Greetings from J-List April 20, 2001

Hello and greetings from Japan, on this quiet Friday evening.

There are many interesting things you notice about the Japanese when you live in Japan -- all highly subjective, of course. They tend to not eat bread crusts, for one thing, and in fact, Japanese bread is sold in supermarkets without the heels -- which might explain why Japanese women are seemingly all constipated. Japanese people never drink root beer, but most can drink Dr. Pepper. Japanese who try Mexican refried beans usually don't like them, because they're not sweet as Japanese beans are -- but if they live overseas for a year or more, they usually come around. And for some reason, all Japanese girls' shoe sizes seem to be either 23 or 23.5 centimeters.

Money is another interesting issue. Discussing money is quite a delicate thing, and the subject is always wrapped in layers of Japanese politeness and "keigo" (polite language) when it is brought up. It's not always necessary to talk money directly though. As an English teacher, I've accepted jobs without even mentioning money at all -- and when my pay envelope came, I trusted that it would be sufficient. Similarly, I've hired Japanese artists to do work without bringing up payment. In situations like this, of course, there's a lot of trust on both sides, and neither would want to hurt that trust by taking advantage of the situation. It's all part of living in Japan.

We're just a little big happier, thanks to the opening of our very own freeway. The North Kanto Jidoushado is a freeway that branches off of the Kanto Expressway, allowing us to drive quickly to nearby Maebashi and Takasaki, and take the freeway all the way to Tokyo if we want. In Japan, where city driving is far more common then freeway driving, it takes hours to get anywhere -- a big difference from San Diego, I can tell you. Now we have a little more freedom to go places on the weekends in our Bongo Friendee. Of course, Japanese freeways aren't "free" at all -- if they were, people would use them too much, and they'd be clogged with cars all the time. To go to Takasaki the toll is about $6; to go all the way to Tokyo, it's around $30.

The "top 5" for the past week has been updated, too.

For the weekend's update, we've got an extra special update for you, including:

• First, some killer and rare magazines from Japan, including Cho Very Good!! (kogals doing bad things), Mecha ike! Hot Breast Girls (very nice amateur magazine), and more
  
• We have some very nice all-new photobooks for you, including Yanagi Asuka's very sexy hardcover photobook, fresh stock of several popular items, and more!
  
• If you like Japanese leg fetish books, we've got fresh stock of several items on the leg & stocking fetish photobook page
  
• For fans of Japanese amateur "indies" AV, we have a great new issue of MPEG Indies, featuring two super Video CDs filled with great amateur sex, as well as a full color magazine!
  
• In addition to several all-new volumes of excellent erotic manga from Japan, we've posted a very special item: the complete set of Furita ni Omakase, the masterful erotic manga about Sayuri and Jun, two policewomen who always managed to get into some bizarre sexual situations (the manga is on order with the publisher, please order your copies to ensure you can get your set)
  
• We have some very nice one-shot erotic dojinshi for you, posted to the dojinshi page -- check these out quickly, before they disappear
  
• For fans of busty Japanese AV actresses, we've got a super new video in the "Menu" (lit. "woman's breast") series. This super video features and busty and delicious Kitahara Erika in a great sexual performance for you
  
• For fans of the bold, refreshing Soft on Demand, we've got not one, but two new videos in their popular All Nude Challenger series, in which 108 lovely nude Japanese girls participate in wacky and bizarre nude sports to get money -- very cool!
  
• Also for Japan AV lovers -- a huge volley of sale and discount items, posted on the Videos (discount) page, all with *free shipping*
  
• For erotic DVD fans, we've got a super item -- a new 120 minute sexual performance featuring the hopelessly "kawaii" Hijiri Sayaka, a fresh, lovely Japanese AV performer
  
• Lovers of Japan's elegant and sexy Race Queens should check out the DVD and Idol pages, for two wonderful Race Queen DVDs by Pony Canyon
  
• We have fresh stock of several of our unique Japanese snack & food items, including sake candy (with real sake!) and Sakura Drops, the delicious hard candy that comes in an old-style tin, and boasts over 100 years of history
  
• Also on the snacks & food page, two new flavors of our surprisingly popular Japanese furikake
  
• For fans of beautiful things from Japan, we've posted a very cute Hello Kitty puzzle, along with a fantastic deluxe puzzle featuring a gold reproduction of Haruyo Morita's "Oboro-zuki"
  
• Finally, we've got fresh stock of some cool things from Japan for you, on our Wacky pages -- including the ultimate way to squeeze all the tooth paste out of your
  

J-List sells the finest selection of Wacky Things from Japan that we know of -- and it's not hard finding new things to sell, since Japan is such a Wacky place. We have it all -- everything from Japanese notebooks with funny English on them to clamps for your futon to Hello Kitty toilet paper to rice scoops to handy things for your bath and laundry. We enjoy selling some of these things because it allows you to touch a little piece of Japan. Since most of the items on our Wacky Things from Japan pages are extremely affordable -- from $2 -- we hope you'll check out our stock regularly. We also can't help thinking that many of the bizarre things we're able to bring you from Japan would make perfect gifts for the Japanophile in your life ^_^

Greetings from J-List April 18, 2001

It's another warm April day in Japan, and outside my window, the grasshoppers are warming up for the summer, still two months ago.

If you're ever in Japan, there are some rules you should observe. In many ways, Japan is obsessed with death, and several "faux pais" flow from this. For example, you should never stick chopsticks in your rice straight up ("tachi-bashi"), as this is done as part of a Buddhist funeral ceremony (mothers tell their children "only dead people" can stick their chopsticks in their rice). Similarly, you should never hand a piece of food to someone else with chopsticks, as it violates some taboo that's related to funerals in some way that's beyond gaijin comprehension -- instead, put the piece of food on a place and let the other person take it. Traditionally, you're not supposed to give cups or plates to someone in sets of four, since four in Japanese is "shi" which also means "death." Never give a potted plant to someone in the hospital, as it implies that they'll be in the hospital a long time (hence the need for roots). Other points of politeness are less intense. When going into any house, you take your shoes off, as shoes and feed are considered to be very dirty in Japan (although I've seen Japanese occasionally go quickly past the foyer to get something they forgot, without taking their shoes off).

We did a little spring cleaning last week, and took the opportunity to change the shoji paper on our shoji doors. Shoji are sliding wooden doors with paper glued to them, and they fit very nicely in with Japanese life. They slide sideways, so they don't take up any room cramped Japanese houses, and the traditional use of shoji in Japan brings a healthy Japanese-style to any room, even western-style rooms. The funniest part of re-hanging the shoji is of course ripping the old paper off -- we called on our kids to help us with this, and they go at it with a passion. The shoji paper market is quite large, with many different companies competing to bring the best shoji paper for your shoji doors. Variations include shoji that are hard to tear (they've got cotton fibers in them), shoji you can hang by just running an iron over the paper, and shoji with various interesting patterns woven into the paper.

For anyone who loves beautiful Japanese women, we have a fascinating CG collection on CD-ROM for you -- Skin Conscious vol. 1 & 2. A massive collection of incredibly beautiful hand-painted erotic airbrush images, each of these CD-ROMs is filled with 620+ megabytes of fabulous artwork, with 900 different images in the set, provided at full size for printing out, and with no copy protection. Skin Conscious is being printed right now, but we've posted it for preorders tonight -- order them now and get free shipping! (Skin Conscious is posted on Hentai & Adult Anime --> Hentai CG collections)

In addition to the Skin Conscious collections, we've got the following really cool new items for you:

• We have several nice new erotic magazines from Japan, including some very nice kogal magazines, and more
  
• Something that should sell well is Buru Mani, a lovely deluxe photobook featuring some very pretty girls -- from the publishers of Waffle
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got some great new items for you, including several very nice leg-fetish photobook items on the let photobooks page
  
• For fans of magazine + video CD magazine combos, a great issue of MPEG Typhoon, with excellent amateur AV on two VCDs
  
• Japanese know their fetishes, and one popular fetish is "doctor play." There's a lot of interesting sexual perversion to enjoy in "You can be a gynecologist, too," a magazine + dual Video CD item on the high-end photobooks page
  
• One of the most popular color manga/art books in recent months has been Yui Shop 2, a beautifully erotic all-color book by Toshiki Yui -- but we sold out in about 30 minutes. Well, we've not only got more stock of Yui Shop 2, but by massive customer request, we've got Yui Shop 1, too -- both in stock now!
  
