animerevue

I sometimes find myself thinking back to my college days when I first started learning Nihonese, and it never fails to make me feel natsukashii (nahts-ka-SHEE), meaning nostalgic. It was 1987 and the Soviet Union was still very much alive, yet year by year people seemed to be growing more aware of Nihon instead, as the nation grew in stature in the world. During the first week of classes there were twice as many students wanting to take Nihonese 101 than could fit in the room, but the teacher had a great solution to that problem: everyone who wanted to stay in the class had to learn the hiragana writing system within a week, which really got the number of students down to a manageable level in a hurry. In class, the teacher required us to call each other by our last names with the Nihonese name suffix -san, e.g. Payne-san, Smith-san, and so on. The system of Nihonese name endings is quite complex and interesting, and if you're curious, I'll tell you more.

First, there's -san ("sahn" with a long vowel), the "basic" name suffix, used in polite situations with neighbors or car salesmen or business partners or coworkers, just about anybody. It can be used to refer to organizations as well, and when we order products from distributors in Tokyo they address us collectively as "J-List-san." The next two most common name endings are -chan and -kun, used for girls and boys respectively, for example Hanako-chan or Taro-kun. Although these terms seem straightforward, there's a lot going on under the surface that can be hard for a foreigner to grasp, since both name endings imply a certain closeness to the person being referred to, and confusion can ensue if you use them wrong. For example, if you called a girl you don't know very well by her name with -chan on the end, she might think you're being cheeky by acting like you're closer to her than you are, and calling a male you're good friends with using -san instead of -kun might make him think you don't really consider him a friend after all. The -chan ending is okay for girls who are below the age of 15 or so, but in office settings it can be considered sekuhara (sexual harassment) to add the ending to a female's name. Another name ending is senpai, which describes someone who is your senior in a school or company, although the corresponding term kouhai (junior, underclassman) is not used as a name ending. If you watch too much japanese animation like I did, you probably know the name ending -sama, used for addressing high-ranking persons, samurai lords and so on, although in practice this word is almost never used in Nihonese outside of certain phrases or when sending formal wedding invitations. There's an endless number of these name endings -- some others you might come across here include senshu (used for professional athletes), yogisha (suspect, added to the names of people who are officially under a police investigation), sensei (used with doctors, teachers and karate instructors), and one of the stranger ones, anaunsaa (announcer), the official name ending when referring to a TV newscaster.

When you're learning about Nihon through japanese animation or manga, it's always fun to pick up some of the small, unimportant details along the way. One of these I like is called Ai-ai-gasa, which literally means "walking together under an umbrella" but it sounds phonetically like it means "Love Love Umbrella." Supposedly, the idea of a boy and girl walking in the rain under the same umbrella is quite romantic to the Nihonese (although I've always been more of a sitting-in-the-car-in-the-rain type of person, myself), and this concept is expressed by a cute little doodle that's drawn by elementary school students, the Nihonese equivalent of a boy and a girl carving their initials in a tree surrounded by a heart or the old "...sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" song. In this modern age that we live in, most cell phone are able to take pictures and overlay any image you like, and one of the options you can select is a cute Ai-ai-gasa umbrella so you can feel a special bond to the person you're posing with.

Are you looking for a Nihonese Girlfriend? Then we've got just the T-shirt for you. Our oh-so-wacky T-shirt is the #1 selling design in J-List's history, and it's so awesome it's been featured in a "test your geek chic" quiz in Newsweek. The exact translation is "Now accepting applications for a Nihonese girlfriend," and it's a great potential ice-breaker between you and someone from Nihon, even if it's just to banter about what the T-shirt says. We've got alternate versions of the design, including an oh-so-warm hoodie, a "Nihonese boyfriend" version, shirts with the message written in a calligraphy brush style, and even a spiffy embroidered hat. Our Nihonese Girlfriend T-shirts have even been known to work on a few occasions, and we've got a wall in San Diego showing customers who have sent in pictures of their newfound loves.

