The other day my wife asked me what a "window-breaker" was. I assumed she was asking about a type of jacket designed to protect you from the wind, but she just might have been talking about a person whose occupation it was to break windows. The problem is that Japanese is a syllable-based language, and generally not blessed in terms of the range of sounds you can produce with it. Foreign words like "wind" are written with the katakana writing system, but because you can only produce the sounds da, di, du, de or do but never "d" all by itself, the word "wind" always comes out a bit like "window," something that takes getting used to. There are other phonetic rough spots built into the language, too. When Lord of the Rings (ロード・オブ・ザ・リング) was released here, a lot of fans thought it was Road of the Rings, due to the lack of differentiated L and R (ロード could also be "load"). Another problem area is that the sound "si" is pronounced as "shi" in Japanese, which means that a simple word like "sit" can be extremely embarrassing -- and don't even consider trying to use the English word "pushy" here, it will not mean what you think it will mean. Some other words that can't be accurately rendered in Japanese are "love" and "rub," which effectively become the same word; "curb" and "curve," which also get reduced to a single concept; "cone" and "corn," prompting millions to assume that the thing that ice cream sits on is made of corn; and the extremely hard-to-pronounce trio of "clash" "crash" and "crush."
The Japanese are well known for using the grammatical rules of English to create new words, which are called
wasei eigo or "Made in Japan English." One of the most famous examples of these is "nighter," which is what a night game of baseball is called here. Adding this "-er" suffix to words is a popular way to create new words, and there's an extensive body of slang that makes use of this mechanism. For example, the word for "part time job" in Japanese is
arubaito, borrowed from the German word arbeit, so naturally a person working such a job is an
arubaitaa (arubeiter), also known as a
freeter (for "free-lance albeiter"). Often these new words are invented to define a sub-group of society, for example people who love mayonnaise are widely referred to as
mayoraa (mayo-ers), while people who love to collect Hello Kitty products are defined as
Kitty-raa (Kittylers). There seems to be a connection to general otaku culture, too. It's possible to extend the ending vowel of the word Akihabara to produce something like Akihaballer (egads, that's hard to transliterate), which means otaku who spend lots of time in Tokyo's electronics and anime hub. Of course, these silly words come and go all the time, so don't expect to find them in a dictionary.
I saw a news report the other day that a major producer of instant noodles in Japan will be raising prices by 10-20 yen soon in response to the rising costs of raw materials to make their products. It seemed interesting to me that this was even news, since in the U.S. at least, most people take the slow creeping of inflation for granted, assuming that most things will be more expensive next year than they were a year ago. But for some odd reason, this rule doesn't generally apply to Japan, where the inflation rate always seems to be low. Except for one hike in train fares a few years ago, I'd be hard pressed to name many prices that have gone up appreciably over the past decade -- and in fact, some of prices have fallen, like when Yoshinoya lowered the price of their trademark Beef Bowl. Recently, however, the rising cost of oil has started to put real inflationary pressure on the country, with a liter of gasoline going for around $1.25, which works out to $4.50 a gallon. My wife is also mad because these useful plastic drawers we use to organize our house have shot way up in price.
Remember that the first
2008 Japanese calendars have come in, and it's a great time for you to to browse our lineup of anime.
JPOP,
idol and actress,
Japanese photo and other amazing calendars. These large-format glossy calendars are a really fun and unique way to make 2008 an extra special year, bringing a little slice of Japan to you every day.
We have good news for fans of the English-translated PC dating-sim games here, an announcement that the upcoming
Bazooka Cafe has gone "Golden Master" and will be shipping soon. A super "maid cafe" game by G-Collections, Trabulance and artist Kohaku Sumeragi, it puts you in the role of a young man surrounded by some of the most beautiful females ever seen. When your aging father collapsed, you dutifully quit your office job to take over running his cafe. Even though exotic Cocoa agreed to come back to her old waitress job, it's still a challenge to run a busy cafe. One day, your former coworker Mizuki comes in an announces that she's going to work at your cafe, then before you know it, two other gorgeous beauties -- childhood friend Narumi and former boss Yayoi also join the staff. It's like a dream come true: you're surrounded by beautiful women, and you're in heaven! This game includes the Bazooka Cafe Valentine Special, a bonus game featuring all-new game art, too. Preorder this great game now before it ships!
Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work" (a yes/no verification screen will be displayed to filter products from our mature site). To see all the J-List products, check out
J-List or the
JBOX.com updated products link. We also recommend watching our
"new products" RSS feed | | JUKEBOX -- Azusa Ito (region 2). A popular new series of 4 hour DVDs released at a great price. These are the best works of Azusa Ito compiled onto one handy DVD. |
| | ANIME PARA PARA MAX US MIX. I just love these Anime Para Para CDs, and owned the whole set from Japan. I am thrilled to have a U.S. release, and I recommend these fun dance-able anime theme songs. I often work late at night at J-List blasting these cool tunes. |
| | Bazooka Cafe *Preorder*. This outstanding game, a cool "maid cafe" dating-sim, is finally Golden Master and will be duplicated soon. Have you preordered your copy? |