• We have another update to our manga page, of course, with fresh stock of many titles that had been sold out of backordered
  
• We've got *four* new hentai dojinshi, featuring great hentai artwork from Black Cat, Yugioh, and more
  
• Yaoi fans, see the elegant Rigel ~ A winter's constellation on the yaoi page
  
• For fans of Japan's lovely hentai games, we've got a nice issue of Fantasienne for you, with over 260 pages of great info on Japan's current games
  
• For those who appreciate Japan's beauty, we've got several nice photo puzzles posted to the anime page for you to check out
  
• If you love Japanese snacks and gum, we've done a major restock, adding fresh stock of several popular items, including Milky Candy (white milk-flavored caramels, they're great), as well as some of our unique Japanese gum, only available from J-List
  
• See the ultimate Japanese flag sticker for you car on the Wacky Stickers & Signs page
  
• For this evening's "wacky" update, we've got some cool new items, including an all-new version of Japanese "socks glue" (to hold your socks up), an oil sheet for ladies with real gold in it, the ultimate 360 degree swiveling hanger, and more! Check out all the new items!
  

J-List accepts all major credit cards for orders, via the secure order form on our web site. But we also are happy to another forms of payment, such as Paypal and Billpoint. We get several emails a week from people asking if check or money order payment are okay, and the answer is of course yes -- just make an order and choose "check or money order."

Some have asked about the enlarged images that are still now showing up. We've kept many of the images off the server, to keep the hard drive space problem we've been having from coming back. We're hard at work on a permanent fix, and should have the problems taken care of soon!

Greetings from J-List April 14, 2001

Hello and greetings once again from Japan!

Well, Universal Studios Osaka is finally a reality, and everyone in Japan is being bombarded with marketing messages from the theme park, trying to get them to go spend their money there. Arnold Schwartzenegger (universally known as "Shuwa-chan" here in Japan) was in Osaka recently to help promote the opening. They did the silly things they do on Japanese TV when foreigners come to visit, gushing about them to no end, and poking fun at them, too -- the gave Arnold a Japanese writing brush and tried to get him to copy some kanji, to see how it turned out. He gave up and wrote "I'll be back" in English.

There are certain grammatical structures that work differently in Japanese than in English. In English, we have two concepts for pointing at objects -- here/there, this/that, etc. But in Japanese, there are "location association" concepts -- here, there, and over there (farther away). Location is expressed with koko (here, where I am), soko (there, where you are) and asoko (over there, where a third person may be). There are little nuances that come out these words. Asoko (over there) is a euphemism for a person's genital area, for times when using a more direct word isn't desirable. Acchi (another word meaning "over there") has some negative meanings as well, and "acchi no hito" (the person from over there) is a euphemism that refers to foreigners -- the people from far outside. Incidentally, listen to Japanese speak, and you might notice a tendency differentiate between "this" as an adjective ("this apple") and "this" as a noun ("I bought this"), using "this one" instead of "this" in the latter case.

We've reorganized some of the J-List pages a little big. First of all, we now have DVD Page 1 and DVD page 2 (with lower-priced items being posted on page 2), as well as a new Soft on Demand code-free DVD page, to celebrate the fact that they're releasing all DVDs as region free now.

For the first update of the week, we've got some nice items for you, including:

• Many new 18+ items
  
• For fans of Japanese manga, we've got two very interesting items: *bilingual* comics from Japan of Love Hina and Cardcaptor Sakura, in English with Japanese written to the side of the speech balloons -- great for both collectors and students
  
• New items on our Japanese snacks page include some tasty new flavors of konnyaku jelly -- as well as lower prices on much of our stock of interesting Japanese snack and food items
  
• We've got new wacky things from Japan for you too, including all-new Japanes maps (a map of Japan and a map of the world, with Japan right in the center), new books to help you learn hiragana and katakana, an authentic Japanese abacus, the ultimate condiment holder for your tabletop, and more of our amazingly popular Hello Kitty chopsticks
  

Thanks for being a part of J-List!

Greetings from J-List April 11, 2001

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Greetings from J-List April 10, 2001

Hello again from your friends in Japan, J-List!

The Japanese approach to family structure is very different than in the U.S. In Japan, a family has a "jikka" or "real house," where their parents live. At certain times during the year, mainly New Years' Day and Obon, a holiday that's kind of a cross between Thanksgiving and Halloween, people return to their jikka to be with family. Usually the oldest son is the one who stays with his parents, taking over the family business if there is one. My wife is an only child, so there was a lot of expectation for her to remain in her house, despite the fact that she wanted to live in America. When I married her, it was expected that we would live in the house and "see to things" (including taking care of my wife's parents as they grow older).

My mother and nephew stayed with us for a week, and it was interesting hearing some of their observations about Japan. My nephew, a typical 12-year-old Pokemon-loving teenager, was interested in many things, too, from the way they play Auld Lang Sine in stores when it's time to close (so you know to hurry up and leave) to stoplights that are horizontally oriented instead of vertically, as they are in the States. My mother, who is really into strict bedtimes for children, was aghast to see my kids staying up til 10 pm most nights. It's a different paradigm -- in Japan, kids don't really have bedtimes, but go to sleep when they are sleepy. It's aided by the fact that Japan's day is about 2 hours later than the U.S. -- school starts at 9 am, not at 7 am, as it did for me, and people usually from 10 to 6, not from 9 to 5. So it all works out.

For this evening's update, we've got some extra-special items in store for you, including:

First, we've got several excellent new magazines, including the excellent new Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, not one but two issues of Iketeru Peach-Ass Girl, and another of those cool magazines that show embarrassing photos of Japanese idols

For photobook fans, we've got some excellent items, including the new Tennyo, featuring the lovely Yoshinaga Mika as photographed by Miyazawa Masaaki, and the incredibly erotic Strawberry Diary 2, by the famous Aida Garo

We've got fresh stock of several sold-out photobooks, including the very cool "From the bathroom with love," the sultry Honjoh Sayuri's "Bedrooms" and Ikeno Hitomi's sizzling S&M photobook

For fans of amateur Japanese girls, check out Gal's Special, featuring all-amateur content in a great all-color format

For hentai manga lovers, we've got some excellent new postings, along with fresh stock of several extremely popular manga offerings that had been sold out and backordered for a long time -- check out out always well-stocked manga pages now

If you like erotic doujinshi, we've got two cool ones for you, both based on Love Hina, the popular new anime

Yaoi fans should check out the two "boy's love anthology" items we've posted for you, each featuring a great collection of yaoi artwork and themes

For erotic DVD and doujinshi fans alike, we've got a cool item: Street Fucker, a 120 minute DVD filled with all parody Street Fighter live-action costume play sex, starring the very pretty Shirakawa Narumi as Chun Li, Sakura and the STII characters

For AV fans, we've got two great videos for you -- the charming Tomosaki Rin in "I'll Give You Help Onanie" (female-assisted masturbation) and Fujisaki Ayaka in a fantastic breast-fetish video "A-Class Busty Criminal"

The extremely popular G-Taste series continues in the latest G-Taste DVD, the Kannazuki Mai Edition

One of the most requested anime items on J-List has been the Love Hina anime series, and we're happy to announce that you can order the Love Hina DVDs on our Anime DVD page. This is a wonderful anime based on one of the most popular manga in years, and we think it's really cool

For fans of the popular game Kanon, we've got the official Kanon Trading Card Game version 2.0 in stock

Speaking of Kanon, check out the Kanon Personal Phone Strap on the anime & toys page, before it's gone, along with several other cool things for fans of Ultraman and Yamato

We have two excellent flavors of Lotte's Xylitol chewing gum on the Japanese gum page. Xylitol is a new product from Finland that promotes tooth health, and this is a great-tasting gum from Japan that incorporates it. In Blueberry Yogurt and Orange Soda flavor!

