All about "castle towns," the use of euphsmisms in daily life in Japan, and funny English you can try at home

As with Europe, Japan has had a long history which has left its mark on cities and towns today. Most of Japan's cities started out as castle towns, built up around the castle of the local samurai lord during Japan's feudal period, which ended only 140 years ago. Virtually all the cities around J-List -- Gunma prefectural capital Maebashi, commercialized Takasaki with its coveted Bullet Train line, and our own Isesaki -- originated as castle towns, and have curvy, narrow, inconvenient roads to prove it. Most of the beautiful castles in Japan are long gone, some lost to floods or general disuse and others destroyed during World War II, and their ruins are usually transformed into parks or other open spaces where people can come and commune with their history or have a picnic. Now only a dozen of the original large castles remain, with the most beautiful generally considered to be Himeji Castle near Kobe, a massive towering white structure that dates back to before the age of Columbus. (Click here for a really big picture of this castle.)

I talked before about euphemisms the Japanese use in their daily lives. Substituting beautified words or phrases for potentially embarrassing ones that we don't want to utter directly is something we all do, but Japan seems to have raised it to an art form. The subject of death is a primary candidate for the use of these substitute phrases, and some polite ways of referring to death include takai ("went to the other world") or gorin-juu ("arriving at the final stage of life"). An average of three times a month, some depressed Japanese person decides to end it all by jumping in front of a train on Tokyo's busy Chuo Line, and whenever there's an announcement of a delay due to "an accident involving physical injury" everyone knows what is really meant. From time to time, a man may purchase various services from a woman, and that practice is prettied up as enjo kosai" ("paid dates) or fashionable words like "delivery health" or "pink salon." Virtually all Japanese females seem to suffer from chronic constipation, which is caused from eating rice three times a day, and there are many alternative ways to refer to this state, including otsuji ga warui (traffic isn't passing through properly). Female menstruation is another big area for finding other words to describe a thing, with the most common way to refer to this is seiri, literally meaning "biology," although there are many other alternate names, like Anne's Day (a bizarre reference to Anne Frank) or "Japanese Flag Day." Finally, perhaps the most famous euphemism used in Japanese is the English letter "H," usually pronounced "ecchi," which stands for anything to do with sex (i.e. a person who thinks about sex to much is "ecchi," to have sex is "ecchi suru" and so on). Japanese students study a total of six years of English, even more if they go on to college, and even though most people don't attain real conversational fluency, English does seep into the culture here in many interesting ways. The Japanese use thousands of foreign-loan words in their daily lives, mostly from English, but sometimes the meanings get changed a little. In Japanese usage, "milk" (miruku) always refers to powdered creamer for your coffee, and some words for makeup are shifted in meaning, too: "rouge" means lipstick and "manicure" means nail polish, although a "hair manicure" means getting your hair dyed a different color. Sometimes the Japanese will use words from languages other than English for style or phonetic reasons. For example, to avoid problems with similar words such as "crown" and "clown," they turn to French for the latter term: pierrot. Of course, language is all about communication, and there's no such thing as "wrong" language if it does it job, but it can be a challenge to keep from judging the Japanese for using "mistaken" English like referring to the thing you look through in a camera as the "finder." It's an even bigger challenge keeping from embarrassing myself by using these colorful English phrases with my family and friends when I go back to the States. 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

	Sabra Magazine 009 May 2007. Gorgeous new issue of Sabra, complete with DVD.
	Legend of Sayaka Tsutsumi. A popular JAV idol over the years, this is her fabulous "sayonara" photobook w/ 4 DVDs (!).
	The Splitting Image of Leah Dizon -- Yuu Hazuki. Another item for Leah Dizon fans, starring the gorgeous Yuu Hazuki.
	Tsuiteru Onna Nihon Irechau ~ A Woman With Two Bodies. Like it or not, the current state of the art in hentai is "futanari" which is "being two at the same time." This is the most famous artist in the genre.
	Yakuza Moon Memoirs of a Ganster's Daughter. Gorgeous book in English all about the yakuza.
	La femme. The art in this book is amazing, but I like the title, too.
	Comptiq April 2007. Get yor "moe" fix with this great magazine.
	L from Death Note ~ Clay Color *Preorder*. Death note figure. Preorder it now.
	Misa Amane from Death Note ~ Clay Color *Preorder*. Or get this one. Or both, we don't mind.
	Dengeki Layers vol. 13. The bible of cosplayers all over Japan.
	Star Wars Action Figure Database vol. 3. Great for fans of Star Wars who want to see *all* the figures and toys ever released.
	Hello Kitty Kimono Strap with Chirimen Mari ~ Orange. Kawaii Hello Kitty wearing a kimono.
	Shakugan no Shana 1/8 Figure Noir Version ~ Kotobukiya. I love the character design from this show, really I do. It's the Haruhi designer, so that explains that. I also love what she's doing with the sword.
	Womens Tatami Sandals -- Red & Pink Kimono Pattern ~ Size 5. We stock many tatami sandals that are great for the summer months.
	Aria Company Diorama Set with Aria, Alicia and Akari. Fabulous anime toy item from Japan!
	Dragon Omamori ~ Japanese Shinto Luck Charm. This good luck charm from Japan is great.
	Mini FURIN (Japanese Summer Bell) -- Gold Fish. Beautiful sounding wind chime from Japan, too.
	Microwave Heart Shaped Egg Maker. Cook eggs shaped like hearts for the ones you love.
	Deluxe Hello Kitty Leisure Sheet. A cute little picnic sheet from Japan, with a surprising number of uses.

Understanding group culture through photography, all about Social Security in Japan, and would you like "lice" with your bento?

The Japanese are a very group-oriented people, and one of the worst things a person can be is nakama-hazure (nah-kah-mah HAH-zoo-reh), meaning "being left out of the group," i.e. an outsider. It's funny to see some of the social mechanisms that are in place to keep groups of people functioning happily. For example, if you watch Japanese taking group photographs, they'll usually take two, so that the person holding the camera the first time can get in the second picture, and no one feels left out of the group by not being in every shot. This little ceremony is very important -- if, say, the owner of the camera were to suggest that the second picture wasn't necessary, perhaps to save film, he'd basically be putting the circle of friends at risk by allowing the implication that every member of the group wasn't as important as all the others to stand, a psychological dynamic that certainly would be rare to see in the U.S. Although you don't think of a family as an in-group, it's certainly possible to be nakama-hazure even with people you share the same home with, something my Japanese wife has learned as she watches our kids get better and better at English. Sometimes we play cruel tricks on her at the dinner table, asking if she'd like more "lice" and smirking when she says yes. Most industrialized countries are struggling with the aging of their societies, and with its very low birth rate, Japan generally leads the pack. There are two systems that provide health insurance and retirement income in Japan, the Social Insurance System (available to any employee of a medium-sized or larger company, and their families) and the National Insurance System (available to everyone else, including self-employed). Both systems work fairy well, covering 70% of medical costs and providing a basis for Japanese retirees to live. Oddly, although everyone is ostensibly required to pay into the local version of Social Security, there are no penalties for not doing so, and many Japanese don't bother with the system at all. This includes some politicians, which caused a scandal that ended several careers a few years ago. Currently Japan's Social Security system is in hot water after losing data on up to 50 million citizens who paid into the system over the past twenty years, including that of yours truly -- we recently asked for a report on the payments I'd made when I was teaching ESL and were told they didn't have me in their computer. It turns out that a change in the number used to track these payments caused information on millions to disappear, causing extra retirement headaches for many.

Bento, Japan's visually beautiful boxed lunch, has become a famous image of the country throughout the world, and very popular with J-List customers, too. The Japanese have a tradition called shoku no bi, or "the beauty of food," and many dishes are aesthetically pleasing to look at as well as being delicious. In keeping with this great concept, bento becomes much more than something you eat at lunchtime. It can be an art form, as wives and mothers show their creativity each day with fun and delicious new ways of cutting sausages into little flowers or crabs or octopi. Eating a boxed lunch that your wife or mother has put a lot of effort into can really make a person try extra hard at work or school, and it's not uncommon for bento to include the word GANBATTE! (gahn-BAH-teh, meaning "Please work hard!") spelled out in cut nori seaweed. Ultimately, bento can be an expression of love in a country where married couples might spend their entire lives together without ever saying "I love you" to each other, and the image of a young salaryman eating his aisai bento (or "loving wife bento") is extremely romantic. J-List has been involved with bringing Japan's PC dating-sim games out to fans in the English-speaking world for years, and we're really happy with the acceptance the games have achieved. In addition to our extensive line of bishoujo ("pretty girl") games which feature all manner of pretty anime girls for you to interact with, we also have the first-ever yaoi games for fans of dramatic "BL" stories, and fans of these yaoi games will be happy to hear that we're reducing the prices of both Enzai - Falsely Accused and Absolute Obedience by $5 today, making today a great day to give these titles a try. Fans of our traditional games, we've got some good news for you, too: we're reducing the price of the upcoming Pretty Soldier Wars A.D. 2048 by $5, too, with retroactive pricing for all fans who have preordered the game. Why not browse our great lineup of PC dating-sim games now, and see what surprises we have in store for you? 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.

	Gorgeous Nov. 2006 vol. 01. Gorgeous new magazine just released. Covers harder themes and features a DVD too.
	Mejiri -- Reina Sakaki. The Mejiri series is famous for this rather interesting pose on the cover. It's been running for more than twenty years. Yes, American pr0n companies sometimes rip the pose off thinking no one will notice.
	Amuro Cos! -- Ami Yamazaki. Amuro is of course Amuro Namie, the girl who changed the face of JPOP a decade ago (did you think it was Amuro Rei?). This is a real mainstream actress who's been tempted into a career change by SOD. God she looks good.
	Newtype Feb 2007. New issue of Newtype, loaded with color.
	Directory of 800 Train Station Bento ~ Shun no Ekiben Meikan 800. Loads of information on Train Station Bento from all around Japan.
	Coakuma Peach ~ Peachy Little Devil - Koakuma Peach. Peachy Little Devil? Anyway, a fascinating manga about gyaru, aka "gals" or their old name, kogals.
	Hatsu Inu 2 ~ First Dog part 2. Fascinating ero manga combining some of the most amazing themes I've seen, and that's saying something.
	Figure Maniacs vol. 24 Spring 2007. New issue of Figure Maniacs, the magazine for people who really love anime figures. I swear I could read this thing for days without getting tired of it.
	Haruhi Suzumiya Gakuran Costume 1/8 Figure ~ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu *Preorder*. New Haruhi figure up for preorder. Looks great.
	Hello Kitty Hariko Daruma -- Red ~ Handmade Traditional Style Daruma. This is fabulous -- a Hello Kitty Daruma! It will bring you lots of "kawaii" good luck.
	Sonsaku Hakufu 1/8 Figure by Kotobukiya *Ikki Tousen* . New Hakufu figure, but limited stock so don't be too slow on it if you want one of them. This is from Ikki Tousen, the show that raised panty shots to an art form.
	Hello Kitty Chirimen OTEDAMA ~ Red. Also got more of the Hello Kitty "otedama" toys again.
	Space Battleship Yamato Mechanical Collection Part.1 ~ Full Set (Set of 5). Cool! Yamato toys, including the Andromeda, the most excellent ship anywhere.
	Sukiyaki Furikake -- Sukiyaki (Beef & Egg). A "delicious" flavor of furikake for your rice.
	Japanese Sake Brand Cafe Bag -- Otoko-Yama ~ Black. New "sake bag" for men or women. Looks great.
	YAKIUGI -- Baked Japanese Cedar ~ Geta Sandals. New variety of stylish Japanese sandals on the site.
	Kuro Figure ~ Tekkon Kinkreet Movie Collection. Tekkon Kinkreet is looking to be awesome, and here's a figure from the series.
	Absolute Obedience - Zettai Fukuju Meirei . For yaoi fangirls and fanboys (mostly fangirls, since yaoi is enjoyed by like 90% straight girls who are usually hot, go figure), we've reduced the prices of the two yaoi titles we've published. Enjoy the new prices!
	Pretty Soldier Wars A.D. 2048 *Preorder*. Also, enjoy a $5 reduction in this upcoming title, which we're doing to better line up our products, making a nice $24.95 line of lower priced new games. Preorder your copy now!

Star Wars group geekout update, the linguistic roots of Japanese, and psychology through TV commercials

The Star Wars Celebration IV convention is in full swing, and here in Los Angeles tens of thousands of fans are having a group geekout as the film hits its 30th anniversary today. I got to talk with the actor who plans Jango Fett and all the Clone Troopers and impress him with my knowledge of the New Zealand national anthem (I lived there for a year as a kid), got to thank Admiral Piett for being such a great villain, and gave free Pocky to the black chick who plays the green chick that Jabba the Hut dumps into the Rancor pit. Best of all, a Japanese VIP was having trouble communicating with Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) and I got to come to her rescue -- that was cool. As usual, it's great to be in a place where we can meet and greet our wonderful customers, and if you have plans to be at the show, which runs through Monday, please visit us in booth 924 and say hi! (See this page for info on the show.)

I talked last time about Japanese being related to Basque, Turkish, and Hungarian. This was a joke, although it does share certain linguistic features with these languages (also Finnish and some Native American tongues), mainly in that it's an "agglutinating" language, which just means it puts a lot of information in the verb conjugation rather than with helping verbs. Some information that can be contained in the verb form include passive voice, causality, negatives, if constructions and so on, and a single conjugated verb could, if you need it to, communicate something like "if I hadn't been made to work, (I wouldn't have missed my favorite TV show)..." While most languages are grouped into families, the most massive being the Indo-European that spans India and Europe, Japanese is possibly in a class by itself, having no generally accepted link to another language (other than Okinawan). Various theories are discussed, including that Japanese is related to Korean based on grammatical similarities between the two languages (this is usually denied by both Japanese and Koreans, to general amusement); that Japanese is related to a theoretical language group called Altaic that directly links, say, Hungarian and Japanese through a distant linguistic ancestor; and so on. Or maybe the Japanese do descend from the Sun Goddess after all, as their myths suggest? Psychology is a complex subject, and no matter what culture you're from, there are certain emotional buttons that, say, TV advertisers can use to change the way you feel about their product. One button used in Japan is that of the "worried child" when mothers or fathers are made to buy some product because of the concern their daughter is showing over their health -- parents are saps for kids who are worried about them. The Japanese aren't long on nationalism, perhaps understandable given their past, but during the 1990s a health drink (Regain) gained popularity positioning itself as helping Japanese businessmen do business all over the world, with a theme song to match. One of the most pathetic commercial messages I've seen here is "if you use this product, foreigners will respect you." This was the message Cabin cigarettes sent in a commercial I saw soon after arriving in Japan, shown in movie theaters (yes, they had tobacco commercials, and yes, they showed commercials before a movie started in a theatre, although both are very rare now) which featured a Japanese man riding a train in Europe. As he smoked the company's product, the Europeans were listening attentively as he spoke, hanging on his every witty comment. 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.

	Mecha Ii Dec. 2006 -- Naomi Miyaji. Always one of my favorite photomagazines.
	Hakyun Biyori -- Misa Kikouden. Gorgeous photobook featuring Misa Kikouden.
	Carnival ~ Katsu-Aki World. Art book by the artist from Escaflowne.
	Reibun de Manabu Kanji to Kotoba Renshucho (Red) ~ Study By Sample Sentences: Kanji and Vocabulary (Level 2 JLPT). A handy approach to studying Japanese.
	Bakunyu Paradise. Ah, those wacky "explosive breasts."
	Rosanna 1/6 Figure Illustrated by Shunya Yamashita. Another nice figure by Shunya Yamashita. This guy is taking over his field.
	Re-ment Puchi Convenience Store ~ Full Set (Set of 8). Build your own miniature convenience store, or "conbini" as they're abbreviated in Japan.
	Chop Sticks & Hashioki Set (red & navy). Cool chopsticks made of bamboo.
	ZEN square plate . Very attractive plate for fans of Arita Ware.
	Tatami Setta w/ Tombo Dot Pattern Hanao. New tatami style setta sandals on the site.
	Panda Hello Kitty Animal Bubble Head vol. 1. Man, this is so cute, I am totally floored. Which is saying a lot, for me.
	* Kenka no Hanamichi * T-shirt ( from Japanese Yakuza Movie ) M Size ~ Black. Cool T-shirt with words from a famous yakuza movie on it.
	*KINKAKU* Kimono Cellular Phone Case ~ White . New fashionable cell phone case.
	Lotte Gold Power Energy Tablet. Get good energy from Lotte!
	Tekoki no Toriko. Pity the poor prisoner of "tekoki." Or don't.

This certainly is a fun con to be at. Although it's different from anime shows in general, we're fitting right in despite our focus on Japan. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure you're going to see this Death Star floating above the San Diego Comicon in a few weeks.

Lots of fun fans.

This is General Veers in case you aren't up on your Imperial armor.

Hopefully not traumatized little girl.

This is Oola. Is this woman not hot as hell, or what?

One of the many fun things we're denied because we're working. Oh well.

This dude has such a good idea!

The married couple that makes pajamas out of Star Wars bedsheets together, stays together. Now I want to get them to pose in American Gothic style.

Prelude to the cool "Princess Leia bitchslap" followed by one Leia shouting "You don't even have a uterus!" to a (male) Leia standing there.

Weird new products in the U.S., getting Japanese onomatopoeia on the brain, and what to the Japanese think of us?

