My Can Collection, And Other Puns

The other day I watched the movie Psycho for the first time. The reason was that Tomo, the Japanese staffer who keeps J-List well stocked with anime Blu-rays and import anime PS Vita games, is a hardcore connoisseur of everything from the music of Zed Zeppelin and Bob Dylan to all the major and minor films of Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, and he's regularly shocked at the idea that an American (me) could go through life not knowing much about these things. When he asked me what I thought about the film, my reply was a foregone conclusion: I told him it was 最高 saikoh, a Japanese word meaning "the greatest," which happens to have the pronunciation as Psycho, making it one of the more famous puns in Japanese. The way to say "what is this?" in Japanese is 何ですか? nan desu ka?, and it's virtually impossible to eat Indian naan bread someone joking, "What is this? Is it naan bread?" I've got a window shelf where I put cans that are waiting to be crushed and thrown away, and the other day I referred to it as my "CanColle," e.g. my can collection, a play on the moe WWII ship game Kantai Collection. I thought it was a pretty good joke, but my otaku son didn't laugh -- kids these days have no sense of humor.

One of my favorite places in the world, the Ghibli Museum; I had a blast at the KFC bar in Tokyo.

My Visit to the KFC Bar

J-List is located in Gunma Prefecture, about 100 km northwest of Tokyo, pretty much in the exact center of Japan's main island of Honshu. It's a nice place but not too exciting, though this is usually not a problem since Tokyo is only a train ride away -- between the ridiculously fashionable Japanese females and greater variety of restaurants and drinking establishments, there'll be something worth seeing. This time I managed to find one of the most interesting bars I've ever visited, the world's only KFC Bar. Called KFC Route 25, it's an actual bar operated by the owner of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, allowing you to throw back Jack Daniels or Makers Mark while eating classic KFC chicken, biscuits with honey and so on, which are delivered from the restaurant downstairs. It's located in Shimokita, in Tokyo, near Keio Shimokitazawa Station. Now you have two reasons to visit Tokyo!

I had a blast at the KFC bar in Tokyo.

J-List Loves Studio Ghibli!

The other day my daughter asked me if I'd mind taking her to the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, since she needed to buy something for a friend's birthday and wanted to get something really special. If you've got kids, you probably know of their tendency to grow up way too fast, so I was all too happy to go with her and re-live the hours we'd spent watching the films of Hayao Miyazaki together. The Ghibli Museum is one of the true highlights of a trip to Japan, a monument to everything the company has created over the years, complete with a giant catbus that children under 12 can play inside as well as a scale replica of a Laputa robot. Everything about the museum is meticulously designed for visitors, from the carved wooden trays you put your money in when buying something to the wonky works of art you can discover walking down random hallways. There's also a cafe and restaurant that sells Ghibli-themed treats -- I had omurice shaped like Mei's straw hat from Totoro and a parfait topped with a single Kompeito candy. On top of everything else, you get to see a short film as part of your admission, with a different one showing every month. The best film is the Mei and the Kitten Bus short sequel to Totoro, and if you're ever planning a visit I recommend you check the museum's English homepage for the film schedule to make sure you can see this film. To avoid overcrowding by fans, advance tickets are required to visit the museum. While you can get the tickets through travel agencies, they can be difficult to purchase, so J-List has a Ghibli museum purchasing service available, if you ever need it.

One of my favorite places in the world, the Ghibli Museum.

Remember Our EMS Shipping Sale!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Nikuman, Japan's Steamed Meat Buns

Hello again from "the land of kawaii and sugoi," Japan! We're in full Christmas mode around here, with the hardworking J-List staff packing and shipping hundreds of packages per day, which are picked up in three large trucks by the Japanese post office every morning. What awesome products can J-List send you today?

