Greetings from J-List December 8, 2001

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Greetings from J-List December 6, 2001

Hello again from your good friends in Japan!

When foreigners come to Japan for the first time, one of the first cultural differences they run into is the Japanese custom of taking shoes off before going into a house. Japanese homes (and some offices, such as J-List) have a lowered area at the front door called a "genkan," where you leave your shoes before going inside. After you've lived here a little while, it becomes second nature to open the door, kick off your shoes (or if you're the obsessive type, neatly arrange them so that they all line up), and go inside. Seeing foreigners on TV wearing muddy shoes on plush, clean carpeting starts to look really weird after a while. To the Japanese sense of cleanliness, anything having to do with your feet is dirty under any circumstances -- actually, the "genkan" where you leave your shoes in modern Japanse homes was much larger hundreds of years ago, and livestock were kept there, so that the humans living in the house could benefit from the warmth of the animals. Because you have to take your shoes off a dozen times a day in Japan, you tend to get very good at choosing shoes that can be put on easily.

The Japanese also have some interesting customs when it comes to their cars. First of all, auto theft is quite uncommon here, so it's not at all rare to see someone leave his beautiful Nissan Fairlady Z parked in front of the "conbini" (convenience store) with the car unlocked and running. The idea that his car might be stolen just doesn't enter into the thinking here, so it's perfectly safe. Japanese cars have the steering wheel on the right side of the car, as in England, and the Japanese have perfected the art of starting the car without getting in it (since the ignition is easily accessible on that side of the car). When stopped at a light at night, it's considered good manners to turn your headlights down to "park" so you don't blind the person in front of you, and when someone lets you go ahead of them in traffic, flashing your emergency lights at them once or twice conveys your thanks. Japanese love their cars, and there are many interesting products that allow drivers to deck their vehicles out, including bizarre and interesting accessories, gaudy air fresheners, and for those with a lot of money to spend, funky custom lights for the outside of your car, such as special flashing lights that replace your normal brake lights. Great for picking up the girls.

Announcing the Big 2001 Doujinshi sale! To say thanks for your past support this year, we're having a big sale on hentai doujinshi. Effective immediately, we've got the following discounts :

Order 2 doujinshi, get $1 off each (for a total of $2 off)
Order 3 doujinshi, get $2 off each (total $6)
Order 4 doujinshi, get $3 off each (total $9)
Order 5 doujinshi or more, get $4 off each book

All doujinshi hentai comics we have in stock are part of the sale, including the new ones we're posting today. The discount will be applied when we process your order and send you the total (the discount won't be recognized by the shopping cart, but we'll factor it in before processing the order).

Also: announcing the 2001 Year-End Bishoujo Game Free Shipping Sale! Until the end of the month, we'll give free shipping to U.S. and Canadian customers on our massive lineup of English-language bishoujo CD-ROM products, when you buy two or more at a time. All products are part of the sale, including JAST USA and Milky House CD-ROM games, as well as the excellent products from Peach Princess, Hobibox Europe and Himeya. This is a great chance to get the titles you've been wanting, and save some money, too.

The past few years has seen a massive blooming of "indies" (independent) adult video in Japan, by companies like Soft on Demand, which are separate from large AV studios like Kuki, Uchu Kikaku, and Alice Japan. We've got some excellent news for fans of authentic Japanese indies AV, because recently, J-List has been able to form relationships with new Japanese AV distributors which will enable us to carry many new indies video products in the future. While we've always had a very close relationship with Soft on Demand -- we sell so many SOD videos and DVDs that Tomo was invited to attend a special retreat at the company, where he met Kurumi Morishita, Nanase Nanami and Tohjiro himself -- we haven't been able to get products by companies like Moodyz, Aroma, Audaz, Waap and Wanz Factory. Well, this will be changing soon, so fans who have been requesting these products will have something to look forward to. Tomo asked me to mention if you want to special order products from these companies, he can get most anything, so please email him. One caveat, however: unlike Soft on Demand, which is embracing DVD in a big way, most of the products put out by these other indies AV companies are available on VHS only, or on region 2 DVD. We'll make sure these titles are available to you on both formats as much as we can.

More improvements to the J-List site are coming soon. We'll be upgrading our check-out system soon to an improved one, which should hopefully solve some of the problems some have experienced with the current system. We're not sure when the new system will go live, and I'll try to give advance notice in case there are any problems with it. As always, if there's ever a problem with the J-List ordering system, you can always use the secure email form to send us your order.

For this evening's update, we've got a very nice volley of new products, including:

• First of all, the excellent game Love Love Show is shipping! This is a really unique game from Hobibox Europe and Love Gun, a very complex and fun game that's actually three games in one. An excellent and 100% uncensored bishoujo game for the English-speaking world (and yes, you can get it with free shipping with our special sale)
  
• For fans of lovely adult video idols from Japan, we've got the new issues of Best Video and Video Boy, both very nice "all purpose" adult video magazines that follow all AV idols, both professional and indies (independent), for your enjoyment
  
• We have some nice erotic photobooks for you, including the erotic Kumano Pooh-ko's "Seduction," and the very lovely Minami Yui's "First Eros" erotic photobook
  
• Also: fresh stock of K.O., the deluxe photobook for fans of O.K.
  
• Also for photobook lovers, fresh stock of a perennial classic -- Santa Fe, the massive nude photobook released by 1990's actress-idol Rie Miyazawa that shocked Japan
  
• We have tons of great new erotic manga for you, both new volumes as well as fresh stock of popular books that we couldn't keep in stock -- check out the manga pages now
  
• For yaoi fans or fans of Japanese homosexual culture, we've got limited stock of Badi, the Japanese "gay life magazine" (we'll carry more items like this on the yaoi page if there are requests)
  
• Kicking off or big doujinshi sale, we've got a new volley of very nice doujinshi for you, with some unique and rare items, at major savings because of our sale -- see the dozen or so new items on the J-List site before they start to sell out
  
• For DVD collectors, we've got some great new titles by Soft on Demand, including famous AV director TOHJIRO's self-produced sex offerings in which he gives up filming gorgeous girls having sex with AV actors, and has sex with them himself -- 150 minutes of good action in the Blue Desire DVD
  
• 16 lovely Japanese kogals agree to play rock, scissors, paper -- if they win, they get money, but if they lose, they have to get undressed inside the Magic Mirror Bus
  
• There's a new 2-in-1 release by Deep's, Get Panty (which features guys adept at convincing kogals to give them their panties), and Peroman (in-street oral sex)
  
• We've got an excellent new indies erotic hardcore DVD for you -- an excellent erotic performance by Rinka Yaguchi with the bizarre title of "Embezzle my Honey Pie"
  
• For those with players that can read region 2 DVDs, either separate players or the DVD drives in their computers, we've got a nice item: a very erotic Bunko Kanazawa/Ryo Takami title featuring some outrageously erotic themes
  
• Also for region 2-capable customers, two excellent new Night Shift Hospital DVD releases by Tachibana Seven
  
• DVD fans should look through all our pages for some extra-good bargains that we've posted, including many discs that come with free shipping, too
  
• Finally, for adult AV fans, we've got a dynamite new series of Crystal Card nude AV idol cards, featuring many lovely girls from Crystal Eizo
  
• Newly added Japanese snack and food items include a new toasted shreaded ika (squid) snack that goes great with beer, and delicious Japanese "ochazuke," a food containing green tea, nori, and salmon you sprinkle over rice, then pour boiling water
  
• Popular new Japanese sign plates include a new No Smoking sign plate, as well as a very nice "It is forbidden to wear shoes here" sign plate
  
• For anime fans, some special items: first, a super-deluxe extra-large "completed model" made of die-cast metal of the coolest ship from the Yamato/Star Blazers universe, the Andromeda, the flagship of the Earth Defense Fleet
  
• Then, a new Kubrick Evangelion toy, featuring the Eva-03 Production Model, a figure of Kouji, and a figure of one of the Angels
  
• New "cute" items include a silly but cute toothbrush holder, and fresh stock of our Hello Kitty straws and spoon/fork set
  
• For fans of our bento (boxed lunch) related items, see several new items, including fresh stock of the little cutter that turns a small sausage into a little cute penguin -- great for eating lunch, Japanese-style
  
• We've got wacky Japanese notebooks for you, with funny English printed on them, as well as study notebooks useful for anyone trying to learn hiragana and katakana, the two basic Japanese writing systems
  
• Finally, on our wacky things from Japan "traditional items" page, which is always popular with J-List customers, find a very nice bamboo cup that would be great for drinking tea, as well as an authentic bamboo soba dish, and more!
  

