Yoi otoshi o! to everyone

Hello all. Last post of 2004. So far I'm having fun with this blog and have decided to move my old homepage over to this system, since it's frankly better than the rather, ah, interesting system I hacked out for the current peterpayne.net page (which used a shopping cart system to host articles as "products"). Not a good idea.

It was a good year for us. Because my wife is Buddhist, there are occasionally "lucky" and "unlucky" (yakudoshi) years. This was a somewhat unlucky year according to her, and so we pretty much just hung around and did the normal stuff we always do, going only to the normal anime conventions and not doing anything bold or new. Next year (in 2005) we hope to do some new things.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

Well, the year is at an end, and we're all ready for our final J-List update before we enter the new year. Japanese usually spend New Years Eve quietly, watching TV while eating toshi-koshi soba (lit. "cross into the new year buckwheat noodles"), which supposedly helps you live longer because the noodles are long. At 15 minutes before midnight, Japan's NHK network (the Japanese answer to the BBC) broadcasts quiet, solemn images of shrines, temples and churches all around Japan, lit up to allow eager visitors to get their New Year's prayers in as early as possible. The bells in shrines and temples ring out 108 times, to purify the 108 delusions that humans are supposed to be subject to, and to ring out hope for the coming year. Then, without any fanfare or countdown, the clock on NHK's video feed flashes 0:00, and the new year is here.

The centerpiece to New Year's Eve is without a doubt the Kohaku Uta Gassen (Red and White Year-End Song Festival), the massive 5-hour long variety and music show shown on NHK and broadcast around the world, in its 55th year this year. Virtually all of Japan's famous singers, comedians and other "talents" (a catch-all term for television performers) appear in the entertainment extravaganza, as the white team (male singers) battle the red team (female singers) to see which side can put on a better show. Anyone who's anyone will be there, from JPOP diva Ayumi Hamasaki to new faces like Aya Ueto to old standbys like cross-dressing enka singer Kennichi Mikawa, who always manages to spend millions of the taxpayers' yen on his dress. South Korean stars were very popular in Japan this year, and several will be appearing in this year's performance. At 11:30 pm, a team of judges and the audience votes to see which group was more talented, and then everyone sings Auld Lang Syne in Japanese. Enjoying Kohaku is a Japanese tradition, just like watching football on New Year's Day is in the U.S.

This year we're in for a special treat in our city: there's a "countdown fireworks show" to be held at the Auto Racetrack, a local landmark. Along with several comedians and other stars, cute-as-a-button Japanese idol Yuko Ogura will be attending, presumably driving up after making whatever appearance she'll be making in the Kohaku (which is always shot live). While I'd love to be able to see Yuko-chan in the flesh, the Tokyo area is currently being assaulted by freezing temperatures and white, puffy snow -- this San Diego boy is not that eager to go outside and freeze his oshiri off at midnight.

2004 was quite a horribilis annus for Japan. While the economy seemed to improve a little, there was also great sadness. A staggering 29 typhoons this season killed many and caused a lot of destruction, including damaging the Miyajima temple near Hiroshima (home of the famous "floating Japanese arch"). Then there was the quake in Niigata which killed some 25 people and brought the mighty Shinkansen train low, which was eclipsed by the far worse tragedy of a week ago. We hope and pray for a happier and more peaceful year for everyone next year.

Remember that J-List has over 2000 cool and unique products in stock for you, with such an amazing range that there's something for everyone on our site. Many of the items are very limited in availability, and once they're gone, they're gone for good. For example, small toys and figures that come with candy inside (candy toys) and capsule toys (called "gashapon," a word that describes the sound of a toy being dispensed from a vending machine while a child waits eagerly) are popular in Japan right now, but almost without exception, these items are put out into the distribution system once and once only -- when they're sold, no more can be ordered. We regularly receive anguished mail from customers asking why the item they planned to buy wasn't on the site anymore -- so if there's something you think you'd like to get, we recommend that you act sooner rather than later. To see products updated in the last three days, click this link: http://www.jbox.com/UPDATES/3/

The Japanese have two ways to say "Happy New Year." On or before December 31st, you tell people yoi otoshi o (short for the longer yoi otoshi o ookuri kudasai, lit "please have a pleasant crossing into the new year"). After January 1st, you greet people with a different phrase, akemashite omedeto (ah-kay-MASH-tay oh-MEH-DEH-toh), which means "congratulations on opening the new year." We thank everyone for your support of J-List, and promise to work hard to bring you a little piece of Japan next year -- yoi otoshi o!!

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." See the JBOX.com site if under 18 or offended by this kind of stuff.

	Intron Depot Galhound figure. Shirow Masamune is the creator of the Ghost in the Shell manga, the "Akira" of the 90s. He's also quite a pervert and, under the Galhound name, designs some pretty interesting hentai characters. This is a very cool 3-D rendering of one of his sexier characters, a futuristic police woman.
	Urecco Gal Aug 2004. Urecco is the #1 selling magazine at J-List, and the quality is very high. An ofshoot that I like a lot is Urecco Gal, basically a "kogal" version of Urecco, featuring lots of amateurs, dolled up in the super-cute style of Tokyo's contemporary bad girls (which Salon Magazine dubbed "Hello Kitties").
	Iroha Karuta. There's a traditional game called karuta, which comes from the German word for "card," in which you basiaclly have a bunch of cards in a pile, and everyone has to grab the card. This version is a fun way to learn to read hiragana.
	Kerotama -- White ~ Meiwa Denki. There is a lot of cool stuff in Japan, and there's always something else to surprise you . Here's a really cool line of toys by a new company that is based on electrical devices.
	Concentration Amateur Gals 2. There are more adult DVDs made in Japan than anywhere else in the world. While most of the discs we sell are priced at $30-50, this is the "Concentration" series which is always really cheap. They're not "indies" but are interesting to watch.

Bad words in Japanese & the Prefectural System

Hello again. Another update, and another post for you. Can't write much now, I'm off to print my damned New Year's cards. Of course my printer broke when I went to use it, so I was supremely hosed -- had to buy a new Canon Pixus just to print all of 17 stupid cards. Perhaps this is a sign of too much technology?

Here are some pictures from Japan. First, there's OFF!, a store that sells rubber stamps and, since this is Japan, hanko stamps, which are what people carry around to stamp document, which you do in place of signing them. Supposedly, no one thinks of stealing someone's name stamp and selling their house out from under them. Then, I've posted the Nimbus 2000 that Santa brought my 9 year old daughter. She was so happy to see it, even though Santa forgot to put magic in it to make it fly. Kids are so cute on Christmas.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

The clock is ticking down to the end of 2004. Today we did our oh-soji (big cleaning), stopping work for a few hours to scrub the J-List office from top to bottom. I even found time to rearrange my Star Wars figures, which had collapsed after the earthquake in Niigata (amid jokes of a "disturbance in the Force"). We're getting ready for a nice, quiet oshogatsu (oh-SHO-ga-tsu, New Year's Day) and we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday, wherever you are in the world.

Going to live in a new country can be a stressful experience, the proverbial paradigm shifting without a clutch. Something I was quite surprised at upon coming to Japan was the lack of street names, which made it very difficult to learn my way around in my new city. The Japanese layout, which is supposedly based on the French prefectural system, separates the country into 47 prefectures (ken), which includes the Tokyo metropolitan area, the special prefectural areas of Osaka and Kyoto (fu) and the island of Hokkaido, a system which was created after the Meiji Restoration and the elimination of the old feudal system. Inside each prefecture, there are three kinds of incorporated areas: cities (shi), towns (machi or cho, two readings for the same kanji character) or villages (mura). Inside the large city areas, such as the city we live in, there are small "town" areas designated, so that a person may live in Sakura Town, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. In lieu of a numeric address on a street, houses are assigned a number for the "town" it's located in, like 2-19-15. If you think it's terribly confusing to have a whole country with no named streets or numbered houses, you're right -- it's virtually impossible to find any location in Japan without a written map or directions using plenty of landmarks. As populations rise and fall in Japan (usually fall, it's sad to say), areas sometimes merge with each other to create new cities (called gappei), to try to attract investment and tourism. Our prefecture is currently engaged in gappei mania, with several smaller towns combining to form new cities. The towns that J-List's Tomo and Jun live in are going to disappear next year, joining part of the newly established Midori [Green] City.

