Friday, April 26, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 26, 2002
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 24, 2002
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Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 17, 2002
Hello again from Japan, where you never stand your chopsticks straight up in rice (only dead people do this).
In Japan, as is well known, you take off your shoes before entering a house. The foyer of Japanese houses have a recessed floor area where you can leave your shoes, or put them in a "geta-bako" or shoes-box, to store them. For gaijin living in Japan, having to take your shoes off and put them on again means you learn to wear "Japan-friendly" shoes pretty quickly -- no more tightly laced high-top basketball shoes. It's just one more little thing about living in Japan.
A major path to business success seems to be, watch what successful companies do in the U.S., then do it in Japan before they can get over here. In America, eBay may be on top of the hill when it comes to online auctions, but in Japan it's Yahoo, and Yahoo's Japanese auction site is so successful that last month, eBay officially ended their attempts at making a Japanese version of itself. Pizza Hut is another similar success story. After observing the paradigm shift from eating pizza in restaurants to having it delivered, Pizza Hut copied the Domino's strategy in Japan, opening hundreds of franchises and delivering pizza in 30 minutes or less. Pizza Hut (whose motto is "Dynamic and Speedy" by the way) has a strong presence all over Japan, but Dominoes is only available in a few cities.
We're pleased with the reaction we've had to the very unique Daki-Makura ("Hug Pillows"), the huge huggable pillows featuring famous characters from Tohru Nishimaki's Blue Eyes mangas, in larger than life versions so you can feel like the characters are right there in the room with you. We wanted to make one comment about the price -- at $160 and $205 for the medium and large size pillows, they aren't cheap. These are a rare and highly collectible item from Japan that are impossible to get outside of Japan, and they're very expensive inside Japan, too (when you can find them at all). Feedback and requests on our new Daki-Makura page is much appreciated.
J-List strives to bring Japan and Japanese pop culture in all its forms to our customers, we've decided to start carrying Japanese film on DVD. Although it's a very small country, Japanese film has had a very strong influence on the rest of the world. Since there are many Japanese film that are released here in Japan but are not available outside of Japan, we feel it's our duty to make these products available. See our first titles on the newly renamed Japanese Film & Anime DVD page, with some nice titles selected by our resident movie freak, Tomo.
For the new update, we've got some excellent new items for you, including:
Spring has come to Japan, and after Spring comes summer. Summer in Japan is hot and humid, and in addition to causing much general discomfort, it also causes chocolate snacks like Pocky to melt and become very difficult to eat. Since we won't be ordering any more Pocky until the end of Summer, you should order what you want now before it disappears.
Another "just to cool to not pass along to everyone" item, I found an interesting page exploring the inspirations for the Star Wars universe. The URL is www.jitterbug/com/origins/
In Japan, as is well known, you take off your shoes before entering a house. The foyer of Japanese houses have a recessed floor area where you can leave your shoes, or put them in a "geta-bako" or shoes-box, to store them. For gaijin living in Japan, having to take your shoes off and put them on again means you learn to wear "Japan-friendly" shoes pretty quickly -- no more tightly laced high-top basketball shoes. It's just one more little thing about living in Japan.
A major path to business success seems to be, watch what successful companies do in the U.S., then do it in Japan before they can get over here. In America, eBay may be on top of the hill when it comes to online auctions, but in Japan it's Yahoo, and Yahoo's Japanese auction site is so successful that last month, eBay officially ended their attempts at making a Japanese version of itself. Pizza Hut is another similar success story. After observing the paradigm shift from eating pizza in restaurants to having it delivered, Pizza Hut copied the Domino's strategy in Japan, opening hundreds of franchises and delivering pizza in 30 minutes or less. Pizza Hut (whose motto is "Dynamic and Speedy" by the way) has a strong presence all over Japan, but Dominoes is only available in a few cities.
