Friday, August 17, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 17, 2001
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Wednesday, August 15, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 15, 2001
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Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 14, 2001
Greetings again from a very humid Japan!
The Japanese recession continues, but some parts of the Japanese economy are still doing well. House construction is up, for example, as people take advantage of the "0% interest" strategy the government has pushed for the past two years, making the real rate about 1.9% (before you ask, no, we can't arrange a Japanese loan for anyone ^_^). Cars are also selling well. This year's selling cars are Toyota Corolla, Honda's new "Fit" (a very small, cute car for women to drive), Honda's Step WGN (pronounced "step wagon"), and Toyota Estima (Toyota's "ingenious egg" according to their commercials). Sales of foreign cars are also up, with Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW being the major beneficiaries. Volkswagen leads the foreign car market here, with 14% of the foreign market.
Well, the existence of God has been proven once and for all: we have an actual Starbucks in Gunma Prefecture. It opened at the single most metropolitan spot in our fair prefecture of 2 million, inside the train station of Takasaki, the largest city in Gunma. We'd love to go enjoy a frosty Frapachino some time, but unfortunately, everyone else in Gunma has the same idea, and you can't get into the place without waiting 45 minutes or more.
We continue to limp along without our air conditioner, hoping it will be fixed soon. Meanwhile, summer is always an interesting time to be in Japan, mainly to enjoy the "usugi" or thin, revealing clothes that girls wear. This year's fashions includes bras that use clear plastic for the shoulder straps, making them appear "invisible." The effect is rather nice.
For this evening's update, we've got some excellent items for you, including:
The Japanese recession continues, but some parts of the Japanese economy are still doing well. House construction is up, for example, as people take advantage of the "0% interest" strategy the government has pushed for the past two years, making the real rate about 1.9% (before you ask, no, we can't arrange a Japanese loan for anyone ^_^). Cars are also selling well. This year's selling cars are Toyota Corolla, Honda's new "Fit" (a very small, cute car for women to drive), Honda's Step WGN (pronounced "step wagon"), and Toyota Estima (Toyota's "ingenious egg" according to their commercials). Sales of foreign cars are also up, with Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW being the major beneficiaries. Volkswagen leads the foreign car market here, with 14% of the foreign market.
Well, the existence of God has been proven once and for all: we have an actual Starbucks in Gunma Prefecture. It opened at the single most metropolitan spot in our fair prefecture of 2 million, inside the train station of Takasaki, the largest city in Gunma. We'd love to go enjoy a frosty Frapachino some time, but unfortunately, everyone else in Gunma has the same idea, and you can't get into the place without waiting 45 minutes or more.
We continue to limp along without our air conditioner, hoping it will be fixed soon. Meanwhile, summer is always an interesting time to be in Japan, mainly to enjoy the "usugi" or thin, revealing clothes that girls wear. This year's fashions includes bras that use clear plastic for the shoulder straps, making them appear "invisible." The effect is rather nice.
For this evening's update, we've got some excellent items for you, including:
- First of all, we've got several great new magazines for you, including the lovely new issue of Dela Beppin, a new issue of Haay Gachinko Musume, and more!
- For photobook fans, see the wonderful hardcover photobook of Hitomi Hayasaki, and more
- For hentai magazine fans who like the popular magazines we carry, we've got several in-stock issues of Bug Bug and E-Login for you, and all issues come with a demo CD-ROM inside
- If you love Japan's erotic manga, we've got some great new products for you, with super new manga by Mujin Comics, Hit Comics, Angel Comics, and more -- also, fresh stock of many sold out books, including the runaway bestseller Puri Puri Mermaid
- Also: we've got doujinshi! We've posted over two dozen nice doujinshi for doujinshi fans, so check out the new items, as these single issues will go fast
- For Japanese adult video and leg fans, check out the new Mini-Skirt Street, a fun video featuring three lovely, leggy Japanese women and high heels
- For DVD fans, some nice new items, including the lovely erotic performance of Kaori Shimamura, as well as a super Zamen Gokkun Best Selection DVD from Soft on Demand, for bukkake lovers; for those with region-free DVD players, a dynamite erotic DVD featuring Aoi Minori
- We've also gotten fresh stock of many of our popular adult DVD titles, including Mai Hagiwara's "The Secret of Mirukuru," Emily Yoshikawa's "Poison," and the very cool Kuki 20th Anniversary sampler DVD titles
- If you love Japan's colorful anime magazines, we've got some issues of Animage from a couple of months ago, complete with all posters inside
- For fans of the Ultraman TV characters, we've got one more box of the very cool Ultraman Hero cards
- We've got a new flavor of delicious Xylitol gum, a sugarless gum that tastes great (Kaori especially recommends it)
- If you love the delicious snacks from Japan, see our snacks page: we've got fresh stock of Pocky, the original chocolate covered pretzel, and Toppo, a delicious baked chocolate snack
- If you love bizarre messages in Japanese, we've got several nice items for you, including fresh stock of a popular Japanese headband, new "Looking for a beautiful woman" stickers, and the totally insane Buddha Man (so stupid, he's cool!) -- see these on the headbands and stickers page
- Finally, for fans of things with funny English on them, we've got a handy little spiral notebook with insane English printed on the front, as well as a nifty train map of Japan showing all train routes, and more!
Sunday, August 12, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 12, 2001
Hi again, from the land where soft-serve ice cream is known as the much more delicious-sounding term, "soft cream."
Lightning strikes! Last summer, the J-List office was struck by lightning, which caused our big air conditioner (which we informally refer to the Giver of All Life and Happiness) to die for a week during the hottest part of the summer. After a freak lightning storm on Friday night that made national news, the J-List office has been hit again -- and we have lost our air conditioner again! Hopefully it will be a minor repair, as it was last time, but the timing is really terrible, as it happened on Friday night before the week-long Obon holiday. Doh! The lightning also managed to kill our phones, and knock out our internet connection (the one we use from Japan, not the one the J-List site is served from). This has been a hell of a day. Now if we can just get that air-con fixed before it heats up again.
Speaking of heat, by the time you read this, I'll be basking in it. Comic Market 60 is going on in Tokyo, at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center (you can see the famous inverted pyramid as it gets destroyed in Godzilla vs. Destroyer), and Yasu and I will be making the pilgrimage on Sunday to talk with doujinshi circles about letting us sell their works on J-List. A massive doujinshi convention in which about 50,000 fans line up to spend hundreds of dollars on these extremely popular amateur-printed comics, Comic Market (or "Comiket" as its called) is held twice a year, in the summer (sweaty, dripping hell) and in the winter (blessedly cold and refreshing). Inside Big Sight, there are four large halls jam-packed with doujinshi circles selling doujinshi (comics) as well as CG collections on CD-ROM, cute hand-made tributes to their favorite anime character, and more. We try, but I never have time to get through more than two of them before the event is over. Because there is no air conditioning in any of the halls, our bodie will be completely drenched in sweat by the time we're done, despite the towels I bring with me to stuff in my clothes. Yasu and I will do our best.
I'm a big fan of video games, and have loved them ever since the days of Berserk and Star Castle. Whenever my son and I go to our favorite public bath ("Furo 21"), we stop off and play a few games at the Sega ge-sen (Japanese for "game center"). We can only afford to play a few, since video games cost 100 yen here in Japan, which is roughly $1 per game, compared to a quarter or 50 cents in the States. Actually, many of the really exotic games are $2 to play. But the extra income from the higher video game prices comes back to consumers in the form of some really cool games. Of course there are the ones that show up all over the world, the Virtua Fighter 4's, the shooting games, and so on. One of my current favorites is a Japanese taiko drum game, in which you have to hit the Japanese drum (either the face of the drum or the rim around the drum, which produce different kinds of sounds) in tune with the song you're playing. There's also a funky "photographer game" out, in which you're a photographer with a camera on a wire, trying to catch great shots at sporting events. Every game center in Japan has a large amount of floor space devoted to "UFO catcher" (crane games) as well as "puri-kura" (print clubs, i.e. those cute machines that take your picture and print it onto stickers), which are solid money-makers here in Japan. Another major trend in video game entertainment is the rebirth of "retro" games that were popular in the 80s and early 90's, like Crazy Climber, Donkey Kong, and the original Street Fighter II. Some of them are cool, but at $1 per pop, I'll stick to Mame.
Everywhere I look, I see more and more signs that Japan really is in a deflationary spiral. We're all used to prices going up a little bit as time goes by, but in Japan, the rule is "Japan's prices are high to begin with, but the rate of inflation is low." This seems odd, but somehow it accurately describes the movement of prices here in Japan -- actually, during the nine years I've lived in Japan, I can't think of a single thing that went up in price, except for train fare to Tokyo (which was raised fro, $16 to $18 a few years ago). Now, signs that prices are actually coming down are everywhere. Beef bowl (that all-important economic indicator) now costs just $2.80, $2 less than it did a few months ago. Many food items that were $1.20 are now under $1. You can even find the 500 ml PET bottles of tea, which usually go for $1.50, for $1 if you look. More than just certain prices dropping, I feel there's a new attitude of "cheapness" present in Japanese consumers, who were known in the past for spending money on all sorts of silly things (like toilets that clean and dry your butt, complete with remote control). Now, consumers want value and low prices, even if it means shopping at Fresay instead of Shimizu Supermarket because their instant coffee is 68 yen instead of 88 yen. This is a good thing in some ways, but if Japanese housewives are being extra-stingy with their pennies, it will make it that much harder for Japan's economy to grow in the future. At the Comic Market on Friday, I watched a huge line of people wait for 30 minutes in the hot sun to ride the free bus to Tokyo Statin, rather than pay the 400 yen to ride the Yurikamome train (a very pleasant train line that takes you up and over Tokyo bay).
Well, we hope you are having a great weekend -- hopefully cooler than Japan is right now!
Lightning strikes! Last summer, the J-List office was struck by lightning, which caused our big air conditioner (which we informally refer to the Giver of All Life and Happiness) to die for a week during the hottest part of the summer. After a freak lightning storm on Friday night that made national news, the J-List office has been hit again -- and we have lost our air conditioner again! Hopefully it will be a minor repair, as it was last time, but the timing is really terrible, as it happened on Friday night before the week-long Obon holiday. Doh! The lightning also managed to kill our phones, and knock out our internet connection (the one we use from Japan, not the one the J-List site is served from). This has been a hell of a day. Now if we can just get that air-con fixed before it heats up again.
Speaking of heat, by the time you read this, I'll be basking in it. Comic Market 60 is going on in Tokyo, at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center (you can see the famous inverted pyramid as it gets destroyed in Godzilla vs. Destroyer), and Yasu and I will be making the pilgrimage on Sunday to talk with doujinshi circles about letting us sell their works on J-List. A massive doujinshi convention in which about 50,000 fans line up to spend hundreds of dollars on these extremely popular amateur-printed comics, Comic Market (or "Comiket" as its called) is held twice a year, in the summer (sweaty, dripping hell) and in the winter (blessedly cold and refreshing). Inside Big Sight, there are four large halls jam-packed with doujinshi circles selling doujinshi (comics) as well as CG collections on CD-ROM, cute hand-made tributes to their favorite anime character, and more. We try, but I never have time to get through more than two of them before the event is over. Because there is no air conditioning in any of the halls, our bodie will be completely drenched in sweat by the time we're done, despite the towels I bring with me to stuff in my clothes. Yasu and I will do our best.
