Greetings from J-List February 4, 2000

Hello again from Japan, the Origin of the Sun (as seen from China, who thought up the name).

The convenience the Internet brings is no secret to anyone reading this list, but for people like me, ex-pats living abroad, being able to buy any books, music, and computer equipment from my computer, with only a slightly longer delay than if I lived in the U.S., is just wonderful. While the Blair Witch Project is in the theaters here, I've got it on DVD from the States.

I think back to what Japan was like when I arrived, in 1992 -- someone would find a small store that stocked import food, maybe Pringles or M&M's, and all the foreigners would rush over and buy everything they could -- a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos was worth more than its weight in gold to foreigners in Japan back then. Now that Japan's markets have opened, partially as a result of pressure from the U.S. government, there are far more foods and products from the U.S. here. It's good to see the change.

We've got a fine update for you tonight, just in time for the weekend. First and foremost, we've started carrying Licca-chan (Rika-chan) fashion dolls on J-List, starting with the very lovely Kimono series. These are very nice fashion dolls by Takara, designed to be more petite than American dolls, with Japanese girls in mind. After Christmas, when we gave my daughter a Licca-chan doll and some accessories, my wife and I have wanted to carry them on J-List and evangelize Licca-chan to J-List customers ever since. See them on the Anime & Toys page.

Other new items include:

• New magazines, including the new Gal's Dee, Milky Dolls, and a new monthly, Ai shite ageru (I'll Love You)
  
• New official Pokemon cards, in English, as well as our full-deck sets of Japanese cards, all in stock
  
• New items on the deluxe S&M & fetish book page, including a lovely bondage book featuring some of J-List's most popular idols
  
• A healthy update of our popular adult manga, on the hentai manga page, with a half-dozen new additions
  
• The new DVD & Video CD Soft Catalog, a great magazine with two full VCDs and nearly 2 hours of sampler footage
  
• For fans of our "reserve subscriptions, two additions: Colorful Manpukusei (the first monthly hentai manga magazine with all-CG content) and Shojo Kakimei (erotic manga for women) -- see them on Reserve Magazines page 2.
  

We've also got stock of the popular Yellows CD ROM series, through which Japanese photographer Akira Gomi documents the female nude body. We've got new stock of Yellows 2.0, Yellows 20 Years Old, and for people who want to see American women through the eyes of the Japanese, Americans 1.0 (see all on the CD ROMs page).

Greetings from J-List February 3, 2000

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Greetings from J-List January 31, 2000

Hello to all from Japan on this cool, quiet evening.

Tragedy has struck J-List again, with the sudden death of Kiki, our American Shorthair cat. My mother in law found him dead in the lot behind our house (which is a liquor shop). Our favorite of our three cats, we liked him for his intelligence and the way he would always crawl into our laps. He is survived by Rin Rin and Ran Ran.

We've always kept cats, mainly because my Japanese family believes that if you have cats around, they die in place of the humans if there's some bad luck in store for the family. I'm not sure if it's a Buddhist idea, or just a belief that my family got on their own, but all I know is that right after each of our children were born, one of our cats died (which my wife calls "migawari, a passing of one life in the household as a new one comes in).

It's one of many beliefs (one might say superstition" but I won't, since my wife is on this mailing list) that I'm exposed to, living in a Japanese family, and I always do my best to reserve judgement as best I can. One such belief that my wife and mother follow strongly

We've got some nice additions to the J-List site tonight. Newly added items include:

• Two absolutely lovely soft vinyl recreations from Princess Mononoke, whose creation was overseen by Miyazaki himself, on the Anime Page
  
• Also on the Anime Page, a nice selection of several new only-in-Japan Hello Kitty items, for the little Hello Kitty fan in you
  
• New magazines, including new issues of DD Toppers and D Cup Japan (see magazine page 1), in addition to some cool older one-shot magazines (including some cool issues from 1988!)
  
• Hentai illustation and "digital comic" magazine/CD ROM combination items, for Mac and Windows, on the CD ROM page
  
• A host of new and back-in stock photobooks, including more copies of Tickle, by Horiuchi Nana, and Last Song, by Miura Aika
  
• For fans of really cool old things from Japan, a complete set of 13 historical magazines from the 1950's looking back on World War II from the Japanese perspective (on the photobooks page)
  

Remember that in addition to our "reserve subscriptions" that allow you to reserve issues of current Japanese magazines, J-List has great 6- and 12-month subscriptions to most of our popular magazines, including Urecco, Bejean, Dela Beppin, Gal's Dee, Video Boy and Best Video. And with your subscription, you get 1 or 2 issues, free! See the Magazine Subscriptions page for more information.

All the J-List product pages were broken during Saturday, U.S. time, due to a glitch in our scripts in Japan. Everything was up and running about twelve hours after they went down, and we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced. Thanks to everyone who emailed us about the problems with the page. (That's what I get for staying up til 2 am making improvements to the site...)

Greetings from J-List October 30, 2000

Happy Monday, everyone, from your friends at J-List.

For a country that loves English enough to come up with adjectives like "towny, cars with names like Bongo Friendy" and "Super Saloon, and song titles like Body feels EXIT, you'd think there'd be a lot of English in use here. Well, there isn't any more English in daily use in Japan than there is French in the U.S., despite general agreement that French is tres cool." Although every beer and coffee can has an English description of the quality of the item -- "Sapporo beer is made from the finest hops for a delicious taste and refinement" -- you'd be surprised how easy it is to find yourself standing on a train platform with not even a sign in English telling you where the train is headed. Since I read Japanese, I tend not to notice it that much, but whenever I've got friends from the U.S. here, it hits me -- while the Japanese try their best to make foreigners feel welcome here, they don't do that good a job when it comes to marking things in English. It's also quite rare to find someone who can help you in English in a shop, if you need it: despite a massive six years of study in Junior High and High School, and four more if the person went to college

Just a last call for calendar pre-orders -- we'll have to stop taking orders for calendars as of the end of October 31st, much as we regret it. J-List has over 150 great 2001 calendars for you to choose from, with great JPOP calendars (former Speed girls, L'Arc~en~Ciel), super anime calendars (Ah My Goddess, Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon), sexy idol calendars (Race Queen Suzuki Fumika, Asakura Megumi), lovely nude calendars (Kanabun)

For this evening, we've got some cool new items for you, including:

• First, we've got new Japanese adult magazines, including the new Cho Very Good!! (cogals), Iketeru Peach Ass Girls (for fans of "wet" themes), The Sperm Oneesan, and more
  
• For photobook fans, we've got several nice items on the photobook pages, including the Waffle Super Collection, featuring a great selection of lovely Japanese girls
  
• On the leg fetish photobook, a great item, Windoh! 96, showing what fun you can have with sexy women in skirts and wind machines
  
• The very hardcore bondage photobook series Black continues, on the high-end S&M photobook page
  
• For hentai fans, some excellent in-stock copies of PC Angel -- see them on the Magazines (Hentai) page
  
• Erotic manga fans will enjoy the deluxe size 250+ page hentai manga, Forbidden Meat, on Manga (new releases)
  
• We've also got additional fresh stock of manga on the manga pages, mostly new releases and best-sellers, including some very cool items that have sold out in the past months
  
• Do you love dojinshi? We've got not one, but *two* new erotic dojinshi works from Okachimentaiko -- great!
  
