American brands in Japan, video games for girls, and

One of the more amazing aspects of the Japanese is how aware they are of popular American brands. When my wife and I got married and built our Japanese house, we went shopping for a good bed. I was surprised to find that the top ranked bed we found was American, good old Sealy Posturepedic, and that's what we went with, partially because my wife wanted to be able to buy sheets in the U.S. (bed sizes are slightly smaller in Japan, so U.S. sheets wouldn't fit). If you like motorcycles, Harley-Davidson is incredibly popular here, and there are three or four dealers within 50 km of my house right now. Japanese men are likely to shave with a Gilette Mach 3, and as in the States, a good cup of coffee is defined in relation Starbuck's more often then not. One of the most well-known brands of alcohol is Jack Daniels, a company which has found fertile ground selling their Tennessee Whiskey here, exploiting their long history and building a legend around their name. Of course as an American I know that not every country has a positive image of my country, especially the way world events have been running, but happily, Japan is one of the few places in the world where most people feel unreservedly good about the USA (which is always nice).

That Sega is one smart company. A few years ago they created Mushi King (Bug King), a card game that capitalized on the fascination boys here have with beetles and other crawlies. You drop 100 yen into the coin slot and get a random "bug card" with bar codes on the sides to indicate what insect you're fighting with, then you do battle with other bugs by swiping your card to choose attacks. It was a smash hit, and for months you had to wait in line to play. Sega recently brought this concept to girls with Love & Berry, a popular game in which girls get cards representing clothes, shoes and other fashion accessories, which they can use to outfit their character and make her look o-sha-re (meaning "cute and fashionable"). The characters then battle by dancing in their cute new outfits, and get points for how good they look while doing it and how well they keep to the beat of the song. Everywhere you go, it seems, there's a crowd of girls waiting to play this game, with mothers standing around talking to each other while their kids wait in line. In generations past, video game arcades have had a bad image, akin to pool halls in a past era, but kid-friendly games like these are slowly changing things.

The Japanese often abbreviate words to make them easier to work with, such as English terms that are clumsy to use in the syllable-based kana writing system. For example, the English word digital camera is often shortened to digi-kame, American comics are known as ame-komi, an American short hair cat is ame-sho, a personal computer is a pasokon, and so on. They also come up with some "English" (quote unquote) abbreviations that can be quite difficult for gaijin to puzzle out. A TV commercial is known as a CM ("commercial message"), and some guys might make a CD of BGM (background music) to play on that special date. Before doing something, you should consider the TPO -- this Japanese word is short for "time, place, occasion." Several English abbreviations which sound strange to my American ear are actually British terms, possibly archaic, like OB/OG ("old boy/girl," i.e. an alumnus of a university), NG ("no good," the opposite of OK), and WC ("water closet"). See if you can figure out what these terms mean:

3LDK
PA
HP
OA
FA
IC

Answer in the next update!

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.

	Otome Gumi 2006 ~ Wotomegumi 2006. A nice photomagazine (which we define as a photobook with a staple, as opposed to perfect bound binding) featuring one gorgeous lady.
	Captain Kana -- Kana Kawai. A new photobook for, er, baseball fans that might just change how you view the sport.
	Japanese Comickers 2. Comickers is a book we hope you'll be seeing more of on J-List. It's a very good book detailing the best art from Japan's many illustrators and manga-ka, with articles on how to create that art.
	Super Beautiful Leg -- Maiko Ohshiro. Very beautiful legs on this lovely model, Maiko Ohshiro (her last name means "Big Castle"). I am very partial to Wanz Factory covers. ^_^
	Japanese Homestyle Dishes. Learn some Japanese cooking with this nice book.
	Natsuki Kuga 1/10 Scale Figure -- Mai-Hime. If you haven't watched Mai Hime, I hope you will -- it's just about the best anime to come along in a long time. My favorite character is Natsuki, and this is a figure of her.
	Snoring Totoro -- Inemuri Totoro. It's a plush Totoro that's sleeping...and he snores.
	Hana to Hidamari no Tami -- White *Shiro* ~ Flower w/ Sunshine People. A deluxe Hidamari no Tami solar-powered toy that's a beautiful flower. Watch it rock back and forth, through the miracle of solar power.
	Hard Type DICT *Black* ~ Elecom Electric Dictionary Case. Protect your precious Wordtank with this cool hard case from Elecom.
	Megami Magazine vol. 69 Feb. 2006. Nice new issue of Megami Magazine, loaded with cute characters.
	Ochaken Tea Dog "Make a Wish" Mascot. Ah, good old "Tea Dog," the character line that brings in a dog for every type of tea (including Sakura Tea Cat, too).
	Hello Kitty Suitcase Belt. Make sure your suitcasae stays closed with this cute suitcase belt -- kawaii!

