J-List side blog

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Greetings from J-List January 30, 2002

Greetings from Japan, where the "silent E" in English is known as "mahou no E" (Magic E).

Japan is quite nippy in the Winter, especially when the kara-kaze, the famous "empty wind" that blows through Gunma in the colder months, kicks up. Most gaijin from warm places like me (San Diego) either learn to dress warmly or go home after a year. It's not just a matter of dressing in layers like my mother always told me -- because Japan lacks some core comforts like central heating, Japanese houses are usually colder than God's Icebox. When relaxing at home, it's quite common to stick your legs inside the kotatsu, a table with a blanket over it and a heater inside. Rooms are heated using small kerosene heaters called "stoves" (suto-bu in Japanese). When these heaters are turned on or off, they release a smell which is quite unpleasant at first, but eventually grows on you as all part of going through Winter in Japan, and you become "natsukashii" (nostalgic) whenever you smell it. For someone from San Diego like me, long underwear is a serious requirement for living in Japan.

It sometimes seems to outsiders living here that Japan is a very death-oriented society. Don't give gifts in multiples of four because the number four is read "shi" in Japanese, which also means death. Don't put you chopsticks straight up in your rice, since that's only done as part of a ceremony for the dead. Likewise, don't sleep with your head facing north, as bodies about to be cremated are laid facing this direction. Yes for all the customs that have to do with death, nearly all of which spring from Japan's various versions of Buddhism, the Japanese have almost no concept of estate planning. As far as I can tell, virtually all the things we do in the States to prepare for the event of one's death, from writing wills to making living trusts to investigating how to avoid death taxes are not practiced here in Japan at all. Since my parents have some land that will be transferred to my wife's name at the time of their death, I brought the topic up with them, but it seem like something you just don't talk about. Likewise, I asked our accountant to recommend some options we might want to keep in mind, but he said no one really did anything to prepare for death estate-wise. Even the concept of drafting a will is not really practiced here. Because all Japanese have strong "common sense" built into them, a natural sense for the "way things should be," wills are not as necessary here. If I were to die, common sense dictates that my wife and children would receive my property, and this logic is rarely contested here.

At J-List, we carry all English-language bishoujo games in the world, including JAST USA, Peach Princess, Hobibox Europe and Himeya Soft. A highly stylized genre of interactive "love simulation" game from Japan, we've worked hard to help make these games available in English to fans. And, our games are uncensored. We received quite a few questions about compatibility with Windows XP, so we've gone through and updated all our bishoujo game product pages with XP information. The good news is that most games will work with XP, either as-is or with by running them in Windows 95/98 compatibility mode. Three Sisters' Story and some of the older Himeya games are among the few that won't load in XP. Also: we've finally gotten in stock of the last of the Himeya Soft games which we had not carried before, Love Potion. Great for fans of the classic games from Himeya!

For the mid-week update, we've got a bunch of very nice new items for you, including:

First of all, some great new magazines posted, including the new Gal's Dee, the magazine for fans of Japanese women who are all size "D" cup or larger
Also posted are some new kogal magazines, for fans of amateur sex in love hotels
We've got some rare items, some collections of some issues of Dick and Up! You, two magazines that specialize in American and European pornography -- it's quite interesting to see this world through the eyes of the Japanese
For photobook fans, check out the new items, including a new erotic photobook by Aida Garo, and fresh stock of many nice books, including the "A Trip Of Beautiful Russians" photobook that sold out so fast last time
For those interested in harder core items, we've got fresh stock of the Aika Miura bondage photobook and DVD combo item
For hentai manga fans, we've posted new books for you, including very erotic manga volumes by LE Comics, Angel Comics and other studios, as well as a good restocking (a dozen or so volumes) of previously out of stock manga books
Also, a treat for doujinshi collectors -- another volley of all-new recently released hentai doujinshi works from the past winter Comic Market
We've got a bunch of very nice new DVDs for you, starting with "My First Experience," a fascinating lesbian DVD with three girls who engage in "penis band" (strap-on dildo) fucking through holed panties, thus there is no mosaic on this DVD (region free)
For fans of the lovely and pure Rin Tomosaki, enjoy her very nice new Soft on Demand DVD project (region free)
Those who remember Fumie Hosokawa, the Big Breast Queen from Gilgamesh Night, check out her very nice erotic DVD release (region free)
We love the Let Fetish World series from Wanz Factory, and the latest release starring Manami Yoshii is great for all leg, foot, stocking and mini-skirt fetish lovers (region 2)
The popular Dream Gakuen orgy series continues, with two new releases for a total of 360 minutes of killer action (region 2)
Volume 5 of the very erotic Night Shift Hospital hentai anime is in stock, and is highly recommended for nurse fetish and hentai DVD fans (region 2)
We've got a big restock of DVDs, too, with fresh stock of Black Shower, Aika Miura Perfect Eternal Edition, SOD 5 1/2 Year's Special and much more
Finally, Tomo has gone through and discounted a bunch of DVD items for you, so you can get them and save some money -- check out the newly reduced items
For anyone who's ever loved the incredibly cool Captain Harlock characters from animator Leiji Matsumoto, we've got the Captain Harlock Saga toy series, 7 different figure/toys created with the direct oversight of the creator
For lovers of beautiful Japanese swimsuit idols, we've got the hardcover photobook of Yoko Mitsuya, one of the most beautiful busty idols to appear in Japan in years
For those who like our unique Japanese snack and food page, we've got melon-flavored carmels (yes, you read right), fried udon snacks, and the famous Sakuma Drops, which appeared in the happy anime film Grave of the Fireflies
Also, delicious Japanese senbei (hard rice cracker), and for babies, very delicious milk-flavored Hello Kitty baby senbei (it's for babies, but Kaori loves to eat these)
For lovers of Japan's very sexy Race Queen idols, chec out the new Gal's Paradise Super Graphic cards we've posted
Lovely "traditional Japanese" items include a "faux" lacquerware bowl, plate and spoon set, Japanese coasters, and some nice crane food decorations
Many new cute Japanese items, including a cardboard box for Hello Kitty fans (you can put anything it, it's very stylish), a Hello Kitty lunch box/food container, and new Hamster Club cute items
For toy fans, we've got a very nice new soft vinyl figure set based on the Sunrise Heroine toy line from Yujin, and a beautiful Kimono Licca-chan doll from Takara
Finally, see funny Japanes signs, handy protective bags that you can keep your laptop in, a cool Japanese world map, several new bento boxes for those in love with Japanese bento culture, and much more. Check out all the newly posted items!