I'm a big fan of video games, and have loved them ever since the days of Berserk and Star Castle. Whenever my son and I go to our favorite public bath ("Furo 21"), we stop off and play a few games at the Sega ge-sen (Japanese for "game center"). We can only afford to play a few, since video games cost 100 yen here in Japan, which is roughly $1 per game, compared to a quarter or 50 cents in the States. Actually, many of the really exotic games are $2 to play. But the extra income from the higher video game prices comes back to consumers in the form of some really cool games. Of course there are the ones that show up all over the world, the Virtua Fighter 4's, the shooting games, and so on. One of my current favorites is a Japanese taiko drum game, in which you have to hit the Japanese drum (either the face of the drum or the rim around the drum, which produce different kinds of sounds) in tune with the song you're playing. There's also a funky "photographer game" out, in which you're a photographer with a camera on a wire, trying to catch great shots at sporting events. Every game center in Japan has a large amount of floor space devoted to "UFO catcher" (crane games) as well as "puri-kura" (print clubs, i.e. those cute machines that take your picture and print it onto stickers), which are solid money-makers here in Japan. Another major trend in video game entertainment is the rebirth of "retro" games that were popular in the 80s and early 90's, like Crazy Climber, Donkey Kong, and the original Street Fighter II. Some of them are cool, but at $1 per pop, I'll stick to Mame.
Everywhere I look, I see more and more signs that Japan really is in a deflationary spiral. We're all used to prices going up a little bit as time goes by, but in Japan, the rule is "Japan's prices are high to begin with, but the rate of inflation is low." This seems odd, but somehow it accurately describes the movement of prices here in Japan -- actually, during the nine years I've lived in Japan, I can't think of a single thing that went up in price, except for train fare to Tokyo (which was raised fro, $16 to $18 a few years ago). Now, signs that prices are actually coming down are everywhere. Beef bowl (that all-important economic indicator) now costs just $2.80, $2 less than it did a few months ago. Many food items that were $1.20 are now under $1. You can even find the 500 ml PET bottles of tea, which usually go for $1.50, for $1 if you look. More than just certain prices dropping, I feel there's a new attitude of "cheapness" present in Japanese consumers, who were known in the past for spending money on all sorts of silly things (like toilets that clean and dry your butt, complete with remote control). Now, consumers want value and low prices, even if it means shopping at Fresay instead of Shimizu Supermarket because their instant coffee is 68 yen instead of 88 yen. This is a good thing in some ways, but if Japanese housewives are being extra-stingy with their pennies, it will make it that much harder for Japan's economy to grow in the future. At the Comic Market on Friday, I watched a huge line of people wait for 30 minutes in the hot sun to ride the free bus to Tokyo Statin, rather than pay the 400 yen to ride the Yurikamome train (a very pleasant train line that takes you up and over Tokyo bay).
Well, we hope you are having a great weekend -- hopefully cooler than Japan is right now!
Monday, August 06, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 6, 2001
Hello again from your good friends in Japan, J-List!
Summer is here in a big way, and that means heat and humidity in Japan. Companies always compete during the summer to capture the extra dollars consumers are spending on exotic drinks. Coca Cola is doing their usual "summer upgrade" of cans from 350 ml to 500 ml (that is, from a 12 oz. can to a taller can with more cola inside), while Pepsi is back with Pepsiman bottle caps (this series shows Pepsiman doing various sports). Kirin has developed a "bottle can," a steel can with a resoluble cap, as a way of attracting consumers to its teas and other drinks. McDonald's, meanwhile, is onto a new idea, selling its "Fruche" frozen drinks -- just frozen fruit in a vanilla shake, but it's really good.
It's said that Japan is 25 years behind the U.S. in terms of social development, or 10 years behind, depending on who you ask. Seen from a certain viewpoint, there does seem to be a "society gap" between Japan and the rest of the world, from the Internet to attitudes about women and men and more. When I came to Japan, I was amazed to see that there was no child carseat law, and you could regularly see kids standing up in the front seats of cars driving around town. Embarrassment as being "behind" the West, though, caused Japan to enact a child seat law two years ago. We sometimes wonder if anti-smoking sentiment will take root here as it began to do a decade ago in the U.S. It would be nice, but we don't think it will happen -- Japan Tabacco (aka JT) is a massive tobacco interest, and until a few years ago was actually operated directly by the Japanese government before it was privatized, so that, like NTT, it still enjoys semiofficial status. Even the message printed on packs of cigarettes here -- "There is concern that smoking too much can affect your health" -- is an obvious concession to the tobacco companies due to the massive tax revenues cigarettes generate here.
For this special Saturday update, we've got some very nice new items for you, including the following (see below for clickable link that will show all new items at J-List):
This is your *last chance* to pre-order Tokimeki Check in!, which is in transit from the CD duplicators even as I type. If you like Japan's excellent bishoujo games, please stop by the Peach Princess BBS (http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi). This is a great place where you can talk about all things Bishojo from anime to manga to games, so please stop by and say hello.
Want to learn Japanese? We recommend Yes Japan, a very cool online course that allows you to study through your computer. Online flash cards, downloadable sheets for practicing hiragana and kanji, and pronunciation are all available. The URL is http://www.yesjapan.com/
Summer is here in a big way, and that means heat and humidity in Japan. Companies always compete during the summer to capture the extra dollars consumers are spending on exotic drinks. Coca Cola is doing their usual "summer upgrade" of cans from 350 ml to 500 ml (that is, from a 12 oz. can to a taller can with more cola inside), while Pepsi is back with Pepsiman bottle caps (this series shows Pepsiman doing various sports). Kirin has developed a "bottle can," a steel can with a resoluble cap, as a way of attracting consumers to its teas and other drinks. McDonald's, meanwhile, is onto a new idea, selling its "Fruche" frozen drinks -- just frozen fruit in a vanilla shake, but it's really good.
It's said that Japan is 25 years behind the U.S. in terms of social development, or 10 years behind, depending on who you ask. Seen from a certain viewpoint, there does seem to be a "society gap" between Japan and the rest of the world, from the Internet to attitudes about women and men and more. When I came to Japan, I was amazed to see that there was no child carseat law, and you could regularly see kids standing up in the front seats of cars driving around town. Embarrassment as being "behind" the West, though, caused Japan to enact a child seat law two years ago. We sometimes wonder if anti-smoking sentiment will take root here as it began to do a decade ago in the U.S. It would be nice, but we don't think it will happen -- Japan Tabacco (aka JT) is a massive tobacco interest, and until a few years ago was actually operated directly by the Japanese government before it was privatized, so that, like NTT, it still enjoys semiofficial status. Even the message printed on packs of cigarettes here -- "There is concern that smoking too much can affect your health" -- is an obvious concession to the tobacco companies due to the massive tax revenues cigarettes generate here.
For this special Saturday update, we've got some very nice new items for you, including the following (see below for clickable link that will show all new items at J-List):
- Many new adult products for our adult customers
- If you love Japan's race queens, we have fresh stock of the very hard-to-find (even for us) Gal's Paradise 2000 cards
- We have fresh stock of Japanese oolong tea on the Japanese snack page, as well as a great for fans of traditional Japanese sweets (or for anyone who wants to try some Japanese candy with hundreds of years of history)
- For anime fans, we've got an extremely cool new item: a superbly crafted figure set of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, aka G-Force/Battle of the Planets in the U.S. that will surely sell out fast
- On our various Wacky Things from Japan pages, we've got a new fashionable wooden sign for when you want privacy in the bath, and a collection of positively zany funny "message buttons" in Japanese.
This is your *last chance* to pre-order Tokimeki Check in!, which is in transit from the CD duplicators even as I type. If you like Japan's excellent bishoujo games, please stop by the Peach Princess BBS (http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi). This is a great place where you can talk about all things Bishojo from anime to manga to games, so please stop by and say hello.
Want to learn Japanese? We recommend Yes Japan, a very cool online course that allows you to study through your computer. Online flash cards, downloadable sheets for practicing hiragana and kanji, and pronunciation are all available. The URL is http://www.yesjapan.com/
Saturday, August 04, 2001
Greetings from J-List August 4, 2001
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Monday, July 30, 2001
Greetings from J-List July 30, 2001
Hello from the New J-List! We're happy to take the wraps off the all-new J-List homepage!
The new J-List site represents many months of hard work, and it includes some features we've wanted to incorporate into the site for years. First and foremost is the #1 request from customers -- full product search -- allowing you to search for just products with the keywords you want. The search is smart, too, allowing you to search for either "Bunko Kanazawa" (English name order) or "Kanazawa Bunko" (Japanese word order). Similiarly, you can search for "bishojo" or "bishoujo" and get the same results. When you add an item to your shopping cart, the new J-List site will make suggestions for other items you may also be interested in. By popular demand, we've brought back the thumbnail, full size and text viewing options while viewing, and now they're "sticky" -- choose one viewing option, and that option stays "on" while you view items. The way you view the various categories and sub-categories has been improved, too, and we've done away with the frames as well. Your address information is saved for you, allowing you to check out quickly without typing your address after the first time, and when you check out, you'll be presented with accurate shipping charges for SAL, Airmail, EMS and seamail. As we created this new site, we tried not just to add new features, but to keep things that should be kept the same untouched. While the new site is being tested and put through its paces, we've left the old site up, in case you ever try to access the new page and find it inaccessible (say, because we're recompiling the shopping cart program). You can access the old J-List pages from the index page at http://www.jlist.com/ . Please let us know how we've done!
Well, the textbook issue continues to cause tension between Korea and Japan, with a few in Korea calling for the severing of relations with Japan. The relationship of Japan and Korea is an incredibly complex one, that can't be easily understood by outsiders. I've always thought the two countries were quite similar to England and Ireland in many ways -- the power in the East tries to colonize the weaker country to the west, trying not just to conquer it, but to erase its native language and replace it with Japanese. If you'd like to read up on the individual issues that Korea and China have objected to in Japan's latest history textbook, see this article from the Korean Herald: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/textbook/textbook.shtml .
Since we love DVD but hate the anti-globalistic efforts of DVD machine makers to divide the world into exclusive DVD regions, we've
For this first official update of the All New J-List, we have some very nice items for you. They include:
Okay, come see us on the web!
