animerevue

Living in Nihon means adapting to many things, not the least of which is modifying your native language. When I first got to Nihon, I was told I spoke incredibly fast, and my students begged me to speak more clearly so they could understand what I was saying. Before I knew it, I was speaking "too" slowly, prompting my mother to ask me what was wrong when I talked to her on the phone. In my own personal dialect of Southern Californian English, I'd always referred to the thing you blow your nose with as a Kleenex, but in Nihon, no one knew what I was talking about so I quickly reverted to "tissue." I've learned to order a "Happy Set" for the kids at McDonald's instead of a Happy Meal, and when I need to get some money out of my bank account I drop by the "Cash Corner," or the ATM. I've also learned that the word "sauna" has three syllables, not two. Many Western foods seem to have morphed into some pretty peculiar forms here. For example, when it's hot out, I might reach for some "ice" (what ice cream is usually called), and if I go to the local amusement park with my kids I might buy them each an "American Dog" (a corn dog) and "fried potato" (french fries) before we ride the "jet coaster" (roller coaster). Although these terms always feel peculiar at first, it's spooky how easy it is for your brain to get used to them.

One television show we watch almost every week is Sanma's Super Karakuri TV, a wacky variety show that does things like ask Nihonese with no special linguistic abilities to answer questions in English while subtitles translate what they are actually saying for viewers, or hold impromptu quiz shows with drunk salaryman as they stumble home late at night, or put on competitions to see which famous star can create a gourmet meal for less than $3. As with most Nihonese variety shows, the interaction of the host with the various "talents" (actresses, singers, comedians) who are on that week is one of the most important aspects, and where America's Funniest Home Videos might just shut up and show you some more clips, this show will stop the action and try to get stars like cute-as-a-button idol Yuko Ogura to guess what's going to happen next. Last night they added a new section, Gaijin Battle, in which foreigners who know an incredible amount about Nihon do battle by asking questions to each other, like, of all the Ultraman brothers, which is the oldest, or what was the significance of the Bakumatsu (the ending years of the Tokugawa Shogunate) on modern Nihon? Canadian otaku Robert Baldwin easily dispatched his challengers and maintained his lead.

We're right in the middle of Golden Week, a cluster of Nihonese holidays that usually fall near each other, which are Showa Day on April 29, originally the birthday of old Emperor Showa, aka Hirohito; Constitution Day on May 3, the date the modern Nihonese constitution took effect; Green Day on May 4, a day to celebrate nature; and Children's Day on May 5. While Golden Week is a nice break from the daily grind, it's all but useless as a holiday, since the other 126,999,999 Nihonese in the country also have the week off, too. Want to go to Tokyo Disneyland? Hope you enjoy waiting for six hours just to get in to the place. How about spending the day in Karuizawa, up in the mountains of central Nihon? Oops, there's a 30 km traffic jam of Tokyoites trying to get into the town. This is also the season of Koi-nobori, the beautiful carp-shaped kites which families with boy children display proudly to the neighborhood. Everywhere you look in Nihon right now you can see beautiful streaming carp, seeming to swim upstream when the wind blows.

Comic AG is the popular magazine of translated "H" manga from Nihon's best artists, which gives you an amazing 80 pages of content for the low price of just $4.99. In addition to selling single issues and revolving subscriptions, we've sold handy sets of back issues in groups of five at a special price, which proved to be a popular way for our customers to complete their collections and save money. We've improved this sesame now, allowing you to buy any sets of five issues you might need, be it vol. 40-45, vol. 41-46, or the current issues, and save 20%. Comic AG is published by Icarus Publishing, and you can really feel their commitment in each issue, with the super-accurate translations and the care they take with the printing, making sure to work from the original artist pages, not the published Nihonese edition as most other manga publishers do.

J-List's region free DVD players make it easy to enjoy DVDs from every corner of the globe, be it imported japanese animation or "Indies" titles from Nihon, Europe-release PAL format discs, rare releases from Asia, you name it. We've added a great new high-end DVD layer that's loaded with features, including *upscaling* to high-def LCD or Plasma TVs, allowing DVDs to be scaled up to their maximum quality in 720p and 1080i format. It also features an HDMI connection (with included cable!), the best way to connect your devices since everything you need is carried through one noise-free digital connection. The player also supports MPEG 4 and AVI/XVID files burned onto DVD media, external USB drives, 5.1 speaker inputs, karaoke mic inputs, and more.

