animerevue

All countries have foreigners living in their midst, whether its a Swedish college student working for a season at a ski resort in Arizona or an Iranian assembling windshield washer motors at a factory in Nagoya. Nihon's 1.6 million foreigners currently make up around 1.5% of the population here, which sounds like a lot until you consider that the foreign-born populations of countries like Germany and the U.S. is 9% and 11%, respectively. As you probably know from reading J-List, the Nihonese word for foreigner is gaijin (GUY-jihn) which could also be translated as "outsider" since the characters literally mean "outside-person." Because the word can carry negative connotations, you'll always hear the more polite word gaikokujin or "outside-country-person" used on the NHK news and in formal situations. Nihon's first encounter with Westerners came in 1543, when Portuguese sailors washed up on Tanegashima, an island near Kyushu. To the Nihonese, these foreigners were Bigfoot-sized giants, disgustingly unhygienic and very hairy, and they were called Namban (Southern Barbarians) and thought to be the embodiment of Tengu, legendary long-nosed spirits who lived in the mountains and who loved to cause havoc. We do, don't we?

One of the most influential foreigners in Nihonese history would have to be William Adams, an Englishman who arrived in Nihon with a Dutch ship in 1600 and who was befriended by Ieyasu Tokugawa, the third of the three unifiers of Nihonese history. Adams' arrival was good timing for Tokugawa, who put the 19 cannon on the ship to good use at the Battle of Sekigahara, the watershed victory that made him the Shogun (military general) of all Nihon and ended Nihon's Warring States Period. Adams showed the Nihonese how to build the first Western-style ships, and freely shared his knowledge of astronomy and navigation. As he rose in rank in the service of the Shogun, he eventually became his personal advisor and translator. In thanks for his service, he was made the only gaijin samurai in history, given honorary swords and a fief with retainers in present-day Yokohama. If you've read your James Clavell, you know that this is the basis for the book Shogun.

Nihon is experiencing an unexpected crime wave, as the rising cost of metals is causing unsavory elements of society to steal anything that's not nailed down. All throughout the Kanto area there are reports of metal pipes, aluminum siding, wires and other metal objects being stolen from homes, factories and other public places, presumably for shipping for sale to hot markets like China. Even something so lowly as the steel gratings on roads are in demand, and yesterday our city was on the national news when it was reported that sixteen heavy grates had been stolen over the past few days. Additionally, there's been a rash of thefts of traditional solid copper fire bells that are hung outside at Nihonese fire stations, some of which are more than 100 years old. We hope the culprits are caught soon.

J-List sells a line of unique Nihonese-themed T-shirts, warm hoodies and embroidered hats, with wacky and fun original designs on them. Today we've got a new T-shirt that celebrates one of my favorite things, Nihonese beer, with a wacky parody logo that looks great. Let everyone know you love delicious Nihonese beer with this wacky new J-List T-shirt.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, the ground-breaking japanese animation series from 1995, is popping up everywhere here in Nihon. The Nihonese post office has even gotten Eva fever with a rare issuing of Evangelion stamps featuring characters from the series. We've managed to get our hands on some of these stamp sets, for fans looking for something really special to add to their collection, on the site 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" (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.

Nihon is nothing if not the land of contradictions. On the one hand, society has been organized in a vertical structure that puts barriers of politeness in place, resulting in top-down relationships that shuffle more respect to higher-level individuals (senpai, sensei, etc.) while requiring them to play their part by providing guidance and leadership to those younger than them, picking up the tab at restaurants, and so on. On the other hand, the Nihonese have managed to achieve what Marx and Lenin could not, creating a society where 90% or more of the people consider themselves to be part of the same equal social group, in this case Nihon's sprawling middle class. It's not exactly clear to my gaijin mind why someone driving a BMW 750i would go out of their way to consider themselves in the same group as those of us of lesser means, but for the most part Nihonese of all income levels seem to strongly identify with the middle class. While everyone feeling like they're all part of one big happy in-group is certainly a good thing overall, there are some downsides, too. For example, one of the reasons there are so many "personal finance" (loan shark) companies like ACOM, Promise and Lake, which loan money at 20-30% to people who should know better, is that their customers seem to have a desire to "keep up with the Yamadas" and buy things they don't need to reassure themselves that they're not falling outside the main economic group. The cover of the current Nihonese Newsweek has a feature article dealing with this strange phenomenon, entitled "it's okay to live a class-differentiated society, Nihon!"