We receive questions about some Japanse CD-ROM and VCD/DVD products and how they work with English equipment, and so we'd like to answer some of these questions. In general, all bishoujo and game CD-ROMs you see at J-List are made for Windows, and should have no problems playing on supported OS versions. If you are interested in some of the magazines that come with one or two video CDs (MPEG-1), these are also very easy to play. On Windows, you can play them with any Video CD player, which are readily available online; for Macintosh in OS 8-9, use the standard Quicktime player. Video CDs also play in most DVD players, although the quality is closer to VHS than full DVD.

For those interested in the high-quality and features of DVD, 99% of the DVDs that J-List carries are "region free," so you can play them without worrying about handling the special region 2 codes. A few adult DVDs (they're located on a special page), as well as all Japan-released anime and hentai DVD titles, are always zoned for region 2 (Europe and Japan). To view them in the U.S. or Canada, you need a region-free DVD player (see the top of the region 2 DVD page for several links to ones we recommend), or else you can set your computer's DVD player to view region 2 discs (although you can only change this setting 5 times on most DVD drives). Personally, I've gotten hundreds of hours of use out of the region-free DVD player I bought for myself, and since certain DVD titles from Japan are simply unavailable in region-free format, we recommend getting a region-2 player if you're interested in those items.

We've placed links to some sample movie clippings from Soft on Demand's titles. The titles are in Windows Media format. To find some of the products that have movies available, you can search for "sample movie" in the J-List search engine.

Greetings from J-List December 4, 2001

Hello and greetings again from J-List!

First of all, we apologize if this mail reaches you multiple times. We're having an issue with our mail server that causes mails to be sent multiple times to some users. We're on the issue and should have it fixed soon.

Happiness over the recent Royal Birth continues in Japan. Department stores had special sales to commemorate the new baby, and bakeries baked special "congratulations" bread which customers lined up to buy, and in one amusement park, anyone named Masako can get in free this week. (We've got a friend named Masako, although she's in the U.S.)

It's always hard to be an expat and live in another country. No matter how long I stay in Japan, I still feel that things from home are "better." American medicine works the best for me, and there's nothing like American Cream of Wheat for breakfast on cold mornings (I've even turned my kids on to it, although my wife sticks her nose up at it, since it looks like "okayu," a watery rice dish Japanese give to sick people). While there are many familiar things to an American living in Japan (McDonald's, Starbucks, Time Magazine), I don't think I could get by without the Internet to give me all the American culture I need. Amazon.com is also a Godsend for someone like me -- a far cry from nine years ago, when we had to scour the town to find a store that had some imported Pringles or Doritos, or travel to Tokyo to one of two bookstores that carried English books.

It's funny how when you live in Japan, you've suddenly got all kinds of things in common with other foreigners living here. For various reasons -- perhaps because of the good economy in the U.S. during the end of the 1990's, Americans are not at all common here in Japan at all. Aided by the "working holiday" exchange program (or waa-holi as the Japanese like to call it), which helps people from Canada, Australia, and many other nations get visas to work in Japan quite easily. I have more non-American friends than American friends, and it's quite interesting to talk American politics and other subjects with people from Canada or New Zealand and see their viewpoints. Just as Japanese studying in the U.S. often get lumped into vanilla group labeled "Asians," foreigners working in Japan are all "gaijin" (or in its more politically correct version, "gaikokujin").

We're now in the month of December, and we've still got lots of very nice anime, JPOP, Japanese idol, and sexy and nude calendars to choose from. In fact, we've got a few too many, so we're having a big sale on our remaining stock of 2002 calendars, lowering prices on all calendars as our way of saying thanks for helping us get our stock levels down. Also, if you buy two or more calendars, we'll give you your mailing tubes free. Calendars will be disappearing from the J-List site as they sell out, or as we post them to eBay, so if you see something you'd like, please snap it up. We can get calendars to you by Christmas, although the cutoff for airmail orders going to the U.S. is Dec 9-10.

For the new update, we've got some very nice items for you, including:

• First, we've got the new issues of Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, two excellent magazines that feature all-Japanese models, photographed entirely by all-Japanese photographers
  
• Also for fans of adult Japanese magazines, we've got the new OK magazine, for fans of "rape play" themes, as well as the very erotic new Hit Parade
  
• For photobook lovers, be sure to check out the very lovely Baccara Five, a beautiful team of bikini babes, as well as a positively dynamite item for fans of Race Queens
  
• We have a very nice erotic update to our manga page for you, with a large selection of very nice volumes by the most famous artists and publishing houses in Japan
  
• For doujinshi lovers, see several all-new doujinshi volumes posted, all nice new additions from the most recent Comic Market
  
• For lovers of SOD's long-selling Deep Kiss series, we've got an extra special new offering: the Deep Kiss First Lesbian Hard Version, featuring girls going far beyond mere deep kissing...
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, a super "best selection" for fans of the lovely elf-like Nao Hirosue, and a super erotic "dick girl" DVD featuring girls with strap-on dildos
  
• Other DVD titles include a very rare and interesting limited offering for fans of SOD's darker themes, and a rare item, a DVD featuring larger girls, a theme not handled in Japan very often
  
• For fans of Japan's truly beautiful idols, we highly recommend the idol DVD of Megumi Yasu, the charming and beautiful model who has graced recent issues of Urecco and Penthouse
  
• For anime fans, we're proud to bring you the Japanese DVD release of Grave of the Fireflies, a moving tale of two children growing up in war-torn Japan at the end of World War II (includes Japanese subtitles)
  
• Also: stock of "completed figures" of Rei Ayanami and Soryu Asuka Langley, with many attachable extras for super detail
  
• For those with an esoteric twist, we've the photobook of the charismatic prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi
  
• For kids who like to draw and doodle, we've got some 'free notebook' (meaning that you can use them any way you like) from Pocket Monster and Ham-Taro, both of which come with stickers inside too
  
• We've got more 'wacky' traditional things from Japan, including
  
• For Getter Robo fans, there are several really cool toys recreated from 1970's versions
  
• Finally, today's wacky things from Japan new items include the ultimate way to store and chill tofu (no, really!),
  

We try hard to keep all sizes of our wacky Japanese T-shirts in stock at all times, but sometimes one size or another sells out. We found 7 shirts with our Dirty American Devil (Kichiku Beihei) in size medium, which had been sold out -- so if you're interested in this shirt in size M, please get it before they sell out again. Some shirts, such as our "Forbidden to Urinate" shirts will not be reprinted, so if you want one, you should pick one up soon.

Greetings from J-List December 1, 2001

Greetings and salutations from the J-List crew again!

Japan is ecstatic over the birth of a girl to Princess Masako, the wife of crown prince Naruhito. Although most wanted a boy to be born (so Japan's Imperial line can have a male successor to the throne), all around Japan people are breaking open sake barrels and celebrating, gathering in crowds around the hospital where mother and child are resting. According to Japan's constitution, only males can succeed to the throne, and the fact that there is no male child in line yet leaves a lot of questions open. Will Japan change its constitution to allow an Empress? It's doubtful, as this is still a very male country -- it took 30 years for the Pill to finally be approved here in Japan, but Viagra was okayed in just a few short months.

