It’s funny how how tenuous the meanings of seemingly basic words can be. In English, the word “friend” is pretty straightforward, meaning someone you are friendly with, or just maybe, someone you are romantically involved with, but don’t want to admit it to others. Most of my English-speaking “friends” are close in age to me, but I certainly could have a friend who was 25, or 45, or 75, if I wanted to. It’s not uncommon to classify someone I know only as a passing acquaintance as a “friend,” too, for convenience or to avoid being rude. In Japanese, however, the concept of what a friend is can be quite different. The most common word for friend is tomodachi (which literally means “those who you go with”), and it has a more “close” feel to it than the English word. Tomodachi in school years are almost always the same age; otherwise you’d use the term senpai (for upperclassman) or kouhai (for underclassman), which are quite different concepts in Japan’s vertically-oriented society. The other day, my son was playing dodgeball with a boy he’s known since preschool — they’ve played together for years. I talked about the boy with my wife, using the word tomodachi. My wife corrected me, saying the boys weren’t friends in that sense, but were instead osana-najimi (o-SAH-NAH NAH-jee-mee). The word, which comes up in anime and bishoujo games quite a lot, refers to someone you were very close to since childhood, and it seems to be both more and less than the English word friend. “An osana-najimi is different from tomodachi,” my wife explained to me. “They’re always there, and you don’t even notice them after a while. You get so used to being with each other, it’s like air.”
There comes a time in the life of every gaijin that he is called upon to perform a service for his Japanese hosts. I’m talking, of course, about dressing up as “Santa-san” (as he’s usually called by Japanese kids) for the school Christmas Party. Christmas is a very bright and happy time in Japan, and no Christmas Party would be complete without a real live gaijin Santa Claus, dressed from head to toe in bright read “Santa wear.” This year I was asked to play Santa at a preschool run by a friend of ours, and I was happy to oblige, handing out gifts to all of the kids with a hearty ho-ho-ho! and being careful not to speak Japanese so as not to break the mood. The kids were happy to see a “real” Santa Claus and thanked me as I handed out their presents. As usual, not everyone was happy to see a big, red foreigner invade their school, and several of the younger kids were bawling their eyes out while the preschool teachers comforted them.
If you’ve browsed our website, you’ve probably seen the “phone straps” we sell, which are popular in Japan as stylish attachments for your cell phone, although you can use the straps with camera, PDAs like Palm Pilots, Sony PSP, and as a keychain, since the nylon string is very strong. Well, did you know these phone straps were actually an updated form of Japanese art going back to the 17th century? Since kimonos have no pockets, men in the Edo Period needed a way to carry their money and other belongings, and they started using small cloth pouches with drawstrings and intricately carved figures called “netsuke” (net-TSOO-keh) on the ends of the strings. To help you add a little bit of classic Japanese tradition to your daily life, we’ve added some great netsuke straps featuring Lucky Cat Hello Kitty, which promise to bring you good luck in the form of business success, passing a difficult test, succeeding at finding love, and traffic safety. If you have a cell phone or similar portable gadget, why not snag a cool netsuke strap for it?
J-List sells region free DVD players for customers who want to be able to enjoy DVDs from all over the world, not just the Hollywood-approved region you happen to be living in. Our popular players include the Karaoke-enabled DVD-7880K and the excellent DIVX-capable DVD-7050. We also sell our outstanding portable player, the AMW M-280, a 7 inch widescreen DVD player that’s loaded with features, including region free disc playback, PAL/NTSC support, the ability to output DVDs to the beautiful 7 inch 16:9 screen or to an external TV and also play external video on the build-in screen. The M-280 comes with a 1-year warranty, like all our DVD players. We’ve dropped our price on the M-280 by $10, to just $168, a fantastic price for a well-made portable player like this.
As a general rule, Japanese houses and many businesses have a recessed area called a genkan where you leave your shoes before entering. J-List’s genkan is currently a massive mountain of hundreds of wrapped boxes, calendar tubes and other packages, waiting to be taken to the post office first thing in the morning (we fill up about two vans per day this time of year). J-List’s staff is primed and ready to speed your order out to you ASAP, either from Japan or from San Diego. Please browse our site and let us know how we can serve you!