The Love & Berry machines at Toys R Us.

Lots of kids gathered around, and lots of impatient mothers.

There are spin-offs, too, of course. This is Dino King, where you fight against dinosaurs instead of bugs.

Japan and "acting your age," all about Japanese seaweed, and the official dictionary of Japan

I've written before about how the "eyes of others" (hito no me) can be a strong force in keeping Japanese people pretty much on the same wavelength, which can make them appear very homogeneous when seen from the outside. The desire to avoid being judged negatively by the people around you is present in all of us, of course -- "frown power" has been used effectively against KKK members in the U.S. -- but Japan seems to carry it to an art form. One of the biggest unwritten rules in Japanese society seems to be "act your age," and in all things, individuals should do what is expected of them based on their current stage of life. If you go to a Japanese university, you'll likely see a lot of students between the ages of 18-23, but it'd be somewhat rare for, say, someone in their thirties to be attending a four-year university in Japan. This wasn't the case at all when I went to SDSU -- there were people of all ages and backgrounds studying together, including an older woman in my Japanese class who was "restarting" her life after a divorce. Japanese men and women who are unmarried late in life also seem to be in violation of these subtle social rules, earning them the cheerful title of makeinu (mah-KAY EE-noo, meaning "loser dogs"), usually applied to women but sometimes to men as well. When the time came to choose the color for our new car, I wanted to go with white since I liked the way it looked, but my wife was adamant that we had to choose a color that was more jimi (plain). Choosing white, she reasoned, would make us look like thirtysomethings who were trying to pretend they were still in their twenties, driving a car that was too flashy. I acquiesced, and now we have a car that's "sparkling gold mica" which is supposedly plainer and more boring than white, for some reason I can't fathom.

Japan is an island nation that's heavily dependant on the sea, and the sea is very imporant to people here -- there's even a Japanese holiday honoring the sea, Umi no Hi (Sea Day). Japanese get a lot of their food from the sea in many forms including fish, which is served broiled, stewed in miso sauce, or cut as sashimi or sushi. Another staple the Japanese rely on are assorted forms of seaweed. The name "seaweed" isn't a very flattening term for the various plants that are cultivated in the ocean, and as you might expect, there are many names for different types of seaweed consumed in Japan. Among the most common are nori (the dark green seaweed that's used with many types of sushi, and which covers the outside of an onigiri rice ball); wakame (WAH-KAH-meh, which you often see in miso soup); and kombu (used to flavor soup stocks and sometimes given as gifts in formal settings). Recently there's been a lot of attention paid to the health benefits of eating seaweed, which includes lowering of blood pressure. The basic breakfast in the U.S. might be a bowl of Corn Flakes, but in Japan, it's white rice with nori seaweed and maybe some kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage, yum).

The "most official" dictionary of the English language is considered to be the Oxford English Dictionary, a very scholarly lexicon that provides the definitions and etymology of 300,000 English words. The Japanese version of this is the Koujien, a massive 3000 page dictionary that is seen by Japanese as the "official" store of words on the Japanese language. We take dictionaries for granted today, of course, but part of the process of Japan's modernizing during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) included coming to terms with the Japanese language as a "proper" language, and for that there needed to be dictionaries just like they had in the West. One effective way to learn Japanese is to make yourself use a Japanese-Japanese dictionary rather than a J-E one, which forces you to think about the definition of words in Japanese. The popular Wordtank dictionaries that J-List sells include full editions of the Koujien for just this purpose.

