China as the source of culture for Japan, and all about Japan's tendency to be seasonal about everything

Just as almost all aspects of modern European culture have their basis in Rome and Greece, much of Japan's culture was based on Chinese elements, either imported directly or filtered through the Korean Peninsula. Many areas of Japanese life, from the architecture to the writing system to the structure of early government, originally hail from China. The Japanese pay a lot of attention to the principles of feng shui, and try to design homes and cities so that the layout will promote the flow of positive energy -- the choice of Edo (Tokyo) as the national capital was made in part because it's exactly northeast of Kyoto, which has a special meaning according to feng shui. The Japanese also follow eto, the Chinese sexagenary cycle, the complex system of twelve animals that cycle through each year -- my wife and I were both born in the Year of the Monkey. Although the Japanese adopted the Western calendar in the Meiji Era, they still remember the Chinese New Year with Setsubun, on February 5, a day when Japanese kids throw beans at imaginary devils to chase them out of the house.

One thing about Japan: it's a very seasonal place. Spring is beautiful with its short-lived cherry blossoms, summer is hot and humid with many festivals, fall is filled with crisp brown leaves, and winter is cold and frosty. I've met Japanese who tell me with great pride that, unlike America, Japan has four distinct seasons, and they enjoy every one of them -- apparently these people haven't ventured outside of Southern California. Japanese people tend to avoid being kisetsu-hazure (ki-SET-tsu ha-ZOO-ray), doing the wrong things for the wrong season. In an ESL textbook once there was a picture of a boy flying a kite in summer. But in Japan, flying traditional kites (tako) is nearly always done around New Year's Day, so my students were amazed at the picture.

Japan's tendency to be very seasonal extends to other aspects of daily life. Swimsuits are sold in the summer months, and calendars sold at the end of the year -- don't even bother trying to find something that's out of season, it won't be available. When fruits are in season, they're ripe and delicious, but since Japan doesn't import much fruit from other parts of the world like America does, when something is out of season it's not available for love or money. Strawberries are in season in Japan now, but they won't be for long, so last weekend we took the kids to a place in the mountains where you can eat as many strawberries off the vine as you want for $8 per person. They were delicious.

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." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	Costume Play International. Cosplay is dressing up in anime or other costumes and, er, playing. The latest boom are "international" girls dressing up in famous Japanese costumes and getting it on. Very popular with J-List customers, too.
	Chinese Zodiac Lucky Card Charm -- Monkey. Holy sexagenary cycles, Batman, it's a metal card with cool Chinese figures and characters on it. This is an omamori (good luck charm) that you can carry around in your wallet with you. One for each Chinese zodiac sign. (We'll be posting the others to the site next week, if you're not one of the animals we are posting now).
	Ryoku Style *Green* - Ochaken. Green tea is popular in Japan. Cute dogs are popular too. Can you see the connection? This is a very cute plush toy of Ochaken, the green tea dog. Comes complete with cute Japanese clothes for him to wear.
	Elecom USB Japanese Full Keyboard. We get a lot of requests for Japanese keyboards, which is a little odd since no one really needs one -- if you want to type Japanes in Windows XP (Pro) or Mac OS X, just enable the keyboard input function and it will work with the keyboard you already have. But maybe it's an aesthetics thing, since they do look rather cool with katakana on the keys.
	Delicious Open-Air Market. Re-Ment is the meticulous company that makes most of those detailed Japanese miniatures you have seen on the site. Their latest recreation are the highly detailed fish, fruit, matsutake mushrooms, and other items sold at open-air markets in Japan. Tres cool.
	Walking Around Tokyo ~ Eigo de Aruku Tokyo. Okay, this book is damn cool. It walks you all around Tokyo, with just about everything that's worth seeing covered -- electronic and otaku stores, cultural areas, shrines, places to people-watch and learn about the country. It's filled with color, and is in both English and Japanese. Dude!
	Whitey vol. 3 Oct 2004. You wouldn't expect "Whitey" to be a name for an adult magazine, but then, "Woody" or "Beaver would make good names for air conditioners. This is actually a rather nice magazine -- it's very well done, softcore, and half the models don't even get naked, which makes it even more interesting to me.
	Lemon Lime Mentos -- Japanese Limited. We aim to please at J-List, and by customer request, we now carry the only-sold-in-Japan flavors of Mentos.