Saturday, March 03, 2001
Greetings from J-List March 3, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Wednesday, February 28, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 28, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Monday, February 26, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 26, 2001
Hello again from your friends in Japan at J-List!
It's always fun to keep an eye on trends in Japan to see what will flower elsewhere in the world. Kickboards (those silly skateboards with handles) got big here in Japan first, for example, then went on to tempt teenagers in the U.S. and elsewhere after that. We think the next trend you might want to watch out for are "beigoma." A kind of hand-carved metal top, which is spun by throwing it down onto a flat surface while pulling back on a wound string, beigoma are a classic Japanese toy that were played with by everyone 50 years ago, although interest in them almost completely disappeared in the intervening decades. Now Japanese toy makers (and Japanese kids) have discovered the beigoma, and are making colorful and interesting beigoma which are being received by collectors and kids all over Japan. Pokemon and Digimon beigoma are inevitable. Your kids will probably hear about them soon, if they haven't already.
While I was studying Japanese in college, we made use of Japanese homestay students as a great way for me to practice my Japanese and learn about Japan, while exchanging information about my home country with a visitor from Japan. We had several very enjoyable experiences with Japanese homestay students. Now that I live in Japan, I've arranged homestays in the U.S. for several friends and students over the years, and they've enjoyed themselves very much. Unfortunately, more and more I've seen the disturbing specter of commercialism creep into the homestay system, with people opening their homes to foreign students as a money-making enterprise, and offering little or no linguistic or social experience. Students are mixed in with other students, and have no chance to experience many fun aspects of living in a new country. If you're interested in learning more about Japan and teaching about your home country, a great way is to invite a homestay student in your home -- they're almost always housebroken. A phone call to the ESL school attached to a nearby university is a good place to start.
For this evening's update, some new and cool things from Japan, including:
Remember that we can send you a text-based list of the items available on the J-List site regularly -- just reply to this mail, and we'll add your address to the J-List text updates list as well.
It's always fun to keep an eye on trends in Japan to see what will flower elsewhere in the world. Kickboards (those silly skateboards with handles) got big here in Japan first, for example, then went on to tempt teenagers in the U.S. and elsewhere after that. We think the next trend you might want to watch out for are "beigoma." A kind of hand-carved metal top, which is spun by throwing it down onto a flat surface while pulling back on a wound string, beigoma are a classic Japanese toy that were played with by everyone 50 years ago, although interest in them almost completely disappeared in the intervening decades. Now Japanese toy makers (and Japanese kids) have discovered the beigoma, and are making colorful and interesting beigoma which are being received by collectors and kids all over Japan. Pokemon and Digimon beigoma are inevitable. Your kids will probably hear about them soon, if they haven't already.
While I was studying Japanese in college, we made use of Japanese homestay students as a great way for me to practice my Japanese and learn about Japan, while exchanging information about my home country with a visitor from Japan. We had several very enjoyable experiences with Japanese homestay students. Now that I live in Japan, I've arranged homestays in the U.S. for several friends and students over the years, and they've enjoyed themselves very much. Unfortunately, more and more I've seen the disturbing specter of commercialism creep into the homestay system, with people opening their homes to foreign students as a money-making enterprise, and offering little or no linguistic or social experience. Students are mixed in with other students, and have no chance to experience many fun aspects of living in a new country. If you're interested in learning more about Japan and teaching about your home country, a great way is to invite a homestay student in your home -- they're almost always housebroken. A phone call to the ESL school attached to a nearby university is a good place to start.
For this evening's update, some new and cool things from Japan, including:
- First, several new magazines, including a killer of the new Bejean featuring several excellent features -- Kanazawa Bunko, Morishita Kurumi, Fukada Miho and many more
- We've got several issues of Otaka Wide Show, the magazine that shows you old and often embarrassing pictures of Japan's hot idols and actresses when they were unknown
- Also for magazine fans, a bunch of nice back-issue sets of 2 and 3 magazines, for fans of some older magazines from the 1990's
- For leg fans, the new issue of the stellar Mini-Suka Deluxe is in, and it's a great one -- the 50th issue special issue of this great deluxe magazine
- In addition to fresh stock of several popular sold out photobook items, we've got fresh stock of three of our most popular photobooks: Ohura Anna's fanatic "i-Nude," Kawashima Azumi's "Flowing Out," and the incredibly cute Hagiwara Mai's "Maichi"
- For fans of our excellent erotic manga, we've got several very nice erotic offerings from AV Comics, Hit Comics and Do Comix, among others
- If you love yaoi, we've got more yaoi for you -- Satoh Ishihara's "Charisma" and a nice Gundam Wing yaoi dojinshi
- On the DVD pages, two new offerings from the Much-Treasured Sexual Technique Lecture DVD series, which will teach you about shio-fuki (female wet orgasm), bondage and more -- complete with really useful (and erotic) tips and more -- see them on the DVD region 2 page
- For our Japanese snacks page, we've got fresh stock of several types of Japanese teas (which we recommend highly, since we drink them ourselves here at J-List), as well as Morinaga's "Hi-Crown" high-quality chocolate
- We've lowered prices on several of our funny Japanese T-shirts, which we're closing out -- wear a bewildering Japanese message on your shirt, it's funny!
- We're got fresh stock of several of our popular Wacky Things from Japan page
- Finally, fresh stock of Wacky Things from Japan items include a new version of our popular Japanese traditional note paper (genko yoshi), a unique Japanese "money tray" (a tray with a rubberized bottom which is used for handing money to cashier), a giant clamp for your futon, and a desktop calendar that's cool enough that we're even bothering to offer it in February.
Remember that we can send you a text-based list of the items available on the J-List site regularly -- just reply to this mail, and we'll add your address to the J-List text updates list as well.
Friday, February 23, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 23, 2001
Hello again from Japan, where wet umbrellas need condoms...
Today was a balmy and beautiful day, more suited for May than for February. We weren't complaining, and gladly wore short-sleeved T-shirts to enjoy the warmth. Wearing a short-sleeved shirt too early is one of the Japanese "unwritten rules" though -- short sleeves are worn in the summer and early autumn, between June 1 and November 1 (yes, they even have official starting and endings dates, basically, the official dates that high school students change from the winter uniforms to their summer uniforms). To wear "summer clothes" in February in Japan is asking for amazed remarks from all Japanese you encounter. In a similarly inflexible seasonal tradition, in Japan you never go into the ocean after September 1st -- it just isn't done. When you ask why, Japanese vaguely say that it's dangerous (presumably far more than August 31st), but it's clear that they've never deeply considered the reason.
The Americanization of Japan has taken a giant step forward recently, with the impending introduction of "MyLine." This is ostensibly a system allowing you to choose which long distance company you want to use, but is really one big "confusopoly" designed to confuse consumers for the betterment of Japanese phone companies. Japan's monopolistic NTT, newly formed KDDI, and several other companies are competing to be Japan's choice for long distance with cute and amusing TV commercials, but they're all very low on specifics, preferring to be vague about what their rates really are. NTT's ads boast that "NTT has just lowered their rates by 50%." What rates were lowered? What were they before, and what are they now? What is "50%" measured against?
For the weekend's special update, we've got a bunch of cool items from Japan for you, including:
We got a lot of positive feedback from Paypal users. We're glad to be of service, since Paypal is a pretty good system (partally because you don't need a credit card to use it -- which is convenient for people who want to write "virtual checks" from their checking account). We also accept Billpoint, and can probably work with any other system out there (for example, many international customers find Western Union's money-sending services convenient). Please email us with any questions or comments.
Today was a balmy and beautiful day, more suited for May than for February. We weren't complaining, and gladly wore short-sleeved T-shirts to enjoy the warmth. Wearing a short-sleeved shirt too early is one of the Japanese "unwritten rules" though -- short sleeves are worn in the summer and early autumn, between June 1 and November 1 (yes, they even have official starting and endings dates, basically, the official dates that high school students change from the winter uniforms to their summer uniforms). To wear "summer clothes" in February in Japan is asking for amazed remarks from all Japanese you encounter. In a similarly inflexible seasonal tradition, in Japan you never go into the ocean after September 1st -- it just isn't done. When you ask why, Japanese vaguely say that it's dangerous (presumably far more than August 31st), but it's clear that they've never deeply considered the reason.
The Americanization of Japan has taken a giant step forward recently, with the impending introduction of "MyLine." This is ostensibly a system allowing you to choose which long distance company you want to use, but is really one big "confusopoly" designed to confuse consumers for the betterment of Japanese phone companies. Japan's monopolistic NTT, newly formed KDDI, and several other companies are competing to be Japan's choice for long distance with cute and amusing TV commercials, but they're all very low on specifics, preferring to be vague about what their rates really are. NTT's ads boast that "NTT has just lowered their rates by 50%." What rates were lowered? What were they before, and what are they now? What is "50%" measured against?
For the weekend's special update, we've got a bunch of cool items from Japan for you, including:
- First, several great new adult magazines from Japan, including the great new issues of Dela Beppin and Gokuh, as well as several other specialty magazine items
- We've got some cool backissues of older magazines, including some popular older issues of leg fetish magazines like Panst Freak (see magazine pages 1 and 2 for these items)
- For hentai fans, we have not one, but two cool issues of PC Angel, the #1 selling hentai magazine at J-List
- For photobook fans, check out several all-new hardcover photobooks, including Konno Saori and Asagi Sumire's "Best Friend" lesbian-play pictorial
- Also for photobook fans, fresh stock of several older and classic items, back on the list
- For Japan's hentai manga fans, we've got another major update, with more than a half-dozen all-new works from Fujimi, AV Comics, Hit and Tsukasa
- Yaoi fans, there are some very nice "boys charisma" books on the yaoi manga page, all of which feature fantastic artwork and characters
- For Japan's underground artwork fans, we've got some nice single-issue postings of dojinshi, as well as some more popular dojiin-soft CD-ROMs (including more of the very cool CG Box series)
- We've got an unopened copy of Dokyusei 2, the popular 2-CD ROM PC bishojo game
- Another very svelte example of Japan's erotic "V-cinema," AV with very artistic and cinematic production values, is My Sister is a Female Teacher -- this fantastic DVD (region 2) was originally shot to film for a cool look
- Fans of our Japanese snacks pages should check out our latest offerings -- grape and strawberry marshmallows, fresh stock of the popular Mousse Pocky (both white and dark), and just a few boxes of Winter Limited Edition Pocky
- We've got some nice items on our Japanese signs & stickers page, including an enigmatic sticker that says "I love you" and fresh stock of our most popular wooden sign ever
- The new issue of JJ, a beautiful Japanese fashion magazine that's filled with great products (and interesting Japanese ads)
- For anime fans, a PVC figure based on Kamikaze Robber Janus
- Restocked items on our Wacky Things from Japan page include more Hello Kitty chopsticks, several of our popular Japanese notebooks, the handy (and very cheap!) English-Japanese mini-dictionary, and bamboo cooking chopsticks
- Finally, we have a ton of all-new Wacky Things from Japan for you, including new Japanese notebooks (including the perfect diary notebook), a "Fumi Fumi" board for massaging your your abused feet, the world's smallest backpack, a silly "party ticket" with English like "Don't you enjoy our party? Let's enjoy together!" on it, the perfect way to organize your computer's unsightly wires, and more. All very wacky!