The new J-List site represents many months of hard work, and it includes some features we've wanted to incorporate into the site for years. First and foremost is the #1 request from customers -- full product search -- allowing you to search for just products with the keywords you want. The search is smart, too, allowing you to search for either "Bunko Kanazawa" (English name order) or "Kanazawa Bunko" (Japanese word order). Similiarly, you can search for "bishojo" or "bishoujo" and get the same results. When you add an item to your shopping cart, the new J-List site will make suggestions for other items you may also be interested in. By popular demand, we've brought back the thumbnail, full size and text viewing options while viewing, and now they're "sticky" -- choose one viewing option, and that option stays "on" while you view items. The way you view the various categories and sub-categories has been improved, too, and we've done away with the frames as well. Your address information is saved for you, allowing you to check out quickly without typing your address after the first time, and when you check out, you'll be presented with accurate shipping charges for SAL, Airmail, EMS and seamail. As we created this new site, we tried not just to add new features, but to keep things that should be kept the same untouched. While the new site is being tested and put through its paces, we've left the old site up, in case you ever try to access the new page and find it inaccessible (say, because we're recompiling the shopping cart program). You can access the old J-List pages from the index page at http://www.jlist.com/ . Please let us know how we've done!
Well, the textbook issue continues to cause tension between Korea and Japan, with a few in Korea calling for the severing of relations with Japan. The relationship of Japan and Korea is an incredibly complex one, that can't be easily understood by outsiders. I've always thought the two countries were quite similar to England and Ireland in many ways -- the power in the East tries to colonize the weaker country to the west, trying not just to conquer it, but to erase its native language and replace it with Japanese. If you'd like to read up on the individual issues that Korea and China have objected to in Japan's latest history textbook, see this article from the Korean Herald: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/textbook/textbook.shtml .
Since we love DVD but hate the anti-globalistic efforts of DVD machine makers to divide the world into exclusive DVD regions, we've
For this first official update of the All New J-List, we have some very nice items for you. They include:
- First of all, we're happy to announce that the third bishoujo game release from Peach Princess, Water Closet, is now shipping! This is a great exploration of various fetish themes, with a hilarious story in which you play from the point of view of one of five female characters (including the first-ever Canadian bishoujo game character). We think Water Closet is a great game!
- We've got some excellent magazines, including the new Urecco, with one of the most lovely cover models we've ever seen -- Megumi Yasu
- Also popular with J-List customers, the lovely new Cream, featuring sweet Japanese sailor uniform models and more -- this issue is extra special because it features the "first nude" of Yuina Mizuki, age 18, and more
- For fans of classic magazines, we've got some mid-1990's issues of Urecco posted for you (see magazine page 2)
- If you like Japan's hentai games, see the new issue of Push, which is extra-cool because it features a CD-ROM with game images and demos to play with
- Also a popular item: fresh stock of the August 2000 DVD & Video CD Soft Catalog, a nifty magazine + dual VCD magazine that gives you up to 2 hours of cool AV fun for a very low price
- For photobook fans, we have a super item, Back Yellows, featuring 47 lovely amateur Tokyo girls exposing their nudity for you, as well as some classic issues of Nowon
- G-Taste is a fantastic series of erotic color art books by Hiroki Yagami, and feature his wonderful and highly erotic characters. We've restocked most of the G-Taste books for you!
- We have a rare and cool erotic ukiyoe photobook, filled excellent 19th century erotica (we only have one copy though)
- If you love our manga selection, we hope you'll like the new search features, which make it easier than ever to find the manga you want. We've also posted some great new volumes, as well as fresh stock of a dozen popular (but previously sold out) items, just for you
- For yaoi fans, we've got some nice items, including Be Boys Zips 26 and Slave & Master (wow, such interesting titles)
- If doujinshi is your true love, we've got the new TGWOA manga ("The Great Work of Alchemy"), filled with great hentai doujinshi themes
- We've got some nice erotic videos for you: Sanity or Insanity (an exploration of masochism among Japan's female college students), and Junna Shiina's great "Lovely Days" video
- For DVD lovers, we've got some excellent items for you too: Miho Fukada's wonderful sexual performance in 5.1 Dolby surround with super multi-angle, as well as Manami Yoshii's super cosplay performance as "Heart Captor Manami"
- Also for fans of rare hentai DVD from Japan, we've got vol. 1 of the Night Shift Hospital hentai anime by the former doujinshi artist Tachibana Seven
- If you love Japan's wonderful anime characters, we've got two excellent magazines available by monthly revolving subscription. Megami Magazine is a fantastic anime magazine that is literally overflowing with fantastic presents for you -- 13 double-sided color posters, stickers, punch-out desktop characters, and more. Then, Ultra Jump is a super monthly manga magazine with 450 pages of great manga for all manga fans, including the popular Bastard!! series, and more
- By customer request, we've gotten in fresh stock of the Love Hina "bilingual" manga, which feature both English and Japanese -- a great way to enjoy these great manga stories
- We've organized the Wacky Things from Japan into several sub-categories, for your browsing convenience. If you love Hello Kitty, check out the very cool Watercolor Set we've got on the Cute Things from Japan page
- Finally, announcing the Wacky Things from Japan $1 sale! We've gotten some really bizarre and wonderful Wacky items over the years. We're having a super $1 sale to allow you to get some cool things from Japan and help us make room for even more Wacky stuff.
Okay, come see us on the web!
Thursday, June 28, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 28, 2001
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Monday, June 25, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 25, 2001
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Thursday, June 21, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 21, 2001
Hello again from your friends in Japan, the staff of J-List!
In any language, words have slightly different meanings from words in other languages. The Japanese word omoshiroi corresponds to the word "interesting," but it also has a connotation of "funny" (like a joke), which is new if you're used to English. In a similar vein, some Japanese words and concepts just "work" differently in Japanese. One is the word "friend," which is tomodachi in Japanese. In english, the word friend is used quite loosely, and is sometimes applied to someone who isn't a close friend, but it just someone you know or meet sometimes, or even of a person you're romantically involved with. In Japanese, tomodachi would only be used for a fairly close friend that was close in age to you -- it would be almost impossible to have a tomodachi that was much older or much younger than you. Other words are used for other casual relationships, such as shiriai (acquaintance), or if the person is above or below you in a school or organization, words like senpai and kouhai just "fit" better. I've got a friend who's got his own English school, and he's 52 years old. In relationships that are based in Japanese, it would be almost impossible for me to think of him as my friend -- the Japanese word just doesn't work that way.
My six-year-old son Kazuki has teacher a great milestone: he's lost his first tooth. Naturally, I wanted to follow what is done in the States, putting the pillow under my son's pillow so the Tooth Fairy could put money under his pillow. My wife, however, wanted to follow Japanese the way, in which the tooth is thrown onto the roof of your house (if it was a lower tooth), or thrown under the house (if it was an upper tooth). In the end, we compromised and did both. Kazuki wanted the tooth fairy to bring him some American money, until I reminded him that he couldn't buy anything with American money in Japan.
The California energy crisis strikes again! A rolling blackout at our ISP in San Diego caused the J-List site to go down for a few hours on Wednesday. We're hard at work on the new server, which has, among other things, a separate gasoline generator to keep things on even if the lights go out. We hope to have some good news for you soon.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items prepared for you, including:
Remember that J-List carries the most unique selection you will ever find of Japanese gum, snacks like Pocky and Pretz, and more. Please browse our site to find our unique products.
In any language, words have slightly different meanings from words in other languages. The Japanese word omoshiroi corresponds to the word "interesting," but it also has a connotation of "funny" (like a joke), which is new if you're used to English. In a similar vein, some Japanese words and concepts just "work" differently in Japanese. One is the word "friend," which is tomodachi in Japanese. In english, the word friend is used quite loosely, and is sometimes applied to someone who isn't a close friend, but it just someone you know or meet sometimes, or even of a person you're romantically involved with. In Japanese, tomodachi would only be used for a fairly close friend that was close in age to you -- it would be almost impossible to have a tomodachi that was much older or much younger than you. Other words are used for other casual relationships, such as shiriai (acquaintance), or if the person is above or below you in a school or organization, words like senpai and kouhai just "fit" better. I've got a friend who's got his own English school, and he's 52 years old. In relationships that are based in Japanese, it would be almost impossible for me to think of him as my friend -- the Japanese word just doesn't work that way.
My six-year-old son Kazuki has teacher a great milestone: he's lost his first tooth. Naturally, I wanted to follow what is done in the States, putting the pillow under my son's pillow so the Tooth Fairy could put money under his pillow. My wife, however, wanted to follow Japanese the way, in which the tooth is thrown onto the roof of your house (if it was a lower tooth), or thrown under the house (if it was an upper tooth). In the end, we compromised and did both. Kazuki wanted the tooth fairy to bring him some American money, until I reminded him that he couldn't buy anything with American money in Japan.
The California energy crisis strikes again! A rolling blackout at our ISP in San Diego caused the J-List site to go down for a few hours on Wednesday. We're hard at work on the new server, which has, among other things, a separate gasoline generator to keep things on even if the lights go out. We hope to have some good news for you soon.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items prepared for you, including:
- Many new 18+ products for our adult customers
- If you like J-List's wacky food and snack offerings, we've got more for you to try. One is a delicious "dry curry" mix (similar to fried rice, but flavored with delicious curry powder), and for rice lovers, packets of Ochazuke, which is a delicious and wholesome food you eat with rice
- For Play Station 2 fans, we've got limited stock of the current Dengeki Play Station magazine, filled with information on the hottest PS2 games from Japan
- Updated "Wacky" items incude Japanese lacquerware bowls and coaster, new unique items for ladies, and more!
Remember that J-List carries the most unique selection you will ever find of Japanese gum, snacks like Pocky and Pretz, and more. Please browse our site to find our unique products.
Monday, June 18, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 18, 2001
Hello and Happy Monday from your friends at J-List!
It's said in Japan that the U.S. is a "horizontal society" and Japan is a "vertical society," supposedly due to the fact that life in the U.S. being merit-based (if you work hard, you can enjoy the fruits of you labor directly) whereas progression up the "social ladder" in Japan is often based on age and seniority. It's certainly true that relationships here are very up-down, with a clear idea that the older you are (or the longer you've been in a certain organization), the more "erai" (high-level) you are. This concept is all around you when you're in Japan, you can't get away from it -- it's even built into the language. When a younger person speaks to an older person, even if he's just one year older, he must use "keigo," or polite Japanese, which effectively organizes everyone in the room according to level in a way that is impossible even to consider in American English. To not use the "right" language for your level is disconcerting to others, and makes you sound "cheeky." It sounds odd, but it actually makes relationships work more smoothly here -- it's almost like a networking protocol, TCP/IP for humans.
One interesting concept in Japan is that of senpai and kouhai, which could be translated as upperclassmen and underclassman, although this would only apply to students in school. Basically, higher-level individuals (either because of age or seniority) in a school or organization are senpai, and those who entered the school or organization after are kouhai. Senpai have various responsibilities to their kouhai, to teach and guide them. When I was an English teacher and met new teachers who had just come to Japan to teach, I assumed my role as senpai and took them around, as others did for me when I first arrived in Japan.