Whenever you study a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the "bad" words -- that's just plain human nature. Most students of Japanese are surprised to find that there are almost no really bad words in the language -- if you define bad as in, words that kids aren't allowed to use. Kuso (the "s" word) is used regularly on children's anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing with nary a rebuke from their parents. Baka (stupid) is the catch-all insult, used in almost any situation (people from the Osaka region say aho instead). Variations on the above two words include baka-jijii (stupid old man) and kuso-babaa (sh--ty old woman). The various applications of the "F" word don't translate into Japanese at all -- the word doesn't exist in Japanese, although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word sekkusu. The only really "bad" word in Japanese is manko (referring to a woman's reproductive organ) -- a word as embarrassingly close to "mango" as election and another word are for Japanese speakers of English. As always, exercise caution when using these words so that you don't offend any Japanese around you. For more information on Japanese terms, see the J-List glossary (link on the left of the main page).

We continue to be shocked at the terrible destruction in Asia after the earthquake and tsunamis, and are very saddened at the loss of life. Thailand's Phuket island is especially popular with tourists from Japan and Europe, and my wife and I spent an enjoyable honeymoon there ten years ago. Among the thousands of tourists feared dead in the disaster were hundreds of Japanese tourists who had gone to escape the freezing weather in Japan. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this terrible international tragedy.

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." See the JBOX.com site if under 18 or offended by this kind of stuff.

	Shonan Bakusozoku figures. In Japan, there's a highly developed tradition of being "furyo" (lit. "not good), what they call young people who act violent and join gangs. Here is a set of figures from the famous manga about rebels without causes.
	Bath Palette Special. There's always something you never knew existed at J-List. Here's a glowing "mood ball" that fills your bath with beautiful light. Or use it to create a little mood at night with that special someone.
	Hello Kitty Traditional Hagoita Board. It's New Year's season in Japan, so we've got lots of seasonal items. Here's a cool "hagoita board" which is a game, sort of like badminton, traditionally played in this time of year. Very, very cool, it's good for hanging on your wall.
	Lotte Black Crunky. Crunky is one of those product names that will drive you batshit when you sit around and think about it. A line of chocolate by candy company Lotte, here's a new dark chocolate cruncky, chunky Crunky.

Culture shock in Japan - Yamato Nadeshiko

Hello all. Back to work for the J-List crew, although it's time for the nenmatsu rush of people taking days off, so not everyone is here. Japan really slows down during New Year's, which is the big holiday in the country. Everything is closed, except for convenience stores. Just two more updates after today before 2004 is history.

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

I experienced many forms of culture shock when I first came to Japan, and one area that surprised me a lot was the place of women in Japanese society. While women do enjoy equality in terms of legal rights here, it is true that Japan is definitely a very male-dominated country in which the roles of men and women are very different than they are in the West. Here, women tend to occupy a slightly lower tier than men, and this is not, as far as I can see, due entirely to any sexist maneuverings on the part of Japan's males. When a company hires a 23-year-old girl to work at a full time job, it's joshiki (common sense) that she'll quit within a few years to get married, and the number of career-minded women in Japan is far fewer than in the U.S. This tendency on the part of Japan's females to defer to men seems to be the root of much of the famed Japanese social stability. It's certainly true that, while the man in the family is the daikoku-bashira or the big, black pillar that supports the family, the woman of the house will handle all finances, expertly putting money away for when it's needed and ensuring the family's future happiness. There's a Japanese word that describes the "perfect woman," called yamato nadeshiko, which represents the traits that are ideal for a wife and mother to have: femininity, chastity, loyalty to her husband, the skill to change her husband's mind when he's wrong, and inner strength. Both men and women buy into this image of the ideal Japanese woman to some degree.

In Japan, there are various first- and second-person pronouns, and which word a person uses says a lot about their social roles. For example, for the word corresponding to "you," Japanese men will usually use a name with -san or -kun after it (polite), the word kimi (somewhat familiar, used among friends) or the masculine word omae (oh-MAI-eh), depending on who they're talking to. This third word is quite interesting to study. It's generally only used by men (or in anime, ultra-Tomboy type females), and generally from a superior to someone below him, i.e. senpai/upperclassmen to kouhai/underclassman, parent to child, dog owner to pet, etc. Choosing to use omae to refer to a person verbally reinforces a certain relationship, i.e. that you are above them in status, so the potential to offend someone by using it improperly is great. If a man says omae to a woman he's romantically involved with, he's basically implying that she belongs to him, in effect saying omae wa ore no mono da, or "You belong to me." Some Japanese women find this term very romantic and get all fluttery inside when they hear it, while others -- Japanese women who've lived in America or Europe, I am told -- dislike having men refer to them with this word.

It's often said that Japanese society follows behind the U.S. by 25 years or so, and this seems to be true quite a lot of the time. The divorce rate in Japan is currently around 2.2 people per thousand people, about half the rate of 4.1 in the U.S., but still higher than countries like Italy (0.6). Japan lacks a "no fault" divorce system, and courts often assign blame to one party, especially if one side can prove unfaithfulness on the part of the other. Usually when a couple lands in splitsville, the women will go back to her jikka, her "real house" where her parents live, and go back to using her maiden name. It's common for the former couple to never see each other again for the rest of their lives, and fathers are often separated from their children forever, too, especially when the woman gets remarried. As Japan ages, an increasing number of older couples are calling off their marriages, once children grow up and move away. When a woman gets divorced, she may not get married again for the next six months, to avoid problems with determining the father of any children she may be carrying.

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." See the JBOX.com site if under 18 or offended by this kind of stuff.

	Mini Skirt Illustrated. The best leg fetish magazine in Japan, this is Mini Skirt Illustrated. Each issue features one really famous star showing her legs, clad in silky nylon stockings, shot from a low angle. A great magazine that's been in print for almost ten years.
	CDB - Character Design Bible. Character Design Bible is basically a great art book that's filled with articles and illustrations on the best illustrators in Japan right now. I can't imagine anyone reading Heavy Metal after seeing this amazing book.
	Pinky Street Fanta Book. Pinky Street is a *really* cool line of toys that are basically very stylized figurs of modern Japanese girls. You change their clothes by popping their heads off one body and onto another. They look damn good, and this set, which comes with a photobook too, is really cool.
	Digi+Kishin Girls -- Eiko Koike. Eiko Koike is one of the Yellow Cab girls, basically a sexy bikini model who appears on variety shows as the star de jour. She looks better and better the older I get -- it must be a middle-aged thing or something.
	Lasonic DVD-7050. While I haven't played with this unit yet (by virtue of the fact that we don't have them in stock yet, plus I'm in Japan), I think this is a great idea. I have a DIVX-enabled DVD player here in Japan and it's fabulous -- we can watch AVI format movies, enjoy dozens of documentaries or up to 5 movies one each disc, and the quality is just fine

Merii Kurisumasu

Hello all. Actually this is a repost because I deleted this post somehow. GRRR...