We got a lot of positive feedback from Paypal users. We're glad to be of service, since Paypal is a pretty good system (partally because you don't need a credit card to use it -- which is convenient for people who want to write "virtual checks" from their checking account). We also accept Billpoint, and can probably work with any other system out there (for example, many international customers find Western Union's money-sending services convenient). Please email us with any questions or comments.
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 20, 2001
Hello from the world's #1 producer of vending machines, Japan.
We now live next to the mayor! Over the last three weeks, the city of Isesaki has been in "election mode," with people choosing sides among the five canditates for mayor. Yanai Ichio, the president of the construction company that's right next to our liquor shop (they built our house, actually), made an unsuccessful bid to be Isesaki's mayor in the last election. This time, with the support of those annoying loudspeaker trucks that drive around asking you to vote for their candidate, he actually got elected. We're happy to live next door to the new mayor, but we're even happier to have life return to normal in our house, now that the election is over.
Japanese is a happy, harmonous place, where people seem to have a built-in sense of "joshiki" or common sense. Kids all go to school and study (no homeschooling here), husbands are the "daikoku-bashira," the large black pillars that hold up the family. They is the problem of the Tyrany of the Majority at times, though, which manifests itself in small ways. In Japan, there are almost no vegetarians, and foreigners who want to live vegetarian have trouble "getting along" in Japan as nearly everything here contains something that was made from animals. In Japan, too, most people love milk with 3.7 per cent milk fat or higher -- it's thick and delicious, they say. When I came to Japan,it was very hard to find low fat (1%) milk without searching several stores. Now, low fat is generally available, but non-fat milk (which I prefer) is completely impossible to find. The "majority" just doesn't want it, so no one produces it.
J-List now accepts Paypal for orders. Paypal is a very convenient payment method that lets you register a Paypal ID (your email address) and tie a credit card or checking account to your ID. You can send or receive money using this system -- very convenient for people who want to use "virtual checks" when paying for orders. The checking account option is probably only available through U.S. banks, but the Paypal system in general is international, so it's convenient for many customers worldwide. Of course, J-List always welcome credit card purchases (via our secure online form) and check/money order payments as well.
We're happy to announce that X-Change is at the duplicators, and should be back in a very short time. You can preorder X-Change and get free shipping when it goes out to you. See it on the Bishojo and Hentai page!
For the first J-List update of the week, we've got some cool items for you, including:
Thanks for being a part of J-List -- have a great Monday!
We now live next to the mayor! Over the last three weeks, the city of Isesaki has been in "election mode," with people choosing sides among the five canditates for mayor. Yanai Ichio, the president of the construction company that's right next to our liquor shop (they built our house, actually), made an unsuccessful bid to be Isesaki's mayor in the last election. This time, with the support of those annoying loudspeaker trucks that drive around asking you to vote for their candidate, he actually got elected. We're happy to live next door to the new mayor, but we're even happier to have life return to normal in our house, now that the election is over.
Japanese is a happy, harmonous place, where people seem to have a built-in sense of "joshiki" or common sense. Kids all go to school and study (no homeschooling here), husbands are the "daikoku-bashira," the large black pillars that hold up the family. They is the problem of the Tyrany of the Majority at times, though, which manifests itself in small ways. In Japan, there are almost no vegetarians, and foreigners who want to live vegetarian have trouble "getting along" in Japan as nearly everything here contains something that was made from animals. In Japan, too, most people love milk with 3.7 per cent milk fat or higher -- it's thick and delicious, they say. When I came to Japan,it was very hard to find low fat (1%) milk without searching several stores. Now, low fat is generally available, but non-fat milk (which I prefer) is completely impossible to find. The "majority" just doesn't want it, so no one produces it.
J-List now accepts Paypal for orders. Paypal is a very convenient payment method that lets you register a Paypal ID (your email address) and tie a credit card or checking account to your ID. You can send or receive money using this system -- very convenient for people who want to use "virtual checks" when paying for orders. The checking account option is probably only available through U.S. banks, but the Paypal system in general is international, so it's convenient for many customers worldwide. Of course, J-List always welcome credit card purchases (via our secure online form) and check/money order payments as well.
We're happy to announce that X-Change is at the duplicators, and should be back in a very short time. You can preorder X-Change and get free shipping when it goes out to you. See it on the Bishojo and Hentai page!
For the first J-List update of the week, we've got some cool items for you, including:
- First, some excellent new magazines, including the new Gal's Dee, a great issue for fans of Ms. Morimura Honey
- For bargain hunters, some nice bundles of back-issues of magazines on magazine page 2
- For photobook fans ,we've got some back-in-stock items for you, as well as two classic miniature photobooks of idols from the early 1990's (for fans of these older models)
- For erotic manga lovers, fresh stock of several popular volumes, along with a very classy 2-volume set by Hit based on a classical Chinese dramatic tale -- but with a super hentai twist
- For dojinshi lovers, the fabulous *color* erotic parody dojinshi, Burajiru 2, by our friends at Okachimentaiko (includes cool erotic material from Yamato/Star Blazers and Team Rocket)
- There's a very fresh and interesting video from SOD -- The Kiss Clinic, a 60 minute video featuring only kiss fetish material with men and give lovely kissing gals -- it will change the way you view kissing forever
- Also for fans of kissing, a super all-female "Lez and Kiss Collection" DVD (region 2) featuring the deep kissing and lesbian play of over 200 Japanese gals
- For fans of the best-selling The Kageki DVD, another offering -- the super erotic perforamances of three busty AV queens, Ayukawa Ami, Inoue Chihiro and Morikawa Juri -- on this great 2-DVD set. *Subtitled in English!*
- Anime fans should check out the anime product pages for some cool items, including several classic issues of popular anime magazine from several years ago
- Also very cool for anime fans, the long-awated Kubrick series Evangelion toys. These are "super deformed" figures of Eva characters and Eva mechs, made in a style similar to the Lego people -- very cool
- If you love Japanese professional wrestling, see an incredible item, a collection of photos and information on the major "pro-wres" names over the last 26 years, in a beautiful hardcover package (on the photobooks and Wacky Things from Japan pages)
- Mishimima Yukio was an amazing writer who comitted suicide by comitting Japanese ritual disembowelment (seppuku). We've got a really cool item, the issue of Sunday Mainichi the week after this amazing and shocking event -- see it on the
- There's a wonderful new collectible card series, Bururun Club II, featuring Japan's lovely swimsuit idols
- We've made a major update to our popular Japanese snacks and food page, with fresh stock of Japanese teas, Hi-Chu Banana Shake, miso soup packets (didn't think they'd sell out so fast), several delicious flavors of Lotte's Japanese gum, sake candy (with real sake inside!), Shige-Kicks (extremely sour lemon "hard gummi" that must be tasted to be believed), and more
- We have several new items on our Japanese signs and stickers page, with funny messages in Japanese
- Fresh stock of our popular "Wacky Things" page include the deluxe bamboo wind chime (which makes a very pleasant sound when the wind blows through it) along with fresh stock of some of our most popular cool Japanese notebooks ("this notebook having horizontal ruled line is the best for arranging sentences")
- And, we've got our usual new volley of cool things you've never seen before from Japan, including a Japanese proverb dictionary (useful to anyone studying Japanese and wanting to learn some Japanese sayings), some cool Hello Kitty items that only Japan could make, and the ultimate "pressure point presser" massage tool that looks like something out of Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
Thanks for being a part of J-List -- have a great Monday!
Friday, February 16, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 16, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Thursday, February 15, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 15, 2001
Greetings from Japan, the home of Mazda's popular car, the Bongo Friendy.
Well, Time Ranger has come to an end. In the last episode, the five time fighters took a trip in Time Robo over the past 20 years of sentai shows, since they are time travelers and all that. It was cool, seeing each year's five-team fighting show -- Go Ranger (the first one, which was shown in 1975), Changeman, Car Ranger, Mega Ranger, Gingaman, Go Go Five. The new sentai show is called Gau Ranger ("gau" being a sound in Japanese like "growl"), which will use animal motifs. I noticed that Time Ranger's footage had already started in the U.S. with Power Rangers Time Force.
We've had to say "sayonara" to our Nissan March. In Japan, there's a special car check-up and tax called sha-ken that car owners must pay every two years, which sets you back about $1400 each time. It's a cleverly disguised government-sponsored system to encourage people to buy new cars sooner than they would, and discourages keeping older cars. Since we got our Saturn, we haven't used the March much at all, so rather than pay the tax, we're going to scrap the car. Unfortunately, there are no economic ways of using the car, as the sha-ken tax exceeds the value of the car. In the U.S., when you scrap a car, you get a few hundred dollars out of it, at least. Here in Japan, the owner of the car must pay $200 to have the car taken away.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you as usual, including:
Okay, please go check out the website now!
Well, Time Ranger has come to an end. In the last episode, the five time fighters took a trip in Time Robo over the past 20 years of sentai shows, since they are time travelers and all that. It was cool, seeing each year's five-team fighting show -- Go Ranger (the first one, which was shown in 1975), Changeman, Car Ranger, Mega Ranger, Gingaman, Go Go Five. The new sentai show is called Gau Ranger ("gau" being a sound in Japanese like "growl"), which will use animal motifs. I noticed that Time Ranger's footage had already started in the U.S. with Power Rangers Time Force.