Remember that you can find things on the J-List site using the handy "quick search" function. The search searches for any items containing the words you enter, in any order -- thus you can search for actress' names in Japanese word order (e.g. Nagase Ai) or English order (Ai Nagase). The search engine is smart, too, and snows that "bishoujo" and "bishojo" are the same thing, although some names that have multiple spellings (such as Yuna Akimoto, whose first name can be written as Yuna, Yuuna, or Yuhna) won't come up if searched. Since J-List has 1500 products in stock at any given time, there should be something for everyone!

Monday, January 28, 2002

Greetings from J-List October 28, 2002

Greetings and salutations from your friends in Japan!

First, notes on the site. J-List may be experience some minor problems with some users, who try to view adult items on the site (but are unable, they are stuck in "PG" mode), and with some other users, who are unable to view product images. If you have any problems with our website, please email us right away and we'll help get on of the problem.

When you become bilingual in a language, you learn a lot about how your own brain works, what processes go on when you learn new vocabulary words (every act of learning involves a physical change in your brain, the creation of a new synapse from one cell to another), and so on. It makes you think about the nature of language in general and consider deeply parts of your own native language that you've taken for granted all your life -- in short, it's really cool. The act of translation from one language to another is really something, too: it takes place deep inside your brain, on a level below your conscious thoughts, like a process in a computer that's running in the background. You place some English in the "buffer," and then something happens in your brain, and in a few seconds Japanese is waiting for you to retrieve it. You can almost hear the "ding" in your mind as the translation "cooks" and is done, without any conscious awareness, at least as far as I've experienced.

When it comes to translation, though, there's one direction to go: from your second language to your native language. If I am translating from Japanese to English, I'll be able to do it just fine; but woe is me if I try to translate from English to Japanese. I know this because I tried it once. My father, who was a nautical engineer who built advanced hydrofoils, had to get a patent of his translated into Japanese, so he asked his Japanophile son to do it for him. Wanting to impress my Dad, I agreed, and two months of hard labor later had produced what had to be the most tear-jerkingly hilarious patent translation ever seen in Japan. I learned my lesson and now politely refuse any requests for translations into Japanese. I believe that 90% of the "wasei eigo" (literally "made in Japan English"), the silly English words the Japanese come up with, are inadvertently created by Japanese asked to translate from Japanese to English -- they are doing their best but are basically translating the wrong direction.

We've mentioned some things that are especially nice in Japan before, including the extra-soft and very warm acrylic blankets they have here. Well, we've finally got some for the list, very nice Hello Kitty half-blankets (or lap blankets) that are very soft and warm and are also very cute. See them on the page! If there's interest in these items, we'll get more in the future.

For the new update, we've got some great items from Japan for you, including:

