It’s spring vacation in Japan now, and rather than having the kids hanging around the house with nothing to do, we packed them up and shipped them off to someplace they could have more fun. My son is in Okinawa with some kids from his school, enjoying the sun and hopefully learning about the culture of the island (very different from mainland Japan). My daughter, meanwhile, is 8275 km away, in Auckland, New Zealand, with a group of kids and a tour guide from our city. I lived in New Zealand for a year in 1976, and have many fond memories of glow worms, One Tree Hill and Big Ben’s Meat Pies. I hope she has fun there, too.
While we’ve got some time to ourselves with no kids (truly the Holy Grail for any married couple), my wife an I headed up into the mountains for some quality onsen (“own-sen”), Japan’s traditional hot springs. Japan is a very volcanic place, with 10% of the world’s 840 active volcanoes located here, and while this can be a bad thing when there are eruptions or earthquakes, it’s certainly good for people who love bathing in natural hot springs (like me). There are many towns that are famous for their hot springs all around the country, but happily, our prefecture is home to Kusatsu Onsen, considered by many to be Nippon Ichi, the best in Japan. We had a nice time, roaming the streets of the town (which has been famous for 800 years, twice as long as there have been Europeans living in the New World), stopping to take a dip at the many town-operated free baths along the way. You can’t go to a hot springs without eating some onsen manju, a kind of traditional cake with sweet beans inside that’s served steamed — it’s delicious.
The world of jidai geki, or TV period dramas set in the era of the samurai, is an incredibly rich and complex one, and I’ve always thought that dramas about Japan’s past fill roughly the same role for the Japanese as Shakespeare does for people in English-speaking countries. Japanese period dramas are incredibly popular, and there’s one on most every night, either on Japan’s public broadcasting channel NHK or one of the private networks. Just as there are many eras of Japanese history, there are different kinds of period drama, with highly dramatic and violent stories from the sengoku jidai (“warring states period” when different feudal lords sought to control the country) to semi-legendary stories from the more stable Edo Period, to stories about the turbulence experienced as Japan was forced open by Admiral Perry’s Black Ships. Some of these dramas are fun stories about famous folk heroes with lots of swordplay, such as the popular Mito Komon, running for a mind-boggling 37 years without interruption. Over the years, there has always been a special class of jidai geki actors who distinguished themselves in this medium in the same way Laurence Olivier has in his various Shakespearean roles. Ken Matsudaira will always been remembered for his role as the Abarenbo Shogun, who loved to disguise himself as a commoner and roam the streets of Edo, and who could forget Katsu Shintaro as he original blind swordsman Zatoichi?
J-List makes a line of original “wacky Japanese T-shirts” and hoodies with fun messages in kanji, and we’re very proud of how popular our creations have become with everyone who digs Japan. Our flagship T-shirt is the famous “Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend” design, which we were rather surprised to see featured in the current issue of Newsweek (April 3 issue, page 56). See a scan of the “Test your Geek Chic” here.
J-List sells many cool things from Japan, and one thing we love bringing people around the world are Japanese snacks. We sell hundreds of different kinds of unique Japanese snacks, going beyond the basics like Pocky (although we’ve got all flavors of that, too) to harder-to-find favorites like Melty Kiss, Morinaga Choco Ball, and the oddly-named Crunky and Asse. We also carry the amazing Japan-only flavors of Kit Kat, including the new Green Tea Kit Kat in deluxe sized packages. We’re happy to bring you a new limited Kit Kat Spring Set, with samples of all the delicious Japan-only Kit Kat snacks made this year.