We've got a nutty item for you on our Japanese stickers & signs page -- Super Buddha! We guarantee that if you put this on your car, you'll be unique

Finally, our always-fun Wacky Things from Japan pages have been updated weather real Japanese subway map; a "stick-free" rice scoop with holder, great for anyone who eats Japanese-style rice; a cooling "relax mask" that reduces puffiness around your eyes; a deluxe keychain that makes losing your keys very difficult; and the only stainless steel drinking cup you'll ever need.

Over the years, we've carried many interesting products, including Japan's unique bishoujo (aka hentai) games in English. One of the first companies to translate these games into English was Otaku Publishing of the UK, and when they stopped selling the games, we bought the last of their stock. That stock is nearly gone now -- Return to Paradise Heights is down to the last 25 copies or so. So if you haven't played this classic game and want to, get it fast!

Greetings from J-List April 2, 2001

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Greetings from J-List March 28, 2001

Greetings once again from Japan, where we've taken time out from tinkering with Mac OS X to bring you another (hopefully) interesting update!

An interesting aspect of the Japanese language is that there are multiple words for "you" and "I," and which one you use speaks volumes about how you perceive yourself. The basic word for I is "watashi" but not used all that much. Words that boys usually use are "boku" (a soft word, usually polite) or "ore" (a rougher word, which can be rude depending on the setting you use it in). A girl who is somewhat tomboyish might use the former, or if she's really tough, she might even use the latter; similarly, a young boy (like my son) might show how grown-up he is by using "ore." The "girl's" word for I is "atashi," and a homosexual speaking in an effeminate manner would use this word for himself. Words for you include "anata" (a somewhat formal word, it's also used by a wife when addressing her husband), "kimi" (a close term, used among friends) or the rougher "omae," used when talking down to someone, or among male friend showing their manliness.

When foreign visitors come to Japan, one observation make is that there's not that much that's written in English. I speak and read Japanese, so I don't think about it much, but it's true -- there are many times when Japanese aren't considerate enough of English-speaking visitors. At least there are many English newspapers to choose from in Japan. The most famous is the Japan Times, which has a long history -- I used to read old newsreels from the World War II years, when I worked in the library back in my SDSU days. I prefer the Daily Yomiuri, however, which has an interesting feature: they cycle in opinion pages from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Independant, for a variety of interesting viewpoints from the U.S. and Europe.

For tonight's update, we've got some truly excellent items for you, including:

• First, we've got two positively wonderful magazines from you: the new Gokuh and Bejean, both oversized and filled with lovely Japanese angels, like Hagiwara Mai and Ohura Anna -- very nice!
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got some excellent items for you, including a great selection of our popular leg, stocking and "low angle" photobooks, and some great high school uniform photobooks
  
• For dojinshi fans, we've got limited stock of some excellent all-new items
  
• If you are a manga lover, of course we've got new erotic wide manga from Japan for you, including several all-new manga offerings by Hit and several other comic houses
  
• For fans of Japan's erotic DVDs, we've got a super DVD in the "Pure" series, featuring three lovely contemporary Japanese girls who express their sexuality in really interesting ways
  
• For collectors of region 2 encoded DVDs, a superb item featuring 120 minutes with six lovely AV stars, including Yoshino Sally, Suzuki Manami and Komuro Yuri
  
• For fans of our popular discount videos pages, some great titles from the J-List vault, including some Miura Aika and Yoshikawa Minami -- all with free SAL shipping!
  
• For Japanese idol card fans, fresh stock of the Bururun Club II series
  
• We've got fresh stock of some of our popular Wacky items, including wooden Japanese signs (our most popular is "It is forbidden to urinate here"), and more blank Japanese vocabulary study cards
  
• A neat new item Wacky Things from Japan page, a collection of highly useful zippered pouches, which you can use to protect your camera, CD player, or any similar device
  
• We've got limited stock of the very cool Domo-kun phone/camera strap on the anime toys page
  
• For Japanese snack & food fans, two delicious boil-in-bag spaghetti sauces: pasta cream (mmm), and "bongore bianco" (I know I've got that spelled wrong, I've never seen the word written in anything but Japanese ^^), complete with delicious clams!
  
• We have a very nice Hello Kitty letter and postcard set on the Cute Wacky Things page
  
• Finally, look for beautiful stickers from the Edo period, Japanese sushi decorative grass, a super item for cleaning your shoes, and the ultimate room freshener for those who like to read...
  

Remember that J-List has a full line of unique and interesting snack foods, from traditional Japanese Pocky to Gummi Pikachu to the excellent Crunky Crunch Chocolate. Check out our excellent items now!

Greetings from J-List March 26, 2001

Hello again from J-List

Breakfast cereal is one of the major staple foods in the U.S., and it's slowly growing in popularity here in Japan, too. It was slow going, though -- Japanese consumers preferred Japanese food, like fish, miso soup and natto (fermented soybeans), to what looked to them like "bird seed." Now, several brands of cereal compete for share the Japanese cereal market, lead by Kellogg's, who markets Corn Flake, Corn Frosty, Choko-wa (chocolate loops), and All-Bran. Unfortunately, Kellogg's products are very expensive here -- about $4 for a box that contains only 2-3 American-sized bowls of cereal, so I usually choose Ciscorn or Calbee's cereal products. Amazingly, Japan is a huge consumer of rice, but no one sells Rice Crispies or a copycat product here.

Japanese is an interesting language grammatically. In Japanese, you have various "particles" which you use to mark words -- a subject particle, an object particle, and so on. Related to this are the many Japanese "counters" you use to count things. There are hundreds of these counters, each used with different kinds of objects. To count thin, flat objects like cards or sheets of paper, you use "mai" (e.g. ichi mai, ni mai, san mai). To count long, cylindrical objects like an umbrella, you use "hon" (ippon, ni hon). There are special counters for birds (wa), small animals like dogs (hiki), larger animals like cows (tou), and so on -- similar to words like "gaggle" "herd" and "flock" in English, but extended to virtually all countable nouns. It's quite fun to try to learn them all.

Japan had a large quake on Saturday which destroyed thousands of homes and left several dead around Hiroshima and Ehime Prefecture, on the smallest Japanese island of Shikoku. J-List is about 1500 km from Hiroshima, so we were quite far from the damage -- I didn't even know about the quake until I read it in the Daily Yomiuri. It was a terrible tragedy, but we're glad there wasn't more loss of life.

We had some server problems on Saturday, Japan time, which resulted in the shopping cart not adding items that were added to the cart properly. We are very sorry for for the inconvenience. The site is working fine now, and we think the problem are over, but if you have any problems with the J-List cart, you can order via our secure email form at https://rook.axnet.net/pages/virtual/jlist/orderjlist_secure.html . Currently, most of the larger images have been removed from the server to keep he drive from filling up while we move servers, so please use "thumbnail view" when browsing the J-List site.

