The warmest winter ever in Japan, all about the Japanese kanji character 'ki' and excitement at my son's school

We've been watching the extra-cold winter dumping lots of snow on the U.S. this year and feeling more than a little guilty, what with Japan experiencing the warmest winter its had in decades and all. The previous 1960 record for the latest snowfall in the Tokyo area has already been smashed, and with the bizarre T-shirt weather continuing, there's talk that this might be the first snowless winter since they started keeping records back in 1876. One of the most enjoyable times to be in Japan is sakura season, when the cherry blossoms bloom with exploding fireworks of beauty, but it's been so warm this year that everyone is sure the sakura will bloom at least a full month earlier. There's also a lot of concern that with such mild weather this year, there'll be less snow in snowpacks in the mountains, leading to water shortages in the summer.

Sometimes part of the fun of studying a language like Japanese is "surfing" the linguistic elements that are totally different from anything found in one's native language. One of the most common kanji characters is ki (気）, a rather all-purpose concept for expressing abstract ideas (read chi in Chinese). Although it can be translated as spirit, soul, nature, heart, mood, feeling, or atmosphere, it mainly deals with (spiritual) energy and a person's awareness. The character is found in some elementary words that students of the language encounter right away, such as genki (happy, energetic), tenki (weather) or kuki (air). The word can express intention (seppuku suru ki = the intention to commit ritual suicide, wish I could think of a better example ^_^), and feelings or emotion (kimochi ii = that feels good). In anime series like Dragonball Z, when a character gets so filled with energy that he literally glows with fire, the word for that fire would be ki. The concept is also used in martial arts and yoga, which seek to focus the mind's ki in beneficial ways -- it also pops up in words like kiai, the verbal yell you release when focusing your strength on a task. The word can be found in several Japanese idioms that are used quite often, such as ki wo tsukete (be careful; literally "fix your body's energy and attention on the task at hand"), or ki wo tsukau (to be considerate of; literally "to use your ki on behalf of another person").

One of the most popular "talents" (an all-purpose word meaning singer/actor/ comedian/whatever) in Japan is Takuya Kimura, a member of the popular group SMAP, the male idol band that dominates much of Japan's music scene. Takuya, who plays the voice of Howl in Howl's Moving Castle, has been called both the "sexiest man in Japan" as well as the domestic version of Brad Pitt, mainly because Levi's hired "Kim-Taku" for their jeans commercials to counter Edwin's successful line of commercials featuring "Bra-Pii." Although they started out as a Backstreet Boys-like group, SMAP has utterly woven itself into the fabric of Japan's pop culture, and you really can't turn the TV on without seeing one or more members of the group hosting a variety show or doing their gourmet cooking competition thing or pulling some gag on the air, like when George Lucas came to Japan and they presented him with a beautiful Japanese sword, which turned out to be a cheap plastic light saber. Recently there's a rumor going around that Takuya and his wife, former singer Shizuka Kudo, are going to put their daughter in my son's special English elementary school this April, which has set the hearts of the school mothers all aflutter with thoughts of Japan's sexiest man attending parents' day with them.

J-List sells a unique line of original T-shirts, hoodies and embroidered hats featuring funny and wacky kanji messages, and today we've gotten in a cool new design for you. Every once in a while you hear of a Japanese man who wasn't able to resist his own particular urges, and who got in trouble peeking at pretty girls. Our new wacky T-shirt warns people who see it to beware of nozoki -- peeping toms, who like to watch women secretly -- with a hilarious new design. Check it out on the site, now!

Remember that J-List carries hard-to-find artbooks and manga of great Japanese artists, including Shirow Masamune, Satoshi Urushihara, Range Murata, Hidenori Matsubara, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Katsuya Terada, Shunya Yamashita and more. We also carry books that help you learn how to draw, including the popular How To Draw Manga series, Comickers, Character Design Bible and more. Why not browse our excellent selection of artbooks and see what strikes your fancy?

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.