Whenever I come back to the U.S., I like to cruise the grocery stores to see what new products have been introduced since I was "in country" last. I know that companies usually can't resist pushing their brands in new directions, which is called "line extension" in marketingspeak -- anyone remember the summer when everyone was wearing Cola-Cola branded clothes back in the 80s? One year I'll find bizarre new concoctions like Yogurt Burst Cheerios, or horrible new shapes and colors added to the Lucky Charms marshmallow pantheon, or Trix brand fruit-flavored yogurt, ugh. This trip I noticed they'd invented beef jerky with A1 steak sauce pre-soaked into it. What will they think of next, Sprite Cola?

One question I'm asked a lot is, what impression do Japanese have of Americans? The answers are always varied, of course, but include that we greet people we've just met as if we've known them for years, we're often not on time, we can be rather "about" (meaning vague or loose about rules), and we often laugh too loudly in public. Another thing I've been told repeatedly is that Americans are "optimistic" and can find something positive in just about any situation. This tendency towards positive thinking was especially important in the years after World War II, when the constructive attitudes of the American and British occupiers became infectious and spread to the Japanese, reassuring them that "everything will be alright." Recently I was talking with some friends about China and what the future might hold with regards to Japan. "It's a foregone conclusion," said one friend, "that Japan will lose to China." Another friend shared this opinion that in future decades, China's population and industrial growth would somehow "defeat" Japan, presumably removing the economic gains Japan has won for itself. This struck me as interesting, since I'm definitely optimistic about the future -- although the country will continue to grow in economic stature, I'm sure America will never "lose" to China. Another friend was sure that China was following Japan's disastrous bubble economy and would self-destruct on its own, so Japan had nothing to fear economically. Onomatopoeia are words that are based on sounds, although there can be quite a wide range between perceptions. For example, we Americans are convinced dogs make sounds like "bark bark!" or "woof woof!" while to the Japanese they sound like "wan wan!" (a big dog) and "kyan kyan!" (a small dog like a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua). When you've been around the Japanese language as much as I have, the local perceptions of sounds tend to seep into your skull, and I have no problem describing the slamming of a door as "batan!" or the sound of being dripping wet as "bisho bisho" or the sound of a Pocky stick breaking in two as "poki!" (which is where it gets its name). Because the Japanese are extremely creative, they have sound words for concepts we'd never think of assigning words to, and my brain sometimes picks up on those, too. For example, when I make a joke but no one laughs, I mentally think to myself "shiiiiin!" ("sheen"), which is the sound of total, deafening silence in the Japanese language. J-List has been involved with promoting Japan's amazing PC dating-sim games from the beginning, and we offer virtually every English-translated "H" game available, from great companies like G-Collections, JAST USA, Peach Princess and Kitty Media. We're happy to announce that there's a new blog where you can follow the development of your favorite titles, the official JAST USA side blog at Otakuism.com. We'll be posting news and updates of interest to bishoujo gaming fans as well as occasional hints at future titles, so check back often! Remember that the "dating-sim of the month" right now is Critical Point, the outstanding sci-fi game created by one of the original writers of Mobile Suit Gundam, Bubblegum Crisis and Macross, which brings an authentic pedigree and classic anime feel to it. Featuring a great mystery set on a distant moon base which you must unravel, and more than 20 endings, it's one game we can really recommend to many fans of Japan's PC dating-sims. And this month it's available for a special price, so get your copy now (the month is almost over...)! 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.

	Gals Extasy vol. 01. A nice 'ero' magazine, or photomag, with a DVD included.
	Munyu -- Mai Nadasaka. Munyu is the sound of boobs being squeezed. Now you know a Japanese sound word.
	Bishoujo Lesbian Soap -- Yuka Haneda. Yuka Haneda looks lovely in this new "soap" theme release.
	Kateigaho International Edition 2007 Winter issue vol. 14. Katei Gaho is one of the most amazing magazines I've ever seen in English, loaded with information on Japan's culture, arts and more. It's got to be the biggest money loser in Japan since it's not officially available outside of the country. Glad we're able to get it for you.
	Shoxx vol. 165 Nov. 2006. Shoxx, the popular Japanese magazine of Japanese rock.
	Dengeki Comic Gao! June 2007. I just love the art in this manga. And you get 500+ pages, wow!
	Deep Fetishism. Outstanding manga that expores, well, various fetishes.
	Hello Kitty Hiragana Chopsticks ~ Pink. Kawaii desho? Yes, I thought so.
	Kanji Square Geta w/Shima (Stripes) Pattern ~ Varnished Paulownia. We've gotten in a bunch more 'geta' sandals with kanji printed on them. Very nice.
	Pinky Street -- PK-013A *Repaint Version* ~ Blue Blouse & Brit Rock Costume. I love the Pinky Street figures, and we've gotten in this cool new figure today.
	WABI Square Plate ~ White. Great traditional square porcelain plate.
	Sitting Jiji Plush Large -- Kikis Delivery Service. Huggable large version of Jiji the black cat from Kiki's Delivery Service.
	Hello Kitty Noren -- Bamboo & Kimono Kitty. A 'noren' (noh-REN) is a traditional door curtain that separates two rooms, adding privacy and in this case, cute-ness.
	McVitie's Cookie -- Green Tea & Black Bean. A bold new flavor of McVitie's, which I presume they don't sell in the U.K.?
	Masane Amaha Power Up version 1/6 Figure -- Witch Blade. DESCRIPTION

Quickie pics of Vegas, in case you wanted to see.

It was our first time at the Bellagio. Very nice hotel, we were happy with everything except the difficulty at winning a the tables. The water show was great, and I sprung for the extra expensive rooms that overlooked the water.

This was breathtaking, going up in the Stratosphere. I mean, you expect Vegas to look good fro 1000 feet up, but we couldn't believe how nice it was. Getting toshed at the bar up there was even more fun.

Hey! They have crepes in America!

Jet Lagging in the USA, ways that Japanese reflect total social harmony, and would you save your baby's umbilical cord?

Well, once again I've made the hop from Japan to San Diego, which takes about 24 hours from door to door -- not too bad, considering I've travelled halfway across the globe. International travel can be a hassle, but at least it's just one long flight compared with making several different connections, as you often have when flying inside the U.S., and alcohol on international flights is always free. I'm currently going through my brief period of "reverse culture shock" in which everything in the U.S. looks kind of funny to me, from the sizes of "small" drinks at restaurants to cars careening down the wrong side of the road and so on. The colors that enter my eye actually seem to be different, but that might be the jet lag I'm feeling right now, or perhaps the leftover effects of all that free alcohol on the plane.

The Japanese can be a harmonious group of people, able to move in tandem in ways that hodge-podge Americans might have trouble conceiving of. One interesting concept is koromo-gae (koh-roh-moh GAH-eh), the official changing from summer to winter clothes, or vice versa. Since Japanese all change from their winter to their summer school uniforms on June 1, and back to winter uniforms on October 1, warm weather often spills over requiring students to swelter in the heat for a few weeks on each end. Although it might be very hot outside, virtually all students make the switch on the same day, so that one day you're seeing dark blue winter uniforms and the next day they're replaced by white-topped sailor suits, as if by magic. We got a lesson on how important not standing out can be to students the other day. During some extra-hot weather last week, we suggested to our son that he switch to his summer uniform early, since it eas plenty warm to warrant wearing the short-sleeve outfit. It'll be some time before I can forget the look of utter shock he gave us as we suggested that he be the only boy in the entire school to switch to his summer uniform early just because it was uncomfortablly warm. Sometimes confirmity can be important, I guess. You never know when Japanese customs will catch you off guard. When our kids were born, I insisted on being in the operating room during the birth so I could be the one to cut the umbillicle cords and help bring them into the world. This was rare enough that I got some surprised comments from the doctor and nurses, who were impressed with my dedication. I was talking about this event with my wife the other day, and she told me "Oh yes, and I still have those umbicle cords saved in a drawer." Supposedly, it's considered a requirement for parents to save that all-important memento of their children when they're born, to dry it and put it in a specially decorated box and keep it safe. Another interesting child-related custom is that of throwing teeth that fall out on the roof or under the house, depending on whether the tooth that came out was on the bottom or the top of the mouth, respectively. This ensures that strong teeth will grow in the future. On the heels of our great permanent price reduction on a dozen or so of our English-translated PC dating-sim games, we've got great news for you: the next two games we're posting for pre-orders! The first title is Snow Sakura, an outstanding game by D.O. in which you play Yuuji Tachibana, who has moved to a cold part of Japan, surprised to find himself surrounded by beautiful girls who love him. Can he discover the mystery of the strange cherry blossoms that bloom in the cold of winter? Then enjoy the upcoming Lightning Knight Raidy, the popular fantasy "monster combat RPG" from Zyx in which you must prowl through virtual dungeous and do battle with beautiful female monsters. Both games are in pre-production now and will be released in the coming months. You can preorder now and get free shipping when they come in! For the new update, the J-List staff has prepared lots of new and back-in-stock goodies for you, including ear cleaners shaped like samurai swords, our fun electric eraser shaped like a banana, good luck charms for 'safety driving,' restocked snacks (Black Sugar Caramels, Black Black Tablet Strong Type, Shigekix Cola), restocked toys (Totoro Alarm Clock, Bible Black figure, Hello Kitty Play Refrigerator), and much more. For our 18 plus customers, enjoy many great items too. Click here to see all the newly updated items. While I'm here in the U.S., the dedicated J-List staff will continue to process all orders and make sure everything ships smoothly. We hope that J-List can serve you today!

Gaijin battling to be the "King of Akihabara," silly thoughts on Japanese company names, and life sometimes being fair in your favor

One Japanese TV show that never fails to please is TV Champion, which pits exceptional people against each other in contests that are always fascinating to watch. Past episodes have featured home remodelers who must transform dilapidated houses into things of beauty with a budget of just $300, chefs who bake bread in the shape of St. Peter's Basilica, children who memorize classical Japanese history just for fun, and "UFO Catcher" collectors who are very good at picking plush toys out of crane game machines. Last night's episode was a battle between gaijin otaku from around the world to see who could be the foreign "Akiba-oh" (King of Akihabara). The questions were taken from a wide range of otaku culture, from guessing the name of an anime theme song to identifying which maid outfit went with which maid cafe to completing a famous line of dialogue from Mobile Suit Gundam (while wearing Char Aznable's famous Red Comet uniform, of course). In the end, the battle came down to Cheng from Hong Kong and Jenya from Russia. The final championship questions were tough, but Cheng correctly identified an electronics shop that's been in business since 1927 to win the gold.

I'll never forget the time when, back in college, I was copying some documents on a Ricoh copier and suddenly realized that the name of the company meant "clever" in Japanese. It was like a secret code embedded in the universe, and I wondered what other hidden gems I might be able to find by analyzing Japanese company names. Many corporations are named after their founders, like the automobile company Souichiro Honda launched, or the chocolate company Tachiro Morinaga created after studying confectionary-making in the U.S. The founder of Pocky maker Glico's son died at a young age of malnutrition, so he named his new company after the nutrient "glycogen," now found in all the company's products. Camera maker Nikon's name is a merging of the words for "Japan Optical" and the "Zeiss Ikon" line of lenses from Carl Zeiss, which the company hoped to duplicate. Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleadies, and Daihatsu is a contraction of "Osaka Engineering Works." The image of the rising sun is imporant to the Japanese, and this is employed by companies like Asahi ("morning sun"), Hitachi ("rising sun") and Sunrise Animation. When the Toyoda Automatic Loom company decided to branch out into automobiles, they decided that "Toyota" had a better ring to it, and they wrote their name in hard-edged katakana characters rather than kanji to set themselves apart. They did so well that the town they were based in eventually changed its name to Toyota City. They still make automatic looms, however. I'm sure that everyone has said at one time or another, "I know that life's not fair, but why isn't it ever fair in my favor?" All in all, Japan is a place where a gaijin can actually enjoy things going their way every once in a while. The "Universal Mystique of Foreign-ness Principle" helps make even a vanilla white boy like me seem interesting to my Japanese hosts, which has earned me invitations to karaoke and drink parties and an occasional girl's phone number scrawled on a chopstick wrapper over the years. When I came to Japan, my favorite band was a Japanese group called Psy-s (pronounced "size"), known for singing a few anime theme songs and releasing many other albums (City Hunter opening credits, To-y, and a few others, although that really dates me), and when I saw they were giving a concert in Tokyo, I made sure to be there. Afterwards I wrote a letter to the lead vocalist Chaka (no relation to the Pakuni from Land of the Lost) to see if she happened to notice a big gaijin in the crowd. She wrote back to me that she had, and we became friends. Of course, things can work in favor of foreign visitors to the U.S. too. J-List's Yasu was a rap DJ before he joined our company, and when he was studying in Philadelphia he went to a club where rapper Nas was going to perform. On a lark, he told the organizers that he was a rapper from Japan, and they immediately put him on stage to sing in Japanese. We've got some great news for fans of our PC dating-sim games: a permanent price drop for some of our best titles, including classics like Tokimeki Check in! and Doushin - Same Heart, outstanding titles from G-Collections like Tsuki - Possession and Heart de Roommate and Figures of Happiness, and even the best-selling game The Sagara Family. For fans of real classics, you can now get the JAST USA Memorial Collection which presents our first three titles in a revamped game engine that's fully compatible with modern Windows, for just $14.95. J-List loves these interactive love-sim games from Japan, and wants you to enjoy our English-translated -- so browse now! Feeling tired? Need more pep? Then we recommend the world-famous Lotte Black Black, the spicy caffeine gum from Japan that's a great way to keep from dozing off. We've got great varations too, including Black Black Caffeine Candy and sugarless variations. Enjoy our cool lineup of rare Japanese gum today! Shrinkwrapped packages of 15 packs are also available for a special discount, too. 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.

	Urecco Feb 2007 vol. 248. The new Urecco issue is here, with a great 2+ hour DVD for you too.
	Bomb Feb 2007. Venerable sexy idol magazine with 30+ years of history.
	Super Erect x Super Jet -- Kaho Kasumi. Kaho-chan, another girl so beautiful you have to ask why she isn't in a different line of work? Or maybe I'll leave that question for the philosophers...
	Mini-skirt plus Boots Collection 4 Hours. I wouldn't give a 4 hour DVD about girls in mini-skirts the time of day. But if you add boots, well...
	3rd Grade ~ The Preparatory Course for the Japanese Proficiency Test ~ Jitsuryoku Up Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken 3 kyu. Great guide for students of Japanese. I was surprised how good the grammar explanations in English were.
	What's What in Japanese Restaurants. Get more out of trips to your local Japanese restaurant.
	Girls Girls Girls! ~ EE Illustration Collection. Love this artbook, containing the works of several artists.
	Megane Bakudan ~ Megane Bomb. Nice manga for fans of "meganekko boys."
	Afternoon June 2007 . This is a great magazine, with a whopping 900 pages of good stuff for you to read.
	Urd 1/7 Figure ~ Oh My Goddess *Preorder*. A new figure of Urd is coming. I've always liked Urd. Heh, my wife (who is not up on anime much) always thinks this show is called Oh! My Goodness...
	Himitsu Nikki ~ Secret Diary. I'd have to say this is the most amazing manga I've seen all week. It's done by the guy who did our Sensei 2 game.
	New Super Mario Soft Magnet. Cute "soft magnets" of the Super Mario characters for your fridge, the white board at work, etc.
	Japanese Merchant Flag ~ KOHRI (Shaved Ice). This just says "Shaved Ice" but it's a whole cultural thing from the summer in Japan, too.
	Animal Post-it Index+Memo Combo ~ Pig. Cute little animal shaped poste-it notes with notebooks? Kawaii.
	Yomiko Readman 1/8 Figure *Read or Die*. While I wonder about the logic of calling a bookish character from an anime called Read or Die Yomiko ("Read Girl") Readman, I have to say I am intrigued by her outstanding design.
	Soundrop Railway Collection JR version ~ Full Set (Set of 8). Okay, this is just too cool -- a Soundrop sound keychain series that plays the sounds of trains in Japan. Fantastic!
	Cat Bus Hand Rolling Music Box *Kiki's Delivery Service*. More little music boxes from Totoroland.
	Black E-ma. Delicious new Black E-Ma mints "for men."
	Stick Black Soy Cafe Au Latte . And I'll bet you didn't see someone selling you Black Soy Cafe au Latte coffee today.

Japan, education and conformity, thoughts on memorizing various stuff, and the enigma of barley tea in the summer

Japan is a country that's very focused on education, and I've always observed that parents seem to put more energy and thought into educating children than I've generally seen in the U.S. To improve the communication between parents and the school, teachers always make a visit at the beginning of the school year, to see what the child's home environment is like and talk over any concerns with parents, and our daughter's teacher came by yesterday. Our daughter is haafu, but with a very expressive and individualistic American side, which can sometimes present challenges in the otherwise homogenous classroom, including minor ijime by the other kids who say things like "Sorry, I don't understand English" when she talks to them in Japanese. (Kids will be kids, and I got the same treatment when I lived in New Zealand for a year at the age of six.) This year we have an extra problem, as the fifth graders will be taking a school trip to the Sea of Japan during the summer break in August, but our kids will be in the U.S. doing fun things and learning English instead. If my daughter is the only one in her class who doesn't go, it'll make her nakama-hazure (nah-kah-mah ha-zoo-reh), or a person outside the group, and her teacher was putting pressure on us to change our plans for the summer. It's a difficult decision, and probably only one that could only come up in a country that values harmony as much as Japan does. What would you do in our situation?