One observation I've made before about Nihon is that it generally seems to follow a decade or so behind the U.S., with many aspects of society appearing in Nihon about ten years after making their debut in the States. Everything from the revolution in e-commerce to laws curbing smoking in public places seems to get started in the U.S. then make its way over to Nihon after a several-year delay. Quite a few businesses that are successful in Nihon merely watched for new trends to emerge in the U.S. -- like home pizza delivery or NetFlix -- and brought the ideas to market locally before the original company could set up shop here. Perhaps the next trend in ideas being imported from the U.S. will be food-related. A couple of weeks ago, I went to Tokyo and happened to pass the new Krispy Kreme doughnut shop that I'd heard had been built in Shinjuku's south side. I didn't think it would be that popular, though, and I was bowled over by the massive press of people waiting two hours or more for their turn to buy. The sight of slender, stylish Tokyoites carrying three dozen doughnuts back the office was also new to me.

The Nihonese have some interesting customs when it comes to driving. When waiting at an intersection, it's considered polite to turn your headlights down (put them in "park" mode) so that you don't blind the person in front of you. When someone lets you in front of them, you flash your emergency lights at them twice to say "thank you." And around our city, young men with nothing to do at night will drive around the train station looking for girls in cars, and when they see them they flash their high beams in a gesture that seems to mean "let's go get some coffee together" (an act which is called nampa, apologies to people in Nampa, Idaho). Another interesting car-related thing they do in Nihon is the "Beginner's Mark," a green-and-yellow sign that newly licensed drivers must put on their cars for the first year that lets other cars know that the driver may not have as much experience as a full-fledged driver, and presumably give them a wider berth on the road. Similar to this is a Senior Citizen's Mark, an orange-and-yellow sign that older drivers can put on their car (with either magnetic or suction-cup attachment), a way to let other drivers know they should give you the respect you deserve and get out of your way. I like to imagine the confusion in the minds of Nihonese people when they wonder why these only-found-in-Nihon signs are being displayed on cars in the U.S. -- which is why we sell both on the site, of course.

J-list carries virtually every PC dating-sim game available in English, and we're always happy to see customers discover the interesting and dramatic world of Nihon's "H" gaming culture. We also license and publish "doujin" CG collections, which are created by artists for sale at the legendary Comic Market doujinshi convention held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight. We're happy to report that two of our popular collections are now available as Internet Download Editions, so fans who missed out on these great collections can get them again. First there's Dream World II, a breathtakingly beautiful collection of several separate releases by Nihonese artist Kobayashi Yuji that parodies the characters of Evangelion and more. Then enjoy all three of our previous Creamy Angel CD-ROM releases available as an Internet Download, a staggering gigabyte of top "H" artwork by Nihonese illustrator Mashitaka, including his speciality of Ah! My Gpeculiaress futanari (um, wow).

Remember that the summer japanese animation conventions are not that far off, and what better way to wow 'em at the shows this year than wearing your very own authentic Nihonese high school uniform. J-List has an exclusive arrangement with the famous Matsukameya of Nagoya, a company that brings real high school uniforms to fans all around the world. Here's how to order: check the site for the type of uniform you'd like (we've got several styles of uniforms for girls, and a standard gakuran school uniform for guys, too), and find which size is closest to your body measurements on the chart. Then submit your order, and we'll get your new high school uniform off to you as soon as its delivered to us by the company.