For fans of lovely swimsuit idols, we've got several nice items including the very lovely hardcover photobook of "Chisato" and more
For fans of wacky Japanese signs and other items, we've got some more for you, with Japanese plastic sign plates with many uses
Show your love of Japan or of your home country with the cute cloth flags (Japan, USA, Germany, France, Canada) we've got in stock
We restocked some of our favorite items, the only-sold-in-Japan Sesame Street pens and mechanical pencils, very cute and great for collectors (or those who just want something special from Japan)
Also, fresh stock of another popular item, the cute plush Totoro magnets
For fans of the Dirty Pair, we've got extremely limited stock of the Dirty Pair figure sets (including a complete set)
We've restocked many fun Japanese items for your kitchen, including onigiri makers and several new bento sets with everything you need to enjoy Japanese bento
For fans of our Japanese snacks, some nice new items, including Every Burger (chocolate cookies that look like little hamburgers, fun to eat), gummi pizza, fresh stock of Japanese miso soups, and more!
For Japanese toy fans, we've got a great Ultraman item, the cool Kubrick Green Hornet and Kato set, and more
For Hello Kitty lovers, a great Kitty item for your car, some fun Kitty stamps and magnets with bobbling heads, Kitty chopsticks, and more
Also: the really soft acrylic blankets (mentioned above) with cute images of Kitty on them
Finally, find more Japanese fude pens (which let you write as if you were writing with a Chinese writing brush), a handy "package opener," a super-fun dress-up-doll set for Hamtaro lovers, and more!
For our adult customers, we've got many new 18+ products. They include:
For magazine fans, we have more excellent magazines from Japan posted, including new issues of Let's Do Something Good and I'm Sure I Love Married Women After All (we just love these titles)
For fans of kogals, those lovely Japanese bad girls, we have the new Cho Mach, filled with lovely girls in love hotels for you
We have more great hardcover photobooks from Japan for you, including a new Garo Aida work that's lovely, and the super sexy leg fetish photos of Aki Mizuki
For bondage fans, don't miss the excellent Maiko Yuki photobook we have -- it's wonderful
For hentai manga fans we have even more great works for you, including Muchan ga Kitayo, about an sexually active little animal who has many adventures with beautiful women, and more
For doujinshi lovers, we've got a great new book by Kenix, Orange Pie 2 (great One Piece hentai!)
For adult DVD fans, find many nice items in stock, including a new Big Morkal Cosplayers release featuring Sayaka Hagiwara as super-cute Japanese game girls (region free)
Ryoko Mitake is a red-hot Japanese nude idol who recently began career as an AV performer, and we've got her newest hardcore work -- it's great! (region free)
Nao Oikawa is a "virgin hunter" who hunts inexperienced boys and steals their virginity in a new SOD release (region free)
There's a nice new Man's Juice release from SOD featuring Mayumi Yoshida in a great festival of bukkake (region free)
From Moodyz, enjoy the hardcore debut of the lovely An Namba, a sexy new AV actress who's eager to please you (region 2)
A great lesbian offering from Wanz Factory, two card-carrying lesbians show the secret of lesbian sex to Kyoka Usami in a great "lesbian training" production (region 2)
Finally, a big restocking of DVDs, including new No Cut!! titles, Sora Aoi's Happy Go Lucky, The girl scouted in the Cake Shop, lesbian kissing DVDs and more!

J-List carries many cool things. One item we like are the bilingual manga which feature Japanese comics (Ah My Goddess, Cardcaptor Sakura etc) with both English and Japanese in them. They're great for anyone wanting to pick up some Japanese, and also fun to read. We're closing out our stock so our prices are great, check out what we've got for you (try searching for "bilingual").

Greetings from J-List January 28, 2002

Hello again from Japan, the birthplace of canned coffee.

Although Japan's version of Christmas is slightly different from other countries, many customs related to the giving or receiving of gifts abound in Japan. First of all, there are two gift-giving seasons, in July and December, when you give gifts to various people who are "sewa ni natteiru," a phrase which describes people who are helping you out in some way (professors, teachers). Companies exchange gifts in these seasons, too, and J-List exchanges gifts with the distributors and other companies that we deal with -- it's always fun to see what this or that company will give this year. In many cases when you receive a gift, you're supposed to give an "o-kaeshi" or a gift in return, which is supposed to be equal to half the value of the gift you received. At weddings, all guests bring about $200 in cash as a wedding gift, and the leave with about $100 in gifts in a big bag -- rice with red beans, katsuobushi (similar to furikake), and other items. Similarly, at funerals, well-wishers arrive with a cash gift in an envelope; they leave with small gifts such as green tea. In years past, it was customary for people to give a gift (cash or some other valuable item) to doctors when their loved ones were in the hospital, although this has been banned by the Japanese medical board within the last decade.

Sometimes you can get yourself caught in a "gift war" with Japanese people -- they give you something, you give something back, intending it to be an "o-kaeshi" (oh-KA-eh-shi), but the next thing you know they've gone and given you another gift. For the first few years of my marriage, my mother and my wife's mother would engage in this kind of gift battle, each trying to get the last word in. My mother finally gave up, I think, resigning to let the balance of gift giving go in favor of my wife's mother. When my wife and I went to Spain, we brought back some salt from the Mediterranean to a couple who run one of our favorite restaurants. They showered us with wine and other gifts in return, despite the fact that the salt cost less than $1, but we knew not to get into a gift-giving war. If you do want to give a gift to a Japanese person and avoid the embarrassment of return gifts, just tell them up front that you don't need an "o-kaeshi"

Tokyo is an interesting place, although I tire of all that concrete when I'm there on businss, and am happy to get back to quiet old Gunma at the end of the day. Some of the more interesting points to check out if you're ever in Tokyo would include Ameyoko, an interesting collection of alleyways full of small street shops selling interesting clothes, food and accessories. It grew out of a major black market that flourished during World War II, and it's quite fun to wander around and see what you can see. Another popular spot with tourists is Akasuka, a large shrine that has many interesting shops around it. If you like electronics, and what gaijin visiting Japan doesn't, be sure and hit Akihabara, home of the "Electric Town" where there are hundreds of shops selling just about anything you can want, and if you've got your passport you can get it tax-free, too. To check out "kogal" culture, just take the Yama-no-te (the loop line that goes around Tokyo) to Shibuya and get off at the Hachiko exit (Hachiko is the famous dog who waited faithfully for his master to return every day, until one day the master died, yet the dog continued to wait faithfully until he, too, died). You'll find a vibrant area of street musicians as well kogals and men trying to hit on them around the famous "scramble intersection" (called this because you have to move your butt quickly to get across in time). For night action, go to Kabikicho, although gaijin should watch themselves as it can be a little rough, and some establishments won't let foreignrs in at all. Tokyo Tower and the massive Tokyo Municipal Government Office are also good to hit if you want a view of the city from above, or find one of the companies that will take you up for a helicopter tour.

