Peter in Japan (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} j_list) wrote,@ 2005-01-19 17:22:00 |
|
Wed, 19 Jan 2005
Back during my days at SDSU, I used to do whatever I could to expose myself to the Japanese language, transcribing JPOP songs friends gave me so I could memorize the words for singing at karaoke bars, and reading lots of manga. One Japanese word I came across was a fun one: yappari, pronounced YAH-PAHree, with a small pause between the first two syllables. Translatable as "as I thought" or "just as I suspected," the word finds itself into a lot of modern manga comics. A girl might find her boyfriend flirting with another girl and spit out "Yappari!" ("I knew I'd find you here!"), or a teacher might express exasperation with a student who didn't do his homework using this phrase ("I knew it!"). It's one of those words Japanese people never expect foreigners to know, so it's fun for that reason, too. Alternate versions of the word are yappa and yahari (YAH-PAH, YAH-hah-ree).
If you've ever been to Japan, you probably noticed the big plate-glass windows outside most every restaurant displaying replicas of food items. Accurately recreating food in wax so that it looks delicious enough to eat is an art form in Japan, and the artists who create the fake food are very much in demand by restaurants who want to show how good their meals are to potential customers passing by on the street. If you like these extremely detailed food replicas, we certainly recommend the food toys made by Re-Ment, modeled after this wax food -- they're fabulously detailed, complete with little chopsticks and silverware, and are a fun way to sample this aspect of Japanese culture. (Full sets of most food items are in stock.)
Sadly, my sojurn in San Diego has come to and end, and it's time to put my momohiki (Japanese for long underwear) on and head back to Japan. San Diego is blessed with almost ridiculously great weather most of the year -- right now we're enjoying our January santa ana, the hot desert winds that have been bringing us up to the 80s every day, even as parts of the U.S. are experience minus 45-degree weather. The heavy rains we had earlier in the month have had an interesting effect: San Diego is a very green place, with grass and flowers popping up where there's normally only sand-colored scrub. It's a big difference from the way things looked this time last year, when thousands of acres were blackened from massive wildfires.
At J-List, we love to bring you cool products you can't get outside of Japan. One upcoming item we're excited about is the 50th Anniversary Godzilla Boxed Set, a tremendous collection of all thirty Godzilla movies ever released, including the most recent film, Godzilla Final Wars. In addition to all these DVDs, you get a really cool kigurumi mask (a mask that covers your head completely) that is only available as part of this collector's set. We're posting the boxed set to the website for preorders now -- this will be a very rare item so don't delay as we probably won't be able to get our hands on more than 5-6 sets.
Back during my days at SDSU, I used to do whatever I could to expose myself to the Japanese language, transcribing JPOP songs friends gave me so I could memorize the words for singing at karaoke bars, and reading lots of manga. One Japanese word I came across was a fun one: yappari, pronounced YAH-PAHree, with a small pause between the first two syllables. Translatable as "as I thought" or "just as I suspected," the word finds itself into a lot of modern manga comics. A girl might find her boyfriend flirting with another girl and spit out "Yappari!" ("I knew I'd find you here!"), or a teacher might express exasperation with a student who didn't do his homework using this phrase ("I knew it!"). It's one of those words Japanese people never expect foreigners to know, so it's fun for that reason, too. Alternate versions of the word are yappa and yahari (YAH-PAH, YAH-hah-ree).
If you've ever been to Japan, you probably noticed the big plate-glass windows outside most every restaurant displaying replicas of food items. Accurately recreating food in wax so that it looks delicious enough to eat is an art form in Japan, and the artists who create the fake food are very much in demand by restaurants who want to show how good their meals are to potential customers passing by on the street. If you like these extremely detailed food replicas, we certainly recommend the food toys made by Re-Ment, modeled after this wax food -- they're fabulously detailed, complete with little chopsticks and silverware, and are a fun way to sample this aspect of Japanese culture. (Full sets of most food items are in stock.)
Sadly, my sojurn in San Diego has come to and end, and it's time to put my momohiki (Japanese for long underwear) on and head back to Japan. San Diego is blessed with almost ridiculously great weather most of the year -- right now we're enjoying our January santa ana, the hot desert winds that have been bringing us up to the 80s every day, even as parts of the U.S. are experience minus 45-degree weather. The heavy rains we had earlier in the month have had an interesting effect: San Diego is a very green place, with grass and flowers popping up where there's normally only sand-colored scrub. It's a big difference from the way things looked this time last year, when thousands of acres were blackened from massive wildfires.
At J-List, we love to bring you cool products you can't get outside of Japan. One upcoming item we're excited about is the 50th Anniversary Godzilla Boxed Set, a tremendous collection of all thirty Godzilla movies ever released, including the most recent film, Godzilla Final Wars. In addition to all these DVDs, you get a really cool kigurumi mask (a mask that covers your head completely) that is only available as part of this collector's set. We're posting the boxed set to the website for preorders now -- this will be a very rare item so don't delay as we probably won't be able to get our hands on more than 5-6 sets.