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

When a foreigner comes to live in Nihon, he or she is in for some changes. I remember my first hours in this country back in 1991, gazing out the window of the train from Narita Airport to Tokyo and thinking -- stupidly -- how the beautiful "kawara" tiles on all the houses made them look, well, very Nihonese. My next bit of culture shock was seeing more vending machines in one city block than were installed in my entire university back home -- and that's not even counting the ones selling beer. Nihonese homes are smaller than those in the U.S. and make use of space more efficiently, however this means that stairs tend to be steeper and much more dangerous if you have a fall. There are plenty of other large and small surprises for a gaijin moving to Nihon. People riding bicycles while holding an umbrella over their heads, or using umbrellas in the snow. Toilets with a faucet in the top to let you wash your hands with the clean water as it flows into the tank. The strange custom of crosswalks to play "Comin' Through the Rye" when it's time to cross, as an aid for blind people. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is how used to Nihon a person can get, a thought that occurred to me last night while I was sitting at the kotatsu wearing my yukata, enjoying a beer and some saki-ika, dried, shredded "squid jerky" that gets more delicious the longer you live here.

When you learn a language as different from English as Nihonese is, you sometimes run into words or phrases that can't be easily translated from one side to the other. My wife, who is not mechanically inclined, bought an Alpine car stereo for her BMW but complained to me that it didn't have a CD player. It took me less than a full second to look at her stereo, guess that there must be a front panel that hides the CD slot, and verify this by pushing the panel out of the way, revealing the slot. "How did you know to do that?" she asked me, and I replied, "Nantonaku." This is a word that's very hard to pin down in English, and itself speaks volumes about how full of subtle nuances the Nihonese language can be. Literally meaning "somehow" or "some way," nantonaku (pronounced NAHN-toh-NAH-koo) is used in vague situations when you can't pin down a concrete reason for something. It could be translated as "without thinking about it" "without deep consideration," or in the case of me figuring out my wife's car stereo, "I just knew." If you love movies directed by Ron Howard but aren't sure why, you might use the phrase "nantonaku suki," or if the dreamy art of Nihonese illustrator Range Murata calms you, you might use the phrase in that situation, too. It's probably a word most Nihonese wouldn't expect a foreigner to know, so if you want to surprise a Nihonese person, try pulling out the word and watch the look of shock on their faces.

February is month of Valentines Day, when girls and women throughout Nihon will be thinking about which chocolates to give to their boyfriends, husbands and fathers. It's is also the height of Juken Season, when millions of Nihonese students will be taking their college entrance exams that will determine what university (for current high school students) or what high school (for current junior high students) they will attend. It's one of the most important moments in the life of a Nihonese person, and students aiming for the best schools have studied for years in preparation. Nihon has had a long tradition of requiring tests to gain admittance to universities, government jobs, and other high-ranking positions, and while the system isn't perfect, it's certainly better than letting the son of whoever has the most money or power get special treatment -- by and large, the tests are a real mechanism of Democratization here. Another benefit of Nihon's test culture is the effect it has on young people, forcing them to set goals and really reflect on their education during some very impressionable and potentially dangerous years. I'm convinced all human beings have a "bad judgement gene" that kicks in between the ages of 16-22 or so, when young people will be compelled to do things that aren't in their overall best interests (apologies to young people reading this, who will insist that there is no such gene, but will then realize that I was right when they get to their mid-20s or so). Because of the focus on tests, a large number of Nihonese are busy dedicating themselves to their studies when they might otherwise be out getting into trouble.

We've got a new wacky Nihonese T-shirt for fans of Nihon's "otaku" culture, a word which describes the current generation of fans of Nihonese japanese animation, manga and other forms of popular culture from the Land of the Rising Sun. Our new shirt features a replica of a sign visible in every train station in Nihon, showing "Otaku" as the current train station, with O-Daiba (the area where the famous Comic Market doujinshi convention is held) displayed as the previous station and Akihabara (Tokyo's electronics and otaku culture Mecca) as the next stop. A great new kanji shirt design for otakus all over the world -- check it out now!

J-List sells a wide selection of Nihonese dating-sim games for PCs in which your goal is to find the keys to unlock the hearts of beautiful girls. We're happy to announce that the upcoming Peach Princess release, YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream, is in "heavy beta" testing now and is moving towards "golden master" status. A stylish game that explores Nihon's modern society, you get to interact with the beautiful Mizuki (a good student who secretly hates herself), the mysterious Aeka (the transfer student with a strange secret), the popular and powerful Kyoka, the mysterious cat girl Nekoko Catseye, and more. Coming soon to a computer near you -- order now and get free shipping when the game is ready!