For the first update of the new week, we've got a very nice selection of new products for you, including:

First, the new Urecco is in, and it's a very nice issue, capturing lovely Japanese models like Ichigo Milk and Natsuki Abe in startlingly beautiful photographs
If you're interested in discount magazines, we've got a bunch posted for you, starting at $5-6 (see magazine page 3 for all discount magazine items)
The very nice Gal's Shower Live, a combination bukkake magazine and dual-Video CD combination item, is in stock
For photobook lovers, we've fresh stock of some great items, including leg and stocking fetish photobooks, as well as the beautiful new hardcover photobook of lovely swimsuit idol Yui Ichikawa
If you like hentai manga from Japan, we've got a very large update for you, with a half-dozen newly posted books as well as fresh stock of many popular books (including the best-selling Fetish Doll dick girl manga series)
Also for doujinshi fans, good stock of three excellent hentai doujinshi for you -- a new Girl Power, featuring Dirty Pair, Gundam and other themes (including naughty tentacles), and two new game girl books from Kenix featuring the best Capcom vs. SNK hentai (all very nice)
For DVD fans, we've got some nice new products for you, including an interesting "Couple Kiss" DVD in which male/female couples step inside the Magic Mirror Bus and demonstrate their kissing style, then an experienced "kissing girl" comes and kisses both the man and the woman to show how it's done (region free)
A busty and lovely new face in the indies AV world, Reiko Matsushima, appears in her first AV release ever, a very nice DVD from Deep's (region free)
For bondage fans, we've got "A Moisten Maid Sisters," the story of two sisters who works as French maids, who have very interesting sex lives (region free)
For Madoka Ozawa fans, we've got a great all-new AV release showing the "private sex" of Madoka-chan, what she doesn't show to the camera (region 2)
Finally, for loves of lesbian DVDs, check out Mami Gotoh and Milk Asakura in a very erotic lesbian and hardcore sex release from Waap Entertainment (region 2)
If you love cool Japanese toys from Japan, we've got a really elegant anime figure of Fujiko Mine from the Lupin III TV series (complete with cloth kimono and 34 points of articulation in her body), as well as limited stock (as in one each) of the very cool Macross transformable Valkyrie toys
Also: limited stock of the very nice "You're under Arrest" cards
For fans of our Japanese snacks and food page, we've got fresh stock of the delicious Strawberry "Tsubu" (bits of strawberry) Pocky, as well as fresh stock of delicious slightly spicy rice crackers with peanuts
We have some health-related items, including fresh stock of the excellent Japanese hand warmers, a very nice brush to clean your feet in the shower or bath
Japan is the birthplace of "cute" and we've got more Hello Kitty toilet paper (they make a great for anyone who either loves or hates Kitty-chan), new stickers for Hello Kitty fans, and even more stock of our #1 selling authentic Japanese bento box, Hamster Club
We've restocked many sold-out sizes of one of our most popular T-shirts, the white "Looking for a Girlfriend" shirt -- now all sizes are in stock, size M to XXL
We've got fresh stock of our popular wacky Japanese signs, including a sign that says "Please take your shoes off" in Japanese, as well as a Japanese emergency exit sign
New "traditional Japanese items" include some of those classic sushi erasers, self-inking Japanese stamps, and more Japanese "happiness beans" that you can throw at your doorway in Japanese tradition to chase away devils
Finally, see Japanese "days of the week" magnets, cool regional maps of Japan (Shikoku, Hokkaido, Northern Japan), fresh stock of our blank vocabulary cards so you can study like Japanese students, and more! Lots of fun stuff for you!

We're happy to see the Hello Kitty vibrators that we got stock of selling at a fast clip -- we sold 20 of them in two days! We have about a hundred in stock, which is a lot, but if they continue to sell at that rate we might run out in a few weeks. If you want your own Hello Kitty mock vibrator, be sure to get yours before they are gone. We just love bring able to bring wacky stuff like this to you!

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Greetings from J-List January 26, 2002

Weekend greetings from your friends at J-List!

I had a nice trip to Nagoya on business on Friday, and I got to ride the Nozomi 700 series, the sleekest and fastest shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan. All boys growing up in Japan go through a phase when they think that trains are the neatest things since odor-free natto, and when my son entered his train phase, I picked up a lot of information about trains in Japan from him. Japan's bullet trains were developed in the 1960's to streamline transportation in Japan, and as with all major construction projects, to impress foreigners who visit here. Some of the most popular bullet trains include the Hikari (which travels between Tokyo and Osaka), the Tsubasa (a bullet train that can travel on normal train tracks, too), and our all-time favorite, the two-story MAX (which stands for "multi amenity express" in case you were wondering). The Nozomi 700 series came on-line a few years ago, and can get you from Tokyo to Nagoya in 90 minutes. To see pictures of the famous trains in Japan, as well as get information on Japan's excellent Japan Rail Pass system, see this page: http://www.japanrail.com/5_gallery/index.html . For whatever reason, there are a fair number of "train otaku" in Japan, people who love trains and travel all around Japan to ride on and photograph their favorite trains. I've noticed a correlation between students who studied hard to get into good high school and universities and this slightly odd "train fetishism."

