great Soups of the world? They're Bouillabaisse, Shark's Fin and Tom Yan Kung. How about the Three Great Guitarists of the world? Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. If you're planning an extended trip to Japan you might want to hit the 日本三景 nihon sankei, the Three Most Beautiful Views of Japan, which are the gnarled Japan Pines of Matsushima near Sendai in the Tohoku area, the view from the top of Amano Hashidate Mountain in Kyoto and the famous "floating Japanese arch" at Miyajima, near Hiroshima.

The islands of Matsushima were beloved of Date Masamune, the samurai who inspired Darth Vader.

I Love Summer in Japan

For a country of such famous subtlety and nuance, in which the subjects of sentences are usually left off because everyone knows what is being discussed from the context, Japan's seasons are anything but subtle. Winter is fiercely cold, with a biting wind that comes down from the Japan Alps called kara-kaze; spring is alive with cherry blossoms and chirping uguisu (Japanese nightingale) outside my window; summer is unbearably hot and humid yet overflowing with unique Japanese flavor, and so on. Although summer in Japan is sticky and unpleasant, I find it's my favorite time of year in Japan -- you can always escape the unbearable heat by running your air-con (Japanese air conditioning is great), and no other time of year is as full of awesome Japanese festivals, from Tanabata in July to the big fireworks festival that signals the end of summer in our city. There are some famous images of summer in Japan, such as a glass of mugi-cha barley tea sweating beside a slice of suika (watermelon), or girls wearing colorful yukata cotton kimonos. Another famous image is 蚊取り線香 katori-senko, the spiral-shaped "mosquito-killing incense" that burns for 6-10 hours while emitting a pleasant smoke that keeps mosquitoes from tormenting you. We've got this incense in stock today, as well as the iconic katori-buta or "mosquito killing pig," a ceramic pig that holds a burning incense coil safely to keep the ash from falling into the floor, etc.

Summer is one of my favorite times of year in Japan.

Come to Akiba for the Shops!

If you ever visit the Tokyo area, you'll find many things to do: go shopping for fresh fish at the Tsukiji fish market, ride a "water taxi" boat designed by the creator of Space Battleship Yamato, catch a day of sumo wrestling if there's a tournament on while you're here, or take a day trip to Kamakura to see the beautiful temples and the Kamakura Daibutsu, the second largest statue of Buddha in Japan. Increasingly Akihabara has become a big attraction for tourists, and you know the train has arrived there because all the foreigners will suddenly get off. Originally a mild-mannered corner of Tokyo, it became a black market for electronics due to its closeness to Japan's first school of electrical engineering in neighboring Kanda, and as Japan's electronics industry took off in the 1970s, Akiba became the best place to find everything from PCs to amateur radios to vacuum tubes. Shops selling used Super Famicom games became popular in the 80s, and when 2D moe boom arrived a decade later, Akiba became forever associated with anime, doujinshi and eroge. Now if you go to Akihabara you'll see a large number of foreigners with cameras snapping pictures of whatever the latest variation of "Akiba maid" happens to be -- currently the trend is towards sengoku maids who dress in armor reminiscent of the "Warring States" period of Japanese history while they hand out tissues and ask you to visit their maid cafe.

Visiting shops in Akihabara is tons of fun.

Reduced Prices on Anime Games for PSP, PS3 and PSVita!

Remember, J-List carries awesome import anime games for the Sony PSP, PS3 and PSVita, which are all region free, so you can play games from any part of the world. We've got gorgeous visual novels, ecchi fighting games, even a game where the object is to collect pantsu. We've lowered our prices on all of these great games, so why not browse our selection now and see what you'd like to play? The Vita has especially started to shine as an excellent platform for otaku gaming, with its large, bright screen that's great for displaying Hatsune Miku dancing on your desk, and it just received a price drop, too, to $199 (in the U.S.).