Embarrassments of being a foreigner in Japan, Japan's latest "rose boom" and words that feature a unique kanji

Hello again from Japan, where the zipper in your pants is known as the "window of society" (shakai no mado).

As a foreigner living in Japan, I consider myself an honorary representative of the English-speaking world here, and do my best to present a good image to my Japanese hosts. Nothing is more embarrassing than having my own English abilities let me down for one reason or another, though. For example, there are times when a Japanese person will know some word that I've never encountered -- doctors are always surprised when their gaijin patient isn't familiar with a certain medical term, when clearly every English speaker must know every word that was ever coined. When I taught ESL I was often asked to explain the rules of English grammar, i.e. why this sentence takes a gerund but this one needs an infinitive verb, and all too often I was unable to produce an answer that satisfied my students. Sometimes Japanese people ask you to translate something into English despite the fact that the concept is untranslatable -- since "my city is surely the city of water, poetry and vibrant greenery" is not much use to anyone, even if it is a technically accurate translation of a Japanese sentence. Most embarrassing are times when I can't recall a certain vocabulary word. After fifteen years of living in a foreign country, some terms just sink into the nether reaches of your brain when not recalled for a long time. Then suddenly you need to use he word "obstetrician" and it takes you a minute of deep thought to bring it up.

The Japanese language is often thought of as being extremely difficult, and was called a creation of the devil to halt the spread of Christianity by the original missionaries that came here. I never thought of it as being that hard, although there is one area that is quite challenging for "white boy" gaijin, learning the kanji that are used to express the language in writing. Studying characters that are related to each other is one way to make it easier, and one of my favorite kanji is the enigmantic ki, which is usually translated as spirit, mind, or essence. This kanji shows up in some basic words, like genki (happy, energetic), byoki (sick) kuki (air) and kimochi (feeling). It's used in martial arts, too, such as kiai (the spirited yells you make when you perform moves in karate or aikido). There are plenty of phrases that use the word, too. If you have a short ki (ki ga mijikai) you're short-tempered, but someone with a strong ki (ki ga tsuyoi) is strong-willed and can take on any challenge.

Flowers and Spring go well together, and this Spring Japan seems poised for a "rose boom" (to go with this year's "spice boom," already under way), as companies bring out various products that make use of the fragrant flowers. Candles and incense that contain oils extracted from roses are popular items in hip department stores like Tokyu Hands, and retailers are always interested in finding new ways to package the pleasant aromas for consumers. One company sells high-quality cashmere sweaters dyed pink with rose essence that are just beautiful. The Japanese have a long history of serving flowers as a decorative food, part of the traditional kaiseki meals famous in Kyoto, and sure enough, beautiful Japanese dishes that contain rose petals (which may or may not be eaten, depending on individual tastes) are a hit this season.

J-List brings you Japan's most excellent magazines via our "reserve subscription" service, a revolving subscription whereby we reserve the issues of Japan's best anime, manga, music, fashion, hobby and other magazines for you. Today we've added a new item for you to enjoy: Cure, the excellent magazine of "Japaneseque Rock + Visual Styling" that's loaded with vibrant pictures of Japan's "visual-kei" and gothic bands. As usual, you never need to pay in advance for our subscriptions and you can stop or switch magazines at any time.

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.

