Lightning strikes, space-faring Japanese astronauts, and interesting tips on learning kanji

Lightning strikes! Twice before the J-List office has had the bad luck of being struck by lightning, frying our main air conditioning unit and causing us to spend a week or so sweltering in the heat and humidity of Japan's high summer. Well, it's happened again, and currently the J-List staff is trying to work in near-sauna conditions. Fortunately the lightning also knocked out the ice cream freezer at my parents' liquor shop, so we had an excuse to eat all the ice cream before it melted. One thing I've learned about the Japanese: nothing makes them more pleased than when one of their own attains international recognition, and writers like Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, directors like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, and athletes like Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki all occupy a special place in the hearts of their fans at home for this reason. So you can imagine that Japan is pretty proud of its latest hero, astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who went up in the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery. Every time I turn on the television I see footage of Noguchi-san, making jokes while floating in zero-g or talking to his fans on the ground. As a former English teacher, I'm happy to see men like him become the new heroes to kids in Japan, and I hope it encourages more young Japanese to try harder to master English. Yesterday morning the crew of the shuttle was awakened with a broadcast of Japanese children singing the theme song to My Neighbor Totoro ("Let's Take a Walk") because it was the day of his first spacewalk outside the ship. Urayamashii! (OO-ra-ya-ma-SHE, which means "[I am] so envious [of him]!")

There's no doubt about it: the most complex part of learning Japanese is kanji, unless you're fortunate enough to already be fluent in Chinese. An educated Japanese person generally uses around 2000 kanji, compared with 3500-5000 for the same person in China. Because the Chinese writing system was basically grafted onto the existing Japanese language in the 5th century, there are fundamentally two ways to read any character, the on (rhymes with bone) or Chinese reading, and the kun (rhymes with spoon) or Japanese reading, the latter being an existing Japanese word that's been assigned to a kanji based on the character's meaning. As a general rule, you use the Chinese reading for compound words made up of two kanji (for example, the word for hibernation, toumin, written with the characters for winter + sleep), and there are quite a few Chinese and Korean words that are the same in Japanese for this reason. The Japanese reading is usually used for kanji words that appear by themselves (e.g. the character for winter written all by itself, fuyu), or in special cases like names of people or places. It's hard to believe, but it's easier to memorize Japanese vocabulary words through kanji than, say, learning from a book which prints Japanese in romaji (the Roman alphabet) For example, the kanji for "most" can be combined with a variety of other kanji to describe ideas like tallest, shortest, etc. Examples above are, from left, saikou (most + high = highest, also meaning the best), saitei (most + bottom = the lowest, meaning a real jerk when applied to a person), saisho (most + begin = the first), saigo (most + after = the last), and saishin (most + new = the newest). The rightmost example is the above mentioned kanji for hibernation. Memorizing these words in kanji only takes two "bytes" of your brain's memory once you've gotten used to the characters themselves, but memorizing the words in the Roman alphabet would be harder since they're just a jumble of letters. J-List loves DVDs, and we sell hundreds of unique DVDs from Japan. While most of our titles are region free, so you can play them on any standard DVD player, Japanese anime, specialized "indies" and some other discs are published as region 2, meaning you need a special player to play them. We've got two great region-free DVD players from Lasonic, the karaoke-enabled DVD7880K and the amazing DVD7050, which plays DIVX movies burned onto DVD-R, DVD-RW, you name it. We've lowered our prices on these players to just $78 and $98, so why not pick one up today? 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.