Here are some pictures from Japan. One is the Christmas Cake my kids baked this year. The other is the computer room of a Japanese friend. As you can see, he really likes America ^_^

Today's J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.

Hello and the warmest holiday greetings to everyone! We hope that everyone has a very "merii kurisumasu," wherever you are in the world. Since we're seventeen hours ahead of California, we've already finished our Christmas morning, and are enjoying a nice calm day with the kids, playing with all the great stuff we got.

Christmas in Japan is a lot different from the rest of the world. Without a genuine tradition of celebrating yuletide, the Japanese often choose to import some of the more "fun" elements of the season, with Santa-san (yes, they really call him that) and presents and fun Christmas songs, and few of the solemn, pleasant themes found in America and Europe. Christians do celebrate Christmas, attending a special mass after they get off work (Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan). For my first Christmas in Japan, I attended mass at the local Baptist church, and was surprised at how similar everything was to what I'd seen back home, except that the Bible was in Japanese. But by and large religious themes play a small part in Christmas here -- instead, Christmas is something for kids, for couples to go on that special date, and for friends to have a fun Christmas party with lots of loud music and maybe firecrackers. This is a major difference between Japan and the U.S.: we are usually solemn on Christmas and have a blast on New Year's, but this is done in reverse here.

Now that Christmas is beyond us, Japanese will be looking forward to the most important holiday in Japan, New Year's Day. New Year's is a time to visit the Shinto shrine and pray for happiness in the new year, and reflect on what kind of year you want to have. Over the next week, Japanese will rush to finish their nengajo or New Year's cards, which are sent out to friends and family as a greeting and to wish everyone a happy new year. People like me, who wait til the last minute, always have a problem getting their nengajo printed in time. We'll also be cleaning the house from top to bottom (oh-sohji or "big cleaning), so that we can start the new year with a clean slate.

We're extremely happy to announce that Little My Maid, the long-awaited dating-sim game from Peach Princess, is finally in stock and shipping now. This is one of the best-ever Japanese bishoujo games to be released in the English language, and we're very happy to finally have it in our hands, ready to ship out to everyone. Featuring a great story based on a centuries-old Japanese tale, memorable female characters, beautiful art and full mouth animation when characters talk, we hope everyone will try this fantastic new game. We've also got lots of cool free stuff to give out with each copy sold, while supplies last.

It's still not too late to send that special someone a J-List gift certificate, which can be delivered within hours to anyone with an email address. J-List gift certificates are a great way to gift wacky and fun things from Japan to anyone on your list. We'll be processing gift certificates every few hours, so if there's someone you forgot to get a gift for, they can take their pick from the over 2000 cool products we have on the site.

Well, that's all for now. Once again, have a super-duper Christmas holiday!


Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." See the JBOX.com site if under 18 or offended by this kind of stuff.

	Little My Maid. How fun is it to port a game that has over 1800 text files and a walkthrough that's 70 pages? Really fun, or at least that's what we tell ourselves now that the game is shipping. It really is about the best hentai dating-sim game to ever be released in English
	DVD-7890. As you probably know, DVD from other countries are zoned for different regions, meaning you can't play them easily on your home DVD player. Here's one of our most popular products, the Lasonic DVD-7890, which gets around this by letting you play DVDs from anywhere in the world. Damned reliable too.
	Kinniku Otoko. For those who appreciate this sort of thing, Kinnuku Otoko (Muscle Man) is the most popular gay comic we sell. I'm not sure if I should say it's a 'yaoi' comic or not, since there seems to be a slight difference between the two. Or am I completely wrong? In general, yaoi comics seem to have more romantic and softer themes, and are bought by girls; guys seems prefer these macho comics.
	New Year's Decoration. New Years is a very big deal in Japan, and there are all kinds of traditional decorations and customs. Here's a nice decoration which is hung on your door like a wreathe, to bring happiness for the new year.

Japanese Corporate Fashions & More

Hello all. Another slice of life from Japan for you. It will be nice to have Christmas again, and my kids are looking forward to it, as kids are wont to do. My wife, who never celebrated Christmas until she married me, always goes through a period where she pooh-poohs it all, but she comes around when the time comes.

Here are some pictures for you to check out. These are pictures I had handy from Daisuke's wedding a month or two back. Japanese weddings are BIG affairs and this one probably cost $50,000. It was great fun. The glasses seen below are interesting glasses we were given which turn any pinpoint of light (such as a candle) into a heart in your vision. If people tell me they like the pictures I'll try to post them every post. I got a much improved phone with a camera in it, so the ability to go somewhere and say, hey, I should take a picture of this, is greatly improved.

Today's J-List post is below:

Hello from all of us in Japan. We hope everyone is having a great holiday season. We're all getting ready for a nice Christmas here in Japan, with presents under the tree and our Christmas Cake reserved from our favorite bakery. We thank everyone for your kind support this past year and wish you all the best holidays ever.

Japan can take the strangest things and turn them into a fashion trend. Over the past few years there's been a bizarre minor trend towards wearing corporate symbols on clothes, usually famous companies like Texaco and British Petroleum which aren't active in the Japanese market at all. The mini-boom in corporate casual wear is attributed to Japanese pro wrestler Sakuraba, who made a shirt that replaced the famous Union 76 logo with "39," numbers which stand for "saku" according to a Japanese number code that I have yet to figure out, the first two syllables of his name. Today, it's quite common to see people sporting the "76" logo on their clothes here, despite the fact that they probably have no idea what the company sells (since Union 76 doesn't exist here).

One concept that comes up a lot in anime or dating sim games is the childhood friend, called osana-najimi (oh-SA-NA NA-ji-mee), a word which seems impossible to remember until you break it down (osanai means young, and najimu is a verb meaning "to become friendly with"). At least in rural parts of the country where we live, Japanese tend to not be very mobile, and my wife's family has lived on the same land for generations, since the Edo Period at least. My son goes to the same elementary school that my wife went to when she was a child...which is the same elementary school her mother attended, too, back during World War II. Because everyone in our city has been here for years, my wife has many osana-najimi friends who she's grown up with, people she's known for years and years. In my family, we moved frequently whenever my mother got a new job or bought a new house, living in several states and in New Zealand before settling down in San Diego, so the concept of having roots that go back that far is really staggering to me.

Are you looking for the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy person on your list? We humbly recommend J-List gift certificates. The spiffy J-List gift certificate system allows you to gift the gift of cool things from Japan to anyone with an email address. We'll send them their gift certificate, complete with a warm message from you and a PDF file that they can print out, or send it to yourself, print out the gift certificate, and present it to them in person. It's the perfect last-minute gift for the Japanophile who has everything. We'll be processing these gift certificate orders every 8 hours as we get close to December 25th.

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." See the JBOX.com site if under 18 or offended by this kind of stuff.

	I@m Pan Taron. Japan is the land of characters, be it Hello Kitty or Bad Batz Maru or this cool new one, Panda-Z, a giant robot flown by the young Pan Taron. Here's a new toy line that features figures with little shirts Pan Taron can wear.
	Inuyasha Figures. For fans of Inu Yasha, here's a worthy set of figures that just came out. I haven't seen the actual figures yet (Daisuke took the pictures and sealed the boxes) but ALL the toys Furuta has put out in the past have been extremely good quality.
	Mission. Exposure in Tokyo. I am not familar with the name of Jun Seto which means she must be a new face in the JAV pageant -- JAV meaning Japan Adult Video by the way. This is a nice "indies" offering exploring the Japanese fetish of stocking legs.
	Japanese New Year's decorations. New Year's is a big day in Japan, and there are many interesting traditional decorations that people put out in the last week of December through the middle of January or so. Here's a nice "lucky Daruma" decoration to hang on your door.

