That Steven Spielberg, he's really good at making movies -- you could even say he's "Jaws." In Japanese, the word for being skillful at something is 上手 joh-zu, which happens to be how the English movie title Jaws is pronounced, hence making a fun (?) little pun. Making word connections like this is one of the ways I helped myself learn the language -- I still remember doodling a little shark coming out of the water in my textbook next to this word -- and it's one way to help "trick" your brain into remembering new information. There are many other ways to learn with these mnemonic games. For example, you might memorize the word りんご ringo (apple) by picturing famous Beatle Ringo Starr eating an apple, and to learn the word 死ぬ shinu (to die), just memorize the sentence "She knew he was going to die." Having trouble remembering the word 揺らす yurasu (to shake)? Well, get out on the dance floor and shake yurasu! You can use these mind games to memorize kanji too, since 肉 niku ("meat") actually looks like a pair or ribs, and the kanji 古 furui ("old") looks like a little gravestone. You can even learn hiragana and katakana using these kinds of mind tricks.

Some unique ways of memorizing Japanese.

My wife and I recently made the decision to "reform" our house, which is what the Japanese call remodeling for some unknown reason. One thing I knew I wanted to upgrade was our toilet, so we hopped in the car and headed to the local TOTO showroom to check out their latest models. TOTO (short for 東洋陶器 toyo-tohki or Oriental Ceramics) is the largest maker of toilets in the world, and in the 80s they developed a toilet with butt-washing and bidet features built-in called a "washlet" which has come to define Japan almost as much as Akihabara, bullet trains and Sony. While the basic features are the same, the newest models do cool things like sense when you've entered the bathroom and hydraulically lift the lid while heating the seat for you, then a mist of ionized water cleans the bowl so it's nice and fresh when you sit down. (An LED flashes inside the toilet while the mist is released, which I found terribly cool, though I couldn't say why.) There are numerous options for cleaning when you're done, from the standard butt spray to various "massage modes," and when you stand up the toilet auto-flushes and cleans the bowl for you again. If you're interested in getting a washlet toilet, they're available in various countries including the USA. Getting one installed would probably involve hiring an electrician, unless you happen to have an electric plug right behind your toilet as nearly all homes in Japan do.

I went shopping for a butt-washing toilet.

Japan has a highly developed entertainment world composed of thousands of professional actors, singers, idols, comedians, "announcers" (aka newscasters) and タレント tarento, a general term for anyone with a skill worth putting on TV for any reason. All of this is managed by professional studios like Yoshimoto Creative Agency, who handles the careers of Japan's top comedians, or Johnny's Entertainment, producers of every Japanese boy band you've ever heard of. One pattern I've observed is, if you've got a really interesting and original angle, there might be an opening for you in Japan's entertainment world...but there's only one potential opening for each unique "talent proposition" so you have to get there first. If you happen to be a Japanese-bilingual comedian from Nigeria, an amusing American who's fluent in the Yamagata-ben dialect of northern Japan or a comically huge former Chicago Bears linebacker, you need not apply, as these positions have already been filled by Bobby Ologun, Daniel Kahl and Bob Sapp. The latest fresh and unique concept to appear in Japan's entertainment world is an idol group called Weather Girls, a team of Taiwanese singing idols managed by Hong Kong's Next Media Ltd., who sing and dance and...tell you if you'll need to bring your umbrella to work today. They're more than just a kawaii singing group: the girls are currently studying to take the national weather forecasting license exam to become registered meteorologists in Japan, so they can report the weather on the morning news programs.

Taiwanese idol group Weather Girls is big in Japan.

Remember our great news for fans of our English-language eroge and dating-sim games: a huge price drop! We've permanently lowered prices on almost 50 of our great visual novels, from The Sagara Family to Yume Miru Kusuri to Kana Little Sister and Brave Soul. Prices have been lowered by $5 or $10 on a huge number of games, so it's a great time to browse the reduced-price visual novels and eroge and see which you'd like to pick up!

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. You can view all new J-List products by clicking this link.

