You know who the Japanese love (note to self: try to word things in a less vaguely racist way)? Nintendo. You know who Nintendo loves? Anyone that will buy their games. Through some version of the transitive property, Nintendo loves Japan because they are buying the crap out of Super Mario 3D Land.

In November, the newest Mario game sold over 500,000 unites in the island country, making it the highest selling game of the month. Most of the sales, 340,000 of them, came in the first week, making this the biggest 3DS launch yet. The game even topped Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but Japan isn’t huge on American wars it turns out.