• We have two great new DVDs for you: AV 2000 vol. 1, featuring 20 of Japan's hottest AV gals in a super 120 minute gallery; and Bikini & Underwater Fuck Special, featuring underwater sex, bikini fetishism -- and *English subtitles!*
  
• More copies of the New Age Girl's Comic Shojo Kakumei can be found on the yaoi page
  
• For fans of our extremely popular wacky Japanese headbands, we've got fresh stock! See them on the Stickers & Headbands page
  
• Finally, we have fresh stock of several popular items, including handy Japanese cooking chopsticks, our unique wooden signs ("It is forbidden to urinate here" and "My room"), and the extremely cute "door message" plaques that allow you to tell others when you're in your room or "out of door."
  

Okay, that's all for now!

Greetings from J-List January 28, 2000

Hello again from Japan, where Nutrasweet is known as "Slim Up Sugar."

The Japanese do love to bathe, and most foreigners living here get caught up in this passion. Going to onsens (hot springs) is the national leisure activity of Japan, and billions are spent annually. Since Japanese have the highest longevity in the world, it would be interesting to see a scientific test done, to see if the daily relaxation gotten from the daily bath had long--term beneficial effects on a person's health.

My kids and I love baths, too -- we have a fancy computer console in our bathroom that fills the bath for you to the preset level and temperature then beeps when it's ready. I also take the kids out to our favorite public bath/sauna, Furo 21, at least once a week. Parents bathing with their kids provides what the Japanese have come to call "skinship" -- the important skin-to-skin relationship between parents and children.

Since the weekend is upon us, we've got an extra good update for J-List readers. The new items added to the site include:

• A large volley of new parody game manga, including several volumes of the Electronic Fighting Daughter and Electronic Love Daughter series, in stock!
  
• For fans of dojinshi and fan-created computer images, we've got a nice new selection of floppy and CD-R-based "dojin-soft" with some really excellent images, including some playable games, on the dojinshi page.
  
• New magazines, including some excellent new "one shot" magazines on Magazine pages 1 and 2, as well as more of the popular $5 magazine on page 3 (including some "lost" Urecco issues)
  A bunch of new in-stock videos, including Asakura Mai, Yumeno Maria, and the lovely Ozawa Madoka (see in-stock videos page 1)
  
• More special-order videos, for people who want to reserve their own copies of the newest, most popular before they come in stock -- we've got some nice ones, including Sakurai Fuka, a nice Elevator Girl item, and more
  
• A fresh infusion of some all-new Year 2000 calendars, including some unique "beauty of Japan" ones that we're interested in getting feedback on. See most of the calendars on photobook page 1, although some of the anime/JPOP calendars are on those respective pages.
  
• New puzzles, including a new lovely artwork puzzle by Morita Haruyo (a character from traditional Japan) as well as a super puzzle item for Morning Musume fans
  
• Finally, a long-deserved update to our Japanese Snacks page, with fresh stock of the delicious "Mogi Mogi Fruits" (Gummi fruit trees) at a lower price, as well as two all-new items: Delicious Gummi Pokemon candy, and one of my all favorite snacks of all time, Shigekix, the incredibly tart lemon "hard gummi" candy. We're very happy to be able to bring these cool treats to people living outside of Japan.
  

To better serve our customers and protect your privacy, we've made some changes to the order form, allowing you to better specify how you want your package sent from J-List. Gift wrapping is now an option (either for sending gifts to a friend, or as added protection against customs agents in certain countries). You can opt for a completely hand-written label, too, in addition to the "no J-List return address" option. We hope these improvements will serve you!

Thanks for checking out J-List. We hope you have a great weekend!

Greetings from J-List January 27, 2000

Greetings from Japan, still a very cold place, although it's gotten a little warmer in the past few days.

The big news in Japan is the death of Kin-san, one of two twin sisters who are known and loved througout Japan as "Kin-san and Gin-san." Kin, who was the mother of 11 children during her life, died at the age of 107. Her funeral was today, and the morning wide shows covered the surviving Gin-san, dressed in black, unable to speak out of grief for her sister. The two ancient sisters were twins, born back during the Meiji era, and have been icons of the 1990's in Japan, appearing on TV and in commercials regularly.

Restaurants that serve kaiten-zushi, or sushi served on a conveyor belt, are feeling the pinch of the ongoing Japanese recession, and owners are fighting back, trying to find ways of capturing more customers. They're pioneering new ideas, such as providing plastic covers that you lift before you take a dish of sushi off the belt (to counter worries over sanitation), or keeping the fish live in tanks in the restaurant, so the customers can watch as the fish is gutted and sliced fresh right before their eyes. One chain of kaiten-zushi restaurants even operates convenient stores in the same building, allowing customers to sit down and enjoy some sushi while doing their "conbini" shopping.

We've got some really nice new items tonight. The new items include:

• The new issue of Urecco, which is a wonderful issue, featuring many of the girls J-List fans want to see
  
• More stock of the best-selling Immoral Lesson, starring Fubuki Akira, the #2 selling video in J-List's history (second only to Baby Oil)
  
• Fresh stock of many of the manga volumes that had sold out in the past, including more copies of "King of Sperm" -- see the Hentai Manga page for the new items
  
• An update to the S&M/Fetish photobook page, with some nice new items for fans of bondage and "cosplay" and women from the "hitozuma, or married women genres
  
• A great update of special-order adult videos, including Race Queen, Contrary Soap Heaven, let fetish, and more
  
• For collectors, we've got in a great supply of English-language Pokemon cards, that are in stock and ready to go out to you now.
  

We hope you're having a warm and pleasant middle of the week. See you on the web!

Greetings from J-List October 27, 2000

Happy Friday from J-List, now with 20% more Pocky!