One of the first words learners of Japanese com across is the word "genki," which means anything from healthy to energetic to "fine." The first greeting you learn in Japanese is often "Ogenki desu ka?" which means "How are you?" (although it literally means "Are you fine?"). The reply is "Hai, genki desu" (Yes, I am fine). In another context, a man becoming "genki" in bed refers to the state of his sexual member. Whenever you learn a language, you're confronted with words that don't quite "match up" with words you use in your native language, such as the two words for "cold" in Japanese (samui and tsumetai), which refer to coldness in the air and something that's cold to the touch, respectively.

We've got a lot of nice items for you for the weekend, including the Anna Ohura soft porn DVD that was accidentally not posted last time -- sorry about that. We've got fresh stock of DVDs (many Soft on Demand and other DVDs in stock), many volumes restocked of hentai manga, fresh stock of photobooks, and more. We've also got more wacky things from Japan, a restock of several backordered anime toy items (including the popular Love Hina figures), and other items for you. Also: a great new item, just in time for Valentine's Day, the long-rumored and very hard to find Hello Kitty Vibrators, er, we mean shoulder massagers, an item we've been searching for months. Check out all the newly posted items on the J-List site today!

The top 5 has been updated for the past week, so you can see what products have been selling well at J-List. (Actually the top five shows the top 10 items for each category, go figure...)

The Japanese phenomenon of the "kogal," the bizarre combination of fashion and life style that grew out of the "Amuler" movement of the mid-1990's (girls who wanted to look and dress like singer Namie Amuro), is a very interesting and unique one. We found an interesting article on kogalism, and wanted to pass it on to you: http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_07/uk/doss21.htm

Friday, January 25, 2002

Greetings from J-List October 25, 2002

Hello again from your friends in Japan!

There are certain changes that happen to Americans who live in Japan for a long time. For one, you get quite comfortable with the metric system, and start annoying your friends and family back home by referring to everything in centimeters and kilometers. My shoe size is 26.5 cm, but I've long forgotten what it is in inches, just as I've forgotten how much I weigh in pounds. But the Japanese don't use the metric system for everything. When talking about the sizes of rooms in Japan, you never use square meters, but instead refer to the number of tatami mats the room contains (or would contain, if it were a tatami room). Tatami mats are standard-sized rectangular mats made of straw, that are supposed to be the correct space for one adult to sleep. A 6-jo room ("jo" is the Chinese pronunciation for the "tatami" character) is an average sized; poor college students have to live in a 4-jo-han (or a small apartment that's just 4 1/2 tatami mats in size). When you buy land, you measure it in "tsubo," an area of measurement that's conveniently equal to two tatami mats. Thus if you have 20 "tsubo" of land you can picture it as 40 tatami mats in size. When you've been in Japan as long as I have, it becomes quite easy to do.

Today is my father-in-law's birthday, and birthdays mean one thing in our house: an excuse to get a big plate of sushi. As you can expect, sushi is pretty popular here in Japan, although in land-locked Gunma Prefecture, right in the middle of the main Japanese island of Honshu, we're as far from fresh fish as one can be in. Still, there are many sushi restaurants, including expensive restaurants where a sushi master chef cuts the fish for you (you have to have a license to prepare sushi in Japan), and the always-popular "mawari-zushi" restaurants ("revolving sushi," i.e. conveyor belt sushi). Some of the conveyor belt sushi places are quite good, but with the deflationary spiral Japan is in now, restaurants are competing on price, not taste. Personally, I'd rather pay a little more for good sushi than settle for "cheap" sushi. But the best sushi in all of Japan (at least in my experience) is a place called Edokko, in Narita City (near the airport), a fabulous place with "neta" (the fish part of the sushi) so big and fresh it falls off the rice. If you ever have a layover in Narita and want to have some good sushi, find any taxi driver and say "Edokko sushi?" and he'll take you there.

We solved a bug with the site which made some customers trying to view adult products via the "three day link" submit button get put into "PG" mode. The problem happened with IE 6 for Windows. The fix should take care of things, but if you have problems viewing J-List products (adult or otherwise), email us right away.

When we first started J-List six years ago, there was one product we knew we wanted to sell, but we've never been able to find a supplier. They're a special kind of shoes for kids (age 1-4) that are really good because they're equipped with "squeakers" in the bottoms, so that the kids make cute little squeaking noises when they walk. The noise is fun for the kids, so they love to wear the shoes. They're great for parents because you can always know where your kids are, without even looking up, which makes your children safer. When our kids were small and wore their "kiki shoes" (as they're called here) in the U.S., we constantly got comments about what a good idea the shoes were. We've got some of these cool shoes for kids for you to try. If there's sufficient interest we'll try to carry more of these shoes in the future.

We've got tons, and we means tons, of calendars in stock for you, with eight new boxes delivered in the past two days. We've posted these to the site so you can see what we've got in stock for you. Also, because it can be hard to tell what the pictures inside the calendars are like, we've opened a few dozen and have added some pictures of inside the calendars for you. Already, several calendars are starting to sell out, and since these are an extremely seasonal item, we won't be able to get more. So please look at our calendar stock -- thanks!