My wife marvels at my ability to quote the proposal scene from the Maison Ikkoku anime or the entire first three Star Wars films from memory despite being unable to recall my dentist appointment this afternoon. Yes, the way memory works is interesting, and learning a foreign language is a great way to mind-meld with your own brain and get insights on how it works. I figured out early on that trying to learn Japanese by cramming information into my skull was not going to work, and instead tried to attack each aspect of the language from as many directions as possible, including writing sentences repeatedly (an effective study method, if boring), studying in short sessions, making associations such as the kanji for "meat" looking like a rib cage, using those funky study aids from Japan, and when possible, speaking with real live native speakers, as the feedback when you screw up in a comical way is quite valuable. Another important tool was is using songs to help memorize information -- although I don't remember much about 1982, I can still remember the song that goes "867-5309." I got a lot of benefit from listening to JPOP songs my friends would record for me as well as hitting the Japanese karaoke bar scene each weekend, since you can literally call up a vocabulary word by singing a song that contains it back to yourself. One added benefit of studying from songs is natural accent reduction, and I believe that I speak the language more like a native because of heavy use of song vocals while studying. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I can understand the U2 musicians when they sing, but not when they talk? The Japanese have a special fascination with New York City, and it's not uncommon to see late-night "New York News" shows featuring a slice of life from America's most populous city from the viewpoint of the Japanese. In one show I caught they talked about New York's "bagel culture" and how the city could not start its day without them. The same could be said of Japan's summer season and mugi cha, the delicious barley tea that is universally consumed during the hot months of the summer here. Made of toasted barley, it's a delicious beverage usually served cold but sometimes hot. Because it contains no sugar or caffeine, it's considered very healthy, and has been shown in tests to reduce the effects of stress. My wife gave barley tea to our kids when they were babies to help fat-proof them, since it's a lot better for them than just about anything else kids are likely to drink. We've gotten our first mugi cha tea bags of the season today, a huge package that makes 40 liters of refreshing tea for you. Why not enjoy some Japanese barley tea this summer? We've got good news for fans of the DVD movie format who don't want to be told by Hollywood that they can only watch discs from the region they happen to live in. J-List's region free DVD players make it easy to enjoy "indies" JAV and anime discs from Japan as well as discs from any other part of the world, with full support for all the features you want, including playback of DIVX and AVI movies from DVD-R media. We've lowered the prices of all three of our current players, so that the reliable Rjtech RJ-200 now just $68 and the high-end RJ1000HD upscaling DVD player with HDMI (and included cable!) now just $98. Of course the players are made for the U.S. market, have full 1-year warranties and are fully compatible with your current TV. Yulia Nova is the beautiful Russian idol who became a sensation in Japan and the Internet, and her newest DVDs are finally in stock and ready for your order. The three new titles -- Yulia In the Spring, Summer and Winter -- are each filmed using exclusively new footage, shot of the lovely model in Moscow in each of the three seasons. It's a rare treat for fans of this special woman. Available now! 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.

	eOnna vol. 36 DEC 2006 - e onna. Another issue of eOnna, for fans of women so beautiful they never need to take their clothes off.
	Sexual Chiropractic Treatment. Very wackky new release from .
	Pythagora Switch DVD Book 1. This is hard to explain. You remember the funny machine in the opening shot of Back to the Future? It's like that, but a whole book and DVD.
	Dengeki Comic Gao! April 2007. I just love this magazine for its high quality art and huge page count.
	Aqua Absolute Zone - Aqua Zettai Ryoiki level. 6. Yaoi fans, this is a new series we've started carrying (we plan to carry more if you're interested).
	Brush Writing Calligraphy Techniques for Beginners. Great book to start teaching you Japanese calligraphy.
	A Look Into Japan ~ Nihon e toki Jiten. This is a cute little book, full of tons of information on Japan, with lots of pictures.
	Fruits No. 118 May 2007. New issue of FRUiTs, filled with tons of pictures of fashionable, happy people form Tokyo's Harajuku region.
	Yuki Nagato 1/6 Figure ~ Black Bunny Girl Cosplay *Suzumiya Haruhi no Yutsu*. LOVE the new Yuki figures. Although this girl is wearing a bunny suit, she's easily the most deep and interesting figure since Rei from Eva. Hell, she can speak SQL, how cool is that?
	Hakufu Sonsaku 1/6 Figure ~ Ikki Tousen *Preorder* . Fabulous "cast off" fiigure that you can, er, cast the clothes off of.
	Zebra Japonesque Super Mini Pen / Pink (SAKURA) . I carry these cool Japanese style pens with me in my computer bag, and like them a lot. Very small, but very nice to hold.
	Shiatsu Pocket Porcupine . It's a "needle rat" (porcupine) that will massage your stress away.
	Totoro Hand Rolling Music Box. Tiny Totoro music boxes are all the rage in Tokyo this year. We got some in stock for you.
	Sunshine Buddies Limited Edition Hidamari no Tami *Made with Corn*. New limited edition Sunshine Buddy -- never needs batteries!
	SAKURA Kasumi Mini Tote Bag ~ Pink . Super cute bag for your stuff.
	ELECOM Wireless Mouse ~ PRUMIE. I like this mouse a lot. From Elecom, and fully compatible with Winndows and Mac.
	Super Mario Bros. Connecting Strap -- Full Set (Set of 6). A cool item for Super Mario and gashapon fans.
	Tsubu Tsubu Hi-Chew -- Ramune Flavor kids . This is new -- Hi-Chew with ground up bits of ramune flavored gummy matter inside.
	Japanese Barley Tea - Mugi Cha - 40 pcs cold & hot water type Yay, the summer crop of barley tea is in!

The history of family names in Japanese, why there are so many last names in use here, and the Japanese connection with Auld Lang Syne

Names in Japanese are quite different from what we're usually used to in the West. Right off the bat, the family and given names are reversed, so if you're going to talk about "kawaii" bikini idol Yuko Ogura in Japanese, you'd need to get used to calling her Ogura Yuko. There are no middle names in Japan, and over the years I've been asked quite a lot by my students about my own middle name (Rowland), which they find interesting. Japanese also never name sons after fathers, as my own father did with me, and part of the mystique of the famous thief Lupin III is that he's the third generation to hold that name despite being of mixed Japanese ancestry. In the States, expectant mothers will buy a book of baby names that contains information on the etymology of each (for example, my own name comes from the Greek word for 'rock'), and books which present various kanji names are popular in Japan, too. It's common for Japanese to consult their local Shinto shrine for advice when choosing a name, but my wife's family is a little more Buddhist than most, so we visited our family Buddhist temple instead. We had been all set to name our son Kazuma, written with the characters for "peace" and "horse," but the priest warned us that choosing animal names was a bad idea, as our son would be headstrong and never listen to us. It can be fun to study how Japanese surnames work. One of the mysteries of family names in Japan is the large number of different ones that exist, around 120,000, compared with a few thousand in China and only 249 in Korea. This is caused partially by how late Japan was in adopting universal surnames, which only became required in 1870, and a lack of a specific tradition of naming families up to that point. It'd be hard to imagine a neighborhood in the States where everyone was named Smith, but nearly everyone who lives around our house has the same last name as us, Yanai, and nearby there are patches of houses where everyone is named Hosoi or Ishida, yet no one is related to anyone around them. Part of this is due to the fact that we live in a small rural city in the exact center of the country where no one ever sells their land, because if you sold your land and moved to another part of the country, what would you do with your family gravestone? Your ancestors would be so lonely. One amusing aspect of living in Japan is hearing people with names like Tanaka ("in the rice field"), Yamada ("rice field on the mountain") and Nakamura ("in the village") argue vehemently that their ancesors were samurai warriors despite their agrarian sounding names.

It's funny how different inputs -- such as a simple song -- can push different emotional buttons depending on what culture you hail from. When most North Americans hear the Scottish folksong Auld Lang Syne we probably immediately think of New Year's Eve, of saying goodbye to the old year with a large beer in our hands. Hotaru no Hikari, or Light of the Fireflies, is the title of the Japanese version of this song, and in Japan it's sung at graduations. The chorus tells the story of hard-working students who wanted to study so much that they read books by the light of fireflies captured in a jar, or the moonlight reflected off snow. It can bring a tear to the eyes of Japanese who hear it sung, and a totally different image from one we might conjure up. Incidentally, the song is also played by stores as they're about to close, and if you've ever visited Japan and wondered why they were playing Auld Lang Syne over the store speakers, it was a polite request that you complete your purchase and leave the store. Here are the words to the first section, in case you're curious:

hotaru no hikari, mado no yuki fumi yomu tsukihi, kasane tsutsu itsushika toshi mo, sugi no towo aketezo kesa wa, wakare yuku

Light of fireflies, snow by the window Many suns and moons spent reading Years have gone by without notice Day has dawned; this morning, we part

This month's "Manga Artist of the Month" is the talented Maguro Teikoku (Tuna Empire), the celebrated erotic manga-ka known for such works as Sister for the Summer, How To Guide for the First Date and the classic Spirit of Capitalism, which you can now read in English in Comic AG. He got started as an artist by accompanying a friend who wanted to draw erotic comics; his friend wasn't hired, but he got an offer from the company instead. His pen name comes from the fact that he was quite lazy, and his parents threatened to sell him to a tuna fishing boat. Remember that J-List carries the incredible Fuccons, aka OH! Mikey, the wacky Japanese comedy series acted out with mannequins who parody an American family living in Japan. From Mikey and his sinister cousin Laura, cute girlfriend Emily, mother Barbara, father James and the annoying twins from England Tony and Charles, you will laugh so hard you might have to go to the hospital. We also recommend the hilarious Vermillion Pleasure Night series, the bold late-night film short series that got OH! Mikey started. These are available on DVD and are fully subtitled in English. 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.

	Mecha Ii Nov. 2006 -- Emiru Momose. Wow, this girl is really beautiful in the new Mecha II (meh-CHA EE).
	Milk -- Sayaka Numajiri. Gorgeous hardcover photobook featuring one of our favorite models.
	Graffiti of Otaku Generation (Anime no Bideo) ~ Misty May. Otaku no Video is the definitive anime about all of us becomming, well, otaku. This is the beautiful figure from the series.
	Swimming Suit 4 Hours. Girls in swuimsuits are becomming a huge fetish in Japan. What do you think? Is this cool, or just weird?
	Ichigo 100% 1~3 set. I am a fan of this anime, and am glad to have the manga for you in case you are too. The ultimate harem show, and a great item for fans of "strawberry pants."
	Megami Magazine Deluxe vol. 8 . Gorgeous new issue of Megami Magazine!
	Castles of the Samurai Power and Beauty. Beautiful book on the most famous castles in Japan. Lots of pictures and great explanations of what is what.
	Hiragana Times Apr. 2007. New issue of Hiragana Times, the bilingual magazine of news and culture from Japan.
	Game Commander Mouse. A really cool gaming mouse from Elecom that fits great in the hand and has great hardware inside
	Kera May 2007 vol. 106. Fabulous magazine about Harajuku culture and all forms of Goth-Loli. Love it.
	The Idol Master Precious Album. Idol Master is the popular game where you train virtual pop idols, for Xbox 360. This is the definiteive Percious Album.
	Erika Seihouin 1/7 Cast-Off Figure -- Miraroma *Preorder*. Another really amazing anime figure. This is a "cast off" figure, meaning you can make her, er, nekkid.
	WA ~ Fragrance Oil * MIYABI / Elegance*. We've gotten in some nice fragrance oils, including one that promises to capture the smell of your first love. Wow.
	Celebration Envelope (Kotobuki ~ Long Life!) -- Red. A beautiful envelope for giving cash gifts.
	Built-In Mechanical Pencil (40 Leads). Mechanical pencils, which are called "sharp-pen" in Japanese, don't ask us why, are very nice to use, but keeping extra leads with you is a pain. Well, this pencil has 40 leads inside the pen -- outstanding!
	Monster Hunter Weapon Collection Vol.1 Exra Edition ~ Full Set + 2 Secrets (Set of 10). I am not familiar with Monster Hunter, but here are the weapons from the game, recreated in perfect miniature.
	Cotton Swab & Ear Pick Combo ( 60pcs ). Really innovative cotton swabs with "mimikaki" built into them.
	JAPAN Eraser Set. They didn't have cool erasers when I was a kid.
	Wiener Shaper-- Penguin. If I've learned one thing in Japan, it's that the ultimate way to enjoy cute bento is to cut your sausages into little penguins.
	Standing Type Nausicaa and Laputa Fox Squirrel -- Kitsune Risu. This is the classic Fox Squirrel from Nausicaa and Laputa, an adorable and huggable little plush toy.
	Gothic Taste. One of the classic books that has decined Goth-Loli over the years.
	Sun-Star Paper StitchLock Zn. Never use staples again, thanks to this realyl elegant (and really heavy) StitchLock Zn. The Zn stands for Zinc.

Japan's amazing adaptions of "black culture," all about gestures used by the Japanese, and what's the currency of Japan?

The Japanese are very good at taking outside culture and adapting it to fit their own needs, and they have done this in many different areas, from Buddhism and writing from China to Hollywood movies from the USA to Flamenco dancing from Spain. Many Japanese have also embraced "black" culture from the USA, and have internalized a lot of the music and fashion style into themselves. I'll never forget the time, soon after arriving in Japan, when I turned on the TV to see what I thought were two black gaijin speaking excellent Japanese on a variety program. It turned out I was watching the Bubblegum Brothers, a two-man JPOP group popular in the 1990s who adapted a "black style" that was so complete I was actually fooled. As part of their own personal vision quest, many young people explore the local hip hop and reggae music scene, and there are quite a few night clubs in our city where you can see "gangsta" or "rastafari" nihonjin partying til the wee hours of the morning. When Japanese think of black culture they think of the U.S. or Jamaica, but in reality most of the black foreigners in Japan are from Kenya or Nigeria. I always roll my eyes when, while walking in Tokyo's hip Harajuku region, I overhear a Kenyan man talking to a Japanese girl saying, "Yes, I'm American," despite his decidedly non-American accent. It's more than just young people who are interested in black music and culture in Japan -- back in my single days I used to frequent a bar with an owner who would play his collection of classic jazz and blues for his customers, which he played on honest-to-gosh LPs. That takes dedication.

Every country is different, and it's a lot of fun noticing the differences I see in Japan and reporting them to you. One reflection of culture can be seen in the gestures that Japanese make in daily life, like the ubiquitous "peace" sign which shows up whenever someone takes out a camera. (A brief aside: when Japanese get their picture taken, then often say "cheese" just like in English, but an alternate version is to say "what's one plus one?" which of course is "ni" in Japanese, which also results in a smile.) Some other gestures you might see include making a slash across the cheek with your forefinger, which means "That guy is dangerous, he looks like he's yakuza"; raising a pinky, which means "I'm meeting my girlfriend tonight"; indicating themselves by pointing to their noses, rather than their chests, as North Americans would do; beckoning by seeming to wave their hand in a way that would mean "go away" to Americans; and good old "Banzai," used mostly at political rallies in this peaceful era. One gesture the Japanese generally know but never use is the classic flipping of the bird, however they have the oddest habit of pointing to things using their middle finger, which always look odd to me.

The currency of Japan is the yen, a word which means "circle" since coins are round, or something like that. The yen was first introduced as part of the country's modernization efforts during the Meiji Era in the 1870s. One unique aspect of the currency is its low per-unit value. If I want to eat a meal and America or Europe, $10 or 10 euros will usually be enough, but you can't even buy a gumball with ten yen. To eat well, you'd need more like 1000-1500 yen, and for a family of four to eat properly might cost 5000 yen easily. A side-effect of this numerical oddity is, when learning to speak Japanese it's necessary to get used to using very high numbers quickly. Want to buy a car? You'll need 1-3 million yen. How about building a house? Depending on its size, you'd be looking at a 20 million yen expenditure. When I read about the current Japanese budget deficit expressed in yen, the numbers are so high that they might as well be expressed in scientific notation. Japan's money is very efficient, with paper notes issued in values of 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000, whereas there are many more flavors of paper money used in the U.S. Like Europe, the Japanese force their citizens to use coins for low-value denominations like 100 and 500 yen rather than paper money, which takes getting used to but nets a significant savings for society overall, as coins can be used for decades. In America if you've got a pocketful of change you might be able to buy a couple of cokes, but it's quite easy to have $20 worth of yen in your pocket in Japan. Remember that you can get all the great anime, manga, toy/hobby, fashion, and other magazines in Japan sent to you each month, thanks to J-List's popular Reserve Subscription service. Here's how it works: for most items, you have the option of either paying month-to-month or paying for a full year in advance. If you choose the former option, we'll reserve the current issue of the magazine(s) you want each month, charging them to a credit card on file if like, or else by check/money order or Paypal. The ten most popular reserve subscription magazine at J-List are, in case you were wondering, Goth-Loli Bible, Megami Magazine (my own personal favorite), Hiragana Times, FRUiTs, Kera, COSmode, SHOXX (J-Rock all the way), Nihongo Journal, and Newtype Japan, and fashion magazine Egg. 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.

