J-list Blog

Toppo -- Baked Chocolate Snack

One of the most delicious and popular snack treats in all Japan, this is Lotte Toppo (like Pocky, but inverted), a wonderful baked pretzel stick filled with chocolate, crunchy and delicious. One of our all-time favorites, each box of Toppo includes two individually wrapped packages of approx. 12 sticks each, for a great and unique taste. (More like this) (Direct link to this product)

Toppo -- Baked Chocolate Snack

One of the most delicious and popular snack treats in all Japan, this is Lotte Toppo (like Pocky, but inverted), a wonderful baked pretzel stick filled with chocolate, crunchy and delicious. One of our all-time favorites, each box of Toppo includes two individually wrapped packages of approx. 12 sticks each, for a great and unique taste. (More like this) (Direct link to this product)

Okay, since I managed to get back earlier than I thought, here are some pictures. The izakaya was a place called Hokkatei, combining the first two characters of Hokkaido with Tei, meaning stop or in this case restaurant. Good seafood, considering we're as far from the sea as you can get.

Since Forget-the-year and New Year's Parties are quite common in Japan, restaurants like this have pre-set menus ready for us. We got the sashimi and nabe set, which was lots of fish (which you really appreciate when you come to live in Japan), and three big pots of kim-chee soup. Yum.

A rare glimpse of the J-List crew. Hilariously, the girls all sit on one side, and the guys on another side, no matter what we do. It's like we're all in Elementary School. This is us about to do the clap I wrote about in today's update. 

This is atsukan, hot sake. It warmed us nicely.

The nabe was delicious, too. This is kind of like sukiyaki, but deeper, and with different ingredients, including kim-chee, tofu, vegetables and meat. When we'd eaten it all, they put rice and crab meat in and stewed it some more and it was heavenly.

Later it was off to the karaoke box. They actually have disco balls in them, isn't that cool? Do they have disco balls in the U.S. at all? I've been gone way too long to know the answer to that.

There sure was a lot of anime and even video game music to choose from, testimony to the rise of otaku culture in Japan. Here you can see the full selection of songs from Air, one of the PC dating-sim games that was so popular they made a mainstream anime out of it.

I've posted before about how good karaoke is for learning Japanese. The only problem I had with it was, it's so effective at teaching you how to read and pronounce kanji properly, you outgrow it quickly.

Just what we all need, a medley of songs from Macross 7. Well, that was our fun little party. Hope you are going to have some fun this weekend, too. And of course, kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimas, which essentially means thanks for your past support, and we hope you'll continue to help us out in the future.

Glico Watering Kiss Mint Gum - Peach Mint Pink

Another pack of the delicious Kiss Mint, by Glico, the famous gum that's been around in Japan for years. This is "Peach Mint" flavor, meaning that it is for people who are concerned about their breath smelling bad -- the breath capsules with herbs and mint make your breath smell nice. 8 sticks of gum in a package with funny English on the package: "Watering Kissmint." Great for fans of Japan's delicious chewing gum. (More like this) (Direct link to this product)

Wiener Shaper -- Octopus

This unique device is a fun hot dog shaper that can be used to make it look like an octopus. Simply slide down the hot dog into the plastic which will cut the hot dog into 6 thinly sliced pieces to form the tentacles of the octopus but don't let it go down all the way. Just let it slide down half way so a head is formed and simply pull out to reveal the cute octopus you created. A great way to make kids bento meals fun again.

Heart Shaped Microwave Good Morning Egg Maker JAPAN!

How do you like your eggs? Scrambled, over easy, sunny side up, or heart shaped? This fun egg heart shaper is nice and easy for your Good Morning Egg -- just drop an egg on it, slide it on into the microwave and there you go, the heart as yoked. More fun than a pile of leaves! (and you get lots of cute points too!) Sure to get a smile from even the grumpiest of morning people. To use, simply crack in an egg (make sure you poke a few holes in the yoke so it can cook properly), and microwave for...

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.

I'm rushing to finish this update a little early since tonight we're having the J-List Shin-nen Kai, or New Year's Party. Similar to the Bo-nen Kai or "Forget the Year Party" held at the end of the year, a Japanese-style New Year's Party is an opportunity for companies or other groups to officially mark the start of a new year, and be brought closer in the process. We've reserved a room at a local izakaya, a traditional bar-restaurant that serves delicious food in addition to frosty mugs of beer and bottles of hot sake (got to have the hot sake!). J-List isn't a very formal company, and we're all pretty relaxed while we go about our business of bringing Japanese pop culture to the world, but I'm always surprised how ceremonial these company get-togethers automatically become. Once everyone is present, the organizer of the party (Yasu does it every year) will stand up and formally announce that the party has begun. After short speeches from Tomo or myself, we'll have the kanpai (cheers) and start eating and drinking. When the beer is gone we'll gather again and Yasu will announce that the party has come to an end, upon which everyone will clap their hands together loudly once, which symbolically ends the event until next year.

The other day I came home from work to spend some time with the kids, and I suggested popping a DVD in and watching it. "I can't," my daughter told me. "Today is 'No Media Day.'" This is an interesting idea that Japanese public schools have started to combat the glut of TV and video games in our modern society, and we had a fine time playing a few rounds of Uno instead. I've noticed some other interesting mechanisms that Japanese educators use to help bring students and their parents together. Recently my 12-year-old son made dinner for us, which was part of his Home Economics homework (he made a meat-and-potatoes dish called niku-jaga, an odd name because it sounds like Mick Jagger), designed to help the kids understand how hard it is for Mom to cook for everyone all the time. Then there was the time my daughter was assigned homework to help her mother around the house, which for some reason included making sure the shoes in the genkan (the foyer where people leave their shoes before entering the house) were all lined up neatly, not scattered like they usually are at our house. Compared with my own experiences in the U.S., I've noticed a lot more involvement by parents in the education of their children here, from frequent Parent Days in which mothers and fathers can sit in on classes to a system that places pressure on parents to spend at least one year in the leadership of their school's local PTA.

Right now it's juken (test) season in Japan, when hundreds of thousands of high school students take the university entrance exams they've prepared for over the past three years. The tests that each student must take differ depending on what school they're shooting for. Students trying to get into a national university like Tokyo or Kyoto University -- which are the most affordable, which makes them the most popular, which creates academic competition to get in, which increases the academic stature of the schools -- must take two, a standardized test called the Center Test, then the individual test for their school of choice. Because the Center Test is so important to the futures of so many young people, the subjects that appear on it help determine the educational direction of the country. One reason the Japanese aren't generally proficient at using English despite six years of study is that the Center Test requires only knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and the ability to puzzle out listening comprehension questions; since using English to communicate in any way isn't on the test, it's completely ignored by students. Due to a happy linguistic accident, the name Kit Kat sounds similar to kitto katsu ("you will surely win"), which has made it the official snack mothers give to their kids to munch on while taking their tests. To commemorate the season, Nestle has just released the new Sakura Kit Kat for 2008, which we've got on the site now.