Anime can be more popular outside Japan than in, plus our favorite rare Japanese foods for you to try.

I’ve made the 11-hour flight from California back to Japan, the land of onsen hot springs and toilets that wash your butt for you. It’s nice to be back, although it’s terribly hot and humid this summer.

One interesting side-effect of the worldwide popularity of anime is the existence of shows that end up being more popular outside Japan than in. This list includes series like Speed Racer, Dirty Pair, The Big O and Cowboy Be-bop, all of which won fans all over the world but weren’t nearly as famous here. When I was a boy I watched a series called Marine Boy, about a boy who swam under the waves with jet boots attached to his feet, able to breathe underwater for several hours thanks to his “oxygum.” It was the coolest thing in the world to my five-year-old self, though the show is totally forgotten inside Japan by now. Different anime series develop followings in different parts of the world. Thousands of fans in South America and the Middle East grew up loving the soccer anime Captain Tsubasa, and I’ve got a Swiss friend who considers Heidi, Girl of the Alps (created by later Studio Ghibli founders Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki) to be a national treasure of Switzerland, despite being from Japan. Then there was Genshiken, a realistic look at an anime modern visual arts club in a Japanese university, which resonated with otakus around the world but didn’t make as deep an impression with Japanese fans, who presumably live that life every day.

Everyone knows famous Japanese foods like sushi, sashimi and ramen, but it’s fun to explore less well-known dishes that are part of the Japanese food zeitgeist. One common dish in Japanese homes is 肉じゃが nikujaga, which is a simple yet delicious dish consisting of meat and potatoes stewed in a slightly sweet teriyaki-like soup. (It’s famous for another reason, because it sounds like singer Mick Jagger’s name.) One of my all-time favorite meals is かつ katsu, a cutlet of pork or chicken that’s fried and eaten with rice and that heavenly Bull-Dog sauce. One dish you see in anime quite often is オムライス omurice, an omelet eaten over rice, preferably with a heart drawn on top in ketchup by a cute Japanese female. Sometimes food has interesting history attached to it, like “Napolitan,” a simple pasta dish that can be made with ingredients like ketchup and Tabasco sauce which were available during the Allied occupation after WWII. Finally there’s soboro, perhaps my favoritest food ever. It’s basically teriyaki flavored ground beef and scrambled egg eaten over steaming white rice, and I always have to fight with my kids for seconds when we have it at my house. Incidentally, J-List has a large stock of cookbooks, bento books and more that are fun to browse and explore.

J-List loves to bring you all the best manga and 2D artbooks from Japan, and this month we’re having a big 3x points sale on all these great books, giving you the perfect excuse to make a big order and get lots of J-List points, which never expire and can be used for discounts on any future order without limitation. You can also get 3x points on the popular “How to Draw Manga” books from Japan, which our customers just love.