Tierrasanta, where Santa Claus wears a Tiara

It's funny how perceptions work differently in different languages. If you're below a certain age, the most famous Chinese name after Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-Tung if you're even older) is probably Chun Li, the cute fighting vixen from Street Fighter II who shouts "Yatta!" ("I did it!") after she wins a fight. While the brains of English speakers labor over properly memorizing a strange-sounding name like Chun Li, which has no mental hooks for us to attach it with, Japanese have the benefit of being able to internalize the name using kanji characters. Because kanji names have meaning, Japanese might get the impression that Chun Li was a beautiful baby born in the spring, since the characters mean "Spring Beauty." We have a house in the Tierrasanta area of San Diego, and just for fun I asked my Japanese daughter what she thought the name might mean. Her answer was really cute: "It means Santa Claus wearing a tiara crown."

"Tierrasanta" made my daughter think of Santa-san wearing a tiara.

Mid-Summer Greetings Cards

Hello again from Japan, where the zipper in your pants is known as the "window of society" (shakai no mado), one of my favorite random euphemisms.

This has been a difficult summer for Japan. First, the heat has been incredible, contributing to more than 100 deaths and sending thousands to the hospital, including comedian George Tokoro, who plays the voice of Ponyo's father. Japan has also started finding that some of its oldest citizens are in fact dead or missing. It all started when municipal authorities decided to check up on an 111 year old man, only to find a mummified corpse that had been there for thirty years. This may have been part of the man's personal choice to self-mumify himself in a Buddhist custom of purification, but his family is going to have some 'splaining to do about why they kept his pension money for themselves all these years. Another 50 centenarians are said to be missing, including a 113-year-old woman born in 1897, Tokyo's oldest citizen.

Yes, this summer has been a hot one, with temperatures as high as 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), of course with very high humidity. It's the perfect weather for enjoying some Japanese mugi cha or refreshing barley tea, which is the most popular drink in Japan when it's hot out. In Japan there's a nice custom called shochuu omimai or a mid-summer greeting card. Individuals and businesses exchange these cards in July and August, and the various companies J-List works with such as Soft on Demand and dating-sim game companies Will and Nitroplus send us these cards to see how we're handling the hot summer.

Midsummer greetings cards are a nice tradition in Japan.

