One adorable anime I’ve been watching this season is 三者三葉 Sansha San’yo, literally meaning “three persons, three leaves” though a better translation would be something like “each girl has her own color.” It’s a 4-koma anime about three girls: Teru, the seemingly prim-and-proper class representative who wears glasses; Futaba, a red-haired girl who’s very genki and always hungry; and Yoko, a haughty former ojosama (rich girl) whose family lost all their money, so she’s reduced to eating bread crusts she buys for 50 yen at the supermarket. As with other slice-of-life shows like Kin’iro Mosaic or Nichijou, this is a show that lives or dies by the quality of its characters, and the voice actors behind them, of course. So far Sanyo San’sha has been a charming journey that leaves me feeling refreshed at the end of every episode. You should give it a try!
One subject I like to write about is the way our perceptions are all subjective and dependent on our cultural background. To most of us, a cat’s tongue us a rough, pink thing in our cat’s mouth and nothing more, but if you’re from France, the word might make you think of relaxing by the Seine while eating a delicious butter cookie called langue-de-chat. In Japan a cat’s tongue (neko-jita) is a label for someone who can’t eat or drink hot foods or beverages, since cats hate these things: my son is famous in our household as a neko-jita, and he has to put ice cubes in his miso soup or he can’t drink it. Age is another area where our perceptions are highly dependent to our cultural background, and seen from the West, Japanese and other Asians always appear to be younger than their actual ages. While we were in Vegas, my wife got carded after ordering a beer despite being old enough to have two kids in university, which made her giggly with joy for some reason.
J-List is a Japanese corporation, and our fiscal year ends at the end of May, after which our staff will spend a day doing inventory of all products in stock. Rather than count it, we’d rather sell it to you, so we are having a one-week flash sale instead. This week only, get 15% off all awesome bento and kitchen products, plus kawaii products like Rilakkuma, Sumikko Gurashi and Sanrio’s Gudetama. The sale ends next Friday!