What do you think of when you think of spring? Love, of course, and there's no more convenient way to experience everyone's favorite emotion than with a great bishoujo game from J-List. Called "bishoujo" or "pretty girl" games in Nihonese, they're best thought of as "love-sim games" since the object of the game is to find out what you need to do to get a certain pretty japanese animation girl to open her heart to you (or guy, as the case may be). We've got a huge catalog of innovative and fun bishoujo games from Nihon, fully translated into English for you, with all manner of stories presented, and with a large selection of games available by download, too. With yaoi and Hirameki games, we've got something for every taste. Why not check out this fascinating genre from Nihon?

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.

One social engine at work in Nihon is that of "obligation," essentially the knowing of what's expected of you and doing it, and whether it's female employees giving "obligation chocolate" to their male co-workers or my wife returning to Nihon when her parents called her back even though she might have preferred to stay permanently in the U.S., it's one of the things that makes Nihon such a unique place. In some specific situations this concept is known as giri (social obligation), but at other times it's so ingrained into people's lives that it goes unnamed. In many situations when something is asked of you, it can be hard to decline, especially if that person has done something for you in the past -- the reason I'm destined to play Santa Claus at the local kindergarten every Christmas for all eternity is because the brother of the school headmaster is a city councilman who's supported us in the past. Recently, a family friend of ours found himself without a job when the company he'd helped build went bankrupt suddenly, so he started a new company that would, among other things, sell insurance. Because of our friendship and a little invisible giri, my wife felt obligated to help him out by moving several of our policies over to him. Of course, people helping each other is what society is all about, and the kanji for "person" (hito) is written with two lines in the vague shape of a human body that prop each other up, and the Nihonese say that each person needs others to stand up, or else both will fall down. Nihon's crisscrossing lines of you-scratch-my-back have proven to be a profitable for the Amway multi-level marketing system, which has enjoyed great success in Nihon over the years.

Transliteration is the act of moving a word from one writing system to another, and with languages like Chinese and Nihonese, there are always different approaches to this problem. This is why you get variations like Peking and Beijing for the capital of China and why there's seemingly no "official" way to write Aoi Sora/Sola's name properly. Nihonese is structured as a syllable-based language: for example, you can express the sounds ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko in Nihonese, but not "k" all by itself. Phonetically, there are three syllables that don't quite fit the neat consonant + verb pattern, which are pronounced shi, tsu and chi. Should they be written as they're pronounced (called the Hepburn method), or should the two-letter pattern (si, tu and ti) be preserved even it leads to terribly inaccurate pronunciation (called the Nihon method)? As with certain computer platforms I could name, students of Nihonese are usually willing to fight to the death over the system of Romanization they think is best. For the record, I believe that the best writing system communicates proper pronunciation to the widest number of people, and we always use this here at J-List.

Recently I talked about how the Nihonese word for name -- namae (nah-mah-EH) -- was spookily similar to what it is in English, an interesting coincidence that isn't related to the importing of loan words, as far as I can determine. There are some other interesting coincidences hidden in the language that are fun to investigate. For whatever reason, the word so (as in, yes, that is as you say) is exactly the same in meaning in both languages, and So desu ka? means "Is that so?" A common word for "in" is the English word spelled backwards, ni. The Nihonese word baibai means "buying and selling," and happens to be very similar to "buy." If you reverse the syllables in the word "road" you get dohro which means...road. A "honky" might be a rude word for white people from the 70s, but in Nihonese it means "serious" (honki desu ka? = "Are you serious?"). A bimbo might be a dumb female, but in Nihon the word means a poor person. And if you ever want to express frustration in Nihonese, just shout out "Cheek show!" which happens to correspond to a curse roughly equal in nuance to "Damnit!" (Chikusho really means "beast" but the usage is the same.)

Mothers Day is coming. Have you gotten something special for her? Remember that J-List has thousands of wacky and fun products from Nihon, from Hello Kitty items for her kitchen to high quality Kutani and Arita Ware glazed porcelain to a great traditional Nihonese mimikaki ear cleaner (see below for a great one)? The special gift for Mom you're looking for might just be found on our website...stranger things have happened.

Kanji are aesthetically beautiful, and at J-List we love our popular line of Nihonese T-shirts with various message printed on them, which have been embraced by a wide range of fans and even featured in Hollywood films. Our most popular recent T-shirt has been our wacky "seppuku" design that shows a classic samurai pointing to your mid-section with the message "In case of emergency, cut here." By customer request, we've posted a hoodie version of this popular design, a great way to keep toasty when it's awesome outside. All J-List hoodies are printed using high-heat screen printing techniques for years of long life, and the hoodies we use are the highest quality available.


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.