Fun at Disneyland and beyond

We had fun at Tokyo Disneyland. It was threatening to rain the whole time, but it didn't, so we knew we had gotten away clean. As told in the post below, we went on a Monday, on the 21st, assuming that the really big crowds would be there on the 23rd, which is the Emperor's Birthday and hence a holiday. The best time to go to Tokyo Disneyland, if you're wondering, is the non-holiday after a 3-day holiday, e.g. a Monday after a 3 day weekend. Then you'll have the whole place to yourself.

Today's post is below. It was cool sharing about a Dog of Flanders, which is a really cool movie. By all means, please go to Amazon and get this great anime. The link is here.

The Japanese believe a person's blood type foretells a lot about his personality, and Japan is having a "blood type boom" right now, with regular variety shows that report on what characteristics each blood type group share. In one recent show, they placed hidden cameras and watched a group of people eating all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue, in which you cook your food together on a big grill in the center of the table. A type people tend to be organized and neat, and the A types took just enough food and cooked it in a small corner of the grill. Type B people, who are "going my way" (a word the Japanese use for anyone who is in their own little world, like me), took too much food and hoarded it from everyone else. AB types, known for doing things differently from others, chose things like vegetables when everyone else was eating meat. In another experiment, they showed the last episode of one of the most moving anime shows of all time, A Dog of Flanders, based on a famous Belgian children's story, to rooms full of people separated by blood type. In the last minutes of the show, as young Mello goes into the St. James's Church to see the three famous Rubens paintings uncovered, allowing him to gaze at them for the first time, he finally knows happiness. As angels come to take him and his faithful dog Patrache up to heaven, the camera cuts back to the roomful of people who were watching the scene. 7 out of 8 of the type O people were bawling over the touching scene, while only 2 out of 8 of the type A and type AB people were in tears. For most of my life I didn't know my own blood type, something which is unthinkable in Japan, where the address book functions on cell phones have a place to record the blood type of the people you're calling.

We wanted to do something special for the kids this winter, so we took them down to Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland has been one of the most successful amusement parks in the world since it opened in 1983, raking in tons of money for the Disney empire. It recreates the original Disneyland in almost every way, although there's no Matterhorn and there actually seems to be more room to walk than at the California park. Knowing how bad the crowds can be during weekends and holidays, we went on a Monday, and were rewarded with a moderately pleasant Disneyland experience -- the longest wait was an hour or so. Of course we were obliged to buy lots of omiyage (oh-mee-YAH-geh) for people back home -- the ubiquitous souvenirs that prop up the Japanese economy. Disneyland's nickname is "nezumi-land" (nezumi = mouse) among Japanese fans.

There are some classic jokes in Japanese that I'll pass along to you. One stems from the words "oneesan" which means older sister but can also refer to a woman aged 18-25 or so, and "obasan" which means aunt but also any middle-aged woman. A classic joke in anime or manga features an innocent child who calls a woman "obasan" even though she's still young, and how she reacts to the label -- kind of like my reaction at being called "sir" for the first time in my life. Another classic joke you encounter every once in a while is a cow saying mou yamete (lit. "please stop it already"), which is amusing because the "moo" sound a cow makes sounds like the word mou ("already") in Japanese. Finally, the equivalent of the stale old joke "roadkill on the information super highway" in Japanese is dohto komu which means "...gets very crowded" but sounds like dot-com. So you can say, Amazon wa dohto komu, "That Amazon site sure has a lot of users." If you want to make a really stupid joke in Japanese, that is.

At J-List, we love to carry rare items you can't find outside of Japan easily. One of my all-time favorite foods is mochi, called rice cakes in English, basically a special kind of white rice that's been pressed into squares, which you heat and eat with soy sauce and nori. In preparation for the New Year's holidays, we've posted authentic Kagami Mochi, basically beautiful decorative rice cakes which you display near your front door in the New Years season, and then eat the mochi when the holidays are over.

Here are today's "really cool products":

	Could you take a hot spring with only a towel? Men in hot spring baths, that's nice. What if a woman suddenly comes in? The men will start to freak out, right? See it all in this new SOD DVD.
	Night Aqua Museum. Japan is really big on the miniature toys called candy toys (because you usually get candy with the toy) or gashapon (capsule toys). Here's a cool one we posted today.
	Replicant. Japan is famous for those beautiful detailed anime figures, and this is one of the coolest books tracking these figures we've ever seen. Filled with photos (and some nude figures).
	Kagami Mochi. Kagami Mochi is a New Year's tradition. Displau these rice cakes near your front door during New Year's than eat it. They're delicious!

Friday night -- J-List bonenkai!

Hello everyone. This is my new J-List side blog, wherein I'll post various J-List and Japan related stuff, if I find the time. And if you have ever run a business, you know that that can be a challenge (the root of business being "busyness").

For whoever doesn't know me, I'm Peter of J-List. J-List is my company, a rather unique company based in Japan. We sell thousands of things from Japan, generally things that people have no idea exist, or which they know about but can't get because they don't live in Japan. We also send out our "postcards from Japan" emails three times a week, which I'll be posting here for your reading pleasure. If you want a slice of life from Japan, we've got it for you.

Tonight I'm in a hurry since it's time for the J-List bonenkai or year-end party. Got to go and eat, drink and sing karaoke -- I'll report later.

Today's update is below. To see the actual items we've posted, go to http://www.jlist.com (if over 18) or http://www.jbox.com (if you want to see non-adult items only).

2004 is winding down, and everyone in Japan is experiencing what's known as shiwasu (shee-WAH-soo). Originally the name of the twelfth month in the old lunar calendar, Shiwasu has come to mean "that extra busy couple of weeks that everyone experiences at the end of the year." And December is a very busy time of year in Japan, when everyone seems to be in a hurry to get somewhere and do something. In addition to various Christmas-oriented preparations people may have, there are things to do to prepare for New Year's Day, the most important holiday in Japan. December is also when everyone does oo-soji or "big cleaning," cleaning their homes from top to bottom so they can enter the new year with a fresh start. Finally, December is the season for year-end parties, called bonenkai (lit. "forget the past year party"), a time when friends get together to reflect on all that happened over the past year. Companies also have bonenkai parties, a fun time for employees to eat, drink, and unwind as they say otsukare-sama deshita ("thank you for your hard work") to each other. J-List's year-end party is tonight, and in a couple of hours we'll all be enjoying delicious food, drink and karaoke, Japan style.

Like all countries, Japanese have a unique set of business customs, some of which can feel quite different to outsiders. First of all, Japanese always carry business cards (called meishi or name cards), which are exchanged when meeting someone. Usually business cards are handed and received with two hands; when you receive someone's card you should look at it for a few seconds then put it on the table, or in your jacket pocket (avoid sitting or writing on it). When negotiating a business deal, it's customary for parties to put forth proposals that are pretty close to what they are willing to accept, and the concept of negotiating back and forth on price somehow feels "unclean." Companies that have ongoing business relationships send gifts to each other in July (called Ochugen) and December (Oseibo). This year we gave sake from Gunma Prefecture to the various distributors and other companies that we do business with, and received various gifts in return. Crowd, the makers of X-Change, Brave Soul and other games, always sends us the best gifts -- this year they sent fresh Hokkaido salmon roe (ikura), a favorite of my wife's.

