Masi Oka of Heroes visiting Japan, contemplating Japanese culture through its food, and more dogs in Japan than babies

I knew it would happen: Heroes is starting to get popular in Japan. This morning I turned on the TV and caught that gaijin-that-other-gaijin- love-to-hate Dave Spector (we dislike him because his Japanese is so much better than ours, and because he dyes his black hair blonde to look more "foreign" on camera, poser). He was interviewing none other than Masi Oka, the Star Wars CG-programming uber-geek with an IQ of 189, who plays the time-bending salaryman Hiro Nakamura in the NBC show. Japan is extremely sensitive to the opinions of people in the West, and any Japanese who raises the reputation of the country in the eyes of the world, such as manga-ka Shirow Masamune, baseball star Ichiro or the pop group Pizzicato Five, gets enormous street cred at home. Dave Spector seemed almost giddy as he interviewed "the most famous Japanese man in the world today" despite the fact that, you know, he's not even Japanese. When one of Dave's jokes fell flat, Masi calmly said, "You just made time stop for me. I think you might have super powers." The newscasters seemed thrilled to see that the word "Yatta!" ("I did it!") had apparently entered the English lexicon through the show.

Although the Japanese have a strong food culture, with various types of noodles, nabe (nah-beh) dishes like sukiyaki that are cooked in a central large pot in the middle of the table, and various good things from the sea like sushi and sashimi, they also embrace cuisine form the West. When we go out to dinner, we've got many choices, including American chains like Denny's (which has carved a niche selling extremely traditional Japanese dishes, go figure), Italian (a dozen or more choices in a 5 km radius), and our personal favorite, Indian naan. Although famous for eating rice, which they usually consume three times a day, they've taken pan (bread) and adopted it into many forms beyond the normal sliced type. If you're hungry for a snack, grab some curry-pan, baked with curry inside, or maybe some yakisoba-pan, a long roll with chow mein noodles inside. Many types of Japanese bread are sweet, which we'd consider to be something like a doughnut, like melon-pan (said to make you smarter, since it sort of looks like a shriveled brain) or cornet (a Japanese version of a French roll with chocolate cream inside, and there's much debate about which end you should eat first). One of the most famous types of bread is is an-pan, a kind of round piece of bread containing sweet Japanese beans. Whenever I go to the bakery, I buy a loaf of French bread with camembert cheese baked inside -- yum.

Japan has a famously low birthrate of about 1.29 children per female, and the country's population is now on its way down, having officially peaked sometime in 2006. The situation is made worse than it would otherwise be by the lack of immigration into the country -- while the population of the United States and Europe is augmented by new people coming in to live, the number of new foreigners in Japan doesn't rise appreciably from year to year. In fact, I saw the other day that the population of dogs has now passed the number of children aged 10 and under, so there are now more poodles, dachunds and chihuahuas being walked by their owners in parks than kids playing there. While I'm not sure sure how serious the problem of a slowly declining population really is -- it's not like the country is going to cease functioning tomorrow or anything -- it is a problem that future generations will have to deal with. Japan does do what it can to make it easy for people to come here -- it's usually possible for a foreigner to get a permanent residence visa in five or six years -- but given the cultural and linguistic differences between the rest of the world, it's unrealistic to expect immigration to turn things around. Hopefully, they'll come up with a way to keep their race from dying out between now and the year 3000, when the number of Japanese in the world is projected to be...27.

We've been hard at work on a new improvement to the J-List website: an updated "top 5" list that shows you the top products in various categories, making it easy for you to browse the most popular manga, magazines, toys, wacky Japanese T-shirts, traditional and wacky items, and so on. Each link shows the top 50 products in accurate order, calculated in real-time. You can also browse all top products at once. Enjoy browsing the most popular products at J-List with our new ranking system!

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. We also recommend watching our "new products" RSS feed

	Bomb July 2007. New issue of Bomb, lovely as usual.
	Iris -- Ayame Misaki. Beautiful photobook newly posted.
	The Documents of Anna Maki 4 Hours. Anna Maki is a JAV idol known for her great performances. Now enjoy this 4 hour "best of" disc.
	Max Pink File -- Mihiro. Man, Mihiro has released a 4 hour disc already -- yowza. She is my favorite JAV starlet.
	Fruits No. 121 Aug 2007. The new issue of FRUiTs is here too, loaded with fashionable Tokyo girls.
	Animage July 2007. Animage is the magazine that gave us the word "anime" by the way, did you know that? Published by Tokuma "We pwn Hayao Miyazaki" Shoten.
	Prina the Dungeoneering Princess Annual vol. 1-3 Summer 2007. Dynamite item for fans of Futanari.
	Saber/Zero 1/8 Figure ~ Fate/Stay night *Preorder*. Saber looks awesome in this new preorder figure for Fate/stay night fans.
	Cream Coronet (Big Sister Coro) Cast-off Figure *Preorder*. This is why I was talking about Cornets, the spiral roll with cream inside, so you could hopefully get the joke about "Coro-Ne" or "Older Sister Coro." Probably impossible, but I had to try.
	DX Genuine Earthenware Sake Set (1server & 2 cups) -- Old Kanji Pattern. Great way to enjoy sake tonight.
	Plug (Juden-chan) - Fight Ippatsu!! 1/7 Figure Insulator Suit ver.　Illustrated by Bow Ditama. Plug, aka Juden-chan, is very cute, in a shocking way.
	WA ~ Bubble Bath Petal * Pink SAKURA *. A unique bubble bath experience -- sakura petals that turn into bubble bath!
	'Modern+' DX Aluminum Locking 2-tier Bento Box with Chopsticks. The nicest large bento box we've seen in a long time. Has everything!
	Mini BAN-GASA ~ Classic Red Parasol with Kokeshi Handle . Cool Japanese parasol to keep the heat away.
	Meiji Xylish Fruits Gum Assortment Flap Top Bottle. Delicious fruit flavored gum that I am chewing right now.
	Lotte Toppo -- Canadian Maple Syrup Flavor. Toppo for Canadians, eh?
	Zebra Sarasa Ball Point Pen 0.5 -- Black. The most popular pen ever sold on J-List, now restocked. My son recommended that we carry this since he won't use any other.
	New Hello Kitty Vibrator ~ Pink. Despite a huge number of customers, this cool item is back in stock (for now).