J-List sells many unique things from Japan, including delicious snacks like Pocky, Melty Kiss and Japan Kit Kat. Unfortunately, it's so hot and humid during the summer that we have to remove all chocolate products from the site to keep them from turning to chocolate mud ("melty kiss" indeed). If there some delicious chocolate item on the site that you've been wanting to try -- maybe that scrumptious dual-layered Rich Fran from Meiji, or the new Kit Kat Baby -- this is your official wake-up call, as the chocolate items will be disappearing from J-List at a rather fast pace over the coming weeks.

J-List brings you our unique line of wacky Japanese T-shirts, with amusing and aesthetically beautiful kanji messages, and we've got a new shirt for you to day. Although McDonald's is quite common in Japan, the original "fast food" here isn't the hamburger but something more traditional: beef bowl, called gyudon, basically a bowl of white rice with flavored beef on top that can be gobbled down in a very short time. The most famous chain of beef bowl eateries is Yoshinoya, with over 1000 restaurants in Japan and more in the U.S. and Asia. Our new shirt is the perfect parody of this company's well-known corporate logo, because we've replaced the name Yoshinoya with "Yokozuna," which is the name of the highest rank in Sumo wrestling, Grand Champion. It's both pleasing to look at for its aesthetic design and a great joke that will get chuckles from any Japanese who see it. Available in size S through 3XL.

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.

	Japanese T-shirt - Yokozuna (Sumo parody). This is our latest T-shirt, and we think it's rather wacky -- a Yoshinoya corporate logo, redesigned to say Yokuzuna, which is the highest rank in sumo wrestling. Available in all sizes, S through 3XL!
	Fruits No. 99 Oct. 2005. We usually only carry this as a subscription item, but we've had some extra issues of late.
	Deathtopia Series ~ Haikyo wo Yuku ~ Going To the Ruins. Pictures of abandoned buildings, run down factories and the like are somehow very cool. Enjoy them in this cool new photobook.
	Dream Fetish Hospital 2 - Tekoki Clinic. If you get sick, pray that you get sent to this hospital, where your every fantasy will be fulfilled.
	Ecstasy Recipe -- Naomi Miyaji. This is one elegant lady, a popular up-and-coming JAV star from Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu. Filmed in multi-angle.
	KA ~ Mosquito. Nice erotic manga from Yo-ka. Very clean style.
	Ultra Jump Dec. 2005. Ultra Jump is the "deluxe" monthly Jump, as sopposed to Shonen Jump which comes out every week. The star of each issue is the newest Tenjo Tenge, penned by a manga artist who has drawn more than his share of "H" comics in the past.
	Three Totoro w/ Ocarina Music Box -- Ghibli Orgel Collection. Another Totoro music box.
	Blackmail One - 3 Disc Box Set. A nice new boxed set for hentai DVD fans, which we get a lot of requests for.
	Elecom 8 Buttons USB Game Pad -- White. A game controller from Elecom that's very handy and easy to take with you. Great for notebook gamers.
	Hello Kitty Zodiac Otedama -- Set of 12. First of all, this is expensive -- I was surprised when I saw myself. But, it's very, very cool - a Chinese zodiac of Hello Kitty bean bags for displaying, juggling, you name it,
	Colorful Sauce Bottles -- Hexagonal Bottles. For some reason, these little soy sauce bottles are always very popular -- you use them to bring soy sauce, ketchup, tonkatsu sauce and so on with your bento lunch.
	Lotte Black Toppo. Toppo is really one of the best snacks to come out of Japan -- a long, baked pretzel with chocolate on the outside, man it's good.
	Kitty & Mimmy Wallet -- Classic Type Kitty. Man, I love this wallet -- it's so cool and so retro.
	Win Chan 1/7 PVC Figure -- Kaiyodo. Win Chan is a cute anime girl invented by one of the PC magazines, who represents Microsoft Windows, although she's not a member of the OS Tan pantheon of characters. Very cute detailing here.
	Tamagotchi Coin Bank -Full Set. Very stylized, the world of Tamagotchi is taking root outside of electronic pets. Here's a set of coin banks from Japan that we thought was mighty cool.

Just some random images, sorry for the lack of cohesion. Here's my iMac running Windows -- pretty spiffy. I have to say, this box is really sweet -- faster at many things than my G5 quad, can be a PC and a Mac, is very quiet, has that remote and Front Row. I think I'm ni "nerdvanna."