The Japanese bishojo game Tokimeki Memorial is one of the most popular games ever to come out of Japan, and has sold over 1.1 million copies in its various forms, making Konami one of the major game companies in the country. Now Japanese investors can own a piece of the Tokimemo legacy, with a new Tokimemo Fund that was recently created. Basically, investors buy shares of the fund, which is tied to the future performance of the Tokimeki Memorial licensing franchise. The more popular the games and characters become, the higher the shares will rise.

The Sogo department store chain is the latest casualty of the beleaguered Japanese economy. The massive debt run up by the unprofitable chain finally caught up with it, causing closure of dozens of the company's stores all around Japan. As part of a government-assisted bailout, the chain's creditors will receive payment for the massive debts, but the total bill comes out to $15 for every Japanese citizen. One factor in the chain's failure is probably slowness in adapting to changes in the world around it. Typing www.sogo.co.jp into a web browser brings up nothing -- the company had not even created a homepage. Close competitor Takashimaya, however, has a highly developed web (www.takashimaya.co.jp) that you can even buy products from.

For this weekend's update, we've got some extra special items, including:

• First, even more of our extremely popular $5 magazine items -- help us clear out our overfilled stock room
  
• Also for lovers of Japanese adult magazines, the new Gal's Dee, the bust fetish magazine for fans of lovely, busty Japanese women
  
• For photobook fans, we've got not one, but two lovely new photobooks capturing the #1 AV idol in Japan today, Kawashima Azumi
  
• For fans of our high-end bondage photobooks, we've got the excellent new Slave Mania, as well as the new Anal-ko Club, for fans of "Hip and Anal"
  
• We've got fresh stock of the Crystal Card nude AV idol collectible cards, on the Photobooks page 1
  Fans of the excellent erotic illustrations of Hawazaki Takuma, creator of Golden Stage and Innocent Age, will love his super new manga, Doctorine of the Sailor Suit (on Manga -> New releases)
  
• Also of interest to manga fans, limited stock of three special volumes of the popular "How to draw manga girls" art books, on Manga -> New releases (and cross posted to the art book pages)
  
• Love erotic dojinshi? We've got fresh stock of several red-hot books from Okachimentaiko, as well as stock of their newest release, Gorippa 2 (take note, busty female fans)
  
• On the newly christened Hentai Magazines page, we've got new in-stock hentai magazines, including extra copies of the newest E-Login
  
• Very cool for Yaoi fans, copies of the extremely popular Be-Boy Gold
  
• For fans of Japanese snacks, we've got a major update to our snacks, including fresh stock of original as well as the best-selling Men's Pocky, Strawberry Pocky (with real strawberry bits), Milky Candy, the excellent Chelsea Butterscotch candy, and of course, our popular sake candy (with real sake!)
  
• Fans of the old classic Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot (a childhood love of Peter's) should check out the Giant Robo Miracle Action Figure toys, on the Anime Toys page
  
• We have some copies of the current Newtype in-stock on the Anime & JPOP Magazines page (it's a great issue!)
  
• Last, but not least, we've got -- real origami paper, for making classic Japanese origami creations. Each pack contains 49 sheets of wonderfully colored paper for creating origami, and comes with instructions on how to make a Japanese crane. See it on the Wacky Things from Japan page!
  

We've received word from our calendar distributors that we will have to close orders on Oct 31st -- in past years, we've kept them open into November, with a disclaimer that calendars ordered later in "calendar season" might not be available. Since we'll have to close calendar orders early this year, we again hope -- at the risk of repeating ourselves -- that anyone who is interested in getting a beautiful, large-format, glossy Japanese calendar for 2001 get their orders in ASAP. Thanks!

We hope you have a fun weekend wherever you are. Until next time, we'll see you on the web!

Greetings from J-List October 25, 2000

Hello again from Japan!

The Japanese love seasons, and Autumn is here in full force. Throughout the country, the trees are turning beautiful shades of yellow and red, and Japanese make regular excursions to the countryside to take in the beauty. For Americans, October means pumpkins and Halloween, but in Japan, the image of the changing of the leaves, and of the full October moon, are very dominant.

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 by referring everything in centimeters and kilometers. My shoe size is 26.5 cm, but I've long forgotten it in inches, just as I've forgotten how much I weigh in pounds. But the Japanese don't use the metric system for everything. While hectares are used for measuring land sometimes, it's far more convenient to express land in tsubo, which is a unit of measurement equal to two tatami mats. When talking about the sizes of rooms, 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).

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

• First, several in stock issues of some of our most popular hentai game and manga magazines, including PC Angel, Shojo Kakumei, and the best-selling hentai magazine in Japan, E-Login -- see Magazines -> Hentai and Manga -> new releases for these items
  
• We have some excellent new photobooks in stock, including a super one by the Queen of Soap, Sakurai Fuka
  
• For S&M fans, an excellent new edition of the SM Uniform Collection ("bloomer" edition), along with a very hard core "medical" fetish photobook
  
• If you love Japan's unique erotic manga, check out the newly added titles by EX Comics, Peace Comics and Izumi Comics, which are great
  
• For MPEG fans, a new magazine & dual-VCD item that gives you 130 minutes of quickie sampler material -- a great value. Find this item on DVD -> MPEG & CD ROMs
  
• For Japan AV fans, more excellent in-stock videos on Videos -> New releases, including the excellent panty and mini-skirt fetish video "Fuckin' Cute Mini-Skirt Land"
  
• Also ranking very high on the "cool" meter, another hot anime cosplay video, this one parodying Yamato/Star Blazers, Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 -- see it on Videos -> Theme videos or the special order video pages if we run out of stock
  
• For lovers of Japan's beautiful Race Queens, a super cool collectible set of Race Queen cards, on the Idols page, and also on Anime -> Cards and Puzzle
  
• We have several in-stock issues of Goods Press, which follows everything that's popular in Japan today -- see these on Magazines page 2
  
• For this evening's addition to our Wacky Things from Japan pages, two classic Japanese posters depicting beautiful scenes from the Edo period. One is a reproduction of a beautiful Ukiyoe portrait, and the other is the famous "Red Fuji" image of Japan's most famous mountain
  
• For everyone who suffers from puffy or tired legs, we've got cute inflatable foot pillows that raise your feet comfortably. A great item from Japan, also on the Wacky Things page
  
• Finally, our JPOP CD customers will have no doubt noticed the disappearance of our JPOP page. We regret not being able to bring as many high-quality, low-price JPOP CDs as we'd like to our customers. We've got a welcome surprise for JPOP fans though -- an infusion of over 30 JPOP CD singles and albums, with lots of very nice items from some of our favorites. As always, J-List's prices on JPOP are the lowest you'll find ever, because we buy CDs from used CD shops. Find the CDs on Anime -> Anime/JPOP Mags & More!
  