Like the famous "F" word in English, the Japanese get quite a lot of mileage out of the word "kuso," which means "shit." There aren't very many "bad" words in Japanese -- meaning that a child will get in trouble if he says them -- and it's quite common for "Kuso!!" to be uttered in all kids' anime shows. It addition to the primary meaning, it also refers to the junk that builds up in different parts of your body. The stuff that comes out of your nose is hana-kuso (nose-shit), and ear wax is mimi-kuso (ear-shit). Sleep in your eyes that builds up while you sleep is me-kuso (MEH-kuso). Rather than have a list of shockingly bad words to use when the time comes, the Japanese get by with less anatomical words -- "baka" (which means stupid) is a great catch-all insult and swear word. The English "F" word is also very famous and is used sometimes, too. (Once I saw, in a game center, a picture of Superman, with a speech balloon that read "Fack you!")

We've made a few improvements to the J-List site. First of all, we removed the Javascript that caused thumbnails to open in a pre-set window. Now clicking on thumbnails of product images opens the larger picture in a new window that you can resize any way you like. Also, we've got many links for those wanting to play region 2 DVDs, including links to some very affordable region-free DVD players, hacks for resetting your DVD-ROM drive's region setting, and more. If you're using Mac OS X, as we are now at J-List, there's a region code resetter there, too. Find these links at the top of the Region 2 DVD page and anime DVD pages.

For the weekend update, we've got a boatload of very nice items for you, including:

• First, we've got some nice magazines for fans of amateur girls and kogals, new issues of Lip Mate, Amateur Girl's Data, Hakkutsu Idol and more
  
• If you like MPEG CD-ROMs (video CDs) in your magazines, we've got a new Video CD & DVD Soft Catalog, a killer sampler magazine with nearly 2 hours of sampler "quickie" footage
  
• We've got some very nice photobooks for you, including the lingerie hardcover photobook of Yui Minami
  
• Also for Maiko Kazano fans, fresh stock of her positively lovely hardcover photobook, which sold out in record time
  
• If you love hentai, we've got the very nice Viper GTB Official Art Book, with many pages of beautiful erotic artwork from the game series (this game is being ported to English)
  
• For fans of Kurumi Morishita, the undisputed Queen of Indies adult video in Japan, we bring you Fan Thanks Day vol. 2, in which Kurukuru performs sexual acts on a total of 80 of her fans -- her way of saying thanks for your support
  
• If you love leggy Japanese ladies, be sure and check out the erotic Leg Fetish Paradise, featuring the lovely Kanako Fujimori and Yoko Yazawa
  
• For fans of older, more mature ladies, enjoy the very lovely Mariko Kawana in her very erotic performance from SOD
  
• Ai Nagase has really gained popularity ever since she emerged on the scene here. Now she fellates dozens of guys to get a "stomach full of zamen"
  
• We've restocked several of the Pure Beauties softporn DVDs that we have in stock in San Diego, and added a very nice new one by the erotic quiet beauty Shiori Inoue
  
• For hentai manga fans, we've got some extra-special new volumes posted for you, as well as fresh stock of many popular volumes (including Black Mass, Alice First and Second and Mama ni Dokkin)
  
• For fans of doujinshi anthologies, which are full-size manga volumes containing hentai game girl, Sailor Moon and Evangelion works compiled for you, we've got fresh stock of Electric Fighting Daughter
  
• If you love Yaoi, we've got another very nice erotic boy's manga for you, by Keiko Konno
  
• For anime lovers, we've got some very special items, including a super *transforming* Macross VF-1A toy from Yamato Toys, which transforms into Battroid, Gerwalk and Fighter mode
  
• Also: a deluxe "finished model" of Kaneda's motorcycle from the famous anime film Akira
  
• Japanese Race Queens are the beautiful girls who promote F1 racing in Japan, and we've got great stock of the new Gal's Paradise idol cards
  
• We've got various fresh stock of our wacky signs and stickers from Japan
  
• For fans of tasty Japanese snacks and food, we've got a new flavor of Morinaga Hi-Chew soft candies (Strawberry), as well as delicious individual packets of miso soup mix (with clam and wakame) and Pocari Sweat
  
• If you want to try your hand at Japanese calligraphy, we've restocked our popular calligraphy sets for you
  
• Wacky things from Japan for this evening include a neat "free case" item for Hello Kitty fans, an all-new Japanese "noren" door curtain for giving your room a Japanese feel, a great way to stay warm this winter in Japanese style, new maps of parts of Japan, fresh stock of our popular sushi maker, and more!
  

The "Top 5" list has been updated by Yasu, so you can see which magazines, manga, DVDs and other items have been selling sell around here.

Are you getting too many emails from us? We update the J-List mailing list three times a week, and for some people, that's too much. We've decided to make an "infrequent J-List updates mailing list" for people who feel swamped by our regular update emails. If you'd like us to keep in touch with you less frequently, please let us know to change you to the new list.

Greetings from J-List November 29, 2001

Hello again from Japan, where going to Kentucky always means eating chicken.

The psyche of Japanese men can be a complex subject indeed. It can be said of Japanese men that they have an "inferiority/superiority complex" when it comes to foreigners the West -- sometimes they feel threatened or uncomfortable around, say, American men, and they express this in various ways. In Japan, foreigners have a reputation for being, ah, somewhat well endowed, whether it's really true or not -- it's very similar to how white men in the U.S. can feel about black men. On a very few occasions, I've met Japanese men (usually drunk) while walking with my Japanese wife, who felt compelled to shout insults at the gaijin who was taking one of "their" women. We are sometimes asked why there aren't many adult videos or DVD that feature Japanese women and gaijin males together. The reason is related to the subtle "uncomfortableness" many Japanese men feel about white guys. (We do have a DVD with these themes on the site, today.) It's not just about imagined penis envy though -- as a rule, most Japanese consider Japanese culture to be below that of America and Europe, and this sometimes affects how they interface with foreigners. Trying to hire a male employee for J-List, too, we learned something else: Japanese men whose English skills are so-so are very nervous about speaking English. Tomo and Yasu, who have had many years of experience with English, don't have this problem.

The subject of gaijin men dating and wanting to marry Japanese girls is another huge one, and I could write a book on it and never understand it completely. I've had several friends who married their Japanese girlfriends, and had major troubles getting their wife's families to accept them into the family. In the case of one friend, it was a matter of out-waiting his wife's parents and the head-shaking relatives who were sure this "silly business" of wanting to marry an American would end in time. In the case of another friend, his wife's parents didn't accept him until they had children -- it's very hard to resist cute grandchildren. I was extremely fortunate in my efforts to marry my wife. My mother in law was very open minded, and accepted the idea right away -- "You're not marrying the country, you're marrying the person," she said. My father in law, a somewhat gruff man who has run the family liquor store for 20 years, and ran a rural Japanese bank before that, wouldn't hear of it. Fortunately, we knew how to deal with him -- just proceed with the plans for the wedding,

Our stock of many calendars is dwindling, as the popular JPOP, anime and other calendars sell out. We've got good stock of some of the lovely nude calendars published this year, such as the Japan Onsen [hot springs] Nudes, or the lovely Natsumi Kawahama erotic "Season of Woman." Look for reduced prices on these great calendars as we try to move our stock out.

For the new update, we've got a bunch of new items for your enjoyment, including:

• First, excellent new adult magazines, including the new issues of Bejean and Dela Beppin, both brimming over with beautiful girls for you
  
• Candygirl!, a new "special cutie and sweetgirls photo book," features eight of the most famous gals at J-List, including Ai Kurosawa, Izumi Morino and more
  
• For photobook fans, we've got several beautiful new photobooks featuring some extremely lovely girls for you, including the Makoto Shinohara (ooh!)
  