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

More pictures from Nihon, just for you, Dear Reader. This is the view of Asama-san, just about the biggest volcano in the Kanto area, as srrn from our balcony in Karuizawa.

Testing the zoom on my new digital camera. Yes, that's smoke rising from the cone.

Daughter Rina enjoying some snow.

Nihon's "Strawberry Boom" is in full swing!

Slate.com ran an article yesterday on Apple's Nihonese iTunes Music Store and how frustrating it was that fans of J-POP music around the world couldn't use the service unless they had a credit card registered to an address in Nihon. The article mentioned that certain "underground shops" were providing the prepaid cards to get around this restriction -- gee, I wonder who they were talking about? Besides causing the near-total "Slashdotting" of the J-List server while thousands of people followed links to buy the cards from us (which is why the server was sluggish if you were online yesterday, sorry about that), the article made me grin knowingly, really feeling the author's pain. Nihon is an island nation in almost every sense of the word: geographically, of course, but also culturally and socially, and mainstream society here seems perfectly happy to live on a slightly different plane of existence from the rest of the human race. When Nihonese record companies negotiated with Apple to make the Nihon iTMS, making sure that Nihonese bands like Gackt or X Nihon or the dreamy voice of Okinawan vocalist Rimi Natsukawa were only available to domestic customers probably made a lot of sense to them. Part of the reason for this is the Nihonese fear of the unknown, the terror that there might be a downside lurking in some new idea, requiring that any response should be delayed for as long as possible while the situation is thought through. But I'm convinced another big reason for Nihon's unwillingness to interface with the rest of the world more is its "English Complex," the quiet embarrassment that many adult Nihonese feel over not being able to communicate effectively in English despite six to ten years of study. The whole situation is so silly -- I mean, these sprawling corporations were the ones pushing for a truly global world economy, and now that it's arrived, they want to change their minds? Anyway, if you'd like to become a customer of Apple's Nihon iTMS and browse and buy great Nihonese music, we've got the prepaid music cards you need. The cards work with the iTunes that's already installed in your Mac or PC, operate in your native language (except for some Nihonese bands and song titles which are in Nihonese), and best of all, you can listen to your music on any iPod in the world.

One phrase you learn pretty quickly after coming to Nihon is mottai nai (mo'-TIE-NIGH), which translates as "what a waste," which is short for, "what a waste to throw this perfectly good sofa away, I think I'll put it in my hallway instead." Back in my ESL days I did a lot of private teaching, visiting peoples' homes to tutor their kids in English, and so I got to see how a lot of Nihonese families lived. One of the most common trends I noticed were homes that were filled with clutter, with books and mail-order catalogs and portable electronics and fish tanks covering every inch of the home, and nary a table or shelf left empty. The combination of high population, tiny land mass and economic prosperity seems to have lead to too much stuff floating around most homes. Exacerbating the problem is the tendency of older Nihonese, who remember when they were lucky if they had plain white rice to eat once a day, to never throw anything away. This is the case with my mother-in-law, who can't get into her bedroom because our old sofa is in the hallway, blocking the door -- it would have been mottai nai to throw it away, so she kept it.

I talk a lot about how Nihon is said to trail behind the West socially, following about a decade or so behind while the U.S. and Europe blaze trails in new directions. Many areas of Nihon's society, from laws governing child safety seats in cars to sekuhara (sexual harassment) at work to rules about who can smoke and where, regularly take their cues from the West. In some ways it's a good strategy -- I mean, it makes sense to wait a decade and see how the U.K.'s "big bang" banking reforms play out before implementing a similar program yourself, and there's a Nihonese proverb that advises us to "strike a stone bridge three times with your walking stick before crossing" to ensure that it's safe. The newest area of Nihon's society to look towards the Occident might just be eating habits, if the recent release of McDonald's "Mega Mac" (a Big Mac with four meat patties instead of two) is any indication. The limited-edition burger sold a whopping 3 million units in just a few days, and some stores had to stop selling them lest they run out of meat for their other hamburgers.