J-List keeps hundreds of our popular Japanese adult videos in stock all the time, but sometimes we get overstocked on certain titles. You can find these marked down videos on the Videos -> Discount page, so check out what we've got!

Greetings from J-List January 24, 2000

Hello from Japan, where, as someone once said, you know no one in the kitchen is horcking in your food.

Well, the performance is finally over. I was nervous, but it came off fine, with only a few mistakes on my part. The kids were wonderful, with performances ranging from Borelo to a dramatic interpretation of the Battle of Aizu-Wakamatsu, where 40 samurai chose to take their lives in seppuku rather than surrender to the forces who were trying to turn Japan into a modern Constitutional Monarchy. See my report on the show, along with a 2.7 mb Quicktime movie, at http://www.myjapan.net/peter/happyo.html .

Newly added items in tonight's update include:

• New magazines, including the new Bejeans, Gokuh and Men's Master
  
• Nice back-in-stock photobook items, including the popular "On the Saddle, Sawaguchi Rina's popular Incentive, and many more items
  
• Super new Miffy and Hello Kitty stuffed animals, including Military Kitty-chan, on the Anime & Toys page
  
• Great all-new items on the Hentai Manga page, as well as more copies of the popular Moon Paradise dojinshi anthology that had sold out before
  
• Great new dojinshi posted to the dojinshi page -- check and see
  

J-List is the only place we know of where you can still get the excellent Bakuretsu Hunter cold-cast figure -- and Tifa, which comes with beautiful styling and detail, and a solid oak base, is only $138 until we run out of stock. We really recommend this great figure!

Greetings from J-List October 23, 2000

Greetings from Japan, the country with feminine products with names like "Charmy body fit."

Japanese as a language has many elements not found in English, which can be challenging to students of the language. One of these areas is the Japanese system of polite language (keigo), which is used occasionally in extremely formal situations and in business speech. There are two basic functions of keigo: to raise the level of the person you're talking to (called "exhaulting" speech); and to lower your own level (called "humble" speech). There are actually different verbs to use depending on the subject in a polite sentence, so if you said, What will you eat, Sensei? I'm going to eat sushi, you'd use different verbs for the two occurrences of "eat" depending on the subject of the sentence. There's a complex version of this used in business speech. If someone from an outside company calls, asking to speak to your boss, you'd use exhaulting speech to refer to the caller, but humble speech to refer to your boss, as he's a part of your "uchi" or in-group, compared with the person calling from outside.

Related to Japanese polite speech is the honorific "o" that goes in front of some words, to give them a higher status. Words like money (okane), relationships like mother or grandmother (okaasan, obaasan), and so on -- it could be translated as "honorable" in Engish, but of course it's never translated blatantly like that (thank God). It's interesting to notice the patterns of words that take this "o" -- words having to do with death or Buddhism tend to take it (otera = temple, okou = Buddhist incense), yet words related to Shinto (the original Japanese religion) usually don't. Adding the honorific "o" to words sort of "softens" the word, so words related to children or babies tend to take the prefix (omaru = child's toilet, omutsu = diapers). Perhaps for this reason

We usual, we've got a bunch of excellent items for you, including:

• First of all, even more magazines for our red-hot $5 magazine sale, to replenish items that have sold over the past few days
  
• In addition to another addition of books to our magazine sale page (Magazine page 3), we've got several all-new items, including the new issue of Aishite Ageru ("I'll Love You"), a popular "wet" fetish magazine from Japan
  
• We have several classic photobooks on the photobooks pages, including copies of the premium Santa Fe by Miyazawa Rie, and more
  
• For our leg fetish customers, we've got a wonderful and elegant leg, stocking and high-heel fetish book, Leg Karisma -- see the leg fetish photobook page for this item
  
• Like Japanese S&M books? We've got a very special on on the gouka-bon page -- with 50 models and 340 all color pages!
  
• J-List sells tons of unique Japanese adult manga, because they're of such incredibly high quality. For our manga customers, we've got a bunch of new, as well as "back from the dead" (previously sold out ) manga titles, with limited stock of several out-of-print items. See Manga -> New items and Manga -> Best-sellers for these items
  
• For dojinshi fans, we have fresh stock of the popular Kaiten erotic dojinshi (Sailor Moon and popular game gals), on the dojinshi page
  
• We have some excellent new videos by Soft on Demand (a company we really respect), with a new "tekoki" (hand job and penis study) offering, and two great new videos from the lovely Sakura Nana!
  
• Also for video fans, two great cosplay videos, with great erotic footage with characters from Eva, Gundam Wing and Japan's most popular fighting games
  
• For fans of esoteric toys from Japan, we've got new "Ultra Detail Figures" from the Planet of the Apes movies -- Dr. Zaius, General Urko, and a new soldier ape. Very detailed!
  
• Finally, for those interested in unique things from Japan, we've got some "Magic Magnets, small magnets you stick on your body, which increase bloodflow and overall health, according to the Japanese. See them on the Wacky things from Japan" page.
  

Remember that J-List is one of the few places where you can find the popular adult "dojinshi anthology" manga Lunatic Party (Sailor Moon parody) and Paradise Lost/Angelic Impact (Evangelion). Although these books are out of print, J-List has a special relationship with the publisher, and still have a good supply of most volumes. Anthologies of some of the best dojinishi ever released in Japan, the artwork is fantastic in these books, and each volume has 160+ pages. You can see these extremely cool items on the Manga -> Parody Manga.

Greetings from J-List January 22, 2000

Hello from a very cold and windy Japan. The temperature is well below the freezing point as the Sea of Japan side of the country is experiencing very strong snowfall. The Japanese Alps (yes, they really call them that) are protecting the Tokyo area from the snow, but it's really cold. North Americans who are used to such staples as central heating, but in Japan, heat is provided to one room at a time via kerosene heaters (called "stoves") which invariably run out of fuel at the most inconvenient times, forcing you to go outside to pump more kerosene (and get kerosene on your hands).

I'm a little nervous before my big performance tomorrow. Sunday is the annual school show put on by our kids' preschool, and it's a huge affair, with over 20 acts performed by the children, the staff -- and parents. I'm in a group that'll be performing a taiko (Japanese drum) number, and being the only foreigner in the group, any tiny mistake I make is sure to be caught by the entire audience.

I'm rushing to get the update off so I can get home (and get warm). For your viewing enjoyment, there's an interesting site that features some Quicktime VR movies of scenes around Tokyo at http://www.Dancy.com/vr/index.html#QTVRPart01 . (Quicktime 3 or 4 with QTVR installed is required.) It's just like being here!

