I bought some stuff from this site a while ago www.jbox.com If you subscribe to their mailing list they send some quite interesting e-mails about Japan, which may be of interest to some here. Here is just a part from the mail I received today Children are very creative, and it seems there's nothing that a child is incapable of imagining, especially when it comes to inventing new words. When I was learning Japanese in college, I discovered that you don't have to be a child to have a child's creativity with language. As I studied Japanese, I experimented with the language every day, completely mangling the grammar as I got each vocabulary word and useful phrase down, sometimes inventing something new and interesting in the process thanks to the universal phenomenon of "not knowing what can't be done." The process is not unlike the way a child experiments with its first language, often creating ingenious Dr. Seussian words for things. Just as most of us have a special place in our hearts for the things we loved when we were small, be they television shows or comic books or 8-bit video games, I still feel "natsukashii" (nostalgic) about the anime I was watching in my college years, which represent my childhood as far as learning Japanese is concerned. So if you ever want to enjoy a second childhood, consider learning a second language! It's said that Japan is between ten and 25 years behind the United States and Europe socially, and viewed from a certain point of view, the statement seems to be eerily true. Various social institutions that you or I might take for granted have taken a while to appear in Japan, such as laws against "seku-hara" (harassment in the workplace) or laws protecting the privacy of individuals. Over the past few years, Japan has been renaming some job titles that had a sexist slant due to the kanji they were written with. For example, the old word for a preschool teacher, "hobo" (literally "protecting mother") has been updated to "hoikushi" (a professional-sounding word that means care-giver), and the former term for nurse ("kangofu," written with characters that meant "nursing wife") is now "kangoshi," which makes no reference to male or female. Some words haven't been updated yet, though. A family with only one parent is often called "boshi katei" which literally means "household of mother and child," but this word doesn't serve its purpose very well if the single parent is male. And Japanese who spend several years overseas then return to Japan are called "kikoku shijo" or "girl-children who have returned to their home country." The term is used for males as well as females, despite the fact that the "girl" meaning is built into the word via kanji characters. I was flipping channels while shaving this morning and happened to see Steven Seagal being interviewed in Japanese by Dave Spector, which was funny since they're both Americans. He was talking about his latest projects, including a Japanese detective film and an energy drink with his face on it. Seagal is popular in Japan because he's fluent in Osaka-ben, the dialect of Japanese that more or less corresponds to New York American English, and it seems I can't go a month without one of his action films being shown on Japanese television. For marketing reasons, most of his movies have been renamed into the "silence" series, for example, Under Siege is the Warship of Silence, On Deadly Ground becomes Fortress of Silence, and so on. I guess it makes it easier to sell a boxed set of his movies to Japanese fans.
Yeah I love the J-list team as well. Without there black black gum I can't get ready for exams! That peter guy who writes those mails does indeed speak a lot of sense. Like things you just get after being in Japan for a length of time. Japan is still pretty sexist, but not in a wholly unpleasent way. I know a couple of gaijin girls who found there time in Japan a bit nasty due to certain things, but nothing too major. The main problems with sexism were not in day to day life, but in relationships with Japanese guys. Anyway big up the Osaka-ben crew! Seagal I salute you.
Heh...I've been on their mailing list for about a year now. I love the assortment of cool things they sell...without them, I'd never have bought a mochi cake, a daruma, or a wooden temple shrine donation box replica! Good stuff and very educational.