• For manga fans, we've got some great new books for you, including books by AV Comics, Mujin Comics and more, as well as fresh stock of a half-dozen or more popular books that we had run out of stock on
  
• For doujinshi lovers, we've got another dozen or so single-issue books for you, all very nice and recent (but they will go quickly, I am afraid)
  
• For DVD fans, we've got another powerhouse lineup, with many great items for you, including the Ami Okina Best Selection (the best works of the very erotic lady) and a super Fellatio Best Selection (the best oral sex and bukkake moments ever)
  
• Those wanting to learn more about sex will enjoy the DVD release of the Much-Treasured Sexual Technique Lecture Video, in which Kurumi Morishita and Yuri Komuro teach how to make a man come -- it's truly amazing, since it really is a course intended to teach women how to be better lovers
  
• We get many requests for DVDs featuring Japanese girl having sex with gaijin (foreigners), and now we've got something for you: the LA Lewd Women and Gaijin Special
  
• Something just in time for the holidays is "Oneesan is Santa Claus," a super-erotic 2-DVD set featuring 250 minutes of amateur sex material, including some very nice Santa-girl erotica that will warm you on a cold winter night
  
• Also for our DVD customers, Tomo has posted some nice titles at reduced prices, and you get free shipping to boot!
  
• For anime lovers, we've got a very special item: the Japanese release of Princess Mononoke. This excellent item contains *3* DVDs, with the film in 8 languages (English, French, Cantonese, Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese), and all kinds of rare extras. We highly recommend this cool item for fans of Miyazaki's films
  
• Also for fans of anime, we've got fresh stock of the very popular Kubrick Evangelion toys, featuring the excellent and bizarre designs, as well as fresh stock of some of the Super Deformed Star Wars toys that talk
  
• If you like Hello Kitty, we've got some wacky things from Japan for you -- Hello Kitty toilet paper (fresh stock), printed chopsticks (they look real cool), straws, printed paper lunch bags, cup cake holders, and more
  
• Other cute items include fresh stock of Picky's Bear authentic Japanese bento box (lunch box), fresh stock of Hamster Club plastic forks, and more
  
• For fans of unique Japanese snacks, we've restocked our popular Japanese sour ume-boshi (pickled plums), as well as added more delicious Japanse "tamago" furikake
  
• For fans of our wacky Japanese signs, we've got fresh stock for you, of the classic Japanese emergency exit sign, and something for those who like the Japanese custom of taking your shoes off
  
• Finally, our "wacky things from Japan" pages include fresh stock of the All Japan train map, more beautiful Japanese "congratulations" envelopes that are used for giving money gifts at weddings (but you can use them in other ways),
  

J-List carries many excellent English-translated bishoujo (pretty girl) games. One of the most popular series are the Viper games from Hobibox Europe. The Viper games stand out from most other bishoujo games because of their excellent full-frame animation. Check out these nice titles, which you can play in English and Italian (in the case of VM1) and English, Italian, Spanish and German (in the case of Viper V16). It's a great series that we recommend to fans.

Greetings from J-List November 27, 2001

Hello again from your good friends at J-List!

We've got a new face around here at J-List, Mayumi Ishiwata, age 24. A girl from Maebashi, she studied English for one year in Ireland -- a rare place for Japanese people to go to study, but she wanted to go somewhere far from other Japanese students so she could really master English. She likes reading, and is a fan of Japanese classics of literature like the Tale of Genji. She wanted to study English more, but she's unfortunately terrified of flying, and was only able to fly to Ireland with the help of tranquilizers. You can mail her at mayumi@jlist.com .

With the continuing negative growth of the Japanese economy (which has fallen into a recession for the fourth time in the past 10 years), the unemployment rate has shot up to 5.3%, which is unheard of in a country that has enjoyed near-full employment for decades. Everywhere one looks there seems to be more bad news, more layoffs, and hope that the U.S. will recover quickly and help lead Japan back into the black. In addition to high unemployment among Japanese, another area that's been having a very tough time are foreigners living here in Japan, especially "Nikkei" (Japanese descended) workers from Brazil, Peru and elsewhere. These workers are often the first to be cut when a company has financial troubles. Take a trip to the local employment office (called "Hello Work" in typical Japanese style) and you'll see dozens of foreigners with their hands in their pockets, milling around and hoping for some work to come in.

When J-List goes to hire Japanese staff members, we first call up the local Hello Work to see if they've got anyone in their lists with the skills we need -- mainly English writing skills, experience living abroad and using English, familiarity with computers. We also run advertisements in the newspapers, also in some weekly "employment journals" that are published in each area, and start doing our interviews. All interviewees bring a filled-out Japanese "rireki-sho" or standardized resume, which has spaces for writing all pertinent information about education, job experience, interests, and of course, blood type. It has been an odd aspect of Japan that employers can list potential jobs for "men" "women" or "either" and put age limits -- say, 30 and under. Last year, legislation was passed in Japan making that illegal -- another example of Japan's society running 10-20 years behind the West.

Ever since the Playstation 2 came out in Japan, the VHS format has been on its way out as a format. Very few adult productions are released on video anymore, and when they are released, the prices are nearly always higher than comparable DVD releases, due to the higher duplication costs and shrinking economy of scale for videos. We're looking for feedback -- if you are a fan of the VHS format and prefer it over DVD, and would like to see, say, productions released by Soft on Demand carried by J-List in both DVD and VHS format (even though the VHS release will be $10-15 more than the DVD), we'd like to hear from you. Thanks!

For the first weekend after Thanksgiving, we've got a super bunch of items for you, including:

• First, we've got some nice new magazines for you, including some nice kogal and amateur items and "rape play" magazines for fans, including the deluxe new issue of Stalkers
  
• For fans of Japan's hot and famous AV idols, we've got the Top AV Idol Best 10, which features Kurumi Morishita, Ami Ayukawa, Nana Sakura and many more girls in very nice nude shots
  
• Photobook fans should check out Gravy, the very nice hardcover erotic photobook by Satomi Nakagawa, and we've also got a new issue of Photoshot for you (with many famous girls)
  
• For fans of cute Japanese girls and school uniforms (all over 18 of course), check out the cute Buru Mani vol. 4
  
• If you like video CDs in your magazines, with lots of sample footage in MPEG format, we've got the new issue of Multi Boy, an erotic magazine with tons of Bunko Kanazawa, Pu-ko Kumano, and more
  
• We have some excellent erotic manga posted to the site for you, with new works from Hit Comics, Oak Comix and a very erotic work from Tsukasa, as well as fresh stock of some excellent works that have sold out
  
• For yaoi fans, be sure and check out the new X-Boy's, another very hard-core collection of yaoi "bara" (rose) themes
  
• For doujinshi fans, we've got a dozen or so all-new doujinshi posted, all of which are very nice new books released at the last Comic Market in Tokyo
  
• DVD fans have many nice new items today, including a dynamite *240 minute* erotic collection of sexual performances by the lovelY Ai Nagase, for fans of this 100% authentic girl
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, the elegant Natsumi Kawahama is a "Virginity Hunter" who takes pleasure in claiming the cherries of men
  
• For all those who wondered why there was no AV for women, we've got a super *4 hour* release of adult video material directed by female AV director Chie Kanbara, made by a woman for women, with tons of classic moments in SOD history
  
• For anyone who loves Soft on Demand's unique products, we've got limited stock of Japanese "nobori" banners, a kind of vertically oriented cloth advertisement, for you to hang up in your room for a little piece of Japan
  
• For fans of scat themes, we've got limited stock of a release by SOD, which we've posted by customer request
  
• Finally, although video releases in Japan have become scarce with the onset of DVD, we've got a killer new item for you -- the lesbian tale of incest and motherly love, starring a new face in the AV world here, Madoka Ishii
  
• We have some cool "sign plates" posted to the wacky signs and stickers page, with funny messages that are both useful and wacky
  
• Also: fresh stock of one of our most popular items, Japanese headbands (hachimaki) that say "Goukaku" ("I will pass the test") and "Nippon ichi" ("the best in all Japan")
  
• J-List carries a line of tasty traditional hard candies from the Edo period of Japan, and we've gotten in fresh stock of Kuro ame (black candy) and the very interesting "sugar ice"
  
• Also, for those wanting to improve the health of their teeth, we recommend the delicious sugar-free gum from Japan, Xylitol, which features a very advanced ingredient for removing tooth decay (and it's very tasty)
  
• Finally, our "wacky things from Japan" main page includes a deluxe new Japanese bento lunchbox (one that's not particularly cute, for those who were too shy to buy one of our other bento boxes), the ultimate way to cook tempura or other fried food, fresh stock of our popular Japanese onigiri (rice triangle) maker, and more. Check out the J-List site now!
  