Newly added items to the J-List site tonight include:

• New magazines, including the new issues of Dela Beppin, Video Boy and Best Vide, as well as a dozen or more $5 magazines for our $5 magazine sale (see new magazines on magazine page 1, $5 magazines on page 3)
  
• Several new in-stock videos, courtesy of Kaori, featuring Kawashima Azumi, Wakana Sena, and more
  
• New Yaoi manga on the Yaoi page o and two new Japanese puzzles on the puzzle page, including a new illustration by the excellent Yoshitaka Amano (creator of Vampire Hunter D).
  

Well, that's tonight's update. Have a nice weekend, and wish me luck on stage!

Greetings from J-List January 20, 2000

Hello from Japan, home of the the original salad-flavored pretzel.

My wife and I are like a mirror reflection of each other sometimes. We were watching one of the "Natsukashii (nostalgic) Anime" TV shows they have here, and they showed some old Astro Boy anime. Kazuki, who loves robots of any kind (especially Grand Liner, a robot that turns into a train), asked what the show was. My wife answered "Astro Boy" in English at the same time I answered "Tetsuwan Atom" in Japanese. The poor boy is never going to get his languages straight...

One area that has really changed in the past few years is the world of investment and finance. Turned on its ear three years ago when one of the "big three" securities firms suddenly closed its doors, Japanese investors are now offered many more choices, with the entry of Merril Lynch, Fidelity, E*Trade and others into the Japanese market. Nowadays, commercials for investment opportunities rival the high-interest loan companies for commercial time on late-night TV.

Tonight's update is a special one, with a lot of nice new items being added to the list. First and foremost, we've added some great new manga to the hentai manga page, including a new issue of the Electronic Fighting Girls parody dojinshi anthology which should be very popular. For fans of Yaoi manga, we've got two very nice new "wide" manga, too. There are new dojinshi and "dojin-soft" items in the dojinshi section, including some floppy-based CG collections that we picked up at the last Comic Market. If you love JPOP, we've got recent singles by Amuro Namie and Globe on the JPOP page, and on the Anime & Toys page, we've got new Lodoss toys

Announcing the J-List $5 Magazine Sale. As a ways of saying thanks for all your support, and to help us clear out old stock, we're happy to announce that all items on Magazine page 3 will be just $5 -- and to make sure there's lots of good stuff, we've stocked the page with great items like Dela Beppin, Bejean, Mr. Max, Nippon Mini-Skirt Club, Gal's Dee, and Urecco -- over two-dozen listings. Most of the items are "one-shots, so they'll go fast. Make sure you check out the J-List Magazine page 3, now.

J-List has the last known stock of the excellent Lunatic Party and Angelic Impact adult dojinshi anthologies, which parody Sailor Moon and Evangelion. We've lowered all prices on these excellent series, so check out the excellent books on the Adult Manga (Parody) page, now!

Greetings from J-List October 20, 2000

Hello again from Japan, where going to Kentucky means eating chicken and everyone thinks IT stands for "Internet technology."

Rice is the national staple food of the Japanese, and almost everyone eats rice with one or two meals each day. The word "okazu" means "that which goes with rice" -- fish, chicken, or "hamburg" steak -- and figures into most every evening meal. The most delicious rice is koshi-hikari, and the most famous region of Japan for growing this rice is Niigata Prefecture (the "snow country" in Kawabata's famous novel). Older Japanese often imagine that bread plays the same role to Americans as rice does to the Japanese, that we plan each and every meal around what kind of bread we have today -- but of course, this isn't usually the case. Japanese can be very silly about rice -- the exact same stalk of rice that tastes good grown in Niigata Prefecture would certainly taste terrible if grown in California or Thailand, for example -- but each nation should be permitted certain hang-ups. The economical situation of Japan's rice farmers is a major factor in politics here, and the most important sector of support to Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party are the rice farmer unions -- every once in a while they get the urge to drive their tractors through downtown Maebashi in protest of something or the other, bringing traffic in the city to a half. Virtually no young people are involved in or interested in farming here in Japan

We're happy to report that the first of the calendars have come in! The ones that came in are the first ones posted (the Joy of Sushi, Morita Haruyo collection, and so on), and more calendar pre-orders will be coming in soon. Unfortunately, the deadline for calendars is looming, and we've been told by our calendar distributor that we should stop taking orders as of the end of October. After the end of this month, many of the most popular calendars will start to sell out, and may not be available. We believe these excellent, high-quality calendars stand for much of what we love about Japan, and we hope that you'll consider getting some of them for yourself or loved ones before calendar season ends this year.

Ah My Goddess! has pulled into the lead, with Totoro, Evangelion, and Gundam Wing close behind. Kanabun's nude calendar is at the head of the pack, with the surprising "Hot springs nudes" in second place. Lovely Race Queen Suzuki Fumika is in first place in the "lovely ladies of Japan" category, followed by swimsuit idol Satoh Eriko, Fukuda Kyoko and "mini-skirt police" idol Asakura Megumi. Other popular calendars this year are the Joy of Sushi and Joy of Soba, The Way (different slogans in Kanji), and the excellent Japanese scroll paintings 2001 calendar.

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

• First, even more magazines for our extremely popuylar $5 magazine sale --
  
• On magazines page 1, a great new issue of the high-value Top Video
  
• The first calendars have come in, and we've got stock of several of them -- see the tops of the Calendars pages (nudes and beautiful views of Japan) for the in-stock items
  
• For photobook fans, the dynamite hardcover photobooks of Takamatsu Ai ("Cosmos") and Mochizuki Karen ("Prologue")
  
• S&M and bondage photobooks will enjoy the two excellent new gouka-bon format books, on the S&M photobooks page
  
• If you like hentai manga, we've got several excellent all-new books for you (Manga -> New releases), in addition to some really excellent back-in-stock manga that have come back in (Manga -> Best-sellers) -- over a dozen new items in all
  
• Several back-in-stock photobooks are posted, including Privacy 004, Kajiwara Norika's erotic nude photobook (she looks like the popular actress Fujiwara Norika), and for Fubuki Akira fans, fresh stock of the sold-out So Long photobook (photographed in Great Britan!)
  