	Hello! Leah! -- Leah Dizon. Very popular idol whose photobooks are extremely hard to find anywhere here.
	The Master of Knee-Socks!!! Japan is, shall we say, in touch with their fetishes. Here's a great DVD for fans of tall black knee-socks.
	THE JAPANESE TRADITION (region 2). This, this is amazing -- the complete humor serious that you can see by searching for "How to eat sushi" on Youtube. Alas, this version lacks subtitles. :(
	2004 Encyclopedia of High School Uniform ~ Joshikou Seifuku Zukan. Japan's fascination with the high school uniform is alive and well, I see.
	Otona ga Tanoshimu Hari-e . Creating pctures by cutting out shapes, a popular art form in Japan called hari-e.
	Hobby Japan April 2007. Great issue of Hobby Japan, loaded with toys I want to buy.
	Shinku PVC Figure *Rozen Maiden* ~ Alter. Rozen Maiden is an excellent show about a hikikomori (shut-in) boy with a fascination for the occult. When he accidentally buys a cursed doll, his life is changed forever,.
	Hello Kitty Kimono "Warabe" Doll. This is one of the coolest Hello Kitty items we've seen all year!
	Furikake Soft/Wet Type ~Tarako (Cod Roe ). Delicious furikake, which you sprinkle over (furikakaru) over rice.
	Square Geta w/Shima (Stripes) Pattern ~ Varnished Paulownia. We've gotten in some geat traditional Japanese sandals for the summer -- check them out!
	Basic Hiragana Drill . How's your hiragana or katakana? Well, you can improve it with these great drill books.
	Lucky Cat Coin Bank. A classic Lucky Cat to put your money in. Cool!
	Revoltech No.025 -- Megatron. We love these low-cost Reveltech toys from Kaiyodo and don't find them revolting at all. This is Megatron, the classic villain from the Transformers universe.
	Revoltech No.024 -- Gaiking. And this is Gaiking, one of the three Shogun Warriors that I played with when I was a boy, not knowing anything about the classic anime series.
	Re-ment Puchi Delivery ~ Full Collection (10 Sets) *Puchi Sample Series*. A new Re-Ment series, great! This is a collection of foods you can order and have delivered to you.
	Mentos -- Pine Fresh (Pineapple). Yum! A Japan-only flavor of Mentos!
	The Ghost in the Shell -- Bilingual comic. One of our most popular bilingual books, featuring a much better translation (I am told) than the Toren Smith one. And my dissing of him has nothing to do with jealous that he got a character named after him in Aim for the Top and I didn't.
	YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream. It's finally out -- order your copy today! Seriously, this is one of the best games ever brought out in English. I was beside myself for several of the endings when I was play-testing it.

Japan and its interesting top-down society, a trip to the park, and all about Japan and conveyor-belt sushi

One of the more interesting aspects of Japan is the top-down nature of its society, how it's ostensibly structured in a way that channels more respect to senior individuals in a school or organization, and society in general. When a younger student or junior employee in a company (kohai) sees an older student or senior employee (senpai), it's expected that he will greet his senior using a formal salutation like Ohayo gozaimasu, while the senior will reply with the more informal Ohayo. In English, I might talk about my brother or my sister without necessarily concerning myself with wether the sibling in question were older or younger than me, but in Japanese these concepts are always split into "oniisan / ototo" and "oneesan / imoto" for older and younger brother and sister, respectively. What about twins, you ask? The one to pop out first is the older one, even if it's only by a few minutes. Lang- uage always reflects the society that generates it, and there are invisible linguistic lines drawn to preserve the separate-ness of individuals from different groups. For example, the word for "friend" is tomodachi, but this usually only applies to someone of the same age as you, or who entered an organization at the same time as you; for other acquaintances, you'd usually use a different word like junior/senior, colleague, etc. My wife loves watching CSI, turning on the Japanese dubbed track because it'd be a chore for her to understand all the medical terminology, and sometimes I like to listen in. In order to remain faithful to the original English dialogue, the CSI team speak incredibly informally to each other, even to their superiors, something that could not be conceived of in Japan. The weather was nice over the weekend, so my daughter and I went for a bicycle ride to the park, and as is often the case, I found myself surrounded by kids who were curious about this large gaijin with golden hair on his arms. Whenever I interact with children in Japan, I make sure to take off my sunglasses to avoid scaring them, since kids in Japan don't have that much opportunity to get used to interacting with foreigners. I also make liberal use of the phrases that kids expect English-speakers to say all the time, like "How are you?" and "Oh my god!" and "Unbelievable!" which got many giggles. As I watched my daughter play and made small talk with the Japanese parents around me, I wondered why I was the only gaijin parent around on a sunny Saturday. With 3% of my city's population made up of foreigners, mostly from Brazil and Peru, you'd think there'd be more mothers with their kids there, mixing in with the other parents, but there were none to be seen.

The other night we all went out for sushi, and like many people do, we opted for a kaiten-zushi restaurant, featuring sushi on a conveyor belt allowing you to grab what you want as it sails by. Unfortunately for our growling stomachs, a few hundred other customers had also gotten the hankering for sushi, and so we had to wait over an our for a table to open up. This popular alternative to a traditional-style sushi restaurant was invented in 1958 by an enterprising restaurant owner in Osaka who was having trouble staffing his restaurant, so he came up with a way for very a few employees to service many customers at once. According to research, a lot of the popularity of conveyor-belt sushi comes from the way the products scroll by from right to left, which creates a pleasant sensation in the brain as any want can be fulfilled just by reaching out one's hand. Although there are many cheap sushi restaurants in our city, we've been happy to find a few that offer better quality "neta" (the fish-part of sushi) for around $1.75-$3 per plate. Truly, life is too short to be eating cheap sushi.

Many gaijin come to Japan and fall in love with onsen (OWN-sen, 温泉), the famous natural hot springs that have been enjoyed by Japanese for centuries. The best hot springs are, of course, the mixed-bathing variety, called kon'yoku （混浴） in Japanese, which can be quite hard to find (I've only found one in my years in Japan). Our newest wacky T-shirt proclaims your affinity for Japan's bathing culture, featuring a kanji slogan that reads "I love mixed-bathing hot springs," with the normal "heart" shape cleverly replaced by the "onsen mark," a symbol that denotes Japanese hot springs. Check out our newest T-shirt now! Remember that J-List specializes in bento, the traditional boxed lunch that is so prevalent in anime and Japanese popular culture. The Japanese are big fans of what they called shoku no ni, translating to "the beauty of food," and bento boxed lunches are often very beautiful to look at. In addition to dozens of large and small bento boxes (including the cool Goth-Loli bento boxes with a garter to keep your lunch securely shut), we have everything you need to complete your bento experience, including chopsticks, chopstick cases, and those little wiener shapers that turn sausages into octopuses, flowers and more! 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.

	Mecha ii Sep 2006 -- Ai Himeno. A fabulous photomag featuring Ai Hiimeno,
	Sexual Esthetic Full Course -- Tsugumi Nagasawa. SOD actress Tsugumi Nagasawa has never looked better!
	Ecstasy Bicycle. Another bold idea from Soft on Demand, girls who ride bicycles in public places with no underwear on!
	PREM -- Kaori Shimamura. Kaori Shimamura is a beautiful example of Japanese grace. This is her "sayonara" photobook.
	awake -- Nana Kasai. And another nice item for photobook fans that I recommend a lot.
	Kateigaho International Edition 2006 Autumn issue vol. 13. Fabulous English language book of Japanese culture, a really rare treat from japan. This issue is especially interesting. Usually only available as a revolving magazine subscription, but we've gotten in some issues for you today.
	Illustrated Japanese Language Dictionary ~ Isso Nippon Tango cho. A great way to learn Japanese by memorizing picture images!
	Queen Bonjourno Anthology Comic. Amazing manga anthology based on a popular game.
	3D Oppai Mouse Pad -- Girl Illustrated by Noantica. It's a mouse pad with built-in soft ergonomics that are shaped like, well, use your imagination.
	Kera Apr. 2007 vol. 105. New issue of Kera, for those who want to keep an eye on the current state of the Tokyo street fashion scene.
	Chii Maid Costume Figure - Chobits *Preorder*. Fantastic figure of Chii from Chobits, one of my favorite CLAMP anime series.
	Japanese T-Shirt - I Like Mixed Bathing. Our newest wacky T-shirt tells all Japanese females taht you'd like to bathe with them!
	WA ~ Fragrance Oil *TSUKI / Moon*. We've gotten in some amazing fragrance oils for you today. This is the scent of the moon.
	Suzumiya Haruhi Soundrop -- Full Set (Set of 8). Haruhi fans, don't let this great set of Soundrop toys pass you by!
	Chirimen Hello Kitty Zabuton ~ Lucky Cat. Lucky Cat meets Hello Kitty meets kimono fabric. Very nice.
	Pururun Gummy -- Apple Mango & Yellow Mango. Delicious gummy snack made with real mango!
	Hemp Moon Tapestry *Blue*. These are just amazing -- beautiful wall hangings made from hemp and cotton, super for hanging in your home.
	Illuminate Cube Speaker. A Rubik's Cube shaped speaker for your iPod that lights up. What won't they think of next?
	Re-ment Fresh Kaiten Sushi Speaking of sushi, we've got some great Re-Ment miniature sushi that come complete with little plates, just amazing! You get everything but the wasabi.

Another odd toy from Japan. This is a cute bishojo female Self-Defense Force moe character.

This one is deep. A "bootlet T-shirts" (sic) that takes the Back to the Future characters and Peanuts-ifies them.

Matches with strange symbols on them.

Slap-a my hand, black soul man! (That's a reference to a classic SNL skit.) That reminds me to do a post on the Japanese and their strange fascination with black culture.

Ah, Indian food in Tokyo. How do I love thee.

Funny things you may see in Japan, strategies for taking tests, and an important difference between Japanese and American schools

Hello again from Japan where getting your hair colored is known as a "hair manicure." For some reason, one of the weirdest sights you can see in Japan is two foreigners using Japanese to carry on a conversation. Although it's theoretically no different from people from France and Germany using a third language to communicate, the sight of two gaijin chatting in nihongo looks very strange here, and will often get amused giggles from passers-by. I used to have an Iranian friend who spoke no English, so we had to use Japanese to communicate. He'd ask me if America was really the way it looked in Hollywood movies, and I'd ask questions about life back in Iran, and we both learned a lot. Once I flew to the States on Varig, the national carrier of Brazil, and learned that Brazilians aren't generally fluent in my native tongue. Any small talk I wanted to make with the people around me had to be done in Japanese. I remember those standardized tests we had to take back in school, the ones where you had to use a No. 2 pencil (although I have yet to encounter a No. 1 or No. 3 pencil in my life). The teachers would try their best to give us some strategies for the tests, like, make sure you blacken in the circles completely and, if you have time at the end, go back and check your answers. The Japanese are a bit more focused on tests than I was during my education, and the idea of studying for a university entrance exam isn't really about simply learning the subjects that will be tested, but rather how to approach the test itself. Teachers who prepare their students to take the test for a school like the prestigious Aoyama Gakuin University have to research the past year's exams so they can help predict what the students need to cram for this year, and there are prep schools that do nothing but prepare students to get into a single university. Students want results, and these prep schools will advertise the percentage of students who got into their school of choice each year. When it came time for my kids to take the "Eiken" test, the standard test of English that's usually taken by much older students, my wife plotted a complex strategy for them, allowing them to score points on their strengths (listening comprehension) while avoiding the difficult patches (long-paragraph reading and "find the grammatical errors" exercises). Both passed with flying colors.

If you've ever tried complimenting a Japanese person on something, their language ability for example, you might be surprised to hear them deny your compliment. A big part of being Japanese is having humility, which is called kenson (KEN-son) in Japanese, and as a rule people here take great pains to avoid appearing boastful and proud. When a Japanese person gives you a gift, they'll usually say, "This isn't very interesting, but please accept it," or if it's food, "I'm not sure if this tastes good or not." One major difference between schools in the U.S. and Japan that I've noticed is that here, the children themselves are responsible for every lick of cleaning that goes on in their school, from sweeping to wiping off desks to cleaning the bathrooms, including the "big cleaning" that's done at the end of the year. There are no janitors at Japanese schools, just a handyman for doing jobs like changing out lights -- all the cleaning is the responsibility of the students. This certainly has some budgetary benefits for schools, but it also helps build character and yes, a little humility, in the kids. This tradition of self-cleaning is carried over into many companies, and every Monday morning the J-List employees wipe, sweep, clean and vacuum the office to make sure we have a clean place to work in all week. Remember that J-List sells incredibly warm hooded sweatshirts that are perfect for cooler months, or for throwing on the evenings when it cools down. Our hoodies feature cool kanji designs, from our classic "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" design to our fun "Respect the Emperor and Expel the Foreign Barbarians." We've also got our great Domo-kun hoodies for you, a great way to show your individuality and love of Japanese pop culture. While most of the hoodies we see being sold online are the inferior 50/50 blends that feel rough against the skin after a short time, we sell the best hoodies money can buy, with high quality 80/20 blends that are really soft and cozy. 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.

	Bomb Nov 2006. New issue of Bomb, whch has been in print for like 34 years -- wow.
	Erotic Woman -- Mitsu Amai. Mitsu Amai has been one of my favorite idols over the past couple of years, and it's great to see her doing indies work now.
	Bijuku -- Hitomi Kobayashi. Gorgeous photobook featuring the "ripened woman," Hitomi Kobayashi.
	Lily White -- Yuriko Shiratori. On the other extreme, here's the lovely photobook of Yuriko-chan, Lily White.
	Catgirl Delivery ~ Hakonde Nyanko. Need cat girls delivered?
	Thunder Warrior Raidy ~ Kaminari no Senshi Raidy Anthology Comic. Ahem, a really amazing manga based on a game from Zyx. We're big fans of this title. This manga includes futanari.
	Yoshi Plush Doll (S)-- Mario Party. Yoshi has never been more huggable.
	Otona no Origami ~ Aruchu Masa. Origami for grown-ups rocks! See how to make funky origami out of Japanese money, like sea urchins and trilobites and more. My favorite was Super Man, a little flying man that's a great gag, since you make it out of a 10,000 yen note (ichi man en).
	FRUiTS No. 115 Feb 2007. New issue of Fruits for fans.
	Hobby Japan Mar 2007. Also, the new Hobby Japan, with its focus on Yamato and all the recent toy releases.
	Japan Atlas ~ A Bilingual Guide. Need a really good map of Japan, with both English and Japanese? This is for you.
	Comic AG Super Erotic Manga Anthology vol. 53. The new issue of AG is in, and it's great as usual because it's got friggin' Maguro Teikoku in it. Wow!
	Tamaki Kousaki Figure *ToHeart 2*. Dynamite figure from ToHeart2 that you can, ah, disrope if you so choose.
	Genuine Arita Ware Latte Mug with Pink Hiragana Script. This is great, a really high quality cup (useful for many types of drinks) from Japan!
	Rinzu Clamshell Jewery Box. We've gotten in some cool small jewelry boxes that can of course be used for other purposes. I love the chirimen fabric on the outside.
	Yellow Lucky Cat Tea Cup . It's a cup that turns into Lucky Cat when you turn it upside down -- wow!
	Basic Kanji Drill New -- 1st Grade. Learn kanji the way the Japanese do with this series of kanji drill books.

The Japanese fear of making mistakes, the end of the Japanese blood type myth, and panty shots in anime you didn't expect to see

Although the Japanese generally study six years of English (or up to ten if they take it in college), they're not as a rule famous for their linguistic skills. There's a long list of reasons why this is so -- English is considered a "test" subject like math, science and Japanese history, grammar and vocabulary are invariably taught in Japanese by Japanese teachers, there are relatively few native speakers around to practice with, and so on. Another big reason many Japanese can have trouble attaining competence in a foreign language is fear of making errors. I saw a concrete example of this many years ago while working at a Japanese supermarket in San Diego, where I noticed a tiny sticker that read "curry" stuck on a box of Vermont Curry. (By the way, you've been in Japan too long when you no longer find anything unusual in the concept of "Vermont Curry.") Being the curious type, I removed the sticker to see that the company had accidentally printed "carry" on the package, a natural enough mistake for a foreign company to make, and had been compelled to fix the error in a way that actually brought more attention to the problem. Many Japanese seem to be quite fearful of making mistakes when speaking English, and it's hard for them to overcome this barrier when they go to a foreign country and must get over "pre-thinking" what they want to say before saying it. In reality, errors are part of the feedback essential for communication, and I've never forgotten a vocabulary word that I screwed up royally with when using the first time. If I had a secret weapon when it came to studying Japanese it was that I never concerned myself with the zillions of errors I made as I try to get my point across to someone.

Historically, the Japanese have placed a great store in what blood type a person is, and some (admittedly silly) people adhere to the belief that the shape and antigen type of your red blood cells can determine your personality. Supposedly, type A folks are straight-laced, serious about everything, very organized, like Felix from The Odd Couple if you're old enough to know what I'm talking about; type B are "my pace," e.g. they go at their own pace, live in their own world, quickly get bored with things that don't interest them, and speak their minds to a fault; type O are very bold, hate to lose and have good leadership skills; and AB people are often so smart they look strange to everyone else. A few years ago there was a series of TV shows that purported to do experiments on groups of people, seeing how kids of different blood types would solve problems for example. For years, my wife would make pronouncements about me or my kids, that we did such-and-such because of our blood type, but she recently received a shock that caused her world view to come crashing down, when a doctor friend of ours asked my kids if they'd like to see their own blood in a microscope. It turned out that both my meticulous son who keeps a detailed log of all his weekly allowance expenditures and my not-a-care-in-the-world daughter who passed a difficult English test by guessing at the answers are both type O, and not A and B as she'd expected. Have you gained some weight? If you're a big person and come to Japan, be prepared to hear light-hearted comments about your weight. Although it's usually not polite to make direct mention of a person's girth in the U.S., in Japan it's quite common to start a conversation with an acquaintance by asking him if he's gained weight recently before getting down to the discussion at hand. It's not fun, but you get used to it quickly enough, and the Japanese mean no harm in it -- it's just a kind of small talk, like discussing the weather or the economy, since there are so few people who are on the big side here. (Actually, it's okay when they comment on your weight. If they stop mentioning it altogether, you might have a problem.) We've just finished doing more upgrades to the J-List website today. Unfortunately the changes to the site might have caused browser cookies to be reset, clearing the shopping cart contents for some customers using the site right as we did the changeover. Very sorry for the inconvenience if you were using the site at the time. Pesky IE7 and its mis-directed anti-phishing warnings... Remember that J-List sells a magazine that's personally done a lot of good for me, Nihongo Journal, a monthly periodical featuring Japanese lessons for many levels, from beginner-intermediate on up, covering a variety of language areas, from business Japanese to conversational speaking to preparing for the JLPT. We carry the magazine via our popular "Reserve Subscription" service which lets you get Japan's most interesting magazine sent to you each month. As with our other subscriptions for Japan's anime, manga, fashion, JPOP, men's and other magazines, you can pay month-to-month as each issue comes in via credit card, check or money order or Paypal, or you can pre-pay for a year's subscription all at once. 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.