Do you want to go to Kentucky? In Japan, going to Kentucky means going to KFC, one of the most successful American businesses to enter the Japanese market, in business in Japan since 1971. While American food chains like McDonald's usually make a lot of changes to the menu to make the food appeal to local tastes (Teriyaki Burger, etc.), KFC in Japan stays pretty close to their U.S. menu, offering original recipe and extra crispy chicken, popcorn chicken and one of our favorite menu items, the Twisters, a large chicken strip in a flour tortilla -- just about the only thing approximating a burrito you can find in Japan. The company that runs KFC in Japan also operates the successful Pizza Hut chain here, however we're not sure where Pepsi enters into the equation, as they sell Coke at both restaurants. McDonald's has been putting a lot of price pressure on all competing restaurants over the past years, making KFC's products look expensive by comparison. KFC combats this by emphasizing that they use Japan-grown chickens, whereas McDonald's imports all its beef and chicken from Australia. KFC restaurants in Japan are always fun for gaijin visitors because they have life-size statues of Colonel Sanders in front of them (dressed up as Santa around Christmas). If you want to see what he looks like, here's a picture: http://www.bigempire.com/sake/images/kfc2.jpg.

Three products I think are really cool:

	Mizuho Kazami sexy figure. I love this trend towards "sexy figures" that look better than anyone could in real life. Prepainted so you don't have to learn how to do this yourself, it shows the sexy teacher Mizuho from Please Teacher, eating her trademark Pocky.
	Ayu Cos. Ayumi Hamasaki is the premier JPOP idol in Japan today, and true to form, the Japanese often make sexual parodies of her with look-alikes. This is the 4th in the series (and the best so far).
	Star Trek ships from Romandoh. While it's true the Romandoh ships aren't as good as the Furuta ones, they are very cool too. They're smaller and more minute, and you get two ships with each individual item (one to display and one to dock outside DS9 presumably).

Greetings from J-List 12/15/04

Japanese television is always interesting, with a broad mix of entertaining things to watch. Variety shows, which feature popular "talents" (entertainers) like cute-as-a-button Yuko Ogura, are a major staple of the airwaves. One show, called World's Greatest TV, brings clips of television from around the world, including bizarre TV commercials from America, Europe and Asia, and has famous people try to guess what will happen next. Another popular genre of television here is the "trendy drama," and love stories starring top stars like Yuji Oda and Akiko Yada are always near the top of the ratings charts. With the opening of cultural ties between South Korea and Japan, this year has also seen a huge explosion of interest in tear-jerking South Korean soaps, as well. Another popular genre of television here are classic Agatha Christie-style mysteries in which detectives have to solve a murder. There are many twists on the standard mystery formula, such as "Stewardess Deka" (a trip of crime-solving flight attendants) and one series in which they tell you who committed the murder right at the beginning, and then let you watch as the expert detective follows the trail right to the killer.

Like Cherry Blossoms in the Spring, words are fleeting things, and it can be surprising how their meanings change when they're imported into other languages. Many of the English words the Japanese use don't match up perfectly with their Japanese counterparts. When I had to replace a cooling fan in one of our Macs the other day, I went to the local computer store ("Power Up Computing Life") and asked for a fan, using the English word. Other concepts that we use the word "fan" for go by very different names in Japanese, such as senpuuki (an electric fan), uchiwa (a fan you use to fan yourself, non-folding) and sensu (a traditional folding Chinese fan). There are some other English words that the Japanese use, but only in limited ways. If there's a girl you're secretly in love with, a Japanese might advise you to "attack" her (meaning, go and win her love). The English word "camouflage" often refers to a gay man and woman marrying to hide this fact from others. And the English word "propose" is used in Japan only to mean a proposal of marriage, which certainly presents the potential for confusion in international work settings.

For whatever reason, Japanese men are fond of urinating outdoors. When driving around Japan, it's not at all uncommon to happen on an older man relieving himself by the side of the road -- even walking from my home to J-List, a mere 100 meters or so, I sometimes see one of our neighbors peeing in the ditch. It's partially a rural thing -- with a population of 140,000, our city is not large, and there's a lot of agriculture -- but I've seen friends from Tokyo and Yokohama do it when the need took them. It can get so bad that people occasionally put signs that say "It is forbidden to urinate here" (tachi-shon kinshi) in front of their homes. This bizarre and uniquely Japanese message is captured on one of our wacky T-shirts, too - a little piece of Japan for everyone.

Do you love the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki? Remember that J-List stocks all the excellent region 2 DVD releases for Studio Ghibli movies like Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky Laputa, Princess Mononoke and his Lupin the 3rd classic, The Castle of Caliostro (a favorite of mine). These DVDs are released in Japan directly by the studio and include many features that make them great for collectors. All discs feature English subtitles and/or dubbed tracks and are great for fans who want the definitive versions of these anime classics overseen by Mr. Miyazaki himself. The only catch is, they're Japanese releases (region 2), so you need a region free DVD player to watch them -- and J-List humbly recommends the three excellent units we currently sell.

Greetings from J-List 12/13/04

Before I started J-List I was an English teacher, and taught ESL to a wide range of Japanese students, from kids to the elderly and everyone in between. Although my students tried hard to learn, the sad reality is that most of them won't become really good at the language in their lifetimes. There are dozens of reasons why Japanese usually don't attain proficiency at English despite six years of education (more if they study English in college), but some major ones stand out. First, the Japanese draw a line between "English" (grammar and vocabulary) and "English conversation" (an ethereal thing which can't be defined), and since only the former can be measured in tests, students tend to be more concerned with demonstrable English skills rather than communication. Second, Japan's system of education is very rigid, and most teachers in the system aren't that capable at speaking themselves, which creates resistance to reform. Finally, just as a computer needs a "killer app" to justify its existence, Japanese need a consuming reason to study English if they're to attain real fluency. If you're in the U.S., you probably don't need German to get through your day, and it's the same for most Japanese -- there's little actual need to use English in their daily life. Currently, Japan's Ministry of Education, which decides the curriculum from for the entire nation, is trying to promote English and "internationalization" (an buzzword that gets thrown around a lot in official circles) by having kids start learning English from the third grade. However, I'm not hopeful that this will have any meaningful effect on English education in Japan.

When I was growing up, I remember thinking that they had arranged marriages in Japan, probably something I got from watching the episode of Happy Days where Arnold gets married in a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. In reality, they have "arranged meetings" called omiai, a kind of formal meeting between prospective partners, usually organized by busybody aunts who can't leave well enough alone. At an omiai, both parties talk about their interests and background and if they hit it off, they go out on more conventional dates to see where things lead. Before my wife met me, she had had omiai meetings with a few men, for example the son of a sake distributor that our liquor shop buys from, hence she couldn't refuse -- fortunately for me she didn't hit it off with any of them. As time marches on, the old-style formal omiai meeting is giving way to more modern methods, with companies that organize "omiai parties" (gatherings of marriage-minded people who interact with each other in a fixed space) and services that are like online dating but with a Japanese twist.

Like most gaijin, I had a fixation with Japanese vending machines when I came to live here, and took many silly pictures of them. Vending machines are quite advanced here, and often accept 10,000 yen notes (the equivalent of a $100 bill) and give change, verbally thanking you for your purchase. In Tokyo, where land is scarce, there are vending machines that are incredibly slim, so you can fit them in small spaces. You can buy just about anything from vending machines here, including canned coffee (hot in the winter, cold in the summer), canned corn soup, and cigarettes. Eggs and rice are sold in areas where there are no shops around, and I've seen machines that sell frozen meals and microwave it for you. Beer has been sold in vending machines for decades, and I have many fond memories of sitting in front of the local vending machine with friends, throwing a few back and talking with people who came by on their way to the station. Beer vending machines are being phased out, though, due to concerns about minors buying alcohol -- although the machine we have at our liquor store features a slot which reads your drivers' license for verification. Adult products are sometimes sold in vending machines, too, since customers like the privacy a machine affords.

