Greetings from J-List November 8, 2002

Hello again from all of us at J-List!

First of all, there was a slight problem with the site for a few hours after Wednesday's update was posted -- the J-List product pages and front page were not updating, although the "view products updated in the last three days" link and search worked. If you looked for newly added products but couldn't find them, we're very sorry. The problem was fixed a few hours after the update mails went out.

Being an expatriate American is always interesting, allowing me to observe events inside the U.S. through the eyes of an outsider. American politics is especially interesting to observe from the outside looking in, and I've had many discussions with Canadian, Australian and Japanese friends about the American political system and how silly it can be sometimes. It's also fun to observe the impressions Americans make on the Japanese, what stereotypes they come up with when they think of Americans. In Gunma, where we live, most gaijin ride mountain bikes, especially Mormon missionaries, so mountain bikes and foreigners go together in the minds of Japanese. Americans are famous for being optimistic in all things -- I once doodled a happy face on a piece of paper and was told "That's very American" by a Japanese friend. Americans are famous for being bad at math (something I am personally guilty of), and according to my wife, Americans are never on time, although she might be just talking about me. Most Japanese believe that American men are more endowed than Japanese, and Tomo told me he was curious about the size of Americans' members when he was a child. The Japanese know of the American fascination with firearms, and when I was teaching English conversation, the subject of whether or not I'd owned guns back home came up a lot. (My answer was always no.) Finally, it's sad to say to say, but a major impression of Americans is that they tend to be on the large side. Considering that most of the Japanese staff has to shop at Gap Kids when they go to the U.S. in order to find clothes that fit them (you think I'm kidding, don't you?), there may be something to this.

The hardworking J-List staff has added detailed digital pictures for another 30 or so of the Japanese calendars we currently stock, allowing you to see what the beautiful calendars look like on the inside. We hope the new pictures make it easy to see how nice these things are and make your buying decisions easier. Incidentally, we can still get calendars (as well as any items) to you in time for Christmas. Since the things J-List sells are so unique and interesting, we believe they'd make great gifts for your loved ones. If you have any questions on our calendars or anything else, please let us know!

For the new update, we've got a super lineup of cool things from Japan for you, starting with:

• We were very pleased with the response we received from the soft acrylic blankets we posted to the site, so we've restocked these blankets and added several larger sizes and cute designs -- see them on the Wacky Things from Japan pages
  
• Also for Hello Kitty fans, an extremely cute Kitty + piggy bank combo items, and a fun pack of Hello Kitty bubble gum, new Kitty stamps, and in our San Diego office, a really cute Hello Kitty wall clock
  
• If you love Japan's Race Queens, we've got a super issue of RQ Press, with 100 beautiful girls including all the top stars
  
• Japan's swimsuit idols are popular, and we've got some nice photobook items for you, including fresh stock of Yuko Ogura's "Future Girl"
  
• J-List stocks authentic Japanese Loose Socks, the bulky, baggy socks that Japanese high school girls wear, and we've got fresh stock for you -- we also stock Socks Glue, to help keep our stocks up
  
• For anime fans, we've got some great toy items for you, including a super set of Tottoko Hamtaro soft vinyl figures that are extremely cute and fun to play with
  
• Also, for Lupin III fans, we've gotten in stock of the superb high-end poseable figures of Lupin, Jigen, Goemon and Zenigata, made by Medicom Toy
  
• For fans of cute anime girls and bishoujo games, we've got several sets of cute soft vinyl models, figures that you put together and display -- they're very cute
  
• For fans of traditional Japanese things, a super cool Japanese noodle set, double bento boxes, chopsticks, and other fun items for your kitchen or bento life
  
• For Japanese snack items, we've gotten several nice items in, including "chocolate tree stumps" (we're not kidding), cool Japanese gum and candy items, more miso soup and wasabi, and more
  
• Finally, find wacky stickers ("It is forbidden to urinate here"), a handy case that can hold anything from a phone to an Apple iPod, more Pocky, cute pro wrestling items, and more!
  

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

• For fans of Eichi Publishing's high quality adult magazines, we have the new Gokuh, an oversized magazine featuring all the top AV idols -- Hitomi Hayasaka, Hikari Kisugi, Misa Nishida, and more!
  
