change feed

JList Blog

2009 Japanese Calendar Season Begins!

Announcing the start of 2009 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 sets: first, we post dozens of amazing calendars that capture the ...

Posted on August 27, 2008 at 12:12 PM

The Japanese Mess Up English

What kind of juice would you like, cola or tea? The Japanese sometimes take liberties with words when they import them from English, adjusting their meanings to suit their needs. In Japan the word "juice" （ジュース）is often casually used to mean any canned or bottled beverage, and it's common for ...

Posted on August 27, 2008 at 12:11 PM

Gunma History Lesson from Iwajuku

J-List's home prefecture of Gunma isn't as famous as Kyoto or Nara, but it can hold its own when it comes to ancient history. For example, there are more than 8000 burial mounds from the Kofun Period (250-538 A.D.), indicating a high level of civilization in the past, even though ...

Posted on August 27, 2008 at 12:10 PM

Useful Skills to Bring to Japan

If you want to live in Japan, there are certain skills you'll need to acquire. For example, you should be okay with popping something in your mouth without stopping to ask what it is, as food that's placed in front of you won't always be something you can identify. ("That ...

Posted on August 27, 2008 at 12:09 PM

Cool Items: Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the ...

Posted on August 27, 2008 at 11:51 AM

More Fun With Chopsticks

It's known that the Japanese eat with chopsticks with almost every meal, deftly picking up even the tiniest morsels of food without a second thought. There are some important of chopstick manners that are practiced here, which you should be aware of if you ever find yourself eating with Japanese ...

Posted on August 25, 2008 at 12:16 PM

Learning About Keigo (Polite Japanese) and Anime

Each language is special, with its own set of interesting features. Romance languages, for example, have nouns that come in male and female genders, which can be difficult for native English speakers to pick up -- why is a pen la puma but a pencil is el lapiz? In Japanese, ...

Posted on August 25, 2008 at 12:16 PM

Kandora: Korean Dramas in Japan

My wife is hooked on Kandora, short for Kankoku dorama or South Korean soap operas, and it seems every time I walk through the living room she's got another one on the TV. When I ask her what's so interesting about the shows, she gets very animated. "Oh, they're nothing ...

Posted on August 25, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Cool Items: Monday, August 25, 2008

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the ...

Posted on August 25, 2008 at 12:10 PM

Thoughts on Japanese Food

It's funny how so many of the foods eaten by the Japanese on a daily basis aren't very Japanese at all. Sure, people here eat plenty of things that are associated closely with Japan, like soba and udon noodles, sushi and sashimi, or donburi ("big bowl") dishes like gyudon (beef ...

Posted on August 22, 2008 at 10:57 AM

Jiko Shokai: Japanese Self Introductions

One interesting concept I learned about soon after coming to Japan was jiko shokai, which just means "self introduction" but which seems to have a special cultural significance here. In almost any situation where people will be interacting, be it a classroom, a part-time job or the local PTA board, ...

Posted on August 22, 2008 at 10:56 AM

Dokdo or Takeshima?

They're known as Takeshima in Japan, Dokdo in Korea, and internationally as the Lincourt Rocks: two ridiculously small volcanic islands located between Japan and South Korea, which were mapped by the French whaling ship Lincourt in 1849 and which both neighbors are claiming ownership of today. The Japanese side of ...

Posted on August 22, 2008 at 10:52 AM

Cool Items: Friday, August 22, 2008

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the ...

Posted on August 22, 2008 at 10:41 AM

So You Want to Teach English in Japan?

I get rather a lot of questions from readers interested in working in Japan as a teacher, and I do my best to guide them to useful information, although I haven't been working in the field myself for more than a decade. Teaching ESL is a potentially fun option for ...

Posted on August 20, 2008 at 11:48 AM

One of my Favorite Words: Kokoro

Zenigata: "I was too late! Lupin has stolen again."Claris: "Be he didn't steal anything. He just fought to save me."Zenigata: "No, he stole something very valuable. It was your kokoro."One Japanese word I like a lot is kokoro, which can be a little difficult to translate into English, which makes ...

Posted on August 20, 2008 at 11:39 AM

I Don't Know My Own Kids

I have a rather strange problem: I don't know my own kids. Or rather, I know the half that speaks Japanese, that works diligently on homework and reads books or plays video games in Japanese. The English-speaking side of my children is something I'm less familiar with, for the main ...

Posted on August 20, 2008 at 11:37 AM

Cool Items: Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the ...

Posted on August 20, 2008 at 11:27 AM

How Many Peopple have Loved You?

Oops, forgot to post this pic after all that. The girl was like 15 years old, so it added a layer of bizarreness to the whole experience. The caption below says "We are the world" (naturally).This reminded me of my past trip to the U.S. and a girl was getting ...

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 5:30 PM

Confused Gaijin in Japan

I write a lot about how one of the challenging aspects of leaning Japanese is getting in tune with what isn't being overtly stated, learning to pick up meaning from situations or from the air around you. This is called mugon ryokai or "understanding without saying," and it presents special ...

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 11:16 AM

Getting Out of Tokyo: The U-Turn

Imagine if 25% of all Americans lived around the Washington DC area? It would be pretty crowded, and not very fun to get in and out of around holidays. That's exactly the case with Japan, though, where one in four people live in the sprawling Greater Tokyo Area, and as ...

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 11:14 AM