We've had to say "sayonara" to our Nissan March. In Japan, there's a special car check-up and tax called sha-ken that car owners must pay every two years, which sets you back about $1400 each time. It's a cleverly disguised government-sponsored system to encourage people to buy new cars sooner than they would, and discourages keeping older cars. Since we got our Saturn, we haven't used the March much at all, so rather than pay the tax, we're going to scrap the car. Unfortunately, there are no economic ways of using the car, as the sha-ken tax exceeds the value of the car. In the U.S., when you scrap a car, you get a few hundred dollars out of it, at least. Here in Japan, the owner of the car must pay $200 to have the car taken away.
For this evening's update, we've got some nice items for you as usual, including:
- First, a killer new magazine & video CD combo -- a new issue of Club Indies, with 70 minutes of sample footage that's really bizarre and cool, very different from the "pro" workd of AV
- For hentai fans, a very special issue of Fantasienne is posted, with a cool sampler CD-ROM and large poster inside -- see the hentai magazine page
- We have several very nice new photobooks, including Kawashima Azumi's lovely Flowing Out" and more copies of the popular Yoshino Minami's very lovely "Haru" photobook
- For our erotic manga fans, another large update of all-new books, including some shocking fetish manga
- For dojinshi fans, a treat -- not one, not two, but three new Okachimentaiko erotic dojinshi, including their all-ero tribute to Gundam, and a book dedicated exclusively to game girls
- Fresh stock of several hentai art books on our hentai art books page
- For DVD fans who buy region 2 discs, two very cool items from SOD -- one, a very high-quality erotic V-cinema creation by Tohjiro and Asaoka Mirei, and an educational DVD (?) on how to do anal sex
- For hentai DVD fans, two new items -- Elf's popular Wordsworth erotic fantasy anime, vol. 2 and 3
- For fans of the lovely Morishita Kurumi, a super item -- a dual-VHS featuring the surface (omote) and secret self (ura) of Kurumi, in a super idol video + AV video dual set, shot on location in Saipan
- For anime fans, some really cool older issues of Animage, including some very rare and cool ones, on the anime toys page
- Also on our anime & toys page, the much-requested Zeta Gundam fully posable toy from Bandai
- On our Japanese snacks & food page, a treat -- three flavors of "furikake," which is tasty, dried food you sprinkle over white rice, which includes ingredients like tiny bits of dried scrambled egg, sesame, dried leafy vegetables, and pieces of salmon. Loved by children and adults in Japan, furikake is a great healthy food for you.
- On our Wacky Japanese signs & stickers page, several cool new items, including more of the "Looking for a beautiful woman" sticker, and sticker for all "safety drivers"
- Restocked items on our popular Wacky Things page include more Hello Kitty toilet paper (for those who really love or really hate Kitty-chan), more authentic Japanese loose socks and Socks Glue to go with them, and more excellent Japanese correction pens
- Finally, we've got several nice new items on the Wacky Things page as well -- funky Japanese 'days of the week' magnets, a fashionable Japanese knit bag (all the rage this winter), and a deluxe long wooden shoehorn for fans of these useful items.
Okay, please go check out the website now!
Wednesday, February 07, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 7, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Monday, February 05, 2001
Greetings from J-List February 5, 2001
Greetings from Japan, where it really is more fun to stand in the "Japanese only" line at Narita Airport immigration...
Well, that was fast -- one day, I'm enjoying the various good things that the States has to offer, from Starbucks to Submarina and good Thai food, and the next, I'm back in Japan. Of course it's nice to be back, but part of me wishes I could have stayed longer and enjoyed the warm San Diego weather a little longer.
I brought back a lot of stuff, from blank CD-Rs to a motorcycle tire for a friend to "anti-constipation chocolate" (chocolate-based laxatives), which are a great gift for Japanese women, if you're ever wondering what to bring one. I tend to push the weight limit whenever I fly, bringing as much as I possibly can -- one reason I fly Korean instead of Delta. Somehow I've managed to bring bicycles from the U.S. to Japan, without paying any extras fees at all -- twice.
Everyone has a little nationalism in them, a love of their own country, and my wife is no different: she wants to see Japan and Japanese excel in the world. One evening, we managed to catch a fabulous opera performance, performed by a troop from China. They did a fantastic job, right down to singing in Italian, and this gave my wife pause. The Japanese are good at many things, but there's no way they could manage to perform an Italian opera in Italian. She said she felt jealousy and inadequacy that Japanese, for all their love of the arts, could not manage the kind of performance we saw.
For this evening's update, we've got some excellent products for you, including:
I'm happy to see that many people are taking advantage of our pre-order offer of free shipping on all Peach Princess games. But remember that J-List also carries a great number of English-language games and image collections that we think are great, and all are in stock now. We also have the last stock anywhere in the world of Otaku Publishing's titles, Return to Paradise Heights and True Love, which are our of print. We've got a few dozen copies of RTPH, but True Love will probably sell out completely in the next week or so. When they're gone, it will be time to say "so much...for True Love..."
Kaori's been playing with Photoshop, and has come up with some cute images, which we've christened the "official" J-List wallpaper. Check out the files on the About J-List page (down at the bottom).
Well, that was fast -- one day, I'm enjoying the various good things that the States has to offer, from Starbucks to Submarina and good Thai food, and the next, I'm back in Japan. Of course it's nice to be back, but part of me wishes I could have stayed longer and enjoyed the warm San Diego weather a little longer.
I brought back a lot of stuff, from blank CD-Rs to a motorcycle tire for a friend to "anti-constipation chocolate" (chocolate-based laxatives), which are a great gift for Japanese women, if you're ever wondering what to bring one. I tend to push the weight limit whenever I fly, bringing as much as I possibly can -- one reason I fly Korean instead of Delta. Somehow I've managed to bring bicycles from the U.S. to Japan, without paying any extras fees at all -- twice.
Everyone has a little nationalism in them, a love of their own country, and my wife is no different: she wants to see Japan and Japanese excel in the world. One evening, we managed to catch a fabulous opera performance, performed by a troop from China. They did a fantastic job, right down to singing in Italian, and this gave my wife pause. The Japanese are good at many things, but there's no way they could manage to perform an Italian opera in Italian. She said she felt jealousy and inadequacy that Japanese, for all their love of the arts, could not manage the kind of performance we saw.
For this evening's update, we've got some excellent products for you, including:
- First, some excellent new magazines including the new Aishite Ageru (I'll Love You), the exceptional "wet" magazine from Million
- For collectors and fans of AV actresses of a few years ago, some premium issues, on magazine page 2
- For bust fetishists, Gal's Dee Super DX Natural Peach-Breast, a deluxe perfect bound photobook-style book with fantastic busty women
- Fresh stock of some of our best photobook items, including the excellent Photoshot vol. 41 (Aoi Minori fans take note)
- Another copy of the hard-to-find Santa Fe, the nude photobook of the lovely Miyazawa Rie
- For manga fans, we've got several all-new volumes posted, as well as a large volley of back-in-stock books -- including one of the most popular manga artists in the history of J-List -- Hit Publishing's own Shiwasu no Okina
- For dojinshi fans, a fantastic treat -- the excellent erotic Ah My Goddess dojinshi work "I want you to stay with me forever" as well as a great number of all-new books for you
- For DVD lovers, a super new "killer app" for your DVD player -- SOD's excellent line of idol DVDs! Featuring lovely Japanese idols in swimsuit and other sexy wear, these DVDs are zoned for *all* countries, and are (puzzlingly) subtitled in Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean -- see them on the DVD and idol pages
- Also very cool for DVD and hentai fans, chapter 3 of the excellent "Fragile Hearts" series from SOD
- Love Japan's AV videos? We do, too. We've got too many though, so we've posted a bunch of bargain videos to our bargain video page
- Also for dojinshi fans, fresh stock of several popular Okachimentaiko works, including Buy or Die
- On our popular Japanese Snacks & Food page, fresh stock of authentic Japanese wasabi
- Restocked "wacky" items this evening include the Hello Kitty Mayonnaise Cups (but you can put anything in them you want), the surprisingly popular bamboo forks (great for serving guests), our deluxe rice scoop with holder (with anti-stick coating), more Japanese origami paper, and that cool business card holder we had in a few months ago
- New additions to our Wacky Things from Japan page include a map of Japan (so cool!) and a Japanese map of the world (in Japanese!), and some really cute Hello Kitty picture frames for your desk
- Finally, we've got fresh stock of our popular and one-of-a-kind Japanese T-shirts with funny slogans, including many of the most popular sizes (that had been sold out for so long). All our T-shirts are printed in the U.S. on Hanes 100% cotton Comfort-T shirts, so you don't need to worry about Japanese sizes or anything. All ship out of San Diego, too, so you can get them quickly. Express yourself with J-List's funny and bizarre Japanese shirts!
I'm happy to see that many people are taking advantage of our pre-order offer of free shipping on all Peach Princess games. But remember that J-List also carries a great number of English-language games and image collections that we think are great, and all are in stock now. We also have the last stock anywhere in the world of Otaku Publishing's titles, Return to Paradise Heights and True Love, which are our of print. We've got a few dozen copies of RTPH, but True Love will probably sell out completely in the next week or so. When they're gone, it will be time to say "so much...for True Love..."
Kaori's been playing with Photoshop, and has come up with some cute images, which we've christened the "official" J-List wallpaper. Check out the files on the About J-List page (down at the bottom).
Saturday, January 27, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 27, 2001
Hello from a very wintery J-List. For the third time this month, the Kanto region of Japan (where Tokyo is) has had a ton of snow piled on it -- an unprecedented amount of snow for this part of Japan. I wouldn't mind much, but I've got to get to Narita Airport Sunday morning for a hop Stateside. I hope the snow lets up...
Alcohol is very important to social life in Japan. The Japanese even have a word for it: "nomunication, from nomu" (to drink) and "communication." Last week was the annual school show at my childrens' preschool, an incredible pageant in which the kids perform many acts for parents. After the show there was a raging drink party where parents could get drunk with the school staff, including the preschool teachers (some of whom are really hot, I can tell you). After months of preparations for the school show, the drink party was a Japanese way to say "Otsukare-sama deshita" (Thanks for your help) and cement relationships at the same time.