Remember that you can use the J-List search engine to find products easily. The engine is "smart" and allowed you to search for words in any order (e.g. Fubuki Akira, or Akira Fubuki). It also has a list of "search synonyms" that it uses to help match products -- so that you can search for, say, bishoujo or bishojo and get the same items both times. We've posted a link to "search help," giving some pointers on searching for products on the J-List site. If there's anything we missed, please let us know!

The J-Mate site (http://www.jmate.com) has been updated with a new interview with Mami Gotoh, the lovely lookalike AV idol who resembles the lovely idol from Morning Musume, Maki Gotoh. Read her describe aspects of the Japanese AV world, including the difference between "rental" and "sell" videos, about her private sex life, and more.

Greetings from J-List November 23, 2001

Greetings and salutations from your friends at J-List!

Our warmest Thanksgiving wishes to everyone on this American holiday weekend. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American event, and when you're an expat living outside of your home country, it's honestly difficult to remember it as I do when I'm at home. Tonight I will get Kentucky Fried Chicken -- there is no turkey to be had in Japan for love or money -- and we'll do our best to mark the occasion.

There is no American-style Thanksgiving in Japan, but today is a holiday. My chance of the calendar, Friday is Kinro Kansha no Hi, or Labor Thanksgiving Day. This is a pretty run-of-the-mill Japanese holiday in which we're supposed to give thanks to those who work hard to keep Japan running. As with all holidays added since the 1980's, it's a thinly disguised attempt by the Japanese government to stimulate the economy, since the assumption is that people spend more money on holidays. As far as I can tell, there are no special customs or events associated with the Kinro Kansha no Hi, except that manual laborers, such as those who do road construction, work extra hard on this day (they get higher pay for working on holidays).

A second cow has been found with BSE (mad cow disease), this time in Hokkaido. As if the Japanese economy needed any more problems, now they have to worry about consumers fleeing all domestic beef. The government is doing its best to reassure people, with many a Japanese politician eating platefuls of beef on TV to show that it's safe to eat, but Japanese consumers are very worried, and domestic beef consumption has dropped 30% after seeing images of cows in the U.K. falling over pathetically while trying to walk. Meanwhile, imported beef from the U.S. and Australia is soaring, and McDonald's is broadcasting a cute commercial showing a family taking their daughter to McDonald's, where all the meat served is "Aussie beef that you can trust."

Several customers had trouble accessing the J-List site around Thursday. We've tweaked the site, and think the problem has gone away, but if you experience any errors, please email us right away. Also, in an unrelated problem, several of the items we posted on Wednesday didn't show up on the site, including the new issue of Cream and Emily Yoshikawa's very lovely photobook. They're on the site now -- sorry about that.

A huge volley of calendars have come in, including the long-awaited Ah My Goddess, Love Hina and You're Under Arrest calendars. If you had preordered these items, we've already contacted you to let you know they're on their way. The extras we ordered are posted to the J-List site, although we already wish we had ordered more -- if you want these great 2002 Japanese calendars for your room, please don't wait to order them, as Japan is a very seasonal place, and once calendars are gone they will be gone til next year. Since most of the calendars we've ordered are in stock, Yasu and I undertook the arduous task of opening the calendars and taking pictures of the inside pages, so you could get a better idea of how nice they are than the small thumbnail scan we had posted before. Check out all the updated calendar images, on the site now.

For this special weekend update, we've got an extra-special lineup of products for you, including:

• First, the new issue of Gokuh is a very special one, featuring Anna Ohura and Nao Oikawa and all the most lovely Japanese AV idols and models
  
• For fans of Beppin School, we've got another excellent issue for you. As with the last issue, the back cover has been damaged and cut away, so we're selling the issues we have at a discount
  
• If you want to keep up-to-date on the Japanese bisujoujo ("pretty girl") gaming world, we've got an excellent hentai magazine, Push!!, which includes a CD-ROM filled with demos, sample images, computer wallpaper and more
  
• For those who love "hitozuma" (married women) and women over 30, we've got an interesting gouka-bon (high-end fetish photobook) featuring married women age 30-42
  
• For fans of magazines that come with sampler video CDs inside, we've got the new Club Indies EX vol. 3, which features 3+ hours of AV in MPEG format for your enjoyment
  
• We have a fistfull of excellent new photobooks, including the incredibly sexy Ran Enoki photographed by Garo Aida, and a rare photobook by Haruki Mizuno, shot on location on the elegant island of Bali
  
• For fans of Japanese "rape play," we've got the new K.O. in stock
  
• We have some great new manga volumes in stock by some of Japan's most popular manga studios, as well as a restock of some very popular "dick girl" books that
  
• For yaoi lovers, a very exotic "hard boys love" anthology of material from several yaoi artists -- highly recommended
  
• We've posted lower prices for most of the excellent Pure Beauties soft porn DVDs, which feature some of Japan's most lovely idols in super DVD format
  
• If you dig doujinshi, we've got a great volley of truly excellent new books for you, from the past summer's doujinshi, and all of excellent quality -- unfortunately we only have one of each book, so they will go fast
  
• For fans of the lovely new "indies" idol Nanami Nanase, we've got an extremly special item -- the First Nanami Nanase Fan Thanks Day, in which the slender, pretty Nanami-chan says "thank you" to her fans by sucking off 54 of them in one day. One lucky fan is even selected to receive much more...
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, a great new tekoki & lewd woman DVD by Kurumi Morishita, followed by a dynamite "2 in 1" tekoki DVD for fans of hand-job fetishism
  
• If you like DVDs that explore lesbian themes, we recommend a new DVD by Kitty High (this is a region 2 DVD)
  
• For fans of leg, nylon stocking, mini skirt and high heel fetish themes, we've got a very special DVD for you by SOD's Hamlet label
  
• We have restocked the delicious "limited release" dark chocolate Mousse Pocky. which is only available in the winter -- this is a delicious and fluffy treat from Japan
  
• For those who have some Japanese down already, we've got a handy kanji dictionary, for looking up Chinese characters by stoke order or radical
  
• We have a new Kubrick toy item for Evangelion fans, the mass-production Eva 05 unit with Kaoru figure
  
• Finally, we've got more zany items from Japan for you, including a great way to make drip coffee Japanese style, an all-purpose "cusion case" that you can use to protect many things (I use it to safeguard my Powerbook G4), and more!
  

The CM-Watch page has been updated with some new Japanese TV commercials. CM-Watch is just our way of saying thanks to our customers for allowing us to bring Japanese pop culture to you in all its many forms. You can access CM-Watch at http://www.cm-watch.com (Quicktime required). Remember you can support CM-Watch by buying a cool limited edition CM-Watch T-shirt at J-List, too!

Greetings from J-List November 21, 2001

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Greetings from J-List November 19, 2001

Hello again from Japan!