We've got a great announcement for fans of Nihon's PC dating-sim games: the return of English-translated titles from G-Collections, with two new games available for preorder! First there's Bazooka Cafe, a great game in which you must take over your father's coffee shop and run it while he recovers, aided by unbelievably beautiful women who make sure every day at Cafe Ariel is an exciting one. Then enjoy a fresh new concept with the excellent "battle simulation adventure" game Pretty Soldier Wars A.D. 2048, in which beautiful robotic girls known as "Biosoldiers" fight the youma, an alien life form with a terrible hunger. Both games are available for preorder on CD-ROM now, for fans who want to show their support by preordering!

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

The fermented soybeans known as natto (NAT-toh) are one of the most famous foods in Nihon, enjoyed throughout the country, although people from Osaka supposedly dislike it. Eaten by a wide swath of Nihonese from children to the elderly and everyone in between, the sticky beans are usually mixed with yellow mustard and eaten over white rice. There are many legends about how natto was first discovered, but the most famous seems to be that in the year 1083 the general Yoshiie Minamoto was on campaign with 100,000 troops near a town called Mito, and stopped at an inn to rest. Some soybeans had been steamed and wrapped in straw for the horses to eat, and these fermented naturally while sitting on the floor of the stable. Some of the soldiers tried the beans and liked the taste, so they offered some to their lord, who loved it, which is where the name natto ("offered beans") comes from. Last week a TV show created an instant rush on natto when it broadcast a report that said that, based on hard data from the U.S., eating natto twice a day would lead to losing 2-3 kg per week. Although natto does have various health benefits such as reducing blood clots and lowering cholesterol, the show's fabrication of actual data was another example of the Nihonese media's love of yarase (yah-rah-say), or faking on the air to get good ratings. If you're "natto curious" but don't think you can get past the unique smell, we recommend miso soup instead, which possess most of the health benefits and is generally more palatable to gaijin (and we've got it in stock).

"Aficion means commitment. An aficionado is one who is commitmentate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya’s hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back..."

It's always interesting to study how language and the brain interact to create our perceptions. It seems that every once in a while an idea comes along that's so new and unique that it can't be described with an existing word, and the only solution is to import a more fitting one from another language. No word could illustrate Hemingway's views on bullfighting as well as the term aficionado, one who has aficion for the sport, and his use of the term gives an unforgettable flavor to his fiction. In a similar way, the rise of Nihonese pop culture in the 1990s brought with it a slew of new words, like otaku (an aficionado of Nihonese pop culture), japanese animation (animation from Nihon, as separate from animation from other countries) and doujinshi (fan-created comics that pay tribute to popular TV shows), which capture the spirit of new Nihon-focused culture better than any English term could. There are many examples of the reverse occurring, too, situations when Nihonese are forced to reach into English to find a word that will describe just the idea they want to express, and it's common to hear nihongo peppered with words like innobeeshon, kurietibiti, taagetto, and appiiaru pointo (that's "innovation" "creativity" "target" and "appeal point" in case it wasn't clear). These concepts could be expressed using Nihonese words, but the nuance would be totally different.

The city of Tomioka, Gunma Prefecture, just down the road from J-List, is overjoyed right now: the sprawling Tomioka Silk Mill has been officially designated a World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. One of the first modern factories of its kind in Nihon, the silk-reeling mill was a built using French know-how in 1871 during Nihon's march towards modernization, and is a symbol of the country's early industrial days. If you know anything about the Nihonese, it's that they like to be recognized internationally, and getting the official nod from UNESCO brought great happiness to the people of the city. The television news was filled with images of people dancing in the streets and shooting off fireworks in the middle of the day over their new official status.

Remember that J-List carries a very warm, fuzzy thing from Nihon: Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service blankets that are great for curling up with on the sofa. Nihon's acrylic blankets are incredibly soft to the touch and will provide your family with years of great service (we use them at my house too). However, our stock of these blankets is very limited and when they're gone they'll be gone for good. Check our J-List's lineup of japanese animation blankets from Nihon now.

