Greetings from J-List January 19, 2002

Hello and Happy Saturday from all of us in Japan.

We're often asked, when coming to Japan, what kinds of items are good to bring as gifts? In the past we've recommended cigarettes, Starbucks coffee or just about anything from your unique home town, be it St. Louis or San Diego. Since the Japanese really like the United States, any of the gazillion items with the Stars and Stripes is a good suggestion. If your intended recipients have been to America before, they may know about American's unchallenged lead in the world of breakfast cereal, and a box of some cereal might be an amusing but appreciated gift. Finally, my bother in Lake Tahoe sent us some graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows so we could make that all-so-American treat, S'Mores. They were such a big hit with our staff here, that we have to add graham crackers to the list of things to bring to Japan when visiting.

Everyone knows that the Japanese take their shoes off when they go into a house. To the Japanese, shoes, and anything to do with the feet, are inherently "dirty." When you enter your own home, you take your shoes off at the lowered foyer, called "genkan" in Japanese, and leave them there. If you have a lot of shoes on the floor of the genkan, you can store them in the handy and stylish shoes holder (geta-bako), which stores your shoes for you. (This is a good thing. Like American women, Japanese women love to accumulate shoes, my wife included.) Leaving your dirty shoes near the front door means that the house is much cleaner, and much easier to keep clean. For inside the house, Japanese always wear slippers, and if a gaijin goes to a Japanese person's house, the Japanese person will give him slippers to wear, even if they're much too small for his feet. It's always sort of "funny" to see people in American TV and movies wearing shoes indoors (kind of like seeing Pocari Sweat for the first time). Although we try to "live like Americans" when we go to the U.S., most of my Japanese family (including myself) quietly leave our shoes near the front door when back home.

I fondly remember my days at SDSU, studying Japanese with the text my professor, Higurashi-sensei, had written. It was third year Japanese, and quite difficult -- we were expected to master 100 kanji per month, which was difficult, although I had an advantage over most of the other students because I actively read manga to improve my reading skills. In the text, the American John Smith comes to a Tokyo university to study architecture, and meets his homestay family, including his homestay brother and sister, Taro and Hanako Yamada (Taro and Hanako Yamada are the Japanese versions of John and Mary Smith, i.e., the "most vanilla" names you can think of). Each chapter features John or his friend Mary getting into some misunderstanding that needs to be resolved. In one chapter, Mary got her sneakers dirty, so she washed them in the washing machine. Well, since shoes are seen as incredibly dirty things here in Japan, Mary's host mother got really angry, and had to buy a new washing machine. I thought that was an exaggeration, but my wife told me no, she would do the same thing if I tried to wash shoes in our washing machine.

We've got a bunch of nice items for you this weekend on the J-List site, with fresh stock of magazines, manga, DVD and other items, including a special treat for hentai doujinshi fans, the very cool busty doujinshi by Blue Eyes creator Tohru Nishimaki. Please check out the new and restocked items.

We're glad to see sales of the new English-language adult manga magazine, AG, taking off. We think this is a great concept, and we're going to support AG with articles on Japan and more. We offer this magazine as an automatic subscription (we'll send you each new issue as it comes in from our warehouse in San Diego). We'll also carry individual issues on the J-List website, too.

Want to take a VR tour of the "real" Tokyo? We found a really cool virtual reality site that lets you enjoy many interesting parts of Tokyo from the comfort of your computer room. Check out http://homepage.mac.com/dancy/vr/ (Quicktime required).

Greetings from J-List October 18, 2002

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Greetings from J-List January 17, 2002

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Greetings from J-List January 15, 2002

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Greetings from J-List October 14, 2002

Hello again to everyone from J-List!

Japan's name in Japanese is "nihon" which is written with the characters for "sun" and "origin" since, seen from China, Japan seems to be where the sun originates in the sky. (China's name for itself means "middle country" since they believed they were at the center of the world.) An alternate pronunciation for the same characters is "nippon," which was the name for Japan used during World War II and it still used today (kind of like the difference between "USA" and "US of A"). The Japanese often create new words by combining characters, and many companies get their names from Chinese character combinations. Nissan is written with the characters for "sun" and "production" (and hence it literally means "Made in Japan" since the sun characters also means Japan). Nisshin, the noodle company, is written with the characters for "sun" and "pure" (implying "purely from Japan").

The sun character has come to represent Japan, but all countries have kanji characters assigned to them, an arbitrary Chinese character which is assigned to represent that country. This system appears to be a holdover from World War II, when Japanese resisted using the languages of the "dirty foreign devils" and instead wrote everything in Chinese characters. Rather than say "America" they would refer to the Chinese character for America, in this case the character for "rice" (usually pronounced "bei"). Now having a system of referring to countries with a single character is handy -- you can make express big concepts with just a few characters. To see a list of some countries and the Chinese character and what each character means, see this graphic: http://www.jlist.com/c3/example.jpg

Today is a holiday in Japan, Sports Day. In Japan, autumn is peppered by a strange mix of holidays scattered here and there, like Culture Day and Respect for the Aged Day and Labor Thanksgiving Day (i.e., a day to give thanks to workers). Unlike American holidays, I've never seen a sign that Japanese care about what day a holiday is, or do certain things to commemorate the holidays. I've not noticed Japanese going to the seaside on Umi no Hi (Sea Day), or do something especially culturally important on Culture Day. But people don't mind a day off, no matter what the day is. Incidentally, there are no war-related holidays in Japan, no equivalent to Veteran's Day or Memorial Day (honoring veterans or war dead).