We continue to watch the events from Afghanistan as they develop. We've seen a great deal of reporting on the Northern Alliance and the four main races that make up the country of Afghanistan. Japan is very fortunate in that regard -- thanks in part to its history and to its isolation, Japan is able to think of itself as a "unified" country where everyone is the same as everyone else and, to a large part, there is no discrimination of Japanese by Japanese. I've never even noticed a tendency by some Japanese to think down on Japanese from another part of the country (although people from Ibaragi Prefecture sure talk funny). This unification is helped along by a social system that encourages inclusion in groups and treating of others as equals, and since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when reformers kicked out the old Tokugawa Shogun to create a constitutional monarchy under the Emperor, getting Japanese to think of themselves as one large group has been a major goal. This unification of spirit is everywhere you look today -- although Japanese have a wide variety of income levels, fully 80% of Japanese think of themselves as "middle class."

Although foreigners living here tend to value individualism, there are many benefits to this "sameness" that Japan enjoys. It makes it much easier to shape national policies on things like education, and in fact, Japan's compulsory education is planned on a national level, not in cities and counties and school boards, as is done in the States. People seem to have a built-in unified "common sense," which is called "joshiki" in Japanese, which guides them in their lives. Kids all go to school and study (no homeschooling here), husbands are the "daikoku-bashira," the large black pillars that hold up the family. Wives either work a little to help support the household, or take care of the home as a full-time housewife. There's more harmony and less discord in Japan.

This leads to the problem of the Tyranny of the Majority at times, though, which manifests itself in small ways. In Japan, there are almost no vegetarians, and foreigners who want to live vegan have trouble "getting along" in Japan, as nearly everything here contains something that was made from animals. In Japan, too, most people love milk with 3.7 per cent milk fat or higher -- it's thick and delicious, they say. When I came to Japan in 1992, it was very hard to find lowfat (1%) milk without searching several stores. Now, lowfat milk is generally available, but non-fat milk (which I prefer) is completely impossible to find. The "majority" just doesn't want it, so no one produces it. Caffeine is another problem -- the Japanese drink all kinds of tea, nearly all of which contains caffeine. If you're Mormon, as a friend of mine was, you are forbidden to drink caffeine, yet there was almost nothing for him that didn't have caffeine in it except water. In the end, he went home.

For the first update of the week, the J-List staff has assembled some extra-special items for you, including:

• First, some very nice new erotic magazines from Eichi Publishing, including the new all-purpose adult magazines, Best Video and Video Boy
  
• We have several new photobooks, too, including a new semi-nude from Garo Aida and the very sexy "visual queen" Yoko Naito
  
• For manga fans we've got a super selection of both new hentai manga (including the dynamite "Shell" from Harazaki Takuma), as well as another major restocking of our popular sold-out manga volumes
  
• For lovers of bondage and S&M, we have the superb "Abnormal Photography," featuring the truly beautiful bondage nudes of a dozen lovely models
  
• Also, fresh but limited stock of the DVD SM Collection, featuring a magazine with fully stocked DVD with 120 minutes of excellent material on it
  
• From SOD, we've got three totally excellent DVD releases for you: the long-awaited DVD release of "In those days, I have known 2 pretty nymphos" (love that English title) with Ai Nagase; followed by a dynamite Love Zamen "4-in-1" featuring the best bukkake fetish ever; and the new Masterpiece of Soft on Demand, with video from 59 titles
  
• One of the best-selling DVDs ever has been the Big Morkal DVD Anthology, which featurs *3 hours* of great sampler footage from their productions, for just $20. Now vol. 2 is out, with another 180 minutes of very special Japanese erotica for you, at a great price!
  
• For lovers of Japanese swimsuit idols, we've got another very nice swimsuit DVD with very sexy video of the lovely Haruka Igawa
  
• We have a new anime card game from Bandai and Cardass, the Magical Paradise Card Game 2, in stock now
  
• For dog lovers, we've got some beautiful metallic stickers with images of famous dog breeds and funny words in English -- good for owners of poodles, collie, American cocker spaniel, and afghan hound, on the Japanese headbands and stickers page
  
• We have a delicious new flavor of Hi-Chew, Lemon Squash, with real vitamin C (I'm eating some as I type this now, it's really good)
  
• Also for Japanese snack food loves, we have fresh stock of the most popular Japanese snack food, Pocky, with fresh stock of both original chocolate Pocky, and Tsubu Tsubu Ichigo (made with real strawberries)
  
• Also: fresh stock of our "looking for a beautiful woman" stickers
  
• For fans of Japanese fashion dolls, which is a big world unto itself, we have a very cute "Jenn"y" doll in he spring high school uniform -- great for displaying
  
• For fans of traditional Japanese things, we have a really cool new Japanese piggy bank in the shape of a Buddhist temple contribution box, as well as more attractive Japanese chopsticks
  
• Finally, our "wacky" page has a new bento item for Picky's Bear fans, a beautiful long head-band for Gunbuster fans, fresh stock of bizarre Japanese ear-cleaners with lights, and more.
  

Greetings from J-List November 16, 2001

Greetings from Japan, where "that's true" means "no" and people bow while talking on the phone (I do it too...).

Some things in Japan are beyond easy comprehension to those outside the country. One are "Yakult Ladies." Yakult (always pronounced "Yakuruto" in Japanese) is a popular "drinkable yogurt" that is sold in supermarkets and convenience stores. It's also sold direct by the company by an army of "Yakult Ladies" who ride around the town on their bicycles (outfitted with packs to keep the drinks cold) and sell their drinks directly. When a woman has pedaled her bicycle all the way to where you work to bring you something to drink, it's hard not to accommodate her and dig into your pocket for 100 yen -- they make great use of this "giri" (obligation) to make sales. The Yakult Ladies are a unique way to market products, and they're probably worthy of some study if you're ever writing a book on Japanese business practices. They all dress the same, wearing one standardized green uniform throughout all of Japan, and they have company songs and great pride in their work.

Japan and Korea are very close to each other, and much of Japan's culture is actually imported from Korea. A favorite dish of the Japanese is "yakiniku," Korean Barbecue, served both at home and at many yakiniku restaurants. Basically, you order a big plate of pieces of beef and chicken and vegetables, and fry it directly on a big hot plate in the middle of the table. It's fun to have everyone gathered around, picking pieces of meat out of the fire before they burn, dipping the meat into sauce and eating it with rice. I like another korean dish, kim chee, but the kimchee in Japan is never spicy enough (Koreans complain of this too).

Another food that is popular is "nabe" (NAH-beh) a word which means "pot" and which loosely describes any kind of food you make in a big pot and eat with everyone gathered around, talking while taking things from the pot (boiled fish, tofu, vegetables, miso, etc.). Chanko-nabe is the delicious food that sumo wrestlers eat to get so big, and kim chee nabe is also delicious. Sukiyaki is a form of nabe, and is both food to eat and a social event at the same time. Nabe is eaten in the winter -- I'm looking forward to eating some sukiyaki soon.

After years of faithful service, the game Season of the Sakura has sold out. We still have stock of Three Sisters' Story and May Club, the two games we're offering on sale for $24.95, but our stock levels won't hold out for long, so please pick these games up if you're interested in trying them.

