Greetings from J-List September 14, 2000

Hello again from Japan, the original home of the salad pretzel.

2000 is shaping up as the "year of the recall" in Japan. Of course the Bridgestone/Firestone scandal in the U.S. is at the forefront of everyone's minds (I have an American friend who works for Bridgestone, one of only a few foreigners in the company, and he's been quite busy with damage control meetings for the past few weeks). Mitsubishi has also gotten itself into trouble, for failing to recall a model of TV set and a car that had manufacturing defects, and covering up the reports of the problems in the first place. Also, major milk manufacturer Yuki-jirushi (Snow Brand) failed to recall improperly prepared milk, which resulted in thousands of people in the Osaka area getting sick.

In the last update I talked about Japanese typhoon season. As I was sending the update, Nagoya was getting pummeled by a huge typhoon, which flooded the entire prefecture and killed seven. Also, the rain shut down the Tokaido bullet train line, which forced 71 trains loaded with people returning home from Tokyo to spend the night inside the trains, unable to leave the train or get food. We have several friends in Nagoya, but fortunately they all managed to come through it without any damage.

For this evening's update, we have some nice items for you, which we've all been hard at work on. They include:

• First and foremost, several new magazines are in, including two popular "liquid" fetish books, Gal's Shower and Pakkun Mecha-Ike, as well as the new Top Video
  
• We have limited stock of other magazine items, including some value-priced back issues of The Best (on the magazine back issues page) and several in-stock issues of the popular E-Login (on the magazines (hentai) page)
  
• We have several nice new photobooks, including Mori Hiroko's elegant hardcover photo work (on photobooks page 1) and a positively wonder "campaign girl" fetish photobook on the leg fetish page
  
• We also have several back-in-stock photobook items, including Enra (lovely Japanese idols in kimono nudes) and the very popular and erotic "Cosplay Cuties" photobook
  
• For our manga fans, we have several new items, including "Picture Diary of Sexual Abandonment, an excellent new manga from Hit Comics, a complete three-volume set of erotic manga, and more
  
• For dojinshi fans, we have great stock of several new titles, including two great erotic Sailor Moon parody dojinshi by Energya
  
• The special order" video (new AV idols) page has been updates with new videos you can special order -- see the excellent titles by Asakura Kaori, bitch of bitches Yanagi Haruka, a bathing suit & sex fetish title with the amusing title "Pheromone Bikinies, and more
  
• For our JPOP fans, we have several new JPOP CD singles posted -- remember our final JPOP sale, where you can buy 2 and get 1 free on any JPOP album or single
  
• We had such success with our two previous Japanese wind chimes that we've got another one -- a deluxe bamboo wind chime, which makes a pleasant bamboo sound as wind blows. We really like finding items like this from Japan for you... Find this on the Wacky Things from Japan page.
  
• J-List carries Japanese congratulations envelopes (shugi-bukuro), which are traditionally used for presenting money to people as congratulations for happy events, but you can use them for anything. We have a new deluxe congratulations envelope on the Wacky Things page, which features a beautiful metal wire wound into the shape of a crane.
  
• Finally, in the you didn't even know you needed it, category, we've got the perfect small pan for making Japanese-style scrambled egg (tamago-yaki) in little squares. Perfect for sushi, putting in your bento-box, or doing anything creative with eggs. When my mother came to Japan, she couldn't buy enough of these for her friends when she went home.
  

Friday is a Japanese holiday, Keiro no Hi, or Respect for the Aged Day, so it'll be quiet around J-List. Today, my son went to visit the members of a nearby elderly home where they danced and sang songs. If you have any elderly people in your lives, be extra nice to them -- they'll appreciate it.

Greetings from J-List September 12, 2000

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Greetings from J-List September 10, 2000

Man, Apple's Airport is really great. Today's update is being brought you from my living room, via my Powerbook and a booster antenna. Kazuki and I are about half way through Zeta Gundam, and we're watching an episode while I finish up tonight's update.

In any language, there are little areas that are especially difficult or challenging. When Japanese people study English, they get hung up on idioms ("it's raining cats and dogs"), and two word verbs and their many nuances (throw up, throw off, throw away, etc.). Also, because it's quite hard to find native English speakers to practice English with, Japanese have trouble getting used to understanding spoken English.

For me, studying Japanese has always been great fun, but there are were difficult areas, to be sure. There's an interesting category of four-syllable words that were quite hard to get down when I was studying Japanese: sokkuri ("it looks exactly the same"), pittari ("it's a perfect fit"), bikkuri ("I'm quite surprised"), and so on -- there are about 50 of these words, all with hard to learn but well-defined meanings. But the most challenging area of Japanese study for non-Chinese, non-Taiwanese, non-Korean students of Japanese is definitely kanji. An extremely complex system of pictures and meanings

For tonight's update, we've got some nice new items, as always, including:

• First, great new magazines, including another new issue of the popular Cho Very Good, for fans of outrageous Japanese cogals
  
• If you like legs, we've got some great items for you, including several new and back-in-stock let fetish books -- including Panstopia, Panst Dream, Leg's Queen, See-Through Fetish, and more
  
• For photobook fans, we've got some wonderful new ones for you, including Girl Friends 2000, a super hardcover book featuring 36 AV idols for you, Yamazaki Akari's erotic "Mellow Fruits, and an interesting bishojo ass" book
  
• We've also got more copies of such popular photobooks as Miyazawa Nude vol. 2, Secret Idol, and Yamada Mariya's "Mariya 2"
  
• We have more copyes of the excellent hentai art books that had been sold out, The Season of L (L no Kisetsu, L standing for "ero" to the Japanese ear) and Cherry Soft, on the hentai art books page
  
• We have some great new videos in stock, including the lovely Aoi Minori's "Fetish Virgin" (gotta love a video with a title like that)
  
• We have a dozen or so *all new* dojinshi posted to the dojinshi page, some really nice ones from last month's Comic Market
  
• JPOP fans are responding to our "final JPOP sale, picking up a lot of JPOP albums and singles with our buy two, get one free." We've sweetened the pot, with 20+ new items on the JPOP page, including limited stock of Amuro Namie, Suzuki Ami, and more
  
• For today's additions to the "wacky things from Japan" category, we've added a wonderful Hello Kitty spoon & fork; a nifty pair of hooks that you attach to the back of your car's seat to hang trash bags, food the the kids, and more; and by request, more of the surprisingly popular "Japanese word cards"
  

Remember that J-List has the only "bizarre Japanese T-shirts" you'll find, with great slogans on them, from "Looking for a Japanese girlfriend" to "I'm a strange foreigner" to the fun favorite, Philosophy of Hentai. Check them out on the T-shirts page!