For the pre-weekend update we've got an extra special selection of items for you, including:

We've got more pretty idol photobooks for you, including the beautiful hardcover photobook of Eiko Koike, one of our favorite swimsuit idols, a cute photobook of Riho Makise (the spokeswoman for the Japanese post office) and more
For Domo-kun fans, we've got a super item, a plush Domo-kun that has a blanket folded up inside (stock is limited though)
Also, a darn cool item: a Totoro "kigurumi" suit, which allows your child to completely become Totoro!
We temporarily ran out of stock of the Sampo DVE612, one of our most popular region free DVD players. We got some more stock in, so if you're looking for a reliable DVD player that will play all DVD regions (for just $109), we recommend it
Fans of the lovely swimsuit idol Yuka will enjoy fresh stock of the Yuka Special DVD, great for fans of this lovely girl
For fans of Race Queen Fumika Suzuki, we've restocked several of her photobooks
For Hello Kitty fans, some cool items, including unique Hello Kitty lip gloss (the cases are so cute), Hello Kitty gift items, more Hello Kitty chopsticks, a great toothbrush for little ones, and other Sanrio items that aren't available outside of Japan
We've got a new and very stylish plush Totoro to go with our other Totoro items that we have in stock
We love the high-quality anime statues available in Japan, and we've got a super cute "sexy statue" of Ayaka Urusugawa from To Heart
We have some nice items for you and your kids, including Japanese origami paper, and some beautiful Japanese "washi" paper for crafts
For Japanese snack fans, look for a major restocking of items, including Green Tea Pretzels, the tasty Banana Choco, wacky Japanese gum, and more
Finally, see a funny wood sign in Japanese ("I'm taking a bath now"), a cute character strap featuring Panda Kopanda, a nice item for Ojamajo Doremi fans, a way to seal your milk so it won't spill, more wacky maps of Japan and more!

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

For fans of our adult magazines from Japan, we've got some nice stock of amateur and leg fetish magazine items for you
For fans of harder core themes, check out Ana Ana, a very nice hardcore amateur item
DVD Soft Catalog is a nice item that gives you a full color magazine and two Video CDs (playable in a computer or most DVD players) of JAV sample items that's always good
We love Japan's erotic photobooks, and we've got some great ones for you, including nude hardcover books by Ai Mita and Natsuki Abe, and for fans of bondage themes, there's a great photobook starring Shinobu Kasagi
For leg fetish fans, we've gotten in fresh stock of Panst Best, an excellent panty stock and mini-skirt fetish photobook
We've added fresh stock of the "Girl's High School Uniform 2000," a massive photobook presenting beautiful photographs of Japan's most famous school uniforms
For hentai manga fans, we've got several new items for you, including new hitozoma anal, dick girl and other items, from some of Japan's top manga studios
For our adult DVD fans, we've got another great selection of items for you, starting with Ai Kurosawa's "Re-Mix" DVD, with 180 minutes of her best performances (region free)
Another great 180 minute DVD, enjoy three hours of Momo Hoshino's best erotic works from Kuki (region free)
We're big fans of the Japanese genre of "deep kissing," and now there's a new Super Bishoujo Kiss, featuring six beautiful AV idols who experience tender lesbian kissing for the first time (region free)
For fans of Akira Watase, a "virtual rape play" offering from Soft on Demand (region free)
The lovely Kaori Shimizu is an erotic Bunny Girl who will fulfill all your sexual wishes, in a new offering from Dogma (region free)
We love the sassy, bold style of Wanz Factory, and now there's a new "Hip and Vagina" DVD with the lovely Nao Oikawa -- and it looks great (region 2)
We've added a new DVD category for bukkake fans -- now you can browse bukkake titles directly if you like. We've restocked many popular bukkake items including some of our best-selling items. Please see the great items we've got for you.

Remember that J-List carries virtually every English translated love-sim game available out of our San Diego office. We carry all titles by Peach Princess, G-Collections, Hobibox Europe, and JAST USA. See the Henai and Bishoujo Games category for all of these products. If you ever need help or recommendations, please email us and we'll be happy to help.

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Greetings from J-List October 23, 2002

Hello again from Japan!

There are many Japanese products with names that sound funny in English. Calpis is a canned drink that's sweet and milky white in color, that's been popular in Japan since before World War II. The name sounds slightly disgusting in a bovine sort of way to the English ear, so it's marketed as Calpico in California. Pocari Sweat is another funny-sounding product, a thirst-quenching sports drink that gets its name from a Japanese word ("pokkari" means to float like a cloud) -- and it does not contains any sweat. (We sell Pocari Sweat powder on the J-List site.) Creap is a popular "creaming powder" for your coffee, and Nutrasweet is sold in Japan as Pal Sweet Diet here. There's a popular line of boil-in-bag meals for people in a hurry called Cook Do, too. Just as some of the names used for Japanese restaurants in the U.S. sound very strange to Japanese people (you'll never find a restaurant called "Ichiban" or "Kamikaze" in Japan), some of the names of products here can sound funny to English speakers.