Drinking is so important in Japan, it's often required that you drink, at east in tiny sips, in order to enter certain groups. I've had several gaijin friends over the years who did not drink at all, and subsequently found getting along in Japan somewhat difficult and cold. If you don't want to drink in Japan, the rule is to keep your glass full. When someone comes by to fill your glass, touch it to your lips but only drink a tiny amount; then he can fill your glass for you, ad tradition demands. Also, there are alcoholic drinks with very little alcohol in them available, too. Foreigners who refuse to drink in some situations are in advertantly making it difficult for Japanese to approach and become close.
For tonight's update, we've posted the excellent Peach Princess bishojo games for preorder. These games will ship over the next couple of months, and you can reserve your copy by preordering it -- plus, we give you free shipping, too! See them on the new Peach Princess Hentai games page.
In addition to posting the PeaPri games, we've got our usual excellent bunch of Japanese stuff for you, including:
Okay, see ou on the web!
Alcohol is very important to social life in Japan. The Japanese even have a word for it: "nomunication, from nomu" (to drink) and "communication." Last week was the annual school show at my childrens' preschool, an incredible pageant in which the kids perform many acts for parents. After the show there was a raging drink party where parents could get drunk with the school staff, including the preschool teachers (some of whom are really hot, I can tell you). After months of preparations for the school show, the drink party was a Japanese way to say "Otsukare-sama deshita" (Thanks for your help) and cement relationships at the same time.
Drinking is so important in Japan, it's often required that you drink, at east in tiny sips, in order to enter certain groups. I've had several gaijin friends over the years who did not drink at all, and subsequently found getting along in Japan somewhat difficult and cold. If you don't want to drink in Japan, the rule is to keep your glass full. When someone comes by to fill your glass, touch it to your lips but only drink a tiny amount; then he can fill your glass for you, ad tradition demands. Also, there are alcoholic drinks with very little alcohol in them available, too. Foreigners who refuse to drink in some situations are in advertantly making it difficult for Japanese to approach and become close.
For tonight's update, we've posted the excellent Peach Princess bishojo games for preorder. These games will ship over the next couple of months, and you can reserve your copy by preordering it -- plus, we give you free shipping, too! See them on the new Peach Princess Hentai games page.
In addition to posting the PeaPri games, we've got our usual excellent bunch of Japanese stuff for you, including:
- Several great Japanese erotic magazines, including a new EX CD-ROM (magazine and CD ROM combo at a great price) and Iketeru Momo-jiri (ass fetish magazine)
- Also for magazine fans, we've got some very special back-issues of some premium magazines, featuring Tohno Natsuko and more -- see the Magazines page 2 and Photobooks pages before these items are sold
- We have more stock of the excellent "Body Poster Actress" featuring some of the most popular erotic AV stars in Japan
- Hentai fans should check out the in-stock issues of several hentai magazines we've posted, including the new E-Login, the #1 hentai magazine in Japan
- Like dojinshi? So do we, and there are several new single-issue dojinshi posted to the dojinshi page
- For our manga fans, we've got another excellent volley of manga for you, with a half-dozen all-new postings as well as fresh stock of some of our best titles
- DVD fans should check out Akina Rika's lovely "complete collection" DVD, with 120 minutes of performance by this lovely girl
- Also for DVD fans, a new "Lesbian File" with 2 hours of excellent Indies lesbian fun
- Ever wanted to date Morishita Kurumi? Now you can in her latest release from SOD, Private, in which you you become her virtual lover, go on dates, eat ice cream
- For anime fans, limited stock of a lovely doll figure from Graduation
- Like Pokemon and the other excellent shows from Japan, or know someone who does? Then check out the issues of Yochien we have posted -- this is a kid's magazine that is literally overflowing with toys, cardboard robots or masks, stickers, and more. Very fun and highly collectible
- New "Wacky" items from Japan tonight include a handy "idea pocket" (a wall pocket for storing all sorts of things), the world's greatest "white out pen" from Japan, the only utensil you'll need to fry fish, and the enigmatic "scale keychain" (only the Japanese could have thought of this)
- Finally, we've got a fresh infusion of Japanese snacks, with more stock of all "wata-gum" (cotton candy gum), sake-ame (with real sake in it!), kuro-ame (the surprisingly popular traditional Japanese sweet), Pocky, and more.
Okay, see ou on the web!
Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 24, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Monday, January 22, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 22, 2001
Hello again from Japan, where a condom is also called a "skin."
Have you ever wondered what all the suffixes on Japanese names mean? Well, I'll tell you. The most well-known Japanese suffix is -san, and it goes on the last name (sometimes the first name) and works like "Mr" or "Mrs." It's a polite term, and places a degree of distance between you and the person you're speaking to. In Japanese organizations, or in school settings, lowerclassmen would use "-san" when referring to their upperclassmen, or "senpai"; senpai would tend to use "-kun" when referring to students younger than them. In business settings, you treat a company as a person, when it comes to speaking. If I called Million Publishing to check on J-List's latest magazine order, I'd refer to the person I was talking to as "Million-san." Two more suffixes are "-chan" and "-kun." These are "cute" suffixes which are used when talking to children. In my children's school
For tonight's update, we've got an extra special bunch of new items for you, including:
Okay, see you on the web!
Have you ever wondered what all the suffixes on Japanese names mean? Well, I'll tell you. The most well-known Japanese suffix is -san, and it goes on the last name (sometimes the first name) and works like "Mr" or "Mrs." It's a polite term, and places a degree of distance between you and the person you're speaking to. In Japanese organizations, or in school settings, lowerclassmen would use "-san" when referring to their upperclassmen, or "senpai"; senpai would tend to use "-kun" when referring to students younger than them. In business settings, you treat a company as a person, when it comes to speaking. If I called Million Publishing to check on J-List's latest magazine order, I'd refer to the person I was talking to as "Million-san." Two more suffixes are "-chan" and "-kun." These are "cute" suffixes which are used when talking to children. In my children's school
For tonight's update, we've got an extra special bunch of new items for you, including:
- First, several excellent new magazines for you, including the new Urecco (an excellent issue!), the new Peach Water, and a super all-new erotic magazine, Million Publishing's Extreme Love (recommended for Hazuki Arisa fans)
- We've got some great photobooks for you, both new items as well as some great back-in-stock items -- Asagi Sumiere's lovely "Umteen" erotic nude photobook, fresh stock of Miyazawa Rie's "Santa Fe, and more
- Also on the photobooks page, we've got great fresh stock of the most popular photobook in recent J-List history, Ohura Anna's iNude"
- We've got a bunch of really excellent erotic manga posted to the adult manga pages, including two volumes of the super "Kangofu Rock" series (fantastic erotic nurse manga) and several other great items
- We've got some copies of Comic Jumbo, the popular large bust manga, on the manga page, too
- If you love dojinshi and fan-produced dojin-soft (including CD ROMs of computer images), we've posted another volley of a twenty or so all-new dojinshi books -- with some very cool items for you
- We have two fabulous erotic videos from SOD's "Deep's" label -- Cosplay Doll Special, a *90 minute* video featuring the best cosplay performances of this great series; and Les Hospital 2, with the super Hazuki Arisa (directed by female AV director Kaori Kobayakawa)
- For our DVD customers, see the lovely new 100 minute DVD by Akina Riko -- a wonderful production for DVD
- Another dynamite item -- Deep Kiss Best Selection, a fantastic collection of SOD's most popular erotic video series, on DVD (region 2)
- For fans of the lovely AV idols of the past, we've got another great video featuring the pure and angelic Ikegami Misa
- For fans of Japan's lovely Race Queens, see our idols page for a nice photobook
- We have some great in-stock issues of Japan's most interesting magazines, including Kindai (current JPOP scene), JJ (a fantastic Japanese fashion magazine, posted to the Anime -> Anime & JPOP magazines
- On the Japanese snacks & food page, we've got authentic Japanese wasabi from Japan!
- On our Wacky Things from Japan page, we've got fresh stock of many cool items, including our our best-selling perfect-bound Japanese notebooks (complete with funny English on them), a "back roller, the plug extender" (handy extension cord for those annoying power bricks), and Japanese warming pads for your shoes
- New Wacky Things from Japan items include a cool item for Hello Kitty fans -- paper lunch bags, beautiful full-color paper bags with beautiful printing of Kitty-chan on them
- Finally, when the Star Wars Special Edition was re-released on video last month, it was re-released on Laserdisc here in Japan. We've got this wonderful set of CLV LDs at J-List, a wonderful item for collectors. See it on the DVD page!
Okay, see you on the web!
Saturday, January 20, 2001
Greetings from J-List October 20, 2001
Hello again on this fine Saturday morning in Japan!
Japanese marrying foreigners is at an all-time high, up nearly double from 10 years ago. In 2000, 31,900 international marriages took place, with about 22,000 Japanese men marrying foreign women (mostly from China, South Korea and the Phillippines), and the rest were Japanese women who married men from other countries, mostly America and South Korea. International marriage is very beneficial to Japan, and it helps society move forward in many imporant areas while providing diversity for Japan, which would otherwise be a very closed place.
On the other hand, many of Japan's institutions are very inflexible when it comes to dealing with non-Japanese, which causes frustration. One such system is the Family Register (koseki tohon), basically an official list of which people live in which households, that is maintained by every City Office around the country. If your daughter gets married and goes off to live with her husband's family (called "yome ni iku" or "going off to be a bride"), she is removed from your family's register and added to her husband's. Foreigners, however, don't "fit" into this system, and are never added to the family register (unless they take Japanese citizenship). As a result, it looks to the city we live in that my wife is a single mother with two kids, since I don't "exist" in the eyes of family registry system. (They've sent social workers around to our house a few times to see how this poor "single mother" was getting along.) Recently, the Japanese government has allowed foreigners to be listed in the "comments" section of the register to avoid this confusion.
