Greetings from J-List January 24, 2003

Hello and "Happy Weekend" from all of us at J-List.

An era in Japanese Sumo history has ended, with the retiring of Takanohana, one of the most popular wrestlers in the history of Japan's national sport. The son of a popular wrestler who is now the stablemaster of Futagoyama Stable (for some reason, the dojos that train Sumo wrestlers are translated as "stables" in English), both he and his older brother Wakanohana have had spectacular careers in the sport, attaining the highest rank of Yokozuka (Grand Master). Unfortunately, age and constant leg injuries had taken too much out of Taka, who made the decision to quit the sport after suffering a crushing defeat by Asashoryu, an up-and-coming wrestler from Mongolia, this week. Takanohana's retirement leaves just one wrestler with Sumo's highest rank, Hawaiian wrestler Musashimaru.

It's college entrance exam season in Japan, as students finish their year of intense studying and take tests that will determine much of their future happiness. Students will generally select a first choice university and one or more easier schools (called "suberi-dome" schools, a word that means "stop the slide"). Students usually go to jukus (evening prep schools) and study for their university exams for all three years of college, but the last year is when they really hit the books. It all pays off when they wake up early and go to their university one cold February morning and look for their number on the board indicating if they've passed the test. If they don't get into a school, they have to be a "university ronin" (a word originally meaning "masterless samurai") and try again next year. Japan's "test wars" are quite interesting, and the drama of taking the most important test of your life are often captured in TV dramas, and in anime like Maison Ikkoku or the Orange Road Movie.

High school students going to college aren't the only ones who have to study for entrance exams -- junior high school students must also take an entrance exam to go to high school, since high school is not part of compulsory education in Japan. Students choose the school they think they can get into and take that school's test. In some cases, students who aim too high don't get into a school and become "high school ronin," fifteen year olds who don't go to school for a year, although it's rare. Japan has a problem with students who choose not to go to high school at all, the equivalent of a high-school dropout, although high school is optional here -- these people are called "chu-sotsu" in Japanese, which means "only graduated from junior high school." As Japan's population of children drops, many new pressures are being applied to Japan's unique education system, including decreased competition to get into popular schools.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:

• First, for fans of the super-cute Kubrick figures, we've got in more cute To-Fu Kubricks, characters whose heads are block of tofu
  
• Through an error, the Hamster Club blankets weren't posted on Wednesday -- sorry about that. We've posted these beautiful and very soft blankets for you today
  
• Also, we've gotten the new 2003 Hello Kitty large blankets, very colorful and incredibly soft, and in stock for you now
  
• For fans of Japanese candy and snacks, we've got new items in, including more tasty Gravel Choco, tasty Fujita chocolates that are sold only in winter, delicious pork ramen snacks, and more
  
• Also, one of our favorite items, delicious curry flavored Curl (but this is special "Lucky Curl" specially made to help you pass your college entrance exams
  
• Also, we've got a great Hamtaro plush bag filled with snacks, the very cute Ribbon-chan from the TV anime
  
• Look for cute sticker items, including glow in the dark stickers that you can use to label things in your home, as well as dynamite Hamster stickers and more
  
• We've got great items for your kitchen, including very stylish and easy-to-use wooden chopsticks, new Pop Animal cute items, fun dishes for kids to use, fresh stock of bento boxes and more
  
• For Godzilla fans, an extremely rare and cool item -- a rubber Godzilla base don the 1954 original, but with a Medicom Combat Joe figure inside, with dozens of points of articulation
  
• We love Hello Kitty and rare Sanrio items only sold in Japan, and have some nice items for you, including Kitty puffy stickers, a Kitty pencil sharpener that's really well designed, and more
  
• Finally, look for various new and restocked health and beauty items from Japan, including unique Japanese ear cleaners, more furikake and other Japanese food items, cute pencil cases with French on them, and more
  

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

• First, a truly dynamite item for Jun Kusanagi fans, a magazine/photobook devoted entirely to her, with all-new photos
  
• Also very cool, two extremely beautiful huge photobooks that capture lovely Japanese models in great photographs -- but these are all uncensored, and extremely, ahem, detailed
  
• For fans of high school uniforms, we've got fresh stock of the popular Pictorial Pocket Book series for you
  
• For fans of Japan's excellent hentai manga, we've got some great items in for you, including a new offering from Kazuki Kotobuki and several new erotic anthology comics, which compile the works of dozens of artists around a central theme
  
• Also, fresh stock of many popular titles, including Wholesome Hentai Girl and Jet Boss
  