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" (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.

Lots and lots of people in line...

Wow, even more people. The line goes all the way down to Tokyu Hands.

Is this the beginning of the end of all those slender Nihonese girls that I like so much? [_][_];;

There's so much strange English around me I don't even notice it. But for some reason I felt I had to capture "Gutsy Repair" for all of you.

You may remember that I collect photographs of the little metal "life advice" signs that the local PTA put up about 20 years ago. I found a new one that's great for my daughter: 忠告も君を思う親心, chuukoku mo kimi o omou oya-gokoro, possibly translatable as "Giving advice and warnings to one's children is part of showing our love for them as parents, even if they think we're just yelling at them."

There's a minor hullabaloo going on between Nihon and Australia right now after the publication of a controversial book on Princess Masako, the Harvard- and Oxford-educated woman who became "Nihon's Diana" when she married Prince Naruhito, the future Emperor. In the book, author Ben Hills argues that Masako has been made a "Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne" and delves into the various problems she's had to deal with since joining the Nihonese Royal Family in 1993 (I have a special commemorative 500 yen coin from back then in my house somewhere). While he overplays things a bit for their dramatic value, it's true that the past 14 years haven't exactly been a Cinderella story for poor Masako-sama, who had visions of reforming Nihon's Imperial Household Agency with modern, Western-influenced ideas before the weight of 2000 years of tradition wore her down. The book has brought about quite a backlash from Nihon, which highlights one of the peculiarer aspects of this otherwise free-thinking democracy: one does not criticize the Imperial Family. Now that a male heir has been born to Naruhito's younger brother, a lot of the pressure is off poor Masako to get pregnant again. Nihonese history is measured in eras that go with the reign of each emperor, with the Showa Era (1925-1989) being the reign of Emperor Hirohito, and the current Heisei Era (1990-present) being the current Emperor Akihito, who is getting on in years. I wonder what the next era will be called?

Last time I talked about how Nihon's society is more ordered than the U.S. or Europe, organized in a way that literally creates a pecking order from the lowest to the highest, from the neighborhood dog that comes around sniffing for scraps all the way up to the Emperor himself. There are mechanisms found in Nihonese society that reinforce this up-down nature, such as senpai and kohai, a person's senior or junior in a school or organization, a heavy focus on treating people who are older than you with more respect and receiving this respect from those younger than you, and a system of polite language that we could never conceive of in English. In practice, Nihon becomes a "vertical" society, where the U.S. is theoretically more "horizontal," and almost nothing is allowed to mess up the tidy little system that exists here. When my sister entered the second grade, the teachers decided she was too advanced and moved her to the third grade, something that would never happen in Nihon, as it would mess up the balance that people depend on throughout their lives. One by-product of this up-down structure is that there are barriers of politeness in place that keep me from being "friends" with someone who is much older or younger than me when speaking Nihonese with them -- although there's no problem if we converse in English.

Near our house, we can see the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and many other interesting wonders of world. These are pachinko parlors, a major source of entertainment for many Nihonese men and women in Nihon. An peculiar game which I don't pretend to understand, you basically buy a bucket of balls for $50, then sit for hours trying to hold a controller in just the right position to make most of the balls go into certain holes in the pachinko machine. Since "gambling" is illegal in Nihon, except for certain events like horse, boat and bicycle racing, you don't win money if you get more balls than you started out with -- you get valuable prizes which you redeem for cash at a shady building next to the pachinko parlor. (Remind me to talk about the concepts of tatemae, the way we pretend things are, and honne, the way they are in reality.) Pachinko is quite a competitive business to be in, and operators (who always seem to be getting involved with some crime or another) work very hard to bring in the newest machines in -- with little video screens or cute japanese animation-style characters printed on them, for example, or recently, pachinko machines based on famous japanese animation series.