The Nihonese 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 Nihonese 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 Nihon, when I turned on the TV to see what I thought were two black gaijin speaking excellent Nihonese 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 Nihonese think of black culture they think of the U.S. or Jamaica, but in reality most of the black foreigners in Nihon 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 Nihonese 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 Nihon -- 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 Nihon and reporting them to you. One reflection of culture can be seen in the gestures that Nihonese make in daily life, like the ubiquitous "peace" sign which shows up whenever someone takes out a camera. (A brief aside: when Nihonese 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 Nihonese, 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 Nihonese generally know but never use is the classic flipping of the bird, however they have the peculiarest habit of pointing to things using their middle finger, which always look peculiar to me.

The currency of Nihon 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 peculiarity is, when learning to speak Nihonese 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 Nihonese budget deficit expressed in yen, the numbers are so high that they might as well be expressed in scientific notation. Nihon'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 Nihonese 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 Nihon.

Remember that you can get all the great japanese animation, manga, toy/hobby, fashion, and other magazines in Nihon 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 Nihon, and fashion magazine Egg.


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.

One of the more interesting aspects of Nihon 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 Nihonese 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 Nihonese 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 Nihon.

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 Nihon, I make sure to take off my sunglasses to avoid scaring them, since kids in Nihon 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 Nihonese 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 Nihon and fall in love with onsen (OWN-sen, 温泉), the famous natural hot springs that have been enjoyed by Nihonese for centuries. The best hot springs are, of course, the mixed-bathing variety, called kon'yoku （混浴） in Nihonese, which can be quite hard to find (I've only found one in my years in Nihon). Our newest wacky T-shirt proclaims your affinity for Nihon'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 Nihonese 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 japanese animation and Nihonese popular culture. The Nihonese 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 awesome 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 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.

Another peculiar toy from Nihon. 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 Nihonese and their strange fascination with black culture.

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

If you want to get married on the cheap in Nihon, I suggest you do it on Butsumetsu ("Buddha's Death"), the unlucky day according to a 6-day cycle that can supposedly affect a person's luck, including cause you to get divorced if you aren't careful. This is one of the more prevalent Nihonese superstitions, and it's common for people to consult a special calendar that indicates these Buddhist days before making big plans like getting married, starting construction of a house or taking delivery of a new car. People will always aim for the luckiest day (Taian, "Big Peace"), and avoid at all costs the unlucky day of Butsumetsu, and in certain industries, this can affect the cost of services provided, e.g. weddings get more expensive on Taian, but drop in price on Butsumetsu. Today (Saturday) is Sensho ("Early Victory"), when it's lucky to make important decisions in the morning but not at other times of the day. The other five days, which cycle in order, are Tomobiki ("Taking Away Together") when you must not have a funeral or the dead will take you away with them; Senpu ("Early Defeat") when the morning is considered unlucky; the all-around unlucky day Butsumetsu; lucky Taian; and Sekko ("Red Mouth") when the 12 o'clock hour only is considered a time of good luck.

Yesterday a Buddhist funeral was held for one of the most awesome fictional villains in Nihon, Raoh, the ultra-strong oldest brother of Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. One of the most popular (and violent) manga and japanese animation series from the 1980s, Fist of the North Star is the tale of a post-Armageddon world in which all cities and technology have been destroyed and only those who can wield raw strength can survive. Amid all the destruction, four brothers battle each other using ancient Chinese martial arts techniques. The awesomeest of the bad guys of the series, Raoh has always been the most popular character, and his funeral came complete with a statue of Raoh on his horse, Kokuoh. The funeral was held at the Koyasan Temple in Tokyo and featured all the trimmings, from chanting Buddhist priests and incense and hundreds of fans who had gathered in the rain to pay their respects. It was part PR gimmick, of course, promoting the upcoming animated film that focuses on the death of Raoh. If you're a Fist of the North Star fan, whatever you do, don't watch The Road Warrior starring Mel Gibson or contemplate that the entire series is one big tribute/parody of the film, with various famous personas from the 80s (Stallone, Bruce Springstein, Boy George) added in for story content.

Has a Nihonese person ever told you are "good head"? If so, it's a complement, although it might not sound like one. In Nihonese, the phrase for "smart" (intelligent) is good head (atama ga ii), which sometimes gets carried over into English by Nihonese who are still learning the language. The English word "smart" (sumaato) is used in Nihonese to mean slender, well proportioned (as in, "That girl is very smart and stylish"). If someone says you have a bad head (atama ga warui), they're saying that you're stupid, the same meaning as that ubiquitous Nihonese insult, baka. Some other phrases that make use of the word head include atama ga katai (hard-headed, stubborn), atama ga yawarakai ("head is soft" which means someone who is flexible and open-minded), and atama ga furui ("head is old," i.e. someone whose thinking is old-fashioned).