We're going to be moving to the new J-List server soon, but in the meantime, we experienced some technical problems over the weekend, which caused the "temporary" order form to misbehave. We've linked the order form buttons to the secure email form, which still works, so secure orders can be accepted without problems. Please note, though, that the secure certificate on the server is giving a "certificate has expired" browser error currently, due to our server problem. If you're concerned about submitting credit card details through the secure email form, please feel free to send us your order by fax or voice mail (the number is (619) 839-3745). If you're ordering through Paypal/Billpoint, or with check/money order, or if you have a card on file with us, we can of course accept orders through email. Thanks, as always, for your understanding during this temporary period.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
Are you an experienced graphic designer with knowledge of Illustrator? We're looking for someone who can help us design some interesting T-shirts, including some shirts promoting CM-Watch, our Japanese TV commercial site. If you're interested in helping, please drop us an email.
It's said in Japan that the U.S. is a "horizontal society" and Japan is a "vertical society," supposedly due to the fact that life in the U.S. being merit-based (if you work hard, you can enjoy the fruits of you labor directly) whereas progression up the "social ladder" in Japan is often based on age and seniority. It's certainly true that relationships here are very up-down, with a clear idea that the older you are (or the longer you've been in a certain organization), the more "erai" (high-level) you are. This concept is all around you when you're in Japan, you can't get away from it -- it's even built into the language. When a younger person speaks to an older person, even if he's just one year older, he must use "keigo," or polite Japanese, which effectively organizes everyone in the room according to level in a way that is impossible even to consider in American English. To not use the "right" language for your level is disconcerting to others, and makes you sound "cheeky." It sounds odd, but it actually makes relationships work more smoothly here -- it's almost like a networking protocol, TCP/IP for humans.
One interesting concept in Japan is that of senpai and kouhai, which could be translated as upperclassmen and underclassman, although this would only apply to students in school. Basically, higher-level individuals (either because of age or seniority) in a school or organization are senpai, and those who entered the school or organization after are kouhai. Senpai have various responsibilities to their kouhai, to teach and guide them. When I was an English teacher and met new teachers who had just come to Japan to teach, I assumed my role as senpai and took them around, as others did for me when I first arrived in Japan.
We're going to be moving to the new J-List server soon, but in the meantime, we experienced some technical problems over the weekend, which caused the "temporary" order form to misbehave. We've linked the order form buttons to the secure email form, which still works, so secure orders can be accepted without problems. Please note, though, that the secure certificate on the server is giving a "certificate has expired" browser error currently, due to our server problem. If you're concerned about submitting credit card details through the secure email form, please feel free to send us your order by fax or voice mail (the number is (619) 839-3745). If you're ordering through Paypal/Billpoint, or with check/money order, or if you have a card on file with us, we can of course accept orders through email. Thanks, as always, for your understanding during this temporary period.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
- Some interesting new 18+ products for our adult customers
- If you love Japanese girls, we submit that you'll love the charming swimsuit idol Chikako Hatsumi, a lovely creature in a great idol DVD from SOD
- Love Japanese snacks and food? We've got some interesting items for you, including authentic "ume-boshi" (very tart dried plums that are delicious), and some Power Rangers "furikake" (dried nori and scrambled egg, which you put on white rice -- kids love it) featuring the next series from Japan, Gao Ranger
- If you love cute things from Japan, we hope you'll check out the "Wacky Things from Japan -- cute items" page. We've posted several new items, including a Hello Kitty lunchbox, a cute Hello Kitty name tag, and more
- Finally, we've added some new items to our Wacky Things from Japan main page, including a new selection of Japanese washi paper (very useful and cool), the ultimate note holder for your desk (trust us! it's cool!) and more!
Are you an experienced graphic designer with knowledge of Illustrator? We're looking for someone who can help us design some interesting T-shirts, including some shirts promoting CM-Watch, our Japanese TV commercial site. If you're interested in helping, please drop us an email.
Friday, June 15, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 15, 2001
Hello again from your friends in Japan!
If you ever want to really learn a subject, try teaching it. I never knew how much I didn't know about my own native language until I became an English teacher in Japan, and it was a great experience for me. You become aware of so many aspects of your own language when you teach it. I also paid attention to the rules that govern English pronunciation. For example, North American speakers of English usually stress the second syllable of a three syllable word -- my son's name (Kazuki) is usually pronounced ka-ZOO-ki by English speakers, rather than with a slight stress on the first syllable. This "American accept" of Japanese sounds cute and pleasing to the Japanese however, and sometimes they go out of their way to use it -- TV commercials for the Konami game company here always end with an American saying the name of the company as "ko-NAH-me."
It's always interesting to compare the U.S. and Japan. In Japan, American-style breakfast cereal is slowly taking root, as Kellogg's Japan and Calbee battle for market share with their Corn Frosty and Choco Crispy products. (I never buy Kellogg's cereal here, it's way too expensive.) When I was growing up, I loved to find the little toys that came in cereal, but here, manufacturers haven't taken that approach. Instead of breakfast cereals, Japanese children can get their fix of silly toys from the monthly kids magazines that are so popular here, like Tomodachi and Tanoshii Yochien, which are magazines for kids which are also filled with fun things, from punch-out cardboard robots to Pokemon stickers or cards, little cardboard sushi so the girls can play "mother," and more. The competition among the magazines is fierce, though, and these magazines are always trying to come up with cooler things for the kids than their competitors.
Calling all big and little guys and girls! J-List has made a name for itself with funny and bizarre T-shirts with Japanese messages like "Hen na gaijin" (I'm a straight foreigner) and "watashi wa H" (I'm H). We're closing out our current T-shirts to make room for new designs, and we're just about there -- however, several of our shirts have sold out of sizes L and XL, leaving a few mediums and several size XXL shirts in stock. To help you help us get rid of these shirts, we've reduced the prices on them even more. Several of the shirts still come with free shipping, too, so they're really cheap. Check out the Wacky Japanese T-shirts page, now!
For this evening's update, we've got some more excellent items for you, including the following:
There's been some kind of weird change in how credit card processing for the UK works, and the result has been some confusing address verification errors with UK buyers. We apologize in advance for any confusion, and will work to push your orders through with as little hassle as possible.
If you ever want to really learn a subject, try teaching it. I never knew how much I didn't know about my own native language until I became an English teacher in Japan, and it was a great experience for me. You become aware of so many aspects of your own language when you teach it. I also paid attention to the rules that govern English pronunciation. For example, North American speakers of English usually stress the second syllable of a three syllable word -- my son's name (Kazuki) is usually pronounced ka-ZOO-ki by English speakers, rather than with a slight stress on the first syllable. This "American accept" of Japanese sounds cute and pleasing to the Japanese however, and sometimes they go out of their way to use it -- TV commercials for the Konami game company here always end with an American saying the name of the company as "ko-NAH-me."
It's always interesting to compare the U.S. and Japan. In Japan, American-style breakfast cereal is slowly taking root, as Kellogg's Japan and Calbee battle for market share with their Corn Frosty and Choco Crispy products. (I never buy Kellogg's cereal here, it's way too expensive.) When I was growing up, I loved to find the little toys that came in cereal, but here, manufacturers haven't taken that approach. Instead of breakfast cereals, Japanese children can get their fix of silly toys from the monthly kids magazines that are so popular here, like Tomodachi and Tanoshii Yochien, which are magazines for kids which are also filled with fun things, from punch-out cardboard robots to Pokemon stickers or cards, little cardboard sushi so the girls can play "mother," and more. The competition among the magazines is fierce, though, and these magazines are always trying to come up with cooler things for the kids than their competitors.
Calling all big and little guys and girls! J-List has made a name for itself with funny and bizarre T-shirts with Japanese messages like "Hen na gaijin" (I'm a straight foreigner) and "watashi wa H" (I'm H). We're closing out our current T-shirts to make room for new designs, and we're just about there -- however, several of our shirts have sold out of sizes L and XL, leaving a few mediums and several size XXL shirts in stock. To help you help us get rid of these shirts, we've reduced the prices on them even more. Several of the shirts still come with free shipping, too, so they're really cheap. Check out the Wacky Japanese T-shirts page, now!
For this evening's update, we've got some more excellent items for you, including the following:
- First, we've got some great new magazines, including the charming new Video Boy and Best Video, which feature all the latest lovely AV idols from Japan, and Aishite Ageru ("I'll love you"), a popular sperm-fetish magazine
- We have some more of our popular "one shot" magazines, single issues posted at low prices. See them on near the top of magazine page 2
- For photobook lovers, we've got some nice items, including Kawai Azusa's busty photobook and several new hardcover items. We've also gotten in fresh stock of some items that had sold out recently, so check out the photobooks page
- We have another update to our manga pages, both Page 1 and Page 2 -- check out the all-new manga volumes we've posted (we think you'll like them)
- Also for manga and doujinshi fans, we've got fresh stock of the very cool Denno Buto Musume (Electronic Fighting Daughter), a series of super "game girl" hentai dojinshi stories compiled into a nifty anthology manga
- For dojinshi collectors, we've got a great selection of some cool single-issue dojinshi. However, since the automatic shopping cart is not working right now, the books might be sold already despite their appearing on the page as available. If the doujinshi you want to buy isn't available, we apologize in advance
- We have two excellent new DVDs in from Soft on Demand. In "Hitomi Ryo Best Selection," enjoy the best moments of this stylish AV idol's AV career. In "An Ideal Day of the Married Woman," see the unfaithful sexual acts of two Tokyo "hitozuma" (married women)
- Also very nice -- Kanazawa Bunko's Lovely Heroine, reissued on DVD at a lower price by Uchu Kikaku
- In the first Blue Sexual Desire series video, acclaimed AV director TOHJIRO got tired of filming Morishita Kurumi's sex and decided to taste her himself. Now, in volley two, he's going after the innocent Nagase Ai, in a self-directed adult video featuring himself as both cameraman and AV actor
- For fans of Japan's lovely swimsuit idols, we've got a new region-free DVD featuring the charming and lovely Ue Sayaka as she is filmed in bikini, sexy costumes, and even boxing gloves
- If you're a fan of Japan's zany professional wrestling characters, we've got a treat -- two very cool toys based on the Great Muta, a popular Japanese wrestler who "transforms" from his "normal self" into a supernatural being
- As noted above, we've reduced the prices on our remaining Funny Japanese T-shirts
- If you're a Pokemon fan, we've got exactly one copy of the 2001 desktop calendar in stock, discounted, on the anime and toys page
- Ever needed to write something in Japanese? Check out the katakana stickers on the stickers & signs page, wacky but also very useful
- Just in time for summer, a product that we at J-List love very much: Japanese mugi tea, a barley tea that is the runaway favorite of Japanese during the unbearable summer months. Now you can enjoy healthy mugi tea all the time, with the cold water tea bags we've got on the Japanese snacks and food page
- We've gotten in fresh stock of several of our unique flavors of Japanese gum
- Finally, our new Wacky Things from Japan include a bizarre new keychain/camera strap/key holder that's a zipper (yes, a zipper) -- zip it around your wrist to keep from losing your keys. Also, new katakana story books (for anyone trying to learn to write Japanese), and more!
There's been some kind of weird change in how credit card processing for the UK works, and the result has been some confusing address verification errors with UK buyers. We apologize in advance for any confusion, and will work to push your orders through with as little hassle as possible.
Monday, June 11, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 11, 2001
Hello again from Japan, where the Yellow Pages are called the Hello Pages.
