Being an American in Japan during Thanksgiving, subtleties of Japanese pronunciation, and a cultural lesson for PSP owners

By and large, an American expat living in Japan has two choices when it comes to celebrating Thanksgiving: completely forget about it, or get a bucket of "Kentucky" for the family and pretend it's delicious oven-roasted turkey. Thanksgiving is, of course, an event that's quite unique to the U.S., and since Japanese stores generally lack stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie filling and all those other good things, it can be awfully hard to get into the spirit of the season. Just the same, you can give thanks for all the good things you have no matter where you live in the world, and this year my family and I are going to take on the challenge of having a real American Thanksgiving in Japan, with a turkey (imported from Australia), cranberry sauce (sent by my mother), sushi (brought over by a friend of ours) and other good things to eat. It won't be completely traditional, but we'll make do somehow. We hope everyone in the U.S. has a wonderful holiday!

When you live in a country as different from your home as Japan is from the U.S., the potential for culture shock is everywhere, even in video games. I ordered Lumines II from the States since I'd enjoyed first version so much, but when I slapped the U.S. release game into my PSP and started playing, something felt strange to me -- for some odd reason, I was having trouble navigating the menus, and kept jumping back to the title screen instead of starting the game. It turns out that, due to differences in how Japanese perceive the symbols X and O compared with the West, Sony had switched the button functions around. While X probably corresponds pretty easily with the idea of "execute" to most Americans, in Japan it's known as batsu and it means "bad" or "no" (as an esoteric aside, a person who's been divorced once is batsu ichi, if twice then batsu ni, and so on). Meanwhile, the circle (maru in Japanese) is the universal symbol for "correct" or "yes" or "good" in Japan, and is the natural choice to mean "accept this menu selection." When a teacher marks answers on a test, she draws circles over the correct answers, and if the student got a good grade, she draws a hana maru or a big flower with a circle inside, the highest praise a teacher can give. Maru sounds lucky, and ships are usually christened with the word as part of their names (although it wasn't all that lucky for the Kobayashi Maru). But perceptions are fleeting things. When a finance company called Maru-Fuku opened near our house, I commented that the name gave me a bad feeling, since mal means "evil" in Spanish, and fuku (good fortune) sounded like "hook" to me. My wife had exactly the opposite impression of the company, telling me that the name sounded to her like it would bring "happiness and good luck to every corner of your home."

Would you like a dorink with that cheeseburger? How about a pair of Edowin jeans? Last weekend I took my kids for a dorive. One of the unique features of Japanese is that it's a syllable-based language, which means that you can express syllables like ka, ki, ku, ke and ko but not a "k" sound by itself. This is part of the reason that the Japanese often have thick accents when speaking foreign languages, since everything must be filtered through this limited phonetic system. The syllable-based pronunciation also has an effect on how some words are used in Japanese, for example, causing the "d" consonant to be expressed as a separate sound, do (doh, as in a deer, a female deer, or what Homer Simpson says), which alters the sound of word like "drink" "Edwin" and "drive" (above) ever so slightly. Just as Japanese anime has been accepted all over the world, there are many fans of Japanese TV dramas, which are invariably called "doramas" by fans due to this slight quirk of phonetics in Japanese.

J-List's "reserve subscription" system is a great way to get the current issues of dozens of popular anime, manga, toy & hobby, fashion and other magazines sent to you each month. Whether you're thrilling at the amazing number of pull-out posters in each issue of Megami Magazine, feeling the pulse of Japan's gothic cosplay or Harajuku street fashion culture, or just checking out the latest in J-Rock, our subscriptions really make it easy to stay in touch with Japan. By customer request, we're giving you a choice now: in addition to the month-to-month revolving subscription we've always offered, you can choose our new annual option, pre-paying a discounted flat fee for one year worth of issues, with SAL shipping included in the price. We originally put the annual subscription in place for libraries and other institutions that prefer to pay once per year (and we're happy to serve these customers), but decided to extend the option to everyone to make it easier than ever to get great magazines from Japan.

It's calendar season around here, and we've gotten even more great 2007 anime, idol and other calendars on the site ready for your immediate order. The newly updated calendars include Naruto, Bleach, Norakuro (a homegrown Japanese character who was used in propaganda films during WWII), One Piece, and many others. The stock we've got of 2007 calendars is in most cases the final stock of calendar we'll be getting in, so if the last copy of that great calendar of Totoro or Haruyo Morita or Mihiro goes, it'll be gone forever.

J-List is hiring in our San Diego office! We've got an opening for an assistant to help fill orders and aid our T-shirt printing operation, and if you're in the area and are looking for a fun job working with a great bunch of people, we'd like to talk to you. To see details on the job and the benefits, please see this page for more information.

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.

	eonna Aug 2006 vol. 32 ~ e onna with DVD Region ALL. eOnna ("ii onna") is a fabulous magazine that I hope to see more of. I mean, girls so sexy they leave their clothes on, what a concept...
	Panst Flash ~ Fetish Photo Album. Once I went to Spain, and happened to pick up magazine featuring stocking photography, sort of like this. But there was a world of difference, with no attempt at capturing beauty or something more aesthetically meaningful in the mag I happened across.
	Obscene Gal's Tutor -- Hotaru Akane. Wouldn't we love to have a hot girl like Hotaru-chan teach us?
	The Pink Coral 1 ~ Momoiro Sango 1. A really cool H manga that's somewhat of a parody of the Love Hina style of harem manga.
	Cosmode 013 ~ Costume Model Magazine . Ah, nice new issue of Cosmode, loaded with pictures of Japanese people in anime costumes.
	Japanese Castle Collection -- Set of 7 *Full Set + Rare Item*. Miniature Japanese castles, including Himeji, my own favorite.
	The Venus of Sakura st. 3 ~ Sakura Dori no Megami vol. 3. Nice new ero manga from Chosuke Nagashima, one of my favorite artists.
	Starship 19990724 Police Figure -- Intron Depot ~ Masamune Shirow. Baby, this is a nice figure, from the pages of Shirow Masamune's dynamite Intron Depot 3 work.
	Spiral Alive -- 2007 Wall Calendar. Nice new boxed anime calendar for 2007 for fans of Spiral Alive.
	Sumomomomomomo 2007 Wall Calendar. Besides having the imost interesting name I've seen all day, this is a calendar with great art.
	Fish Mouse Poi -- Blue ~ Elecom. It's a mouse, it's a fish -- it's so cute. From Elecom.
	Vegetable Store -- Full Set *Set of 10* ~ Re-ment Puchi Sample Series. Wow, new offering from Re-Ment (do these guys ever sleep?) featuring super detailed vegetables that you can buy and eat, if you happen to be Barbie-sized.
	Gainax Heroines Part03 -- Full Set *Set of 5* ~ Bandai Gashapon. I am no small fan of Gainax, as you can guess if you've ever moseyed over to Seishun.org. This is a really cool new line of gashapon figures.
	Kimono Netsuke -- Hana *Gorgeous* ~ Red. I like that these things have a kanji printed on them. Sadly we have 2 of each color/design, so you should check them out before the one you want is gone.
	New Year Decoration -- Pair of Authentic Kadomatsu. Traditional New Year's decorations from Japan. we're posting them now so people can order them and save on shipping.
	New Year Decoration -- Shimenawa Rope with Shishimai. Another type of decoration, which you hang on your door (or sometimes, your car hood).