Customs differ all over the world, and some of Japan's customs would seem a little odd in the States. When calling on someone in their home, it's acceptable to open the door and step into the "genkan" (the low area where you take off your shoes in a Japanese house), which is considered part of the outside of the house. It's quite common to have salesmen or delivery men to open the front door and poke their head in, saying "Sumimasen!" (Excuse me!), then letting themselves into the genkan area to wait for you to come talk to them. If no one can be found inside, it's common to walk around to the back of the house to see if anyone's there, perhaps hanging up laundry. This kind of thing isn't done in the U.S., but is a nice folksy custom, for the most part. It proved deadly in at least one case, though: in 1992, a boy Japanese boy named Hattori-kun did this in America while looking for a Halloween party. The owner of the house was alarmed and went for his gun, and because the boy did not understand the word "Freeze" he was shot and killed.

Now that J-List has turned six years old, it's always interesting to reflect on how we've grown and changed over that time, thanks to you, our valued customers. We can gauge our growth as a company each year by seeing how many more calendars we get in than we had in stock last year. This year we've really outdone ourselves, and we've got so many 2003 Japanese anime, JPOP, contemporary art, pretty idol, AV and other calendars, we finally have no room to move all (we've taken over the J-List kitchen as our Calendar Shipping Department). We're very happy with the quality and variety of calendars this year, and think you will be too. Please check out what we've got for you!

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

For fans of one of Japan's most popular swimsuit idols ever, we've got a sexy new photobook featuring Yuka
Also, a white-hot sexy photobook featuring top Race Queens like Miho Yoshioka, Toko Ushikawa, Chisato Morishita and more!
For fans of Japanese swimsuit lovelies, we've got the Operation of Aya Hirahama, a full color magazine and idol DVD (region 2)
For fans of our Japanese snacks, we've got the delicious Coffee Beat, candy-covered chocolate coffee beans, as well as a super Milky Candy and toy set, new varieties of miso soup, and some Korean dishes that you can try yourself
Also, a new parody item that looks like a package of chocolate, but it's really a set of really cool colored pencils
We've got even more Studio Ghibli music boxes from Sekiguchi and Sun Arrow, this time from Hayao Miyazaki's famous film Kiki's Delivery Service (one of our favorites)
For Lupin III fans, we've got some great "super deformed" character keychains in stock
For fans of Hamtaro and Japanese bento boxes, we've gotten in fresh stock of the deluxe Hamster Club bento box set
For anyone interested in buying one of the Studio Ghibli region 2 DVD players, we've been able to find some more stock -- these items can be special ordered, so if you want one please find the item on the site and we can get it for you
Finally, we've gotten in fresh stock of the popular Hello Kitty toilet paper, both colors -- these wacky items are great for anyone who loves (or hates) Japan's most famous cute character.

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

For fans of Japanese adult magazines, we've got some nice new items, including new amateur and love hotel magazines with real Japanese amateur girls
Also, we've got more rare back issues of popular magazines like Urecco and Gal's Dee, in stock in our San Diego office
For fans of Japan's hardcover erotic photobooks, we have several new items, including a great photobook shot by Seiichi Nomura and other great items
Also: fresh stock of popular items by Yuko Ogura, one of our favorite swimsuit idols
We've got a nice hardcore photobook that features erotic cosplay and sex, it's great
For hentai game fans who want to follow the Japanese hentai world, we've got the new issue of Push, with two CD-ROMs of demos, pictures and more to check out
Also, a rare hardcover photobook filled with bondage photographs that are uniquely Japanese
For hentai manga lovers, we've got six new items for you, including a great new "deep and hard" comic anthology and a new hentai work from Hariken Hanna
Also, fresh stock of many nice items, including several volumes of Pururun Seminar
For DVD fans, we've got some great items for you, starting with Wet and Fetish Mix, from Kuki, with 210 minutes of soap girl and lotion fetish featuring top AV stars (region free)
With her 105 cm bust (J cup), Marina Matsushima is truly an amazing busty AV idol -- see 3 hours of her best work in a new DVD! (region free)
From Soft on Demand, 35 all-nude AV girls get revenge on men, subjecting them to all kinds of wacky punishment (region free)
SOD also gives us a great new "from below" DVD featuring the erotic Ran Asakawa, shot entirely from "low angle" below her erotic body (region free)
For lesbian DVD fans, we've got another excellent offering from Deep's, featuring "The Best Lesbian" of nine beautiful actresses (region free)
For fans of Indies AV, we've got the DVD release of Mirai Hoshizaki's best-selling Dream Shower (region 2)
Finally, we've added stock of several DVD items, including Aoi Sora's "Blue," fresh stock of Rubbing Breasts for the First Time, and a major restock of the "Do Lesbian" series by SOD.

At J-List we carry many nice art books for fans of Japan's hentai culture, such as the art books for X-Change 2, Tokimeki Check in! and Brave Soul, as well as other popular bishoujo games. Check out our excellent selection of items.

Remember our "free shipping sale" on Hentai Anime Poker ends at the end of the month -- this is a great game that's really fun to play, and now that it comes with all twelve expansion pack characters for free, it's a super bargain. We highly recommend it!

Greetings from J-List January 23, 2002

Hello again from Japan, where it's okay to make loud slurping noises when eating soba (Japanese noodles) but very rude if you're eating spaghetti.

First of all, we apologize if anyone experienced any problems with the mailing list on Monday. The computer we send the J-List updates list choked again, and it looks like a few people got multiple copies of the mailing (although most got no copies). If you want to see my update, it's on the front page of the J-List site.