Cool Products Friday, August 6, 2010

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	Fun New Evangeline Items Two awesome Eva items: a NERV tissue cover for your car or office, and a cool Sticky Plate to hold your important items like your phone and wallet securely in your car.
	Enfu Posters Then: celebrate the awesome Japan-influenced pop artwork of master illustrator Enfu. His professionally reproduced prints are available to order now!
	Re-ment Onsen Yado no Gohan Neat! A new series of miniature Re-Ment food toys portraying the exotic foods found at an onsen (hot springs) inn.
	K-On! Figma and Nendoroid Toys In Stock! K-On! fans should be happy because we've got the Ritsu Figma toy in stock -- it comes with her drums! -- plus the Nendoroid of Tsumugi.
	Haruhi Suzumiya illustrations ~ Spring and Summer A great artbook for fans of Haruhi Suzumiya and all the other characters of the Haruhiverse. Tons of gorgeous art here.
	Gorgeous Shirow Artbooks Restocked Then enjoy some of the most amazing illustrations by Shirow Masamune restocked for you. So detailed, so dreamy to stare at for hours!
	Good Afternoon #11 Next enjoy more than 1000 pages of the best manga with the new Good Afternoon, featuring tons of stories for you to read through, with furigana beside the kanji to make them easier to read.
	B's Log July 2010 B's Log is the magazine for fans of girls who love games -- from BL and Yaoi games to awesome girl-centric visual novels and otome games, this is what you've been searching for.
	Smart Aug 2010 Smart is the popular Japanese fashion magazine that helps you keep up with what's popular in Tokyo. This issue fives you great omake (free stuff) too!
	Restocked Cosplay Uniforms, 'Shimapan' Stripe Bags The popular Basic High School Uniforms from Joybank are back in stock. These are the best and simplest way to transform yourself into a Japanese high school girl.
	Ponyo Wind-Up Music Box Strap Everyone loves Ponyo, and today we've got a treat for you: two new Ponyo wind-up music boxes you can carry on your keys.
	Restocked Totoro and Ponyo Also see a HUGE restocking of Totoro and Ponyo plush items, like the classic Ponyo plush toy, the Totoro Treehouse plush toy, Cat bus with small Totoro to ride inside plus Totoro bento (!).
	Elecom Burger Cleaner Keep your computer clean with these plush hamburgers from Elecom. Take each piece off -- bun, meat, cheese -- for another soft surface for polishing your computer. All versions restocked today!
	Touhou Project Games Restocked Touhou is a series of popular shooting games with amazing graphics, sound, music, and of course all the Touhou characters. Several restocked today.
	Sakura Silhouette Ball Aroma Candle We love to find random cool things from Japan for you. Here's a really special Sakura Candle that shows cherry blossoms when you light it.
	Japanese Barley Tea - Mugi Cha - Summer Drink Ocha Another great way to make summer special is by drinking mugi cha, the barley tea that all Japanese love to drink. This is a package of 32 cold-water tea bags that are super easy to prepare, restocked today.
	New Japanese Snacks Today's new snacks are all great -- a new flavor of Pringles Japan,Ten Times Hotter Karamucho potato snacks, plus delicious Lotte Acuo "Sparkling Powder In" gum.
	Restocked Food Drops, Too We have fresh stock of amazing Japanese Food Drops, including Going to Hell (spicy) candies, delicious Gyoza (aka "pot stickers") and Seafood Rice Bowl (yum).
	Even More Bento Boxes See fresh stock of the Genuine Lacquered Miso Sop Bowl Bento Box, which had everything you need for a great bento experience in one unit. Awesome design.
	Bento Boxes for Men Restocked Or if you're a guy looking for a large, non-kawaii bento box, we recommend the AG+ Men's Bento which holds a large volume of rice and, meat, vegetables and other good things for you.
	Kawaii Bento Accessories Hello Kitty and Bento seem to go hand-in-hand, and today we've restocked the Hello Kitty Onigiri Decorate Set, for making perfectly shaped kawaii rice balls.
	Kanji Drill Workbooks J-List always has helpful tools to help you learn Japanese, whether you're just picking up hiragana and katakana or are studying more advanced parts of the language. Today we've restocked our kanji practice books for students.
	Great Back to School Items from Japan Make going back to school more fun than ever with these fun items, including the One Piece Fragrant Double Market Pen, classic Campus notebooks ("the best foolscap for writing") and more.
	Lucky Cat Tea Cup We love Lucky Cat and carry dozens of awesome products. Among our favorites are our Lucky Cat Tea Cups, which are so awesome to decorate your home with or just drink tea out of.
	Mio Akiyama 1/6 Figure ~ K-ON! *Preorder* Awesome new Mio figure in large 1/6 scale. True K-On! fans don't need to be told that her pantsu are true blue shimapan.
	Sci-Hi Revoltech: Jason & Giant Robo *Preorder* Most of you may think the Jason from Friday the 13th Revoltech is the more awesome of these new preorder items, but being an old school fans of Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot (aka Giant Robo), I'll go with the latter.
	Haro Multi Purpose Box *Preorder* Gundam fans -- here's a really cool Haro toy that looks like an awesome figure...but it's really a secret place to hide stuff.
	Solid Snake Play Arts 'Kai' Action Figure *Preorder* Metal Gear Solid fans get a new figure today. Super detailing and highly poseable.
	Get These Discontinued J-List T-shirts J-List is always closing out some kanji T-shirt designs to make room for new shirts, including Warning Panty Thieves, Peeping Toms, Don't Commit Seppuku and Rated "H." Get them fast!
	Restocked Hentai Artbooks We have some great artbooks back in stock for you too, including Kashimashi Communication, Prismtone ~ Range Murata Anime Works, Girls Girls Girls, and more.
	HEAVEN'S FRONTIER I Fabulous new doujin game that involves lots of touching!
	Fun 'Harem' Games If you're looking for a light and fun interactive game for your PC that lets you explore love with beautiful girls, why not consider the offerings from Trabulance, like Target: Pheromone (help a witch get back to her own dimension by, er, cuddling) or Pick Me Honey!, a ame in which you must choose your future wife.
	Bible Black Memorial New Toys See fresh stock of the new Bible Black Memorial toys, with redesigned insides that will really help you remove your daily stress.
	Shizune Futou 1/6 Cast off Figure *Preorder* Superb cast-off figure with some of the most amazing detail we've seen, and we've seen a lot.

The Only Gaijin in the Room

Because I live in a smaller rural city in Japan, there are fewer foreigners around me, and it's not uncommon for me to find myself the only non-Japanese person around. When I take my family to the Shinto shrine to pray for good luck in the new year on January 1st, for example, I'm likely to find myself in a huge crowd of Japanese faces with nary a Westerner in sight. This is less due to the paltry number of foreigners in our part of the country and more to cultural differences, e.g. most of the Brazilians or Peruvians or Canadians living in Japan are at home doing their own thing rather than standing in the freezing cold trying to experience Japanese New Year's Day culture. Sometimes being the only foreigner around can take real courage. Once I went to a concert by a minor group called Personz, which wasn't the sort of band to attract gaijin fans. Not only was I the only non-Japanese in the entire concert hall, but most of the other attendees were short Japanese females, which meant I stood a head or more above everyone, the better for every pair of eyes in the room to lock onto the strange barbarian in row 23.