For the new update, we've added some excellent items for you, including

First, some excellent adult magazines from Japan, including the stellar new issues of Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, a super new Gal's Dee for fans of busty Japanese girls, and the very erotic amateur magazine High-Teen Nessha Boy

For photobook fans, we have A5 format color photobook of the popular CD-ROM series Yellows 2.0, Yellows 3.0 ~ China and Yellows 1.0 ~ Americans, which are mostly out of print

Als for photobook lovers, a special item: From the Bathroom with Love, which contains fabulous nude shots of Japan's most famous AV gals, but also pictures of their own homes with maps to their homes -- features virtually every popular AV girl in Japan today

For bondage and discipline lovers, an interesting magazine + dual Video CD sampler item with footage from Brain Trust and others

We have two excellent new dojinshi in stock for you: the very sexy 12 Kaiten, an exploration in Japanese "waitress fetishism," and Energya's fabulous new collection of hentai Sailor Moon

We've got a bunch of excellent erotic manga that have been posted, with many new all-new volumes, including books from IC, Do and Oak Comix -- also a super new issue of Electric Fighting Daughters, the "game girl" hentai parody dojinshi anthology manga

Also for manga fans, we have fresh stock of the truly excellent Paradise Lost erotic dojinshi anthologies from Fusion Product

For DVD lovers, another excellent re-issue DVD for fans of classic gals -- Ozawa madoka's sexy "18 Dreams"

Also for DVD fans, we've posted the Masterpiece of SOD collection DVD, which features killer samples from 64 titles released between May and August of 2000

If you love the pure and virginal Minori Aoi, check out her "Lucky Creamy Girl" video offering, from the famous Uchu Kikaku, on our video pages

From Soft on Demand's Deep's label, an excellent compilation video featuring 120 minutes of their excellent tekoki, cosplay and other video works

For fans of Takara's very lovely Licca-chan doll series, we've got a cool set of keychains featuring Licca dressed for a summer festival -- Asakura Licca-chan -- on the anime & toys page

We've got fresh stock of one of my favorite foods from Japan, konnyaku jelly, on the Japanese snacks and food page. Konnyaku is a vegetable-based food that is very solid and firm, and is used as a diet food here because it fills you up while providing very few calories. Check out our konnyaku jelly items before we sell out again

Also on the snacks page, a delicious new twist on furikake: kimchee flavor (yum)

We've got several very cute things for you for the Wacky Things from Japan (cute stuff) page, including two new Hello Kitty chopsticks, and a really nice set of Kitty-chan bags of different sizes -- great for giving gifts or eating your lunch

We've got two sets of lovely collectible cards for you -- for lovely idol fans, the deluxe and very popular swimsuit and high school uniform cards of Nagai Luna, and for anime fans, the excellent Love hina trading card series

For our T-shirt fans, we've got a few leftover "I'm a virgin killer" Japanese kanji T-shirts

For our Wacky Things from Japan customers, some really cool new items, including traditional bamboo ear cleaners (they feel so good!), more extra-long cooking chopsticks from japan, origami paper for kids, a bamboo mat that has many uses, and the "ultimate" slly container for your desk!

Greetings from J-List March 21, 2001

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Greetings from J-List March 19, 2001

Hello again from Japan, where fatherhood means never taking a bath alone...

Bongo Friendee aside, it's quite interesting to analyze Japan's car names. Above all, they must sound "kakko ii" (cool), and since nothing sound cooler to the Japanese ear than English, most cars here get their names from English words -- like Honda Life and Legend, or Nissan's Bluebird and Sunny. But many other names come from slightly altered English, so that they cause the same emotional response while being original. Words like Carolla or Tercel or Sylphy or Premacy sound like English, but car companies can still "own" the original names.

Japanese cars must never, ever have Japanese names, since that would be "kakko warui" (un-cool) -- Japanese are always amused to learn that the Suzuki Jiminy is sold as Suzuki Samurai in the U.S. However, there are some cars whose names started out as Japanese words before being "English-ified." Toyota Camry, for example, gets its name from "kammuri," which means crown in Japanese -- which is funny, since Toyota sells a higher-priced sedan here called Toyota Crown. Other names that have a "Japanese" feel to them are Daihatsu's Mira (sort of sounds like "mirai" which means "future") and Mitsubishi's Minica (which sound like what it is -- a very small "mini car").

Incidentally, no one drives Camry here, and it's quite rare that you see them driving on the streets. Honda's popular Step Wagon (a mini-van) and Toyota's Estima are far more common.

For this week's first update, we've got some extra-special items for you, including:

• Killer new magazines, including the very lovely new Beppin School. Because last month's issues were unavailable, we expect this great issue to go fast, so pick it up if you want a copy
  
• Also very cool, Urecco's CosPet, a look at some of Japan's most killer AV gals in sexy costumes
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got some nice all-new titles, including Yokoyama Yuki's very erotic hardcover nude photobook
  
• Also for photobook fans, some limited stock of some classic photobooks, including Miyazawa Rie's category-killing "Santa Fe"
  
• Leg fans, don't miss the Internet Idol and Race Queen panty stocking fetish photoobok (3 copies posted)
  
• Also very cool, we've now got stock of the fabulous Mania Club Deluxe, an all-color hardcore S&M photobook featuring 25 gorgeous AV gals, including Yoshino Sally, Sawaguchi Miki, and many more
  
• For dojiinshi fans, we've got fresh stock of two incredible works from Okachimentaiko: The Next Climax Magazine 3 (all Gundam hentai dojinshi) and Burajiru 2 (a lovely *color* Yamato, Pokemon and other hentai dojinshi)
  
• If you love hentai games from Japan, a new issue of Fantasienne is posted for your approval
  
• For as long as we've sold Japan's erotic manga, the #1 seller has been Harazaki Takuma's positively beautiful erotic comic Golden Stage. Now vol. 5 of this supremely crafted hentai manga is available
  
• For fans of very hardcore yaoi, we've got the excellent "SM Boy's Love Anthology Stinger" on the yaoi page for you
  
• For DVD collectors, a very nice magazine + code-free DVD sampler item, with *120 minutes* of great footage from 74 different adult DVD titles
  
• Also for DVD fans, a great item -- the DVD version of SOD's First Period of 2000 product sampler, and this DVD is code-free (yaay)
  
• The DVD titles Bondage DX and Big Morkal's 4 hours sample item, which had sold out and were accidentally taken off the J-List site, are reposted (sorry about that)
  
• For Japan AV video lovers, we've got two for you: Shy DX 2000, a great erotic video featuring 8 of Japan's most popular actresses performing for you over 90 minutes, and Sexy Restaurant Konna Miller's an erotic exploration of Japanese waitress fetishism
  
• For fans of our "wacky" things from Japan, we've restocked several items, including Hello Kitty chopsticks (the pefect symbol of Japan in one little package), Japan's milk container sealers, and the washing machine balls that make your clothes cleaner
  
• For Japanese snack fans, we've got some nice items for you, including a deluxe Miso Soup package (with different varieties of soup in one package), children's furikaku that comes with a cool Japanese pokemon figure, and just one package of the much-requested winter limited edition chocolate
  
• For Japanese gum fans, find Meiji's Xylish sugarless mint gum, that protectes your teeth with the help of a funky compound invented in Norway
  
• We've got the ultimate Japanese set of funny stickers for your bathroom on the Japanese signs page
  
• And finally, new items on our Wacky Things from Japan page include Hello Kitty tissue, a delue package of chopsticks that say "Live long and prosper" on them in Japanese (well...), and the ultimate Japanese device for separating egg yolks from whites!
  

We've also lowered the price of the very popular Creamy Angel CD-ROM series vol. 1 & 2 from $14.95 to $9.95. This is a really excellent hentai CG series featuring the full works of Japanese erotic CG illustrator Mashitaka. See these and other very cool items on our hentai CD-ROM pages.

Greetings from J-List March 19, 2001

Hello again from Japan, where fatherhood means never taking a bath alone...

Bongo Friendee aside, it's quite interesting to analyze Japan's car names. Above all, they must sound "kakko ii" (cool), and since nothing sound cooler to the Japanese ear than English, most cars here get their names from English words -- like Honda Life and Legend, or Nissan's Bluebird and Sunny. But many other names come from slightly altered English, so that they cause the same emotional response while being original. Words like Carolla or Tercel or Sylphy or Premacy sound like English, but car companies can still "own" the original names.