J-List loves PC dating-sim games, a great way to interact with beautiful girls (or guys) on your Windows computer, and we carry virtually every title available in English for fans, with many titles available in Internet Download Editions. We've recently gone through and added opening and demo movies for many popular games that you can watch, including Brave Soul, Heart de Roommate, the X-Change saga, Yin-Yang!, Pick Me Honey!, Bazooka Cafe and more. Check them out now!

J-List sells a unique line of original kanji T-shirts, with designs that range from hilarious to aesthetically beautiful to just plan awesome to wear. We've added several T-shirts and Hoodies to our discount page, which we're closing out to make room for future designs. It's a great opportunity to pick up a great original shirt that won't be available again and get it at a great price too, but you should hurry as quantity is limited and sizes do sell out. If you're a big person you should also check out the site, as we've got several XXL and XXXL sized shirts there for you, all at great prices, too.

Remember that J-List carries over 3000 amazing products you can only find in Nihon. One of our specialties is Domo-kun, the super cute plush toy that is the official spokesmonster of NHK, Nihon's public broadcasting network. Unfortunately nearly all of the products we carry are out of production and can no longer be stocked by us, meaning that if you'd like to score a Domo-kun pen, plush keychain or the infamous "whenever you ... God kills a kitten" plush toy. So...check our Domo-kun lineup 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.

Went to a new restaurant, and thought I'd record the meal I had. I am quite a baka for sukiyaki, and whenever I can eat it like this, I do.

Wow, this place is good -- chopstick instructions in English. I guess writing them in English would be kid of silly.

I don't know if Americans eat much in the way of raw egg (been living in Nihon way too long), but it really makes good sukiyaki great for me. Take the boiled meat, put in the egg, and then...

...put it on the rice, so that the egg and soup from the sukiyaki falls down on the rice. Repeat.

They finished off with really good coffee in a really awesome Nihonese cup. The cost for this meal? Something like $7. And as long time readers may remember, I judge every restaurant by its ice coffee, which was quite good, a solid 8 or 8.5. So I had no complaints at all.

I was making up some Nihonese business cards for one of my employees yesterday, trying different layouts and fonts to see what looked best. As I worked on the design for the "name card" (as business cards are called here), something seemed wrong to me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then it hit me: I'd left off one of the most important parts, the job title. Organization is very important in a place like Nihon, and just as the entire country is ordered into prefectures, cities, towns and villages, with no unincorporated areas anywhere, people are generally expected to fit into pre-defined slots, e.g. programmer, graphic designer, accountant, city employee, and so on. Everyone must have an occupation associated with their name for people to know how to categorize them, and when proper categories aren't available, allowances are made, such as the recent additions of sub-groups like "freeter," a person who only works part-time jobs without ever officially joining a company as a full-time employee or starting a career; or NEET, a term for a young person living with their parents and "Not in Educational, Employment or Training," i.e. loafing and surfing the net all day. When I started J-List, I encountered some opposition from my wife's family, who didn't think it was a good idea to trade a secure career teaching English for the uncertainty of starting a business on the Internet. I realized later that this was because the concept of an "entrepreneur" was not defined as a valid category in their minds, and they didn't know how to feel about a son-in-law who didn't fit neatly into one of the pre-defined slots...which suited my American sense of individualism just fine.