Being the only gaijin can be a challenge.

Japanese and Mexican Beans

Yesterday I took my wife out to my favorite Mexican restaurant in San Diego. While she scarfed down the refried beans she said, "This is delicious. I guess I'm not Japanese anymore." She was referring to the fact that virtually every Japanese detests Mexican style beans, and the mark of a Japanese person who's lived in the U.S. for some time is that they can eat all types of Mexican beans. I've got a theory that both beans and pickles are at the heart of each culture, and it always takes time to learn to appreciate the differences in one place if you come from another. And sure enough, I love nothing more than a crunchy Vlassic dill spear, while Japanese usually hate American pickles, much happier to eat traditional Japanese versions like pickled eggplant, daikon radish, or -- I swear I am not making this up -- fish intestines, all of which I can't stand. Incidentally, you can try Kyoto-style Japanese pickles with our popular Traditional Food Drops candies.

It's usual for Japanese people to hate Mexican style beans.

Keeping Up with the Gaijins

History is in all of us, and each nation has its own unique quirks or features that come about as a result of its own past. For the Japanese, the arrival of Perry's black ships in 1853 brought them face-to-face with the fact that Japan couldn't stand against nations like the United States and Great Britain. After the "respect the Emperor and expel the foreign barbarians" revolution that ejected the last Tokugawa Shogun in favor of a government formed around the Emperor (which theoretically "restored" the Emperor to power, hence the term Meiji Restoration), the country underwent an unprecedented program of modernization, retiring the old system of feudal domains (han) for a modern prefectural system based on that of France and introducing education to the people. One of the forces driving this was Japan's desire to be seen in a positive light by foreigners from the powerful countries of the West, and today, the Japanese are still very concerned about how they appear to gaijin. Many large-scale public works, such as the first Shinkansen line launched in 1964, coincide with international events like the Olympics, when foreigners would visit Japan in large numbers and "oo and ah" over their technical achievements. It's like Japan is still trying to prove to the West that they've left the backwards feudal nation they were 150 years ago behind.

The Japanese have a strange compulsion to look good in front of gaijin.