Japanese cars must never, ever have Japanese names, since that would be "kakko warui" (un-cool) -- Japanese are always amused to learn that the Suzuki Jiminy is sold as Suzuki Samurai in the U.S. However, there are some cars whose names started out as Japanese words before being "English-ified." Toyota Camry, for example, gets its name from "kammuri," which means crown in Japanese -- which is funny, since Toyota sells a higher-priced sedan here called Toyota Crown. Other names that have a "Japanese" feel to them are Daihatsu's Mira (sort of sounds like "mirai" which means "future") and Mitsubishi's Minica (which sound like what it is -- a very small "mini car").

Incidentally, no one drives Camry here, and it's quite rare that you see them driving on the streets. Honda's popular Step Wagon (a mini-van) and Toyota's Estima are far more common.

For this week's first update, we've got some extra-special items for you, including:

• Killer new magazines, including the very lovely new Beppin School. Because last month's issues were unavailable, we expect this great issue to go fast, so pick it up if you want a copy
  
• Also very cool, Urecco's CosPet, a look at some of Japan's most killer AV gals in sexy costumes
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got some nice all-new titles, including Yokoyama Yuki's very erotic hardcover nude photobook
  
• Also for photobook fans, some limited stock of some classic photobooks, including Miyazawa Rie's category-killing "Santa Fe"
  
• Leg fans, don't miss the Internet Idol and Race Queen panty stocking fetish photoobok (3 copies posted)
  
• Also very cool, we've now got stock of the fabulous Mania Club Deluxe, an all-color hardcore S&M photobook featuring 25 gorgeous AV gals, including Yoshino Sally, Sawaguchi Miki, and many more
  
• For dojiinshi fans, we've got fresh stock of two incredible works from Okachimentaiko: The Next Climax Magazine 3 (all Gundam hentai dojinshi) and Burajiru 2 (a lovely *color* Yamato, Pokemon and other hentai dojinshi)
  
• If you love hentai games from Japan, a new issue of Fantasienne is posted for your approval
  
• For as long as we've sold Japan's erotic manga, the #1 seller has been Harazaki Takuma's positively beautiful erotic comic Golden Stage. Now vol. 5 of this supremely crafted hentai manga is available
  
• For fans of very hardcore yaoi, we've got the excellent "SM Boy's Love Anthology Stinger" on the yaoi page for you
  
• For DVD collectors, a very nice magazine + code-free DVD sampler item, with *120 minutes* of great footage from 74 different adult DVD titles
  
• Also for DVD fans, a great item -- the DVD version of SOD's First Period of 2000 product sampler, and this DVD is code-free (yaay)
  
• The DVD titles Bondage DX and Big Morkal's 4 hours sample item, which had sold out and were accidentally taken off the J-List site, are reposted (sorry about that)
  
• For Japan AV video lovers, we've got two for you: Shy DX 2000, a great erotic video featuring 8 of Japan's most popular actresses performing for you over 90 minutes, and Sexy Restaurant Konna Miller's an erotic exploration of Japanese waitress fetishism
  
• For fans of our "wacky" things from Japan, we've restocked several items, including Hello Kitty chopsticks (the pefect symbol of Japan in one little package), Japan's milk container sealers, and the washing machine balls that make your clothes cleaner
  
• For Japanese snack fans, we've got some nice items for you, including a deluxe Miso Soup package (with different varieties of soup in one package), children's furikaku that comes with a cool Japanese pokemon figure, and just one package of the much-requested winter limited edition chocolate
  
• For Japanese gum fans, find Meiji's Xylish sugarless mint gum, that protectes your teeth with the help of a funky compound invented in Norway
  
• We've got the ultimate Japanese set of funny stickers for your bathroom on the Japanese signs page
  
• And finally, new items on our Wacky Things from Japan page include Hello Kitty tissue, a delue package of chopsticks that say "Live long and prosper" on them in Japanese (well...), and the ultimate Japanese device for separating egg yolks from whites!
  

We've also lowered the price of the very popular Creamy Angel CD-ROM series vol. 1 & 2 from $14.95 to $9.95. This is a really excellent hentai CG series featuring the full works of Japanese erotic CG illustrator Mashitaka. See these and other very cool items on our hentai CD-ROM pages.

Greetings from J-List March 17, 2001

Hello, and "happy weekend" from Japan and J-List!

One thing I've noticed about Japanese, especially Japanese in Gunma Prefecture, which is a rural prefecture right in the center of Japan (population 2 million), is that they tend not to move. Aside from moving because of changes in jobs, Japanese tend to stay where they are. This creates some interesting differences, when compared with the U.S. In San Diego, there are different "levels" of neighborhoods, depending on the age and income of the people who live there. Poor college students will live in one area of the city, then move to a slightly nicer area when they start to work, move up again when they buy their first house, and so on. But in Japan, where people rarely move and almost never want to give up land they own, you find newly rebuilt houses next to much older homes and even some run-down shacks.

My mother has spent some months adding on to the house in San Diego, and it's been interesting to observe some differences between the US and Japan, too. In Japan, when you have workmen working for you, you're required by unwritten custom to bring them something to drink (coffee, green tea) at 10 am and 3 pm. After all, they're working hard, and you want to keep goodwill between the workmen who are building your house. Of course, they don't have any Shinto groundbreaking rites in the U.S. either -- when we built the J-List office, for example, we had a Shinto priest come out and consecrate the ground in an interesting ceremony to bring good luck.

Our "top 5" has been updated for the past week. Peach Princess's premier release, X-Change, is selling very well!

For this evening's update of cool stuff from Japan, we've got some really cool items, including:

• First, killer new issues of Japanese magazines, including the new Bejean (features Fukada Miho and more!), the excellent new Gal's Shower, and a great new issue of Waffle (which should go fast)
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got several excellent all-new hard- and soft-cover books for you, as well as fresh stock of some old favorites
  
• We've got more $5 magazine for bargain hunters, on magazine page 3
  
• If you love Japan's erotic S&M photography, we really recommend Bondage 17, which features 17 fantastic Japanese ladies in exotic and erotic poses -- includes Hosho Nana, Shimizu Kaori, Inoue Chihiro and more!
  
• For leg lovers, we've got a killer new item -- Panst Best, a Photoshot-format glossy photobook-magazine with great and erotic images inside
  
• Fans of AV sampler products should check out fresh stock of DVD & Video CD Soft Catalog, on the magazine and CD-ROM pages
  
• For hentai fans, the new issue of Tech Giant, a fantastic gem of a magazine that includes a CD-ROM with demos and game images
  
• We've got some great all-new erotic manga posted for you, including "Rugged Relation," an interesting title from Hit Comics -- also, fresh stock of some popular manga volumes on the Bestsellers page
  
• Also for manga fans, we've refreshed our stock of the excellent Lunatic Party and Paradise Lost series, from Fusion Product -- however, the stock we have now will likely be our last, so complete your collection of these excellent Sailor Moon and Evangelion parody dojinshi anthologies soon
  
• For yaoi fans, we've got a nice new title posted for you
  
• For DVD collectors, two excellent items: the very lovely Kawamura Risa's Bondage DX, a Race Queen/S&M exploration; and Big Morkal's DVD Anthology, with an amazing *3 hours* of footage featuring *124* lovely AV actresses, for just $20
  
• For SOD lovers, a fresh new twist on the Stark Nakedness Sports series: the All Nude Challenger series, where 108 all-nude Japanese girls compete in various sports for cash. Features nude bicycle tricks, nude 100 meter dash, and trying to see how many nude Japanese girls can fit into a phone booth
  
• If you love 90's AV, you must love Iijima Ai, an elegant woman who helped make the AV world what it is today. We've got a great title from her glory days!
  
