The holiday season continues, and even the Sailor Moon girls are snug in their beds, hoping for a present from “Santa-san.” Remember, J-List is offering free shipping on all J-List anime and kanji T-shirts and shrinkwrapped visual novels shipping from San Diego, for the rest of the month!
Running a business in Japan for so many years has given me some insights into Japanese culture. As I’ve written before, I sometimes find myself welcoming economic downturns here, since I know from experience that these are the only times Japanese companies will embrace change, e.g. when they have no choice but to do so. Whenever we contact a Japanese visual novel company to try to form a relationship so we can translate their games into English, we know we’ve got an uphill battle ahead of us. Japanese companies are incredibly cautious and risk-averse, and if there’s any possible downside to a certain business decision, they’ll nearly always focus on that one potential issue. If there’s a chance that one person will object to a game’s release in English – maybe someone in Tennessee will take offense at the way a certain character is drawn – they’re suddenly ready to scrap the whole deal. This is one reason why some Western releases on consoles get censored needlessly, to the great frustration of fans. It’s been interesting, looking at Sony’s response to the massive hack and orders to cancel the release of their film The Interview, knowing that all Sony’s executives want is make the safe choice, avoid doing anything that could get them in trouble personally with the company.
Theother day it was raining, so I grabbed an umbrella so I could make the 3-minute trek to J-List World Headquarters without getting wet. The umbrella turned out to be my wife’s favorite Louis Vuitton, and when she took me to task for using it, the inner reaches of my brain came up
with a retort: “But honey, mi casa es su casa!” This was a play on the word kasa (casa),
which means “house” in Spanish and “umbrella” in Japanese. Here are some other Japanese words you didn’t know you already knew:
- Cheek show! –> Damn! (畜生 chikusho)
- Bose –> A Buddhist priest, or any bald person (坊主 bozu)
- Chile –> Geography (地理 chiri)
- Psycho! –> That’s the best! (最高 saiko, pronounced “sai-koh”)
- Bimbo –> Poor, no money (貧乏 binbo)
- Hen –> strange (変 hen, and yes, it’s the the hen in hentai)
- Show you –> soy sauce (醤油 shoyu, incidentally one of the most difficult to write kanji characters)
- Ohio –> Good morning (おはよう ohayo)
- “E” –> good, ok, sometimes “no thanks” (いい, ii)
- Ski –> [I] like [that] (好き suki)
- Haha –> one’s own mother (note, will always incite giggling in Japanese 101 class)
- Chin chin –> a cute word for a penis, pronounced like cheen cheen, and the big reason Japanese versions of the Three Little Pigs never contain the phrase “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.”
Great news today! The amazing visual novel/magical bring-up simulation game Girlish Grimoire Littlewitch Romanesque is now available! The Limited Edition package version of the game later this week. We’re releasing the digital download version of the game today. Order the Limited Edition through J-List, or mosey on over to the newly refreshed JAST USA site and grab the instant download now! (No waiting for processing.) This is an amazing game with great gameplay, including 100 spells to explore and 79 quests to complete as you train Aria and Kaya to be mages. Also: JAST USA’s just announced a Steam Greenlight project for the all-ages version of the game, and we hope you’ll vote! If successful then game keys for the Steam version will be provided to purchasers of the Limited Edition for free.