We're pleased with the reaction we've had to the very unique Daki-Makura ("Hug Pillows"), the huge huggable pillows featuring famous characters from Tohru Nishimaki's Blue Eyes mangas, in larger than life versions so you can feel like the characters are right there in the room with you. We wanted to make one comment about the price -- at $160 and $205 for the medium and large size pillows, they aren't cheap. These are a rare and highly collectible item from Japan that are impossible to get outside of Japan, and they're very expensive inside Japan, too (when you can find them at all). Feedback and requests on our new Daki-Makura page is much appreciated.
J-List strives to bring Japan and Japanese pop culture in all its forms to our customers, we've decided to start carrying Japanese film on DVD. Although it's a very small country, Japanese film has had a very strong influence on the rest of the world. Since there are many Japanese film that are released here in Japan but are not available outside of Japan, we feel it's our duty to make these products available. See our first titles on the newly renamed Japanese Film & Anime DVD page, with some nice titles selected by our resident movie freak, Tomo.
For the new update, we've got some excellent new items for you, including:
- First, several nice new magazines, including the new issue of Urecco, filled to the gills with beautiful girls for you
- For classic adult magazine fans, we've got two issues of the venerable Boys, from the mid and early 1990's (see magazine page 2)
- We've also got some dynamite photobooks for you, including the dynamite Manatsu Hirose's very revealing nude photobook, new leg fetish books, and more
- Also fresh stock of our photobooks, including Maiko Kazano's dynamite "Memories"
- For fans of the positively lovely G-Taste hentai and leg fetish art books by Hiroki Yagami, we've got G-Taste 5, an extra-thick and extra-lovely illustration book for you
- We've also got a grand update for manga fans, with excellent new hentai comics by Japan's best artists and publishing houses, as well as another large update of previously out of stock items for you
- Also for manga and doujinshi lovers alike, a new "doujinshi anthology" in keep-forever book form containing the best hentai parody of Chobits, the new manga (and anime) by CLAMP
- For fans of Japan's unique homosexual comics, enjoy another update to our yaoi page, with many of the often-requested b-Boy Zips series books in stock
- For Japanese erotic DVD fans, we've got another huge volley of items for you, starting with your virtual live-in girlfriend, Minami Asaoka, who wants to play house with you (region free)
- SOD has a new "Best Selection" DVD for you, featuring the best "horse riding style" sex (i.e., girl on top) with many lovely stars (region free)
- For fans of Ai Nagase, enjoy the new Ai Nagase Remix, featuring some of her best hardcore performances (region free)
- J-List also stocks many nice soft porn DVDs, and we've got a brand new Sara Shimada sexy nude DVD, along with a final restock of the out-of-print Maiko Kazano "Pure Heart" (region free)
- For lovers of the very strong bukkake erotica of the famous Milky Cat, we've got new video offerings for you that are not to be missed
- As mentioned above, we've got three very nice selections of quality Japanese film on DVD, with English subtitles!
- We love beautiful Japanese girls, and the beautiful Aimi Nakamura really shines in her sexy idol DVD that we highly recommend
- For Gundam fans, a really fun item: Gundam robots that really walk, through an advanced battery and cold capacitor
- We have some beautiful Japanese figures for you, including a new one based on Dark Angel by Kia Asamiya, and more
- Also, a dynamite series of Lupin III talking figures, and something very cool for fans of the American comic book hero Spiderman
- We've got some nice newly posted snack and food items, including delicious yogurt "soft candy" with gummi inside, a tasty traditional Japanese hard candy, and new furikake!
- Also, a major restocking of older items, including sake candy (one of the longest-selling single products in our history), plum hard candy, new caffeine-laced coffee candy, and the last stock of Green Tea Pocky before summer
- Also: fresh stock of the so-fun-to-eat "Fruit of the Bubble" bubblegum by Lotte
- We've got some cute items for you, including a Doraemon Pachinko toy and a super bathroom item for fans of Hello Kitty looking for something really special
- Finally, look for a great items for people on the go, more popular Japanese hot springs bath powder, very nice "wet" ear swabs with alcohol on them, to clean your ears or any other surface well, and more!
Spring has come to Japan, and after Spring comes summer. Summer in Japan is hot and humid, and in addition to causing much general discomfort, it also causes chocolate snacks like Pocky to melt and become very difficult to eat. Since we won't be ordering any more Pocky until the end of Summer, you should order what you want now before it disappears.