There are many things to like about winter in Japan. The nostalgic smell of kerosene when you light your space heater for the first time. Drinking hot canned coffee on the train platform. It's also the season to eat one of my favorite foods, nikuman, Chinese steamed buns with seasoned meat inside, also known as pork buns or baozi. Like many things in Japan, nikuman has a rather long history, dating back 1800 years to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in China, which for some reason gets parodied by everything from the Ikki Tousen anime to the Koihime Musou "H" game series. One problem with Japan is that people are used to prices never rising, thanks to two decades of deflation after the bursting of the Japan Asset Bubble in 1989. As a result, the only way shops can increase their revenue is by being creative and inventing "deluxe" new products you'll pay a higher price for. You can buy normal nikuman steamed buns for around $1.10, but there are other variations too, like beef curry-man, pizza-man or the gyoza-man I saw the other day, a giant steamed bun with gyoza dumplings inside. While you can get nikuman at any convenience store during the colder months of the year, the best place to eat really good steamed meat buns is Yokohama. Try some next time you're there!

Kyoko offers you half of her steamed meat bun.

Japanese Sound Words (Giongo and Gitaigo)

When you start to learn a language as separate from English as Japanese as, you naturally expect some things to be different. Japanese has a different word order, uses kanji characters alongside Japanese grammar constructions in a way that's similar to how English is augmented by Latin and Greek loan words, and is "agglutinating," which just means information like past tense, passive voice etc. is often encoded into a verb conjugation rather than using confusing helping verbs. (This means that horrible sentences like "all the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life" can't exist in Japanese.) One thing I was surprised by was Japan's creative use of "sound words." All languages have onomatopoeia, and Japanese is richly stocked with words like ざあざあ zaa zaa, the sound of rain pouring down, or しんしん shiin shiin, what frosty snow sounds like when falling. But they take it up a notch, assigning sounds to abstract things like niko niko, the "sound" of smiling, where Nicodouga gets its name from; paku paku, eating very quickly, the origin of Pac-man's name; pera pera, the sound of someone speaking a foreign language fluently; and kyoro kyoro, the sound of a person's eyes moving from left to right as he looks for something. Some of these sound words can be quite colorful, for example もっこり mokkori is the "sound" of something like a hill sticking up suddenly in the landscape...as well as a certain state men find themselves in in the mornings, and くぱぁ kupaa is the sound of a certain anatomical region opening. (The link is safe for work, though weird as hell).

Kyoro kyoro is the sound of eyes looking around, perhaps at other girls.

Japan is Not the Land of Unspoiled Nature

Japan is a wonderful country full of great people and amazing culture. One thing it's not, however, is a land of unspoiled nature, something I was reminded of when I took my vacation to the Hakone area. Several times I found fabulous views of Mt. Fuji and pulled over to take some pictures, only to find ugly power lines finding their way into my photos. This is not entirely the fault of the Japanese, of course: Japan is a highly industrialized country which manages to fit a little less than half the population of the U.S. into an area the size of Nebraska, so of course it needs to make use of its land in a way that serves the most people. Still, Japan's ruling (and ironically named) Liberal Democratic Party sometimes goes overboard, over-funding the constructions of roads in part to help Japan's construction-based economy move forward, but also to reward political supporters with contracts. Often I'm driving through the mountains and I see they've literally covered the side of a mountain in concrete, ostensibly to keep landslides from happening in the event of an earthquake...but I can't shake the idea that someone here just likes concrete more than mountains.

The beauty of Fuji-san calls to us with the heart of a samurai and GOD DAMN IT NOT AGAIN.

All J-List English Eroge are Now 100% DRM Free!

We have more good news. J-List sells visual novels and eroge which we license from Japanese game companies and translate into English, in order to make them available to fans around the world. In the past we were contractually required to secure certain games with a DRM system, but when the contract was over we ripped the system out, posting the games in DRM-free versions. Still, we had a dozen or so games, including Demonbane, Cosplay Fetish Academy, Cat Girl Alliance and a few others, which required online activation, but we're happy to report that we've removed all DRM from these games now. If you purchased a DRM-enabled game from us before and want to get the DRM-free version, the download code we originally sent you should let you access the new version. Open a support ticket if you need us to look up anything for you. Thanks for supporting our efforts to create a market for these awesome video novels outside Japan!