• If you love erotic doujinshi, we've got the excellent Kinpatsu Ace Gold, an all-adult Mobile Suit Gundam hentai comic that's fantastically detailed
  
• Also, from the excellent "Androgynous only circle," enjoy the new Elixir CD-ROM, which wonderful erotic artwork graphics and Flash movies for you
  
• If you love DVD, we've got a bunch of great items in stock for you today, starting with Shy Super Cup, featuring three hours of the best AV performances of three AV queens including Nao Hirosue (region free)
  
• For fans of the old Immoral Angel video series, we've got a great compilation DVD with 180 super minutes of erotic AV for you (region free)
  
• We love the beautiful Ran Asakawa, one of the hottest adult video idols in Japan today, and you can see her in great new erotic DVD from Soft on Demand (region free)
  
• From SOD's IEnergy, explore the word of anal sex with eleven beautiful Japanese amateurs (region free)
  
• For fans of Akira Watase, we have her parody on Drunken Master 2, creating a new fetish for erotic, lewd women who are drunk off their asses (region 2)
  
• Look for another fabulous lesbian DVD from the famous U'K, a new exploration of tender, erotic lesbian love for you (region 2)
  
• Finally, look for fresh stock of many DVD items, including items included in our "buy 4 get 25% off" January Sale. Newly stocked are Bukkake Angel, Anna Ohura's lovely DVD, a great work by Mirai Hoshizaki, and more!
  

J-List carries two excellent region-free DVD players that allow you to watch DVDs from around the world, regardless of their region code. For those who want a great player with all the features you want, including region free playback and "VCR friendly" DVD viewing, we recommend the small-footprint OITO Technologies player, which is made of very high quality materials for years of satisfying DVD playback. For bargain hunters, we recommend the very solid Sampo DVE612, which supports very solid features at a great price (including "VCR friendly" viewing via a firmware hack). Both players are fully compatible with media like Video CD and SVCD, MP3 and audio discs, and more, and support both PAL and NTSC discs. We stock these great players in our San Diego office and ship daily for your ordering convenience.

At J-List, we're proud of the unique range of great products we sell. Remember that we offer price matching on certain items (photobooks, manga, doujinshi). If you see identical items sold on a Japan-based site that sells to customers outside of Japan, please let us know and we'll gladly match their price. See our "How to order" page for more info.

Greetings from J-List October 24, 2003

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Greetings from J-List January 22, 2003

Hello again from your friends in Japan!

Well, darn it all. When we fixed the site after the downtime on Sunday, the script that updates the individual J-List product pages each hour wasn't properly restarted. This means that all the great products we posted on Monday didn't actually show up on the product pages (although they did if you clicked the "show all products updated within the last three days" link, or used the search feature). Some customers were confused -- where were all the new products we'd posted on Monday? Well, everything is fixed now, and with today's newly added items, there are twice as many great new products for you to check out.

Japanese as a language has many elements not found in English, which can be challenging to students of the language. One of these areas is the Japanese system of polite language (keigo), which is used occasionally in extremely formal situations and in business speech. There are two basic functions of keigo: to raise the level of the person you're talking to (called "exalting" speech); and to lower your own level (called "humble" speech). There are actually different verbs to use depending on the subject in a polite sentence, so if you said, "What will you eat, Sensei? I'm going to eat sushi," you'd use different verbs for the two occurrences of "eat" depending on the subject of the sentence. There's a complex version of this used in business speech. If someone from an outside company calls, asking to speak to your boss, you'd use exalting speech to refer to the caller, but humble speech to refer to your boss, as he's a part of your "uchi" or in-group, compared with the person calling from outside.

Related to Japanese polite speech is the honorific "o" that goes in front of some words, to give them a higher status. Words like money (okane), relationships like mother or grandmother (okaasan, obaasan), and so on -- it could be translated as "honorable" in English, but of course it's never translated blatantly like that (thank God). It's interesting to notice the patterns of words that take this "o" -- words having to do with death or Buddhism tend to take it (otera = temple, okou = Buddhist incense), yet words related to Japan's Shinto religion usually don't. English loan words never get the special "o" prefix, either. Adding the honorific "o" to words sort of "softens" the word, so words related to children or babies tend to take it (omaru = child's toilet, omutsu = diapers, oshiri = a cute word referring to a person's rear end). Men often put the honorific "o" on the word for the female sexual organ, which is the only "bad" word in Japanese (e.g., the only word they wouldn't let you say on TV). The word is "manko," and in "honorific" form, "omanko."