	A Bilingual Handbook on Japanese Culture. This is another of those really amazing items that we come across that make me think, wow, what visionary companies are publishing things like this? It's a great book of articles on things from Japanese funerals to history to language and government, both in English and Japanese.
	Kimono Hime 5 ~ Natsu Asatabi ver. Here's another issue of Kimono Hime, a gerat magazine that gives you loads of information about kimono culture in Japan. I especially liked the photos of older style kimonos from the 1940s and 50s, that was cool.
	Passion -- Amika Hattan. Japan's hardcover photobooks are the most beautiful in the world, with big glossy pages and the best printing we've ever seen. This is a new offering from a very special model, Amika Hattan, an amazingly elegant collection of artistically beautiful pictures.
	Chu Totoro Plush Doll -- M ~ Blue. The Totoro plush toys by Sun Arrow are among the coolest things we sell. Very well made, they are soft to the touch and very huggable. This is the "Chu" (middle) Totoro, the blue one.
	The Theory of Big Bust Evolution -- Shoko Goto. You can see why Shoko Goto is getting a lot of attention these days -- her amazing J cup bust is 110 cm in circumference, and have no doubt that it's totally natural. She puts even Anna Ohura to shame.
	Cowboy Bebop Illustrations ~ The Wind. This is something that's very cool -- a deluxe art book full of pictures, sketches, character info and more for fans of Cowboy Bebop, the amazing anime designed by Toshihiro Kawamoto.
	Tsukamoto Tenma 1/8 Scale Figure -- School Rumble. Japan's famous anime characters come out in three dimensions with great figures like these. This is an excellent figure of Tenma Tsukamoto from School Rumble, very beautifully crafted with every detail you could want.
	Adult Fairy Tale -- Mihiro. Mihiro is one of the top adult stars in Japan today, This is her newest release by Alice Japan, fittingly, a parody of Alice in Wonderland with erotic themes.
	AG Super Erotic Anthology Comic vol. 16. A new issue of AG, the magazine of "art, sex and CG culture." Published by a dedicated company who really loves Japan's erotic comics. His dedication really shows in every issue of AG, which keep managing to get better than the last ones. If you're a fan of Japanese H manga, we hope you'll cast your "dollar votes" for AG by considering a subscription through us.
	Hello Kitty Face Rubber Bands (24 Pieces). Another item that floored me -- rubber bands in the shape of Hello Kitty and her rabbit and bear friends. Kawaii!!
	DX Navy Dragon Setta. A very nice pair of traditional Japanese setta sandals, these are extra large shoes that are great for men who want to wear something special on their feet. The soles are real leather, very nice!

Just as there are veins of alternate cultures in "white bread" America, from Japanese anime to cajun cooking to Thai, exploring Korean culture in Japan is always interesting. Despite various difficulties and hard-headedness on both sides, Japan and Korea are very close, and the histories of the two countries are forever linked. A favorite dish in Japan is yakiniku, aka Korean BBQ, and here are pictures from our trip to a Korean BBQ place in San Diego.

Korea House on Convoy (San Diego's Asian district is the best Korean BBQ place I've found, out of four or so that I've sampled. Here is the address if you need it. As you can see, they have cute English in Korea as well as Japan.

Basically, Korean BBQ is a big grill where meat is cooked by you or your server, depending on the establishment. There are many kinds of meat you can order, including a few that perhaps should not be contemplated. I recommend the first two items on the BBQ menu, basically the normal beef and chicken -- nothing too scary there. In addition to whatever you order, you'll also get lots of vegetables as well as a dozen or so small plates of appetizers -- make sure to try all types of kimchi (pickled, spicy cabbage), which is the source of the Jedi-like calm you may have noticed in most Korean people. Also, all Korean nori (seaweed) is to die for. I recommend you also order steamed rice, because eating Asian food without rice is weird. Also, the best way to eat the meat is to wrap it in lettuce leaves, along with spicy miso and maybe some rice, but you have to ask for lettuce or they won't bring it.

One of the basics of Korean food is kimchi soup (kimchi chi-gae), guaranteed to put a fire in your belly. I had to argue with the lady for a while to bring me the spiciest kimchi chi-gae they had, and it was very spicy, but not so spicy that I couldn't eat it. I think to see a gaijin (how do you say gaijin in Korean?) insisting on being brought the spiciest thing on the menu freaked the waitress out a little. If you're brave (braver than me), order yukke, which is raw cow meat. Yasu loved it but it wasn't to my taste.

Korean BBQ eaten in the U.S. is somewhat different from what you find in Japan. In Japan, you go to a chosen hanten, or Korean restaurant, and order your meat and vegetables, which you always cook yourself. There are no free appetizers in most places, which is bad because there are some things people wouldn't ever try otherwise. You never get the lettuce leaves in Japan, but on the plus side they have this amazing tangy sauce that you can dip the meat in to cool it, then sit that on the rice, allowing the sauce to drop down into the rice until it's fabulously delicious. I would like someone at the U.N. to make a motion to require Japanese Korean restaurants to give you lettuce and the little dishes, and American (and presumably Korean) Korean restaurants to give you that sauce. Then there will be peace.

This is O.B., the most famous (?) beer of South Korea, or at least the one you see all the time. I've *just* realized that it means Oriental Brewery, and not Old Boy, as it would in Japanese. It's quite good, a light and drinkable pilsner that's got a lot more flavor than it look like it would have. When I took my employees out to Korean food in Vegas, we saw a beer poster for O.B. featuring none other than Aoi Sora, the famous adult film star from Japan. We were quite floored by this. Unfortuantely I didn't have a camera with me at the time, so that image was lost to the ages.

Oo! I found a review for this restaurant here, if you want a second opinion.