	Bomb Sep. 2005 with DVD (zoned for ALL countries). Another great issue of Bomb, filled with top names, and a DVD too. This mag has been around for forever, 27 years (wow).
	New Urecco Jan 2006 + Mini photobook. New issue of Urecco, our personal favorite nude magazine from Japan.
	Shugyoku -- Ourei Harada. Oh my, this is one amazing woman. And that bikini is a wonderful experiment in applied physics.
	Anime ni Sachi Ari ~ There's Sachi (Happiness) in Anime! A nice ero manga by Tenyo.
	Dengeki Comic Gao May 2006. New issue of Dengeki Comic Gao, loaded with 500+ pages of manga goodness.
	Himekuri Image Girl 1/7 Scale PVC Figure -- Moda Bianca. I am really thrilled to bring this to you -- this is one of the coolest figures we've seen in a long time. We do have only 2 though, so don't delay if you like it. It's made by the creator of Sgt. Frog if you can believe that.
	Kohime - 2 Disc Box Set. Popular hentai anime based on a bishoujo game.
	Walkie Bits -- Green *Melon*. These are little electronic frogs that Takara has made for you. They walk, race, dance and more!
	Citrus Mango Mentos. Mentos flavor only sold in Japan. Mmmm, Mentos. I wish I were eating some right now.
	Cure Reserve Subscription. Bitchin' J-Rock magazine, now available every month. (Also check out Shoxx.)
	JAPAN -- Introduced in English and Japanese ~ Eigo de Shouwai suru Nihon. Read about Japan in both languages in this good bilingual book.
	Kikan S vol. 14 ~ Seasonal "S" Magazine April 2006. Seasonal S is frankly not that popular a magazine, and I want to ask people WHY???? It's filled with the most amazing art, has tons of great stuff to check out, and it's not expensive at all. Yet it never approaches the popularity of Robot or the other more famous books.
	Asakusa T-shirt ~ Bushido (Samurai Spirit). A new Japanese T-shirt, which is size 3L (which means XL or so to most of us). Really cool design on this.
	Kitty Leather Purse -- Pink. If you are a Hello Kitty fan, this might be the right purse for you to carry around. Very cool.
	"Hanamusubi" Kimono Cel Phone Holder -- Pink. Okay, this is really cool -- a case for your phone (or iPod) made of kimono fabric. And it's, like, not expensive at all, for somethiing this unique.
	Yoroi Kabuto for Display -- Armor. Another kabuto (ceremonial helmet) for you to display in your home. I like this one a lot.
	Glico Collon -- Green Tea. Despite the fact that this snack makes you think about getting examined by a doctor, this new green tea flavor is really good.
	Lacquered Wood Sandal for Men -- Navy ~ Kasuri Pattern. Wear some cool wooden "geta" sandals this summer -- J-List has them in stock!

Japan's train culture, all about rice and the Japanese, and the Japanese word "ne"

Japan is a very rail-centric place, and trains are a big part of life here. In big cities like Tokyo, trains and subways run everywhere you want to go, and many Tokyoites forego owning a car, especially faced with the prospect of spending $300-500 a month on a parking space for the vehicle. The largest railroad companies in Japan are the six Japan Railway ("JR") entities, which were created as private companies out of the wreckage of the old state-run National Railroad in a breakup not unlike AT&T. There are numerous other train lines operating in various parts of the country, run by companies that usually operate department stores and own baseball teams, for some reason I have yet to figure out. I have fond memories of traveling around Japan on the Youth 18 ticket, which lets you go anywhere you want on any JR line for around $20 -- a great way to see the country, as long as you don't mind riding the slow local trains. Japan's train network is a well-oiled machine, operating so efficiently that you never even think about it until something goes wrong. Something did go wrong yesterday, when construction crews working under the Yama-no-te line's tracks caused the tracks to become elevated, so JR shut down the entire line while they checked into the problem. The closing of this important train line, the loop line that runs around Tokyo, was a huge mess, and a whopping 320,000 people were unable to ride to their destinations for five hours.

You can't live in Japan without eating rice, the staple food of the Japanese, usually consumed with each meal. Rice is usually prepared in an automated rice cooker, a device that's as important to Japanese households as the refrigerator or television. Take a trip to a denki-ya (electronics store) and you'll see that many companies competing to bring the best rice cookers to market, from Mitsubishi to Sanyo to Zojirushi. Just as the Eskimos have more words for "snow" than the rest of us, there are quite a few words for rice, like uncooked rice (kome), unpolished rice (genmai), steamed rice (gohan, which also refers to all food), newly cultivated rice (shinmai, also used to refer to a new employee at an organization), and so on. The kanji for "rice" is one of the most basic ones and includes the characters for the numbers 88 inside it, a Buddhist concept that represents the 88 steps that go into each grain of rice. The essence of "living life as you should" seems to be to eat rice each day, and back when I was single and living in an apartment, I was often asked Chanto gohan taiteiru no? (Are you cooking rice for yourself properly?) -- i.e. was I making healthy food for myself, and not just eating cup ramen every night.

If you've paid attention while watching Japanese anime, you've probably picked up on the word ne. This is an interesting Japanese grammatical particle that usually goes on the ends of sentences and serves several purposes, mostly related to asking for confirmation of information or agreement with an opinion. Here are two examples:

Aisu kohii futatsu desu ne? Two glasses of ice coffee, is that right?
Kyou wa atsui desu ne. It's hot today, isn't it?

Other functions of the all-purpose Japanese particle ne include softening a sentence so its meaning it less harsh (Chotto furotimashita ne. You've gained a little weight, haven't you?); emphasizing what you want to say (Kondo chanto kiite kudasai, ne. Please listen closely next time, alright?); working as a pause in sentences; and to get the attention of the listener before saying something. Girls use ne more often than guys and with a higher intonation, so males should use the word with caution lest they appear effeminate.