Transliteration is the act of translating a word from one writing system into another, and due to differences in English and Japanese, this can be a challenge. For one thing, there are long and short vowels in Japanese (the last syllable in Kyoto is the short vowel "to" but the first syllable in Tokyo is a long vowel, "toh"). Because writing extra letters in translated names and words only cause confusion to English speakers, the long vowels are often ignored when the word is written in English. For example, instead of writing the first name of Panasonic founder Kounousuke Matsushita with all letters, you could get away with writing "Konosuke" and it wouldn't make a difference how the name was pronounced by anyone. The Japanese dating sim games we sell at J-List are called "bishoujo games" which means "pretty girl games." Should this word be transliterated as "bishoujo" or with a short vowel, e.g. "bishojo"? There's no difference in pronunciation in English, and shorter words are easier for people to remember, and yet "bishoujo" is the more common spelling. The name of Yuka, the popular swimsuit idol who has turned into one of Japan's most famous celebrities, would be more accurately written "Yuuka" (since it's a long vowel). Which is better? If accuracy is what's important, we have to all start writing Tokyo as "Toukyou" and Osaka as "Oosaka," but no one wants to do that, I'm sure. Incidentally, the J-List search engine is "smart" and will bring up results whether you search for, say, "yuuka" "yuhka" or "yuka" -- the search engine maintains a list of "search synonyms" and checks against that list when you perform a search for products.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:

• First, for fans of Fist of the North Star, we've got a splendid PVC figure for you of Shin by Kaiyodo, with 27 points of articulation, very cool!
  
• Also great, we've got stock of the super-cool Studio Ghibli plush keychain characters, two sets of six great plush toys from Mr. Miyazaki's movies
  
• If you love anime on DVD, enjoy vol. 2 of She, The Ultimate Weapon, a positively wonderful anime series from Japan (region 2)
  
• Also for fans of anime DVD, we've restocked our Hayao Miyazaki films (Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Laputa) along with restock of the wonderful Japanese release of Akira -- and all DVDs are fully subtitled/dubbed in English (region 2)
  
• For fans of traditional Japanese beautiful things, find a super bamboo chopstick holder with chopsticks, and a great set of miso soup bowls, and more
  
• J-List carries over 100 kinds of Japanese snack, food and gum, and we've got new items for you today, including delicious corn and rice snacks, onigiri mix, traditional Japanese hard candy, miso soup, and more!
  
• For lovers of Yu-Gi-Oh, something that's very popular in Japan right now -- cool set of the cards for the Official Card Game that comes in a fabulous metal tin to hold your cards
  
• For Hello Kitty fans, find several cool items, including a Kitty purse that's just too cute, a set of super Sanrio character stamps, a super pouch with "British Kitty" on it, and more
  
• And another popular item, fresh stock of one of the best-selling products in J-List history, the Hello Kitty vibrating shoulder massager
  
• If you like Hamtaro, we've got some great items in, including the very popular "Hamtaro Cutting Note" (little notes that are perforated, you can pull one off easily)
  
• Finally, look for other great items, like cute kitchen timers, new funny signs in Japanese
  

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

• For fans of extremely high-quality Japanese nude magazines, enjoy the new Bejean, an oversized magazine with superb photos and famous models like Mai Hagiwara and Misa Nishida
  
• We've got other magazines too, including Hip de H! (all-anal magazine) and fresh stock of low-cost discounted magazines, too
  
• For fans of Japanese bondage and bold photography, enjoy the very sexy Akira Watase in EX Gachiire
  
• Also for photobook collectors, you won't want to miss Love Hearts, a "pictorial magazine of so cute and so lovely girls" as well as Race Queen Toshimi Horiguchi's super sexy first photobook offering
  
• Also, from Shin Yamagishi, the fabulous sexy photographs of Kaori Ohara, taken with extremely sexy and bold camera angles
  
• We love AG, the manga magazine of "art, sex and CG culture" that features erotic Japanese manga faithfully translated to English (including hentai stories by Shiwasu no Okina, one of our favorite artists). See vol. 6 of AG in stock on our site now!
  