Any way you look at it, English is a convoluted language, with grammar and vocabulary taken haphazardly from many sources, including Olde English, French, Greek, Latin and listening to young people these days, Nihonese. The Nihonese language is much the same, originally based on the indigenous (pre-6th century) language of the Yamato people dwelling in the Nara Valley, influenced by 1500 years of kanji and 250 years of national isolation, and then exposed to a huge amount of foreign loan words in modern times. There's a category of four-syllable (or four kana) words used here that are so pregnant with meaning they boggle the mind, and as is often the case with nihongo, you can't ask yourself why they mean what they mean but must instead just accept them as gestalt units. First is sekkaku (seh-KAH-koo), which carries the implication of having gone to great trouble to do something for someone only to have them not appreciate your efforts. Another fun word is yappari (yah-PAH-ree), which means "just as I thought" or "as I expected" or "Aha! I knew you'd be trying to peek into the girl's bath!" When you learn something that surprises you, you might use the phrase naruhodo (nah-roo-hoh-doh), which can be translated as "wow, I didn't know that" or "I see your point," and on a TV drama, a character picking up some information from subtle, unspoken clues might mutter this word to themselves as a signal to viewers that he'd found another piece of a puzzle. Finally there's tonikaku (TOH-ni-kah-koo), which just means "at any rate" "regardless of that fact" or just "anyway." When my bilingual son was growing up, he got confused and accidentally combined English and Nihonese stems to create the hybrid word "toni-way" (tonikaku + anyway), which has been a running joke in our family ever since.

One of the first things I did after arriving in Nihon back in 1991 was hop on a train to Tokyo to explore Shinjuku, one of the most famous parts of Nihon's sprawling capital, which I'd only glimpsed through the window of manga and japanese animation until that time. One of Tokyo's 23 wards, Shinjuku is a bustling mini-city unto itself, with sprawling department and electronics stores, restaurants and drinking establishments. Because it happens to contain some of the only stable land in the earthquake-prone area, virtually all of Tokyo's high-rise buildings are located in Shinjuku, including the monstrous 48-story Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (Tokyo's "city hall") and virtually everything seen in the film Lost in Translation. Shinjuku Station is the busiest in the world, with a mind-boggling 2 million passengers passing through each day as they rush to get to work or home. The station is so massive that the only thing to do is divide Shinjuku into quadrants based on what train exit you're using, e.g. take the east exit to score some good Indian food, or the south exit to get to that one good bookstore, and so on. Shinjuku's Kabuki-cho section is one of Nihon's leading drinking districts, too, and a complex economy has formed around the thousands of tired salarymen who get rid of their daily stress there, throwing some back with co-workers before heading home.

Remember that J-List always strives to bring you fun and interesting things from Nihon, including many kawaii (cute) items, like Nihon-only products from Sanrio. From Hello Kitty toilet paper to bento boxes to chopsticks and more, you can always add a dash of color to your life with awesome products from J-List. We carry other popular Sanrio characters, too, like My Melody, Cinnamoroll and Keroppi. Browse our site now and see what awesome things we've got 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.

I've written before about how Nihon is a very safe place -- so safe it might just kill you with boredom. Swimming pools in Nihon generally have two or more lifeguards on duty at all times, although it'd be pretty hard to drown since the water is never deeper than your waist, and dangerous things like diving boards are not allowed. My son and I didn't realize what we were missing until we went to visit family in Maryland, and got to jump off the high dive at the local pool, something a non-Olympic swimmer could only dream of doing in Nihon. People are constantly bombarded with silly safety messages here, which remind you to "stand behind the yellow line" on train platforms because apparently trains are dangerous or something, and there's even a voice to tell you how to get on or off an escalator safely in department stores. Now the latest trend in obsessive safety thinking is condemning swings, sliding boards, jungle gyms and other equipment at playgrounds due to an infinitesimally small number of tragic accidents involving children at play. Nihon is nothing if not the land of duality, though, and just as it tries to "think of the children" on the playground, the country still lacks some of the basic safety attitudes we take for granted in the U.S., like always using approved child carseats when driving, using baby gates to keep little ones from dangerous parts of the home, and so on.

There are some key areas where the U.S. is well ahead of Nihon, including availability of Mexican food and the proliferation of sports bar-themed restaurants with excellent beer. One area where Nihon has a comfortable lead, though, is the delivering of packages via its takuhai (private delivery company) system, as seen in the Ghibli animated classic Kiki's Delivery Service except with packages being delivered by polite, efficient men in trucks rather than by a witch and black cat on a broomstick. One of the great conveniences of flying out of Nihon is being able to send your suitcases to the airport via companies like Yamato or Sagawa for around $9 per suitcase, allowing you to hop on the train or bus to the airport without a lot of heavy stuff to lug along with you. I recently bought a used Mac G4 tower from a friend to use as a backup server at J-List. My friend dropped the heavy box off at the 7-11 at 9 pm on a Sunday night, and the package reached me, two prefectures away, less than 12 hours later. Total cost? Just $15.