We couldn't be happier with how popular the Japanese 2005 calendars have been this year. We've moved tons of these unique and beautifully printed calendars to people all over the world. Every day, a few more calendars sell out forever. We still have 80+ different items in stock, including the really cool Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service desktop calendars, other gorgeous anime items, popular swimsuit and JPOP idol calendars, and cool traditional offerings like kimono idols, sushi and bento. Remember, buy 4 or more and get 15% off automatically.

Remember that J-List carries dozens of amazing Domo-kun products for you, more than any other company in the world, we're pretty sure. Domo-kun is the ultra-cute spokesmonster for the "BS" (broadcast satellite) TV network operated by NHK, the BBC of Japan, and he's as cute a monster as you could ever hope to see. We've got tons of amazing Domo-kun toys on the site, from the famous classic plush toys to the limited-edition Shinsengumi Domo-kun toy and much more.

Greetings from J-List 12/10/04

Pachinko is a popular past-time in Japan, especially with men. It's basically a vertical pinball-style machine, with the object being to shoot metal balls at just the right angle needed to make them go into certain holes inside the machine, which makes more balls come out, so that you end up with more balls than you started out with. Although gambling is illegal, you can exchange the balls for "prizes" which you turn into "sell" back to the pachinko parlor. Gunma prefecture, where we live, happens to be the Detroit of the pachinko world -- virtually all major manufacturers are based here, and there are more pachinko parlors than in other parts of Japan. As with all industries, pachinko companies must work hard to come up with ways of attracting customers, and it's common for new machines to sport LCD screens and slot machine displays and innovative cabinet designs. Recently pachinko parlors are turning to famous anime shows to attract customers. Leiji Matsumoto has redesigned his famous anime Space Cruiser Yamato (aka Star Blazers) as Great Yamato II, a line of pachinko machines designed to capture the hearts of a new generation of players. I've posted some scans from a recent newspaper flyer advertising some new pachinko establishments in our area -- the art is pretty cool. See them here: http://www.jlist.com/pachinko/

Transliteration is the act of moving a word from one writing system into another, and with languages like Chinese and Japanese, there are always different approaches to this problem. This is why you get variations like Peking and Beijing for the capital of China or an alternate spelling of "Leon" for photo idol Reon Kadena's first name. Japanese is a syllable-based language, and has a system of syllabary sounds built into its structure. For example, you can express the sounds ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko in Japanese, but not "k" all by itself. One point of contention is how to Romanize three syllables that don't fit easily into this pattern, pronounced "shi" "tsu" and "chi." Should they be written as they're pronounced (called the Hepburn method), or should the "consonant + verb" pattern be preserved even if it results in written words that foreigners can't pronounce correctly (called the Nihon method), e.g. writing the word pronounced "tsuchi," meaning earth or ground, as "tuti." As with computer platforms, students of Japanese are usually willing to fight over the system of Romanization they think is best (whichever one they happened to learn first).

Among the many interesting products from Japan we carry, J-List also stocks all English-language dating-sim games in print, which allow you to interact with cute anime characters in interesting and uniquely Japanese stories. While most of the titles we carry are for those 18 and older, we do sell a line of non-adult "H games without the H," which allow everyone to you play through exciting the multi-ending stories on any DVD player, Playstation, Xbox or Mac or PC with a DVD-ROM drive. The newest interactive DVD game we have for you is Ishika & Honori, a great new game in which you must assist a cute-but-bumbling pair of Paranormal Defense Force investigators as they try to unlock a terrible mystery. Enjoy this great new game, in stock now!

Remember, J-List has hundreds of great gifts for your loved ones (or you!) this season. If you run out of time or want to add something cool at the last minute, consider a J-List Gift Certificate, which makes it easy to give the gift of wacky Japanese pop culture to anyone. Because you can choose either a physical gift certificate in gift box (mailed from San Diego) or an email-only gift certificate which is delivered instantly, these gift certificates are great for anyone looking for the perfect gift for the Japanophile on your list.

J-List carries many delicious snack items from Japan. Japan is famous for delicious chocolate-covered stick snacks like Pocky and Fran, and this year's flavors are really amazing. In addition to a larger package of original Pocky, our favorites this winter are Cocoa-Powder Rich Pocky and Strawberry and Chocolate Pocky Decorer ("the Pocky that's like eating a decorated cake").

Greetings from J-List 12/8/04

Japan is very technically advanced, and no where is this more evident than in the market for portable phones, called "keitai" in Japanese. Japan's keitai market has really matured, with the various companies that compete for market share each claiming different niches for themselves as they try to survive and flourish. The Microsoft of Japan is NTT, and their Docomo line is the top-selling cell phone, although they're expensive and don't really work any better or worse than their competitors. Next is "au by KDDI," the phone service run by NTT's main competitor. They've chosen phones with GPS, cameras that take beautiful pictures, and Bluetooth as their primary areas to compete in. J-Phone, which was renamed Vodafone after the European company bought them, has staked out cheap per-packet charges as its main battleground, for users who surf the web and send and receive lots of email on their keitai phones. And Tu-ka has built a name for themselves around the concept of "simple," making phones that have only bare-bones features, including a phone for elderly people that's as easy to use as a household cordless phone.

Yes, there seems to be no end to the features they won't think of to put into these things. Yesterday we went shopping for new phones for our entire family, including our nine year old son, who will be commuting to his new school next year. I was bowled over by the number of handsets I was presented with -- at least 200 different models and colors. Would I like 2G or 3G? How about the karaoke option for the phone? A phone with an extra-wide screen and Opera web browser built into it? A 3.2 megapixel camera with mini-SD slot? Of course they play MP3s. One phone had an interesting feature: a reflective mirror body, so ladies could check their makeup while they read their email. We finally went with the au phones, since we like the GPS feature that allows us to see where our son is via the web in case we can't find him for some reason. My phone came with songs and pictures of lovely South Korean pop star Boa, who is very much in demand in Japan these days. See a TV commercial for the phone I bought, here: http://www.jlist.com/phones

Japan is a great place, with friendly people, beautiful sights and a strength of culture that is really amazing. And while it's true that the Japanese revere the beauty to be found in the passing of the seasons or in the sight of Mt. Fuji in the morning, it can't really be said that Japan is at harmony with its environment. When I first came to Japan, I was surprised at the stagging amount of concrete and asphalt there was, even in the small rural city I live in (pop. 140,000). Signs of Japan's mastery over nature can be seen everywhere. In most every river, there are concrete breakwaters and graded slopes to guard against flooding, and when you take a drive in the mountains, be prepared to see heavily landscaped roads, often with chain link fences embedded in the sides of mountains to protect against falling rocks. Parks often feature concrete walkways, with concrete going right up against the trees. I have a theory on why this is: because Japan didn't have a cold war to fight, they invested massive sums in WPA-style public works rather than a huge base of military technology like the U.S. did. A silly law that requires that 100% of gasoline taxes be spent on roads whether they're needed or not is another part of the problem, and the reason drivers know they're going to be stuck in traffic from January to March, as municipal governments try to use up their budgets as quickly as they can. Some differences in how Japan manages its natural resources are to be expected, considering that Japan has to fit half the population of the U.S. into an area just 1/25 as large, but it's still surprising to the uninitiated.

Remember that almost all of the DVDs that J-List carries are zoned for "all" regions, meaning that you can view them on any DVD player in North America, or on any computer with a DVD drive in it. The exceptions to these are anime DVDs issued in Japan (such as the Studio Ghibli DVDs like Totoro), Japanese films released in Japan, and most "indies" DVD titles by companies like Moodyz and Wanz Factory. If you wish to view Japanese region 2 DVDs in the U.S., including European region 2 PAL titles, we humbly suggest the feature-packed region free DVD players we carry in San Diego. Our most reliable ever model is in stock and costs just $78!