I get a lot of questions from readers interested in working in Japan, usually as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), and I do my best to guide them to useful information, although I haven't been in the field for years. Teaching ESL is a potentially good option for people wanting to work for a few years in Japan, as long as you have realistic goals and know that it's not the healthiest of industries (there were some major bankruptcies of ESL school chains a few years ago). First of all, you need a four-year degree in order to get a working visa, so if you don't have one yet, that'd be the logical place to start. One popular choice for teaching in Japan is the Japan English Teacher (JET) program, operated by the government to get native English speakers into the country to teach and also facilitate "grass roots Internationalization" of Japan. While getting accepted into the JET system can be a challenge since there are so many applicants, Japan's ruling LDP party recently announced an expansion of the program, which might help your chances. There are two types of JET jobs, Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) who do the actual teaching, and Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs), who help guide the program and who need a minimum amount of Japanese, usually 2-3 years. As a rule, I generally recommend people with a deeper interest in Japan to consider trying for the latter job, which will contribute more to your understanding of the country and could help you build コネ kone, or connections which will help you in the future. There are plenty of alternatives to JET, too: for example, most cities have "sister cities" in Japan, like our city's relationship with Springfield, Missouri, and often there are ALT jobs or exchange study opportunities open through these connections. There are also programs like the Lion's Club International Camp and Youth Exchange Program to look into. If you're interested in researching how to live and work in Japan, we've got some books that might help.

Some advice for those considering teaching ESL someday.

This may not exactly come as a surprise, but I love anime fandom. It's a warm and comfortable place filled with cool people who are all pretty much on the same wavelength about what's important in life. Thanks to the Internet, anime has experienced a "golden age" of sorts, allowing fans in all corners of the world to become part of the same extended "meme group," sharing ideas and pop culture freely. If I were to visit Russia or Mexico or Spain or South Africa, I might not be able to speak the local language…but if I can locate a group of anime fans, I know we'll be able to communicate in the language of manga, Vocaloid and Touhou. One thing I love about fandom is the way it's really a "big tent," composed of many smaller related groups. Aficionados of Gundam model building are quite different from fans of the latest moe cuteness from Kyoto Animation, and serious cosplayers might have different priorities from fujoshi geeking out over girl-centric games and BL manga. While our individual obsessions might each be different, in the end we're all part of the same family, or -- to borrow the Gaelic term -- clannad.

I love fandom because it's a "big tent" full of smaller groups.

Besides being a dedicated fan of all things Japan-related, I'm also card-carrying lover of time-travel and related science fiction stories. I've read all the classics, including H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (and its "official" sequel, The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter), the Hyperion Saga which all Haruhi fans should read, and of course the alternate history classic Guns of the South. There's a rich tradition of stories about time travel in anime, too, starting with the archetypcal "person from modern Japan is transported back to the country's 'Warring States' historical period" genre (of which The Ambition of Oda Nobuna is the most recent example), along with various Groundhog Day/Endless Eight style repeating time loops, convenient wormholes that cause characters to "timeslip" if they encounter one, plus films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. One of the best stories time travel stories in years has been the visual novel and anime Steins;Gate, about Rintarou Okabe, a "mad scientist" who discovers how to send messages, and later himself, into the past, which naturally results in a lot of bad stuff happening that he has to fix. Last night I went to the movie theatre to see the new Steins;Gate movie, which was just about as awesome as it could have been. I want to go see it again tonight...

Steins;Gate is a story about love, time travel and Dr. Pepper.

We've got some big news today for fans of our English-language eroge and dating-sim games: a huge price drop! We've permanently lowered prices on almost 50 of our great visual novels, from classics like Amorous Professor Cherry or Heart de Roommate to legendary titles like Hitomi Stepsister and Family Project. Prices have been lowered by $5 or $10 on a huge number of games, so it's a great time to browse the reduced-price visual novels and eroge and see which you'd like to pick up!

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. You can view all new J-List products by clicking this link.