Japan is reeling from a terrible tragedy this weekend. On Friday, a man entered an elementary school in Osaka and ran amock with a knife, killing 8 and injuring 13. The slain students were all first- and second-graders, aged 6 and 7, in what is one of the bleakest days in memory in Japan. Japan has had a string of tragic incidents of this kind over the past five years, including school stabbings with deadly "butterfly knives" of teachers by students, younger children by older bullies, as well as murders by young people. While nothing compared to the sad events that occur in the U.S., the terrible trend underscore instabilities with Japan's society. As a parent of young children, this unfortunate event has left my blood chilled.
The latest issue of Newsweek (the International edition, not the U.S. one) had an interesting story on the trend towards young people in Japan not caring to find full-time jobs. I've noticed this too -- more and more, a class of "freeters" (young people who prefer to work part-time jobs, changing every few months) is emerging. In Japan, there are three kinds of jobs: seishain (full-time jobs, with all benefits and annual bonuses), "part" (part-time jobs with some benefits), and arubaito (from the German word albeit, this word means week-to-week part time jobs). In the old days, life was very simple -- you studied hard to get into a good collge, entered a good company, and stayed there all your life. Now that lifetime employment is basically out the window, fewer young Japanese want to follow the same path their parents did. I wonder what repercussions this trend will have on Japan over the next decade or so?
One of the major complaints by foreigners living in Japan is the dentists here. Basically, Japanese dentists are famous for taking a certain job and making it take weeks. I've had three root canals done while living in Japan, and each time the dentist managed to break the work up into at least eight visits. I suspect that they do this because the Japanese medical insurance system limits the amount they can charge for each visit -- probably around $50 -- so they have to break up the job into many visits. Still, it's far from fun to have to go back again and again and again just to have a tooth filled.
If you look at the J-List site, you'll see that we've "forgotten" to end the 10% off on all magazine, manga, photobook and art book orders sale. We'll leave it up through the weekend, so if you want to save some money on that Golden Stage manga set or that Ohura Anna photobook you've had your eye on, we won't mind...
Japan is reeling from a terrible tragedy this weekend. On Friday, a man entered an elementary school in Osaka and ran amock with a knife, killing 8 and injuring 13. The slain students were all first- and second-graders, aged 6 and 7, in what is one of the bleakest days in memory in Japan. Japan has had a string of tragic incidents of this kind over the past five years, including school stabbings with deadly "butterfly knives" of teachers by students, younger children by older bullies, as well as murders by young people. While nothing compared to the sad events that occur in the U.S., the terrible trend underscore instabilities with Japan's society. As a parent of young children, this unfortunate event has left my blood chilled.
The latest issue of Newsweek (the International edition, not the U.S. one) had an interesting story on the trend towards young people in Japan not caring to find full-time jobs. I've noticed this too -- more and more, a class of "freeters" (young people who prefer to work part-time jobs, changing every few months) is emerging. In Japan, there are three kinds of jobs: seishain (full-time jobs, with all benefits and annual bonuses), "part" (part-time jobs with some benefits), and arubaito (from the German word albeit, this word means week-to-week part time jobs). In the old days, life was very simple -- you studied hard to get into a good collge, entered a good company, and stayed there all your life. Now that lifetime employment is basically out the window, fewer young Japanese want to follow the same path their parents did. I wonder what repercussions this trend will have on Japan over the next decade or so?
One of the major complaints by foreigners living in Japan is the dentists here. Basically, Japanese dentists are famous for taking a certain job and making it take weeks. I've had three root canals done while living in Japan, and each time the dentist managed to break the work up into at least eight visits. I suspect that they do this because the Japanese medical insurance system limits the amount they can charge for each visit -- probably around $50 -- so they have to break up the job into many visits. Still, it's far from fun to have to go back again and again and again just to have a tooth filled.
If you look at the J-List site, you'll see that we've "forgotten" to end the 10% off on all magazine, manga, photobook and art book orders sale. We'll leave it up through the weekend, so if you want to save some money on that Golden Stage manga set or that Ohura Anna photobook you've had your eye on, we won't mind...
Saturday, June 09, 2001
Greetings from J-List June 9, 2001
Hello again from Japan! It's good to be home, but the humidity of June in Japan is not exactly welcome...
One of the most unique and complex aspects of Japan is its education system. Ever since "discovering" outside culture through Korea and China, including Confusionistic ideas of appointing government officials according to academic rank, rather than who was who's son, Japan has thought deeply about the role of education in its society. Although it was held up during the late 80's as yet another area in which America lost to Japan, it's important to understand what the good and bad parts of the education system in Japan.
There are two "halves" to education in Japan. Throughout elementary and junior high, the goal of education is to create happy individuals who harmonize with each other through shared experiences -- a sports day here, a classwide field trip there, and most of all, the systematic learning of kanji. In each school year, students are assigned to a certain class, and are in that class all the time -- the teachers come and go as each hour goes by -- which is probably done to build social skills. In junior high school, there are "clubs" (volleyball club, ping pong club, English club, manga and anime club) and every student is required to join a club as a character-building excercise. Compulstory education in Japan is extremely centralized -- for example, there is one and only one textbook for students at a certain level to use, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The keyword for the first half of education in Japan is "uniformity."
High school is not compulstory in Japan -- everyone is free to go or not go, although "chu-sotsu" (those who graduated from junior high school, without going on to high school) are seen in an extremely negative light here. For high school and college, the main idea is "competition" -- since there are many high schools and universities that a student can choose from, depending on his level of academic ability, students must study hard to get into the school of their choice. The extra work that students headed for high school or college put into their studies is one of the main benefits of the Japanese system -- nothing makes a student buckle down and study like having a goal. As Japan's population of children shrinks, however, making it possible for more students to go to a four-year university even without extra studying, this beneficial mechanism is at risk of breaking down.
Japan is taking a lot of flack these days for having some textbooks that gloss over Japan's attrocities during World War II. It's a shame that Japan lacks a greater awareness of what they did wrong during the war, but on the other hand, they're only human, too. All countries have national pride, and how they express history tells a lot about this. I was in college before I realized that even my own country has bent plenty of history in the name of citizenship, starting with George Washington and his cherry tree and ending with the glorification of certain parts of history that happen to give Americans a "warm, nationalistic feeling." Unfortunately I see no end in sight to the ongoing fight over Japan's self-awareness issue, and Korea and China will still be at odds with Japan on the "textbook issue" well into the future.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
Okay, take care and see you on the site!
One of the most unique and complex aspects of Japan is its education system. Ever since "discovering" outside culture through Korea and China, including Confusionistic ideas of appointing government officials according to academic rank, rather than who was who's son, Japan has thought deeply about the role of education in its society. Although it was held up during the late 80's as yet another area in which America lost to Japan, it's important to understand what the good and bad parts of the education system in Japan.
There are two "halves" to education in Japan. Throughout elementary and junior high, the goal of education is to create happy individuals who harmonize with each other through shared experiences -- a sports day here, a classwide field trip there, and most of all, the systematic learning of kanji. In each school year, students are assigned to a certain class, and are in that class all the time -- the teachers come and go as each hour goes by -- which is probably done to build social skills. In junior high school, there are "clubs" (volleyball club, ping pong club, English club, manga and anime club) and every student is required to join a club as a character-building excercise. Compulstory education in Japan is extremely centralized -- for example, there is one and only one textbook for students at a certain level to use, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The keyword for the first half of education in Japan is "uniformity."
High school is not compulstory in Japan -- everyone is free to go or not go, although "chu-sotsu" (those who graduated from junior high school, without going on to high school) are seen in an extremely negative light here. For high school and college, the main idea is "competition" -- since there are many high schools and universities that a student can choose from, depending on his level of academic ability, students must study hard to get into the school of their choice. The extra work that students headed for high school or college put into their studies is one of the main benefits of the Japanese system -- nothing makes a student buckle down and study like having a goal. As Japan's population of children shrinks, however, making it possible for more students to go to a four-year university even without extra studying, this beneficial mechanism is at risk of breaking down.
Japan is taking a lot of flack these days for having some textbooks that gloss over Japan's attrocities during World War II. It's a shame that Japan lacks a greater awareness of what they did wrong during the war, but on the other hand, they're only human, too. All countries have national pride, and how they express history tells a lot about this. I was in college before I realized that even my own country has bent plenty of history in the name of citizenship, starting with George Washington and his cherry tree and ending with the glorification of certain parts of history that happen to give Americans a "warm, nationalistic feeling." Unfortunately I see no end in sight to the ongoing fight over Japan's self-awareness issue, and Korea and China will still be at odds with Japan on the "textbook issue" well into the future.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
- First, we've got some great new magazines, including a great new issue of the "magazine of pretty girl-ism," Waffle
- For fans of the popular magazine + Video CD combination items, we've got the new Club Indies, a fantastic magazine featuring tons of excellent amateur AV for you
- We've got a great bunch of new hardcover photobooks, including Anzai Hiroko, Yoshida Satomi, and more
- A bizarre fetish that's fast growing in popularity are Japan's "medical" erotica, featuring sexual "check up" photos of beautiful girls playing doctor, and much more. See it all in the new Karte Club, on the high-end fetish photobooks page
- For our erotic manga customers, we have some nice new offerings, including new manga volumes by EC Comics, Angel Comics, AV Comics and more
- For lovers of Japan's erotic doujinshi, we have fresh stock of Nostalgia (uncensored Dirty Pair doujinshi) and Under the Influence (Gunsmith Cats and Gunbuster)
- For DVD collectors, there's a very cool item indeed -- the new Kozen DVD featuring a host of erotic performances by Ayukawa Ami. This 2-DVD set features all the cool features of DVD, including multi angle, multi story, and is *subtitled* in English, Chinese and Korean
- Fans of SOD's unique AV style should check out the new Go! Go! Magic Mirror Box Car DVD, featuring 120 minutes of sex behind a 1-way mirror, as well as "reverse nampa" in which three pretty girls lure men into the box car for some fun
- For hentai lovers, see the new Night Shift Hospital, vol. 1, featuring fully animated erotica by the extremely talented Tachibana Seven (formerly a doujinshi artist)
- We have two new erotic videos from SOD: Miyazawa Yuna as the "Ravished Campaign Girl," and the Queen of Indies, Morishita Kurumi, in a super "boxing glove fetish" video for you
- For fans of the popular Deep Kiss video series, we're happy to announce that we've lowered our prices on this series, which features the first "deep kiss" between girls, in an excellent exploration of female love
- If you love Japan's bishoujo ("pretty girl") games, we've got some cool items for you: beautiful bishoujo T-shirts, featuring images from Peach Princess's Little My Maid and Tokimeki Check in! Check out these shirts on the Wacky T-Shirts page or the Peach Princess games page
- For fans of our Japanese food page, we have two nifty items that you can fry up really easily: Glico's delicious "dry curry" (curry which you can prepare in a frying pan, with rice), and delicious "Buta-Kimu," fried rice with pork and kimchee
- We have two giant funny Japanese signs posted on our Signs & Stickers page, which are both useful and wacky. One says "No parking" (for cars" and the other says "No bicycle parking."