• If you love amateur AV, check out Peepers, a fun all-amateur magazine and Video CD item with 70 minutes of footage -- on DVD -> MPEG CD-ROM
  
• For Japan AV video fans, we've got several excellent new titles in stock (Videos -> New releases) including Kanazawa Bunko's excellent "Mouthful of Ejaculation"
  
• For DVD lovers, the excellent History of Crystal, with 220 minutes of footage from the last five years of this company's history (region 2 encoded)
  
• If you love Japan's excellent SF films, check out Uchusen, a super item filled with information on Godzilla, Kamen Rider, and much more -- on Anime -> Anime & Manga magazines
  
• For Japanese snack fans, more stock of the very cool only-from-Japan Digimon toys
  
• Back in stock on our popular Wacky Things from Japan page are more wooden signs ("do not urinate here"), more Hello Kitty chopsticks (amaze your friends!), more Japanese vocabulary study cards, and more "socks glue" to hold your "loose socks" up with!
  
• Finally, another delicious snack item that I've loved for years -- Japanese "persimmon seed" rice crackers with peanuts! So spicy, so tasty. See them on the Snack pages.
  
• We've added a selection of links on how to view region-2 encoded DVD players, on our region-2 DVD page. Included is information on code-free DVD players, hacks and kits for your current DVD player, and firmware for DVD ROM drives. We also recommend a very nice DVD code-free player that we recommend for all fans of international DVD. Thanks to all J-List customers who helped us assemble the list.
  

Okay, go check out the items!

Greetings from J-List January 18, 2000

Greetings, Programs, from J-List.

I'm typing this on my new Power Macintosh G4 right now, experiencing the thrill of being "edge" again, for however many months it will be...

January 17th marked the fifth anniversary of the terrible Great Hanshin Earthquake, which devastated the Kobe-Kyoto-Osaka area and claimed more than 5000 lives. I still remember getting beeped on my "pocketbell" (everyone had pocketbells back in 1995, no one had portable phones yet) and hearing Chiharu tell me about the terrible earthquake and fires that were destroying the city. It was very humbling to the Japanese, who openly consider their civil engineering to be the best in the world. I had visited Kobe myself just two months before the tragedy, to see the city and also to add another notch in my Old Spaghetti Factory belt -- whenever I travel to a city that has an Old Spaghetti Factory, I am compelled to visit the restaurant. It turned out that the manager of the Kobe branch had done a year of management training at the OSF in San Diego and we became friends, and he drove me around the city. I was happy to hear that the old restaurant (which was formerly a brick warehouse used to store torpedoes during World War II) suffered some damage, but none of the staff was hurt in the quake. We've got a bunch of great items for you tonight.

Greetings from J-List October 16, 2000

Hello from Japan, the country that invented "melon au lait" -- melon-flavored milk, which Tomo just loves.

Whenever you learn a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the "bad" words -- that's just plain human nature. What many students of Japanese are surprised to find are, there are almost no really bad words to learn -- if you define bad as in, words that kids aren't allowed to use. "Kuso" (shit) is used regularly on children's anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing. "Baka" (stupid) is the catch-all insult, although my daughter takes it a step higher by saying "baka-jijii" (stupid old man), usually to strangers. The various applications of the "F" word don't translate into Japanese at all -- although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word "sekkusu." What defines "bad" language in Japan is often not the words themselves, but the tone and style of speech -- I forbade my kids to watch Gingaman (aka Power Ranger Galaxy) on TV in Japanese due to the rude yakuza-like tone of voices used by the villains. The only really "bad" words in Japanese is "manko" (referring to a woman's reproductive organ) -- a word as embarrassingly close to "mango" as election/erection for Japanese speakers of English. This word is so bad, it's usually written with a circle or "X" in place of the middle letter when written in manga.

There are many interesting gestures that the Japanese have come up with, some of which are quite famous all over the world. Instead of point to his chest when referring to himself, he'll point to his nose, which looks odd to some foreigners. An "okay" sign inverted means "money, and a pinkie held up with a questioning glance means Are you seeing your girlfriend tonight?" Waving your hand at someone looks to Americans to mean "get away from me, but it really means come here." Both forefingers put on your head to look like devil's horns means "anger, as in, If I go to a bar, my wife will get angry with me." And clashing your forefingers together like swords means "fighting, as in, My wife and I got into a big fight last night. I shouldn't have gone to that bar last night."

For this evening's update, we've got a lot of great items for you, including:

• First, new magazines, including the excellent new Beppin School and Gokuh issues -- these are great new issues filled with the most popular AV stars and models from Japan
  
• For photobook fans, we've got The Super Girls, a collection of *35* lovely AV and models from Japan
  
• On our high-end bondage and S&M photobook page, several new items, including new "hitozuma" (married women) books and more
  
• We have several excellent manga posted, including new erotic wide manga by Mujin Comics, MD Comics and Cult Comics (see Manga -> New releases)
  
• For fans of erotic game dojinshi, we've got not one but two new volumes of the popular Electric Love Princess adult dojinshi anthology mangas (on Manga -> Parody manga)
  
• For hentai anime fans, an interesting item, the "Active Memorial Series, a line of hentai video digital comics" adapted from popular hentai games -- see this on Adult videos -> New releases
  
• For code-free adult DVD fans, we have two great new titles -- Mejiri Climax vol. 1, which features 90 minutes of great footage from five of the Mejiri titles, and Non-Stop Fuck, a 120 min. compilation of "100+1" girl over the past ten years (great item for collectors)
  
• On our anime toys page, we've got a really cool item -- the Kubrick action figures based on the Planet of the Apes, with figures of Taylor and Statue of Liberty, Cornelius, Zira, Dr. Zaius, and more
  
• Also from the Kubrick line, a mech and armored figure based on Votoms
  
• We have another set of vintage Japanese pro-wrestling magazine, on the magazines "back-issues" page
  
• For those who don't have enough Hello Kitty in their lives, a nifty photograph frame -- display pictures of your loved ones on a desk or hanging on a wall, surrounded by Hello Kitty
  
• Finally, from the "things Peter has wanted to sell for years" category, we've got another handy item you just can't live without: Japanese mosquito incense, known as "katori senkoh" in Japanese. A spiral of long-burning incense which burns from the outside, towards the center, it emits a pleasant incense smoke that wards off mosquitos and other flying bugs. A great item for anyone who's bothered by mosquitoes!
  

As much as I've enjoyed working on CM-Watch, that site that aims to bring you interesting Japanese TV commercials and CM-culture, I've got to face the fact that I'm just too busy to continue with the updates. Rather than let this great site fold, I'm looking for a webmaster who will help with updates and conversion of commercials in iMovie format to Quicktime (including subtitles). Please email me if you're interested, as I've got a backlog of interesting CM's I'd like to post. Knowledge of Japanese CM culture and idols, and experience with Macs and iMovie/iMovie 2 are appreciated. Please email for more information!

