My wife and I face various daily challenges because of our kokusai kekkon, or international marriage. As an American I can never get completely comfortable with natto, the fermented soybeans she loves so much; and she’ll always be frustrated by my inability to perform mugon ryokai, the “wordless communication” that somehow allows Japanese to send unspoken social signals to each other through the air. Our kids, however, are both American and Japanese, and they each have two passports to prove it. When a child is born to U.S. citizens living in Japan, they get automatic dual citizenship until they turn 20, allowing them to carry both Japanese and U.S. passports. Incidentally, I’ve lived in Japan for almost fifteen years and have permanent resident status, essentially a “green card” to live in Japan. I of course have the option of becoming a naturalized Japanese citizen, something that many “lifer” expats opt to do, but somehow the world seems a little more fun with me in it as an American rather than a Japanese.
One big area where Japan and the U.S. are different is housing. Houses are nearly always designed and built from scratch by construction companies, rather than made in blocks of similarly-designed homes as is usually the case in places like California. Land is never very plentiful in Japan, especially in areas where people would actually want to live, and partially because of this people tend to develop an attachment to land rather than their home. Since “used” houses don’t have resale value like they do in the rest of the world, it’s quite common for Japanese to tear their houses down and have new ones built every 15-20 years. Although the Japanese are fluent in the metric system, they always measure homes in tsubo, a unit of measurement that’s equal to two tatami mats, or approximately 3.3 square meters, and prices for home construction are usually expressed “per tsubo” (with the average being around $2500 per tsubo to build a house). Home construction is a huge business in Japan, and every day you can see commercials from established companies trying to make you want to trade in your ratty old home for a fresh, new one built by them. Some companies show elephants standing on the second floor of their houses to show how sturdy they are, or hire famous stars like Ichiro Suzuki to promote their companies. Some companies you may have heard of are involved in home construction in Japan, including Toyota Home (Toyota) and PanaHome (Panasonic).
Although rice is the famous staple food of Japan, eaten with almost every meal, the Japanese are no slouches when it comes to bread. Called pan in Japanese, from the Portuguese who introduced it to Japan, the are dozens of varieties of bread here, available from national bakery companies as well as smaller bakeries that deliver fresh-baked right to shoppers. Often what the Japanese call “bread” would qualify as a doughnut to most of us, such as the famous Anpan, round bread with different types of Japanese sweet beans inside, or Melon Pan, essentially a large piece of sweetened bread that looks like a honeydew melon cut in half — or like a brain, which is why Japanese say eating it will make you smart. One of my favorite types of Japanese pan is Curry Pan, fried bread with spicy curry inside, yum. They have “regular” bread in Japan, too, of course, and there’s one benefit over U.S. supermarket-fare: you can buy a loaf of bread with 8, 6 or 4 slices (I recommend the latter if you like really thick French Toast). If you’re a fan of Re-Ment, the company that makes incredibly detailed miniatures of food and other products, check out the new Homemade Bakery series we’ve just posted!
We’ve been tweaking our new search feature, which provides more accurate, weighted search results, and we’ve added some new functionality, including the ability to search for specific strings by putting quotes around the search term (entering “loose socks” with quotes searches for this exact string), and omit results (loose socks -glue, which will show all results containing “loose socks” but not the word “glue”). Incidentally, the new search system broke our “top 5” pages that indicate the most popular products on the site, but we’ve gotten it fixed and back on the main pages of J-List and JBOX.com.
Announcing the start of 2007 Calendar Season! Every year about this time, J-List starts taking preorders for the outstanding calendars from Japan, which are printed exclusively for the Japanese market. The calendars we sell every year come in two volleys: first, we post dozens of amazing calendars that capture the natural beauty of Japan; the delicate imagery of a tea garden; the aesthetic beauty of Japanese sushi or bento; kanji calendars for students; gorgeous bikini idols like Aki Hoshino; and fantastic other calendars like the best-selling “Onsen Girls.” Most of the JPOP and anime calendars will be posted in a couple weeks. Please browse the amazing calendars we’ve got on the site for you now!
Each month, J-List offers a “PC dating-sim game of the month,” allowing you to explore this amazing genre of entertainment from Japan at a special price. This month’s game is Target: Pheromone, a great title from Trabulance in which you must help a witch from another dimension get home, which you do by collecting female, er, pheromones. A fun interactive game with a story that you control. Buy it as a shrinkwrapped package or download (the download is just $19.95).
