Japan has a highly developed entertainment world composed of thousands of professional actors, singers, idols, comedians, "announcers" (aka newscasters) and タレント tarento, a general term for anyone with a skill worth putting on TV for any reason. All of this is managed by professional studios like Yoshimoto Creative Agency, who handles the careers of Japan's top comedians, or Johnny's Entertainment, producers of every Japanese boy band you've ever heard of. One pattern I've observed is, if you've got a really interesting and original angle, there might be an opening for you in Japan's entertainment world...but there's only one potential opening for each unique "talent proposition" so you have to get there first. If you happen to be a Japanese-bilingual comedian from Nigeria, an amusing American who's fluent in the Yamagata-ben dialect of northern Japan or a comically huge former Chicago Bears linebacker, you need not apply, as these positions have already been filled by Bobby Ologun, Daniel Kahl and Bob Sapp. The latest fresh and unique concept to appear in Japan's entertainment world is an idol group called Weather Girls, a team of Taiwanese singing idols managed by Hong Kong's Next Media Ltd., who sing and dance and...tell you if you'll need to bring your umbrella to work today. They're more than just a kawaii singing group: the girls are currently studying to take the national weather forecasting license exam to become registered meteorologists in Japan, so they can report the weather on the morning news programs.

Taiwanese idol group Weather Girls is big in Japan; I went shopping for a butt-washing toilet.

My wife and I recently made the decision to "reform" our house, which is what the Japanese call remodeling for some unknown reason. One thing I knew I wanted to upgrade was our toilet, so we hopped in the car and headed to the local TOTO showroom to check out their latest models. TOTO (short for 東洋陶器 toyo-tohki or Oriental Ceramics) is the largest maker of toilets in the world, and in the 80s they developed a toilet with butt-washing and bidet features built-in called a "washlet" which has come to define Japan almost as much as Akihabara, bullet trains and Sony. While the basic features are the same, the newest models do cool things like sense when you've entered the bathroom and hydraulically lift the lid while heating the seat for you, then a mist of ionized water cleans the bowl so it's nice and fresh when you sit down. (An LED flashes inside the toilet while the mist is released, which I found terribly cool, though I couldn't say why.) There are numerous options for cleaning when you're done, from the standard butt spray to various "massage modes," and when you stand up the toilet auto-flushes and cleans the bowl for you again. If you're interested in getting a washlet toilet, they're available in various countries including the USA. Getting one installed would probably involve hiring an electrician, unless you happen to have an electric plug right behind your toilet as nearly all homes in Japan do.

That Steven Spielberg, he's really good at making movies -- you could even say he's "Jaws." In Japanese, the word for being skillful at something is 上手 joh-zu, which happens to be how the English movie title Jaws is pronounced, hence making a fun (?) little pun. Making word connections like this is one of the ways I helped myself learn the language -- I still remember doodling a little shark coming out of the water in my textbook next to this word -- and it's one way to help "trick" your brain into remembering new information. There are many other ways to learn with these mnemonic games. For example, you might memorize the word りんご ringo (apple) by picturing famous Beatle Ringo Starr eating an apple, and to learn the word 死ぬ shinu (to die), just memorize the sentence "She knew he was going to die." Having trouble remembering the word 揺らす yurasu (to shake)? Well, get out on the dance floor and shake yurasu! You can use these mind games to memorize kanji too, since 肉 niku ("meat") actually looks like a pair or ribs, and the kanji 古 furui ("old") looks like a little gravestone. You can even learn hiragana and katakana using these kinds of mind tricks.

Remember our great news for fans of our English-language eroge and dating-sim games: a huge price drop! We've permanently lowered prices on almost 50 of our great visual novels, from The Sagara Family to Yume Miru Kusuri to Kana Little Sister and Brave Soul. Prices have been lowered by $5 or $10 on a huge number of games, so it's a great time to browse the reduced-price visual novels and eroge and see which you'd like to pick up!

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. You can view all new J-List products by clicking this link.

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