J-list Blog

YUTANPO ~ Microwave Hot Pack & Cover

Here's another modern version of a classic Japanese heating method -- a yutan pad is traditionally filled with boiling water and used for heating sore muscles and for keeping beds warm under the covers during the chilly winter months. This specially made pad is a microwave yutan that you can just pop in your 'electric range' (microwave) and keep it wherever you need a boost of T-energy (Thermal). Plus it's soft and mushy like a mousepad so you can rest your tired dogs on a warm cloud of...

Kairo ~ DX Large Warming Pad (Individual)

When it's just too cold and the heater's on the fritz (or just won't keep up with the extreme conditions), here's a great slice of Japanese innovation that will make your life easier (well, at least a little warmer). These instant heating pads are perfect for those critical convenience store missions during the coldest times, and great for soothing sore muscles, too. Just remove the outer package and mix around the pouch (without opening it) to activate the heating element. Now available as...

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 J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

One of the defining features of the Japanese as a people is that they are generally kenson (KEN-son), that is, humble and not boastful. If you've ever tried to compliment a Japanese person on something such as their English ability or how smart their kids are, you may have experienced a strong denial that can be confusing to Westerners. I was reminded of this during the San Diego Comicon a couple of years ago. While setting up our booth I happened to see a Japanese-looking girl with a badge that read Junko Mizuno. Being a complete idiot, I didn't realize it was the artist herself, and I actually said, "Oh, you have the same name as that famous artist, how interesting." The girl, who is so small-bodied she could have passed for a sixth grader, blushed red that anyone would think her famous, despite her many published works all around the world. One word the Japanese use when receiving some kind of compliment is okage-sama de (oh-KAG-geh sah-mah deh), a phrase which literally means "thanks to you," which is a little weird since the person doing the complimenting probably had nothing to do with the acquisition of the skill in question. Often when you say something nice to a Japanese person, they'll turn the kindness back onto you with this phrase.

Without a doubt, one of the big barriers to learning Japanese are the kanji, the Chinese characters that communicate meaning in written Japanese. Elementary school students start learning kanji in the first grade, starting with the simplest character there is (ichi, the number one, written 一) and going all the way up to the last character of the sixth grade (hai, meaning ash, written 灰). Although many might blanch at the idea of mastering the entire list of 1945 joyo or "general use" kanji, what you need to be considered literate in the language, it's really not that bad if you take it a step at a time. In recent years, the rise of waapro (word processing) and computers has brought a real change in how people work with their writing system. Since characters are written by hand less often, instead increasingly typed using a computer keyboard or cell phone's keypad with the correct character picked from a list, many Japanese (and gaijin, like yours truly) lose much of their ability to write the characters, although the ability to read them is usually not affected. The problem is pretty widespread, with Japanese people from all walks of life generally less able to write kanji than the previous generation. The other day I caught a TV show called Neptune League in which teams of famous people -- say, female TV announcers, who are all supposed to be very well educated -- ride in a train traveling through a computer-generated mine shaft. Words fly out at them, and they must correctly write the kanji characters on the screen or the CG car will be sent crashing to the bottom of the shaft. It's quite an interesting show -- everyone in our family gets quite excited as they try to write the correct answers before the timer runs out.

On Sunday I took my son into Tokyo to check out an exhibition on robots at the National Science Museum, where we got to see the famous robot Asimo that can climb stairs and play soccer. We took the opportunity to ride the shinkansen, Japan's famous bullet trains that zip along special elevated rails, which is my all-time favorite way to travel. My son told me he wanted to eat ekiben, the traditional bento boxed lunches that are only sold at train stations. Each Japanese city makes its own unique train station bento lunches, like Masu no Sushi (a round disc of rice with salmon on top that you eat like a pizza) from Toyama on the Sea of Japan, or the famous Kanimeshi (crab meat bento) from Hakodate, Hokkaido. The symbol of the city of Takasaki (where we catch the train) is the Daruma, those round red figures that are displayed in homes and businesses to bring good luck, which are representations of Bodhidharma, a historical figure from India in the 6th century who founded the predecessors to Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu, and who attained his unique round shape by fasting and meditating for so long that his arms and legs disappeared. When it came time to choose which lunch we wanted to eat, we naturally picked Daruma Bento, and ate it in the train as the countryside sped by.

Just a heads up, I'm going to be making some changes to the way I do the blog posts. Instead of one "super" post with several subjects and today's newly posted items, I'm going to start doing smaller, more conventional posts in a more conventional format. I'm doing this for several reasons, but one of them is so that someone who wants to link to a point I make from another website doesn't necessarily have to be pointing to a post with Zenra Ice Skating, or whatever the latest wacky product is. Feedback on this is greatly appreciated.