	Juicy Fruits. Popular manga back in stock. I love the art on this cover.
	Walkie Bits Robot Turtle -- Peach Pink See fresh stiock of these cool electronic robot turtles. Now at a lower price, too!
	Genki II ~ An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese 2 Textbook. We've restocked a ton of the popular Genki Japanese textbooks.
	Wet Hips! -- Shou Nishino. Hips in Japanese referrs to the rear end. This is a great release featuring Shou Nishino, who used to do photobooks before she went for full AV as a career.
	Sakura (Cherry) Kit Kat. Remember, the time to get your Sakura Kit Kat is fading fast.
	Tabi (Split-toe) Type Socks ~ Brown & Light Brown - Ninja Socks. Some cool "ninja socks" for you!
	Lucky Cat Chawan (Rice Bowl) *Blue. Great rice bowl for fans of Lucky Cat.
	Domo-kun Deluxe Stuffed Plush Japanese Toy - DOMOKUN. This is the most popular plush toy we've ever sold. It's also an endangered species and it may well be sold out by the summer.
	iTunes Japan Music Card. Remember, you can buy all the JPOP songs you want from Apple's iTunes store using the prepaid cards that we've been selling. We even had a Slate.com article written about us!
	Naruto Anbu Mask . If you are a Naruto fan, be sure and get your Anbu mask, they are just too cool.
	Snake Hanao Setta -- Size LL ~ Leather Sole . Dynamite setta sandals with (imitation) snakeskin coverings.
	Lotte Black Black Gum . Delicious caffeine gum for people who need to stay awake and productive.
	Lotte "Plum Gum" (Ume Gum). One of the most unique flavors of gum from Japan. Yum.
	Jewel Knights Crusaders. Back by popular demand on our site, the great parody game of fighting evil with the power of sex.
	Japanese Onsen Powder - Kusatsu (set of 5). Enjoy an authentic Japanese hot springs back. Kusatsu is a hot springs town just up the road from us that has hundreds of years of history.
	Cominica Nausica Keychain -- Gun Ship. This is a dynamite item for Nausicaa fans.
	Japanese Hat - "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend". Our most popular embroidered Japanese hat.
	Bizarre Japanese T-shirt ~ EMERGENCY EXIT 100%. This has been a huge seller over the years, and one of my all-time favorite Japanese T-shirts.

I've been on quite a tear recently, watching classic anime like Touch (the most excellent baseball manga ever), Arion (hilarious combination of Zeta Gundam characters with the Greek Pantheon), and lately, the original Yamato. I thought it'd be fun to compare with the original U.S. release.

There are, ah, a few scenes that I don't remember seeing before. And don't even get me started on Dr. Sado (Dr. Sane) and his "spring water" with the "sake" kanji clearly written on the label.

The fan translation I'm watching is done by Central Anime in Kansas (major shout out to you guys!), which is funny since Gunma (where I am) is probably the "Kansas" of Japan. These guys put lots of great commentary in the translation like what was going on historically when the episode was first aired. They also did the Touch translation.

Most interesting, of course, where the World War II sections that were not in the U.S. version, at least to my recollection.

As I recall, they said "The Yamato" in one line, then renamed it the Argo (bleah) right away. This version had a long scene devoted to the last battle of the Yamato.

Through one of those bizarre coincidences Japan likes to throw at you (like the one about how, through random chance, I just happened to come live in the city where the creator of my favorite anime/manga Touch was born and marry a woman who happened to share his birthdate of 2-9), they showed Otokotachi no Yamato, the film about the end of the ship, the next day, and it was "timely-sugiru" so I watched it.

It's hilarious to realize how totally Star Trek (TNG and beyond) gets its cues from the Yamato series. Like the Holodeck.

A reeeeally cool bunch of parody anime dubbers (no, not that bunch of parody anime dubbers) called Cornpone, who have made many things that I haven't seen, did a great (long) short film called Animation vs. Live Action, in which they basically pit the TNG Enterprise against the Yamato/Argo, and other fun stuff.

Japan's latest shining baseball star, fun space-saving innovations, and Japan is wasted on the Japanese

Japan takes its baseball seriously, and right now the whole country is closely watching Daisuke Matsuzaka as he starts his new career with the Red Sox. A longtime favorite among Japanese baseball fans for his boyish face and strong pitching repertoire, Daisuke is the latest player to make the hop into the Big Leagues. This guy was literally born to play baseball -- his mother named him after Daisuke Araki, the star of the Koshien high school baseball championship the year he was born, and he went on to win the Koshien championship with his high school in 1998. When he joined the Seibu Lions as their #1 draft pick, he distinguished himself further by striking out the .380-batting Ichiro three times in a row the first time they went head to head, which no had ever done. Like every Japanese baseball player, he married an attractive "announcer" (newscaster), but his relationship with the lovely Tomoyo Shibata caused quite a scandal at the time, since she's five years older then him (they called her a cradle robber). As usual, the Japanese go wild over their citizens who achieve recognition outside Japan, be it baseball players like Daisuke or Ichiro, directors like Otomo or Miyazaki, or mangaka like Shirow Masamune, and this is no exception. (When Kenzaburo Oe won the Nobel Prize for literature it was funny to watch most Japanese people wearing questioning manga faces, saying "Who's that?")

Since Japan has just 1/25 the land area of the U.S. but half its population, people here have to come up with innovative ways of using land efficiently. Some friends of ours recently built a restaurant near the center of town, and did what many business owners do: they built their house above their restaurant, with a separate entrance and everything. My house is the same, with half of the downstairs taken up by our rural liquor shop, especially handy when I run out of beer late at night. Imagine if the Denny's near you was built on stilts to allow cars to park underneath, so that the parking lot and the restaurant itself could share the same plot of land? In Japan that's how it's usually done. Sometimes when I go to the Prefectural Office in Maebashi I put my car in the vertical parking garage, essentially a giant elevator that stores your car until you're ready for it, then spits it out when you need it again. And whenever my mother comes to Japan, she has to get a picture of the Japanese gas stations with the pumps located above the cars with hoses that drop down, enabling a gas station to be constructed in a much smaller space than could otherwise be used. Youth is wasted on the young, they say, and in a similar way, Japan is wasted on the Japanese. Foreign visitors are always taken with the beautiful temples of Kyoto and Nara or the graceful Himeji Castle near Kobe, yet all too often it seems that Japanese are quite ho-hum about the amazing country they live in. I've travelled all around Japan, hitchhiking or taking the Youth 18 ticket that lets you go anywhere you want within a 24 hour period for around $20 as long as you don't consider spending 16 hours inside a slow local train to be a drawback, but I've yet to meet a Japanese who feels quite the same way about this place as I do. Japanese high school students usually take a school trip to Kyoto but most of the time they're bored when they get there, and when my wife saw the beautiful rock garden at Ryoan-ji in Kyoto she admitted a strong desire to run out and mess up all the little rocks that were combed so neatly. Taking your own country for granted certainly isn't limited to Japan, of course -- I have a friend in Rome who's never been to Venice, just a few hours away by car, and there are many places the staff of J-List has visited in the U.S. that I've never been to. So I guess it's all part of being human. We've got a treat for fans of PC dating-sim games: we're permanently dropping the price of Casual Romance Club by $10. A fantastic game from Japanese publisher Libido, it's in a class by itself since it was released in Japan already translated, and it's the only game where you can choose to hear the girls' voices in the original Japanese or cutely accented English. In addition to a unique gaming dating system in which you actually go on dates with the girls in the club, the game comes in a large Japanese box with the most beautiful printed game manual you'll ever see, hardcover and glossy and fully translated into English. Enjoy the game at its new price! 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.

	Urecco DVD Dec 2006 vol. 246. New issue of Urecco DVD, now featuring a 4 hour DVD for your entertainment!
	Minna no Anna -- Anna Kawamura. We know you will love "Everyone's Anna" in her new photobook.
	Tachikoma Yellow Version ~ Perfect Piece (Ghost in the Shell) *Preorder*. Wow, yet another dynamite Tachikoma item! This is a large toy that you can play with, made in limited construction yellow. What an excellent toy! Available for preorder.
	Mitsuryo Nikki ~ Poaching Diary -- Rio Tsuyuhara. This is the newest "Joytoy" model discovered by Russian photographer Hiraokanovsky Kuratachenko, who is actually Japanese, named Hirao Kurata. Gorgeous photobook.
	NAGISA's Cherry Boy Hunt -- Nagisa. The Japanese are very much in touch with their fetishes. Here a very tall woman goes after very short virgin men.
	Cherry Bomb Wow, fantastic art in this new manga.
	Nyan Nyan Nyanko ~ Nyanko Tour no Maki. A great book full of kawaii Nyanko art by San-X. Go on a tour of Japan with these cute edible cats! Don't think, just click, trust me!!!!111
	Nihongo Journal March 2007. Aaaand we've got another issue of Nihongo Journal for the linguistically inclined.
	Secrets of Judo. Learn all about Judo with this handy book.
	Maicching Machiko-Sensei Cast-Off Figure. A "cast off" figure means a figure that be rendered nude. That's quite a mental image there.
	Hello Kitty Chirimen Soft Pen Case -- Pink. Really cool line of chirimen (kimono fabric) pencil cases in several colors. Keep yourself organized with Hello Kitty!
	Glico Caplico Rainbow. It's an ice cream cone! It's chocolate! It's amazing!
	Taiyaki Chocolate. Taiyaki features prominantly in Kanon, which I'm watching now. This is different though, with cookie "fish" and chocolate "anko beans."
	WA~ Fragrance Sachet with Hook *SAKURA Scent*. Enjoy the fragrance of sakura in your closet or room!
	Traditional Kitsune Mask - Fox Art Mask. The fox is an ancient symbol of Japan. Although this mask is kind of scary, it's ancient so that's okay.
	Japanese Lacquer Style Serving Tray - Red . Serve your guests with a cool looking Japanese tray.
	Casual Romance Club. A really great game, that I've played for many hours. Comes with the most beautiful printed game manual you'll ever see, and characters who speak cute accented English (or Japanese, optionally). Now $10 off.
	Hariko Daruma -- 17cm ~ Medium. We've got daruma back in stock too!
	Calpis Walkie Bits -- Normal *Blue* ~ Limited Ver.. Look for fresh stock of the Calpis Walkie Bits, the limited edition electronic robot turtles that walk, run, dance and more. Totally fun!

Thoughts on television in Japan, April and "newly harvested rice," and that cultural question, what color is the sun?

Television (which turns 80 today) in Japan can be quite entertaining, and sometimes its fun to sit back on the sofa and see what Japan's TV networks have for me. While there are some variety shows in which they do odd things like seeing how many seconds a sexy bikini idol can stay on a mechanical bull or submerge her body in protru- sion-inducing freezing water, these types of programs are in the minority. One show I caught the other day took a simpler approach: a camera crew started at one end of the Inokashira train line that runs from Shibuya to Kichijoji, famous for its large (for Tokyo) park and drinking area, and went to each station, introducing a unique business located in the area. These included a man selling refurbished American motorcycles from the 1930's, a Japanese couple who fell in love with the unique taste of Korean food found in Los Angeles' Korea Town and now operate a restaurant that aims to recreate that taste, and a store that sells nothing but mimikaki, those traditional Japanese "ear picks." Another staple of Japanese television takes several "talents" -- a catch-all word meaning any television personality -- and sends them off through the Japanese countryside, bathing in exotic hot springs and enjoying delicious meals at Japanese ryokan inns while the camera follows them from place to place. It's hard to understand, but watching this kind of "feel good" show can have a real calming effect on a person, and I'm sure a lot of other viewers here would agree with me.

It's April in Japan, and that means two things: beautiful sakura blooming everywhere and ichinen-sei (一年生、 first graders). April is the start of the Japanese school year, and throughout the country millions of parents will be watching with teary eyes through the video finder as little Taro or Hanako start Elementary School, with cherry blossoms falling all around them. Japan's "back to school" season is a busy one for mothers, who must rush to get all the school supplies for the new school year -- if you've noticed a lot of notebooks, pencil cases and erasers on J-List lately, you know it's because that's the season here. Mothers are going to get even busier, though: they're given a list of things they must hand-make for their kids to use, including a quilted bag to put art supplies in, a "shoes bag" (sic) for carrying shoes around inside the school, and a clean towel with the child's name sewn into it for daily desk-cleaning. In addition to being the start of school, April is when new employees officially enter the work force, and somewhere in Japan right now there are a few hundred new hires at a Company Entrance Ceremony enduring a long speech from the chairman. These new employees are often referred to as first-graders or shin-mai (新米, newly harvested rice). What color is the sun? You might answer that it's yellow, or orange, or white. However, when asked this question, though, many Japanese are likely to answer "red." This seems to be a differences in cultural perception -- the red circle in the Japanese flag is called hi-no-maru or circle-of-the-sun -- and the color red does seem to have a special place in the hearts of the Japanese. Red is the color of celebration, something the Japanese imported from China, and when you attend a Japanese wedding you always leave with a bag of gifts which include sekihan, red rice that's cooked with beans in it. There are many words that incorporate the color in them, such as aka no tanin (a "red" or complete stranger), or one that took me a while to get used to, akachan (a baby), which comes from the supposed red coloring of a newborn infant, although I can't really see it. Japan's perception of color often causes confusion among foreigners, such as their use of the word "blue" to refer to the deep green of a forest and -- most confusingly -- for the color of a green traffic signal. Karoshi means death from overwork, and it's a reality in Japan, where companies demand long hours of their employees. You don't have to live in Japan to be overworked, and we've got a great new Japanese T-shirt that shows a famous symbol of tired "salarymen" returning home on the train after working through an exhausting day, with two men visible inside the train so that they form a face. The words at the top of the train say "Karoshi" and below the train is written Otsukare-sama deshita (oh-TSA-rey-sah-mah DESH-ta), which is the phrase you say to someone who's finishing his day's work, corresponding to "Thanks for working hard today." Great new T-shirt printed in Army Green. Don't work too hard! J-List stocks region free DVD players that are great for enjoying DVDs from any part of the world. Our low-cost DVD players play discs from any country out of the box, are fully compatible with NTSC and PAL TVs, come with international power supplies, and are fully warranted by the manufacturer. Best of all, they feature the ability to play DIVX and AVI format movies, in incredibly convenient feature since 4-5 movies can be put onto a single disc. We've gotten fresh stock of our high-end DVD-7050 player in stock today -- check it out now! Remember that now is a great time to pick up that delicious Sakura or Ichigo Kit Kat, some yummy Green Tea Pocky or Meltykiss, or other chocolate products that we sell. In the summer months, which are not far off now, we're unfortunately forced to remove all chocolate products from J-List since they melt like crazy. When we take our chocolate snacks off the site we always get emails from customers wondering why they can't get their favorite Crunky. So check our snack pages now! 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.

	Shoko Let Mikanne -- Shoko Nakagawa. Dynamite photobook featuring Shoko Nakagawa!
	Y -- Yoko Mitsuya. Before Yuko Ogura, before Maichy, there was Yoko Mitsuya, who debuted back in the late 1990s as a very pretty idol. Now she's all grown up and looks better than ever.
	Cos Mania #1. Get your cosplay fix with this 4 hour release, excellent!
	Famous Prima Ballerina Orgy -- Yoshika Kimura (region 2). A real ballerina makes a bold career change for her fans.
	Comp Ace vol. 013. Great new issue of this popular bishoujo manga + game magazine for you, loaded with free stuff.
	Lum (Urusei Yastura) 1/6 Pure Style Doll *Action Figure. If it weren't for this show, Urusei Yatsura, none of us anime fans would be here.
	MItsuru Kirijou 1/7 PVC Figure *Persona3*. Positively beautiful anime figure in stock soon -- you can preorder it now.
	Dengeki Layers vol. 12 Apr 2007. The ultimate guide to cosplay culture, with 500+ pictures of great costumes!
	Hisoka na Oshigoto 2 ~ Secret Work 2. Great manga by Setsuna, an artist I just love the art of, due to her really subtle pictures and beautiful characters.
	Shadowing ~ Let's Speak Japanese! -- Nihongo wo Hanaso! ~ Begginer to Intermediate Edition. Great situation-based Japanese study -- a super idea!
	Aikido Basics. An excellent introduction to Aikido, the Way of Putting your Spirit Together With Someone Else. Hmm, maybe I'm trying too hard with that translation.
	Japanese T-Shirt - Tired Salaryman. Great new T-shirt, for overworked salarymen like you and me.
	Chirimen Mini Tissue Case - Blue. Nifty holder for your pocket tissue -- a great idea, and we've even got the tissue for you!
	Washi - Traditional Japanese Paper *White with Leaves*. We've gottenin some authentic washi paper, useful for many crafts.
	J-List Tissue Set (12 packs). J-List gives you free pocket tissue with each order, unless it's impossible due to the shape of your order. You can also buy them in this set of 12, in case you've got a really big thing for Japanese tissue.
	Deluxe Pentel Fude Brush Pen -- Roman Brush & Hard - XGFW50. Write like you were using a Chinese calligraphy brush!

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.