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

The subject of Nihon's police is an interesting one. Nihon's boys in blue are organized under the umbrella of the National Police Force, one of the first areas of society to be modernized in the European model when the country began its transformation from a feudal backwater into an industrialized nation in the 1870s. As with the Ministry of Education, Nihon's police are a very top-down organization, and there's very little in the way of variance between police in different parts of the country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. One big difference between the police in Nihon and in the U.S. is the network of koban, the so-called "Police Boxes" or small police stations situated around Nihonese cities. If you have a problem or need to ask for directions, there's usually a Koban nearby where you can get help. Police in Nihon are komuin (KOH-mu-een), part of the sprawling caste of life-long public employees originally modelled on Britain's Civil Service system, who must pass a challenging regimen of tests in order to achieve that enviable status, just like firemen, teachers and employees at government offices here. Because komuin by definition cannot be fired except in extremely rare situations, it creates somewhat of a gap between society's protectors and Taro Q. Yamada (i.e., the average Nihonese person on the street, Joe Sake Bottle if you will).

When you learn Nihonese, or any foreign language for that matter, you need to get used to new and often strange pronunciations of familiar words. In the film "Madagascar," which my kids still try to watch at least twice a day if they can get away with it, Marty the Zebra is trying to find "the wild" which he believes is located in Connecticut. Once, my wife asked the kids, "Why does he want to go to Connecticut?" For phonetic reasons, Connecticut renders quite bizarrely in Nihonese, a five-syllable word that sounds like "coh-neh-chi-KAH- tto" (in katakana, it's コネチカット). This pronounciation was so different from the English name that my kids were used to that they burst up laughing, then spent an hour trying to get my wife to pronounce "Connecticut" the proper way (which she couldn't do -- kids can be so cruel). In addition to place names, the Nihonese use many English words in daily life, with altered pronunciations to fit their language, and it's always hard for English speakers to learn to "mispronounce" words, like "weekend" (ウィークエンド, which sounds like "oo-EE-koo-EN-doh"), "stew" (スチュー, which comes out like "su-CHOO" according to the rules of Nihonese phonology), or good old "McDonald's" (マクドナルド, which is "ma-ku-do-NA-roo-doh").

Ogenki desu ka? This is one of the first phrases a student of Nihonese encounters, and it corresponds to the greeting "how are you?" although "are you well?" is a slightly more accurate translation. In the context of this greeting, genki means "fine or "well" and you can reply by saying "Hai, genki desu (Yes, I am fine). But words don't always map cleanly to other languages, and genki can have other meanings, such as describing children running around (energetic), or someone beaming with happiness about something, or someone getting healthy after an illness. An elderly person is called genki if he's still hale for his age, you try to cheer up a depressed person by saying Genki wo dashite (lit. show me some genki), and the word can also describe the state that many men find themselves in when they first get up in the morning. The o on ogenki desu ka is an honorific prefix that shows respect, and it's often found on family titles (okaasan = mother, obaasan = grandmother), Buddhist words (otera = Buddhist temple), and "cute" words often used around kids or babies (oshiri = a cute-sounding word for a person's rear end).

You never know where the next "boom" is going to come from in Nihon. It could be sneakers with ridiculously thick soles one year, fashionable clothes sporting the Union Jack the next year, and ridiculous librarian-esque horn-rimmed glasses the next. Right now Nihon is in the middle of an "Ichigo Boom" or surge in strawberry-flavored food products, with dozens of delicious strawberry related products showing up in stores. Today we've posted some great new ichigo products for you to sample, from chocolate covered Koeda stick snacks to Strawberry Choco Flake to a bold new Strawberry Crunky, the chocolate with the peculiarest name in Nihon. Check out our line up of strawberry products now!

J-List loves to bring Nihon to our thousands of customers, and one of our most popular product categories are our "reserve subscription" magazines, which make it easy for you to get the best japanese animation, manga, toy and hobby, goth-loli fashion and other magazines sent to you each month. You can pay for each issue as it comes in and quit or change magazines at any time, or choose to pay annually via our new annual subscription option. We've posted a great new magazine to the site today, the gorgeous Comptiq, a 350+ tome filled with beautiful color pictures of popular characters from bishoujo japanese animation and games, with a special focus on the beauty and design of the characters. Each issue of Comptiq is filled with awesome free stuff, too, like posters, pencil boards, cards, and more. If you love Megami Magazine, Newtype Nihon or Dengeki G's, we hope you'll consider checking out this great new character-centric offering for you.