When Japanese think of foreigners, they think of overly tall, blonde Americans with huge feet, trying to find their way to the right subway line. In actuality, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan are not Westerners, but are from South Korea, North Korea, Brazil, Peru and China. Officially, 1% of Japan's population are foreigners living here, although that number doesn't take into account people who are here illegally, so the number is probably higher. The largest group, the Koreans, are very interesting because many of them were born and raised right here in Japan, and often don't even speak Korean unless they attended one of the Korean-only private schools that pepper thee country. To an American like me, this is quite confusing, as all children born in the U.S. get to be Americans without any problems, and this works for pretty much everyone. But the relationship of Korea and Japan is a very complex one, and more or less by mutual agreement of both sides, Koreans live for generations inside Japan, living and working but never allowing themselves to become culturally assimilated. Or is it the Japanese who keep the Korean population from becomming part of itself? I couldn't possibly say for sure. On the one hand, it's not difficult for anyone (even old gaijin me) to get Japanese citizenship as long as he meets the requirements, and Japan is always very sensitive to possible accusations of racism, so there are no groups that aren't "allowed" to take Japanese citizenship. One thing I must do is take a Japanese name. For many reasons, including the name requirement and the memories of Japanese attrocities during World War II, many Koreans living in Japan don't allow themselves to become Japanese.
Calendar season continues to pass us by, and we see that several of the calendars we got in stock during the week are selling well. It wil be quite hard for us to fill calendar preorders after the end of October, so if there are any interesting anime, JPOP, Japanese beauty or other calendars you're interested in, let us know. We'll get another shipment of calendars in within a week or so, so more preordered calendars can go out. One note: the images we've got posted to the J-List site leave a little something to be desired, since we have to scan the pictures of the calendars from tiny thumbnails. The real calendars are much nicer to look at.
The J-List site was broken for about 8 hours, two days ago, as our programmer was doing some work on the site. We're very sorry for the problem, but it's all fixed now. At some point in the next couple of days, we'll be making some more improvements to the J-List server, moving images to an image server. If you experience any problems with the page for any reason, please let us know right away. Remember that you can always order with the secure email form if our shopping cart gives you trouble. Thanks!
For fans of Japanese adult video, slashed many prices and put many items on the Discount Videos page -- get these great videos for cheap, and get free SAL shipping, too. Included in the discounted items are the popular Zenra (all nude sports) videos, Penis Study, and more!
For the pre-weekend update, we've got some extra-nice items for you, including:
For fans of Japan's bishoujo games, we're reducing the prices on our three Peach Princess hentai T-shirts, which feature images from Tokimeki Check in! and the upcoming Little my Maid. These shirts are beautiful, featuring excellent 4-color images and high quality, and now they're on sale!
Japanese marrying foreigners is at an all-time high, up nearly double from 10 years ago. In 2000, 31,900 international marriages took place, with about 22,000 Japanese men marrying foreign women (mostly from China, South Korea and the Phillippines), and the rest were Japanese women who married men from other countries, mostly America and South Korea. International marriage is very beneficial to Japan, and it helps society move forward in many imporant areas while providing diversity for Japan, which would otherwise be a very closed place.
On the other hand, many of Japan's institutions are very inflexible when it comes to dealing with non-Japanese, which causes frustration. One such system is the Family Register (koseki tohon), basically an official list of which people live in which households, that is maintained by every City Office around the country. If your daughter gets married and goes off to live with her husband's family (called "yome ni iku" or "going off to be a bride"), she is removed from your family's register and added to her husband's. Foreigners, however, don't "fit" into this system, and are never added to the family register (unless they take Japanese citizenship). As a result, it looks to the city we live in that my wife is a single mother with two kids, since I don't "exist" in the eyes of family registry system. (They've sent social workers around to our house a few times to see how this poor "single mother" was getting along.) Recently, the Japanese government has allowed foreigners to be listed in the "comments" section of the register to avoid this confusion.
When Japanese think of foreigners, they think of overly tall, blonde Americans with huge feet, trying to find their way to the right subway line. In actuality, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan are not Westerners, but are from South Korea, North Korea, Brazil, Peru and China. Officially, 1% of Japan's population are foreigners living here, although that number doesn't take into account people who are here illegally, so the number is probably higher. The largest group, the Koreans, are very interesting because many of them were born and raised right here in Japan, and often don't even speak Korean unless they attended one of the Korean-only private schools that pepper thee country. To an American like me, this is quite confusing, as all children born in the U.S. get to be Americans without any problems, and this works for pretty much everyone. But the relationship of Korea and Japan is a very complex one, and more or less by mutual agreement of both sides, Koreans live for generations inside Japan, living and working but never allowing themselves to become culturally assimilated. Or is it the Japanese who keep the Korean population from becomming part of itself? I couldn't possibly say for sure. On the one hand, it's not difficult for anyone (even old gaijin me) to get Japanese citizenship as long as he meets the requirements, and Japan is always very sensitive to possible accusations of racism, so there are no groups that aren't "allowed" to take Japanese citizenship. One thing I must do is take a Japanese name. For many reasons, including the name requirement and the memories of Japanese attrocities during World War II, many Koreans living in Japan don't allow themselves to become Japanese.
Calendar season continues to pass us by, and we see that several of the calendars we got in stock during the week are selling well. It wil be quite hard for us to fill calendar preorders after the end of October, so if there are any interesting anime, JPOP, Japanese beauty or other calendars you're interested in, let us know. We'll get another shipment of calendars in within a week or so, so more preordered calendars can go out. One note: the images we've got posted to the J-List site leave a little something to be desired, since we have to scan the pictures of the calendars from tiny thumbnails. The real calendars are much nicer to look at.
The J-List site was broken for about 8 hours, two days ago, as our programmer was doing some work on the site. We're very sorry for the problem, but it's all fixed now. At some point in the next couple of days, we'll be making some more improvements to the J-List server, moving images to an image server. If you experience any problems with the page for any reason, please let us know right away. Remember that you can always order with the secure email form if our shopping cart gives you trouble. Thanks!
For fans of Japanese adult video, slashed many prices and put many items on the Discount Videos page -- get these great videos for cheap, and get free SAL shipping, too. Included in the discounted items are the popular Zenra (all nude sports) videos, Penis Study, and more!
For the pre-weekend update, we've got some extra-nice items for you, including:
- First, weve got a nice mix of new magazines for you, including the new Gal's Dee, just brimming with wonderful bust-fetish girls like Makoto, the lovely covergirl (93 cm bust, F cup), and many other newly posted items
- For fans of Japanese idols, we've got two items for you. In Hakkutsu Magazine, see old and embarassing pictures of Japan's famous idols like Yuka and Mami gotoh. Then in Video World CD-ROM, see startling (?) footage of Japan's idols performing AV before they were famous
- For lovers of Japan's unique kogals, check out Yes!! featuring a slew of kogals and Japanese female college girls
- We've got some excellent photobooks posted for you, including the new installment of the excellent Tennyo series, featuring the erotic nude of Ayumi Tahara
- Also for photobook fans, we've restockd the Yellows Angels and Yellows Americans photobooks, which catalog the nudes of beautiful women for posterity
- For Race Queen fans, limited stock of a nice item indeed, the Top GT Race Queen photobook
- For fans of Japan's high-end bondage pornography, we've got the popular DVD Video Cinema, featuring a magazine as well as a full 2 hour DVD with two complete bondage AV productions
- Our customers often ask us to get even more manga in stock, so we cheerful oblige -- we've got a major update to our hentai manga pages, with several new items as well as fresh stock of some doujinshi anthology books including the Electric Fighting Daughter's series
- For yaoi lovers, we've got the excellent Sony Magazine Comics "Rutile" (yes, Sony makes a homosexual comic, go figure), along with fresh stock of several of the popular Be Boy Zips
- If you love the erotic doujinshi themes known as "kemono" (beast), humans with animal characteristics like cat ears and furry tails, check out the upate to our doujinshi page, with several adult doujinshi posted
- We've got some great DVDs for you. For lesbian fans, we have a super *4 hour* all-lesbian megapack from Media Supply. Then, Nanami Nanase, star of the best-selling One Week with Only Semen, is back in a massive 200 minute product in which she answers "the flagrant requests of semen maniacs with a smiling face"
- In addition to the reduced-price videos, we've got a new video release from Soft on Demand's famous director "Dogma," the lovely Erika Nagai is a karate-wielding tornado who beats up guys then performs "tekoki" on them
- For anime fans, we've got a cool Card Captor Sakura Figure Clock that's just great, as well as lovely "angel and devil" figures for fans of the Japanese fashion doll Licca-chan
- For fans of Japanese bishoujo games, see the collectible cards for "Air," the popular game from Visual Art's
- We've got some new funny "Japanese buttons" with funny and bizarre pictures and images on them, and some excellent new Japanese "hachimaki" headbands
- We've got several new items on our Japanese snacks and food page, including a delicious new flavor of Shigekix, the popular super-sour "hard gummi," Japanese shreaded ika, and some chocolate gum that's really good
- We have fresh stock of several of the sold-out "ukiyoe" chopsticks on the "traditional things" page
- Our Wacky Things from Japan main page includes many new items, including rolls of beautiful Japanese "washi" paper, fresh stock of the always-popular "fude pen" (a pen that you can use to write Japanese calligraphy), a new item in the cheerful "Kitchen Hanako" line of cute things for your kitchen, a cute "door message" for your door with ridiculous English on it, and more
- Finally, if you've ordered from J-List before, you may have been surprised to find a packet of Japanese pocket tissue included in with your order. In Japan, a major way that companies get their message out to people is through printed advertising tissue, handy packets of tissue that are fun to receive and handy to use. J-List's pocket tissue is always popular when we bring it to anime conventions, but now, by customer request, we're making 12-packs of our handy tissue available at our cost, to J-List customers who want to carry a little piece of J-List with them wherever they go. You'll get 12 packs of our famous pocket tissue in a plastic protective case. Share them with your friends, we don't mind! (Of course, a free packet of tissue will still be included with every order).
For fans of Japan's bishoujo games, we're reducing the prices on our three Peach Princess hentai T-shirts, which feature images from Tokimeki Check in! and the upcoming Little my Maid. These shirts are beautiful, featuring excellent 4-color images and high quality, and now they're on sale!
Friday, January 19, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 19, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Wednesday, January 17, 2001
Greetings from J-List October 17, 2001
Hello from your friends at J-List!