The most-quoted phrase by pop Japanologists, the reason for Japanese innovation, and stupid Japanese money tricks

No consideration of Japan is complete without the often-quoted-by-gaijin- who-are-experts-on-Japan phrase deru kui wa utareru (DE-ru KOO-ee wa oo-TAH-reh-ru), which translates as "the nail that sticks up will be hammered down." It describes the tendency of Japan, especially the educational system here, to "hammer down" individuals that don't fit in so that they're brought in line with everyone else. While a classroom full of similar students would probably be easy for a teacher to manage, the idea that students with special talents -- a child gifted in music or math -- might be forced to "conform" to the larger group offends my American idealism. My first employer in Japan had a daughter who was born in the U.S. and grew up speaking mostly English before returning to Japan, but by the time she'd finished three years of Japanese high school, various social pressures (as well as some issues unique to the girl, no doubt) made her actively pretend to not understand English, even though I knew better. The Japanese are quite aware that their country isn't very good at handling special cases, and in some instances a family with an exceptional child will emigrate to a country where the differences can be appreciated and encouraged. The great irony is that many of the most successful people in Japan have violated this rule and stood up as proud as any nail ever did, such as Softbank president Masatoshi Son, cybermall Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani, and flamboyant former professional centerfielder Shinjo. The man who founded Honda stood out, too: as a boy, he wanted to learn how to swim, so he got the idea of swallowing small fish whole and jumping in the water while it was still flapping around inside his stomach.

The Japanese are very good at taking an idea and improving on it, and the entire history of modern Japan involves observing the nations of Europe and the U.S. and seeing what they could adopt and make better. This is known as wakon yosai or "Japanese Spirit, Western Know-How," a phrase that was coined after the Meiji Restoration, meaning that Japan should combine the technology of the West with that "extra something" (which the Japanese insist on calling "plus alpha") that only Japan can provide. My first introduction with Japanese innovation upon arriving here was in one of the most uninteresting places imaginable, the toilet. Most Japanese toilets in homes have a little sink on the top that lets you wash your hands with clean water as it flows into the tank after you flush -- very logical in a country that's both starved for elbow room and very conscious about cleanliness. One of the fun things of living in Japan is keeping mental count of the little innovations there are around me, from vertical parking "elevators" for your car to single-serving drip coffee that sits over your cup to cola vending machines that are only a few centimeters thicker than the length of a can so that they can be placed along the narrow roads in Tokyo. Oh, and those dreamy massage chairs. There's a wacky thing that Japanese do to money: fold a 1000 yen bill so that 19th century novelist Souseki Natsume (or whoever -- it works with just about any bill) makes sad or happy faces, depending on which way you look at it. I'll teach you how it's done so you can amaze your friends with this great Japanese trick. First, take a bill and make an outward fold where each of his eyes are. Make an inward fold through the middle of his face, so that his eyes are higher than his nose (like little mountains). If you look at the bill from above, the face will look sad; from below, and he'll look happy. Virtually all Japanese known this silly trick, and would probably be surprised if any non-Japanese knew it. Here is the result:

Remember that our newest PC dating-sim game, YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream, has gone "Golden Master" and will be on its way to the duplicators soon. We've got some other happy announcements for H-game fans, too. First, we've lowered the price of Yin-Yang! X-Change Alternate by $10, so if you haven't picked up this extremely popular title yet, you have a great excuse to do so now. Then, two of our popular game releases are now available in a new Internet Download Edition: the gorgeous Legend of Fairies and Fairy Nights, fully translated into English and compatible with Window as well as Mac (OS 9/X). The summer conventions are not too far off. Have you ordered your Matsukameya high school uniform yet? We're starting our convention lineup earlier than normal this year by attending the Star Wars Celebration IV convention in Los Angeles May 24-28. This is only the fourth official Star Wars convention ever held, and my first. It'll be great to rub elbows with Star Wars fans from all over, and we'll have lots of fun and interesting products from Japan for you. So if you can make it to the show, be sure and look for us! See this page for info on the show. 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.

	Karami 26 -- Manami Amamiya. Positively beautiful angel in her new Karami photobook.
	Geki! SOS Dan. You know a show is hot when there are tons of doujinshi, which is a Japanese word meaning "fan fiction by people who can actually draw."
	Emi Essence -- Emi Hasegawa. In-CRED-ibly beautiful Japanese model in her new photobook.
	Onanist -- Mihiro. Mmm, while I was sad to see Mihiro actually start real AV, there are the occasional moments when I think that it was a good thing after all. Like now.
	Ryomou Shimei 1/7 PVC Figure ~ Ikki Tousen *Preorder*. This, this is the coolest figure I've seen in a while.
	Witch Blade Takeru 2. Japanese manga for you to study with. Comes with hiragana by the kanji to make it easier to read.
	Imonatsu ~ Sister for the Summer. I am a huge fan of Magoru Teikoku if for no other reason than, his name means Tuna Empire. Amazing new futanari work in stock today.
	Uchikoma (Tachikoma) 1/24 Model Kit ~ Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. 2nd Gig. Tachikomas are cool, but here comes the Uchikoma!
	Talking About Buddhism ~ Eigo de Hanasu Bukkyou. Learn about Buddhism with this great bilingual book.
	Black Otokoyama Long Sleeve T-shirt *M Size. We've gotten in a bunch of these cool long-sleeve shirts. I love the designs.
	Legends of Fairies & Fairy Nights Download Edition. You can now buy this classic game again as a download edition. In addition to Windows, we've got Mac OS X support, baby!
	Kana Bathroom Chart. Learn hiragana and katakana in the bath.
	Onimusume 3 She-Devil Figure (White Version). Another gorgeous figure from Mon-Sieur Bome.
	Tohato's "Let's Order Some Bacon". You know, this is really the the most bizarre snack I've seen in a year at least.
	March of Koala Ball Point Pen with Slot Machine. It's a pen! It's a Koala no March item! It's a...slot machine?
	Otona no Nurie 2 -- Flowers. More coloring books for stress relief are in stock.
	Gothic My Melody "Kuromi" A4 Clear File. Cool document protector for gothic Sanrio fans.
	Great Japanese parody pen ~ Injection needle If I were a doctor I would totally carry these pens everywhere.

A magic Japanese phrase for you, home ownership Japan-style, and Japan as "producer heaven"

Last time I mentioned the magic words that may be responsible for much of the wa or harmony that Japan is famous for. The phrase is shikata ga nai (sh-kah-tah ga NAH-ee), or in its more common form sho ga nai, which both translate as "it can't be helped" or "I can't do anything about that," and its used in a wide variety of situations. Whether it's the government quietly hinting that a European-style VAT may be in Japan's future or Section Chief Tanaka's flat rejection of your latest suggestion at work, the phrase allows Japanese to accept what they cannot change and shrug off stress that would otherwise build up inside them. The phrase can also be seen on our wacky T-shirt and hat for girls, "I like what I like, so get off my back!" which sums up a lot of my own life. From my idealistic American point of view, it seems that the phrase is trotted out a little too quickly when there's some social injustice or other wrong that needs righting, be it racism or sexism or many other ism's out there, but of course there are things that we can't change in the world and it's very practical of the Japanese to be open about this fact. The phrase is also used to cheer someone up after sickness, heartbreak or other sadness. We had a sho ga nai event this morning when our family cat, Mi-chan (short for "mix" since her fur is black and white), was hit by a car and killed. My daughter's going to be devastated when she gets back from Malaysia, and I'm sure my (very Buddhist) wife will bring up the idea of migawari, or an animal dying to take bad luck away from the family.

A friend of mine is taking a big step in his life, buying a plot of land and hiring a builder to build a house on it for him. Unlike in the U.S., where you usually buy an existing house through a realtor, it's much more common in Japan to buy land and plan your own home from scratch. The Japanese are not fans of "used" homes that someone else has already lived in, though, so if the land you're buying happens to have an older home already on it, it's a given that it will be torn down and replaced. Home construction is a huge business here, and when my friend was looking for a company to build his home he had many options, from large firms like Sekisui that uses baseball star Ichiro for their TV commercials to Habel House, famous for steel-framed homes that are so strong you could keep a pet elephant on the second floor. Japanese companies tend to engage in businesses that might seem a little off-target to some, and my friend could have chosen homes built by Panasonic (PanaHome), Toyota Home (they build your house in parts on the same manufacturing lines as their cars then truck the pieces in), or TBS Home, the house-building arm of the Tokyo Broadcasting Station, I kid you not. He could also have done what many Japanese families are doing and get an "import home," basically a pre-designed kit that's assembled in Canada or Sweden and shipped over, then put together by a local contracting company. In the end he went with a company with the charming name of Wish Home that specializes in building homes of brick. Of course, buildings made of brick are not allowed in earthquake-prone Japan, so the house itself is built so that the structure is actually supported by the internal 2x4 frame, for safety. Although Japan is a capitalist country with a strong market economy cast in the mold of the U.S. and England, there are plenty of differences. One of the major themes of economics in Japan is that it tends to be a "supplier heaven" for companies that manufacture products and provide services, with so much power accumulated into the hands of large companies that it seems a wonder that things can function at all. In general, sellers of products benefit from stricter pricing structures and are able to capture a greater percent of the final purchase price than in any other country. At the rural liquor store my wife's parents run, our markup for beer and tobacco is a piddling 5%, barely enough to pay the electricity in the shop, but this doesn't matter since a shop without beer and cigarettes wouldn't get many customers, so my parents treat them as loss leaders. Price fixing is illegal here, but there's a whole slew of product categories such as books and CDs that are allowed to be sold at manufacturer-specified prices, which is a boon for producers wanting to create stable markets with none of that pesky competition. If you own an apartment building in Japan you've got it made thanks to the "key money" system that usually requires a tenant to pre-pay six months of rent when they move in, which includes "thank you money" and a deposit to the owner as well as to the agent that found the apartment for you, which by the way must be paid every two years. The funny thing about top-heavy supplier-centric economies is that they're always changing, and just as the open field of ideas called the Internet has brought a lot of good in the U.S. and Europe, the fact that change will come to Japan too is, well, sho ga nai. It gives us great pleasure to announce that our upcoming game, YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream, has gone "golden master" and will soon be on its way to the duplicators. This is a really outstanding game set in a totally modern version of Japan in which you play a Japanese student struggling with many of the same problems that real students deal with every day. Your life is about to be turned upside down by three beautiful girls: the grown-up Mizuki who's terrified of her own weakness, the poor transfer student Aeka, and the bizarre cat girl Nekoko. As you interact with these characters and affect each others' lives you can find love, purpose and much more. A super game with dramatic themes, dreamy art and fascinating characters. We hope you're preorder your copy now! Remember that J-List carries a great for fans of JPOP, the iTunes Japan Music Cards, which are the only way to buy music from the iTMS unless you happen to have a credit card registered inside Japan. Looking for the Doraemon theme song? Want to browse the latest singles by Every Little Thing? Or browse the Japan Hip Hop scene for songs you like the sound of? It's all very easy to do from any Mac or PC running iTunes. The cards come in 1500 and 5000 yen denominations, and are super-easy to use: just log out of your current iTunes account, select the Japan store, click the link to enter an iTMS card number, and you can set up a new account for your Japanese music. You don't even have to muck with Japanese characters in the iTunes application, since it will work 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.

	Gals Paradise 2007 ~ Tokyo Autosalon. See the girls who promote F-1 racing in Japan in this great new photobook.
	Chinkame 3. Absolutely gorgeous photography in this new "Chinkame" series book.
	Flexible -- Ayuri Iisaku. This is the kind of photobook I love to bring you -- innovative, fresh and fun.
	Get Ecstasy Challenge Match -- Rika Asao. Rika Asao looks sweet in this bold 4 hour DVD.
	Burn My Date. We've got limited stock of doujinshi on the site for you too.
	Gothic Lolita & Punk Brand Book 2007 Spring vol. 5. A book loaded with cool pictures for gothic & lolita fans.
	Arcadia Black Version *Preorder*. Man, this is almost as cool as the Really Big Yamato we posted earlier this month.
	YesJapan's Japanese From Zero Vol. 1. New textbook line brought to you by the hardworking people at YesJapan.com.
	Comickers - Art File 014. New artbook featuring illustrations by Japan's top artists.
	Keroro Gunso K66 ~ Keron Army Action Figure Series. Great new toy for Keroro fans.
	Tyrant Habanero -- Thai Flavor. Now, you might not be thinking that you need Thai flavored Habanero chips, but let me tell you, these things are delicious!
	Black Sesame Caramel. Yowza! Black Sesame Caramels! They're really good, too, and I don't say that about every product J-List sells.
	Hello Kitty Cotton Swab Holder *Pearl Pink. Make sure your ears are as cute as they can be.
	"Wagara" Cotton Shirts ~ Sakura *M Size*. Line of button up 100% cotton shirts with amazing Japanese designs.
	YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream *Preorder*. I was playing this last night, doing some of the final beta testing, and I have to say I couldn't believe the drama of some of the stories. I was literally crying out as I played. Can't wait to get it out as to our fans.

I'm feeling sad about Mi-chan so I'll show you some pictures. This is our cat, taken a few days before she ran got hit by a car.

Animals totally have personalities, and even though it looks like she hated being put in this doll house by my daughter, she was always happy to "gaman" (put up with) anything my daughter wanted to do. A real kid's cat.

This is Mi-chan's brother, Ku-chan (from kuro, black). This dumb cat loved to climb inside people's cars and hid inside a moving can that brought some furniture to us, then got carted off. We *hope* he's alive somewhere but aren't sure.

Mi-chan as a baby, back when we could play Kitten Stick-Ons©.

I joke when I post about things like my wife saying "I'm glad we have pets around, they die in place of family members" but living in the context of a very Buddhist place like Japan, I start to believe it. And if believing it makes it actually work, I'd certainly give up a beloved pet over a family member. So if you died to save one of us from some bad fate, Mi-chan, you have our eternal thanks.

What we can learn about culture and Star Wars from Japanese comedians, some reverse sexual discrimination, and all about "What is your Hobby?"

"What is your hobby?" This is one of the first phrases of English conversation that Japanese students learn, along with "What is your name?" "Where are you from?" and "What is your blood type?" My students at the time were aged 18-20, that period when you're sure you've had all of life's major experiences and don't need to form any new opinions, and some regular responses included Mayumi's stated love of doraibu (going driving with friends), Misako's constant talk about baito (working a part-time job, from the German word arbeit), or good old Kiyoko, who always replied "going shopping with my mother." Because I'm an emotional, idealistic American, I always did my best to get the students to give more information to the class about what really excited them, to get them to do more with their precious youth than they were doing. But except for a few students who had a particular passion for something they could share with the class -- the Beatles, American pro wrestlers, traveling around Japan taking pictures of trains -- getting my Japanese students to be excited about anything was always a challenge. Speaking of hobbies, one of mine is comparing the cultures of Japan and the U.S., in case you haven't guessed, and sometimes you don't need to look any farther than the people who make us laugh, comedians. While most famous comedians in the U.S. come from the stand-up circuit or through the hallowed gates of Saturday Night Live, comedy in Japan is a little different. One form of traditional Japanese comedy that's been around for centuries is rakugo, literally "fallen words," which involves a lone comedian sitting Japanese- style on a zabuton cushion located very near the audience. The interesting thing about this style of performance is that, rather than using new comedy material, the monologue that the comedian tells is one of an already established library of a hundred or so such humorous stories, although a good rakugo-ka will add his own unique touches. There's a TV show where rakugo comedians do battle to see who is the funniest, and when they get a laugh they get another cushion, so that by the end the winner is sitting on a tower of them. (And in fact, a way of saying "that was funny" is Zabuton, ichi mai, or "I'll give you one zabuton cushion for that.") Another pillar of Japan's comedy world is manzai, humor involving a two-man team that includes a dim-witted boke (boh-KAY, meaning fool) and his sharp-tongued tsukkomi (tsu-KOH-mi, meaning straight foil) sidekick, who act out complex comic sketches together. Manzai has been popular throughout the 20th century and has had a great influence on many areas -- for example, the characters of C-3P0 and R2-D2 indirectly owe their existence to this humorous tradition, via the films of Kurosawa. The most popular manzai team in Japan today is Bakusho Mondai, who are regular guests on news programs where they bring their witty commentary to bear on the events of the past week. If you've happened to see the Japanese version of Apple's "Get a Mac" ads, the duo playing the Mac and PC are two halves of a manzai comedy pair. (We have an English book of rakugo monologues on the site today if you're interested.) Normally when you think of a subject like sexual discrimination you think of women not being offered the chance to do what they want on an equal footing with males, but I had a little lesson in reverse discrimination last night. My wife, mother-in-law and our two kids were heading to Malaysia for a week to visit a family friend, leaving me home alone -- the Holy Grail for any married man, since I can walk around the house in my underwear, put my feet on the table, and drink out of the milk carton with impunity. Before she could leave, though, my wife was compelled to prepare a week's worth of meals for me, as if my male-ness made me totally unable to fend for myself in for seven days, like some comedy version of a husband from the 1950s. And that, I realized, is one aspect of the relationships between men and women in Japan, a kind of yin-yang (to bring a sufficiently Asian image to my theory) in which the man is responsible being the "great black pillar" (daikoku-bashira) that holds up the household, while the woman does her part to ensure the happiness of the family from the inside. Sounds overly simplified to put it like that, I know, but from within the context of living in Japan, it really works well. Today we've not one, not two but three wacky new Japanese T-shirts for you on the site. The Japanese are an incredibly expressive people, and they can take something as bland as ASCII letters or generic hiragana and katakana characters and turn them into incredibly expressive images. We've got three new limited-run T-shirts featuring popular emoji ("emotional characters") that capture the heart and soul of the Japanese BBS 2ch and look really cool at the same time. See them on the site now! J-List carries region-free DVD players that make it child's play to enjoy region-encoded DVDs from Japan, Europe and other countries. Our players are specially manufactured to ignore the pesky region codes that try to keep you from watching the discs you want to enjoy, and are fully compatible with DVDs from all regions, including PAL and RCE discs. Even better, they're loaded with features, like the ability to play DIVX/AVI files burned onto DVD-R media. We've lowered the price on our popular RJ-200 progressive scan/surround sound DVD player, making it even easier to snap up one of these half-height demons and watch any DVD you like. 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.