- A rare toy for anyone who ever loved Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato, we've got a very cool, very rare PVC figure of Mori Yuki, aka Nova, complete with her 70's style holster, gun, and stand - see this cool item on the anime & toys page
- Finally, we've got a bunch of odds and ends on the Wacky Things from Japan page, including cute greetings cards with outrageous English on them ("I'm glad to know you're fine. I don't meet you recently."), some beautiful rolls of Japanese 'washi' paper suitable for use as wrapping paper, wrapping for flowers or for use in many crafts, and more!
Okay, take care and see you on the site!
Saturday, May 26, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 26, 2001
Hello and greetings from J-List on this lovely Saturday afternoon.
Today was the summer Sports Day at my kids' kindergarten, and all the kids and parents spent the morning running relays and three-legged races, doing tug-of-war, and watching the kids show off their athletic skills. At the end of the day, the kids thanked their parents for working hard and gave their fathers framed pictures the kids had drawn. Rina, my daughter, must have been influenced by the pictures the other kids in her class were drawing, because I came out looking pretty Japanese, complete with black hair...
When you live in Japan, you learn to "adjust" your language so that the people you interact with will understand you. A "fan" in Japanese could be an electric fan, but the kind you hold in your hand is, to the Japanese mind, a completely different concept. A tissue is always a tissue, never a "Kleenex," although Kleenex is a popular brand here -- "milk" is the powdered stuff you put in your coffee, not what comes out of a cow. In a similar vein, there are several words that just "work" differently from word s in English, and it causes some confusion to the English-speaking mind. For example, there are two words for "cold" in Japanese: samui (for the air around you) and tsumetai (for anything that is cold to the touch, like ice cream). Gaijin invariably use th e wrong word when speaking Japanese. Also, the concepts of cold water (mizu) and hot water (yu or o-yu) are completely separate words, something that takes more than a bit of getting used to.
Yasu and Tomo are enjoying an Evangelion renaissance. Having missed the classical anime series when it was on the air in 1995, they're watching the series now, renting the episodes at the local Family Book. Every day at work we discuss the new psychologica l elements that come up in the show. If you like Eva and bishoujo games, I recommend you take a look at Season of the Sakura, which is basically a game based on the last 5 minutes of the Eva series (right down to several of the characters)
We're happy to announce that Borderline 3 ~Frozen Beach~ is shipping (and early, too!). This is an excellent work of hentai CG by illustrator Sakaki Naomoto, which we think is just wonderful. He's taken, ah, extra care with the detail of the 100% uncensore d graphics, too, and the result is a very erotic collection of "doujin" anime computer images -- something unavailable even to Japanese fans of this artist's work. The "click to zoom" feature on the images is great, too.
We've got a special announcement for the weekend: announcing the J-List 10% off sale. During the changeover from our current site, we're going to give 10% all magazine, photobook, anime art book and manga items on our site. This is our way of thanking you for your understanding while we work on the changeover. The temporary order form we've got up and running is working well, by the way, but if you find entering the items you want to buy into the form is cumbersome, we can accept orders either through our s ecure email form at https://rook.axnet.net/pages/virtual/jlist/orderjlist_secure.html or else directly via email. This is an excellent chance to pick up on some fantastic magazine, photobook and manga items from Japan!
Also, we've permanently lowered the price of one of our most popular video series, the Stark Nakedness Sports Series. This is a great and wacky video series from Soft on Demand that puts "zenra" (all-nude) Japanese girls in various athletic settings, from snow sports to nude underwater sports, "stealing into the room at night" and more. The #1 "Zenra" series video, though, is the classic "64 Zenra Girls in Rock-Paper-Scissors." 64 girls play jan-ken-pon with each other; the loser has to take off an article of clothing. Repeat. (The Zenra videos can be found on the SOD Main videos page.) In the last update, we talked about Morishita Kurumi's newest video release in which she actually performs with director TOHJIRO. Unfortunately, the item wasn't posted to the SOD video pages. We've corrected this now, sorry for the confusion ^_^
One of our most popular games over the past couple of years has been Nocturnal Illusion. One of the first bishoujo games ported to Windows 95, it features many nice characters and is popular with bishoujo gamers. Unfortunately, we had just sold out of the game -- or so we thought. The Gods of Pretty Girl Games smiled, and we found another 20 or so copies of this game in San Diego. If you're interested in this nice game, we suggest you get it before it sells out again.
We're glad to hear feedback from CM-Watch (http://www.cm-watch.com). This is a nice site (IMHO) where you can download a slice of Japan, in the form of Japanese TV commercials. There are many commercials we'll be showing you, from Brad Pitt's "Roots" coffee commercials to the infamous Simpsons CC Lemon ads. You can subscribe yourself to the CM-Watch updates mailing list to receive emails when the page is updated -- or if you like, just reply to this email and ask us to add you to the CM-Watch list. You need Quicktime 4 or 5 installed to view the movies on the site.
Today was the summer Sports Day at my kids' kindergarten, and all the kids and parents spent the morning running relays and three-legged races, doing tug-of-war, and watching the kids show off their athletic skills. At the end of the day, the kids thanked their parents for working hard and gave their fathers framed pictures the kids had drawn. Rina, my daughter, must have been influenced by the pictures the other kids in her class were drawing, because I came out looking pretty Japanese, complete with black hair...
When you live in Japan, you learn to "adjust" your language so that the people you interact with will understand you. A "fan" in Japanese could be an electric fan, but the kind you hold in your hand is, to the Japanese mind, a completely different concept. A tissue is always a tissue, never a "Kleenex," although Kleenex is a popular brand here -- "milk" is the powdered stuff you put in your coffee, not what comes out of a cow. In a similar vein, there are several words that just "work" differently from word s in English, and it causes some confusion to the English-speaking mind. For example, there are two words for "cold" in Japanese: samui (for the air around you) and tsumetai (for anything that is cold to the touch, like ice cream). Gaijin invariably use th e wrong word when speaking Japanese. Also, the concepts of cold water (mizu) and hot water (yu or o-yu) are completely separate words, something that takes more than a bit of getting used to.
Yasu and Tomo are enjoying an Evangelion renaissance. Having missed the classical anime series when it was on the air in 1995, they're watching the series now, renting the episodes at the local Family Book. Every day at work we discuss the new psychologica l elements that come up in the show. If you like Eva and bishoujo games, I recommend you take a look at Season of the Sakura, which is basically a game based on the last 5 minutes of the Eva series (right down to several of the characters)
We're happy to announce that Borderline 3 ~Frozen Beach~ is shipping (and early, too!). This is an excellent work of hentai CG by illustrator Sakaki Naomoto, which we think is just wonderful. He's taken, ah, extra care with the detail of the 100% uncensore d graphics, too, and the result is a very erotic collection of "doujin" anime computer images -- something unavailable even to Japanese fans of this artist's work. The "click to zoom" feature on the images is great, too.
We've got a special announcement for the weekend: announcing the J-List 10% off sale. During the changeover from our current site, we're going to give 10% all magazine, photobook, anime art book and manga items on our site. This is our way of thanking you for your understanding while we work on the changeover. The temporary order form we've got up and running is working well, by the way, but if you find entering the items you want to buy into the form is cumbersome, we can accept orders either through our s ecure email form at https://rook.axnet.net/pages/virtual/jlist/orderjlist_secure.html or else directly via email. This is an excellent chance to pick up on some fantastic magazine, photobook and manga items from Japan!
Also, we've permanently lowered the price of one of our most popular video series, the Stark Nakedness Sports Series. This is a great and wacky video series from Soft on Demand that puts "zenra" (all-nude) Japanese girls in various athletic settings, from snow sports to nude underwater sports, "stealing into the room at night" and more. The #1 "Zenra" series video, though, is the classic "64 Zenra Girls in Rock-Paper-Scissors." 64 girls play jan-ken-pon with each other; the loser has to take off an article of clothing. Repeat. (The Zenra videos can be found on the SOD Main videos page.) In the last update, we talked about Morishita Kurumi's newest video release in which she actually performs with director TOHJIRO. Unfortunately, the item wasn't posted to the SOD video pages. We've corrected this now, sorry for the confusion ^_^
One of our most popular games over the past couple of years has been Nocturnal Illusion. One of the first bishoujo games ported to Windows 95, it features many nice characters and is popular with bishoujo gamers. Unfortunately, we had just sold out of the game -- or so we thought. The Gods of Pretty Girl Games smiled, and we found another 20 or so copies of this game in San Diego. If you're interested in this nice game, we suggest you get it before it sells out again.
We're glad to hear feedback from CM-Watch (http://www.cm-watch.com). This is a nice site (IMHO) where you can download a slice of Japan, in the form of Japanese TV commercials. There are many commercials we'll be showing you, from Brad Pitt's "Roots" coffee commercials to the infamous Simpsons CC Lemon ads. You can subscribe yourself to the CM-Watch updates mailing list to receive emails when the page is updated -- or if you like, just reply to this email and ask us to add you to the CM-Watch list. You need Quicktime 4 or 5 installed to view the movies on the site.
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 22, 2001
Hello again from J-List, your neighborhood friend in Japan.
Have you ever spoken to a Japanese person and wondered why they make agreeing noises while you're talking? This is aspect of Japanese speech called "aizuchi," basically "agreeing sounds" that speakers make when having a conversation. In Japanese, I could be explaining something that happened to me, and the person I'm speaking to would say things like "ee" (yes), "so" (that's true), and "ne" (a general word of agreement). It may sound funny, but in Japanese, it's necessary to show that you're listening to the other person -- not making these noises shows you're not paying attention, and the person you're talking with is likely to ask you what's wrong. The trouble is when you carry aizuchi into English, and butt into what the other person is saying with "that's right" and "yes."
Well, I'm sorry to say that Sachiko (who worked at J-List two years ago) hasn't had much luck getting a career as a "talent" since she moved to Tokyo. She's working at a company that provides Internet telephony services, and is doing well. However, Kaori and I were surprised to learn that the daughter of our old boss (the owner of the school we used to work for, which has since gone bankrupt) has debuted as a singer and is now famous all over Japan. It floored us to learn that Yumiko-chan, the half-Japanese, half-American girl who was a silly 13-year-old when I last saw her (I remember playing Nintendo with her at her house) is now Fukuhara Yumiko, and is being managed by the same company that manages Max and Speed's Uehara Takako. She's even singing the title song to a Japanese drama. See her picture at http://www.rising.ne.jp/web/release/fukuhara_what.html . It just goes to show, you never know.
Do you detect the scent of minty freshness? There's something new in the air, and I'm happy to report that it's.....CM-Watch! CM-Watch (http://www.cm-watch.com) is a site we launched where you could download Japanese TV commercials (called "CMs" in Japanese), but the site had been on hiatus while I grapled with being too busy to update the page. Thanks to the hard work of my good friend James, the new webmaster, CM-Watch lives, and with new Japanese TV commercials for you to check out. CM-Watch is a little service we make available to you, the Japanophiles of the world, because we think Japan is such a nifty place. Enjoy! (Requires Quicktime, available at http://www.quicktime.com/.)