• I love anime, and one of my first loves was Yamato, aka Star Blazers. We've got fresh stock of the very cool die-cast Yamato toys, including the Andromeda, on the anime toys page
  
• We've restocked our Wacky Things in Japan page with several items, including the very popular Japanese "kairo" warming pads, and more
  
• For Japanese snack & food fans, some all-new items: a new flavor of furikake (wasabi flavored, for those who love wasabi), a great curry powder that helps you make curry fried rice easily, and a favorite of mine, Japanese "sauce" (that's it's name, just "sauce"), a delicious thick sauce that goes with many foods (but not, IMHO, eggs)
  
• We've got a new silly Japanese sticker -- "No drunks allowed"
  
• Finally, newly posted items on our Wacky Things from Japan page include an authentic Japanese bento box, buddhist incense and special gold sand (to stand your incense up with), and something really cool: Japanese "noren" door curtains, to add a touch of Japanese color to any room.
  

Remember that J-List has a great assortment of interesting and bizarre gum from Japan, from the runaway best-selling gum Black Black (per number of units, the best-selling single product in J-List's hitory) to refreshing Green Gum (to give you the "freshness of the forest"), exotic fruit flavored gum like La France and Pepino, and more. Check out the Japanese Gum page now!

Greetings from J-List March 14, 2001

Good evening from Japan, where calories are always "kikocalories."

The social phenomenon known as "kogals" (Japanese young girls who wear outrageous fashions, with blonde wigs and silly elevator shoes and tan their bodies nearly black) has brought about a new consequence: the "gal mama." Silly gals who wear flamboyant fashions can now be seen pushing baby carriages in front of them. Sexually active kogals have accidents just like everyone else, and they want to do right right thing and raise their babies -- but not at the expense of their fashion and style. Seeing two "gals" exchanging child-rearing tips while they put on their thick make-up can be quite a sight.

Living in Japan, there are certain things you learn by watching the people around you, little wisdoms that accumulate. One is that Japanese almost never sleep with socks on. I don't know why. Japanese women always have a shoe size of either 23 or 23.5 cm, so if you're ever in a pinch and need to buy shoes for a Japanese woman (say, on a trip to Rome), you can guess her shoe size and be right half the time. They never turn their headlights on during the day. All Japanese have brown eyes, of course, but the Japanese insist they are "black." And if you ask a Japanese with a high school level education how many years they've studied English, they will dutifully count out six years on their fingers -- three for junior high, three for high school -- and then tell you "six years" -- despite the fact that everyone here studies six years of English minimum.

The J-List homepage was broken for a few hours today, very sorry for the inconvenience. The problem was due to an overfilled hard drive, but the problem has been fixed. If you ever experience problems with the J-List order system, feel free to use our secure email form at https://rook.axnet.net/pages/virtual/jlist/orderjlist_secure.html to submit your order.

For this evening's update, we've got some very nice items for you, including:

• First and foremost, some excellent magazines for you, including the excellent new issues of Gokuh (with a special on Japanese & Korean Race Queens and more), and the excellent new issue of Dela Beppin
  
• For fans of Video CD + magazine combinations, we've got a great new issue of Ex CD-ROM, containing tons of sample footage of your favorite AV gals
  
• We've got some excellent photobook items for you, including fresh stock of several of the Bishojo Memorial photobooks
  
• For lovers of Japan's amazing erotic wide manga, we've got some all-new issues, including some positively wonderful erotic works by Angel Comics, Ex Comics and Fujimi
  
• Also for manga fans, a large volley of fresh stock of some of our popular manga, including From the Bucho with Love, Kozue, Professor the Cow God, and Shiwasu no Okina's "Get or Die"
  
• For fans of erotic parody works, we've got some very nice dojiin-soft CG image collections on the dojinshi/dojinsoft page
  
• Fans of pro AV actresses should check out the shockingly cool offering from Inoue Chihiro, A-Class Busty Criminal, on the in-stock video pages (remember, if we run out of stock you can find this item on the special order video page)
  
• Fans of SOD's Stark Nakedness Sports Series will be happy to see two new "Zenra" series videos on the SOD pages
  
• We've got a very nice item for DVD collectors -- two awesome DVDs re-released at lower prices by their studios: Ozawa Madoka's "Pure Love" and Kanazawa Bunko's "Sweet Eighteen" (both code-free!)
  
• For fans of lovely Japanese "kogals," we've got a new item for you via our monthly resolving "reserve subscription" -- Egg, a kogal fashion & social magazine that captures the current style and trends of Japan's young kogal medium. Get this magazine sent to you every month from J-list!
  
• For fans of our Japanese snacks and food page, we've got a classic Japanese item for you: pickled "umoboshi" plums, which are delicious but very tart. Also, fresh stock of a favorite of mine, wakame soup
  
• We have fresh stock of several items on our Wacky Things page,. including our popular hiragana and katakana notebooks (great for learning to write Japanese), our affordable maps of Japan, our wacky Japanese days-of-the-week magnets, and more
  
• New items on the Wacky Things from Japan page include a great letter-writing notebook in traditional Japanese fashion, colorful wire-ties that help you arrange your ugly computer wiring, and a "pig bag" that is just so Japanese
  
• The #1 most popular funny Japanese T-shirt J-list makes is our "Looking for a Japanese girlfriend" kanji T-shirt. It's so popular, we had run out of several of the sizes before. But we've gotten a large shipment in, so we have all sizes of this great and wacky T-shirt in again.
  

Although most of the DVDs J-List sells are zoned for all countries, meaning that there is no region encoding to them, certain DVDs are zoned for region 2 (Japan and Europe) only, namely anime, bishojo/hentai and some adult DVDs from SOD. There are some helpful hints for people who want to get around these anti-globalizing region codes posted at the top of the region 2 DVD page. Thanks to a customer, we've posted a link to DVD Genie, a nifty program that removes region code checking in several software-based DVD players for Windows. We've also got some links to region reset hacks for Macintosh DVD-ROM drives. We love watching (and selling) cool DVDs from Japan, and hope you will find these links helpful.

Greetings from J-List March 12, 2001

Hello again from the country that invented curtains for cars, Japan!

Japan has some interesting customs regarding the signing of official documents. For example, when we went to fill out the forms for our Bongo Friendee, we had to make sure we had our dually registered name stamp ("hanko"), which is used in place of a signature as a way of verifying a person's agreement. In order to officially stamp something, you often need a "stamp proof of registration" paper which you get from the local city office. Only stamps that are registered with the city are legally binding. The use of these stamps is somewhat puzzling to foreigners -- what's to stop someone from mugging you and stealing your stamp, then withdrawing all your money from the bank. For reasons that only the Japanese can probably understand, this nearly never happens. As the Japanese economy takes more queues from the outside world, credit cards are becoming carried more and more; since the credit card system uses handwritten signatures as verification, the Japanese are of course familiar with western-style signatures, too.

The Kyokucho (manager) of the Kotobuki Post Office is retiring, at the age of 62. An interesting man whose been an incredible help to us at J-List from the beginning, setting up ways to send packages through the post office much faster. J-List repaid his kindness by rocketing his tiny post office to the #1 stop for orders shipped (J-List edged out Sanden, a large manufacturer based in Isesaki, as the biggest user of postal services in the city last year), earning him a big bonus, we hope. He said he's retiring early so he can spend his time traveling the world and doing interesting things. A very "genki" man who loves Japanese onsens and N-gauge model trains, we feel like we're losing a member of the family.

For this evening's update, we've got some very nice items for you, including:

• First and foremost, I'm very glad to say that Peach Princess's premier title, X-Change, is now shipping. This is a wonderful "sex change comedy" bishojo game that's been eagerly awaited by fans for many months -- get your copy now!
  
• We have a bunch of excellent erotic magazines from Japan, including the new issues of Video Boy and Best Video -- take note Ohura Anna fans!
  