There are some words that the Japanese are doomed to have problems with, due to the fact that Japanese is a rather phonetically impoverished language, with just 5 vowels and a limited repertoire of sounds produced normally. The sounds of L/R are not differentiated in Japanese, which makes some English words hard for them -- hence, jokes about the Japanese sending Viagra to the U.S. last November because we couldn't get an election. "Cone" and "corn" are impossible to separate in Japanese, and Japanese may be apt to think that cones for Ice Cream are made out of corn. I've lived in Japan for 9 years, but I've never seen a Japanese spell the word "flea market" correctly -- it's usually "free market" (as in, a market you don't need to pay to get into), and I've even seen "frea market" once. A curb is something by the side of the road, and a curve is a turn in the road, but don't ask a Japanese which is which. And finally, one of the most famous pizza chains in Japan is Pizza Hut, but 120 million Japanese all think it's Pizza Hat (as in Red Hat Linux).
Well, after 6+ years, Kaori and her boyfriend Hitoshi finally tied the knot, and they did it with style. The wedding was a big success, and all the J-List team was there to congratulate her. Kaori was beautiful -- actually, that my son Kazuki told me, "She's so pretty, I didn't know who she was." If you'd like to see the pictures from the wedding, along with short MPEG movies, they're at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=KAORIWEDDING&Category_Code=PC
Well, the first calendars have come in, and we've dually processed them for those had had them preordered. If your calendars didn't come in yet, don't worry -- we'll get some more in next week or so. We've posted about 30 calendars that are now in stock -- everything from sexy idol to art to nude calendars, so you can buy them now with no waiting. Unfortunately, we received word that one of the most popular calendars this year, the 2002 Evangelion calendar, has been canceled by the publisher.
In addition to the calendars that have been posted, we've got a bunch of very nice new items for you, including:
About a month ago, I posted some information on how Japanese is pronounced. At the time, my homepage was down, but now that the site is up again, anyone wanting a primer in how to pronounce Japanese can check out the site at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=J-PAGE1&Category_Code=BJ
There are some words that the Japanese are doomed to have problems with, due to the fact that Japanese is a rather phonetically impoverished language, with just 5 vowels and a limited repertoire of sounds produced normally. The sounds of L/R are not differentiated in Japanese, which makes some English words hard for them -- hence, jokes about the Japanese sending Viagra to the U.S. last November because we couldn't get an election. "Cone" and "corn" are impossible to separate in Japanese, and Japanese may be apt to think that cones for Ice Cream are made out of corn. I've lived in Japan for 9 years, but I've never seen a Japanese spell the word "flea market" correctly -- it's usually "free market" (as in, a market you don't need to pay to get into), and I've even seen "frea market" once. A curb is something by the side of the road, and a curve is a turn in the road, but don't ask a Japanese which is which. And finally, one of the most famous pizza chains in Japan is Pizza Hut, but 120 million Japanese all think it's Pizza Hat (as in Red Hat Linux).
Well, after 6+ years, Kaori and her boyfriend Hitoshi finally tied the knot, and they did it with style. The wedding was a big success, and all the J-List team was there to congratulate her. Kaori was beautiful -- actually, that my son Kazuki told me, "She's so pretty, I didn't know who she was." If you'd like to see the pictures from the wedding, along with short MPEG movies, they're at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=KAORIWEDDING&Category_Code=PC
Well, the first calendars have come in, and we've dually processed them for those had had them preordered. If your calendars didn't come in yet, don't worry -- we'll get some more in next week or so. We've posted about 30 calendars that are now in stock -- everything from sexy idol to art to nude calendars, so you can buy them now with no waiting. Unfortunately, we received word that one of the most popular calendars this year, the 2002 Evangelion calendar, has been canceled by the publisher.
In addition to the calendars that have been posted, we've got a bunch of very nice new items for you, including:
- First, we've been bringing Japan's unique bishoujo games to you for years, and we've had great fun making them available to you. As a way of saying thanks, we're lowering the price of Virtual Reality Dating Simulator May Club to match Three Sisters' Story and Season of the Sakura, just $14.95
- We have some new magazines, including the new issue of the bold Shuffle (an amateur kogal hardcore magazine), and the new issue of Push!, a great Japanese hentai/bishoujo game magazine with CD-ROM
- We've got some very nice new soft- and hardcover photobooks for you, including Eri Kimura's solemn nude photobook, and a rip-off of the famous "Yellows" nude photobook series, as well as fresh stock of several popular items
- For fans of famous Japanese adult video idols, check out Body Shop, featuring the "photographic of 11 girls hair nude" including Ichigo Milk, Ami Ayukawa and my own fave, Manami Yoshii
- Also, we've got fresh stock of the very popular Tennyo photobook series (Ichigo Milk, Aoi Minami, and Hikaru Shiina), which features a different girl in each volume, photographed by Masaaki Miyazawa
- For lovers of Japan's highly developed bondage and S&M photography, check out the new issue of "the Most of Beautiful Slave" (we love these titles...), which features 16 different models
- We've got a major update of erotic manga for you, with many new volumes posted by some of Japan's most famous manga artists, as well as a major restock of popular manga by Chataro, Narise Ayumi, Yutaka Tanaka and more
- For yaoi fans, see the new manga works we've posted for you, too
- We've got new doujinshi, a selection of very nice erotic works that will probably go quickly again -- check them out as quickly as you can
- We've got some excellent items for DVD fans, including the Bunko Kanazawa Best Selection (see her best work at SOD), and a very nice new Zamen Gokkun ("Semen Swallowing") DVD with two complete productions on it
- Also for DVD lovers, we've restocked the hard-to-keep-in-stock Mai Hagiwara soft porn DVDs, and also the incredibly popular Anna Ohura "Heartful Summer"
- For lovers of Japan's ever-sexy Race Queens, be sure to see the new Pony Canyon Race Queen we've posted -- you get to view the girls from the angle of a dog, and more
- For anime/manga fans, we've reposted the sold-out Bilingual comics to the English manga and anime pages, and we'll get fresh stock of the English/Japanese Card Captor Sakura and Love Hina in soon
- Also for anime fans, we've got more stock of the very-cool Gatchaman Complete Figure series
- We have some new "wacky" Japanese signs for you, including "Please take off your shoes," and fresh stock of our popular Japanese emergency exit signs
- Also, more stock of our most popular Japanese "hachimaki" headband ever, "Watashi wa H" (I am a pervert), always a fun item to have around
- We've got some nice items on our "traditional things from Japan" page, including beautiful Japanese "Chouchin" lanterns made of paper, as well as fresh stock of our popular Japanese designer chopsticks
- For fans of silly English, we've got more of the beautiful notebooks with the "punch out" design on the cover
- An item we're quite excited about are the first collectible sumo trading cards we've seen, featuring wonderful photos of Japan's most famous sumo wrestlers (along with their names in English), great for sumo fans
- Finally, our Wacky Things from Japan main page brings you a nifty "rice shaper" for making Japanese or Thai dishes, a cool portable phone holder for your car, oversized boxing gloves that look ridiculous, a new set of brushes for those who want to try their hands at Japanese calligraphy, and more!
About a month ago, I posted some information on how Japanese is pronounced. At the time, my homepage was down, but now that the site is up again, anyone wanting a primer in how to pronounce Japanese can check out the site at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=J-PAGE1&Category_Code=BJ
Greetings from J-List January 17, 2001
Greetings from Japan, where people inexplicably write last names in CAPITAL LETTERS.
In Japan, a meeting of friend for drinks near the end of the year is called a Forget-the-year Party ("bounen-kai"), and a party held after Jan 1 is a New Year's party ("shinnen-kai"). I had a New Years meeting with some friends in Shibuya, one of the three main "playgrounds" of Tokyo, and we had a great time. My favorite restaurant in Shibuya, an authentic Italian restaurant with the unlikely name of DJ's Bar & Grill, recently closed its doors, a victim of the Japanese recession, but we managed to have a great time anyway.
First, we had dinner at Anna Millers, a chain of restaurants known for having beautiful waitresses and the sexiest uniforms you've ever seen -- the rumor is that the girls' hourly wage goes up, the shorter she cuts her skirt. (See Kayama Juri's photobook on the photobook page for an example of the uniform.) Then, we we went to a restaurant called the Buttsu (Budda) Trick Cafe, a fascinating place where all the food is a hodge-podge of Asian food. from Vietnamese spring rolls to Thai-style chicken and hot sauce -- and everyone eats around a replica of the Giant Buddha of Kamakura. Be careful not to sit with your back to Buddha, or you may offend him. Finally, we headed over the Shibuya branch of TGI Friday's for one of the rarest treats in Japan -- frozen margaritas. It was fun to experience such unabashed Americanism for a change, but coming out of the restaurant to find myself on the streets of Tokyo kind of made my head spin.
For this evening's update, we've got a carload of cool items for you. They include:
We've posted a link to some excellent reviews of region-free DVD players, at the top of the region-2 DVD page, in case you're looking for information on which region-free players are the best for you.
In Japan, a meeting of friend for drinks near the end of the year is called a Forget-the-year Party ("bounen-kai"), and a party held after Jan 1 is a New Year's party ("shinnen-kai"). I had a New Years meeting with some friends in Shibuya, one of the three main "playgrounds" of Tokyo, and we had a great time. My favorite restaurant in Shibuya, an authentic Italian restaurant with the unlikely name of DJ's Bar & Grill, recently closed its doors, a victim of the Japanese recession, but we managed to have a great time anyway.
First, we had dinner at Anna Millers, a chain of restaurants known for having beautiful waitresses and the sexiest uniforms you've ever seen -- the rumor is that the girls' hourly wage goes up, the shorter she cuts her skirt. (See Kayama Juri's photobook on the photobook page for an example of the uniform.) Then, we we went to a restaurant called the Buttsu (Budda) Trick Cafe, a fascinating place where all the food is a hodge-podge of Asian food. from Vietnamese spring rolls to Thai-style chicken and hot sauce -- and everyone eats around a replica of the Giant Buddha of Kamakura. Be careful not to sit with your back to Buddha, or you may offend him. Finally, we headed over the Shibuya branch of TGI Friday's for one of the rarest treats in Japan -- frozen margaritas. It was fun to experience such unabashed Americanism for a change, but coming out of the restaurant to find myself on the streets of Tokyo kind of made my head spin.