• Also enjoy amateur hardcore magazines like EX Gacha Ire featuring very erotic girls in love hotels, and a super double issue of Let's Do Good Things
  
• Enjoy some great hardcover Japanese photobooks including the lovely nude of Mai Asakura, back again after many years
  
• We have another volley of excellent hentai manga for you including the excellent Celamic (Ceramic) Garden by Fujimi Comics, a full set manga series, and more
  
• Also, a great update of restocked manga, including all volumes of the popular Paradise Lost and Lunatic Party parody comics, I Saw Her Standing There, and fresh stock of the long-selling anime parody Irodori!
  
• We've got some great new adult DVDs for fans, starting with the debut sex of the lovely Rei Itoh, in her very first on-camera performance (region free)
  
• The very erotic Rumiko Hasegawa, who looks suspiciously like Japanese actress Ryoko Hirosue, performs for you in an erotic new "Premium" hardcore offering (region free)
  
• We love the long-running Adult Video Wrestling series from Obtain Future, and we've got a new one for you -- very erotic and yet also a fantastic pro wrestling performance with authentic action (region free)
  
• Kokoro Amano is the "highest class of soap lady" and fulfills all your erotic dreams in a new offering from Soft on Demand (region free)
  
• A great new fetish offering from Deep's, enjoy "Lesbian Commando" with erotic "military lesbians" who have big guns and beautiful bodies (region free)
  
• From Moodyz, see the pure and innocent sex of three girls, aged 18 years old, filmed with classic Moodyz brash style
  
• Finally, see restocked erotic DVDs, including Obtain Future Memorial, superb 180 minute DVD offerings from Emily Yoshikawa and Hikari Kisugi, Mirai Hoshizaki's erotic Leg Fetish World, and more!
  

The top 5 lists for the past week have been update, so you can see what items are popular at J-List. Click the links to bring the items up in your web browser.

We've added a new link at the top of the J-List homepage, allowing you to translate it through Altavista's BabelFish links. The translation isn't always perfect (we amused ourselves viewing the site in Japanese), but we'll keep the links there in case they're of use to our international readers. Please note that you can't checkout using the BabelFish system (the cart file will come up empty), so switch back to English mode if you want to buy items through the site.

Greetings from J-List November 6, 2002

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Greetings from J-List November 4, 2002

Greetings from Japan, where a corndog is known as an "American dog."

I don't doubt that part of the reason I live in Japan today is all the Japanese TV and movies I enjoyed as a child -- Ultraman and Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot, Star Blazers, Kimba the White Lion, and so on. But while I was being influenced with a love of Japan, my wife was watching American TV shows that were being broadcast in Japan, shows like Charlie's Angels, Bewitched (brought over as "Okusama wa Majo" or My Wife is a Witch), I Dream of Genie, Knight Rider and so on. Just as I was first interested in Japan through monster movies and anime, she became intrested in America through American television. When we started dating, we knew we would end up married because we had so much in common, including a love of the 1980s show The Greatest American Hero. Fate can be very funny, can't it?

The Japanese are always pleased by foreigners taking an interest in their language and becoming fluent in Japanese, and many of the actors and comedians on Japanese TV are foreigners who have mastered Japanese enough to even be funny in the language. Dave Specter, an American who came to Japan as a TV producer, is universally despised by gaijin like me, usually because his Japanese is better than ours (but I hate him because he dyes his black hair blonde to appear more "American"). Daniel Carl is famous because he mastered Japan's Yamagata dialect, and it's funny to see an American speaking redneck Japanese. Thane Camus (prounced "Sane Kamyu" in Japanese) is a super-cute "gaijin talent" (and incidentally the grandson of famous French novelist Albert Camus) who does a show called World's Funniest English, in which Japanese who do not speak English are asked to tell stories in English while the exact translation of what they're saying appears on the TV. (If you want to see what he looks like, his homepage is here: http://www.thane.co.jp/thaneworld/info.html) And then there's Wickie-san, who came to Japan from Sri Lanka and passed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, Japan's top-ranked school. His primary goal is to get Japanese people to learn that Sri Lanka is not part of Africa.

Some customers have been reporting a problem with the J-List page, which causes individual categories to give a "page not found" error. If you should happen to experience problems with the J-List site, please let us know right away and we'll get on the problem.

We love the interactive love-simulation games from Japan, and work hard to bring these great games to you. This month, we're having a "free shipping sale" on some of our favorite games, the great English-language bishoujo releases from G-Collections! The four G-Collections games are I'm Gonna Nurse You (sexy goings-on in a school for nurses in training), Kana ~ Little Sister (heartfelt game about love between brother and sister with a story that will have you in tears), DOR (a classic bishoujo game from one of Japan's top game companies) and Chain ~ The Forgotten Footsteps, an excellent game loaded with sexual intrigue and more. Get free shipping on these games in the U.S. and Canada or half price shipping for international orders this month!