	Bachelor Dec 2006. Fresh stock of this issue for Yulia Nova fans!
	Isshoni Iruyo ~ Together -- Misako Yasuda. Misako Yasuda continues to be a force of great beauty in Japan.
	Gal Royale -- Hotaru Akane. Two famous kogals do battle in a new video offering.
	WOMAN Age 30 -- Emi Fukatsu. It's nice to see women who aren't all 18 years of age being chosen as JAV actresses. Here's a very experienced, very sexy woman who's starting her new career at the age of 30.
	Futanarikko Lovers 4. The most popular genre in Japan is back in a new anthology manga.
	Yuki Nagato SD Version ~ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu *Preorder*. Gorgeous super-deformed statue of Yuki, the Dan Simmons-reading adroid from the future. (This anime is partially based on the novel Hyperion, amazingly.)
	Gush April 2007. Popular yaoi manga anthology. Like, 450 pages!
	Precious ~ Limited Edition. Gorgeous limited edition manga that comes with its own artbook.
	Comic AG Super Erotic Manga Anthology vol. 52. New issue of Comic AG. If you haven't been reading it, you might want to reconsider since the includsion of The Spirit of Capitalism makes this a fabulous read.
	Nihongo Journal Feb. 2007. New issue of Nihongo Journal on the site, for students of the language.
	Tekkon Kinkreet White Side ~ Shiro. FABULOUS is the only word I have for this pair of artbooks. The art is all incredible, so dreamy I can't belive my eyes.
	The Manga Guide to Sudoku. Like manga? Want to learn Sudoku? This is your chance!
	Japanese ASCII T-Shirt - Questioning Face. Japanese ASCII T-shirts from Japan are so l33t.
	Aria - The Natural - 1/6 scale pre-painted Figure ~ Alice Carroll. Gorgeous large-size figure for fans of this anime.
	Rakugo ~ Traditional Japanese Sit-down comedy. This is an interesting item, translated rakugo monologues for you to use to understand Japanese humor with. A great idea!
	Kei Kishimoto Bikini version *Gantz*. This is an anime I'll have to look up. It's about a girl who dies and wakes up in a video game.
	Koume Tablet - Sour Plum. Delicious ume tablets from Japan,
	Black Samurai Sword Ear Cleaner w/Red Strap. More samurai sword ear cleaning action from Japan!
	Lucky Cat Family (Three Cats) *Sunshine People Style. We've got new solar powered Lucky Cat toys on the site, too. They're very cute.
	Neko Bus "Kacha Kacha" Music Box Keychain ~ Totoro. This is a series of small wind-up music boxes from Japan that you can take anywhere.
	Cup Noodle Mug Cup. Back in stock. I realized I should have pointed this out with I did my post about Mr. Noodle.

I see I forgot to post pictures of the hidden micro brewery in the mountains of Gunma. Well, here you go. Here are the taps.

Good roaring Dwarven fires, too.

In general, any time I get the chance to eat wood-fired pizza, I take it.

Like all Japanese breweries, there were three types, very blonde, medium and very fruity, and very dark/stout. I found the middle path to be the most delicious.

This is what the Japanese call a "Margherita" Pizza.

I just love the construction of this place, all wood, with huge pillars of wood visible inside. It was so unexpected to find such a good place in a town with a winter population of a few hundred.

I brought some of these back for my father in law, although I know he won't like them. I'll just have to help him drink them ^_^

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!

An expected bit of Irish in Japan, thoughts on Japan's slow-changing educational system, and all about the concept of "kakko ii"

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, a celebration of all things Irish in the U.S. and, presumeably, Ireland. As you might imagine, there isn't a lot of awareness of this day in a place like Japan, which knows nothing of shamrocks or leprechauns or pots of gold buried at the end of the rainbow. However, we managed to have our own little Irish Experience nevertheless. While taking our customary weekend drive up the mountains around the resort town of Karuizawa, we came across an interesting-looking restaurant that served wood-fired pizza and home-brewed beer, a rarity in a country that favors large, easily-taxable industries. Among the beers they offered was an authentic Irish Stout, and I was so shocked at the concept of drinking a rare and delicious brew on a mountain in an extremely rural corner of Japan that I had to have three of them. One thing you can say about Japan is, you never know what it's got in store for you next.

The subject of Japan's compulsory educational system is a complex and interesting one. Officially begun as part of the modernization program of the 1870s, Japan's schools are responsible for teaching young people everything they need to function in life, from reading and writing of kanji to math and science to social skills suitable for Japan's group-oriented culture and being able to say "Fine thanks, and you?" when you ask them how they are in English (a very important skill, to be sure). Public schools are extremely conservative and resistant to change, and it's amazing how much is the same at my daughter's elementary school compared with when her mother went there 25 years ago...or her grandmother, who attended the same school 50 years ago. This is good on the one hand because it creates a continuum of experiences that crosses generations, such as playing the Japanese educational game "Karuta" that teaches respect for local culture -- even something like Japanese school lunches have cultural threads that we foreigners can never comprehend. On the other hand, Japanese public schools seem trapped in a time-warp without any significant plan for the changes students will face this century, including fierce competition from every country in Asia. I sometimes wonder if Japan's educational system can go on changing so little. Japan can be a very style-oriented place at times, and it seems that everyone is concerned about looking good. The universal word for "cool" in Japanese is kakko ii (KAH-koe ee, lit. "good style"), while the opposite is kakko warui (KAH-koe wa-roo-EE, "bad style," e.g. dorky). Another word that describes an absence of coolness is dasai (dah-SAI, out of fashion, uncool, n00b), which supposedly started out as a derogatory word for people from half-rural, half-urban Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo, essentially to Japan's capital what Orange County is to Los Angeles. Many Japanese also have a great appreciation for what's known as dasa-kakko ii, or something that's both lame and cool at the same time, or perhaps cool specifically because it's out of sync with current mores. Some examples of dasa-kakko ii might include the hair styles or fashions from the 1970s, that scene from Mobile Suit Gundam when Amuro sits in the cockpit desperately reading through the manual as he trying to find the mecha's weapons, the movie Willow, anything featuring Vin Diesel, and the artist formerly and currently known as Prince. Remember that J-List carries cool computer peripheral and iPod products by Japan's leading company, Elecom. From stylin' USB computer mice to their trademark katakana mouse pads and keyboards to stylish speakers for your iPod, Mac or PC, Elecom has great stuff for you. We also carry the bizarre-but-cute Mogmo Kun, a push little monster that "eats" your USB flash drive or similar shaped device in order to protect it. So cute! All products are fully compatible with computers and iPod products around the world. 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.

	Mecha ii -- Kaede Matsushima. Kaede Matsushima may just be the most popular actress in Japan today. I love her for her slender body and Japanese-ness. Is that a word?
	Hello Kitty Square Pouch (L) *Red*. A cute way to store all your stuff in a Hello Kitty way.
	Totoro Match Box Music Box ~ Mei and Kurosuke -- Totoro no Takaramono. This is just too cool -- a miniature music box for Totoro fans! Two of them, actually.
	TGWOA 21 ~ Twin Dungeon-Princess vol. 3 -- Futari no Meikyu Ohjo III. Fabulous new doujinshi from the Great World of Alchemy circle.
	BIBLE -- Rina Akiyama. Rina Akiyama is red hot in Japan now, so hot that her photobooks are hard to find and we aren't sure if we can restock this. If you love Japanese sexy models, don't miss this extra-special photobook.
	Skinny Denim Style. A fetish for girls in denim jeans?
	Ultimate Erogenous Service -- Aya Koizumi. Aya Koizumi really shines in her latest release, another trendy title from IEnergy.
	Intron Depot Ballistics Figure ~ Shirow Masamune. Intron Depot is Shirow Masamune's popular artbook series, and the art is so good you can't take your eyes off it. Here's a figure from the pages.
	Tokimeki Takaramono ~ Puchi Retro Series Full Set (Set of 10). From Re-Ment, cute retro stuff from the 1980s that's very "dasa-kakko ii."
	Newtype Dec 2006. New issue of Newtype is loaded with good stuff, including a poster and pull-out book for Haruhi fans.
	Hello Kitty Car Aroma Ball *Red*. These are so cool -- little balls of Hello Kitty cuteness that provide good aromoas for your car. And they are just so funky-looking.
	Green Tea & Kinako Aero. Green Tea Aero Chocolate, sounds delicious!
	Daruma Chawan (Rice Bowl) *Blue. Cool rice bowl (chawan) featuring Daruma and Lucky Cat.
	Pocket Monster Origami (plain color 16pcs & special 6pcs ). This is so cute it's kind of weird -- origami Pikachu? Incidentally one of my early memories as a kid is seeing the word "origami" and being totally unable to pronounce it. Now I can write it in kanji.
	Kana ~ Little Sister. This is one of the most well known of our PC dating-sim games, one that I hope all fans or curioous will consider trying. In this game, your sister is dying, a very dramatic and emotional title that has made more than a few of my customers cry.

How to sub-divide Japanese groups into "zoku" (tribes), all about Japanese rice, and what's that blue spot on Taro's butt?

Words always reflect the people that use them, and vice-versa. In American English our notions about individualism and not going with the flow no doubt color the language we use in subtle ways, and Japan's language is similarly affected by its culture. Japan is a country where 80% or more of the people feel a strong need to consider themselves part of the Middle Class and where the word futsuu (foo-TSOO), meaning "normal" or "the same as everyone else," never carries a negative connotation. One interesting way of organizing people into sub-groups is the term zoku (族), translatable as "family" or "tribe," a tongue- in-cheek way of dividing the population up into quasi-anthropological categories. One of the most famous of these sub-groups are the otaku-zoku, the species of human that surrounds himself with manga, anime and pop culture from Japan -- we don't know anyone like that, do we? The poshest address in Tokyo is Roppongi Hills, a high-rise mini-city in Tokyo, and the fashionable people who can afford to live there are known as Hills-zoku. Often the word is used to give a name to a new social trend, such as hotaru-zoku, the "firefly tribe" of males whose wives have forbidden them from smoking in the home, forcing them out onto the veranda at night where their cigarette tips dance like fireflies. Some other sub-species of Japanese are mansion-zoku, people who live in high-rise apartments, oddly referred to as mansions; neko-zoku, those who like their cats way too much; and keitai-zoku, people obsessed with their cell phones all the time. Which zoku are you?

Rice is the staple of every Japanese household, the most important food in the country since cultivation began back in the Yayoi Period (300 B.C. ~ 250 A.D.). Eaten with three meals a day in many households, rice is such a big part of food culture here that the most common word for rice, "gohan," also refers to any food or meal. To prepare Japanese-style rice, you must wash it for several minutes to remove the edible white powder it's packed in, then put it in your electric rice cooker and press the button -- very convenient. The old U.S. commercials for Uncle Ben's Rice boasted that the grains won't ever stick together, but Japanese rice is supposed to be sticky enough so that you could use it to stick stamps on letters instead of licking them. Being the basis for Japanese civilization, rice is almost considered holy, and mothers tell children to eat all their rice because there are 88 gods in each grain who will get angry if rice is wasted. One the great mysteries of Japan is why virtually every woman seems to suffer from chronic constipation. The answer of course is that they eat too much rice, a natural cure for soft stools, but trying to get Japanese to listen to such a suggestion is just impossible. I love Japanese public baths (sento) and hot springs (onsen, pronounced own-sen), and take my kids every week -- sometimes twice. Public baths hail back from the Edo era when people didn't have private baths in their homes, and had to go to community facilities to get clean. Hot springs have a long history in Japan, and popular onsen towns like Kusatsu or Beppu have been around for more than 1300 years. Once, when my son was younger and we were in an onsen together, he took me aside and asked me why a little boy playing in one of the baths had a blue bruise on his rear end. This is the famous Mongolian Spot (mokohan in Japanese, meaning "the Old Spot of Mongol"), a blue bruise-like spot which is found on Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian children, including my own kids when they were young. (See link here -- um, it is okay to link to something like this, right? ^_^) The spots go away when the children reach age five or so. In Japanese, the word for someone who is still a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn is ao ni-sai ("still blue 2-year-old"), which is probably related to this spot. J-List has been involved in licensing great "doujin" CG artwork and publishing it in CD-ROM format for years, and today we're happy to announce that the Borderline Collection vol. 2 & 3 are available again as Internet Downloads. The breathtakingly beautiful creations of illustrator Sakaki Naomoto (who incidentally designed the J-List logo girl), these two collections are filled with great images for fans and collectors. Check them out now! 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.

	Karami SE Otome Gumi 2007 - Girl's Team. Fabulous new photomagazine filled with incredibly beautiful Japanese girls. Nice to see a highly tasteful magazine being published like this.
	H. -- Yuika Hotta. Fantastic Japanese beauty in her new hardcover photobook.
	Su Nao -- Nao Oikawa Last potobook. Nao Oikawa once ruled the JAV world, but now it's time for her to take her bows, and so she's showing you her "Goodbye Hair Nude."
	Whale Shower! Nakadashi! -- MIMI. More fun with Japan's "Reggae Dance" erotic DVD craze.
	Panasonic TOYOTA Racing TF106 Choro-Q. We've got some cool Choro-Q toys on the site, really fun and hard to find outside of Japan.
	Dead or Alive Photobook Side A ~ Love Kasumi. Wow, beautiful CG girls to gaze at in this DOA photobook. This book focuses on Kasumi.
	Dead or Alive Photobook Side B ~ Kiss! Gals. All CG DOA book featuring a look at the sexiest girls in the game.
	Showa Nuri-e Shu ~ Shigeru Komatsuzaki. We debated whether to carry this item, but thought it would an interesting angle on Japan that our customers might not otherwise get. This is a collection of nuri-e (coloring book images for painting, coloring etc) featuring images of World War II during the Showa Period.
	Asahina Mikuru Figure. If you're as much a Haruhi fan as I am, I hope you click on this and it comes up as being in stock. Sadly, we only got one of the darned figures since they're so popular in Japan.
	Omamori Stickers -- w/ Daruma & Maneki Neko. Super cute little stickers that promise to bring good luck.
	Borderline 3 ~Frozen Beach~ (Internet Download Edition). We've gotten the Borderline 2 & 3 CG collections back on the site again, and ready for download. Compatible with Mac or PC.
	My Neighbor Totoro -- Large Totoro ~ Totoro Doll Collection. One of our most popular Totoro related toys ever, back in stock.
	Sake Ame - Sake candy. Oo, yummy sake candy from Japan, back on the site!
	Wiener Shaper -- Tulip. Got bento and want to make it look pretty? This wiener shaper will cut little sausages to look like tulips.
	Naked Star. Oh Great is the manga artist who made a name for himself as one of Japan's top "H" artists, then went mainstream with a popular manga called Tenjo Tenge that you might have heard of. Here's some of his old work, and it's, er, great.
	Fuwarinka Soft Candy -- Rose Flavor. This has been making the rounds on the blogs this week, and we've got it in stock right now!
	Hitomi 1/5 Scale Painted Figure. Fabulous figure based on an erotic manga. Back in production after two years of being out of stock.

So, I'm taking the kids to Mahatma, the Indian restaurant that I blog about from time to time. I took my wife here on our first date. We're were going for some of this...

Or maybe some of this, a plate of tandoori chicken, which my son loves more than anything. On the way there I joked with the kids if they wanted to go to Mahatma or to McDonald's instead, which is very amusing since who would go to McDonald's when they could have this instead?

Then we get to our table, and apparently some funny Indian person has decided to bring a menu from a McDonald's in India, just to play with our minds.

I really have no idea what the differences would be. No beef or pork, right? So I guess India is a lame place to be a sheep.

Like most Americans, I get my knowledge of India from the Simpsons episode where Apu gets married. Just kidding!

People who are interesated in Mother Theresa should hunt down Penn and Teller's episode where they strip away some of her halo. It's quite an eye-opener. Unfortunately doesn't look like it's up on Youtube or anything.

The Japanese concept of "joshiki" (common sense), why there are rice fields everywhere in Japan, and would you pay $3500 to meet Michael Jackson?

One concept that's always interested me is joshiki (JOH-sh'kee) the Japanese "universal common sense" or knowledge that all reasonable people are supposed to possess here. The Japanese have a vast storehouse of this knowledge and it's one of the reasons why Japan seems to be such a harmonious place when viewed from the outside. Have a traffic accident? The insurance companies will work out the percentages of who was at fault according to guidelines the industry has established, so there's never a need for a lawsuit. Going to have a baby? Virtually all babies are born in traditional hospitals, and you almost never hear of alternate birthing methods. Quite a lot of people around the world have chosen a vegetarian lifestyle, but in Japan, it's joshiki that a meal will generally include meat or fish along with vegetables and white rice, and so there are almost no vegans here at all. When I go to the U.S. this summer, one thing that's on my list to do is straighten out my legal affairs and make a new will, something every family man should consider doing regularly. My wife was curious about why I needed to do this, though -- it seems that the Japanese common sense system covers death quite tidily, with all assets distributed in a logical manner, and there's seldom any cause for someone to have a written will in place.