Greetings from J-List 12/6/04

It's funny how a language reflects the people who speak it, and vice versa. Much of famously nuance-filled indirectness of the Japanese people has its roots in the language itself, although it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg question of which came first. For starters, Japanese speakers often leave off the subject when speaking, since it's almost always clear from the overall sentence. If I ask Yasu if he's posted the latest manga to the website, I'd just say, Atarashii manga wo dashimashita ka? (lit. "New manga [object marker] put out [question marker]") without adding a subject ("you") since I'm obviously asking about something Yasu did. Sentences can get even shorter -- if the rest of my meaning is clear from the context, maybe because I'm holding the manga in question in my hand at the time, I might just say "Dashimashita?" and he'd know what I was asking about. Also, Japanese makes use of passive forms of verbs to express concepts without specifying who did the action, with sentences like "it has been decided" rather than "my boss decided it," which serves to soften statements and smooth the creation of consent in groups. Passive voice is usually not used that much in English, but in Japanese, making a statement while leaving the subject unspecified is quite common.

Another interesting grammatical tidbit which reflects the character of the Japanese people is the verb ending "masho" which corresponds to "let's..." as in "let's eat" (tabemasho), "let's go" (ikimasho) or "let's not smoke" (tobacco wo yamemasho). In situations where verbal or written warnings would be worded in a command form in English (don't smoke, don't ride on the escalator backwards), it's common for Japanese to express the same message with this softer "let's..." verb form, making statements like "let's put our telephones into vibration mode" (manner mode ni shimasho) or "when a pregnant woman or elderly person gets on the train, let's give our seat to them" (seki wo yuzurimasho). These statements subtly create a warm and fuzzy "let's all cooperate" atmosphere that make people want to do their part for the good of everyone. Every year, the Japanese tax office sponsors commercials featuring famous TV personalities walking to their post office to mail their income tax forms -- "Let's fill out our tax forms accurately and honestly," is the verbalized message. It's quite different from the way things are usually done in the U.S.

Many aspects of life in Japan can be different from America and Europe, and marriage is one of them. For centuries, Japan's entire population has been recorded in "family registers" which are kept on file at city offices throughout the country. When a woman marries a man and goes to live in his house (called yome ni iku or "go as a bride"), she is completely erased from her father's register and joins her husband's, taking his last name, and when she dies, being buried in her husband's family grave. This system works both ways: males often join their wife's families households, too, called muko ni iku or "go as a son-in-law"), legally taking their wife's last name. Males sometimes join their wife's households but keep their own last names, a rarity called "Masuo-san" (MAH-soo-oh-san), named after the husband of Sazae-san in Japan's most popular and longest-running anime -- if you ever want to floor Japanese people with your knowledge of Japan, pull this term out and watch their eyes go wide. Since I keep my own last name even though I've joined my wife's household, I am a Masuo-san as well.

Japanese calendar season continues, and once again I'm amazed at the speed with which our unique 2005 calendars are selling out. A week ago we had 180+ different anime, JPOP, traditional, swimsuit idol and other great calendars, and now we're down to 130 or so. We still have lots of these excellent calendars, which are beautifully printed on large sheets of paper and sold in the Japanese market only. Check out our still-amazing selection of calendars before the ones you want disappear forever.

J-List is really humming, both in Japan and our San Diego office, as we ship hundreds of packages a day to everyone. We've got 24 hour turnover on shipping EMS orders, and the San Diego office is also working very hard to get all DVD player, bishoujo game and T-shirt orders out the next day. We hope we can serve you in some way!

Remember that you can see dozens of great gift ideas by clicking the "Looking for gift recommendations?" link on the right side of the site. We've gone through the entire site and selected some excellent items you might want to consider giving to others this year. And everything in the list is in stock and ready to be shipped out right away!

Greetings from J-List 12/5/04

Hello to everyone in J-List land. It's time for another installment of the J-List Infrequent Updates, for people who receive too much email and who only want to hear from J-List every once in a while. The site has been updated regularly over the past two weeks, and we've got hundreds of new items for your to check out, from every possible category you would wish for. We hope you'll visit us at http://www.jlist.com

Every rule has an exception, and the Japanese writing system is riddled with so many exceptions, it's almost as complex as English grammar. Japan adopted China's kanji writing system back in the 6th century; before this time the Japanese had no writing at all. As a general rule, each kanji is supposed to have two pronunciations: the original Chinese one (suitably shoehorned into the Japanese phonetic system), and a native Japanese one. Thus, the character the Japanese use for car, which originally meant wheel, is read kuruma (Japanese reading) when used by itself, or sha (Chinese reading) when combined with other characters to form a more complex word, such as jidosha, automobile, or jinrikisha, a "rick-shaw"). The two-ways-to-read-a-kanji rule is more of a guideline, though -- many characters have only one reading, while a few have a dozen or more. Underlying the kanji system are the two kana syllabaries, hiragana for writing Japanese words and grammatical particles, and katakana for writing foreign-loan words and the names of foreign people and places. But katakana is sometimes used in place of hiragana for emphasis (kind of like writing in italics in English), and a few English words like tobacco, coffee and club have had kanji assigned to them, since they've been in use for so long. Incidentally, if you've ever wondered why the Japanese don't do away with kanji and write using the two kana syllabaries, the reason is that without kanji, the brain can't easily take in the chunks of meaning on the page -- for me, there's nothing harder than reading a children's book because there are no kanji to break up the sea of hiragana. Here's an example of some of these writing systems in case you're curious what they look like: http://www.jlist.com/writing

Christmas in Japan is very different from in the U.S.. First of all, it's a normal day like any other -- people fight traffic jams to get to work, and if they're Christian, they attend mass in the evening. Gifts are given, but mostly between couples, or from parents to children -- Toys R Us Japan has made sure that no child will go without toys each year. More important than Christmas Day is Christmas Eve, when most families have a special dinner, and eat the Christmas Cake that they reserved a month in advance. It's easily Kentucky Fried Chicken's busiest night, but sushi shops also do very brisk business. Christmas Eve is also a night for lovers: if you want to reserve a room in a popular love hotel on Christmas Eve, you have to do it at least a year in advance.

The largest group of foreigners in Japan aren't American or Australians or Brits. They're Koreans, an interesting group because many of them were born and raised right here, and often don't even speak Korean unless they attended one of the Korean-only schools that pepper the country. To an American like me, it's odd that these people would not be considered Japanese, as all children born in the U.S. get to be American citizens automatically. But the relationship of Korea and Japan is a very complex one, somewhat akin to that of Britain and Ireland, and more or less by mutual agreement of both sides Koreans often live for generations inside Japan, never allowing themselves to become culturally assimilated. Or is it the Japanese who keep the Korean population from truly becoming part of their society? I couldn't possibly say for sure. On the one hand, it's not difficult for anyone (even white-boy gaijin me) to get Japanese citizenship as long as he meets certain reasonable requirements. Japan is always very sensitive to possible accusations of racism, so there are no groups that aren't "allowed" to become Japanese citizens. Many Koreans object to the Japanese requirement that all persons wanting to become naturalized must take a Japanese name, e.g. Taro Yamada, as well as requiring that many jobs, including teaching at public schools, be done only by persons with full Japanese citizenship. Koreans living in Japan make sure they only hang out with other similar-minded Koreans (e.g., South with South, North with North), lest questions arise about their loyalties. There is, unfortunately, a lot of organized crime related to North Koreans, everything from making North Koreans born in Japan pay protection money to "support" relatives back home to mass-production of high-grade cocaine. Gunma, the prefecture we live in, has many companies that make pachinko machines, and for some reason, pachinko, North Korea and crime always seem to go hand-in-hand around here.

