The man who created the Yamato theme song, all about the traditional game Karuta, and thoughts on corn soup

I've written before about how the meinichi (命日), the anniversary of a person's death, is very important in a Buddhist country like Japan, and once a person has passed on those left behind will remember him or her on this day. Today happens to be the meinichi of Hiroshi Miyagawa, a person who's had no small impact on Japan's animation industry, as well as myself. He was the composer who wrote the music for Space Cruiser Yamato, shown in the U.S. as Star Blazers, essentially the first anime series associated with the now-familiar concepts of dramatic, sequential stories with problems that are resolved and multi-faceted characters who die, fall in love and generally act like real people. Several years before John Williams gave us the music for Star Wars, Maestro Miyagawa showed the world what could be achieved with extremely melodramatic and high-quality music even in something as mundane as an animated series. His single most famous creation was the Yamato theme song, which he composed after being asked by Producer Nishizaki to envision "an iron ballad," and the song is regularly performed by marching bands from the Maritime Self-Defense Forces to my daughter's 4th grade class. The Yamato franchise, with its Gamilon-planet-bombs-as-allegory-to-World-War-II themes, was incredibly campy, but for many it was a first wonderful bridge to Japan.

If you love "corn potage," then get to Japan as fast as you can, since people here just can't get enough of creamed corn soup. Right now I'm sitting in Steak House Miya, a Japanese restaurant that serves both regular and "hamburg" steak, famous for a tangy daikon sauce that the server pours over your sizzling plate, then a napkin is draped over the whole thing to keep it from burning you as the sauce cooks into the meat. Beside my steak and plate of rice is a bowl of corn soup with corn flakes sprinkled on top, which tastes good enough, I guess. As an American, when I think of soup I think of the Campbell's classics like chicken noodle, tomato, and vegetable beef, but these are as alien here in Japan as Green Tea Butterscotch and Rose Flavored Gum are in most parts of the world. Types of soup that the Japanese prefer instead include creamed pumpkin or carrot soups, healthy wakame (seaweed) or miso soup, or if at an Italian restaurant, perhaps some minestrone. When you get sick in the U.S., most people think of eating chicken soup, but in Japan the most common remedies are drinking a tea with ginger in it or swallowing down a raw egg in sake -- yum.

I wrote last time about the traditional Japanese card game karuta, which gets its name from the Portuguese but is based on games played in the Imperial Court in ancient Kyoto. Karuta consists of two decks of cards, one featuring hiragana characters and another with poems or phrases that correspond to cards in the first deck. Two players scatter the hiragana cards on the floor randomly and assume a position that allows them to grab cards easily, then a third person starts reading the poems one by one. The most famous karuta game is the Hyakunin Isshu, which features poetry about one hundred historical figures in short tanka form. As kids hear one of the 1300-year-old poems -- perhaps the one about the poet Ki no Tomonori, which goes "In the peaceful light/Of the ever-shining sun/In the days of spring/Why do the cherry's new-blown blooms/Scatter like restless thoughts?" -- they grab the card that corresponds with that phrase before their opponent can find it, and whoever gets the most cards wins. Another popular variation played in our prefecture is Jomo Karuta, which substitutes poems about the beauty of Gunma, from the fiery Mt. Asama to the bustling hot springs resort at Ikaho. Playing karuta is good on many levels, since it teaches children to read, is competitive and fun to play, and it also instills them with a link to the past that I think Americans can't easily comprehend. It can be used to teach many things, too. For example, my daughter is learning the flute, and her teacher cleverly makes the kids play a version of karuta that teaches them musical terms, like da capo and staccato.

J-List has been involved with licensing and translating Japan's amazing PC dating-sim games for years, and we've built a great lineup of really amazing story- and character-centric games for bishoujo gaming fans that allow you to take your relationship with Japan to a whole new place. Our games are available in shrink-wrapped CD-ROM packages as well as Internet Download Editions, and there are titles for every taste, from cat girls to maids and highly evolved dramatic stories and more. We're happy to announce that we've completed our initial testing with Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system (32-bit), and are happy to announce that all our games are compatible with the new platform. So whether you're using Vista now or plan to in the future, our great dating-sim games will be compatible.

Remember that J-List carries the extremely high-end school uniforms for guys and girls made by Matsukameya of Nagoya, a company with an outstanding reputation in Japan. Our sailor uniforms are all custom made to your exact size specifications and available in many styles, making it easy for you to have the coolest costume for the summer anime conventions. We also carry a really cool item: authentic Japanese school bags, the kind high school girls carry to school, made of high quality materials and loaded with pockets to hold all your stuff.

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" (a yes/no verification screen will be displayed to filter products from our mature site). To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	Sabra Magazine 004 mar 2007. Killer new issue of Sabra. How can they take photographs like this??
	Living Japanese Book 1 -- A Practical Course. A killer new Japanese textbook that looks to be very useful.
	First Pittari Mosaic -- Rola Sato. Rola Sato is really taking over the JAV world here. She is pretty, I'll give her that, although "Laura" would have been a far more reasonable way to romanize her name, Oh well.
	Best of Advanced Actresses. A nice DVD feautring lovely Japanese actresses, although I'm especially a fan of Megu Hagiwara, pictured above.
	Iron Hammer Mermaid 1 ~ Kanaduchi Mermaid 1. Very nice manga that's 99% non-adult, with a story that had me sitting here reading it instead of writing my update.
	Fruits Dec 2006 No. 113. New issue of FRUiTs is in stock, for fans of Japan's hip Harajuku culture.
	Yuki Nagato 1/8 PVC Figure ~ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu *Preorder*. Gorgeous figure of Yuki from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I love her in the witch getup.
	A Cage of Big Boobs ~ Kyonyu no Ori. Fabulous erotic manga about, well, take a guess. Simply incredible artistic conceptualizing here.
	Insult Fighting Musume 25 ~ Touki Ryoujyoku vol. 25. Popular series of manga and doujinshi anthologies about "fighting girls" from anime and video games.
	Neon Genesis Evangelion Eva-00' Proto Type Kubrick. Wow! One of the great Japanese toys returns! Kubrick Evangelion figures!
	Rozen Maiden Traumend Hinaichigo ~ Doll Figure. This is a highly stylized Rozen Maiden doll that is just beautiful
	Lotte Toppo -- Salted Caramel. Delicious new flavor of Toppo.
	Black Samurai Sword Ear Cleaner w/Purple Strap. Clean you ears with this cool samurai sword mimikaki!
	Domo-kun Sticker. Domo-kun stickers! Domo-kun stickers!
	Totoro Karuta. For anyone who wants to try Karuta on their own, we've got some cool Totoro Karuta too!