For this evening's update, we've got a nice volley of cool things from Japan for you, including:
The link to the Anime categories was broken during the weekend, making those pages inaccessible. The link has been fixed -- sorry about that. Other than this hiccup, the "cartless" shopping cart is working well, and there have been no more problems with orders at all. The new J-List page is coming along nicely, and will include all the features that have been requested for so long, including full product search. Thanks for your patience while we work on the new site.
Have you ever spoken to a Japanese person and wondered why they make agreeing noises while you're talking? This is aspect of Japanese speech called "aizuchi," basically "agreeing sounds" that speakers make when having a conversation. In Japanese, I could be explaining something that happened to me, and the person I'm speaking to would say things like "ee" (yes), "so" (that's true), and "ne" (a general word of agreement). It may sound funny, but in Japanese, it's necessary to show that you're listening to the other person -- not making these noises shows you're not paying attention, and the person you're talking with is likely to ask you what's wrong. The trouble is when you carry aizuchi into English, and butt into what the other person is saying with "that's right" and "yes."
Well, I'm sorry to say that Sachiko (who worked at J-List two years ago) hasn't had much luck getting a career as a "talent" since she moved to Tokyo. She's working at a company that provides Internet telephony services, and is doing well. However, Kaori and I were surprised to learn that the daughter of our old boss (the owner of the school we used to work for, which has since gone bankrupt) has debuted as a singer and is now famous all over Japan. It floored us to learn that Yumiko-chan, the half-Japanese, half-American girl who was a silly 13-year-old when I last saw her (I remember playing Nintendo with her at her house) is now Fukuhara Yumiko, and is being managed by the same company that manages Max and Speed's Uehara Takako. She's even singing the title song to a Japanese drama. See her picture at http://www.rising.ne.jp/web/release/fukuhara_what.html . It just goes to show, you never know.
Do you detect the scent of minty freshness? There's something new in the air, and I'm happy to report that it's.....CM-Watch! CM-Watch (http://www.cm-watch.com) is a site we launched where you could download Japanese TV commercials (called "CMs" in Japanese), but the site had been on hiatus while I grapled with being too busy to update the page. Thanks to the hard work of my good friend James, the new webmaster, CM-Watch lives, and with new Japanese TV commercials for you to check out. CM-Watch is a little service we make available to you, the Japanophiles of the world, because we think Japan is such a nifty place. Enjoy! (Requires Quicktime, available at http://www.quicktime.com/.)
For this evening's update, we've got a nice volley of cool things from Japan for you, including:
- First, some excellent new magazines, including the new Gal's Dee (featuring the slender but busty Yoshizawa Nanako), a new issue of the always-popular and never-enough-in-stock OK, and more
- For magazine/CD-ROM combo lovers, we've got a rare item -- Live Gal's Shower, which features both a full-color magazine as well as 2 CD-ROMs (Mac&PC Compatible) filled with excellent "bukkake" fun for you
- If you love Japan's beautiful photobooks, we've got several all-new hardcover photobooks, including the lovely nude photobook of the Cherry Bombers (the "anti" Mini-suka Police). We also have fresh stock of several of the "Bishoujo Memorial" photobooks.
- We've gotten in more stock of the very nice Cho Very Good photobook vol. 2, featuring a slew of Japan's most lovely AV idols
- We have a major update to our manga pages, with fresh stock of dozens of excellent manga, including some of our most popular manga and items that had been backordered for many weeks (and which might not be available once our current stock runs out). Remember to check both page 1 and page 2 for new items
- For doujinshi fans, we have fresh stock of the Great Work of Alchemy erotic doujiinshi, featuring great erotic themes
- We've got fresh stock of the popular Crystal Card 2000 vol. 2 series, featuring beautiful collectible cards of Japan's most lovely AV idols
- For hentai fans, see vol. 3 & 4 of Ohno Tetsuya's very lovely Mei King bishoujo anime DVD -- we'll be the first to admit it's a pricey series, but the beauty of these characters makes it worth it
- If you love SOD's daring brand of "Indies" AV, we've got another nice item for you -- a new "teasing the penis" series video, featuring four "kogal" types who have great fun with some lucky cocks
- Also for SOD, a great item for "chikan" (pervert on a train) fans: a super DVD featuring two complete hours of train-touching play and more
- For fans of Love Hina and Card Captor Sakura, we're happy to announce that our order of these "bilingual" comics has come in, and we've posted the items to the anime & toys page. These great manga include both English and the original Japanese, and are great for collectors or students
- For fans of Japan's lovely idols, we've got a daring DVD directed by the famous AV director TOHJIRO of Soft on Demand, who films the lovely Matsumoto Miku in ways that are far more erotic than filming her nude would be -- a truly amazing "hybrid" idol DVD (it's region-2 unfortunately)
- We have fresh stock of our silly "Looking for a beautiful woman" sticker on the Signs, Stickers and Headbands page
- We've got a bunch of new items on our Wacky Things from Japan pages, too, including the ultimate belt clip for your portable phone (go ahead, be Japanese), cute little "Hello Kitty" bottles that you can use to carry shampoo, contact lens solution, and other things, and more!
The link to the Anime categories was broken during the weekend, making those pages inaccessible. The link has been fixed -- sorry about that. Other than this hiccup, the "cartless" shopping cart is working well, and there have been no more problems with orders at all. The new J-List page is coming along nicely, and will include all the features that have been requested for so long, including full product search. Thanks for your patience while we work on the new site.
Monday, May 14, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 14, 2001
Hail and well met from your friends in Japan, J-List!
The Japanese may think that Brad Pitt is the sexiest man in the world, but to many Japanese fans, the hottest guy is Kimura Takuya, of the talented singing group SMAP (they also cook gourmet means in their spare time). One of the top Japanese "talents," he can sing, he can dance, and his TV dramas are always huge money-makers, especially when he stars with pretty actress Matsu Takako. He is to Brad Pitt what Matsuda Seiko is to Madonna, and the fact that he advertises Levi's in Japan while BP does the Edwin Jeans commercials seals their yin-yang relationship. See some pictures of Kimu-Taku, including some of his Levi's ads, at http://www.geocities.com/youarebest1/index2.html (fair warning, there are popups on this site).
In sports, it's harder to tell who the best-looking Japanese guys are. One contender is Ichiro, the popular baseball player who quit the top spot in Japan's baseball world (at least in making TV commercials, anyway), and went to join the Seattle Mariners. He's a handsome guy, even if he weren't a talented batter (fellow Japanese pitcher Nomo beaned him accidentally in a game last week, which was widely shown all around Japan). But my wife and I agree that the sexiest Japanese "sportsman" (athlete) has to be Nakata, who quit Japan's soccer league and is now a world-class soccer player in Italy. He's also fluent in Italian, which fuels the Euro-philism that all Japanese secretly keep in their hearts. (Remember that part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that they secretly wish they were part of Europe. Why else would they make the DVD region codes for Japan and Europe the same?) You can see pictures of Nakata at http://nakata.net/official/light/document/document001.htm.
For the first update of the week, we've got some nice new items for you, including:
J-List sells many wacky and cool things from Japan, that aren't available to people living outside of Japan otherwise. One cool thing we love to sell is Japanese gum, with all the delicious flavors that sound funny at first, but are great once you try them. Kaori recommends the delicious sugarless gum containing Xylitol, a remarkable product from Finland that protects against cavities and tastes great. We've got several varieties of this delicious gum in stock, so check out our Japanese gum pages!
The Japanese may think that Brad Pitt is the sexiest man in the world, but to many Japanese fans, the hottest guy is Kimura Takuya, of the talented singing group SMAP (they also cook gourmet means in their spare time). One of the top Japanese "talents," he can sing, he can dance, and his TV dramas are always huge money-makers, especially when he stars with pretty actress Matsu Takako. He is to Brad Pitt what Matsuda Seiko is to Madonna, and the fact that he advertises Levi's in Japan while BP does the Edwin Jeans commercials seals their yin-yang relationship. See some pictures of Kimu-Taku, including some of his Levi's ads, at http://www.geocities.com/youarebest1/index2.html (fair warning, there are popups on this site).
In sports, it's harder to tell who the best-looking Japanese guys are. One contender is Ichiro, the popular baseball player who quit the top spot in Japan's baseball world (at least in making TV commercials, anyway), and went to join the Seattle Mariners. He's a handsome guy, even if he weren't a talented batter (fellow Japanese pitcher Nomo beaned him accidentally in a game last week, which was widely shown all around Japan). But my wife and I agree that the sexiest Japanese "sportsman" (athlete) has to be Nakata, who quit Japan's soccer league and is now a world-class soccer player in Italy. He's also fluent in Italian, which fuels the Euro-philism that all Japanese secretly keep in their hearts. (Remember that part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that they secretly wish they were part of Europe. Why else would they make the DVD region codes for Japan and Europe the same?) You can see pictures of Nakata at http://nakata.net/official/light/document/document001.htm.
For the first update of the week, we've got some nice new items for you, including:
- First, some excellent new Japanese magazines for you, including the new issues of Video Boy and Best Video (two great magazines from Eichi Publishing that let you follow the entire Japan AV world easily), in addition to a special edition of the popular Waffle
- For fans of high-quality Japanese erotic photography, we have some nice photobooks for you, including Kurosawa Hitomi's lovely "age 19" photobook, fresh stock of some popular photobooks that had sold out, and more
- Bondage fans should check out the "Traditional Bondage in Japan" photobook we've posted (stock is limited though)
- For erotic manga fans, we've got a large update, with both new manga posted as well as fresh stock of some very nice full sets of erotic manga that have been popular (but which had sold out and been removed from the manga pages). Be sure to check both pages 1 and 2 for new items.
- For anyone who wants to learn more about how to please a woman, famous Japanese AV actor Kato Taka and director TOHJIRO will teach you in their great erotic DVD from Soft on Demand, The Much-treasured Sexual Technique Lecture DVD. This lesson centers around "How to make a woman come."
- Everyone love beautiful Japanese women, and Japan's Race Queens are some of the loveliest. By popular demand, we have fresh stock of the very nice (albeit expensive) Gal's Paradise 2000 ~Race Queen Collection Cards~
- Also for fans of lovely Japanese girls -- the latest set of Morning Musume collectible idol cards, "Sweet Morning Card II," featuring lovely glossy images of all the beautiful Mo-Musu gals
- For anime fans, two very special items only available from Japan -- first, a superb "Laputa Castle in the Sky" figure set (Sheeta, Pazu and the super-cool Laputa robot!), and from Banpresto, a highly detailed Lupin III figure set (full sets available!)
- In Japan, there are two brands of mayonnaise -- Ajinomoto and Kewpie. We've had Ajinomoto's in stock on our Japanese snacks & food page for a few weeks, and now we've added Kewpie -- so you can compare and decide for yourself which Japanese mayonnaise is the best
- On our funny Japanese signs & posters page, see new wacky wooden signs with interesting Japanese proverbs printed on them (including one of my favorites, "Boys be ambitious!")