We had a few problems with the website on Monday and Tuesday evenings, which caused products to disappear from the site for a couple hours (all categories reported "no products found"). We're very sorry about the interruption -- everything's working now, and hopefully the problem, a glitch in our server setup, will not come back.

J-List is hiring again in our San Diego location. We've got a job opening for a shipping clerk to fill web and wholesale orders, handle receiving of products, and so on. If you're interested in helping evangelize our brand of Japanese pop culture, we'd love to work with you. See here for details. (Unfortunately, we can only consider people currently in the San Diego area for this position.)

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.

	Sukusui 09 Sep. 2005 vol. 9. A really nice magazine filled with beautiful JAV stars and idols wearing swimsuits.
	SHOXX vol. 151 Sep 2005. Another issue of Shoxx, the cool J-Rock magazine from Japan.
	E'L - 2 Disc Box Set. A nice-looking hentai anime DVD boxed set, which we now stock in San Diego.
	Partners -- Sakura. Gorgeous photobook of a model called Sakura. Wow, imagine that, the word "sakura" being used for a name in Japanese.
	The Fetish of Leotard White Tights V. Leotards and white stockings are a popular fetish with J-List customers, and I agree, they are quite nice to look at.
	I've started AV actress -- Naho Ayakura (region 2). A new face in the adult video world in Japan.
	Hita Hita ~ Kenji Tsuruta Illustration. Interesting images from Kenji Tsuruta featuring a female character going about her daily activities, but seen by us in the nude.
	Lucky Cat for Display (7705) -- Family Health & Fortune. A cool new Lucky Cat statue from Japan, featuring messages that will bring you good luck in various areas.
	Seshomaru 1/8 PVC Figure -- Inuyasha. We get requests for Inuyasha items, and here is one -- a really stylin' statue that would look great on your shelf.
	Kabuto w/ Mini Basket. A kabuto is a Japanese helmet, generally displayed with pride by parents of boy children around May 5th. Here's a nice kabuto set for you!
	Comic AG Super Erotic Manga Anthology vol. 32. The new isue of Comic AG is in, and this features more Blue Eyes, accurately translated and totally uncensored. I certainly hope that all fans of Japan's hentai art styles will support this magazine (subscriptions are also available).
	Kitty Fruits Mascot in the House -- Set of 7. Hello Kitty "fruits" mascots, so cute!
	12 Buttons USB Game Pad *Black* -- Elecom. While I am more of an FPS guy myself, this is a cool game pad from Elecom, for use with PC (or Mac, if you use drivers like USB Overdrive).
	Kabaya Can Baby -- Pop Flavors. Delicious new hard candy from Kabaya, in ramune, muscat and apple soda flavors).
	Buuden Deluxe Pen Case -- Kanji Rice Company Logo. Here's a unique item: a really cool pencil case featuring a cool kanji logo.

It was Easter last Sunday for us, even though we're well past the real date. I brought some Easter Egg decorations to share with the girl scouts here in Japan.

The eggs came out quite good, although I am not much of a teacher when it comes to these things.

I bought cheap baskets for the kids to decorate. My mother had also dutifully sent chocolates from the U.S. which I passed along.

The Hello Kitty stickers I had brought along were also quite popular.

We wanted to have an Easter Egg hunt, but Japanese aren't too big on putting food that you're going to eat on the ground (the eggs). So we had a Kit Kat hunt instead, and it was a big success.

Being more health-conscious in aging Japan, Japan's prefectural system, and what does "3LDK" mean

Japan as a nation is getting older, and is having to come to terms with this fact sooner than other countries. I've noticed a high awareness of the changes that are coming for Japan, whether it's companies talking about "barrier-free" products or every automobile maker promoting new wheelchair-friendly vehicles in their product catalogs. I caught an interesting show on TV the other night that basically submitted a panel of famous "talents" (a catch-all word meaning any actor, singer, model or comedian) to the grueling full-body check-up known as ningen dokku ("human dock"), which checked their entire bodies from head to toe for irregularities, including full MRI body scan. Then, different doctors came out to discuss various problems found with each person. Attractive model Yasu Megumi got by with some eating and stress-related problems, while actress and dancer Aya Sugimoto ran into trouble over her after-work wine drinking. Tomiyo Umezawa, a kabuki actor famous for his female roles, got dinged for his 50 cigarette-a-day smoking habit, while comedian Razor Ramon scored poorly on his mental health exam due to the great stress of wearing his public "HG" (which means "Hard Gay, although he isn't) face 24 hours a day (he can't even take his sunglasses off, as they're part of his public persona). The biggest health problems were found in pro wrestler Choshu Koriki, who had never gone to a doctor in his life and had built a media personality around his big gut and bicycle shorts.

