Learning about how your brain works through Japanese, looking back on Japan since 1991, and services gaijin render to Japan

One thing I like about learning another language is the understanding you get of how your own brain works, not unlike reverse-engineering the firmware in a cool techno gadget. One area that interested me was analyzing how new words or grammatical concepts were internalized in my mind. Back in my SDSU days, I distinctly remember struggling to memorize the word "soto" (soh-toh), meaning "outside." I'd stare at the word for several seconds, saturating my short-term memory as I waited for my long-term memory to grab the word, but it just wasn't working. Next I wrote the word 20 times, always a good way to memorize information, and even created a mnemonic picture for myself, imagining a Chrysler DeSoto outside a window (stupid, but it worked). The final step in mastering the new concept was using it and getting feedback from Japanese speakers -- often negative feedback when I'd use the word in a spectacularly wrong way, but that's still okay. It's like your mind is a network of cobwebs, and in order to secure a piece of knowledge inside so it won't fall out you have to attach it to the network with threads from several different directions, which oddly is pretty much what happens on a synaptic level inside your brain.

Sometimes it's fun to look back on how things have changed since I came to Japan in 1991. The Tokyo land bubble had just burst but the shock hadn't trickled down very far yet, and businesses still seemed to be in "bubble mode" -- on my first trip to Tokyo Disneyland, for example, I went into an ice cream shop and was surprised to see no less than eleven employees waiting to serve me ice cream even though I was the only customer in the place. In retrospect, the off-and-on recession years of the 1990s were really good for Japan, forcing it to adopt a "reality based" approach to its economy which is bringing benefits now. When I first came here, Japan was a very closed place, truly an island nation, where common brands like Coca-Cola and Budweiser seemed downright exotic because there were so few other foreign products around, but there's a lot more choice now. By far the biggest change in life in Japan has been the arrival of that newfangled Internet thing you've been hearing so much about. Back in the day, it cost $4 a minute to call home, so I learned to talk fast, but in the age of broadband and Skype, Japan doesn't seem like such a far-away place anymore.

Like plover birds that clean crocodiles' teeth, gaijin in Japan serve many useful functions to our Japanese hosts. First and foremost, we notice things, and provide an important point of reference for Japan's all-too homogeneous society. When I first arrived in Japan, I was shocked to see cars on the roads with children playing inside and nary a child safety seat in sight -- carseats just weren't part of the national consciousness yet. No doubt the combined "frown power" of foreigners living here helped push lawmakers to enact Japan's first carseat law, which they finally did in 2000. Sometimes I find myself noticing little linguistic oddities in the Japanese language and sharing them with people around me, whether they want to hear about them or not. For example, the word sashimi (sliced raw fish) is written with characters that mean "stabbed meat" （刺し身）, but if you've ever tried stabbing sashimi with chopsticks you'd get some funny looks. The word chawan means "rice bowl" yet is written with characters that actually mean "tea bowl" (茶碗), and no one thinks anything of this. A Japanese child who has lived abroad for a time and returned is a kikoku shijo (帰国子女）, which means literally means "return-country girl-child" even though the term applies to boys, too. And the Japanese word for novel is written with characters that mean "short story" (小説）. There's plenty of weirdness in English, of course, but because we aren't as aware of the individual meanings of parts of words, we don't notice them as much.

Along with more than three thousand other unique Japan-related products, J-List carries region free DVD players that make it easy to enjoy DVDs from any part of the world, including the region 2 anime or "indies" titles from Japan and PAL discs from Europe and South America. In addition to our high-end DVD-7050 that's capable of playing DIVX movies burned onto DVD-R/RW media, we carry the recently refreshed DVD-7880K, a great half-height DVD player with many features including progressive scan output and a karaoke function. Our DVD players start at just $65, ship to you in protective outer-boxes from San Diego, and all come with full one-year warranties from the manufacturers.

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.

	First Kiss -- Rin Hayakawa. Rin Hayakawa is looking mighty fine in her new photomagazine + DVD combo.
	Petite Amie -- Leah Dizon. Leah Dizon is the beautiful model that has stolen the heart of all of Japan, including the J-List staff. See her new photobook.
	IZUMO 2 Visual Collection. Beautiful artbook from the Izumo 2 H-game.
	Hiragana Times No. 237 July 2006. Learn about Japan with the excellent articles in this issue, in both English and Japanese.
	Flat Tits Premium for Mania 2. So, everyone knows that some men prefer women with large breasts. But there is apparently a well developed core of fans who prefer, er, the opposite.
	Organic Tachikoma Collection -- Full Set *Set of 6* ~ Ghost in the Shell. Organtic has brought us a super detailed Tachikoma toy set, with all versions of the cool wheeled robots that were seen in the Ghost in the Shell films.
	Kotona Elegance 1/7 Scale Figure -- Zoid Genesis. Positively gorgeous sexy figure from...Zoids??
	Nestle After Eight Chocolate -- Dark Rum Cream. After Eights, with a Japan style twist!
	Kitty Key-Met -- Maneki Neko *Lucky Cat* ~ Buden Shop. Another cool Hello Kitty "Key-Met" rubber key cover for your keys.
	Washi A7 Mini Note Book -- Purple. Cool notebooks made of real washi paper!
	Handy Massager. If you've been paying attention when watching JAV videos, you'll see this massager from time to time. There's an attachment so men can use it, too.
	Felix Strawberry Gum - 60 pieces *Full Box*. Back in stock, the most popular cult favorite ever to come from Japan!
	Zenra Ballet II. "Zenra" means all-nude, and only the ultimate indies studio in Japan could have brought something like this off, a real performance of Swan Lake with professional dancers in the nude. Wow!
	Mitsu Hime -- Rio Natsume. Also back in stock, Rio Natsume's dynamite photobook.
	Gothic Lolita Hair Make Bible. The ultimate guide to "hair and make" (hairstyling and application of make-up) from Japan.

More pictures from "What we did on our Oshogatsu" (New Year's Day). Here we sit at my wife's uncle's house, drinking beer, eating good food and playing old Japanese card games. This is a rather easy game about a princess, a feudal lord and a Buddhist priest.

Then it was time to play some Hana Fuda, which my kids love.

The deck of Hana Fuda cards our uncle brought out was quite rare. Can you guess why? Hint, look at those three characters on the bottom of the package of cards. These cards were made by Nintendo, back when this was what they did.

No New Year's would be complete without mikan oranges. Since we had no mikan oranges, we ate deko-pon oranges, which are larger and sweeter. But they're not strictly speaking, mikans.

I was holding my MacBook Pro and my cell phone, and our uncle was so interested I showed him some of the stuff you could do with the Internet, namely Google Earth and Google itself. He wanted to look up some pictures of his old ship, the Ise, and we found some good ones. This was a hell of a ship, a battleship with three main batteries of guns, along with runways in the back that could accommodate 22 planes. See more pictures here.