Various flavors of soft-serve ice cream, or as the Japanese call it, "soft cream." Would you like azuki bean, or maybe matcha?

Or, would you like to challenge yourself to Black Sesame Seed ice cream?

Driving in our MPV with the navi feature. There sure are a lot of Nazis in our city! (Of course, the swastika mark denotes Shinto shrines here.)

Good, refreshing green tea. I am of the mind that they should sell bottled green tea in the U.S. without sweetener. Has anyone seen this? Every time I go to Trader Joe's (a god-like supermarket, if you don't know what it is) I see green tea, and it's got honey in it.

Japan's latest "boom," the custom of giving sake to your political candidate, and driving in Japan

Japan is the land of the "boom," and you never know when some new thing is going to come out of left field and become wildly popular for a few months and then fade away. One year it was Vietnamese food and Asian-style home furnishings, then it hand-made jam, and then it was the Playboy bunny on just about every T-shirt you saw -- even some kids clothes, since the image is meaningless here, just an icon that looks "American." Now Tokyo is in the midst of a "spice boom," with department stores and specialty shops selling various rare spices, from Indian masala to coriander to raw cinnamon and more. There are even "spice circles" where groups of women explore new spices and how they can be used in cooking. It goes well with the Japanese interest in "aroma therapy" (soothing the mind using various fragrant oils and incense, some of which we have on the website).

It's election season around here, which means one thing: lots of trucks driving around with candidates shouting "I will work hard for you!" and "Thanks for your support!" through loudspeakers. It's also a very busy time for my father-in-law, who runs the small liquor shop on the first floor of our house. It's common for businesses and families to give gifts to their favorite candidates to show their support, most often a large ceremonial bottle of sake called an issho-bin (which translates as "all-your-life bottle," since it's so big you supposedly never run out) with hissho (certain victory) hand-written on the outside of the box. My father-in-law often talks about the old days, when only a few places were licensed to sell alcohol and their shop had lots of customers, but this was slowly eroded by the widespread availability of alcohol at convenience stores and supermarkets. He gets his revenge at times like this though, since you couldn't expect a 7-11 clerk to know the proper way to package and inscribe an important gift for your political candidate -- but he's been doing it for three decades.

One thing you can say about Japan: driving here will make you a better driver. Between learning to park your car with less than 6 inches of space on either side to memorizing winding, narrow streets, driving in Japan can be a challenge. Although Japan has freeways connecting major cities, there's usually not one between where you are now and where you want to go, so almost all driving is done on normal city streets. Learning your way around a Japanese city is made more difficult by the fact that only the largest streets have names, and there's no way to refer to smaller streets other than "that one road with the beauty shop and the convenience store on it." This was especially difficult for me when I first got here: in order to learn my way around the city I lived in, I had to throw away American-style memorization-by-directions ("turn left on College Avenue") and had to instead envision where I wanted to go in 3-D in my mind. It was kind of a bizarre experience. Like the British, the Japanese drive on the right side of the road, so whenever I go back to the States I have to be extra careful to get my bearings straight before getting in the car. It's usually not a problem -- I just make sure I'm closer to the center of the road than the passenger seat is no matter which country I'm in, and it works out okay.

If you're interested in learning Japanese, J-List wants to help you, and we've got a great addition to our "reserve subscription" service: Nihongo Journal, which you can now get sent to you every month -- the only way to get this great magazine sent to you from outside Japan, actually. A perfect-bound magazine filled with Japanese study aids for all levels, you can read essays, follow current events in Japan, learn ways of memorizing kanji, and more. Since articles are written for a variety of levels, you can put away your issues and come back to them later, when your language ability has increased. Features translations in English, Korean and Chinese too, and an audio CD for building listening skills. I personally used Nihongo Journal for many years -- I used to read it the bath -- and highly recommend you all students of Japanese give it a try. (As always, we will only send new issues to subscribers, so if you order the individual issues we've got on the site now, you don't need to worry about getting the issues sent to you again as part of your subscription.)

J-List specializes in the PC dating-sim games from Japan, "pretty girl" games for Windows computers that let you interact with cute anime girls in a wide range of stories and settings, with multiple endings to explore. For fans of the more traditional "H" anime on DVD, we're happy to announce that we're now carrying these titles for you too, with many new titles on the site today.