Japan is the land of the “boom,” and you never know when some new thing is going to come out of left field and become wildly popular for a few months and then fade away. One year it was Vietnamese food and Asian-style home furnishings, then it hand-made jam, and then it was the Playboy bunny on just about every T-shirt you saw — even some kids clothes, since the image is meaningless here, just an icon that looks “American.” Now Tokyo is in the midst of a “spice boom,” with department stores and specialty shops selling various rare spices, from Indian masala to coriander to raw cinnamon and more. There are even “spice circles” where groups of women explore new spices and how they can be used in cooking. It goes well with the Japanese interest in “aroma therapy” (soothing the mind using various fragrant oils and incense, some of which we have on the website).
It’s election season around here, which means one thing: lots of trucks driving around with candidates shouting “I will work hard for you!” and “Thanks for your support!” through loudspeakers. It’s also a very busy time for my father-in-law, who runs the small liquor shop on the first floor of our house. It’s common for businesses and families to give gifts to their favorite candidates to show their support, most often a large ceremonial bottle of sake called an issho-bin (which translates as “all-your-life bottle,” since it’s so big you supposedly never run out) with hissho (certain victory) hand-written on the outside of the box. My father-in-law often talks about the old days, when only a few places were licensed to sell alcohol and their shop had lots of customers, but this was slowly eroded by the widespread availability of alcohol at convenience stores and supermarkets. He gets his revenge at times like this though, since you couldn’t expect a 7-11 clerk to know the proper way to package and inscribe an important gift for your political candidate — but he’s been doing it for three decades.
One thing you can say about Japan: driving here will make you a better driver. Between learning to park your car with less than 6 inches of space on either side to memorizing winding, narrow streets, driving in Japan can be a challenge. Although Japan has freeways connecting major cities, there’s usually not one between where you are now and where you want to go, so almost all driving is done on normal city streets. Learning your way around a Japanese city is made more difficult by the fact that only the largest streets have names, and there’s no way to refer to smaller streets other than “that one road with the beauty shop and the convenience store on it.” This was especially difficult for me when I first got here: in order to learn my way around the city I lived in, I had to throw away American-style memorization-by-directions (“turn left on College Avenue”) and had to instead envision where I wanted to go in 3-D in my mind. It was kind of a bizarre experience. Like the British, the Japanese drive on the right side of the road, so whenever I go back to the States I have to be extra careful to get my bearings straight before getting in the car. It’s usually not a problem — I just make sure I’m closer to the center of the road than the passenger seat is no matter which country I’m in, and it works out okay.
If you’re interested in learning Japanese, J-List wants to help you, and we’ve got a great addition to our “reserve subscription” service: Nihongo Journal, which you can now get sent to you every month — the only way to get this great magazine sent to you from outside Japan, actually. A perfect-bound magazine filled with Japanese study aids for all levels, you can read essays, follow current events in Japan, learn ways of memorizing kanji, and more. Since articles are written for a variety of levels, you can put away your issues and come back to them later, when your language ability has increased. Features translations in English, Korean and Chinese too, and an audio CD for building listening skills. I personally used Nihongo Journal for many years — I used to read it the bath — and highly recommend you all students of Japanese give it a try. (As always, we will only send new issues to subscribers, so if you order the individual issues we’ve got on the site now, you don’t need to worry about getting the issues sent to you again as part of your subscription.)
J-List specializes in the PC dating-sim games from Japan, “pretty girl” games for Windows computers that let you interact with cute anime girls in a wide range of stories and settings, with multiple endings to explore. For fans of the more traditional “H” anime on DVD, we’re happy to announce that we’re now carrying these titles for you too, with many new titles on the site today.