For this evening's update, we've got a carload of cool items for you. They include:
- Some excellent magazines, including the new issue of the always-popular Gal's Shower, and a special "wide" issue of Urecco, called Urecco Super Beautiez, which features *18* of Japan's most popular AV idols
- We have a bunch of all-new photobooks for you, including several lovely new books in the Bishojo Memorial series, and Minami Masako's lovely underwater nude hardcover book
- Along with our new photobooks, we've got a great volley of some excellent sold out books -- including more stock of Ariga Mih's "Hommage" and several more
- We have another huge volley of excellent erotic manga, with not only all-new manga volumes, but many (more than a dozen) back in stock items -- Distance, Chattaro, Hit Comics, and many more
- We've got fresh stock of all issues of the very popular G-Taste, the excellent hentai illustration book series by Yagami Hiroki
- Also update, our yaoi page, with new yaoi manga, including some very hardcore books
- For our video customers, we have two brand new releases on the Videos (new releases) page: G-Cup Lesbians, and Hinano Tubame's lovely "Prime" erotic performance
- We have fresh discount videos for the discount page, with all videos receiving free shipping -- check them out
- Morishita Kurumi fans will love the excellent "Morishita Kurumi: AV Actress, a fantastic 120 minute erotic video that takes you go Kuru-Kuru's rural hometown, where you meet her mother and younger brother and hear what they think of Kurumi's AV career -- it's a fantastic video for you
- Also, we've posted Kurumi's first three AV releases, now available on DVD, on the region-2 code DVD page. Like all SOD's DVD releases, they're zoned for region two, but their high quality and bargain price (almost always cheaper than the video releases) make a strong case for looking into a region-free DVD player
- For anime fans, check out several items, including a cool Kubrish toy set featuring the famous Iron Man 28 robot figures
- We have fresh stock of several of our sold-out wooden signs, including my room, secret room, and It is forbidden to urinate here"
- Restocked items on our popular Wacky Things from Japan page include "hand of a grandchild" (mago no te), the excellent bamboo backscratchers, and those really cool Japanese eraser sets, featuring rubber erasers in the shape of sushi, curry rice, tempura, and other Japanese foods
- Finally, some all-new funny Japanese notebooks -- useful, high-quality "perfect bound" blank notebooks with lines that won't smear if you spill water on them, complete with ridiculous English printed on the covers. Enjoy!
We've posted a link to some excellent reviews of region-free DVD players, at the top of the region-2 DVD page, in case you're looking for information on which region-free players are the best for you.
Monday, January 15, 2001
Greetings from J-List October 15, 2001
Hello again from Japan, the land of strawberry and butter sandwiches...
One thing that's often a shock to outgoing, cheerful Westerners is the Japanese tendency of modesty. Try praising a Japanese person by telling them how good their English is, and they'll disagree with you, telling you "No, my English isn't good at all." If you compliment most American women on how pretty they look, they'll probably reply with a warm "thank you," but taking note of how pretty a Japanese women looks can be a confusing experience, as they shake their head and firmly disagree with you. In Japanese society, the concept of "kenson" (translated as humility or modesty) is an important quality for people to have in a land that's got so many more people per square kilometer (325 vs. just 26 in the USA). There are many stereotypes and silly notions about Japanese modesty, many which were inserted into American popular culture by novelists like James Clavell, but basically, the concept of "kenson" just means that people not be boastful but instead try to play down their own skills or abilities in a polite way. There are many phrases in Japanese that illustrate the tendency to show humility. For example, when you give someone a gift, you usually say "Here's something that's not interesting" (tsumaranai mono desu kedo...) or if you bake someone a cake, you say, "I'm not sure if it tastes good or not..." (Oishii ka dou ka wakaranai kedo).
Modesty is never more important than during a job interview, when you'll basically be asked various questions by the interviewer and must show your good character by how humble you are. It's very different than in the U.S., where interviewees must enunciate their skills in concrete ways in order to stand out from the pack. We did some interviewing last week, talking with several potential Japanese staff members, and it was a very interesting thing to partake in. One girl in particular boasted about how good her English was (it wasn't), and basically violated the idea of "humility" as a good thing to be. It wasn't hard deciding which girl we weren't going to hire...
I get a lot of questions from people who want to teach ESL (that's English as a Second Language in teacher-speak) in Japan. While there are tens of thousands of teachers teaching English in Japan at a variety of schools, the long Japanese recession has done a lot of damage to the "eikaiwa" (English conversation) industry, bringing salaries and general teaching conditions down. Teaching English is still a great way to get to see and live in Japan, and it's also a super way to meet some very nice Japanese people (including girls) who are interested in learning English -- but anyone interested in teaching in Japan (or in other countries in Asia) should know that teaching ESL isn't the stuff that satisfying careers are made of, for most people. Anyone who wants to teach in Japan, either on the JET program, or at one of the three major English conversation school chains, or at smaller private schools, would need a bachelor's degree from a four-year college (any subject will do, no one cares what you majored in here), an open mind about things like squid pizza (you think I'm joking, don't you?), and the desire to do right by your Japanese hosts -- e.g., learn a little humility. With the long string of Good Times in the U.S., most language teachers here come from Canada and Australia, so there's probably some demand for Americans to teach. Also, although female language teachers are always in demand, it seems that there are almost none here, so maybe there are some opportunities available (husband and wife teams can also find jobs together, too).
Five years ago this month, we started J-List. At first it was just Kaori and me as things slowly picked up and started to grow. Now Kaori-chan, J-List employee #1, is getting married to her fiancee, who she's dated since high school. Japanese take weddings seriously, and Kaori's been planning her wedding for months (she reserved the church over a year ago, to be sure she could have the wedding on one of the lucky days according to the Chinese calendar). The J-List team will be there in force to congratulate Kaori, and we'll bring our cameras. Oh, that reminds me, I've got to write a speech! As Kaori's boss, I have to give a speech to 150+ people, and in Japanese, too!
Well, that's all for now -- until our next regular update, we'll see you on the web!
One thing that's often a shock to outgoing, cheerful Westerners is the Japanese tendency of modesty. Try praising a Japanese person by telling them how good their English is, and they'll disagree with you, telling you "No, my English isn't good at all." If you compliment most American women on how pretty they look, they'll probably reply with a warm "thank you," but taking note of how pretty a Japanese women looks can be a confusing experience, as they shake their head and firmly disagree with you. In Japanese society, the concept of "kenson" (translated as humility or modesty) is an important quality for people to have in a land that's got so many more people per square kilometer (325 vs. just 26 in the USA). There are many stereotypes and silly notions about Japanese modesty, many which were inserted into American popular culture by novelists like James Clavell, but basically, the concept of "kenson" just means that people not be boastful but instead try to play down their own skills or abilities in a polite way. There are many phrases in Japanese that illustrate the tendency to show humility. For example, when you give someone a gift, you usually say "Here's something that's not interesting" (tsumaranai mono desu kedo...) or if you bake someone a cake, you say, "I'm not sure if it tastes good or not..." (Oishii ka dou ka wakaranai kedo).
Modesty is never more important than during a job interview, when you'll basically be asked various questions by the interviewer and must show your good character by how humble you are. It's very different than in the U.S., where interviewees must enunciate their skills in concrete ways in order to stand out from the pack. We did some interviewing last week, talking with several potential Japanese staff members, and it was a very interesting thing to partake in. One girl in particular boasted about how good her English was (it wasn't), and basically violated the idea of "humility" as a good thing to be. It wasn't hard deciding which girl we weren't going to hire...
I get a lot of questions from people who want to teach ESL (that's English as a Second Language in teacher-speak) in Japan. While there are tens of thousands of teachers teaching English in Japan at a variety of schools, the long Japanese recession has done a lot of damage to the "eikaiwa" (English conversation) industry, bringing salaries and general teaching conditions down. Teaching English is still a great way to get to see and live in Japan, and it's also a super way to meet some very nice Japanese people (including girls) who are interested in learning English -- but anyone interested in teaching in Japan (or in other countries in Asia) should know that teaching ESL isn't the stuff that satisfying careers are made of, for most people. Anyone who wants to teach in Japan, either on the JET program, or at one of the three major English conversation school chains, or at smaller private schools, would need a bachelor's degree from a four-year college (any subject will do, no one cares what you majored in here), an open mind about things like squid pizza (you think I'm joking, don't you?), and the desire to do right by your Japanese hosts -- e.g., learn a little humility. With the long string of Good Times in the U.S., most language teachers here come from Canada and Australia, so there's probably some demand for Americans to teach. Also, although female language teachers are always in demand, it seems that there are almost none here, so maybe there are some opportunities available (husband and wife teams can also find jobs together, too).
Five years ago this month, we started J-List. At first it was just Kaori and me as things slowly picked up and started to grow. Now Kaori-chan, J-List employee #1, is getting married to her fiancee, who she's dated since high school. Japanese take weddings seriously, and Kaori's been planning her wedding for months (she reserved the church over a year ago, to be sure she could have the wedding on one of the lucky days according to the Chinese calendar). The J-List team will be there in force to congratulate Kaori, and we'll bring our cameras. Oh, that reminds me, I've got to write a speech! As Kaori's boss, I have to give a speech to 150+ people, and in Japanese, too!
Well, that's all for now -- until our next regular update, we'll see you on the web!
Saturday, January 13, 2001
Greetings from J-List October 13, 2001
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Friday, January 12, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 12, 2001
Hello, and Happy Friday from Japan, from your expat friends at J-List!
American companies must always strive to bring unique products that meet the tastes of other countries, and in Japan, companies like McDonald's and Burger King strive to do this. McDonald's is currently running a special on their new Salmon Muniel Deluxe sandwich, which is accompanied by a new limited edition pie, Pear and Cranberry, which are both quite good. Burger King has copied McDonald's popular Teriyaki Burger with a Teriyaki Burger of its own, which is definitely a taste improvement, but they really missed their target with this month's special, the Mexican Ravioli Burger, a fried large ravioli with spicy Mexican sauce inside on a bun.