Another "just to cool to not pass along to everyone" item, I found an interesting page exploring the inspirations for the Star Wars universe. The URL is www.jitterbug/com/origins/
Monday, April 15, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 15, 2002
Hello again from Japan!
When my wife and I went to Spain two years ago, we were pleased to see how old and beautiful houses were, with many houses being hundreds of years old. Unfortunately, this is something that doesn't exist in Japan -- when a house gets too old to live in comfortably in Japan, you tear it down and build a new one from scratch. What's more, the houses that are built in Japan are really part of this 15-to-20-year rebuilding cycle, are designed so that they won't last beyond a certain point, kind of like the computer you may be using right now. As a result, Japan is a country where you can find very old things as well as very new things, but very little in the middle. Part of the problem is the perceived value of homes and buildings: unlike in the U.S., where real estate goes up in value, homes drop to almost zero in value in a very short time (since after all, who would want to buy a "used" house?). When we bought our home in San Diego, it took me days to convince my wife that buying a house and keeping it in good condition was a sound investment, not just money you throw away, as it is in Japan.
One big different between Japan and America is that Japan is a very cash-based society. When you get your monthly salary, you almost always get it in a big fat envelope of 10,000 yen notes, with a little hand-written slip of paper inside, for tax purposes. Japanese often carry loads of cash with them -- I had a friend who lost $3000 once because she was carrying it around with her -- whereas it's rare to have that much money in the U.S. One reason it's convenient to carry cash with you here in Japan: there is no system of writing checks to pay for things, and the concept of accepting a piece of paper as payment for goods is very alien here. This is the reason J-List accepts check/money payments for orders through our bank in San Diego, although we're a Japanese company. As the Japanese economy continues its painful changing process, more and more consumers are using credit cards for their purchases. There's little fear that the Japanese will give up that national passion for savings, though, just because credit card use is going up: the average Japanese household has well over US$100,000 in cash savings here.
If you're interested in yuri and shoujoai in anime and manga (that is to say, if you are interested in "animated" female/female sex themes), why not check out Yuricon? It's a convention run by AniLesboCon in June in New Jersey. For more information see their site at http://www.yuricon.org. Tell them J-List sent you!
For the new update, we've got a bunch of great new items for you today, including:
One of my favorite games is Love Love Show, which is a totally new concept in bishoujo games, as it's a series of fun puzzle and card type games. With some of the best graphics ever seen, and great game play that's a totally new and fresh, we hope you'll pick up the game. The publisher, Hobibox Europe, has many great games in the pipe, including some of the most popular Viper titles, and they appreciate your support!
When my wife and I went to Spain two years ago, we were pleased to see how old and beautiful houses were, with many houses being hundreds of years old. Unfortunately, this is something that doesn't exist in Japan -- when a house gets too old to live in comfortably in Japan, you tear it down and build a new one from scratch. What's more, the houses that are built in Japan are really part of this 15-to-20-year rebuilding cycle, are designed so that they won't last beyond a certain point, kind of like the computer you may be using right now. As a result, Japan is a country where you can find very old things as well as very new things, but very little in the middle. Part of the problem is the perceived value of homes and buildings: unlike in the U.S., where real estate goes up in value, homes drop to almost zero in value in a very short time (since after all, who would want to buy a "used" house?). When we bought our home in San Diego, it took me days to convince my wife that buying a house and keeping it in good condition was a sound investment, not just money you throw away, as it is in Japan.
One big different between Japan and America is that Japan is a very cash-based society. When you get your monthly salary, you almost always get it in a big fat envelope of 10,000 yen notes, with a little hand-written slip of paper inside, for tax purposes. Japanese often carry loads of cash with them -- I had a friend who lost $3000 once because she was carrying it around with her -- whereas it's rare to have that much money in the U.S. One reason it's convenient to carry cash with you here in Japan: there is no system of writing checks to pay for things, and the concept of accepting a piece of paper as payment for goods is very alien here. This is the reason J-List accepts check/money payments for orders through our bank in San Diego, although we're a Japanese company. As the Japanese economy continues its painful changing process, more and more consumers are using credit cards for their purchases. There's little fear that the Japanese will give up that national passion for savings, though, just because credit card use is going up: the average Japanese household has well over US$100,000 in cash savings here.