As everyone knows, the Nihonese are capable of coming up with some amazingly creative (?) English phrases, like "Body Feels EXIT," "Get Chance and Luck," "Fappy, Fax Makes It Happy" or "All Your Base Are Belong To Us." There are several reasons why this happens, including the fact that the Nihonese nearly always learn English in a bubble, sitting passively as grammar and vocabulary are explained to them in Nihonese by Nihonese teachers, with the amount of linguistic input from living, breathing native English speakers being quite limited. Also, when a Nihonese person studies English for six years (high school) or ten years (college), it's understandable that they'll want to strut a bit and use what they've learned, even if it results in something like "For restrooms, go back towards your behind." But the biggest reason there's so much colorful English here has to be that, to many Nihonese, English is really just a decoration, something to sprinkle around to add color to one's environment without thinking about it too deeply. I was reminded of this fact over the weekend, when I took my family to the Pizza La in Karuizawa and sat down in the to enjoy some pizza. Perhaps because Karuizawa is a town discovered and colonized by Europeans soon after the Meiji Period, the restaurant had a bookshelf filled with English books for customers to browse through while they ate...although no one in the place was showing any interest in them. My family dug in though, each finding some interesting book to page through -- I scored a biography of Hemingway from the 1960s that looked interesting. We even did something we'd never have done in the U.S., liberating some of the books to read at home, since it was clear no one was going to be wanting them anytime soon, and an unread book is such a lonely thing. I'll make it up to the Pizza La people by bringing some of the English childrens' books my kids are too old for by next time I'm in the neighborhood.

One of the fun things about visiting Tokyo is walking down the street and getting pocket tissue handed out to you by people advertising businesses like banks, hairdressers, or newly opened restaurants. J-List lets you experience this thrill with the free authentic Nihonese pocket tissue packet that we include with most every order you made from us. We say "most," because we won't include tissue with orders in cases where the tissue would bend or damage your order (like a thin magazine or doujinshi). You can also buy ten of our wacky pocket tissues for the low price of just $3.00, if you have an especially runny nose.

Remember that J-List carries fun PC dating-sim games from Nihon, a whole new way to interact with Nihon's amazing japanese animation culture. For many games, you've got the choice between a shrinkwrapped CD-ROM package or a convenient download, making it extremely easy to buy. We've got titles for every range of tastes, from the all-ages titles by Hirameki International to the incredible story- and character-centric releases by Peach Princess and G-Collections to classics by JAST USA and more. We even carry yaoi games in English. Why not browse our PC dating-sim game selection today?

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.

Our weekly (almost) trip to the mountains was pretty awesome this time around.

One of the books from the Pizza La (and yes, it does take time to learn to stop saying Pizza LA, as in Pizza Los Angeles) was a great book on the Titanic.

Shots from an electronics store where I'd dashed in for something. This is the NTT Docomo Mushroom.

Softbank, aka Vodafone, is kicking butt with their phone types. This is a great series of phones based on the PANTONE color chart.

And more!

Speaking of kicking butt, they've been scoring big with some famous names.