• The new issue of DVD Soft Catalog, renamed to reflect the changes in the Japanese marketplace, is posted
  
• If you love great hentai-related magazines from Japan, check out Tech Gian, an excellent magazine that comes with a CD-ROM
  
• We have some new items on the gouka-bon page, for fans of high-end Japanese bondage erotica
  
• We've got some powerfully beautiful photobooks for you, including a new one from the lovely Tanaka Rena, and Hoshina Rie's "Afternoon Face"
  
• Also for photobook fans, a treat -- stock of a great issue of Photoshot, the glossy photobook-quality magazine with the oversize format
  
• If you love Japanese angels with long legs, check out our surprise: fresh stock of Mini-Suka Deluxe, our #1 leg-fetish item
  
• For manga fans, we've got a nice item: fresh stock of many issues of the excellent parody manga from Japan's Fusion Product: Lunatic Party (erotic Sailor moon) and Angelic Impact and Paradise Lost (erotic Evangelion)
  
• Also for manga lovers, we've got some great back-from-the-dead manga volumes in both the Manga (new releases) and Manga (classics) pages
  
• We've got some new dojinshi posted, too, although they will likely sell out quickly (sorry
  
• For girls, check out the stock of the latest Shojo Kakumei (Girl's Revolution), a very interesting erotic comic for girls
  
• If you love cute Japanese gals, check out the 4th video in SOD's Puchi Angel, featuring the lovely Hayakawa Yu-chan
  
• Fans of the popular bishojo game Kanon should check out the very nice art book on the art books page
  
• We've got two killer items for region- free DVD collectors: Hell of Lesbian, a refreshing lesbian DVD performance; and the excellent My Little Sister, a *4 hour* DVD featuring excellent erotic works by four lovely AV actresses, including Ijiri Sayaka -- this cool DVD comes with a business-card size CD-ROM for Mac/PC with extra goodies
  
• We've got some nice items back in stock on our Wacky Things from Japan page, including some excellent new funny Japanese notebooks
  
• If you love Japanese tea, we've got an item for you: Japanese mugi (wheat) tea bags that are extra long and thin, so you cna easily brew mugi-cha in any narrow PET bottle. Convenient and delicious!
  
• Finally, we've got some great new Wacky Things for you, as we always do: today we have a deluxe canvas backpack (very popular among Tokyo gals), a super-hanger that allows you hang tons of cloths in a small space, and a niffty Japanese "shoes box" for your car -- keep your car clean by having your guests take their shoes off in your car.
  

I must apologize again to the people who got multiple copies of the J-List updates list last week. Very sorry about that. The offending list server has been punished, and we don't think the problem should occur again.

Greetings from J-List March 8, 2001

Hello and "Hoppy Thursday" from J-List!

Has a Japanese ever told you are "good head"? If so, it's a complement, although it might not sound like one. In Japanese, the phrase for "smart" is "good head," which sometimes gets carried over into English. The English words "smart" is used in Japanese to mean slender, well proportioned (as in, "That girl is very smart and stylish"). Other words are used in English in interesting ways. For example, when a man wants to win a woman's love, he prepares to "attack" her -- the English word attack means "to vie for the affection of another" and doesn't carry the violent connotations it can in English. That's good.

Near our house, we can see the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and many other interesting wonders. These are pachinko parlors, a major source of entertainment for many Japanese men and women in Japan. An odd game which I don't pretend to understand, you basically buy a bucket of balls for $50, then sit for hours trying to hold a controller in just the right position to make most of the balls go into certain holes in the pachinko machine. Since "gambling" is illegal in Japan, except for certain events like horse, boat and bicycle racing, you don't win money if you get more balls than you started out with -- you get valuable prizes which you redeem at a shady building next to the pachinko parlor. Pachinko is quite competitive, and operators (who always seem to be getting involved with some crime or another) work very hard to bring in the newest machines (with little video screens, for example), and interesting names to attract customers (there's one a few miles from here named Al Pacino). Despite the efforts of the pachinko industry to make the activity seem like a friendly and family-oriented thing to do, pachinko always seems to go hand in hand with the yakuza, and people who engage in pachinko don't seem to be the brightest or most savory. (A while ago, a woman left her baby in the car while she played pachinko; the baby died.)

For this evening's update, we've got some special items for you, including:

• First, some excellent new magazines, including the Urecco -- it's a fabulous issue this time, featuring many charming models and "fresh nudes"
  
• We have several other interesting magazines, including "Lip Mate," a popular item
  
• For photobook fans, see several new items posted, including Yano Emi's "El Amor" and Ayami Shiho's "Elopement," both very beautiful
  
• Also, we have fresh stock of some wonderful photobooks including Kawashima Azumi's "Flow Out" and "Azumi II," new stock of the dynamite "Sweet Trap" deluxe hardcover photobook, more stock of Futari and Love Session, and mor!
  
• We've got a positively wonderful photobook for leg fetish fans, Hyper Low Angle, on our unique Japanese leg fetish page
  
• For dojinshi collectors, we've got a few single issues posted to the dojinshi page now, including some nice items from the 1990's
  
• For manga fans, we've got our usual strong update of manga, half a dozen or more excellent items back in stock, and several more all-new offerings -- including Tanuma Yuichiro's excellent Princess of Darkness
  
• On our DVD (Main) page, a nice new erotic DVD fraturing the sultry Sakura Makoto's erotic performance -- and this one is subtitled in English and Chinese!
  
• Also newly posted, a selection of rare and bargain Video CD titles, including some by Miura Aika (we only have one of each though, so they will go fast)
  
• We'e got some nice new AV videos in, including some nice S&M offerings from the excellent AquaWave
  
• If you love Japan's erotic bishojo games, check out Bishojo Wonder Land, a CD-ROM + magazine combo with many samples and demos on the disc
  
• For anime fans we've got some nice anime items, including Dengeki Animation Magazine, filled with pictures and images from Love Hina, Sakura Wars, Card Captor Sakura, and more
  
• On our popular Japanese snacks page, we've got the all-new Pokemon Gummi candies, featuring Pikachu and Pokemon, in two tasty flavors (we've found that if you hate Pikachu it can be fun to eat his gummi body slowly
  
• Finally, on our Wacky Things from Japan page, including some cool stainless steel "cooking ring" to make pancakes and eggs in various shapes, an ultra-cool "parasol type" Japanese hanger that allows you to hang all your clothes in a small space, as Japanese do, and the ultimate Japanese address and "print club" book for you!
  
  Due to a mail server glitch, the update went out multiple times to some people on the list last time. Very sorry about that -- we'll watch it and try to make sure problems like this don't happen again.
  

If you haven't seen All Your Bases yet, check it out. It'll get in your head! The URL is http://www.duke.edu/~jmm5/AYB3.swf

Greetings from J-List March 5, 2001

Hello again from your friends in Japan, J-List!

The Japanese use a lot of English words in their daily life, and depending on your age, spoken Japanese is often peppered with English words like stance, better, pretty, and so on. But when speaking Japanese, you have to "convert" the "English" words a bit before using them. The word "energy" is used in English, but it's pronounced with a hard G -- if you want people to understand you, you learn to pick up the new pronunciation, although it sounds odd at first. "Vitamin" is pronounced "bitamin," with a stress on the second syllable. Sometimes words come in via England, so they're unfamiliar to Americans like me -- a car's hood (bonetto), for example. And some "English" words aren't even English, but come from other languages, such as arubaito (part time job), anket (questionnaire), karte (a medical chart), and ruksak (a backpack). Because all foreign words are written in the Japanese katakana writing system, Japanese people tend to think that all these words are English.

Well, White Day is approaching. This is a silly Japanese day in which men must give a gift -- usually white chocolate -- to women who gave them chocolate on Valentine's Day. Convenience stores jump on the occasion to sell all manner of silly gifts, including many forms of chocolate. Men have an obligation to give chocolate back to people who gave them something, and shops know that they will sell a lot of "obligation chocolate" (giri choco) by March 14.