If you're interested in yuri and shoujoai in anime and manga (that is to say, if you are interested in "animated" female/female sex themes), why not check out Yuricon? It's a convention run by AniLesboCon in June in New Jersey. For more information see their site at http://www.yuricon.org. Tell them J-List sent you!
For the new update, we've got a bunch of great new items for you today, including:
- First of all, Japan is experiencing a boom in a new category of pop art -- Daki-Makura, or "Hug Pillows," massive (120 or 160 cm) huggable pillows that are nearly as big as people, with sexy and nude characters printed on them -- see our new
- We have some great new erotic magazines for you to enjoy, including the new Urecco Gal, loaded with beautiful pro and amateur kogals
- We have some dynamite new photobooks for you to browse, both hardcover and softcover, including Erovogue, a beautiful collection of the nudes of six wonderful AV idols from Japan
- The new issue of A-G, the English magazine of "art, sex and CG culture" is in stock, and ready to go out to you from our office in San Diego
- For Japanese hentai manga collectors, another excellent selection of new comics for you, including the excellent "Aizen" by Yukio Shijima, and many other nice books in stock for you
- For yaoi collectors, we've got a great update of several very nice books for fans of Japan's unique homosexual comics
- Also: for fans of the popular hentai anime series La Blue Girl (Inju Gakuen), we've got a rare and lovely art book filled with information and glossy artwork pages (region free)
- We've got some great new erotic DVDs in stock for you, starting with Starship Nymphomania, featuring lovely anime cosplay as only Soft on Demand could bring you (region free)
- The lovely Nanami Yusa looks so sweet and innocent, yet willingly performs in SOD's very erotic bukkake special Idol Semen
- For fans of the lovely Kyoka Usami (I am one!) we've got an erotic new DVD for you -- We are Crazy about Kyoka Usami (region free)
- For fans of Kimiko Matsuzaka, the incredibly busty Japanese AV idol, we've got a great offering for you -- 8 hours of her life's best work, a massive collection of huge-busty AV for you (region free)
- Yulia Nova is apparently popular with J-List fans, since her photobooks sold out in record time (more are on order) -- so we've volume 3 of her fantastic video! (VHS)
- For Aika Miura fans, we've got the very nice Aika Miura Special Perfect Eternal Edition, finally released on DVD for you! (region 2)
- For anime lovers, we've got some great new toys in stock for you, including the deluxe Mach 5 die-cast toy for Speed Racer fans, and several new Totoro items, including a fantastic Totoro alarm clock
- We've added some cool new items in The Dog collection, including loveable alarm clocks and more, and we've put them in a newly created category just for The Dog items
- For fans of Japan's lovely swimsuit idols, see the newly posted photobook and other items
- If you love cute things, we've got some for you, including a killer Hello Kitty calculator, more Hello Kitty tissue and toilet paper, and more
- We've restocked the popular Spirited Away color comics, which are really beautiful recreations of the film in book form
- There's a really cool Morning Musume collectible figure set out, and we've got stock of them for you (they are cool)
- For fans of our Japanese snacks, we've got old-style Glico chocolate snacks (with a wooden toy included, traditional apricot flavored hard candy, more Green Tea candy, and a restocking of our very popular miso soup
- Finally, look for cute hamster colored pens from Japan, a nifty pen that's really a light, new bento boxes, a handy way to de-core an apple, and more!
One of my favorite games is Love Love Show, which is a totally new concept in bishoujo games, as it's a series of fun puzzle and card type games. With some of the best graphics ever seen, and great game play that's a totally new and fresh, we hope you'll pick up the game. The publisher, Hobibox Europe, has many great games in the pipe, including some of the most popular Viper titles, and they appreciate your support!
Friday, April 12, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 12, 2002
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Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 10, 2002
Hello again from your friendly neighborhood gaijin!