J-List's Huge EMS Shipping Sale, Get $50 Back!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Japan's Local "Yuru-chara" Characters

Well it's finally here: the last day of our biggest-ever pre-Christmas sale. If you want to pick up some awesome products from Japan for the Japan-focused people on your list this year, remember that the 12%-off-nearly-everything sale ends at midnight at the end of Cyber Monday, so get shopping now! 

You never know what's going to become popular in Japan next. For the past few years the country has been experiencing a boom in "Yuru-chara," which are cute (?) plush characters with people inside that promote interest in Japan's various prefectures and towns. Yuru-charas are defined as characters who express a strong message of love for different regions of Japan, move in clumsy but lovable ways and take a fundamentally relaxed view of life. The boom got its start back in 1999, when Nikko Edo-mura, a sort of theme park that re-creates the old Edo Period, created a fairly horrifying samurai cat thing called Nyan-mage, and before anyone knew it, these regional characters were everywhere. Most are minor and blend in with the background, posing for photos at local cultural events but not really standing out. A few, however, become quite popular and get licensed for mainstream products, like the official character promoting the city of Kumamoto, Kumamon. Although J-List's home prefecture of Gunma is famous for being the least interesting prefecture in Japan (it's sort of become a meme at this point), our character Gunma-chan (the orange horse in the image) is quite popular, regularly ranking in third place nationally.

Cute "Yuru-chara" promote Japan's various regions.

All About Japanese Futons

Before you left for work today, did you hang your bed out of the window to dry in the sun? That's what millions of Japanese do each morning, if they sleep on a 布団 futon, the traditional fold-away bedding that's been used for centuries. A Japanese futon is basically a soft sleeping mat, a separate foam mat that goes below that, and a thick blanket on top (there's never any wood frame involved as in the U.S.). Futons are enormously convenient for living in small spaces because they can be folded up and put away in a closet during the day, which allows a room to fulfill two separate roles. Because the sleeping mats absorb sweat, they can become damp, which is why they're hung from the balcony to dry and kill germs; there's almost nothing nicer to sleep on than a Japanese futon that's been hung and dried during the day. While traditional futons are nice, it can be a chore to put them away each morning and lay them out again at night, so many older Japanese end up switching to Western style beds, something my wife's parents did recently. Even if they opt for conventional beds for themselves, most every household in Japan has a "guest" futon for use when unexpected visitors need to sleep over, which is great because it takes up almost no space when not in use. If you would like to own a futon but don't have room in your office, why not consider the wacky Japanese Futon Mouse Pad we posted to the site, which is heated via USB!

A futon is a unique aspect of life in Japan.

Anime Lesbians, Cthulhu and the Kanji for "Child"

You never forget your first, they always say. My first anime shower scene was the Macross "Do You Remember Love?" movie, and my first anime lesbians were Cobalt and Sepia from the classic Cthuloid robot anime Fight! Iczer-One. I also remember the first kanji character I became aware of, which was 子, pronounced ko, which means "child," commonly found in names of Japanese girls, like Keiko, Kumiko or Yuko. (An alternate reading for the character is is shi.) Most "baby" names of animals can be made by putting 子 ko in front of the name, like 子犬 koinu (koh-ee-noo) for puppy or 子猫 koneko for kitten. The ko word is often used to define different groups of people, for example 江戸っ子 Edokko is a label proudly worn by families who have lived in the Tokyo area since the days when it was named Edo, or 鍵っ子 kagikko ("key child"), the Japanese term for a "latchkey kid" whose parents work. My wife was a 店っ子 misekko or "shop child," a child whose parents ran a shop (their liquor store) and were thus too busy to play with her or take her places, and she's also a 眼鏡っ娘 meganekko or a girl who wears glasses, which is fine by me. The 子 kanji is quite flexible, being found in scientific words like 電子 denshi ("child of electricity," i.e. an electron) or 原子 genshi ("child of origin," or an atom), as well as words like キノコ kinoko ("child of tree" e.g. a mushroom). Another of these words I like is 龍の子 tatsu no ko, the "child of dragon" which is what seahorses are called. 