Well, that's all for now. Remember that the J-List site has ben updated several times since you visited last. Please stop by J-List and see all the great items we have for you!

Greetings from J-List 12/3/04

Every rule has an exception, and the Japanese writing system is riddled with so many exceptions, it's almost as complex as English grammar. Japan adopted China's kanji writing system back in the 6th century; before this time the Japanese had no writing at all. As a general rule, each kanji is supposed to have two pronunciations: the original Chinese one (suitably shoehorned into the Japanese phonetic system), and a native Japanese one. Thus, the character the Japanese use for car, which originally meant wheel, is read kuruma (Japanese reading) when used by itself, or sha (Chinese reading) when combined with other characters to form a more complex word, such as jidosha, automobile, or jinrikisha, a "rick-shaw"). The two-ways-to-read-a-kanji rule is more of a guideline, though -- many characters have only one reading, while a few have a dozen or more. Underlying the kanji system are the two kana syllabaries, hiragana for writing Japanese words and grammatical particles, and katakana for writing foreign-loan words and the names of foreign people and places. But katakana is sometimes used in place of hiragana for emphasis (kind of like writing in italics in English), and a few English words like tobacco, coffee and club have had kanji assigned to them, since they've been in use for so long. Incidentally, if you've ever wondered why the Japanese don't do away with kanji and write using the two kana syllabaries, the reason is that without kanji, the brain can't easily take in the chunks of meaning on the page -- for me, there's nothing harder than reading a children's book because there are no kanji to break up the sea of hiragana. Here's an example of some of these writing systems in case you're curious what they look like: http://www.jlist.com/writing

Christmas in Japan is very different from in the U.S.. First of all, it's a normal day like any other -- people fight traffic jams to get to work, and if they're Christian, they attend mass in the evening. Gifts are given, but mostly between couples, or from parents to children -- Toys R Us Japan has made sure that no child will go without toys each year. More important than Christmas Day is Christmas Eve, when most families have a special dinner, and eat the Christmas Cake that they reserved a month in advance. It's easily Kentucky Fried Chicken's busiest night, but sushi shops also do very brisk business. Christmas Eve is also a night for lovers: if you want to reserve a room in a popular love hotel on Christmas Eve, you have to do it at least a year in advance.

Today is Friday, and that means I'll be taking the kids to our favorite public bath. Bathing in hot springs ("onsen") and public baths ("sento") is a popular pasttime in Japan, and despite the hard economic times of the past few years, Japan's public bathing sector has been going strong. Our favorite bath is called Yura no Sato, and offers over a dozen different baths to enjoy, from traditional Japanese "kama" baths which are basically giant metal pots to baths with rocks on the bottom which massage your feet.

For fans of the incredible 2005 Japanese calendars, we've gotten in some cool new items, including the deluxe calendars of Naruto, Prince of Tennis, Magi Magister Negima, and more. These are really nice large-sized calendars that are shipped flat, and every year we're amazed at the quality of the printing and art. We also have a treat for fans of the lovely Russian Goddess Yulia Nova: extremely limited stock of her 2005 calendar, which is very hard to obtain even in Japan, let alone around the world. Get your copy before we run out.

J-List has tons of great items for the special people on your Christmas list. In order to help you pick something good, we've gone through the site and selected some items that we know we'd like to receive, if it were us. To see the items we've selected, click this link: http://www.jlist.com/SEARCH/gift_idea

Remember that J-List makes dozens of magazines available through our "reserve subscription" system. Basically, we'll reserve the current issue of each month's magazine for you and have it in the mail to you by the time it's in bookstores here in Japan -- a few days earlier, actually, since we get our stock earlier than most bookstores. We've got many different anime, toy, JPOP/JROCK, street fashion, idol and other magazines available, we just know there's something you'd love to get each month. See the magazine subscription pages on our site for more information.

Baffled by Bishoujo? Troubled over Tekoki? Confused about Kogals? Because the products J-List sells are very unique and special, many of the terms that go with them can be confusing and alien to people not familiar with the concepts. J-List maintains a complete glossary of terms where you can get answers to all your questions about Japanese words. The link is on the left side of the J-List main page.

Greetings from J-List 12/1/04

You've been in Japan too long when you pronounce the word "warehouse" as "wah-rey house." Japanese pronunciation is extremely easy, once you get the hang of it and break it down into simple rules. First of all, Japanese is written with the two kana syllabaries (hiragana for Japanese words, katakana for foreign loan words), not an alphabet like English. There are just five vowels, the exact sounds found in languages like Spanish and Italian: A (ah), I (ee), U (oo), E (eh) and O (oh). Japanese words are expressed in consonant + vowel syllables (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko/sa, shi, su, se, so); vowels and the consonant 'n' can also be expressed alone. English grammar rules like silent e (or "magic e" as the Japanese call it) don't exist: hence a name like Tomoe is pronounced TOH-MOH-eh and the family name Inoue is just EE + NO + OO + EH. There are long and short vowels, so that the short "o" in a word like "okane" (o-kah-nay, meaning money) sounds different from the longer "oh" sound in Osaka. Since there's only one way to verbalize any syllable, there's no need to debate how a word should be pronounced (as with, say, British and American pronunciations of the word "tomato"). Happily, Japanese uses almost no inflection when speaking, which makes it much easier for English speakers than some other Asian languages.

I've lived in Japan since 1991, and every time I return home, I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle, the man who went to sleep as a British colonist and woke up twenty years later, after the American Revolution had taken place. Back in the old days of the 80s, anime was something you watched once a month at an anime club on a university campus. You watched everything in Japanese, with a xeroxed sheet of paper that explained what was happening in the episodes, if you were lucky -- almost nothing was available in English. The idea of going to a store and buying anime goods was also laughable, since no stores sold anime, except for a few comic shops that were ahead of the curve. Now, the level of acceptance of Japanese anime and manga is incredible, as people all over the world have come to embrace this fascinating alternative world culture. The wacky trivia show Fountain of Trivia that we watch every week is even being brought out in English, as Hey! Spring of Trivia, on Spike TV, so you can follow the adventures of cute model Megumi, Chairman Tamori and everyone else. Here's some info on the show, including broadcast times: http://www.spiketv.com/shows/series/hey/

Well, our little Thanksgiving was a big success. Using a combination of American and Japanese methods, we managed to bake our turkey and prepare all the other fixings, although we had some confusion from our Japanese oven, which had various "fuzzy" settings intended to make food preparation easier for us but which only got in our way. We had fun blending tried-and-true American traditions with Japanese ones -- our Japanese friends brought along sushi, and my kids asked for soy sauce while they ate their turkey with chopsticks. One thing about being an expat in Japan: it will make you appreciate your mother like nothing else. Thanks for everything you do, Mom.

Is there anything we can do for you for the holidays this year? J-List has a mind-boggling number of cool things from Japan, with something for everyone. Looking for a really unique gift? Browse our anime, snack and "wacky things from Japan" pages for a huge number of ideas. Want to keep it simple? Why not give our wacky Japanese T-shirts or hoodies, which stocked in San Diego for your shipping convenience. Don't forget are incredible selection of 2005 anime, JPOP, swimsuit idol and other calendars, which are only available from Japan and are already starting to sell out

Remember that J-List sells hundreds of cool things from Japan, including the popular "Mononofu" detailed miniature weapons that are made of real die-cast metal and exactly replicate the armor, shields and weapons used in Japan and Europe in centuries past. They're amazing miniature weapons that are great for displaying -- each piece comes with a stand and information on the weapon or armor. We go out of our way to make full sets of these great toys available for you, so there's no need to buy duplicates and throw them away.