Driving in Japan can be different from what you might be used to. First, while many people prefer to drive with their lights on during the day in the U.S. for extra safety, is never done here, and if you leave your lights on while you drive, it causes other drivers to stop you and tell you that your lights are on. While honking a horn at another driver can cause road rage in the U.S., here a short "beep" is the universal way of saying thanks and good-bye as you pull away. Most drivers turn off their car's headlights at intersections (leaving the parking lights on), as a courtesy to drivers who might be blinded by their lights on the other side of the intersection. In Tokyo, where drivers drive with consideration for others (unlike Gunma, where we live), a two-second flashing of the hazard lights is the correct way to say "thank you" when another driver gives you the right of way. And no matter how much I try not to
We like to have extra-special updates on Friday if we can, and today is no exception: we've got a bunch of great items.
Thanks to everyone who passed on advise on how to view region-2 DVDs. We've updated the top of the Region-2 DVD page with links to a nice code-free player for $299 that has many other extra features, along with various links to information on ways of getting around the region lockouts with your PC's DVD-ROM drive. We've also got a link to a useful program that lets you reset your region code if you're using a Mac.
American companies must always strive to bring unique products that meet the tastes of other countries, and in Japan, companies like McDonald's and Burger King strive to do this. McDonald's is currently running a special on their new Salmon Muniel Deluxe sandwich, which is accompanied by a new limited edition pie, Pear and Cranberry, which are both quite good. Burger King has copied McDonald's popular Teriyaki Burger with a Teriyaki Burger of its own, which is definitely a taste improvement, but they really missed their target with this month's special, the Mexican Ravioli Burger, a fried large ravioli with spicy Mexican sauce inside on a bun.
Driving in Japan can be different from what you might be used to. First, while many people prefer to drive with their lights on during the day in the U.S. for extra safety, is never done here, and if you leave your lights on while you drive, it causes other drivers to stop you and tell you that your lights are on. While honking a horn at another driver can cause road rage in the U.S., here a short "beep" is the universal way of saying thanks and good-bye as you pull away. Most drivers turn off their car's headlights at intersections (leaving the parking lights on), as a courtesy to drivers who might be blinded by their lights on the other side of the intersection. In Tokyo, where drivers drive with consideration for others (unlike Gunma, where we live), a two-second flashing of the hazard lights is the correct way to say "thank you" when another driver gives you the right of way. And no matter how much I try not to
We like to have extra-special updates on Friday if we can, and today is no exception: we've got a bunch of great items.
- First, several new magazines on the magazines pages, including Subijin, for fans of busty amateur girls, and PC Dash, a nifty magazine + idol CD ROM
- For photobook fans, we've got a dynamite item: the often-requested "Flowers" hardcover photobook featuring Aoi Minori and Horiuchi Nana
- Also for photobook fans, many new and back-in-stock items on the photobooks page, including Sakura Makoto's "Cherish" photobook and limited stock of Yoshino Minami' angelic "Spring" photobook
- If you love Japan's very special let fetish books, check out the excellent items on the let photobook page, including fresh stock of "Cosplay Top Mode" and "Legs of Rich Girl 3"
- We've got fresh stock of the incredibly popular Crystal Card nude collectible cards (maybe because Ohura Anna is included in this set?)
- For manga fans, there are many cool items posted to the manga pages, including fresh stock of many of our most popular books, and more
- There are new items on the dojinshi page, including some very popular and much-requested dojinshi
- For fans of the popular Japanese genre known as "tekoki" (females giving hand jobs to men), another great item: Hayashi Yumika's very erotic "Do you want a hand job? 4" from the excellent Soft on Demand folks, including many interesting ways for an AV idol to jack off a man
- Also for AV fans, two very special and rare items: Ikegami Misa's lovely "Twinkling Apple" erotic performance, and the busty Sawaguchi Miki's "Huge Breast Aventure"
- We have two excellent and value-priced erotic DVDs zoned for "ALL" countries, including a double feature with Sakura Nana and Misaki Mao, on the DVD pages
- We've got an update to our fast-growing bishojo/hentai DVD page, with a DVD from the popular Dokyusei 2 anime
- For our anime fans, we've got several cool items, including more stock of the sold-out Gundam Mark II from Zeta Gundam (AEUG version) and a fantastic anime phone strap for Lupin III lovers
- We have fresh stock of two surprisingly popular items on our snacks pages -- Kuro-Ame Black Candy and Japanese sake candy -- as well as two cool new items (the classic Sakuma Drop hard candies as seen in Grave of the Fireflies, and Lotte's puzzling "Crunky")
- Our patented Wacky Things from Japan page has been updated again, with fresh stock of several nice items, including Hiragana and Katakana study notebooks and other funny Japanese notebooks with strange English on them, that nifty "relax pillow, and more Japanese onsen (hot springs) powder for your bath
- Finally, new items for the Wacky Things from Japan page include Megane Cleaner, a super way to clean the lenses of your glasses or sunglasses, and another version of our popular anti-germ masks from Japan!
Thanks to everyone who passed on advise on how to view region-2 DVDs. We've updated the top of the Region-2 DVD page with links to a nice code-free player for $299 that has many other extra features, along with various links to information on ways of getting around the region lockouts with your PC's DVD-ROM drive. We've also got a link to a useful program that lets you reset your region code if you're using a Mac.
Wednesday, January 10, 2001
Greetings from J-List January 10, 2001
Hello again from your friend in Japan! Pardon my typing tonight, I was up til 4 am watching the Macworld Expo keynote speech via webcast...
The Chinese language and writing system is to the Japanese very much what Latin and Greek are to the west: the source of all science and expression of ideas. Just as the words we use in English come from words in classical languages, kanji and the ways in which words are combined using Japanese characters to make new words are an interesting way to understand the language. Although now the Japanese have English to turn to when new ideas come along, needing words to label them -- resulting in words like "DVD player" and "illustrator" being used as-is in Japanese, albeit written in the katakana syllibery -- there are just as many cases where new names come from kanji, combined by joining kanji elements to make a new word.
There are several amusing phrases that speak to the Japanese and their relationship with Chinese characters, kanji. In Sazae-san, the long-running anime that captures in calming, peaceful tones the happiness of a traditional Japanese family, for example, Sazae and her husband, Masuo, sleep on futons with their son, Tara-chan, sandwiched in between. This is called sleeping in "kawa no ji" or "like the character for river" since it imitates the three lines of the character for river. Also
For this evening's update, we've got some very nice new items for you, including:
While the vast majority of the Japanese adult and other DVDs J-List carries are zoned for "ALL" countries, meaning you can view them on any DVD player, we do our best to stock those discs that are zoned for region 2 (Japan and Europe).Virtually all anime DVDs, including our hentai DVDs, are coded for region 2, as are SOD's DVD line. The country lockouts are frustrating for people in North America and Asia trying to view code-2 discs, but remember, there are several ways to view these DVDs, most of which are outlined at the top of the region-2 DVD page. I personally keep my Mac's DVD drive set to region 2, and view all region-2 DVDs on my computer (you can change the code up to 5 times). Also
The Chinese language and writing system is to the Japanese very much what Latin and Greek are to the west: the source of all science and expression of ideas. Just as the words we use in English come from words in classical languages, kanji and the ways in which words are combined using Japanese characters to make new words are an interesting way to understand the language. Although now the Japanese have English to turn to when new ideas come along, needing words to label them -- resulting in words like "DVD player" and "illustrator" being used as-is in Japanese, albeit written in the katakana syllibery -- there are just as many cases where new names come from kanji, combined by joining kanji elements to make a new word.
There are several amusing phrases that speak to the Japanese and their relationship with Chinese characters, kanji. In Sazae-san, the long-running anime that captures in calming, peaceful tones the happiness of a traditional Japanese family, for example, Sazae and her husband, Masuo, sleep on futons with their son, Tara-chan, sandwiched in between. This is called sleeping in "kawa no ji" or "like the character for river" since it imitates the three lines of the character for river. Also
For this evening's update, we've got some very nice new items for you, including:
- First, some great new stock of magazines, including the great Pink Gold, as well as several backissues from 1999
- If you love S&M photobooks and Japan's high-end fetish books, we have fresh stock of several items, including a cool issue of Slave Mania
- There are several very nice photobooks posted on the Japanese photobooks page
- For leg fetish fans, more stock of the sold-out deluxe "Mini-Suka Super"
- We have yet *even* more 2001 calendars, including the excellent Haruyo Morita works, the World of Soba noodles, and a wonderful nude calendar featuring "Kaori, on the calendars pages
- For erotic manga fans, we've got another major update, with a half dozen all new books posted, as well as many very cool back from the dead" books that had been sold out in the past (but which we have extremely limited stock of on hand)
- Monday's volley of dojinshi disappeared in record time, so we've got another for you -- a bunch of excellent new adult dojinshi which we picked up at the winter Comic Market
- Fans of the dynamite Morishita Kurumi have reason to be happy, with her super 90 minute "Kuru-Milk" video, featuring Kuru-Kuru decked our as a Japanese kogal, right down to the tanned skin -- it's all very erotic
- Also for SOD fans, a super item called Sperm Lesbian, a neat featuring with two lovely AV idols performing hetero lesbian sexual acts (sometimes at the same time)
- To help us lower our stock levles, we've got even more discount videos on the discount pages, all with free shipping
- Newly added stock to our Wacky Things from Japan page include another really lovely "Japanese congratulations envelope" (used for giving money at weddings, but you can find a dozen uses for it), as well as a nifty "trash net" that removes link and other trash from your washing machine as you wash your clothes
- For Speed Racer fans, we have fresh stock of the oh-so-cool die-cast Mach 5 car, complete with all the excellent features of the original car
- Finally, by customer request, we've created "sampler boxes" of our unique Japanese snack foods, featuring different selections of some of the snacks we love most, including Pocky, Hi-Chu Kids, Wata-Pachi (exploding pop rocks and cotton candy), and of course, Japan's wonderful varieties of gum. Three sets available, and all are shipped in special protective plastic cases.
While the vast majority of the Japanese adult and other DVDs J-List carries are zoned for "ALL" countries, meaning you can view them on any DVD player, we do our best to stock those discs that are zoned for region 2 (Japan and Europe).Virtually all anime DVDs, including our hentai DVDs, are coded for region 2, as are SOD's DVD line. The country lockouts are frustrating for people in North America and Asia trying to view code-2 discs, but remember, there are several ways to view these DVDs, most of which are outlined at the top of the region-2 DVD page. I personally keep my Mac's DVD drive set to region 2, and view all region-2 DVDs on my computer (you can change the code up to 5 times). Also
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)