Last time I put forth the idea that perhaps one solution to Japan’s birth rate woes might lie in international marriage, that encouraging Japanese of both genders to consider marrying people from other countries might add something to Japan’s somewhat homogeneous society and reverse the population decline. Gaijin males do have a reputation for being a lot more romantic than their Japanese counterparts, and a certain segment of female society seems to yearn for these qualities in a partner, sometimes desperately. Back when I was teaching ESL, it was my job to work with graduating high school students who were going off to study in the U.S. One of my female students had a hilarious book on how to avoid being mislead by blue-eyed, smooth-talking Americans who were likely to compliment a girl on how pretty she was (which is never done here), causing her to melt into his potentially less-than-virtuous arms like so much butter. Just as gaijin-husband Japanese-wife couples are known for being more “love-love,” meaning more romantic, I’m pretty sure that couples with Japanese husbands and foreign wives tend to have the same altered dynamic. There’s a weekly show on called My Wife is a Foreigner, which follows the lives of married couples in which the wife is from outside Japan. (Like many aspects of contemporary Japanese life, the show is heavily influenced by the American sitcom classic Bewitched, go figure.) In one episode, a Japanese man had married a Ukrainian woman, and the show explored how they raised their kids with both languages, how their meals differed from the average Japanese family’s, and how the couple got along with each other when the kids were in bed and the wine was chilled.
One concept you eventually bump into when studying about Japan is “Nihonjinron” (nee-HONE-JEEN-rone), a word which literally means “theories on Japan.” A collection of ideas that grew out of Japan’s postwar period, the Nihonjinron concepts generally have to do with describing Japan as a unique country, totally unlike the nations of Asia or the West, with a linguistic and developmental history unlike that of any other nation. Part of this is the belief, held by almost all Japanese, that their language is one of the most difficult in the world, with its mixture of Japanese words and grammar overlaid by Chinese characters with readings that shift by context and region, with a heavy borrowing of foreign loan words for good measure. Another part of the reason Japanese is so hard, supposedly, is that it is so subtle, with so many shades of grey and information that’s implied rather than being specifically stated. Although some of the ideas seem like they could possibly be valid, there’s a high amount of voodoo in most Nihonjinron thinking, and overall it seems to be nothing more than coming up with ways to feel good about your own country, since everyone feels that their country is special.
Depending on how you look at things, the Japanese can appear quite superstitious. Certainly, there are many superstitions here that seem odd to foreigners, such as, don’t cut your fingernails at night or you won’t be able to be with your parents when they die, don’t whistle at night or snakes will come and get you, don’t give gifts in sets of four since four means “death” in Japanese, and so on. Many of these beliefs come from Japan’s death-oriented Buddhism — it’s bad luck to sleep with your head to the north (kita makura), as dead people about to be cremated are laid with their heads to the north. Similar to this, there’s a complex system of lucky and unlucky days according to a Buddhist calendar, with six different days that cycle throughout the month. It’s good luck to get married or start construction on your home on the luckiest day (Taian), but if you were to get married on the unlucky day (Butsumetsu, the Dying Day of Buddha), you’d probably end up divorced and unhappy. Virtually all Japanese want to get married on Taian, and wedding halls are packed to the gills on these lucky days. When buying a car, it’s also customary to take delivery of it on one of these lucky days, to avoid traffic accidents.
We love to bring you rare products from Japan, and today we’ve got some great items for fans of Nintendo’s DS, which is incredibly popular all around the world. In addition to our recently posted DS pencil case, we’ve added pencils in DS colors, multicolored little DS erasers that open up, and a pad of paper that imitates the shape of a DS. A cool line of unique products only available from Japan!
Hot on the tail of the 75+ anime, JPOP, sexy idol and other 2007 calendars posted on Friday, we’ve got…a whole bunch more! We’ve got dozens of new anime calendars (Gintama, Gundam, Kiki’s Delivery Service, the new Ghibli movie Tales of Earthsea, Fate/Stay Night), great new cute idol calendars (Mayuko Iwasa, Mayumi Ono, and more), JPOP calendars (Maki Gotoh and other Morning Musume members, and more), some old standbys (Audrey Hepburn, Hibari Misora), and some very steamy calendars (Yinling of Joytoy, and many more). Our large-format glossy Japanese calendars are a fantastic way to spend a year with your favorite images of Japan. Why not browse our 2007 calendar pages now?