I talked about "kokumin-sei" last time, the national personality that is a grouping of various aspects of all of us. One of the fun things about living outside of your home country is, you get to view it from the outside, as people in other countries see it. Everything from American politics to national events looks different, and I sometimes feel I'm outside a fishbowl looking in. Americans, as a general rule, value individuality and uniqueness, and everyone seems to want to find their own little niche (or their "my boom" as the Japanese would say, meaning their own personal unique little hobby). Looking back to the mid-1980's, becoming in anime fan back when anime was really fringe and unknown, was probably some desire to "be original" on my part.

Japanese like to be original too, and the Japanese staff of J-List (Tomo, Yasu, Mayumi, Kaori, Hiromi and Chiharu) encompasses an incredibly wide range of talents and interests from the Beatles to rap and bongo drums to my wife, who for some reason has a license to operate fork lifts. But during my time in Japan, I've met some people who thought that the best thing in the world was to be "average" -- that is to say, normal, unexceptional and above all, not different from others. When I was in college, I strove to be as different from everyone else as I could be, but my Japanese friends were actually offended if I said they were a little "kawatteru," a word which means "different" or "odd" -- they wanted others to see them as average and normal. At one of the Japanese bishoujo game companies we work with, there's a slightly odd programmer who has legally changes his name to Reije Abe, or in Japanese name order, Abe Reiji (ah-BEH REI-ji), because he wanted his name to have the same pronunciation as the English word "average" in Japanese. As an "individual" American, sometimes I am hard pressed to understand Japan, even though I've lived here nearly 10 years.

One aspect of working with Japanese is that there are sometimes multiple ways to write (or transliterate, to use the correct term) a Japanese word or name in English. 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." It's challenging when writing names because there is no "official" way to write Japanese names in English. Is it best to write Maiko Yuuki (long vowel) as Yuuki, Yuhki, or just cut out the long vowel since it serve no purpose English? For the word bishoujo ("pretty girl"), should we faithfully translate the long vowel, or use the more coincide spelling of "bishojo"? It's confusing, and particularly because of this, we had to custom-code the J-List search engine to look for alternate spellings of many words to make sure items that people search for come up.

For the mid-week update, we've got the following new products for you, including:

First, we've got more great adult magazines for you, including a very nice ass-fetish item, more fun amateur girl in love hotel magazines, and more
For fans of lovely girls in sailor uniforms, we've got a bunch of issues posted for you, just $5 each! See magazine page three for these bargain items
If you're a fan of our quality photobooks from Japan, check out the newly posted books by Fumika Suzuki and more
Also: a big restock and price reduction on many of our photobooks, with great new prices across the board
We've got another new volley of hentai manga for you, with new works by some of the top comic studios in Japan today
For doujinshi fans, we've got stock of a very nice new erotic doujinshi dedicated to Sailor Mercury from the venerable Rose Water doujinshi circle (lots of romantic action between Ami and Minako)
Also: newly obtained from the past winter Comic Market, we've got some excellent CD-ROMs of "doujin-soft," which refers to fan-created hentai computer CG images parodying Japan's game girls and more
We've got a great new selection of erotic DVDs for you, starting off with the incredible Stark Nakedness Sports Series 5-in-1, which crams 270 minutes (4.5 hours) of all-nude aerobics, swimming, weight training and more onto a single DVD
From SOD's Natural High label, a killer new "Bukkake Circle in Blue Sky" offering
From Momotaro Eizo, a killer new category of AV: country western hard core, featuring lovely Japanese girls with cowboy hats and boots on (this features Mirai Hoshizaki, one of my favorites)
For fans of zamen themes, we've got a new 2-DVD Dream Shower series release, VIP Shower (featuring three famous AV idols)
Tomo and I have long loved Minami Yoshikawa for her charming good-girl style and pretty looks, and now she's officially made her debut in the sordid world of Indies adult video -- see her new DVD and video from Moodyz
If you love Anna Ohura, be sure to get her new soft porn DVD, which features some of the most erotic imagery we've ever seen from her (region 2)
Finally, we've got stock of the (region 2) DVDs for several popular Indies productions, including Reversible Soap, Costume Princess and the best-selling Big Bust Lesbian Orgy DVDs (which comes with a free packet of sex lotion in each DVD)
For fans of Skin Conscious, the incredibly lovely collection of erotic airbrush art on two CD-ROMs, we've got a special treat: the price has been lowered to just $9.95 for each volume, and there are over 1100 large images in the collection
If you are studying Japanese or any other language, why not tell the world with our cute wooden signs that says "Now studying" in Japanese
We have some great sugarless gum for Felix the Cat and Hello Kitty fans, and it's got Xylitol in it (very cool), as well as fresh stock of the chocolate covered sunflower seeds we sold out of so quickly last time
For those who love cute things, see our cute doorstop that's a parent and child dragon, fresh stock of our ever-popular Hello Kitty chopsticks, and more
For fans of Bento (boxed lunch) from Japan, we've gotten fresh stock of our best-selling Hamster Club lunchboxes
Finally, for those who want to add a touch of Japan to their rooms, we've got several Japanese maps, including the stylish Japanese train map, a general map of the entire country of Japan. Also, cool health items, some really nice Japanese traditional bowls, and more!

Remember that J-List is the only place where you can buy the excellent Himeya Soft games from C's Ware and get them sent from inside the U.S. We stock all the very nice bishoujo game titles from Himeya, and recommend them very highly to fans and collectors of this unique genre of game from Japan.