Greetings from J-List January 15, 2000

Hello again, from the wild, woolly land of Japan, where you really can dry your body off of with one of those little towels after getting out of the hot springs.

My wife and I continue to enjoy "Ally, My Love" in Japanese on NHK on Sunday nights. It leads to some interesting discussions on the differences between Japan and America. In Japan, for example, there is no jury system at all -- if you're brought before a court, your fate is determined by either one or three judges, who sit in a triangle shape like Cylons. I shudder to think that potentially hardened, cynical judges would be judging my fate (it might account for the 99%+ conviction rate in Japanese courts), but Chiharu said she'd prefer being judged by experienced judges to the randomness of a jury of people who weren't experts in law at all.

As the new year progresses, various statistics about the 1999 are becoming available. The number of people who died in 1999 in car accidents was 9005, a very low number and partially the result of a program by the Japanese police to keep the number below 10, 000. Gunma Prefecture, where we live, has the highest per-capita number of automobiles, but we avoided the honor of having the highest number of traffic deaths last year. The winner was Hokkaido, where 532 people were killed in car crashes.

Tonight's update is filled with interesting, diverse items. First, we've got a volley of "one shot" magazines, posted at the top of magazine page 2. These are single issues we've gotten in at J-List, some dating back to 14 years ago! Next, for fans of our new high-end S&M/fetish photobook page, we've got several new items, including a very nice "Traditional Bondage in Japan" photobook item that looks very nice. There are new magazines as well, including the new issue of Milky Dolls, and many back-in-stock photobooks

J-List sells unique snack treats from Japan, including everything from the original Pocky to Wata-Pachi (cola-flavored cotton candy with pop rocks in them), Wata-Gum (a similar concept, cotton candy that turns to gum in your mouth), as well as some really unique Pokemon snack items, which of course come with collectible stickers, toys and other items inside them. We've lowered the prices on some of our cases, so check out what we've got.

Remember, if you try to access the J-List secure order page and get an error from your browser saying that the secure certificate has expired, it's just the Y2K Browser Bug. Upgrade to a newer version of Netscape or Internet Explorer to fix the error. (For Mac users, the IE fix is at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/en/other_EN.asp).

Greetings from J-List January 13, 2000

Good evening from Japan, where we've had our first snowfall of the season! Being from San Diego, I'm a big fan of snow, and can't see any other reason to have winter. Unfortunately, the Kanto Plain (where Tokyo is, and where we are) is not known for its snow, and already the fluffy, white flakes have started turning to rain.

Fans of the Japanese band Morning Musume are saddened to hear that Ishiguro Aya, one of the prettiest and most interesting members of the 7-member pop band, is leaving, possibly to marry her boyfriend, the drummer from from "visual rock" group Luna Sea. We're bummed, too -- she was one of the cutest.

The newest boom to hit Tokyo this year is called "Stick Board, and it's basically a lightweight skateboard with a retractable handle that you can use to cruise around town with, darting around pedestrians. Seen in places like Harajuku and Shibuya, where young people gather, they're very convenient. Unfortunately, when something gets popular in Japan, it gets *really* popular, and stores can't keep them in stock (so I can't find one for myself, rats).

We've got a really great update for you tonight, with many new items that should be really popular. First, we've got in a wonderful two-part chikan" (pervert on a train) CD ROM series, with over 600 megs per disc of interesting train hentai. Then, for fans of J-List's magazines, we've got the ever-popular new issue of Gal's Shower as well as some other nice new additions to our magazine pages. There are new additions to the S&M photobooks page, including an interesting dominatrix item and a gouka-bon format photobook featuring 58 of your favorite Japanese AV idols (including girls who have retired). On the manga front, there are two excellent new dojinshi anthologies on manga page 2 (but only 5 copies of each), as well as some other excellent adult wide manga. There are several nice new photobook items, including both all-new items as well as more copies of popular items that had sold out (Sawaguchi Rina's popular photobook "Incentive" for example). There's a large volley of all-new JPOP singles on the JPOP page, including some very cool recent CDs

We've also added more items to our popular Reserve Subscription pages, which allow you to get popular Japanese magazines sent you to automatically every month, when they're still on the newsstands here. Uta Bon is a wonderful magazine for JPOP fans, which gives you lyrics and sheet music for hundreds of popular songs in Japan, by the hottest bands. And for ladies, we've added the most popular "Lady Comic, Labien, an erotic comic read by housewives and married women in Japan. We're very happy with the response to our magazine service.

That's all. Enjoy the new update!

Greetings from J-List October 12, 2000

Good evening from your friends at J-List!

The Japanese are awfully good at memorizing facts and dates by making handy phrases. To memorize the months of the year that have less than 31 days in them, they use "nishi muku samurai" ("the west-facing samurai") -- ni = 2, shi = 4, mu = 6, ku = 9, and samurai is written with the Chinese numbers for 10 and 1, hence the 11th month. Want to remember the start of the Kamakura Era? Just memorize "ii kuni o tukuro" ("let's make a great nation"), which contains the year -- 1192. There's even a way way to memorize the periodic table of elements using a method like this, although it defeated me pretty quickly.

Japanese singer Kahala Tomomi is still trying to make a go of her "American debut, trying to find a band she can join as a singer. I hope she does well, but it's hard to see her getting a record contract without some backing. Meanwhile, another Japanese singer is trying to make it in the US. Kobayashi Yukie, a talented singer picked out of 4000 competitors to become the star-child of star producer Tetstuya Komuro, has released her first single in the U.S., using the stage name Nikki Monroe. Her career is followed each week on the hit TV show Asayan, the show that made Morning Musume what they are today. See her homepage at http://www.nikkimonroe.com (Flash-enabled).