For the pre-weekend update, we've got an extra volley of new things for you, including:

• First, we've got new magazines, including the new Urecco (Eri Yukawa is so cute at her "busty picnic"), a new "Otakara" (treasure) magazine with embarrassing and nude pictures of famous idols from years ago, and the new Gal's Shower, the #1 selling "wet" fetish magazine
  
• For photobook fans, some new and back-in-stock items, including the hardcover "comeback" photobook of Momo Aida (one of Peter's old faves from the 1990's)
  
• Also: be sure and check the new issue of Mini-Skirt Deluxe, a fantastic square-back magazine featuring the best leg-fetish photography in Japan
  
• Those enamored of anal themes should check out "Sweetie," which features ass-centric photos of some very erotic idols
  
• For fans of Japanese adult idol trading cards, we've restocked the Crystal Card 2000 vol. 2 series (we have three whole boxes of 20 cards each in stock now)
  
• For manga fans, we've got another great selection of new wide manga works, filled with some of Japan's most talented hentai artists for you, as well as a major restock of almost a dozen other books that had been sold out
  
• If you love G-Taste, the popular erotic art book series from Yagami Hiroki, we have fresh stock of volumes 2 and 3
  
• Also for manga lovers, a restocking of the Electric Fighting Daughters hentai game girl parody mangas
  
• For doujinshi lovers, check out Nyu-Gi-Oh, an erotic parody of Yu-Gi-Oh by the excellent doujinshi circle Kennix
  
• For DVD fans, we've got some excellent items for you, including DVD releases of Bukkake Circle vol. 1 (one of our most popular semen items), and good old Ball Breaker Erika (beautiful girl who kicks ass on would-be rapists)
  
• For fans of Ai Nagase and Mirai Hoshikawa, we've got a super "2 in 1" DVD featuring two complete releases for you -- great for fans of sailor uniforms
  
• Japan has many lovely swimsuit idols, and one of the most popular is Kaori Manabe, who takes time off from her career as a college student to make a super busty swimsuit idol DVD for her fans
  
• For Japanese toy fans, we've got a deluxe fully posable Mobile Suit Gundam toy that is very cool, followed by a super set of Ultraman and his most famous foe, Alien Baltan, two highly collectible figures similar to the Kubrick toy line
  
• On our "cute things" wacky page, we've got a new bento box and cute spoons and forks based on a cute Japanese character "Hamster Club"
  
• For anime fans and card collectors -- the very cool Yu-Gi-Oh "Struggle of Chaos" card series in stock
  
• We have restocked that old favorite, Japanese sake candy, a delicious hard candy made with real sake inside
  
• Also, we've got fresh stock of unique Japanese chewing gum, including Black Black (caffinated spicy gum to keep you awake), No Time (gum that brushes your teeth for you), and the ever-delicious Blueberry
  
• For those studying Japanese, we've got a nice new Campus Word Book (great for studying a language), and an improved version of our traditional Japanese writing paper (which sells very well, although we're surprised at this)
  
• Finally, we've got many new "wacky" items for you, including some nice Japanese chopsticks (you can never have too many chopsticks), Japanese shiatsu boards for your feet, more wacky Japanese signs with messages on them, and more bizarre items!
  

J-List is the only place where you can find the Lunatic Party, Angelic Impact and Paradise Lost erotic parody doujinshi anthologies from Fusion Product. Each volume in the series is an excellent wide manga in B5 format, with the compiled works of a dozen hentai doujinshi artists. They offer excellent erotic parody of Sailor Moon and Evangelion, and are a great value, too, since each book has 160+ pages. They are out of print, so we're never sure when they'll stop being available to us.

Greetings from J-List November 14, 2001

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Greetings from J-List November 12, 2001

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Greetings from J-List November 10, 2001

Hello again from your friends in Japan!

I was hit by some kind of flu bug yesterday, so I took myself down to the nearby medical clinic so they could look at me. There I did what many Japanese people do to get well, get a "tenteki" (intravenous administration of medicine). Japanse swear by I.V.'s, and whenever they feel sick they will go to a nearby hospital or clinic for one. After my I.V. finished, the doctor gave me various medicines to help chase away whatever bug I had caught. I was pleased to see that each batch of medicine had a little slip of paper included, explaining what the medicine did and how it worked. In the past, Japanese doctors have been famous (among foreigners living here, anyway) for giving out medicine without the slightest explanation of what the medicine was for. In general, foreigners living here aren't too thrilled with Japanese medicine, as it never seems to have any effect -- I tend to prefer medicines from home, as most foreigners do, and fortunately for me, I brought back a cache of Nyquil, Alka-Seltzer, Contac and other medicines from the States.

If you ever come to live in Japan, you will probably gain a new appreciation for fish. The Japanese eat much more fish than most Americans do, which probably contributes to their overall good health. Before I came to Japan I liked sushi and sashimi, but didn't eat much in the way of "yaki-zakana" (fish slit open and fried). Now I love many kinds of fish, from shaké go aji to hokke. There's just one problem -- living here as I do, I never had the need to learn what most of the fish I was eating was called in English, so I only know the Japanese names.

Money is important, and no one should be frivolous with it. However, I must admit that when I have American change in my pockets in Japan, I sometimes toss pennies or quarters on the ground, wondering if some high school girl might pick it up and be somehow inspired to do something like go study English in the States or something. It's probably silly, but you never know how one event might affect others in some positive way.

A great moment of fatherhood has come for me -- my son is finally old enough that I can read The Hobbit to him. I've been a huge fan of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings and have been waiting for this for years. Unfortunately I wasn't able to time our trip to the U.S. to allow me to be around for the Lord of the Rings movie premier. Maybe I'll get lucky and have to take a business trip to the States in January...

Remember that at J-List, we've got a wide variety of Japanese snacks and food products, from delicious Pocky (a chocolate covered pretzel stick) to "furikake" (a delicious food you sprinkle over rice) to wakame soup and more. Some of the items are very traditional, such as the Japanese "kuro-ame" ("black candy"), and others are just plain fun to eat, such as the super-sour Shigekix, or

Greetings from J-List November 8, 2001

Greetings again from the other side of the Pacific!

We're safely back in Japan now -- although it was really an ordeal, getting our massive boxes and suitcases back in one piece. Japan, like most countries, places limits on the amount of merchandise you're allowed to bring into the country without paying duty, but I'm quite good at squirreling my way through customs without paying anything. If you're ever coming into Japan with a lot of boxes, tell the man you're bringing in American cereal, pickles and other foods you can't buy in Japan -- apparently they're used to that and won't question it.

There are some things you just don't get used to. While I have gotten quite good at switching from the right side of the road to the left when going to and from the U.S. and Japan (you just make sure you look for other cars and go the same way they're going, it's only hard when there are no cars around you), I can't for the life of me seem to get in the correct side of the car on the first try. It's a great joke with all of us -- start to get in the wrong side of the car, then walk around to the other side as carefully as you can, so one notices your goof.

Because names in kanji have some meaning that's not necessarily present in Western names, it's usually interesting for foreigners to find out what those meanings. Many Japanese are made up of kanji for some of the simplest words -- ta (rice field, also read "da"), ishi (stone), naka (inside), yama (mountain) and so on. People who have names like Yamada, Tanaka and Ishida probably came from farming backgrounds, although somehow all Japanese will tell you that their ancestors were Samurai. The last names of the J-List staff are a little more complex: Tomo Fujita (fuji = wisteria flower, ta = rice field), Yasu Nieda (nie = victim, da = rice field), Harumi Shibuya (shibu = tasteful, ya = valley) and Chiharu Yanai (ya = arrow, nai = "inside"). Hmm, maybe their ancestors really were samurai after all.

