Differences in "maid culture" between Japan and Malaysia, thoughts on technology, and what makes a jar a jar?

First of all, we experienced some server trouble Sunday night for about an hour or so. I'd think of some witty April Fools Day joke to attribute the downtime to but it's already April 2nd in Japan. Sorry for anyone trying to view the site during the trouble -- everything's back to normal now.

My family got back from Malaysia last week, bursting with news about everything that they'd seen there. They were in Kuala Lumpur, the country's largest city, and got to take in many beautiful sights, from mosques to bazaars to the famous Twin Towers. One cosmic truth about Japanese boys is that they all seem to suffer from "beetle mania" and love to collect beetles as pets, and since Malaysia is a regular Beetle Mecca, my son had great fun hunting for his favorite specimens in the backyard. As is natural, there were cultural differences between my Japanese family and the Malaysian friends they were staying with. For example, our friends had never seen snow and were interested in hearing what winter was like in Japan. They were quite wealthy and employed several maids to clean their house, which caused some minor culture shock in my daughter, who wondered what the maids were doing cleaning. In the context of modern Japan, a maid is an incredibly kawaii girl who wears a frilly uniform as she serves coffee and cake and generally provides eye candy for men to enjoy, and they have nothing to do with cleaning. I had to laugh at the differences in the two cultures.

Living with a foreign language every day as I do gives me large and small insights into how our brains are wired, including, for example, how we come to assign words to objects. What makes a jar a jar? In my own dialect of English, at least, it's any glass container that has a wide mouth opening. A bottle is similar, but must have a narrow opening. The Japanese define vocabulary words in the same way, although there can sometimes be confusion when they import English words and assign slightly different meanings to them. To you or me, "juice" comes from various types of fruit, but in Japanese the word is often used to refer to any canned beverage, even if it's tea. Milk comes from cows, but here the word miruku refers to powdered creamer for coffee. Rice in Japanese is usually called gohan, unless you're eating at a Western-style restaurant, in which case it's called by its English name, raisu. Often some of the earliest words to be imported from English are shifted in meaning the most, since the Japanese of the early Meiji Period had very little experience with foreign languages. Some of these older imported words include "rouge" (lipstick) and "manicure" (what they call nail polish), and even the venerable Ramune soda got its name because some Japanese person of the era couldn't pronounce the word "lemonade." Sometimes two words become one, as in "curb" and "curve" which are phonetically impossible to distinguish in Japanese anyway, while in other cases related concepts are split into two, as with clip-on earrings ("earring") and pierced earrings ("pierce"), treated as two separate concepts rather than sub-sets of the same group. And the word jar? In Japanese it usually means "rice cooker" -- go figure.

Technology is always on the move, and no sooner do we get used to one type than it's been replaced by something else. When I first came to Japan in 1991, it was very hip for young people to carry beepers, called "pocket bells" (ポケベル） and my students would constantly send messages to each other, usually during my class. At first the units could only receive numbers, so my students would send messages using cryptic phonetic codes -- for example, good morning ("ohayo") was rendered as 084, and "where are you now" ("ima doko?") came out as 10105. Yeah, I can't figure it out either. Then pocket bells that could display kana characters arrived, allowing more detailed messages to be sent, which really allowed communication to flourish. The ubiquitization of the cellular phone put paid to beepers a few years later, although paging services continued to be operated for customers in specific industries where they were still being used. Last week NTT announced that they were ending their paging service, which brings the pocket bell era to a close. Considering how quickly other technologies seem to be fading -- I'm sure modems and CRT monitors will look really cool and retro in another decade or two -- I wonder what the future holds for all of us?

(Ha, I just realized that the word Pocket Monster is a reference to the term Pocket Bell.)

Remember that J-List stocks thousands of wonderful items from Japan, including bento boxes, cute interactive electronic toys, tools to help you study Japanese, cool ways to bring a touch of Japan to your personal space, and much more. There are many great ways to browse our extensive selection of products, including with the "3 day" link on the front page that shows you items added or updated in the last 3 days; the alternate "view all products" link, which shows all J-List products in newest-to-oldest order, and for slower connections, our handy "tree display" mode. Remember that we've recently added a Wish List feature, making it easy for you to add items to the list that you can either use as a reminder of items you want to check out later, or else you can make it a public list and share it with others.

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.

	Yui Shop Yellow. Wow! Yui Toshiki's art is incredible, and we're glad to have the latest Yui Shop in stock.
	Mikuru Asahina *Waitress version* ~ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. This Mikuru is in stock, ready for you to buy. We tried to order 32 of them and only got 3 sent to us from the distributor, so I think this will not last too long. (In fact one sold while I was updating the blog)
	O Ha Tsu -- Minori Hatsune. Fabulous H-cup Japanese idol in her first photobook.
	Kera Dec. 2006 vol.101. Kera is the new #1 magazine for fans of Harajuku fashion and gothic lolita cosplay. Get this rare single issue now.
	Zenra Mixed Bathing - Could you Enter a Hot Spring Bath wearing Nothing? in Isawa. The Zenra series is always popular. Here's the latest one, in which girls are asked to go into the men's bath.
	Exchanging Bodies Nakadashi Sex -- Tsugumi Nagasawa. Tsugumi-chan changes bodies with a man accidentally in a bold new release from SOD.
	Mikuru Asahina ~ Nurse Costume (White Color) -- Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu *Preorder*. This is the really hard to find Mikuru figure that's coming in stock in June. Get yours now!
	Dungeon Crusaderz. Amazing fantsy "H" comic in the AD&D style.
	Nyan Nyan Nyanko ~ Nyanko Cafe no Maki. The official book of Nyanko cuteness, from San-X.
	Works SCAJI illustrations - SCA-ji. Gorgeous artbook from artist SCAJI, if that's how you write his name in English.
	JAPAN ~ Mini Encyclopedia of Japan. Learn a lot about Japan through this mini-encyclopedia.
	Hello Kitty Gothic Heart ~ Citizen Watch. We've got some nice Hello Kitty watches on the site, with Gothic Lolita styling.
	Complete Kendo. Learn lots about Kendo from this new book.
	Pull-Dash Petit Tachikoma Racer. This is cool! A Tachikoma racer that you can zoom anywhere. I have to get one of these for myself.
	Negima Figuremate *School Version* Full Set (Set of 6). Fun new Negima toy series on the site.
	Uki Uki Island ~ Sunshine Buddies Style. Cute little monkeys relieve your stress through solar power.
	Naruto Nurie Coloring. Naruto coloring book, cool!
	Village of Bamboo Shoot Eraser (Box of 5 Bamboo Shoot Mini Erasers). Japanese snacks are so popular that they're making other products featuring their images, including erasers, rulers and more. Fun stuff.
	Totoro Music Box -- Acorn Festival - Dondoko Matsuri. We have new Totoro music boxes today, beautiful ceramic ones that play Totoro music (naturally).

And now for some random pics that I hopefully haven't posted yet. Do you hate caterpillars? For some reason they are the most detested insect in all Japan -- they're known as Kemushi or "hair bugs" in Japanese. This is one I happened to save from being squashed in front of a store.

Ah, things I love about Japan. This is the current Momi Momi chair line.

Keep your "naisu badii" (nice body) with one of these, a Joba horse riding simulator.

It can also help your golf swing, according to this.

At our place in Karuizawa we were bestoyed a great honor -- a pigeon used our balcony for its nest. Here it is with its new babies.