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

• First, some excellent new magazines, including the new Urecco (Kusanagi Jun alert!), a new issue of Amateur Girl's Data, and more
  
• For photobook fans, Pure, a snapshot of the wonderful youthful idol Yagi Mika
  
• For let fetish fans, we've got more stock of several sold-out books, including Bizarre Legs, Slit Skirt, and The Nama-ashi (pictures of sexy women with bare legs)
  
• The new DVD & Video CD Soft Catalog is in. This is a magazine with two Video CDs, filled with quickie" sampler AV (including underwater fetish)
  
• If you love lovely Japan AV videos, we've got a bunch of new titles in stock, including Asato Yuka, Suginami Ami, and Tomosaki Rin in "My younger sister's panties" -- see Japan AV Videos -> New releases
  
• Also for video fans, a super 90-minute tekoki & lewdness video from Kanazawa Bunko and SOD -- see the SOD in-stock video page, or the special order page if our stock runs out
  
• For our adult manga customers, we have several back-in-stock classics, including I can't keep quiet ~ Koe ga dechau, stock of manga by the very popular Ranchiki, and more -- see the Manga new releases and best-sellers pages
  
• For our T-shirt fans, fresh stock of previously sold-out sizes of shirt F ("Beware perverts in the area") and shirt K (the popular black & white version of "Looking for a Japanese girlfriend")
  
• For idol video fans, a really special new items: the wonderful 50 minute idol video of the captivating Sakai Wakana -- see the Idols page
  
• If you've ever loved the excellent show Kamen Rider (Masked Rider), we've got several complete sets of the "Dash Rider" bike & figure toys
  
• We have several copies of Goods Press in stock, for those who love to follow what's popular in Japan -- see then on Anime -> Anime & JPOP magazines
  
• Finally, just when you thought J-List had run out of handy things to sell on our Wacky Things from Japan page, we've got -- cooking chopsticks. These extra-long bamboo chopsticks are extremely useful for a variety of cooking tasks, not just when preparing Asian food. Check them out now!
  

Friday is "Thai day" at J-List, as we celebrate our fourth anniversary with various Thai curries (not very Japanese of us, we know...).

Greetings from J-List January 10, 2000

Hello from Japan, a very cold and windy place right now. Today is a holiday in Japan, so I'm all alone in the J-List World Headquarters...

The Japanese economy continues to limp along, despite showing some signs of recovery. Ford, always the most successful U.S. automaker at selling cars in the Japanese market due to their partial ownership of Mazda, began offering $2000 back cash if you buy one of their cars -- a new concept for the Japanese car economy, which is very different from the U.S.

No car marker is in the news more than Nissan, as it tries to bounce back from years of poor management and red ink. Just as America tired to emulate Japan and Japanese business practices back in the 80's (think Saturn), not Nissan is trying to learn to adapt Western business and management in order to survive. After their merger with French car maker Renault, company president Carlos Gon (spelling?) has become sort of a "pop business idol, appearing on Japanese in interviews as well as Nissan's car commercials. To help improve car sales here, Nissan is renovating all of its showrooms, renaming them Nissan Red Stage" and "Nissan Blue Stage" (we have yet to figure out what the difference between them is). In Japan, car companies control the entire customer experience, including car showroom, and Nissan had allowed their showroom network to become run-down and uninteresting. They're fighting back now with the slogan "Nissan Renaissance."

For tonight's update, we've got some very nice new items for you. First of all, there is a slew of back-in-stock magazines and photobooks, including some items by the popular Miura Aika. There are some great new manga posted, including a rare and out of print Sailor Moon parody anthology, and others. We've updated the popular Gouka Book page with some new high-end fetish photobooks, too. We've taken another good whack at all prices of all calendars -- Slayers Try and Turn A Gundam are down to $16, Hello Kitty to $12 -- to help get our existing stock out the door. Finally, there's another dozen or so of the winter Comic Market's all-new dojinshi up, although they'll go fast as always. Please stop by and see the newly posted items!

The world was largely safe from Y2K disturbances, but not complete: there's a Y2K browser bug that makes some secure pages give an error when viewed with some Unix browsers and Internet Explorer 4.5 for Mac. The fix is to ignore the "certificate has expired" errors, or use Netscape until IE5 is out for Mac. We apologize for any confusion.

Greetings from J-List October 9, 2000

Greetings from Japan, the country where you pronounce the word "election" very carefully.

The Japanese love to compete internationally, since a lot of their validation as a nation comes from getting the respect of foreigners (this is arguably why the Shinkansen was built, so foreigners would oo and ah when they came for the 1968 Olympics in Tokyo). The interesting TV show TV Champion followed several Japanese "oo-gui" (big eaters) through some hairy and gross competitions in which they tried to eat more sushi, bananas, or Chinese dumplings than their rivals. The winner got to come to New York City, in an international big eating competition against some of the biggest eaters America could muster. In a surprise turnaround, the Japanese oo-gui competitor (who wasn't even fat) defeated his larger American rivals. It was all the more meaningful as the competition took place on the Fourth of July.

Calendar pre-orders are off to a great start this year, and it's always interesting to see which will be the top sellers. Anime calendars are leading the race this year, with Evangelion and Oh My Goddess in a tie for the top spot, followed by Gundam Wing, Totoro, Sailor Moon and Ruro ni Kenshin. The lovely ladies and nude calendars are also selling well, with Onsen Nudes (lovely women in Japanese hot springs) in first place, followed by Kanazawa Bunko, race queen Suzuki Fumika, the busty Satoh Eriko and the lovely Mini-Skirt Police idol Asakura Megumi. Other calendars that are selling well are the Morita Haruyo illustrations (simply beautiful)

Newly added to the site this evening, new T-shirts! Yes, we have three more of our excellent wacky Japanese T-shirts, with very cool slogans for people who want to show their love of Japan to everyone. We have both wacky slogans ("Hentai gaijin" would fit into this category) as well as cool kanji that look good ("daikoku-bashira, the great black pillar" that holds up the household, now on its very own T-shirt), and a Japanese version of the famous Vulcan slogan. Check them out on the T-shirt page.

In addition to the new shirts, we have a bunch of great products, including:

• We have several excellent new magazines, including the very nice Best Video, Video Boy, and Suppin Evolution
  
• For our those interested in our unique photobooks from Japan, we have fresh stock of the Miura Aika 1999 Photobook (the best-selling photobook in J-List's history), as well as both volumes of Miyazawa Nude (but they will go fast)
  
• For indies fans, we've got a new issue of MPEG Indies, a cool magazine and dual-VCD sampler magazine that's a great value
  
• We have more original Japanese bishojo games from JAST and Trush on Hentai game & CD ROM -> CD ROM & MPEG
  
• On Manga -> New releases, we've got some excellent new adult wide manga from Japan, from Hot Milk, Tsukasa and AV Comics
  
• For video fans, two nice new long-playing videos from Kuki and Big Mogal, including a new edition of the excellent "Tokimeki Invitation" series
  
• Also for video lovers, a brand new "study of men's penis with innocent girls" directed by Sugawara Chie (on the SOD Main Page, or the Special Order page if we run out of stock)
  
• For DVD lovers, the second edition of the "Image Club Super" series, a 120 minute DVD featuring excellent "image club" (costume play and acting out of sexual fantasies) on the DVD Galleries page
  
• On Wacky Things from Japan page has several items, too, including more stock of several of our remarkably popular wooden signs with messages on them, as well as more of our popular wooden and bamboo wind chimes. Very cool!
  

That all!