Although I've been in Japan for more than 20 years, there are some things I've never really mastered, like eating nattou, the famous fermented soybeans that my kids love to have for breakfast. I can't read "air kanji" Japanese people write with their finger, and I have trouble perceiving the secret messages Japanese see in numbers, such as April 4 being "Yo-yo day" beause the number 4 can be read as yo in Japanese. I was also never able to master the Japanese art of yankii-zuwari, literally meaning "squatting like a Yankee." In Japan there's a class of semi-delinquent young people who like to show their rebellious nature by dying their hair blonde (which usually comes out orange), and these people came to be called yankii, no doubt because they looked like Americans with their interestingly colored hair. (Another theory holds that they came from a part of Osaka nicknamed America-mura.) There's a certain squatting pose these tough boys are famous for which is especially difficult for foreigners to pull off without rolling over like a daruma. It's normal squatting, but somehow they can do it with their feet perfectly flat, not balanced on their toes, and they're able to squat like that for hours without discomfort. The reason the Japanese can sit comfortably like this is Japanese style toilet seats, seatless toilets which you squat over to use, and Japanese develop muscles for this pose from an early age.

I still can do the flat-footed squatting thing that Japanese can all do easily.

Yesterday I took a trip to Takasaki to visit the local branch of the Tokyo Immigration Office. I was there to trade my old Alien Registration Card in for one of the new "residence cards" that were launched a year ago. The new card system represents a major effort by the Japanese government to make the country more "gaijin friendly" by eliminating little frustrations foreigners sometimes experience here, like the need to pay $60 for a "re-entry stamp" if you want to leave Japan and return again, and having a strange, specialized registration card with that makes people think of Xenomorphs and facehuggers. As usual, it was interesting to be sitting in a waiting room with other gaijin from so many countries. There was a nice married couple from Bolivia who helped me figure where to go to get a passport photo taken (they didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish, so we conversed in Japanese), a few couples who had emigrated from South Korea and China, a family of nikkei ("of Japanese descent") Brazilians who had come to register their baby's birth, and one lady from either France or Belgium, I couldn't tell. We made quite an interesting group: about 40 people in all, each with varying levels of Japanese language ability and (this being the year 2013), all of us pecking away on smartphones.

The Japanese government has good news for gaijin.

The spring 2013 anime season is an especially good one, and it's definitely been a chore to keep up with all the episodes that are coming in each week. One standout show this season is Suisei no Gargantia, or Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, a high-quality "hardcore SF meets moe water world" concept with gorgeous production values. It's the story of Red, a lieutenant in the Galactic Alliance of Humankind, who fights in a great space battle against an enemy known as the Hideauze. He's attacked while passing through a wormhole and ends up on Earth, a planet which had been completely frozen but has since thawed into an ocean world, now populated by humans who live atop fleets of rusting ships. The show is created by Urobuchi Gen, whose work you've seen in Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass and our own brand-new eroge Saya no Uta, and our favorite company Nitroplus is also involved in the anime's production, so we like it a lot. The story and writing are outstanding, and you'll like the fan-service, too.

I'm enjoying the new Suisei no Gargantia, are you?

There are many great reasons to get the iTunes Japan prepaid cards J-List sells. There's a huge number of anime songs available, from the new Railgun OP to music from the Steins;Gate movie to the Suisei no Gargantia theme sung by the seiyuu for Nagato Yuki for extra awesomeness. You get full access to all Japan-only iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, too. many of which are made for promotional purposes and are thus free as long as you have your iTunes Japan account set up. Everything you buy from the iTunes Japan store -- music, apps, even light novels -- are fully compatible with all your iStuff no matter where you are in the world. Best of all, we've just lowered our prices on the iTunes Japan cards, so why not grab one now?

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. You can view all new J-List products by clicking this link.

