This posted rated H (for Hentai)

So, if you know a bit about Japanese culture you may have run into the words Shonen and/or Jump. Shonen Jump is a weekly comic compilation for teen boys that's pretty famous. A lot of anime have gotten their start as serial manga in Shonen Jump. Naruto, for instance, and currently Gantz is running.

Anyway, last Friday Max and Seiji (pictured below) both recommended Shonen as reading practice. So Saturday I went out and bought.

It cost me 280円, which is like less than three bucks, and it's a good-sized volume, with around 15 seperate comics. I bought something called Young Jump, which I figured would be easier to read.

Which, of course, it wasn't. Through the unique ambulations of English-as-pop-culture the meaning of the word Young was somehow reversed, and Young Jump is actually harder to read and contains more gratuitous nudity than run-of-the-mill Jump.

I was slightly surprised. It's all fairly sexploitative, and I'm sure in a regular country people would be up in arms over it, but this is Japan and they're a little more relaxed about these things. I've heard a lot of explanations for this, ranging from the lack of Christian influence to the debauchery of American troops in the post-war period. Hentai (that's pervert in Japanese) culture is so accepted in Japan that the word has even found its way into American vocabulary, though in Canada it's generally a noun reserved exclusively for, say, tentacle-rape-porn.

Which, to be honest, I'm glad I couldn't find in Young Jump.