Iczer-One taught me about Cthulhu and anime lesbians.

Last Day of J-List's Big Pre-Christmas Sale

Remember, J-List has extended our unprecedented Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday, California time. So for four more days, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered.)

Western Influence on Japan Through Europe

We hope everyone in the U.S. enjoyed a warm and pleasant Thanksgiving with family and friends. It's not a holiday you can easily get into the spirit of while living in Japan, a country in which few homes have an oven large enough to cook lasagna, let alone a large meal with all the fixings. I did manage to have a turkey sandwich from Subway, making it one of my more traditional thanksgivings since coming to Japan.

One of the themes I write a lot about is the way Japan likes to pretend it's part of Europe instead of Asia. There are many "homages" to Europe to be found here, from Tokyo Tower (a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower) to the "Japan Alps" to the stylish corner of Shibuya dubbed スペイン坂 Spain-zaka, e.g. Spanish Hill, in tribute to/parody of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The Japanese go crazy for beaujolais nouveau every year, too -- Japan is the largest market for the wine outside of France, and there's an onsen where you can actually bathe in the stuff. For some reason, the Japanese have chosen to fixate on mannekin pis, the famous peeing boy statue in Belgium, as a symbol representing all of Western civilization, and when Honda wanted to promote its new hydrogen-powered car it created Hydrogen Boy, a statue of a boy that "pees" pure water to show how clean the technology is. (You can also get a peeing statue earphone mascot for your phone, if you want one.)

Of course American culture is not without its influence. Friday, the biggest shopping day in the U.S., and I happened to notice that some companies are starting to promote Black Friday sales in Japan, despite there being no custom of Thanksgiving here. Incidentally, we've got good news for anyone looking to give the gift of fun products from Japan this year: we're extending our popular Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday, with 12% off nearly everything on the site. So get shopping and score some awesome products from Japan! 

Pre-Christmas Sale through Monday, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

Don't Cause "Meiwaku" (Inconvenience) in Japan.

We're currently finishing up some construction on the land behind J-List, erecting a concrete wall to keep rainwater from running from our land to the neighboring field, which is owned by a local farmer. A few months ago the farmer came to tell about the drainage problem and ask us to fix it, so we called a construction company and had them give us a bid. If there's a "golden rule" to Japanese society it's that everyone should avoid causing 迷惑 meiwaku -- a word which means inconvenience, nuisance or bother -- to others, and once it became apparent we were causing meiwaku to our neighbor, we were required by unwritten Japanese social rules to fix the problem, even though it cost us $6000 to have the wall built. This "don't cause inconvenience to others" system is one of the fundamental building blocks of Japanese society, and one reason they can get along with one lawyer for every 5000 people compared with one for every 250 people in the U.S. By and large, Japanese go their entire lives without ever encountering a lawsuit in any form, in part thanks to this proactive social rule that encourages people to avoid inconveniencing others and to take responsibility for causing problems when asked to do so.

Actually I'd be okay with someone putting on yuri-play on the train.

J-List's Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale Continues!