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

People talk about convergence all the time, of things coming together in a more convenient form. Living in Nihon, one of my favorite examples of convergence are hot spring baths (onsen) that offer other services too, like a restaurant where we can eat and enjoy a cold beer, a "massage corner" where we can say goodbye to the week's stress, and a barber shop where my kids and I can cut our hair before going to the baths to get clean. A few weeks ago my son and I were about to get our hair cut, and the barber asked how he wanted his hair to look. My son has a bit of a shy streak, and he looked over expecting me to answer for him, but I told him, "Speak up and tell the man how you want your hair cut. If you don't open your mouth and tell people what you want, you'll never get it." For some reason this statement was interesting to the staff in the barber shop, since Nihonese kids are never told to be assertive or specify their own choices in a direct way, and soon we were all involved in a discussion on the differences between raising kids in Nihon and the U.S.

Yes, seen from Nihon, America is definitely a country where a person has to be very assertive if they want to get anywhere in life, and one of the things Nihonese who study in the States must do is make a conscious effort to become more strong-willed. This "acquired boldness" can take many forms, such as learning to express opinions to others that would probably be kept to one's self in Nihon and realizing that there's no shame in being more focused on yourself than on the overall group. My son got a lesson in comparative culture studies when, while attending a summer day camp in San Diego one year, the staff forgot to tell him where the lunches had been put so he could get his. If he'd spoken up and asked where his lunch was, the staff would have told him and all would have been well, but he sat there expecting someone to notice that he had no lunch -- which would have probably been the case in Nihon -- so he went hungry all day. My project to get my son to assert himself more seems to be getting some results. At his special English elementary school, the teachers organized a weekly basketball club during recess for the kids. My son prefers dodgeball, though, and so he and some of his friends formed an official commission of kids to present their case to the teachers explaining why they wanted to have a choice between the two sports. It was a big success, and the new school dodgeball club starts next week.

One of the most popular categories of products at J-List are Nihonese study-related items like kanji cards, hiragana practice notebooks and the best-selling Genki textbook series, and this gives me a warm feeling since I love to promote interest in the language whenever I can. Learning Nihonese is a very challenging endeavor since it's so different from Western languages, but even a little bit of Nihonese study opens new doors of understanding about the country. Although I generally recommend studying at a four-year university with a study-in-Nihon option for serious students, there are lots of innovative ways to make Nihonese study work, such as reading manga, developing an interest in "J-Dorama," playing import games in Nihonese or getting into J-Pop/J-Rock. One of the best methods I found for learning Nihonese was to memorize songs for karaoke, writing out the lyrics you want to learn several times. The act of writing the song aids memorization and when you've learned it, it's actually possible to retrieve words from memory by singing the song back to yourself, which helped me on more than one test in college. If this sounds like a good idea to you, I recommend the new book Songs for Learning Nihonese, a textbook with two CDs that present some great popular and traditional Nihonese songs for you to learn.

Fans of delicious Nihon Kit Kat snacks will be happy to see that the new Sakura Kit Kat for 2007 is on the site. Kit Kat has been loved in Nihon since it was introduced in 1973, and the phrase "Have a break, have a Kit Kat" is as famous as "this is a pen" or "I am a boy" here. Through a convenient linguistic accident, Kit Kat sounds like the Nihonese phrase kitto katsu (きっと勝つ） which means "you will surely win," and parents buy Kit Kat for their kids when they go off to take their college entrance exams to show their support. Buy ten packs of Sakura Kit Kat and get a sealed box of this delicious Nihon-only treat sent to you, and a 15% discount, too!

Remember that J-List carries the hilarious DVDs of OH! Mikey, the tale of the Fuccons, an American family who's come to live in Tokyo that features mannequins instead of actors. You'll marvel at the antics of Mikey, father James, mother Barbara, cousin Laura and all the rest. Then make sure you check out Vermillion Pleasure Night, the late-night Nihonese television show that features comedy shorts that will have you dying from too much laughter. Both series are fully subtitled for your viewing enjoyment.

Here are today's "really awesome products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "NWS." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.