• If you love doujinshi, we've got two great new ones for you from the "Androgynous Only Circle" that makes the Great Works of Alchemy, all dick-girl hentai books
  
• Also, we've got a huge offering of positively wonderful erotic manga from Angel Comics, Plaza Comics, Fujimi and more
  
• We've gotten in fresh stock of several popular comics, too, including Celamic Garden, Nami SOS, and the Yui Shop series -- note that stock is limited on some of these items
  
• Also, a very romantic and erotic yaoi comic in stock
  
• For fans of Japan's erotic DVDs, enjoy several great new offerings, starting with the best of Million vol. 2, with 240 minutes of their most erotic works on one disc (and the price is great) (region free)
  
• Also very cool, see Akira Watase as the erotic female teacher in a super fantasy of sex education (region free)
  
• For fans of extremely erotic lesbian AV, enjoy "Le-zu-bian," a superb offering from the famous U and K (region 2)
  
• We've still got a huge selection of items in our 25% off January DVD sale. Choose four of these items and get 25% off when checking out. There are over 300 items you can choose from, and you can find them all by searching for "January sale" on the J-List site
  
• Finally, Tomo has added a bunch of restocked DVDs to the site for you. Please check out all the new items we've got for you!
  

Remember that J-List carries all the legendary Viper games that have been translated into English, and we've got them all in stock in our San Diego location, ready to go out to you. The Viper games are unique because they feature full flowing on-screen animation, which adds much to the game play. The excellent titles by Hobibox Europe we've got you are include Viper M1, Viper M16, Viper Limited Edition (shooting game with uncensored pictures), Viper Paradice (cool 3D board and card game), and more!

Greetings from J-List October 22, 2003

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Greetings from J-List January 20, 2003

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Greetings from J-List October 20, 2003

Hello again from Japan, where a popular dessert is "coffee jelly" (coffee flavored gelatin), one of my personal favorites.

Languages deal with new vocabulary words in different ways. In Chinese, when a new concept comes along like the computer, they express the word in kanji characters ("calculating table"). In Japan, they have a choice: import the kanji-based word from China, such as the word for "operating room" ("hand-technique room"), or more frequently, import the word from Western languages (usually English) and write it in the katakana syllable system, which is used exclusively for writing foreign loan words. Katakana is very useful -- any foreign name can be written easily, unlike with kanji characters, which have multiple readings. Certain types of words tend to be written using foreign loan words -- anything having to do with cars or computers or the Internet, and the names of many occupations (engineer, illustrator), for example. The problem is that more and more words are written in katakana these days, which creates a "comprehension gap" between young and older Japanese, with people over 40 not understanding much of what is being said around them. The problem is so bad that there are actually "katakana dictionaries" you can buy in stores, which help explain what these strange words mean. (Several of the Wordtank electronic dictionaries that J-List sells also have katakana dictionaries built into them.) Just as some English speakers throw a dash of French into their writing to show off their intelligence, Japanese businessmen and news commentators love to pepper their speech with English words like "consensus" and "manifesto" and "Initiative" which can cause plenty of confusion.

Yes, it's quite common for Japanese speech to contain words borrowed from other countries, and there are two grammatical aides that allow Japanese to plug these words into Japanese grammar easily. The first are is the adjective particle "na" which allows an adjective to be used without any tense. This makes it great for using English adjectives in Japanese, and you do hear words like "kyuuto na hanii" (cute honey, perhaps a term for one's boyfriend or girlfriend), "chiipu na oto" (a cheap sound coming out of your stereo), and "torendii na dorama" (the latest trendy soap opera on television). Then there's the catch-all verb "suru" which means "to do" and can be used with English words to easily plug them into a Japanese sentence. Words you often hear are purei suru (to play a game), doraibu suru (to go for a drive), and of course, sekkusu suru (to have sex). The staff at J-List uses lots of English in their Japanese, too, and you can hear terms like sukyan suru (to scan something), pikku suru (to pick products in preparation for shipping) being used everyday.

It's 2004 Calendar Season right now, a special time of the year when J-List is a-buzz with lots of beautiful anime, idol, JPOP, character and other fun calendars sold only in the Japanese market. We got a shipment of calendars in over the weekend, and have added the new items to the J-List site -- lots of great ones in stock, and no waiting!

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:

• First, we've got more wacky Domo-kun handtowels for those who want to really make an impression on guests!
  
• For fans of beautiful anime girls, we've got a limited edition series of "shokugan" figures by Megahouse, that are very detailed and very cool
  
• Then, for collectors of Kubrick and Blythe toys, we've got the perfect crossover -- Blythe Kubrick figures. They're eerily compelling!
  
