One tradition every foreigner living in Japan must come to terms with is sitting on the floor. The Japanese do a lot of floor sitting, and even the most modern house will probably have at least one traditional Japanese-style room with tatami mats and a low table that you use while sitting or kneeling in seiza style. My house is a two-story home with my Japanese wife’s parents living on the first floor and all of us living upstairs. Whenever we’re downstairs we sit around a low table with a heater inside called a kotatsu, sitting on little cusions called zabuton (which literally means “sitting futon”). Of course, it’s not really all that comfortable to sit on the floor for long periods of time, and my wife and I are much happier upstairs in our Western-style living room with normal sofa and dining table.
Every country is different, and companies trying to do business in a new place have to change their strategy to fit local customs and expectations. 1992 was a great year for foreigners living in our prefecture — the Subway sandwich chain, which was expanding into Japan at the time, had discovered our city and decided to put a store in. This was back in the days when the only taste of “back home” was McDonald’s, and it was a major coup if a person could score some imported Doritos from an expensive department store. So the entire gaijin population of our city flocked to enjoy the novelty of eating Subway sandwiches in Japan, and everyone was happy for a while. Unfortunately the company had made a miscalculation: they had located their restaurant near the local university, which is no doubt where you put a Subway if you’re in the U.S. In a country like Japan, though, it makes much more sense to locate a business across the street from train stations, where you can benefit both from increased visibility and plenty of foot traffic. Since the local university was far from the heart of the city, our precious Subway had a hard time getting enough customers and closed its doors less than a year later.
Asian students of English as a Second Language get a lot of flack for answering “yes” to questions even though they didn’t understand what had just been said to them, but I can totally understand where they’re coming from. Learning how to “fake” understanding in certain situations is an important part of learning a foreign language and interfacing socially with people from other countries. One strategy for communication that’s used by Japanese when speaking English (and by me at times, in Japanese), is the non sequitur, a reply that can be used as a response to just about any question, including questions you might not have understood. Back in my bachelor days, I went to a live orchestra performance and was surprised to hear that the organizers had “randomly” chosen three people from the audience to get up and conduct the orchestra: a cute old woman, a little girl, and funny American who happened to speak Japanese, namely me. I got up on the conductors podium, trying to ignore the hundreds of people with their eyes focused on me, and lead the Maebashi Philharmonic Orchestra in the first few bars of Beethoven’s 5th. I only got a little ways into the music, because my total lack of timing caused the musicians to ground to a halt soon after they started. When I was done, the MC asked me some questions about where I was from, how I liked my first time conducting an orchestra, and…something else, that I didn’t happen to catch. Rather than embarrass myself in front of so many people by asking the MC to repeat herself, I gave her a very generic answer: So desu ne, which literally means “yes, that’s so” but in practice, doesn’t really mean anything at all (so it fit the bill perfectly).
We’ve got a wacky new T-shirt for you today, a parody of the famous ESRB rating logo for video games that rates the wearer as “Rated H” and warns others to stay away from this “very dangerous person.” A really fun design that will bring many laughs, with another warning on the back that you are “extremely ecchi” and “supremely sukebe” — great because people who get the joke will laugh, while everyone else won’t know what the shirt means (always nice).
Do you love anime? If so, then why not subscribe the popular anime magazines direct from Japan, like Newtype, Animage and Megami Magazine through J-List’s revolving magazine subscription system? These magazines are great for keeping your finger on the pulse of the Japanese industry and following the most popular shows and characters. And these issues are loaded with color pictures, posters and other fun stuff, even if you can’t read Japanese. Best of all, all our subscriptions are month-to-month, and you can switch to other magazines or end a subscription at any time. You can also opt for credit card, check or money order or Paypal payments.