A new Mediterranean-style restaurant opened near a built-up part of our city, so my wife and I went to give it a try. On one side of this restaurant was a bank, a convenience store, and a gas station. On the other side was...a large rice field with a farmer in it, busily preparing his field for the coming planting. Japan is funny that way, mixing industrial, commercial, and agricultural land in ways we wouldn't ever consider doing in the States. Even in Tokyo you can find agriculture going on in areas that seem way too urban to support it. Because there's only a little bit of land to go around, the laws that govern how you can use land are quite strict, and agriculture is given a special status. For example, the area where J-List is located is officially designated as agricultural land, only to be used for growing crops, except for certain circumstances such as plots of land that face the road or individuals building a business that contributes to society, such as a school. When representatives of companies J-List does business within Japan visit us, they're invariably surprised to see a high-tech IT business standing in the middle of fields of swaying rice, which definitely appeals to our rebellious nature.

Would you pay $3500 to see Michael Jackson? That's what several hundred Japanese fans did last night, attending a dinner with the former star and getting to talk with him briefly, and pose for photographs, and most of the attendees said it was a bargain for the chance of a lifetime. The former King of Pop arrived in Japan this week to the cheers of thousands of fans who had camped out at Narita Airport to greet him, and he was soaking all the attention up. He also made a surprise appearance on the popular TV show SMAP x SMAP, in which the five-member "talent" team cooks an exquisite meal on camera while they talk with the guest. You cant have a famous visitor to Japan without Queen of Movie Subtitles Natsuko Toda at his side, and she was there, translating for Michael and the SMAP members as they did their best to make him feel welcome in Japan.

As an dyed-in-the-wool old-school anime fan, I've had some pretty fun moments, from standing for the first time in front of the Studio Alta TV in Shinjuku to that first visit to Tokyo Tower, the icon featured in most every CLAMP anime. I've posed in front of the Shibuya 109 building, slept in my car so I could be among the first 5000 in line for the Comic Market, and even sung the Yamato theme song on the top of Mt. Fuji, in Japanese of course. Another event in my life as an anime fan came when we got the incredible Space Cruiser Yamato 1/350 scale toywe're posting to the site today in, one of the coolest items we've ever carried at J-List. A huge model of Japan's most famous battleship, it's loaded with features, from guns that move by remote control to a Wave Motion Gun that fires. Check it out now! Remember that J-List has great PC dating-sim games you can buy, with many titles available as Internet Download Editions starting at just $24.95. We're extremely proud of the lineup of great games we've built, and hope you'll try this fun way of interacting with Japan on a new level. We've got games that are humorous and games with highly defined stories and even games that can make you cry. Check out our lineup of PC dating-sim games today! 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.

	Yuru Yuru -- Hitomi Aizawa. Hitomi-chan looks wonderful in her hardcover photobook.
	Welcome to Max Soap -- Tina Yuzuki. Tina Yuzuku is incredibly popular at J-List. She's half Japanese, half-Portuguese, and all beautiful.
	Love Tights Delicious 4. For men who love women in dark tights.
	Road to Las Vegas -- Akane Souma, Yoko Kawahara. Two beautiful women on the road to Las Vegas. Great photography throughout.
	*Shinku (Pure Ruby)* ~ Rozen Maiden Traumend Puni-Cole *Preorder*. Rozen Maiden is a great anime about, well, gothic-lolita style dolls that are animated through some kind of curse. It's quite deep and explores Japan's current psyche even as it entertains.
	*Suiseisaki (Jade Stone)* ~ Rozen Maiden Traumend Puni-Cole *Preorder*. This is Suiseki, one of the most popular characters from the series. I love her eyes being different colors.
	Space Battle Ship YAMATO 1/350 scale Plastic Model. Wow, is all I can say. In ten years of running J-List, we've never gotten in a product with so much raw impact. I've got to get one of these for myself ^_^
	Drift Tengoku Reserve Subscription. Cool new magazine for fans of Japanese cars.
	Maritan's Concentrated Drill 2 ~ Maritan Shuchu Kaihei 2 Nensei ver.. Wow, this is fantastic/ Learn English with cute bishoujo characters. However, it's English that would turn your grandmother beet red.
	Ninja Sword Letter Opener. You need this ninja sword letter opener!
	Disposable DX Bamboo Chopsticks *40 pairs . Great chopsticks, made with environment-friendly bamboo, too. Plus they're easy to hold.
	Lotte Sasha *Sakura Flavor. Yum, sakura and chocolate, sounds delicious.
	Sesame Street -- Elmo Sepia Version. This is totally cool, a "Sepia" version of Elmo, the perfect collector's item!
	Sesame Street -- Cookie Monster Sepia Version. Cool "sepia" version of Cookie Monster, sold only in Japan.
	Hello Kitty Oil Absorption Paper *Retro ~ 50 Sheets. Remove oil and be kawaii with this nice item from Japan.
	Sakura Mayonnaise Cup. New mayonnaise cups for your bento life.
	Pocari Sweat Powder. An oldie but a goodie, this is the powder that makes real Pocari Sweat drink mix. Which doesn't, you know, contain any sweat, trust us.
	Genkai DNA - Limit DNA -- Yoko Matsugane. Yoko Matsugane is one hot lady. Thisis one of her most popular photobooks, back on the site after a while.

The needless tragedy of 'ijime,' what's easy and hard about learning Japanese, and the Japanese as the most expressive people on the planet

The other day I went to my son's school to watch the various end-of-year performances the students had prepared for the parents, which included putting on a puppet show and school TV news report all in English, and the entire fifth grade performing a symphony concert for us, too. While I was walking through the halls, I noticed a big poster that said "STOP THE IJIME" with the slogan "we cannot allow bullying to continue -- your courage will end it forever" written below. It's a sad fact that ijime (ee-jee-MEH), the bullying and hazing that happens in schools, is a major social problem here in Japan, and all too often it's given as a the trigger leading to a young person's untimely death. There are several reasons why ijime is such a problem in Japan, beyond the bully-before-you-are-bullied mind-set that is probably present in all kids to some degree. First of all, the Japanese custom of keeping classes of students together all day throughout the school year, with teachers coming and going each hour, might be good for imparting group cooperation skills for forming lifelong friendships, but it also amplifies problems between students. If you have to sit next to a cruel jerk for one hour a day you could probably get through it, but all day, every day, for a whole year? Teachers also sitting together in a large room rather than individual offices is a problem, too, since it makes it difficult for a student to talk to one teacher, especially bad when a teacher is part of the problem. Finally, the near total lack of counseling and therapeutic medicine is also part of the problem, and all too often all kids can do is that most Japanese of activities "gaman" (meaning to endure patiently).

Each language is special, with unique features that may cause confusion for speakers of other languages. Romance languages like Spanish and French have noun genders, forcing English speakers to puzzle over why a pen is feminine while a pencil is masculine. Although Japanese do consider it a point of pride to think of their language as being especially hard to learn, I am convinced that no language is intrinsically more or less difficult than all the others. Still, there are some barriers to learning Japanese that must be overcome, starting with the two syllable-based writing systems, hiragana (the wavy looking one) and katakana (the boxy, masculine looking one), which you can tackle by memorizing the shapes and what sound they make (we can help). Kanji is also no small challenge, although you'd be surprised how much you can read with just a few hundred characters under your belt after a year or two of study. Grammatically there are some confusing areas, such as having to get used to two different verbs for to be (in a place), aru (ah-ROO) for inanimate objects, and iru (ee-ROO) for anything that moves, like people or animals. Whenever you learn something new, it's important to test it to find the limitations on that new piece of information so your brain can internalize it, and I remember bugging my sensei about which verb was correct for objects like zombies, cyborgs, and Venus Fly-Traps. There are times when the Japanese seem to be the most expressive people in the world to me. First of all, the fact that nearly everyone has taken several years of English allows for Japanese to use the language as a tool of expression without letting all the biases against bad grammar and meaningless words get in the way. This leads to the Japanese being able to create new English words to fit their needs, like Balance Up (a calorie balanced snack), Wordtank (Canon's popular electronic Japanese dictionary), Meltykiss (delicious fudge squares, love 'em) or the famous Walkman by Sony, which had to sound really silly the first time you heard it. They're also able to express more when writing text on a computer or cellular phone, since Japanese is a two-byte language, allowing fonts to go beyond the limits of mere ASCII, adding everything from musical notes to common symbols as standard characters. Finally, the tradition of putting kana above kanji to show how it should be read is often extended in innovative ways. In Yu-Gi-Oh, for example, they can put an unfamiliar word like Black Magician in English and write tiny kanji that explain the meaning above it, creating a single gestalt for the eye that performs both functions. Similarly, someone translating a Harry Potter novel might use the English word Quidditch but write characters for "air broom ball" above it in kanji, making all aspects of the word instantly clear at a glance. We're happy to have our Domo-kun T-shirts and warm hoodies back on the site for you, and J-List customers seem very happy to have them available again. We forgot to mention that our hooded sweatshirt now includes an XS size -- a first, since this color is usually not available in this size -- making Domo-kun a great item for customers needing youth sizes. We love to bring you fun an interesting things from Japan, and today we've got Fresh Cuts, an outstanding collection of the most interesting indies music from Japan today, brimming with 16 tracks by bands like Baggy Chopper, Maria Gadet and Guitar Vader. It's in stock in San Diego and ready for your order. Remember that J-List always has plenty of what we call "Wacky Things from Japan," with hundreds of products that are so bizarre, they could only come from the Land of the Rising Sun. Want to make Hello Kitty-shaped ice cubes? We've got your back. How about those fluffy Loose Socks the high school girls wear, along with Socks Glue to make them stay on your leg just so? When you're feeling too much stress in your daily life, we've got something soft to squeeze, or if you want to make a change in how you view your lunch, we've got lots of ideas for you, too. J-List's mission is to be your personal "wonderful toybox of things from Japan," so why not browse our wacky Japanese items now? 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 003 Feb 2007. New issue of Sabra, yummy.
	Maiko Kazano Last photobook. Maiko Kazano was the "other" really beautiful model on
	Which? -- Asami Katsura. Beautiful photobook by a lovely woman who was discovered selling orange juice on TV.
	Heisei Onna Ninja -- Mai Hanano. Female ninjas, that's about as cool as you can get.
	Four Seasons Wife ~ Shiki Tsuma. Fascinating manga about, er, unfaithful women. Kind of blends manga and realistic style together.
	Genki Picture Cards 2 on CD-ROM ~ Genki na E Card 2. New Genki item in stock for students of Japanese.
	Tachikoma Action Figure Perfect Piece ~ Stand Alone Complex. This is *THE* coolest Tachikoma item I've ever seen. Opens up and takes a figure inside!
	Fresh Cuts From Japan - Music CD. Cool, a JPOP music selection for you -- learn about Japan's indies music world!
	Kokeshi -- Winter Color ~ Fuyu. We've gotten in some gorgeous new kokeshi dolls, as well as restocked some of our old favorites today.
	Pretz -- Pudding Flavor. Yum, new flavor of Pretz for you. This is actually Flan flavored, a favorite in Japan. Does anyone know what that is?
	Meiji Pucca Black. Delicious bitter chocolate Pucca.
	*Pink *Hello Kitty Monogram Pouch. If I were of the female pursuasion, I'd definitely carry these cool Louis Vuitton-type Hello Kitty accessories. They look great.

All about trains and fuzzy blue rabbits from London, linguistic quirks of the Japanese language, and finding someone's "secret talent"

One thing I like about living in Japan is the rail culture here, so very different from the freeway- and automobile-based transportation system of Southern California. Trains have crisscrossed Japan since the first tracks were laid down in 1872, and you can go just about anywhere you want by rail, either a speedy bullet train between major cities or convenient local train when taking shorter trips. While you still need a car to really get around out in the inaka (boonies) where we live, residents of larger cities like Tokyo can easily get along without owning a car, and considering that a monthly parking space can cost up to $500 per month, that's probably a good thing. One of the most convenient train lines in Tokyo is the Yama-no-te loop line, which circles all of Tokyo and provides an easy way to get to most locations, as well as a fun drinking game for college students: get off at one stop, drink, get on the next train and go one station down, drink some more, repeat. There are plenty of advertisements in trains for various products, and every once in a while a company will buy every spot of advertising in a Yama-no-te train when it really wants to get its message across. The other day I got inside a train and was amazed to see pictures of Brits wearing cute plush rabbit ears, with the slogan "Go! London" everywhere, designed to make Japanese tourists think about taking a vacation there. I'm certain the advertising campaign succeeded in making Japanese feel all warm and fuzzy about Londoners.

One of the more interesting aspects of having bilingual kids is the conversations you can have with them about how they perceive their two languages. My kids grew up speaking Japanese primarily, but many trips to the U.S. and interaction with me kept their English skills up to speed. I like to ask them if they feel their personalities are different when switching from one language to the other, and seeing what insights they might have for me. The other day my son asked me what the difference between the words sutoraiku (strike, with a 'ku' sound on the end, ストライク) and sutoraiki (the same, this time with a 'ki' on the end, ストライキ) was. Japanese is quite impoverished phonetically, with just five vowels compared to the twelve vowel sounds we produce in English -- for example, the schwa or the unique way a New Yorker pronounces the first syllable of "coffee" -- and they sometimes split English words into chunks that are easier for them to digest. The words strike with a 'ku' sound on the end is the term Japanese use for a strike in baseball or bowling, but the word with a 'ki' on the end is a labor dispute, two very different concepts in the minds of the Japanese. Some other split words include mishin (a sewing machine) vs. mashin (any machine, mecha or robot); bureiki (what stops your car) vs. bureiku (what you take when you're tired); and one that I invariably mess up, garasu (glass, what your windows are made of) and gurasu (a glass that you drink out of). Socially, Japan is a different place from the West, and human relationships often have more formality than they might in the States. Therefore it takes time to really get to know a Japanese person, and it's not uncommon to keep on discovering things along the way, even years later. One interesting aspect of Japanese relationships that pops up from time to time is kakushi-gei (ka-ku-shee-GEI、隠し芸), the "secret talent" that people will hide from everyone else, only to pull out suddenly for dramatic effect. Jun is the J-List employee who brings you delicious snacks and "wacky things from Japan." When he first started working here we took everyone out for Indian food to welcome him, and he showed us his secret talent of being able to eat curry and rice deftly with his hands like they do in India, a skill he'd picked up while traveling the Silk Road. Once I took DVD and Japan iTunes-card meister Tomo out to dinner at a Japanese curry restaurant but realized I didn't have enough money to cover his meal, so he ordered the 1300 gram Super Curry Plate, which you get free if you can eat three pounds of rice and curry within 20 minutes -- he did it with time to spare. Other J-List staff members have secret abilities, too, like Yasu, who can do a great Eddie Murphy impression in Japanese; super-packer Saori, who possesses vast knowledge of American punk bands; and our newest employee Asami, proficient in Brazilian martial arts. Are you ready for White Day, on March 14th? This is the day when men who received a gift of chocolate on Valentine's Day give some sort of return gift -- okaeshi in Japanese -- to the wives, girlfriends, daughters and female co-workers who gave them something. It's pure marketing fluff, of course, but kind of fun, and companies are happy to take advantage of the event by thinking of ways to sell products. Even Apple gets into the spirit of White Day their Japan store page, by suggesting that men buy engraved iPods for their better halves as a way of saying "Thanks for the chocolate!" We've got a big announcement for you all today, with the return of our Domo-kun T-shirts and hoodies to the site. As you probably know, Domo-kun is the incredibly cute official spokesmonster for NHK, Japan's public broadcast system (the initials stand for Nippon Hoso Kyokai in case it ever comes up in casual conversation). We've got our classic Domo-kun men's T-shirt, our stylish Fitted Tee for girls, and a super item for those in cold parts of the world, our super-warm Domo-kun hooded sweatshirt. Check out the great new Domo-kun items on the site now! Remember that J-List carries great Japan-only snacks like Pocky, Pretz, Meltykiss and much more, with a staggering 200 "oishii-licious" products in stock. We've also got all varieties of the delicious Japan-only flavors of Nestle Kit Kat, including Sakura (great for spring), Strawberry, Green Tea and the brand new Peach, available by the individual pack or as a discounted sealed boxes. Japan's summers are hot and humid, though, and soon we'll have to take all chocolate products off the site to keep them from melting, so if you'd like to enjoy this year's great crop of J-Snacks, the best time to make your order is now. Since this winter has been such a warm one in Japan, we expect to have to take the chocolate snacks off the site earlier than normal, probably in April this year. Check out our selection of great snacks now! 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.

	Urecco DVD vol. 245 Nov. 2006. Urecco is still a great magazine, filled with pictures of beautiful women, and now a DVD for you to enjoy.
	Japanese T-shirt "Domo-kun" (Men's Standard). Domo-kun fans, we're happy to announce the return of NHK's official Spokesmonster to our humble pages. Now better than ever before! We've also got cool a greatDomo-kun hoodie on the site, too.
	Japanese T-shirt "Domo-kun" (Girl's Fitted). We've also got our stylish girl's Domo-kun shirt back on the site. Looks great!
	Legs of Yamato Nadeshiko ~ Cosplay Henka. More long, silky legs for you to enjoy from Japan.
	First Arisa ~ Saisho no Arisa -- Arisa Kuroda. Gorgeous glossy photobook of Akira Kuroda.
	W Cast -- Hotaru Akane & ICHIKA (region 2). Wow, this is quite a combination, Hotaru Akane and Ichika performing together. I can't think of a cooler pair of actresses in Japan right now.
	Figumate vol.1 Full set + Rare Figures (Set of 7) ~ Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu vol.1 . Haruhi Suzumiya is the most excellent anime series to come along since Evangelion, and we've gotten in cool figures from the series. Hurry, the full sets we have in stock are quite rare.
	Photography in Japan 1853-1912. This is one book I'm going to get myself -- a collection of *400* photographs from Japan from 1853 through 1912, from the age of Perry to the end of the Meiji Era. My gosh, what a great idea, and such a beautiful presentation!
	Hello Kitty Plush in Kimono *Pink ~ Large. This is the kind of thing J-List lives to se