J-List sells a great item for DVD fans: low-cost region-free DVD players which will play DVDs from all over the world, no matter what region they're from. They even play PAL discs, in case you want to view DVDs from Europe. We're happy to announce that we've lowered the price of the Lasonic player, a very handy portable player that you can put anywhere (even in your car) to just $109!

For the new update, we've got a huge number of cool items from Japan for you, including:

• First, we have some nice new idol photobooks in, including lovely swimsuit idols and a great new offering by Yuko Nakazawa, former Morning Musume member
  
• We've restocked our cool Japan-only Hot Wheels cars, with new Speed Racer, Night Rider and Japanese-themed cars
  
• For snack fans, enjoy several new items, including Caplico, the fun to eat ice cream cone that's got chocolate on top, rather than ice cream, as well as many other items
  
• We have the large-size versions of the chic Blythe fashion dolls from Takara, based on a minor doll manufactured for one year in the U.S. -- they're really cool
  
• If you are a member of the Ultraman Generation, run, do not walk, to see the excellent resin statue we've got in stock -- unfortunately we have only one of these
  
• A great love of mine was the Gamera movies, starring Japan's most famous monster turtle -- and we've got limited stock of a really cool Gamera toy on the site now
  
• We love the new show Tokyo Mew Mew, about five cute girls who transform into cat girls and protect their boyfriends -- we've got some high-quality metallic stickers from the show in stock now
  
• For fans of Hayao Miyazaki's films, a super cute Totoro plush keychain, and a 4-figure Spirited Away keychain that is fabulous
  
• We've got some nice rare phone strap items, including an out of print Fist of the North Star item
  
• For Sailor Moon fans, we've also got the last available stock of the excellent Mini Collection Doll from Bandai (personally recommended by Peter's daughter)
  
• Finally, we have handy Japanese bamboo chopsticks (a set of 10 pairs), a great Hello Kitty ceramic rice bowl for little ones, a cute way to organize business cards, fresh stock of The Dog toilet paper (display it in your bathroom), and more!
  

For our adult customers, we've got many new 18+ products. These include:

• First, for fans of Japanese adult magazines, the new issue of the oversized Gokuh, and a rare treat, the new Dela Beppin
  
• Also, we've got new amateur magazines, including several nice amateur and love hotel magazines in stock
  
• One of our favorite items is DVD Catalog, a magazine + video CD sampler item that lets you enjoy many different "quickie" clips from different AV studios -- now we've got the deluxe 3-disc DVD Perfect Guide, with over 3 hours of AV for you
  
• We love Japan's photobooks, and have some nice ones in for you, including the very lovely Defiance, featuring the nude of the lovely Nana Chihara, and several other items
  
• Of course we have great hentai manga for you, including one that I really loved, a fantastic sex-fantasy Inspection from the Alvireo Observatory and more
  
• Also, fresh stock of cool doujinshi from the TGWOA people
  
• A unique item for fans of the Japanese inflatable "Love Pillows" based on famous AV idols, two new ones: Kurumi Morishita and Maiko Yuki!
  
• For fans of Japan's excellent adult DVDs, We've got a cool item for fans of Japanese cosplay: a super 200 minute cosplay DVD for you (region free)
  
• For Nao Oikawa lovers, we've got the new Other Side of Nao from Million, featuring her first anal sex ever (region free)
  
• Another great item, we've got a special *4 hour* DVD with the best performances of the lovely, busty Miho Fukada (region free)
  
• Another really cool offering, Akira Watase filmed having sex outdoors at night, shot with special night cameras for a really thrilling performance (region free)
  
• A great new lesbian offering from SOD features Rika Uemura being subjected to a "yuri" sexual experience (older, more experienced girls taking on young, shy girls) (region free)
  
• Finally, from Moodyz, a great erotic DVD featuring top stars like Bunko Kanazawa and Maiko Yuki and Aika Miura, all having sex while still wearing clothes (interesting Japanese fetish) (region 2).
  

Remember that J-List carries something that's almost impossible to get outside of Japan: authentic, beautifully hand-sewn Japanese high school uniforms, made just for you by the famous Matsukameya of Nagoya. Each uniform is sewn just for you, to the sizes you specify on our detailed chart, and the quality is not to be believed. If you love Japanese "cosplay" and want to try on a real Japanese female high school uniform (the company takes pride in offering sizes large enough for men to wear them), please see the excellent items we have on our site.