Great news: J-List has decided to extend our unprecidented Pre-Christmas Sale through the end of Monday. So for four more days, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)

America to China: Love is War

China has caused an international stir by unilaterally declaring a chunk of the East China Sea as its exclusive "Air Defense Identification Zone," and requiring that all other countries file flight plans ahead of time lest they trigger a "defensive" military response. The area includes the islands claimed by both China and Japan, and essentially promises more confrontations if Japan and other nations don't support China's growing claims for lebensraum. Several countries have denounced China's actions as a dangerous move that will destabilize the region, and America has come down solidly on the side of its ally Japan by flying two B-52s in a "training mission" through the region without informing Beijing ahead of time. As China has grown in economic strength it's become more belligerent, issuing territorial claims against several neighbors including South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and India, and it's even fought several limited wars. China has even made noises that Japan should "return" Okinawa to China based on the fact that the island kingdom paid tribute to China centuries ago. It's a dangerous situation, and I hope things calm down soon.

Googled Pixiv for images of B-52 bombers, was not disappointed.

Some New Words for 2013

Every year the Oxford English Dictionary chooses to bless a few new words by adding them to its hallowed pages, and every year people react, often strongly, because most of us make a distinction between "proper" language and the latest slang words we use when speaking. In the past words like tweet, hashtag, app and Googlegänger were added to the official listing of English words, and this year the word "selfie" joins them. There's a similar listing of influential words popularized this year in Japan, too. This year's words include アベノミックス Abenomics, the economic policies of Prime Minister Abe, also known as The Man Who Makes Our Anime Cheaper; パズドラ pazu-dora, the popular Puzzles and Dragons game that my son can't stop playing for five minutes; and 今でしょ！ ima desho! ("the time to do that is right now!"), the catchphrase of famous prep school teacher Osamu Hayashi which became so popular Toyota hired him to do a car commercial ("When are you going to buy a new Toyota? The time to do it is right now!"). Another word I've been hearing a lot is バカッター bakattaa, rendered in English spelling as "bakatter," which means "to do something really stupid on Twitter." Like the planking boom of a few years ago, it's become quite a thing, with people posting pictures of themselves sleeping in convenience store freezers, eating ramen in restaurants while naked or standing on top of police cars just for the lulz.

Some new words for 2013, from "selfie" to bakatter.

Pacific Rim vs Anime

The other day I watched Pacific Rim, a movie I'd not managed to catch in theaters due to my convention schedule during the summer. It was a great film, a well executed love letter to the classic Japanese kaiju (monster) movies of decades past, and it was a lot of fun to watch. Of course you can't make a serious movie featuring giant robots without a lot of comparisons with anime, and it was fun to observe the influence of classic robot series like Great Mazinger and Giant Robo on the film design. The ending especially felt like an extended homage to Aim for the Top: Gunbuster, which suited me just fine, old school Gainax fan that I am. I thought the film was great for another reason: having an actual Japanese actress (the lovely Rinko Kikuchi) play a Japanese character. All too often "Japanese" characters in mainstream American media are played by Koreans (Heroes, The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, Star Trek Enterprise, the new Star Trek film remakes), with the unspoken implication being that Japanese are so bad at English they can't perform the roles themselves. Pacific Rim went the extra mile and found a Japanese actress who was great for the part, and I appreciated the extra connection to Japan this brought to the film.

I enjoyed the Japanese pop culture references in Pacific Rim.

J-List's Pre-Christmas Sale Continues

Christmas is racing towards us, and as we do every year, J-List has prepared thousands of awesome items for our customers around the world. But there's a special problem this year: the traditional start of hardcore shopping season (Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.) is a week later than normal, meaning that our customers wouldn't be able to to take advantage of more affordable shipping options when purchasing, like First Class Airmail. We did the only thing we could: we're starting the sale a week early! Through November 29, you can take an awesome 12% off of all items on the site*, including all bento and kitchen items, plush toys, figures, snack items, apparel and cosplay products, as well as the naughty stuff. In addition, the J-List staff has gone through and discounted some special items by up to 50%, including Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, and more. (Note that the 12% off sale doesn't cover grab bags, iTunes and PSN cards, gift certificates, or the specially selected sale items, though 99.5% of products are covered by the sale.)