	Nu Beau ~ Special Nude Collection -- Kaho Kasumi, Shinju Murasaki with DVD. Fabulous nude pictures of Kaho-chan and Shinju-chan -- the latter's name means "Pearl." Vague reference to Dec. 7, 1941?
	First Photobook -- Miwa Asao. Beach Volleyball is big in Japan now, and now you can buy the photobook of the most popular "volleyball idol."
	Triptych Trading Figure -- Set of 7 *Full Set + Rare Item*. Fabulously detailed sexy figures, some of which are nude. Those Japanese are so inventive...
	Japanese T-shirt - Beware of Men Peeking (Men's standard). Wacky new Japanese T-shirt with a zany kanji message.
	Dengeki Comic Gao Mar 2007. I love the new look of Gao, and since it features the Miina manga from Densha Otoko, it's even better. This i ssue comes with a free figure -- don't miss it!
	Shiba Wanko Figure -- Full Set *Set of 5*. Aww, cute little Shiba Dogs dressed in traditional Japanese fashion.
	Sister Anthology Comics. Nice manga about, er, sisters and related nun themes.
	RPG ~ Roll Playing Girl. I love the art and video game premise of this manga. And the girl with glasses isn't bad either.
	Passage to Eternity ~ Yoshino and Omine -- Tenkai no Michi. Beautiful images of the spirituality -- Shinto and Buddhism -- of Japan.
	Pocky Decore ~ Peach. Delicious new flavor of the most deluxe Pocky ever.
	Tomica 117 -- Mitsubishi *i*. Wacky car offering from Mitsubishi, available in tiny form.
	Sakura Tea Leaf Container. Store all your loose tea with this.
	Tenori Mamegoma -- Shiro Goma *White*. Super cute plush baby seal from San-X.
	Tenori Mamegoma -- Kuro Goma *Black*. And here's his twin.
	Totoro Magnet Hook. This is cool. Hang your coat in style with a Totoro magnet hook.
	Authentic Leather and Snake Skin Setta. These are cool, authentic leather setta sandals with tops made of friggin' snake skin. They are so nice to the touch.
	Xylitol Sugarless Sunset Ruby Gum. Delicious gum. I'm chewing it right now ,believe it or not.
	Hello Kitty Toilet Paper -- green. This is really the perfect gift. I mean, whether the person you give this to loves or hates Hello Kitty, you've scored a real hit.
	Hana Fuda -- Yozakura ~ Kyoto Shogun Do. Cool card game practiced with the blessings of the ancients for thousands of yahrens. Oops, I'm channelling 1978 Battlestar Galactica again.
	Lucky Cat 2 Tier Bento Box -- Red. We've been out of bento boxes big time, but got a bunch in today. Sorry if you were waiting for one.
	Fuwarinka Gum -- Rose Flavor. This wouldn't be a product I'd think would sell a huge number, rose flavored gum and all, yet we've moved 1000 packs since we posted them. The mind reals...

Heh, I'll tell you my own favorite game. All those newfangled video games are okay, but I'm still loyal to the original Unreal Tourmanent, released in, I think, 1999. I'm using it on my Intel MacBook Pro, and the fact that it plays so nicely (even with 300 bots, see below) in Rosetta is really an amazing thing.

The reason it's so fun is that there's a nuke you can use to kill your enemies.

Of course, that's not fun enough, so here's what I do. Load the game, type SUMMON WARHEADLAUNCHER unless I'm on a level that has the nuke, get the warhead, then type ALLAMMO. Then instead of having one pansy nuke you have 999 of them. Muhahaha! LOADED is another fun command that gives you all weapons in the game.

You can then addbots if you like so that you have 100, 200 or more enemies to kill rather than the default of 16. Note that adding too many bots at once can overload the machine since most of the bots appear at the same few spawning spots which causes them to explode, and the computer has to draw 100 x 300 bits of expanding flesh on your screen.

This lets you discover a new kind of game, where basically everyone is trying to kill you but you've got a nuke. You can do fun game of trying to kill everyone else (up to 300 bots) without using any weapons other than the nuke. This means you need to shoot and duck behind obstacles, or shoot at the ceiling to take out someone before they get too close. It's quite a challenge. Another fun thing is to slow the game down so you can set up extra beautiful kills.

There's something about running down the hallway in the contrail of a tactical nuke you've just shot that's so much fun. Incidentally I've played this game so much in the past my eyes actually got infected. That's not good, is it?

Ah, beautiful stress relief... I realize my love of cheating at games goes back to my Captain Kirk complex, since I look up to him as the father I didn't have (Captain Kirk, Carl Sagan and Ernest Hemingway). I guess using NOCLIP or god mode in a game is just my own answer to the Kobayashi Maru test.