After several years of mocking Mazda's Bongo Friendee mini-van for having the strangest English of any Japanese car (right up there with the Mitsubishi Thanks Chariot and Toyota's Super Saloon), the versatility of this interesting, fun car finally wore me down, and we bought one. The continuing poor performance of the Japanese economy means that auto makers have to work hard and compete on price, so that helped our decision. The way you buy a car in Japan is quite different from how it's done in the U.S. Here, you always order a car and pick it up in 2-3 weeks, rather than getting it off a dealers' lot that day. Virtually all dealers are operated by the auto makers directly -- thus, you find only Mazda's at the local Mazda dealer (or maybe some Fords, since Ford owns most of Mazda). And as with deciding the date of your wedding, it's important to pick your car up on a "lucky day" according to special Buddhist calendar, to avoid problems and unhappiness. You can see the Bongo Friendee at http://www.friendee.mazda.co.jp/

For this evening's update, we've got some very nice items for you, including:

• First, some excellent new erotic magazines from Japan, including the new issues of the all-Japanese Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, which feature all Japanese models photographed by Japanese photographers, and more
  
• For fans of the popular magazine + Video CD combo items, we've got a special item for you: the DVD & Video CD Perfect Guide IV, a massive all-color magazine with three VCDs filled with great erotic clips and "quickies" from a variety of genres
  
• We've got more one-shot issues of older magazines at the of Magazine page 2
  
• For leg fetish fans, we've got fresh stock of several items for you on the Leg Fetish photobooks page -- including a great new item, Costume Play Sisters, featuring a slew of erotic leg fetish cosplay
  
• If you love Japan's unique S&M photobooks and related items, check out the new items on the Gouka-Bon page, including SM Net, a magazine + dual-Video CD combo item for S&M and bondage lovers
  
• For photobook fans, we have several very nice all-new hardcover photobooks, as well as fresh stock of some popular items that had sold out
  
• There are several excellent new erotic wide mangas posted to the manga pages, including new titles from Tsukasa and Hit Comics, as well as fresh stock of several popular items (including some great large-breast manga items)
  
• Love dojinshi? We've got three, count them, three great erotic dojinshi from the Angel Pain series, including stock of the popular all-color Angel Pain vol. 5
  
• For yaoi lovers, we have the handsome new Be Boy Gold, the deluxe erotic yaoi manga monthly with nearly 500 pages of great artwork for you
  
• The "Puchi Angel" offering from Soft on Demand, featuring pure, pretty Japanese girls and lots of wonderful sailor school uniform themes, was a big hit -- so we've added two new videos in this popular series. See them on the SOD Main page (for the ones we have in stock) or the SOD special-order page (if we run out of stock on hand)
  
• For fans of the lovely Morishita Kurumi, there's a super erotic release on DVD (region 2), the Bright Blue Wood, with *90* minutes of excellent erotic AV by this special lady
  
• By customer request, we've created a great new page for you -- Anime DVDs, where we'll carry the unique anime DVDs released here in Japan. these anime DVDs are always of the highest quality, and while they are expensive, they give a lot of value (6 episodes per disc, long playing times). For starters, we've got the first two discs of Mach Go Go Go, the original series known as Speed Racer outside Japan, and the fantastic OVA Complete Collection of Iczer One -- with the entire anime series on one DVD!
  
• We love updating our Wacky Things from Japan pages, but unfortunately, we got so much cool, bizarre stuff in stock that the page got overcrowded. So, we've made a Wacky Things (Cute) page to go with our Wacky Things (Main) page. We've added some great items to this page, including a super Hello Kitty box with lid and drawer (so cute for your desk) as well as fresh stock of many popular items
  
• Finally, our popular Wacky Things from Japan page has also been updated, with a spiffy back massager (great for people who get itchy backs), the ultimate milk carton sealer (certified as being "really cool" by my mother, who bought them as gifts when she came to Japan), and more.
  

Remember that you can get any three of our $24.95 bishojo anime games for $70, shipping in US/Canada included. This is like getting $20 off, and it's a great deal. You can choose from Hentai Anime Poker, Three Sisters' Story, Season of the Sakura, Runaway City, Nocturnal Illusion, May Club, or even the enigmatic Transfer Student (which really, really come out some day). These games are in English, and are uncensored, so they're really cool.

Greetings from J-List March 3, 2001

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Greetings from J-List February 28, 2001

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Greetings from J-List February 26, 2001

Hello again from your friends in Japan at J-List!

It's always fun to keep an eye on trends in Japan to see what will flower elsewhere in the world. Kickboards (those silly skateboards with handles) got big here in Japan first, for example, then went on to tempt teenagers in the U.S. and elsewhere after that. We think the next trend you might want to watch out for are "beigoma." A kind of hand-carved metal top, which is spun by throwing it down onto a flat surface while pulling back on a wound string, beigoma are a classic Japanese toy that were played with by everyone 50 years ago, although interest in them almost completely disappeared in the intervening decades. Now Japanese toy makers (and Japanese kids) have discovered the beigoma, and are making colorful and interesting beigoma which are being received by collectors and kids all over Japan. Pokemon and Digimon beigoma are inevitable. Your kids will probably hear about them soon, if they haven't already.

While I was studying Japanese in college, we made use of Japanese homestay students as a great way for me to practice my Japanese and learn about Japan, while exchanging information about my home country with a visitor from Japan. We had several very enjoyable experiences with Japanese homestay students. Now that I live in Japan, I've arranged homestays in the U.S. for several friends and students over the years, and they've enjoyed themselves very much. Unfortunately, more and more I've seen the disturbing specter of commercialism creep into the homestay system, with people opening their homes to foreign students as a money-making enterprise, and offering little or no linguistic or social experience. Students are mixed in with other students, and have no chance to experience many fun aspects of living in a new country. If you're interested in learning more about Japan and teaching about your home country, a great way is to invite a homestay student in your home -- they're almost always housebroken. A phone call to the ESL school attached to a nearby university is a good place to start.

For this evening's update, some new and cool things from Japan, including:

• First, several new magazines, including a killer of the new Bejean featuring several excellent features -- Kanazawa Bunko, Morishita Kurumi, Fukada Miho and many more
  
• We've got several issues of Otaka Wide Show, the magazine that shows you old and often embarrassing pictures of Japan's hot idols and actresses when they were unknown
  
• Also for magazine fans, a bunch of nice back-issue sets of 2 and 3 magazines, for fans of some older magazines from the 1990's
  
• For leg fans, the new issue of the stellar Mini-Suka Deluxe is in, and it's a great one -- the 50th issue special issue of this great deluxe magazine
  
• In addition to fresh stock of several popular sold out photobook items, we've got fresh stock of three of our most popular photobooks: Ohura Anna's fanatic "i-Nude," Kawashima Azumi's "Flowing Out," and the incredibly cute Hagiwara Mai's "Maichi"
  
• For fans of our excellent erotic manga, we've got several very nice erotic offerings from AV Comics, Hit Comics and Do Comix, among others
  
• If you love yaoi, we've got more yaoi for you -- Satoh Ishihara's "Charisma" and a nice Gundam Wing yaoi dojinshi
  
• On the DVD pages, two new offerings from the Much-Treasured Sexual Technique Lecture DVD series, which will teach you about shio-fuki (female wet orgasm), bondage and more -- complete with really useful (and erotic) tips and more -- see them on the DVD region 2 page
  
• For our Japanese snacks page, we've got fresh stock of several types of Japanese teas (which we recommend highly, since we drink them ourselves here at J-List), as well as Morinaga's "Hi-Crown" high-quality chocolate
  
• We've lowered prices on several of our funny Japanese T-shirts, which we're closing out -- wear a bewildering Japanese message on your shirt, it's funny!
  
• We're got fresh stock of several of our popular Wacky Things from Japan page
  
• Finally, fresh stock of Wacky Things from Japan items include a new version of our popular Japanese traditional note paper (genko yoshi), a unique Japanese "money tray" (a tray with a rubberized bottom which is used for handing money to cashier), a giant clamp for your futon, and a desktop calendar that's cool enough that we're even bothering to offer it in February.
  

Remember that we can send you a text-based list of the items available on the J-List site regularly -- just reply to this mail, and we'll add your address to the J-List text updates list as well.