- Also on our Wacky Things from Japan pages, we've got some great new items for you that only J-List could bring you -- including Hello Kitty toothbrushes, deluxe Japanese fans with wonderful Japanese pictures printed on them, origami paper, and more!
J-List sells many wacky and cool things from Japan, that aren't available to people living outside of Japan otherwise. One cool thing we love to sell is Japanese gum, with all the delicious flavors that sound funny at first, but are great once you try them. Kaori recommends the delicious sugarless gum containing Xylitol, a remarkable product from Finland that protects against cavities and tastes great. We've got several varieties of this delicious gum in stock, so check out our Japanese gum pages!
Friday, May 11, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 11, 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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 09, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 9, 2001
Hello from Japan, where a car's blinker is called a "winker."
One of the more enjoyable pasttimes to engage in when learning Japanese is to memorize useless kanji for words that aren't usually written in kanji (mainly because the kanji are too hard for Japanese to remember). One way to write the word "urusai" (which means "loud" or "annoying" and is the basis of the name of the 80s anime Urusei Yatsura) is literally "May flies" (as in, the dirty little insects that reproduce so much in the month of May). I've never figured out why Japan is overrun with flies in May, but they're everywhere, buzzing and basically being "urusai." We've got fly paper hung in the kitchen to keep them from getting into the rice cooker.
Japan is one country where a pocketful of change can be a serious amount of money. Because the Japanese use coins for 100 and 500 yen denominations of their money (roughly equal to US$1 and $5), it's quite common for a handful of change to be a lot of money indeed -- $20 or more. I'm all for the U.S. Government taking the bold step of eliminating the $1 bill altogether, without giving any choice to consumers. A coin is just as easy to use as a bill, and the savings from using coins over paper for the $1 unit would be in the millions. I'm sure it'll happen right after the Metric System gets adopted, however...
In addition to these cool CD-ROM titles, we've got some great items for you, including:
Imagine yourself walking down the street. Suddenly, you run into some Japanese people, preferably the cute kind. They might nod and walk on by, but if you're wearing a funny Japanese T-shirt from J-List, who knows what could happen? We've got T-shirts that communicate cool messages like, "I want to be Japanese" or "I'm looking for a Japanese girlfriend." If you want to confuse and confound just for the fun of it, how about "Hentai gaijin" (perverted foreigner) or the perplexing "Self-loathing." If you admire the beauty of Chinese characters, we recommend "Daikoku-bashira" (big black pillar) or our "Happiness" T-shirts. If you secretly wish you were Japanese, send that message with a J-List shirt, too. And since we now offer free shipping on many of our T-shirts, as we try to make room for new designs, it's a great time to check out what we've got to offer.
One of the more enjoyable pasttimes to engage in when learning Japanese is to memorize useless kanji for words that aren't usually written in kanji (mainly because the kanji are too hard for Japanese to remember). One way to write the word "urusai" (which means "loud" or "annoying" and is the basis of the name of the 80s anime Urusei Yatsura) is literally "May flies" (as in, the dirty little insects that reproduce so much in the month of May). I've never figured out why Japan is overrun with flies in May, but they're everywhere, buzzing and basically being "urusai." We've got fly paper hung in the kitchen to keep them from getting into the rice cooker.
Japan is one country where a pocketful of change can be a serious amount of money. Because the Japanese use coins for 100 and 500 yen denominations of their money (roughly equal to US$1 and $5), it's quite common for a handful of change to be a lot of money indeed -- $20 or more. I'm all for the U.S. Government taking the bold step of eliminating the $1 bill altogether, without giving any choice to consumers. A coin is just as easy to use as a bill, and the savings from using coins over paper for the $1 unit would be in the millions. I'm sure it'll happen right after the Metric System gets adopted, however...
In addition to these cool CD-ROM titles, we've got some great items for you, including:
- Many new 18+ items
- For fans of our unique Japanese snack foods, we've got a major update, including fresh stock of many candy items, Pokemon gummi, Pocky and Toppo, delicious miso soup with asari (clams) in it, sweet dried plums, and more
- We have more of our trademark Silly Wooden Signs with funny messages in Japanese on them, including the most popular sign we've ever carried -- the famous "Do not urinate here" sign
- New items on the Wacky Things from Japan page include the ultimately cute trash can for your desk, a beautiful bamboo flower pot made of charred bamboo, We've also added fresh stock of many items that had sold out, including several varieties of our popular $5 Japanese-English dictionaries.
Imagine yourself walking down the street. Suddenly, you run into some Japanese people, preferably the cute kind. They might nod and walk on by, but if you're wearing a funny Japanese T-shirt from J-List, who knows what could happen? We've got T-shirts that communicate cool messages like, "I want to be Japanese" or "I'm looking for a Japanese girlfriend." If you want to confuse and confound just for the fun of it, how about "Hentai gaijin" (perverted foreigner) or the perplexing "Self-loathing." If you admire the beauty of Chinese characters, we recommend "Daikoku-bashira" (big black pillar) or our "Happiness" T-shirts. If you secretly wish you were Japanese, send that message with a J-List shirt, too. And since we now offer free shipping on many of our T-shirts, as we try to make room for new designs, it's a great time to check out what we've got to offer.
Monday, May 07, 2001
Greetings from J-List May 7, 2001
Hello again from Japan, where a movie release is called "road show." We were slowed down last week by both the Golden Week problems as well as some server hiccups, but we're back, with a great update for J-List fans. The page is working fine now, although not that we are keeping most of the large images off the server to avoid the problems coming back (please forgive our dead links).
Well, Japan feels just a little more like home to me, now that the local Toys "R" Us is open. I took the kids there for a treat on opening day, and was surprised to see thousands of Japanese, getting into the spirit of American consumerism. On the other hand, what the Market gives, the Market taketh away: Burger King has unfortunately retreated from their foray into the Tokyo fast food market, and has sold the leases to their dozen or so stores to -- ugh -- Lotteria. Back to eating at the Subway in Ocha-no-mizu.
All languages have different elements which are new to learners coming in from other languages. In Japanese, there are long and short vowels -- the sounds "ko" and "koh" are two completely different phonetic concepts in Japanese, just as L and R are in English. It can be confusing when learning Japanese: ojisan means "uncle" but ojiisan (note the extra "i") means "grandfather." The long/short sounds are so completely separate that Japanese don't even hear a similarity in the sounds. I once had a student named Ohno Yoko (Yoko, not Yohko). When I pointed out that her name was similar to the wife of the former Beatle (which is Yohko, with the long vowel), she told me she'd never thought of that in her life.
The long/short vowels also cause problems when transliterating Japanese into English. For example, Akimoto Yuna's name is really Yuuna, not Yuna (long vowel), but it's tedious and pointless to write her name the "correct" way when it makes no difference to how the name is pronounced. At J-List, we generally transliterate names and words in whatever way makes them shortest and clearest, especially from the standpoint of pronunciation -- thus, we'd use "Yuna" in the above example. We usually write words like bishoujo, doujinshi as bishojo and dojinshi, although it's technically less accurate. Sometimes AV actresses have an "official" English spelling, or one that's very accepted (Tohno Natsuko, Ohura Anna), we usually use those. It's a difficult situation -- the multiple spellings is a big challenge for search engines, for example -- but it's all part of Japanese.
Announcing the Spring Video Sale! We're a bit overstocked on our popular AV videos, so we've moved tons of titles to the Discount Video page. In addition to free SAL shipping, until the end of May you can buy 3 and get the 4th video free. The videos must be in stock (not a problem, we've got hundreds in stock now). The lowest priced video is the "free" one, so if you choose four videos of similar price, it's like getting 25% off.
For the first update of a fresh week, we've got some nice items for you, including:
We're looking for a person knowledgeable about Japan's bishojo games, who can help work up an article for publication in a major adult magazine. If you have a writing background and are preferably published, please talk to us. Thanks!
Well, Japan feels just a little more like home to me, now that the local Toys "R" Us is open. I took the kids there for a treat on opening day, and was surprised to see thousands of Japanese, getting into the spirit of American consumerism. On the other hand, what the Market gives, the Market taketh away: Burger King has unfortunately retreated from their foray into the Tokyo fast food market, and has sold the leases to their dozen or so stores to -- ugh -- Lotteria. Back to eating at the Subway in Ocha-no-mizu.
All languages have different elements which are new to learners coming in from other languages. In Japanese, there are long and short vowels -- the sounds "ko" and "koh" are two completely different phonetic concepts in Japanese, just as L and R are in English. It can be confusing when learning Japanese: ojisan means "uncle" but ojiisan (note the extra "i") means "grandfather." The long/short sounds are so completely separate that Japanese don't even hear a similarity in the sounds. I once had a student named Ohno Yoko (Yoko, not Yohko). When I pointed out that her name was similar to the wife of the former Beatle (which is Yohko, with the long vowel), she told me she'd never thought of that in her life.
The long/short vowels also cause problems when transliterating Japanese into English. For example, Akimoto Yuna's name is really Yuuna, not Yuna (long vowel), but it's tedious and pointless to write her name the "correct" way when it makes no difference to how the name is pronounced. At J-List, we generally transliterate names and words in whatever way makes them shortest and clearest, especially from the standpoint of pronunciation -- thus, we'd use "Yuna" in the above example. We usually write words like bishoujo, doujinshi as bishojo and dojinshi, although it's technically less accurate. Sometimes AV actresses have an "official" English spelling, or one that's very accepted (Tohno Natsuko, Ohura Anna), we usually use those. It's a difficult situation -- the multiple spellings is a big challenge for search engines, for example -- but it's all part of Japanese.
Announcing the Spring Video Sale! We're a bit overstocked on our popular AV videos, so we've moved tons of titles to the Discount Video page. In addition to free SAL shipping, until the end of May you can buy 3 and get the 4th video free. The videos must be in stock (not a problem, we've got hundreds in stock now). The lowest priced video is the "free" one, so if you choose four videos of similar price, it's like getting 25% off.
For the first update of a fresh week, we've got some nice items for you, including:
- Many new 18+ items
- For Japanese idol fans, we've got stock of the newest Morning Musume card set -- the Priname Petit Card series -- only $2.50 per pack!
- There is fresh stock of the silly wooden sign that has "Now being punished" (oshioki-chu) on it
- We have limited stock (one set of each, actually) of FULL SETS of the Cardcaptor Sakura keychain and Cardcaptor Sakura stationary set -- both very lovely! See the Anime Snacks page for these items.
- We have fresh stock of several cool items on our Wacky Things from Japan, including the surprisingly popular train/bus pass holder, Japanese vocabulary word cards, wacky Japanese notebooks with funny English written on them, and more. We've also added new items, including a very nice new Japanese "noren" room curtain (add a touch of Japanese style to your room), a wonderful Japanese pouch that can hold your digital camera or MP3 player, and more.
We're looking for a person knowledgeable about Japan's bishojo games, who can help work up an article for publication in a major adult magazine. If you have a writing background and are preferably published, please talk to us. Thanks!
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