In the Japanese system of prefectures and cities is quite different from what we're used to in the States. The current Japanese system, which was based on the French prefectural system (or at least that's what the Japanese believe), came about when Japan modernized its infrastructures during the Meiji Restoration. Basically, there are 47 prefectures (ken), along with Hokkaido and the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which like the District of Columbia in the U.S. is separate from the normal system of prefectures. 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. Streets are not generally named in Japan, so a physical address will just be a numbered block inside that part of the town. If you think it's terribly confusing to have a whole country with no named streets or numbered houses, you're right! Basically, if you don't have a clear map to wherever it is you're going in Japan, you're probably not going to get there. As populations rise and fall in Japan (usually fall, it's sad to say), sometimes a new city is born, as small municipalities join together to try to make their region more attractive for tourism and industry. The idea, I guess, is that if people are leaving the rural areas for cities, we'll redefine some of the areas to be "cities" (even if they're not very urban).

Here are the answers on the Japanese "English" (quote unquote) abbreviations from last time. 3LDK means a 3-room apartment with a "living-dining-kitchen" (i.e., one main room for cooking, eating and relaxing). PA is a Japanese term meaning "parking area," and refers to the rest stops you see along the freeway. If someone asks you to check their HP, they're inviting you to see their homepage. OA means "office automation," and buying an "OA desk" means you're getting a desk that's designed to work with computers (perhaps it has a power strip built into it, or a special rail in the back for organizing cables). Baseball fans know that an FA is a "free agent" who isn't a part of the players union, but represents himself in contract negotiations. And IC means "interchange" and is just a freeway on-ramp.

Among other things, J-List works hard to bring Japan's PC dating-sim games to English-speaking fans, and we carry virtually every game in print, from great companies like Peach Princess, JAST USA, G-Collections and more. We're happy to announce that the latest game from Peach Princess, Doushin - Same Heart, has gone "golden master" and is being duplicated right now. The three Suruga sisters have a strange power: whenever one of them feels a sensation, the feeling is transferred to the other two immediately. If one girl were to prick her finger, the other two would feel the same pain...and if one of them were to get, er, excited, the same thing would happen to the other two, no matter where they were. This is a great new game, the first "zapping" adventure seen in the English language, which allows you to play the game from the viewpoint of the three sisters and move from one character to another freely. In a way, the game is quite similar to one the very first "H" game we ever brought out, Three Sisters' Story, and I'm very glad to be making it available to fans. (By the way, you can still preorder it and get free shipping!)

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.

	Sabra 007 27th April 2006. Sabra is one of my favorite magazines. Each issue is filled with really beautiful women, like Megumi Yasu and Misako Yasuda. And you get a DVD with fun stuff to check out.
	Fruits No. 101 Dec. 2005. More Fruits issues in stock for you, in case you don't want to get a subscription just yet.
	Kailand -- Asami Kai. Asami Kei will charm you with her beautiful photos.
	Kowaremono - Fragile Hearts - 2 Disc Box Set. For hentai DVD fans, this is Kowaremono, aja Fragile Heartts. Excellent boxed set in stock.
	Behaviour Illustrations 2. Fans of "futanari" (and you know who you are), this is the latest doujinshi by the famous Amanoja 9 (Amanojack).
	Big Breast Widow -- Milk Matsuzaka (region 2). A nice new "oppai" idol, thi sis Milk Matsuzaka (nice name), with a 108 cm bust and G cup.
	Lucky Cat Inviting Love for Display. Lucky Cat is always your friend.
	Bandai Chogokin Gamera. I was nothing if not a Gamera fan when I was small. This is a realyl cool Gamera toy from Bandai.
	Kitty Apple Pouch. A great Hello Kitty pouch, shaped like a giant apple!
	"Refutu Rhythm" -- Range Murata. A nice new limited edition art book for Range Murata's fans. Comes with a chic book cover and lot
	Japanese Sake Cup "Guinomi" -- Blue Glay China. Enjoy sake with this delicious sake cup. Also good for tea.
	Bleach Charactors 03 -- Individual Box. I haven't watched Bleach yet myself, but it's very popular -- here are the cool anime figures from Bandai.