New Arrietty plushes from Sun Arrow.

It's been a couple weeks since the Arrietty was released, and I've yet to see the movie. To accompany the Karigurashi no Arietti (The Borrower Arrietty) premiere, Sun Arrow has released it's first set of plush toys:

First we have the Arrietty mascot, at 12 cm (1:1 scale??) it can attach to your bag or cellphone?!? Mascots on bags have seemed to replace the cellphone lanyard fad as of late. I've got Docomo-dake attached to my bag right now, and have been eying this Kodama.

Also from Arrietty are these great Neeya plush toys. Having not seen the movie yet, I don't know what, if any, character Neeya plays, but judging from previous Ghibli movies, she or he is probably a lazy house cat that just lounges around. Neeya currently comes in Medium (40 cm), Small (25 cm), and Mascot (13 cm, with chain). Aside from Jiji and Lily from Kiki's Delivery Service, Neeya is probably the only other cat (normal cat, sorry Nekobus) plush Sun Arrow has made in its Ghibli collection.

If anyone has seen the movie, I'd love to hear what role Neeya plays, just leave a blurb in the comments.

Serving the mangaka in you.

Walking into the office the other day, I came across one of the various pose books we carry, the "High School Girls" pose collection for mangaka. After just watching Danny Choo's Culture:Japan trailer, and remembering him writing about how hard it was to get filming permission, I thought these pose books are and excellent way to see Japan in a different light.

The fact is that there are all kinds of different pose books for traditional artists and mangaka alike. Let's take a quick look at a several choice selections from our book catalog.

For those of you looking to perfect the human female form, the Ima-doki Nude Pose-shu will be perfect.

How about some Moe poses?

I was also able to find a selection of BL themed pose books, BL/Yaoi manga are big sellers here.

Again, if you're interested in drawing the insides of schools or Japan in general, we've got the excellent Background Visual Material series.

Finally, if you're interested in the mythical, Ghibli forest, kinda thing, you must get the Kusanagi series of Background Illustrations.

With the Japanese manga/anime industry outsourcing more and more, foreign mangaka will need to get their scenery in order. There's plenty of help though, right from the source.

Ghibli Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi in Kanazawa

Ishikawa Prefecture native and director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Cécile Corbel are making an appearance at Aeon Cinema Kanazawa, Forus Shopping Center outside of Kanazawa Station on Tuesday July 27th, 2010, 8:10 PM. They'll make a brief presentation for about 15 minutes, after which you'll be able to enjoy Yonebayashi's directorial debut, Karigurashi no Arietti.

Aeon Cinemas are fairly small, which will make for a intimate viewing experience of the director. Reserved seating only. Info in Japanese here.

Happy Hacking Keyboard

In June, to celebrate PFU's 50th Anniversary, they held a prize drawing. You could select one of several different awards centered around the limited HHKB Blue (ESC) Key, or you could purchase a Happy Hacking Keyboard and get the blue key.

Since PFU is located near Kanazawa, I thought I'd try my luck. No e-mail from them as of yet. Did any one enter, or better yet, did anyone purchase a HHKB Professional and get the blue key?

Let AudioTechnica help you run longer...

... 23 minutes longer according to a recent online survey by Audio-Technica. 70% of those surveyed reported having listened to music while jogging, while 93% stated they felt they could run longer with music than without.

Breaking down the music genres joggers often listened to:

• J-Pop 87%
• R&B 30%
• Hip Hop 27%
• Anime songs 18%
• Enka 2%

Here's the responses to the question, "What song do you most often listen to while jogging?":

1. Kiseki by GReeeeN (17 votes)
2. Monster by Arashi (9 votes)
3. Happiness by Arashi (8 votes)
4. Makenaide (ZARD), Joifuru (Ikimonogakari), Ring a Ding Dong (Kaera Kimura) - 6 votes

Does music give you the inspiration to jog longer? What are your favorite sports headphones?

Studio Ghibli: On Your Mark.

After watching Whisper of the Heart (耳をすませば) for the first time this evening, I wanted to read up on it a little more, and came across a reference to "On Your Mark." In 1995, apparently Ghibli produced a short animation for the video of On Your Mark by Chage & Aska. Luckily, I was able to find it on Google Video:

JLPT: お天気がいいから散歩しよう

... said the voices, one after another, from the sound check CD.

A pretty much full seminar room at Hokuriku University had just returned from the gengo-chishiki portion of the exam. In classrooms all over Japan, examinees had just completed the first section of the new JLPT examination. For me, those 105 minutes really flew by fast, as I struggled to get through the reading portion of the exam. During June I had taken the 2007, 2008, and 2009 2-kyuu exams to practice, and had handily passed them. However, somehow this new N2 exam felt different, more difficult than the previous. One of the changes this year was the combination of the language knowledge section, if you don't manage your time you could spend too much time on the vocabulary/grammar section, and lose the valuable time necessary to work on the reading comprehension questions. I ended up having to shortcut the longest text, and just tried to pull the answers without reading the whole thing. One nice thing was the revision of the reading layout, it went from short to long, with the "graph," or on this test an informational bulletin, last; there's no need to skip to the end and go backwards anymore.

As for the listening part, there were two new types of questions for the N2 listening portion, both of them didn't give you the questions until after the dialog was spoken. The dialogs were simple, nothing different from the other sections, it just means that if you don't have a good memory, you have to take some notes.

I've never taken the old JLPT tests, but other than a slightly higher difficulty compared to the questions in previous years, it's mostly the same stuff. Perhaps the most dramatic change is that you have to pass each section in order to pass the whole test, and this change has me wondering if I'll pass. We'll all have to wait until September to find out. Pass or fail, it doesn't matter, time to get to work on studying for N1! Gotta break out the wallet for some new texts.

Porco Rosso in da house!

It's been longer than I remember, since the last time I watched Hayao Miyazaki's 紅の豚, a.k.a. Porco Rosso or Crimson Pig depending on which side of the Adriatic you live on. This month, 日テレ (Nihon TV) is presenting the ジブリ祭り (Ghibli Matsuri), a Ghibli movie each Friday night this month (except the 30th).

Since the family was watching something else downstairs, I got to put my Nintendo DS TV to work... don't you just love 1seg? Here's one of the beginning scenes where Porco is battling the pirates.

Next we have the maiden flight of the supped up Savoia S.21F.

Porco loves his new "boat".

It was nice to take a break from JLPT study, thanks 日テレ! Here's the great line up this month:

• July 9 - Mimi wo Sumaseba (1995)
• July 16 - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
• July 23 - My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Aside from Totoro, I haven't seen the other two flicks... so it'll be nice to check them out on the cheap! The great thing is that when I first started watching Miyazaki's films, I had just begun to study Japanese. It's nice to finally understand what's going on, without English subtitles.

If you're interested in Porco Rosso, beNippon carries tons of authentic merchandise from the movie, our scale model kits have been especially popular.