For the new update, we have some excellent products for you, including:

• For fans of beautiful anime art books, enjoy a great collection of Masahisa Suzuki artwork, loaded with color illustrations
  
• We've got reduced prices on the very nice bilingual comics we have, featuring Cardcaptor Sakura, Ah My Goddess and Love Hina with both English and Japanese, right in the book!
  
• For Japanese snack fans, we'v got some nice items for you, including tasty Cafe Chocolat Pretz, rare Babana Kit Kat from Nestle, and some delicious Hello Kitty "edible bubbles" that are fun to play with and eat
  
• Speaking of Hello Kitty, we've got some nice new items for you, including a great Hello Kitty USB hub (Kitty types on her keyboard when you do)
  
• For Gundam fans, see the great plush toy of Haro, the flying round robot from the first two Gundam series -- it's really just too cool!
  
• Also for anime and toys fans, enjoy fresh stock of many cool items, including the Japanese-only Hot Wheels, fresh stock of the Space Cruiser Yamato die-cast toy that is so cool, and more!
  
• We've got a killer item for Evangelion fans, too: a beautiful "master model production" of the third Angel Sachiel from Kaiyodo
  
• Also, for Star Wars fans, we've got fresh stock of the popular "Kiran Kiran" lighting necklaces, including Darth Vader and Yoda!
  
• Laputa fans will love the beautiful soft vinyl Laputian Robot keychain added to the site -- it's so cool!
  
• For fans of traditional items, we've got a beautiful set of "card wallets" that you can use as business card holders, or else carry anything from credit cards to cash in them -- they're made out of the same material as kimonos
  
• Finally, see a nifty train pass you can use, wacky Japanese stamps, a handy "pocket toilet" for times when you can't get to one, and more!
  

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

• For Japanese magazine fans, we've got the new Video Boy and Best Video, two excellent all-purpose adult video magazines that feature all pro AV idols from Japan's adult video world
  
• Also, we've got fresh stock of the popular backissues of magazines, stocked in our office in San Diego -- check them out on magazine page 3!
  
• For fans of Japan's hardcover glossy photobooks, we've got some nice new items, including Kyoko Ayana's beautiful nude photobook, and great items by Mihiro and Ayaka Bessho
  
• For adult manga fans, we've got some great new hentai comics, including Milk Lovers by Belle Comics, as well as other new works and restocked comic works including Huge Breast Mother and Daughter
  
• Also, we have the excellent vol. 5 of A-G, the English hentai magazine of "art, sex and CG culture"
  
• For DVD fans, we've got many nice items for you, starting with a 180 minute collection of the "first debut fuck" of sixteen famous AV idols (region free)
  
• From Soft on Demand comes a very special item: to commemorate their reaching $70 million in annual sales, they've released a special DVD of their best works over the past 7 years -- 4 hours! (region free)
  
• Also from SOD, a great new "Rubbing the Breasts for the First Time" offering (region free)
  
• Maria Yumino and four AV gals go into the Magic Mirror Box Car for some excellent "fan thanks" in beautiful Shonan Beach, Yokohama (region free)
  
• For fans of Japanese Indies, enjoy a very detailed "digital mosaic" release with the lovely Nao Oikawa (region 2)
  
• If you're interested in Japanese films, especially in the story of Ai Iijima, one of the most famous AV actresses of the 1990's, don't miss the excellent Platonic Sex, in stock now and with English subtitles! (region 2)
  
• Finally, we've got a major restock of DVDs, including Minori Aoi's great Cosplay Mania, Ryoko Mitake's Parfum, hard- and softcore titles from Hitomi Hayasaka, more Mai Hagiwara DVDs and more!
  

The J-Mate site has been updated again, with new reviews of Aroma Planning's "International Lesbian" and also a review of the autobiographical movie based on Ai Iijima's life, "Platonic Sex." The URL for J-Mate is http://www.jmate.com/

Remember that J-List carries many cute items for your kitchen, including bento boxes and accessories, Japanese chopsticks (both basic ones for general use and cute chopsticks), sushi and onigiri molds, wacky Japanse kitchen containers, and more. Please check out the "Kitchen and Bento" section of the Wacky Things from Japan page!