Japan is a very literate nation, and there are many daily newspapers and weekly magazines that report and compile the news for Japanese readers. Over the past decade, as people here have gotten used to more and more participation in all forms of Japanese life by American and European companies, the American magazine Newsweek has worked to make a name for itself in the Japanese-language news market. Although most of us take the Time-Newsweek-U.S. News magazine format for granted, I’m sure it took some time for Japanese readers to get used to it. Compared with Newsweek’s general approach to the week’s evebts, most Japanese magazines are more specific, covering politics (AERA, Focus), business (Nikkei Weekly, President), arts and literature (Bungei Shunju), local events (Tokyo Walker, Pia), and so on. While color pages are always present, most Japanese magazines are still largely black-and-white, making Newsweek’s all color printing a pleasant surprise for readers. There’s one other big difference: it’s common practice for some weekly news magazines typically read by men to include a few pages of beautiful models who appear au naturel, to give a little kick to the week’s news, something that Newsweek doesn’t emulate. The past week’s issue had an interesting article asking “who owns English?” which discussed how the language is changing as it’s adopted by countries all around the world. Japanese tend to obsess over “correct” English from America and the U.K. to the exclusion of all else, yet English is everywhere, in use in nearly all corners of the world, and always changing. So when the makers of Pocari Sweat come up with a new slogan for their sports drink (“Re-Body,” click here to see the commercial I’m talking about), maybe it’s not quite as weird as it first sounds.
Last night we had udon (oo-DON) noodles at my house, which are the fat, white noodles, as opposed to the thinner, grey soba (buckwheat) noodles. If you know anything about the way Japanese people eat noodles, you can probably guess that it was a very loud dinner, with everyone slurping away at full volume. We weren’t being rude or anything — you’re supposed to slurp your noodles while you eat, bringing the little bowl of noodle sauce close to your mouth and sucking in both noodles and the sauce as you guide the noodles with your chopsticks (this makes it taste better). On several occasions I’ve found myself on the receiving end of comments from Japanese people that I eat “very quietly,” not slurping my noodles enough, but after fifteen years here I think I’ve got the slurping thing down. While slurping ramen, soba or other noodles is perfectly okay, this doesn’t extend to spaghetti, and every once in a while we see someone in a restaurant slurping his pasta like a vacuum cleaner, to the amusement of the other patrons.
In Japan, there are often concepts that are very difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a persons eyelid when their eyes are open — one crease (hitoe, hee-TOE-eh) or two creases (futae, fu-TAH-eh). Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with double creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese. Getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV stars and young Japanese (although not as much as South Korea). I have to admit, I’d never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here — it was a totally alien concept to me. Incidentally, we sell a wacky item called Double Eyelid Makeup, basically eye makeup that’s very sticky, which “glues” your eyelids so that your eyes look larger, more like a foreigners’. We love to bring you our trademark “wacky things from Japan,” this this item certainly fits the bill!
The Final Fantasy XII Potion was a smash hit, the most popular item over the weekend by far. Happily, we’ve been able to get additional supplies of this great item, which is a blue-colored health drink loaded with herbs and caffeine that comes in a gorgeous blue glass bottle that looks like a health potion from Final Fantasy, with one of six different caps. Whether you want to recharge your hit points or just display this oh-so-cool item, we’ve got stock for you, and at a reduced price, too. Also, we’ve posted full sets of these great potions to the site now, at least until our stock of these sells out. Each potion comes in a special box and contains a foil-wrapped card, and will be carefully shipped to you by our dedicated Japanese staff.