It was Thomas Paine -- a possible ancestor of mine, although I somehow doubt it -- who uttered the words, "These are the time that try men's souls." Strike the word "men" and insert "gaijin" and you know what it's like to be sick in a country like Nihon. Although I resisted as best I could, it seems I've managed to pick up the bug that my wife and daughter had, and now I'm pecking away at the computer while wearing one of those Nihonese health masks, and feeling quite miserable. No matter how much I may like Nihon, one of the fundamental rules of human beings is that when you're feeling under the weather, you want familiar remedies that you know will work. Nihon has plenty of cold and flu medicines on the market, with names like Benzablock, Paburon, Ruru and even a local version of Contac, but they just don't seem be strong enough for my oversized American body. There are differences in how medicines are sold, too -- I'll never forget the first time I got sick in Nihon, trekking feverishly to the supermarket to buy medicine because that's where you go in the U.S., then being told that I had to find a drug store instead. Happily, I always keep a small stockpile of American medicines in the house, from Nyquil to Dimetapp and Vicks Vapor Rub and so on, so hopefully I'll be okay in no time.

Without a doubt, one of the most famous words of Nihonese is baka, the all-purpose insult that takes the place of many more anatomically colorful words in English. Meaning "stupid" or "idiot," the word is used by Nihonese of all ages, from three-year-olds to the elderly. Someone nearly hits your car in an intersection? Let fly with a baka yaro! ("stupid jerk!"). Your gaijin husband who shall remain nameless mistakes a mimikaki ear scoop for one of those spoons used in Nihonese tea ceremony? The proper response to this would be, baka ja nai? ("what are you, stupid?"). The word is also used to describe someone who goes overboard with love of something, like "oya-baka," parent-fool, the word for mothers and fathers who are absolutely ga-ga over their own kids; and "tsuri-baka," meaning fishing-fool, someone who likes to fish so much that he does it whenever he can. The word is also found in Nihonese proverbs, like Baka ni tsukeru kusuri wa nai," or there is no cure for stupidity." The word baka (馬鹿） is written with the characters for "horse" and "deer" and there's an interesting legend about how this word came to be. It seems that in ancient China there was an Emperor who was not very well liked by his retainers. One day, one of his underlings presented the Emperor with a deer, instead of a horse as was customary back in those days. When the Emperor pointed out that it was a deer, the man insisted that no, it's a horse. He kept this up until he convinced his lord that the deer was, in fact, a horse, and thus Emperor became famous throughout the land for being so stupid that he couldn't tell the difference between the two animals.

Another trait I respect about the Nihonese is their tendency towards kinben (KEEN-ben、勤勉), or diligence and hard work. The famous image of an industrious Nihonese salarymen is one that everyone is familiar with, but children in Nihon are encouraged to work hard, too, with a general culture that expects kids to put in 1-2 hours of studying per evening, on top of any juku night classes they may attend. Several times a week there are quiz shows that aim to interest the minds of young people, like Test the Nation, which presents questions to viewers and lets them keep track of their own scores. We're big fans of TV Champion, a show that usually pits teams against each other doing things like baking bread in the shapes of famous buildings or making works of art out of origami. Last night's episode involved four very smart kids who underwent an amazing battery of quiz questions before a winner was finally determined, and our whole family was hanging on every question. One of my favorite food items sold by J-List are Shigekix (shi-geh-kicks), super tart "hard gummy" candies in flavors like lemon, cola and ramune. In their newest series of TV commercials, which I've posted in the product descriptions on the site, a strange but irresistible girl in a yellow dress sings a song inside the brains of students, tying the BCAA Amino Acids and Gaba in their products and the stimulation of the tart taste to students hoping to do better in their studies.


At J-List, we love the DVD format, and carry a huge stock of interesting Nihon-related products. Although most of our titles are region free, meaning you can play them on DVD players from anywhere in the world, many of the "indies" studios and all of the Studio Ghibli japanese animation DVDs are zoned for region 2. To help our customers get around these frustrating limitations, J-List sells inexpensive region free DVD players that are great for playing discs from every country in the world, including PAL and SECAM discs from Europe and other parts of the world. Today we've posted a great new region free player that's loaded with features, including full region free playback, component and 5.1 ch output, VGA output for playing on a standard computer monitor, and full support for DIVX/MPEG4 movies, MP3 DVDs and so on.

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.