Greetings from J-List. We had a blast at the Phoenix Comicon, and I’m safely back in San Diego. Next stop for me is Japan, where I’ll return for a few weeks before coming back for Anime Expo and the San Diego Comic-Con. Will you be at either show?
I’m a big fan of Japanese girls, and have loved observing their mannerisms over the years. One of the cuter — or possibly creepier — things they do is to refer to themselves in the third person, like Fuko from Clannad or Ayumi from Charlotte. Usually, girls will use their own names in place of a first-person pronoun from a young age, then when they start school and begin interacting with other girls will switch to atashi, a feminine version of watashi (the most common first-person pronoun), or possibly the slightly masculine-sounding boku if she’s the tomboy type…though back in my teaching days I had quite a few 18-20 year old female students who still used their names in place of “I” to sound kawaii. Another cute thing Japanese females do is hold on to their sleeves with their fingers, a gesture that makes their hands seem small and makes them look ridiculously adorable.
One of the many challenges Japan faces in the 21st century is getting a handle on its suicide rate, which for the longest time was above 30,000 annually, only slightly lower then the U.S., a country with 2.5x the population. Happily, the number is on its way down, dropping to 24,025 for 2015, a decrease of 1400 from the previous year. The officially listed causes were health problems (49%), economic problems (16%), family issues (15%), workplace related (9%), love problems (3%), and school issues like bullying (2%). Part of Japan’s suicide problem comes from differing social mores — suicide has at times been seen in a positive light, a way to take responsibility for mistakes and a source of romantic stories about lovers’ suicide (shinju) during the Edo Period, for example. But in my opinion, the biggest problem modern Japan faces is its outdated custom of mistrusting psychoactive drugs as “always bad,” despite the existence of drugs that are proven to potentially help with deep depression. I’d love to see some new thinking in this area in Japan.
J-List has some great cosplay and apparel products for you, and today we’ve got a nice new item: a J-List T-shirt homage to Iowa, the hot new American Kantai Collection ship that everyone loves. She wants the big stick! Don’t leave her waiting!
