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It's time for one of my least favorite times of
the year: rainy season, called tsuyu in Japanese, written with
the kanji for "plum" and "rain" since for
some reason, the rain during this season falls in extra-large
drops. For the next month, Japan will get rain almost every day,
and generally be very grey and dismal. Well, at least we've got
the sweltering Japanese summer to look forward to starting in
July!
When I started learning Japanese at SDSU in
the late 1980s, my Japanese friends made tapes of music for me
to help me learn. This was my first brush with Japan's
ubiquitous idol culture, in which beautiful singers are placed
on pedestals and worshipped as a national pasttime. The top
idols of the 80s -- Seiko Matsuda, Noriko Sakai, etc. -- were
incredibly cute in a mind-dulling but very real way, and I
eagerly embraced Japanese music as a way to learn the language
and experience a new side of the culture at the same time. One
of the keywords of Japan's idol culture is "burikko,"
a word which combines "buru" (to pretend) and "ko"
(child, girl), which describes the somewhat false bouncy
cuteness Japan's idols exude. Today, the top idol in Japan is
Aya Ueto, who worked her way up through the ranks acting and
singing, landing a starring role in NHK's current big-budget
historical drama, Yoshitsune. She's also the current "CM
queen," appearing in more TV commercials than anyone else.
In her latest appearance, Aya-chan wears a Speed Racer costume
and drives the Mach 5 while she advertises Men's Plaza Aoki, a
popular men's clothier. When you live in Japan, it can be darned
hard to resist the charms of these super-cute smiling
faces.
Now that I'm back in Japan, I have to
re-orient myself to driving on the left side of the road. In
general, this isn't that hard -- you just look at what the other
cars are doing, and make sure you're following their lead.
Another way to avoid confusion when switching from one country
to the other is to make sure that whatever country you're in,
you're driving nearer to the middle of the road than your
passenger. While getting used to driving isn't that hard, I seem
to have more trouble remembering which side of the car to get
into, and frequently embarrass myself by trying to get in the
wrong side, then walking around the car.
J-List is famous for our wacky Japanese
T-shirts with messages like "Now accepting applications for
Japanese girlfriends" and so on. The shirts are extremely
high quality, 100% cotton 6.1 lb weight shirts printed in the
USA -- and today we've got two new offerings for you! The
Japanese are known to work very hard, and sometimes can actually
die of overwork (known as karoshi) -- our newest shirt warns you
to take time to smell the roses, though. Then, when gaijin go
drinking in Tokyo, there's always the chance of running into a
bar with a sign saying "no foreigners allowed." Now
we've got a cool T-shirt of this for you!
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