A very warm Makise Kurisumasu to everyone! We hope you’re having a wonderful special day today, wherever you are in the world.
Christmas in Japan is a bit different from how it probably is in your country. First, it’s not even a holiday here, and throughout the country people are driving to work and doing their jobs as they normally do. More than Christmas Day itself, the Japanese seem to prefer Christmas Eve, which is when couples go on that special romantic date, and families enjoy a big dinner together. (Ours was a bit non-traditional this year, consisting of pizza, baked chicken from the supermarket and a Totoro Christmas cake my daughter baked.) While Christmas in the U.S. heralds the final week of the holiday season, which starts with Thanksgiving at the end of November, in Japan things are just getting started. After Christmas there’s a super-busy period in which people rush to write New Years cards then do their 大掃除 oh-souji or “big cleaning,” scrubbing every inch of their homes so they can start the new year with a clean slate. Companies have to do this cleaning too, and tomorrow the J-List staff will spend the day cleaning the entire company, throwing away junk and rewiring LAN cables. When the New Year arrives, everything pretty much closes down throughout Japan until January 5th or so, as people just takes it easy.
I’m often amazed at the way Japan’s culture has become famous internationally, with some very minute details about the country known to people around the world. Like the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys, which come from a carving at the Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko and presumably entered Western consciousness during the Allied Occupation. Still, the sad truth is that some of the things we think we know about Japan aren’t 100% accurate, either because things have changed in the intervening decades (there are no more geisha in modern Japan, though there were once), or because they were partially based on urban legends (vending machines selling pantsu would fall into this category). One of the most famous images of Japan is the kon’yoku bath, where men and women bathe together nude, a staple of fan service anime like Trinity Seven, which always manage to get characters into a bath together somehow. Other than hot springs that rent private baths for couples or families to use, or natural hot springs high in the mountains, I’ve only managed to find one mixed bath during my time in Japan. And believe me, I’ve looked really hard.
We’re happy to report that the amazing visual novel/magical bring-up simulation game Girlish Grimoire Littlewitch Romanesque is now shipping via Internet Download edition! The Limited Edition package version is delayed for 1-2 weeks, but you can order the never fear: we’ve released the digital download version of the game! 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. Please make sure you vote for us on our Steam Greenlight project so we can get the all-ages version of the game launched. If we’re successful then game keys for the Steam version will be provided to purchasers of the Limited Edition for free.