In a world where so many anime series follow the adventures of yet another high school club trying to assemble enough members to avoid being disbanded, it's enjoyable to encounter something truly fresh and original, which I found in Hataraku Maoh-sama (English title The Devil is a Part-Timer!, though Working Devil King would be a more accurate translation). It's the story of a demon king named Sadao who's about to win a major victory and rule his kingdom of Entre Isla when he's suddenly sucked into another world, modern-day Tokyo, with one of his generals. In the human world they must learn to survive like we do, finding a job and getting an apartment, making monthly budgets for food, etc., and the show hilariously captures the irony of a magical god eating cucumbers pickled in miso sauce because he ran out of money before the end of the month. Watching the show I can't help thinking that the creators are trying to send a message to viewers about the joy of working and earning money. Japan has a big problem with ひきこもり hikikomori, aka NEETs or people who have dropped out of society to live on the Internets without bothering to hold down a job, and shows like Hataraku Maoh-sama and Working! seem to try to get these people to re-think their lives a bit.

Many anime series, of course, create parody brands both to avoid getting into trouble with the original companies and also to create humor, and you get used to seeing on-screen gags like "Somy" electronics or "Sudohbucks" coffee on a regular basis. Sometimes the jokes are a bit deeper, for example Family Mart is changed to Sister Mart in Oreimo, or the AT/MT convenience store in our own Initial D-esque racing eroge trilogy Moero Downhill Night, a nice car pun on AM/PM. McDonald's is well parodied, and you always see variations like WcDonald's, WacDonald's, EcDonald's and so on. Hataraku Maoh-sama has an even better version of this meme, having the characters work at "Maguro-donald's," a great joke because まぐろ maguro means tuna fish -- either the fish itself or maguro sushi; tuna fish in a can is referred to with the English word "tuna" -- which is the last thing you'd associate with that chain.

Hataraku Maou-sama is a great new series.

All languages use onomatopoeia, words based on sounds, and some examples in English are bark, oink, crash, click, snap, clap, and tick-tock. Japanese uses onomatopoeia, too, and part of the fun of learning the language is discovering how the many sound-based words work, and getting used to cats saying nyan nyan instead of "meow meow." Many Japanese slang words are based on sounds, for example no one bothers to call "capsule toys" (small toys sold in egg-like capsules in vending machines) by their official name of gashapon; instead everyone refers to them as gacha gacha, which is the sound of turning the handle to make a toy fall down after you've deposited your money. Then there's チン chin! (pronounced cheen, with a long vowel), the sound word for the ding! you hear when microwaved food is done cooking. In a recent episode of A Certain Scientific Railgun Kuroko says something ecchi to Mikoto, who promptly fries her with her signature lightning attack, and this chin! sound is heard to signify that Kuroko is "done being cooked." The Japanese go beyond English at thinking of creative sound words, into the realm of the "ideaophone," which are sounds that capture a situation or an abstract idea. For example there's an onomatopoeia for someone staring intensely (じいいーっ pronounced jiiiiii!), and one for sparkling, as in vampires or stars twinkling at night (きらきら kira kira). Some of these sound words will probably be known to anime fans, like どきどき doki doki, the sound of a rapidly beating heart, and no one who grew up watching Pokemon will be surprised that the sound of lightning crackling is ピカピカ pika pika. If you are interested in Japanese sounds you can now put them in your favorite drink, with cool Japanese sound word ice cube trays.

Pika pika! Kuroko gets 10,000 volts of punishment.

When you order from J-List, you get the promise of an order that is packaged accurately and speedily by the soft, warm hands of our Japanese packing girls. You'll also get Japanese pocket tissue enclosed free with your order, something J-List has become quite famous for. A popular method of advertising for businesses in Japan, Japanese pocket tissues are really useful since you never know when you'll need tissues. We've updated our tissue packet designs for 2013, so feel free to make a new order so your collection of Japanese pocket tissues can grow. * Note that tissue isn't sent it your order would be damaged by the inclusion of the tissue, such as a thin magazine or doujinshi, and we're obviously dependent on the tissue being available in our Japan and San Diego offices.

Here's some great news: one of the best visual novels in recent years is coming out in English, called If My Heart Had Wings (Japanese title この大空に翼を広げて Kono Ohzora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete), a great story about youth and love and dreams. The game will be out in June, and you can preorder either the package or download edition now.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. You can view all new J-List products by clicking this link.