animerevue

Easy Boiled-Egg Shaper -- Heart & Star Shapes

How do you like your eggs? Scrambled, over easy, sunny side up, or heart shaped? This fun egg heart shaper set is nice and easy for your Good Morning Egg -- just drop in a freshly boiled egg and let sit in the fridge for about 5 minutes. Great for cute points when you need 'em most! Sure to get a smile from even the grumpiest of morning people. To use, simply place a freshly boiled egg (still hot) in the bold and lock to close. Pop it in the fridge, wait 5 minutes, and enjoy your fun shaped...

There's nothing more interesting than studying a foreign language, of learning the way its unique grammatical rules work so you can form sentences and ideas and communicate with others. Language is always rule-based, and even dialects like Ebonics and Cockney which may sound "wrong" to speakers of standard American or British English are actually formed around their own suites of unique grammatical rules. The Japanese make heavy use of foreign loan words, usually borrowed from English, but since the grammar of the two languages is different, something is needed to "bridge" the two, and conveniently there are two such grammatical aides built right into the language. The first is the adjective particle na which allows an adjective to be plugged into a Japanese sentence without breaking any rules, and you can hear phrases like surimu na onna (a slim, slender woman), gohjasu na hoteru (a gorgeous hotel) or torendii na dorama (the latest trendy drama on television) spoken every day in Japan. I've even heard the word "epoch-making" used in this fashion -- as in, epokkumeekingu na ibento, meaning an event that is truly Earth-shattering in nature. The other tool to help foreign words be used in Japanese is the catch-all verb suru which means "to do." Words you might hear in Japanese include getto suru (GET-toh suru, to get or find something), doraibu suru (doh-RAH-ee-bu suru, to go for a drive), kamingu auto suru (kah-min-GU AH-oo-toh suru, lit. to do "coming out" or to come out of the closet about something), and of course, sekkusu suru (to have, well, you know). The staff at J-List uses lots of English in their Japanese, too, and you can hear terms like sukyan suru (to scan something), pikku suru (to pick products in preparation for shipping) being used everyday.

Are you coming to Anime Expo? If so be sure and stop by booths 624-626-628 to say hello, and check out the many anime figures, plush toys, T-shirts, Hoodies, manga and dating-sim games we've got for you. We'll also be holding a panel on bishoujo games on Saturday July 5th from 8 to 9 pm in room LP4 (LACC 411), with free stuff for everyone who shows up, including a raffle and more. See you there!

One of my favorite movies is Pleasantville, a fun film about two modern-day teenagers who get transported inside a 1950s-era black-and-white TV show similar to Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver. In the strange universe of Pleasantville, every wife stays in the kitchen cooking her family's dinner, and there's a funny scene where the husband comes home to an empty house to find no wife and no dinner waiting for him, which utterly confuses him since it's supposed to be impossible in the world he lives in. Watching that scene the other day amused me because just that day my Japanese father-in-law had been upset because his wife had gone off to a UNESCO meeting without leaving his dinner, forcing him to fend for himself in the kitchen, never an easy task for an older Japanese man. The idea that a funny joke about life in the 1950s could still describe people in contemporary Japan is a surprise, but then Japan is a very different place from the U.S. In my family I'm considered the daikoku-bashira or the "big black pillar" that holds up the family, and it's always interesting to observe from a cultural standpoint the way my Japanese wife or her mother jumps up when I get home from work, fetching me a bowl of rice and my chopsticks in a way that reinforces my role in the family. Part of me feels like resisting that kind of treatment, since I don't think it's particularly necessary, but in the end I usually just shut up and eat my dinner.

We're here at Anime Expo, the most excellent anime-themed annual event there is, with something like 40,000 other fans who have gathered to celebrate the important alternate popular world culture of Japanese animation. I've been involved with American anime fandom from the beginning -- I was at this event back in '91 when it was called Anime Con, when no one was sure if there were enough anime fans to fill a whole convention. As I wander the halls of the Westin Bonaventure hotel looking at the inspired kids (I'm at that age where most everyone I see can be described with this word) I see, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

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