For our first update to the J-List site after returning to Japan, we've got a bunch of excellent items for you, including:

• First, we're announcing a new category of DVD product for AV collectors, the Pure Beauties Collection from Asiaview Entertainment. These soft porn DVDs capture some of the most lovely AV idols Japan has to offer, like Akira Fubuki, Madoka Ozawa and Bauko Eichi. Because many of the models are retired, these DVDs are a great
  
• We've got some great new magazines, including the new Dela Beppin and Bejean, both brimming over with lovely girls
  
• For photobook fans, we've got some excellent new items, including the excellent Top GT Race Queen book with the top-RQ's (including Toko Ushikawa and the Chinese Race Queen Yinling)
  
• Also for photobook fans, fresh stock of most of the popular Tennyo erotic nude photobooks including Maiko Kazano, and fresh stock of Mami Gotoh's "Morning Baby"
  
• If you love hentai art books, check out the excellent erotic work, "The Science of Wet Girl," filled with some excellent
  
• Also: fresh stock of the long-selling Yui Shop erotic art books (both volumes)
  
• For manga fans, you know we've got some excellent new works for you, including a new erotic manga my Marshmallow Juubaori (creator of Alice First/Alice Second), the erotic tales of a sexy private investigator, and more -- as well as fresh stock of several popular sold-out books, too
  
• For SOD DVD lovers, we've got two great offerings for you: the new Do Lesbian, featuring lesbians who have sex with other girls they've just met, and Airi Kago's incredibly erotic Idol Semen vol. 4
  
• We've gotten many requests to carry the products of Ai Kurosawa, a lovely new busty AV idol whose star is rising fast. See her new DVD in stock now, too
  
• Anna Ohura is still queen of the busty AV world in Japan, and we've got a killer new DVD featuring the lovely Anna-chan in some seriously erotic video footage -- and it's uncensored!
  
• For collectors, we've got the debut video of the lovely "Latin AV actress" Emily Yoshikawa, a truly beautiful girl who is half-Japanese and half-Dominican Republic (and she speaks Spanish)
  
• J-List offers "reserve subscriptions" which allow you to get the latest issues of a wide variety of Japanese magazines each month. Now we've added Animedia, a popular anime magazine that comes with lots of extras, and Roadshow, a magazine for fans of Western and Japanese film
  
• For fans of Licca-chan, the super-cute line of dolls, we've got two very cool "Neo Licca" PVC straps for your portable phone (or you can use them as a keychain, or a camera strap) featuring "kogal" (high school valley girls) versions of Licca
  
• On our English manga page, we've got fresh stock of the Love Hina Bilingual Comics, which feature English and Japanese side by side, along with the new volume, vol. 7
  
• On our popular Japanese snacks and food page, see fresh stock of Shigekix, the very sour "hard gummi" (very chewy gummi candy) in lemon and cola flavor, as well as a delicious Japanese mustard
  
• On our Japanese signs & stickers page, we've got fresh stock of some popular wooden signs with funny messages on them, along with very cute metallic cute pins, for fans of Hamu-Taro and Thunder Bunny
  
• For those studying Japanese, find fresh stock of our $4 E-J and J-E dictionaries, along with some very cool notebooks with funny English printed on them
  
• Finally, our Wacky Things from Japan main page includes a new way to scoop rice, Japanese document protectors that are great for protecting your bank book, passport and other important documents, date magnets that let you organize your life better, and more!
  

Sant to know why adult video actresses choose to go into their unique careers? Want to know what it was like for Kurumi Morishita or Rin Tomosaki their first time performing? Check out J-Mate, at http://www.jmate.com, the only place where you can read translated interviews with Japan's lovely idols, so you can find out their personal feelings and thoughts firsthand.

Greetings from J-List November 5, 2001

Hello again from your friends at J-List!

Well, our sojourn to the U.S. is at an end, and tomorrow we get on a plane back to Japan. As always, it's been incredibly fun coming home, spending time in the house here, and doing lots of shopping for things that an expat needs in Japan. The kids loved Trick-or-Treating, and we followed this American tradition up with a trip to Disneyland California Adventure, the brand-new amusement park on Disneyland, which we liked very much. Now that it's time to go home, the kids want to stay, but of course school and all their friends are waiting for them back home.

Whenever you go somewhere, you're required by unspoken Japanese tradition to bring back "omiyage" or souvenirs for those who didn't get to go. This little custom goes a long way to keeping the Japanese economy alive, as anyone who goes anywhere must bring loads of stuff back with them. Of the seven massively packed suitcases and boxes we're lugging home, much of what we're carrying is omiyage for our various friends and family, including beef jerky and Disneyland trinkets for the J-List staff, Ichiro T-shirts for jiichan (grandfather) who is a big baseball fan, Halloween treats for the students in our kids' classes, and so on. Well, we don't mind -- we figure we're doing our part for the American economy.

Have you ever been to a Recycle Shop? This is a Japanese word meaning a shop where you can find used TVs, vacuum cleaners, and other goods, and with the Japanese economy continuing its poor performance, these shops have become quite popular. The word "recycle" means to reuse natural resources in English, but it also means to get use out of things again. Actually, the Japanese word for recycle, saisei (literally "live again"), also means "play back" on VCRs, since the video is truly living again as it plays off the tape.

The top 5 list has been updated, belatedly. You can see what manga, DVD and other items other J-List customers are most interested in by clicking the links on the J-List front page.

For today's update, Tomo and Yasu have come up with tons of excellent new products for you, including:

• First, we've got some excellent new magazines for fans of Japanese adult magazines
  
• We've also got fresh stock of some nice new $5 and discounted magazines as well, on magazine page 3
  
• For fans of magazines with discs inside, we've got the very nice DVD Video Cinema, a 2 hour DVD of bondage and SM with a color magazine
  
• Also for fans of bondage themes, we've got fresh stock of the dynamite Hitomi Ikeno photobook "Tied-Up Angel"
  
• For those who love Japan's famous AV idols, check out the very erotic "Love Diary" featuring silky
  
• For leg fetish fans, be sure and see the limited stock of Panst Best, for fans of "panty stockings"
  
• We've got some new hardcover photobooks, including Akari's alluring "Himitsu," Kaori Shimizu's erotic nude photobook and more
  
• For hentai manga fans, be sure and check out the excellent additions we've posted, including new kemono works, manga with many forbidden themes including incest, and many more works
  
• Also: fresh stock of the popular Electric Fighting Daughters series, which offer erotic parody of popular game girls from games like Street Fighter II and more
  
• We've got more cool doujinshi, which we think you'll like -- although please note that we have only 1 copy of each
  
• Also for doujinshi collectors: a restocking of Nostalgia, the very special English-language doujinshi that features totally uncensored parody of Dirty Pair
  
• If you are a fan of yaoi manga, see the yaoi page for some newly posted unique Japanese homosexual comics
  
• If you love DVD, we've got some excellent items for you, including the new Study of Penis by Innocent Girls, the Sperm Angel series vol. 2, a super 4-hour "remix" DVD with Kago Airi (recommended for fans of Morning Musume), and more
  
• For adult video fans, see some excellent "Would you like Hand Job?" videos now posted, and more
  
• For anime fans, we've got some cool new items, including a deluxe die-cast metal toy of the VF-19A from Macross Plus, more Japanese professional wrestling, and some cool figures from Tokimeki Memorial
  
• The new trailer for Star Wars episode II is up on Quicktime.com, and to celebrate (well, not really, but the timing is good), we've got fresh stock of the Super-Deformed Star Wars figures
  
• We've got some new calendars posted, all in-stock, so check out those, too
  
• For little fans of stuff from Japan, we've got some play Japanese money, too -- that's just plain cool
  
• J-List carries various cool notebooks and study items, including notebooks with funny English on them (a long favorite of ours) -- see fresh stock of our unique Japanese flashcards and Japanese report paper as well as the Japanese ultimate correction pen
  
• New and restocked items on our "wacky things from Japan" category include fresh stock of our famous penguin wiener maker (which makes cute little penguins for your bento lunchbox), a handy Japanese outdoor plate and plasticware set, a special brush to clean your foot, fresh stock of Picky's Bear authentic Japanese bento boxes, and more!
  

J-List carries many useful things, but one of the most rare are our revolving magazine subscriptions. Each month, you can reserve your copy of some unique Japanese magazines, including anime magazines (Newtype, the poster-filled Megami Magazine, Animage), toy magazines like Hobby Japan, JPOP/J-Rock magazines including Uta-Bon, which features sheet music of popular JPOP tunes for musicians, the excellent Bomber, featuring lovely swimsuit idols, and more. See the magazine subscription pages for more information on what we have available.