We've got a happy announcement for fans of Hirameki International's excellent visual novels and interactactive japanese animation games. All games have been marked down in price by $10 or more, from the outstanding Ever 17 - Out of Infinity to the gorgeous gothic vampire tale Animamundi to the fantastic Ai Yori Aoshi double game and more. The interactive DVD games like Hourglass of Summer and Tea Society of a Witch are marked down too, to just $14.95. Why not pick up some of these great Hirameki titles today?

Mother's day falls on May 13th this year, and J-List would like to suggest that you look on our site for a rare gift for her. Your mother may or may not be a Pocky-munching, japanese animation-watching, nihongo-studying otaku, but even if she's not, we've got some outstanding and fun items on our site for her, from rare Hello Kitty products for her kitchen or bathroom to a Totoro alarm clock or music box, or perhaps some coloring books for grown-ups, which are great for keeping older minds sharp. One thing's for sure, J-List has gifts they won't expect to get!

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.

It's fun going to Tokyo and hitting the toy stores to look for things to order for J-List. This is the "Soft Tank" line of toys. They're awfully cute.

However, "you cannot know which toy is inside."

Really, really tiny manga that are actually printed correctly on those little pages.

Man, I am so ready to start smoking, just so I can carry around these awesome Gundam lighters. Hyaku-shiki (the gold mech that Char/Quattro pilots)? A Zeon lighter? So awesome.

Or if you want to be really esoteric, go for a ring with the Aniheim Electronics logo on it. This is the company that made the original Gundam RX-78.

Nihon is numbly watching the aftermath of the sad events at Virginia Tech as they unfold. Much like Europe, it's illegal for most people in Nihon to possess guns, and as a rule real firearms are a distant part of life for Nihonese. The subject of guns has come up in my English conversation classes many times over the years ("How many guns did you own when you lived in America?"), and I always did my best to present the complex issue in a way that my students could understand, which was not always easy since they don't have a feel for our history. While incidents of gun-related violence are less common in Nihon, they're not totally unheard of, a fact that we were all reminded of when Mayor Ito of Nagasaki, an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons, was shot in the back by an irate yakuza boss on the same day as the tragedy in Virginia. The gangster in question had managed to run his Mercedes Benz into an open ditch at a construction site several years ago and had tried to make the city take responsibility for the repairs, and his frustration finally came to a head. This isn't the first time a Nagasaki mayor has been targeted: the city's previous mayor was shot by a right-winger in 1990 after he made remarks blaming former Emperor Hirohito for the events the war.

You may know that Nihonese, like other nations in Asia, reverse the order of the family and given names, so that the name Hayao Miyazaki in English would be Mizayaki Hayao here. Essentially, the ideas of "first name" and "last name" are useless in Nihonese, replaced by the family name and namae (nah-mah-EH), or the given name, which is so close to the English word "name" that it's spooky. Like learning to say your phone number in Nihonese, it can be quite a challenge to make your brain un-learn a name memorized using one language when you need to use it in another. When you learn the name of Nihonese film director Akira Kurosawa, the name takes up one gestalt part of your memory, and having to say the name in the reverse order causes your brain to do some fast calculation. Although the family name comes first with Nihonese names, this rule doesn't apply to foreigners, whose names are always used as they are in English.

Living as a gaijin in a place that's as homogeneous as Nihon brings out some interesting responses in people, and one could write a book studying the psyche of foreigners in Nihon. For example, there are the "three states of eye aversion" they seem to go through when it comes to looking at other foreigners around them, not wanting to directly meet the gaze of a an unknown foreigner on the street. There are many gaijin from various countries who appear regularly on TV speaking fluent Nihonese and giving an "outsiders view" on things, but foreigners living in Nihon often hate these TV personalities, if for no other reason than because their Nihonese is better than ours. Among the foreign-born "talents" you can see on TV here are Bobby Orogon, the bumbling Nigerian comedian who makes Nihonese language mistakes on purpose to get laughs; dashing bilingual Italian Gioramo, always there to provide his views on travel shows or documentaries about the Roman Empire; and the eternal Dave Spector, the most famous American in Nihon, who has his own gossip section on the morning TV news where he reports on what all the American stars are doing this week.

Remember that J-List carries all the greatest PC dating-sim games from Nihon, but translated into English. With a huge catalog of games for all tastes, there's something for everyone, whether you want games with incredibly cute characters, story-centric dramatic games, hilarious comedy dating-sims, all-ages titles or whatever. The upcoming YUME MIRU KUSURI :: A Drug That Makes You Dream has been declared Golden Master and will be shipping in a very short time. Why not preorder it for free shipping when it's printed?

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.