• Also, for those who wish they could paint garage kits like the pros, we've got a beautiful cold cast pre-painted figure from Comic Party that would look great on your desk
  
• We love Japan's sexy swimsuit idols, and one of our favorites is Chinatsu Wakatsuki, whose new photobook features removable poster pages that you can hang up in your room
  
• Also, enjoy a super cute new photobook by Aiko Ito, who will charm you with her beauty and cuteness
  
• Yuko Ogura fans will enjoy the delightful new idol DVD, Peach, featuring the superb Japanese idol who has captured the hearts of so many
  
• For Final Fantasy VIII traditionalists, we've got a super art-and-data-book with over 500 pages of information and visuals from the game and its world
  
• Keep cool with our wacky "fruit fans" which can be used as tabletop or portable fans just about anywhere
  
• When I was a boy, I loved Micronauts almost as much as I loved Star Wars figures -- we've got limited stock of some of the cool re-issued Micronauts (the good ones from Japan, not the awful Palladium toys)
  
• We've got some cool wooden Buddhist beads that you can use as a religious item, or to make you look fashionable
  
• Like Crayon Shinchan? We've got a cool plush toy for you then
  
• Hello Kitty fans, enjoy a cute portable phone strap/charm that is really cool, and other interesting Kitty items sold only in Japan
  
• Also, make you portable phone even cuter with a plush "happy face cover"
  
• For fans of Japanese snacks, we've got tasty fruit candy from Fujita's Peko-chan world, real tart Japanese "ume-boshi" plums, super minty mints, and more
  
• Also, for people who don't get enough vegetables in their diets, we've got more "Green Vegetable Pretz"
  
• We've got a handy wallet from japan with a cute panda on it, that will serve you for many years
  
• Also, for fans of Japan "minty eyedrops" (and you know who you are), we've got some cool eyedrops just for contact lens users, as well as fresh stock of several popular other items
  
• We've got a dynamite illuminated message board that shows your notes in vibrant color, very cool
  
• Finally, look for a wacky "open" sign from Japan, more bento boxes and other items for your kitchen, and more!
  

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

• For fans of beautiful Japanese kogals, the young, sassy and stylish girls from Japan, we've got the new issue of Urecco Gal, and this one is really lovely
  
• For fans of Ryoko Mitake (ME-tah-KAY), enjoy a super new Diva Mook, featuring nothing but lovely nude photographs of this fantastic AV star from Japan
  
• Then enjoy the super sexy Erika Ogawa, who shines in her super sexy hardcover photobook
  
• Don't miss the new nude photobook of Akira Watase, who shows you everything about her erotic body and sex
  
• Also, look for great restocked adult photobooks, including the best-selling Kaoru offering by Akira Gomi, European Fairy Tale, Moe Yoshizawa's hit photobook, Akane Souma wonderful erotic offering and more
  
• Also, for art book fans, we've restocked the dynamite Yui Shop 3, by master hentai artist Yui Toshiki
  
• For hentai manga fans, enjoy some great new erotic books, including "reverse lesbian" play with Takeshi Matsuzawa, erotic fantasy and "furry" sex by Hot Milk, a superb new erotic manga by MEE-kun and more
  
• Also, fresh stock of many great hentai manga, including Your Eyes Only, Urushihara's hentai masterpiece Dark Crimson vol. 1 and 2, Slight Fever Prince, The Ties That Bind and more
  
• For doujinshi fans, we've got some great new ones, including Gundam Seed and more
  
• Adult DVD fans can enjoy many new items today, starting with a new No Cut!! release giving you three full video releases on one low-priced disc, enjoy the dynamite Haruka Tsukino (region free, 3 hours)
  
• Then, Hitomi Hasegawa shows you her sweet sex in a new "4 HOURS of Hitomi Hasegawa" release by Million, with lots of "virtual sex" shot from the point of view of the actors (region free)
  
• The lovely Reika Yoshizawa must endure 24 hours of "anytime and anywhere sexual intercourse," in which she is called upon to service men at all hours of night and day (region free)
  
• From Deep's, a great "2 in 1" release featuring the sultry leg fetish and low-angle photography of Rumiko Hasegawa and Sara Akigawa, great for fans of Japan's stocking and mini-skirt fetishism (region free)
  
• Then enjoy the delightful Asuka Sawaguchi in a great release from Waap in which she performs sex and fellatio in a great array of sexy costumes (region free)
  
• Then, we've got some great restocked DVDs, including Kurumi Morishita and Nao Oikawa's superb Forest in Nude, more fun sex with Russian and Swedish girls, great bukkake with Kokoro Amano, Asuka Sawaguchi's oh-so-lovely No Cut!! release, anime cosplay sex, and more!
  

Remember that we're having a "free shipping sale" on select DVDs on top of our regular "buy 4 get 15% off" discount. It's a great excuse to buy a bunch of quality DVDs from Japan and save some money. Search for "free DVD special" to find the DVDs included in the discount.