Cool Products Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

	NyanType 10 Why do we love NyanType, the primary competitor to Megami Magazine? Why, because of all the awesome omake (free stuff), in the form of many awesome original posters and more. Enjoy the new issue, but hurry!
	CLANNAD ~ Hikari Mimamoru Sakamichi de Part II Then, a new sequel story to CLANNAD by the original writers? Wow, I am jazzed by this idea! Play it on the Sony PSP.
	Sci-fi Revoltech: Woody and Buzz The coolest spaceman and cowboy pair in the world are now the coolest toys -- from Japan! The Woody and Buzz Revoltech toys are super detailed, and I know I'll be getting a pair.
	Revoltech Protect Gear ~ Kerberos Saga We have those Jin-Roh Revoltech figures in too, so detailed and awesome-looking. In stock and ready to buy.
	Tamaki Mukousaka 1/7 Figure Then, a figure that's so awesome I can hardly describe it, this is the new Tamaki maid-school-mizugi version from ToHeart 2. Rendered in big 1/7 scale for maximum viewing pleasure, and in stock now.
	Mizuho Kazami Hug Pillow Case If you love Kazami-sensei from Please Teacher, here is the perfect product for you: a full sized dakimakura hug pillow for your room. But hurry, most of the pillows sold out as pre-orders.
	Mame Revo! Moyashimon Revoltech Figures Then, the cutest little bacteria are coming out in toy form, as Revoltech recreates your favorite Moyashimon characters. And these are in stock and ready to buy.
	Touhou Project Traditional Fans We love Touhou a lot around here, and here are some gorgeous fans featuring original art from the series. Great for summer!
	Hard Case for iPhone 4 with Stand Finger Strap A great case for the iPhone 4 from Elecom! It comes with an attachable stand/finger strap which makes it easy to hold the phone. You can also attach any Japanese strap you like!
	Space Battleship Yamato USB Flash Memory 1GB Nerdy and awesome -- this is a 1GB flash memory stick for fans of the classic Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers).
	UTB ~ Up To Boy Aug. 2010 Up To Boy is a famous magazine for fans of super-cute idols. Check out the new issue.
	Cutie July 2010 J-List carries fun fashion magazines from Japan, like the new issue of Cutie, which gives you free omake fashion accessories.
	Candy Rain -- Kyuta Sakai Illustration Works Great artbook by the creator to some of Japan's best anime characters, from Higurashi to Ichigo Mashmaro.
	Hetalia Axis Powers vol. 1 & 2 Awesome news for Hetalia fans: fresh stock of the official manga, filled with 4-koma (4 panel) manga and other great art with all you favorite anthropomorphic WWII countries.
	Dengeki Layers vol. 32 Of course "Layers" doesn’t refer to layers of clothing: instead, 'layers refers to cosplayers, whose who are dedicated to the art of getting the costume just right. New issue in stock.
	Stripe Panty -- Shimapan Mint I have to say, I love my job. Who else gets to write up descriptions of Miku Hatsune's pantsu and call it work? Fresh stock of all sizes plus the Strip Panty and Half Top Set, plus Red Ribbon Gray Sailor Uniform in stock.
	Evangelion Interface Earphones Then: see fresh stock of the Evangelion earphones featuring the distinctive white "head interface" of Rei and Asuka. Compatible with any standard music player such as the iPod / iPhone.
	XCALGO ~ Overhead Type Stereo Headphones Those awesome folding overhead stereo headphones from Elecom are back in stock, as are the cool 2.4 Wireless Laser Mouse that's designed "Like a SPOON."
	Takoyaki Items Restocked We love takoyaki, the batter balls that contain a bit of octopus meat inside. See the popular electric takoyaki maker, plus the right brush for applying oil before cooking.
	Traditional Kyoto Candy Restocked Also -- neat! -- those traditional Kyoto candies are back in stock, with several fun styles for you.
	New Snacks Today's new Japanese snacks include Glico Comecco rice treat in nori (seaweed) flavor, Lotte Strawberry Toppo (yum!), plus FritoLay Japan's Yakosoba and Okonomiyaki Doritos -- wow!
	Restocked Sake, Beer Food Drops Today's restocked traditional Japanese "Food Drops" candies include popular flavors such as Sapporo Beer and Sake, plus Shirokuma Ice Cream from Kagoshima. Also Gyoza and Takoyaki furikake.
	Restocked Hello Kitty Bento Boxes For bento fans, we've restocked the that awesome Hello Kitty Wagara Bento Set, which is the #1 selling bento box from Sanrio because of its awesome design and functionality.
	The Manga Cook Book J-List sells dozens of great cookbooks and other books that help you learn about the amazing food culture from Japan, like the popular Manga Cookbook, which we restocked today.
	Slim Mug Bottle ~ Ume Stainless Water Bottle An elegant bottle to carry water with your bento lunch.
	Sakura Bamboo Long Chopsticks 2 Set Here are some extra long, extra easy to use chopsticks for cooking or eating with.
	Authentic 'Socks Glue' From Japan For all those who love "Zettai Ryoiki," which is the space between the top of the a girl's over-knee socks and where her skirt begins, we've restocked the Japanese "socks glue" to hold up tall socks.
	Restocked Artbooks and Photobooks A serious work for artists as well as general moe enthusiasts that documents real high school uniform types and features of each. Also: we have fresh stock of the popular Haikyo Discovery photobook.
	Nintendo DS Study Software Restocked In addition to the popular My Japanese Coach, the Nintendo DS software that teaches you Japanese, we've restocked several popular titles from Japan, including Perfect Kanji, Kanji Test for 250 Millions and more.
	Shikinami Asuka Langley Figma *Preorder* I so love the Asuka Test Plugsuit version from the Evangelion 2.22 movie. It's very, ah, revealing.
	Ritsu Tainaka 1/7 Figure ~ K-ON! *Preorder* Wow, here's a really nice Ritsu figure showing the president of the K-On! club on her way home from school.
	Tomoe Nendroid Figure Queen's Blade *Preorder* I love Tomoe from Queen's Blade, and not just because she'd voiced by Mamiko Noto. I also love her strength, and skimpy shrine maiden outfit.
	Restocked Japanese Snacks, Gum Finally, see some excellent restocked J-snacks and gum, including Lotte "No Time" Gum (for when you have no time to brush) and Ume Gum, Calbee Jagabee, Yamayoshi Wasa-Beef Wasabi Potato Chips, Calbee Sapporo in BBQ flavor, and more.
	The Best Magazine Special Aug 2010 NO. 205 Super new magazine with free pantsu for you, as modeled by the girls in the outstanding magazine.
	Stress Relief Toys Restocked Then enjoy fresh stock of stress relief toys that will make you glad you're a guy, or a girl, including the "Dignity" hole toys that are so awesome, they come in wooden boxes, plus the Waterproof PLESTO Massager, or Angelica Elvish One-Hole.