When you live in Japan, you get used going without some things that they just plain don't have in Japan. First of all, there are no school buses. It's part of the "school experience" for children to walk to school no matter how far it is, or in extreme situations, to take public transportation. For all the varieties of alcohol that are consumed in Japan, no one ever decided to bring American-style wine coolers here. When you go to a restaurant and can't finish your meal, you don't ask for a "doggie bag" -- you just leave, and they throw your food away. It's far too embarrassing to bring your food home with you, and as a result, the Japanese have the highest percentage of food waste in the world. And amazingly (from my own perspective as an American), there are no fire alarms in homes in Japan, and no laws requiring them -- but then, Japan's child safety seat law didn't get passed until 1999, and before that time it was very common to see children standing up, playing, inside moving cars. We have American fire alarms installed in our Japanese home.
A strange aspect of written Japanese is that many Japanese people cannot read their own language. While the vast majority of Japanese can read the 1900+ "joyo kanji" (the standard characters all Japanese must learn by the time they graduate from high school), there are many very difficult characters that fall outside of the "official" lists, and thus, many people aren't sure how to pronounce them. Family names are notoriously difficult to read, and even my wife's family's last name -- Yanai -- is read as "Yanagi" in almost every other part of Japan besides our city. Place names are also very difficult for Japanese to read, unless they happened to grow up in that area. All the place names in Northern Japan, which was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people for thousands of years, have odd names can't be written with standard characters -- and as a result, most Japanese often can't read the names.
For the mid-week update, we've got some splendid items for you, including:
At J-List we sell many interesting items from Japan. One of our most rapidly growing areas is our Japanese snacks and gum categories, where we sell anything from Japanese Pocky (the original Japanese chocolate covered pretzel) to our very popular gummi sushi. If you'd like to sample a bunch of delicious treats from Japan, mosey over to our Japanese snacks and food pages and see what we can get for you!
The J-Mate site has been updated again, with reviews (and many screenshots) of new titles by Madoka Ozawa and Maiko Kazano, along with a super interview starring Anna Ohura. The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
When you live in Japan, you get used going without some things that they just plain don't have in Japan. First of all, there are no school buses. It's part of the "school experience" for children to walk to school no matter how far it is, or in extreme situations, to take public transportation. For all the varieties of alcohol that are consumed in Japan, no one ever decided to bring American-style wine coolers here. When you go to a restaurant and can't finish your meal, you don't ask for a "doggie bag" -- you just leave, and they throw your food away. It's far too embarrassing to bring your food home with you, and as a result, the Japanese have the highest percentage of food waste in the world. And amazingly (from my own perspective as an American), there are no fire alarms in homes in Japan, and no laws requiring them -- but then, Japan's child safety seat law didn't get passed until 1999, and before that time it was very common to see children standing up, playing, inside moving cars. We have American fire alarms installed in our Japanese home.
A strange aspect of written Japanese is that many Japanese people cannot read their own language. While the vast majority of Japanese can read the 1900+ "joyo kanji" (the standard characters all Japanese must learn by the time they graduate from high school), there are many very difficult characters that fall outside of the "official" lists, and thus, many people aren't sure how to pronounce them. Family names are notoriously difficult to read, and even my wife's family's last name -- Yanai -- is read as "Yanagi" in almost every other part of Japan besides our city. Place names are also very difficult for Japanese to read, unless they happened to grow up in that area. All the place names in Northern Japan, which was inhabited by the indigenous Ainu people for thousands of years, have odd names can't be written with standard characters -- and as a result, most Japanese often can't read the names.
For the mid-week update, we've got some splendid items for you, including:
- First, we've got a new category, Unique Adult Toys, where we'll be introducing a variety of interesting adult toys made specifically for the Japanese market, including some of the items seen in Japanese adult videos and DVDs -- check out our new offerings now!
- For magazine fans, we have the new issues of Penthouse in stock, and they are lovely, filled with dynamite photography of Japanese models by Japanese photographers
- For the leg or stocking fetishist in you, we've got the dynamite Mini Skirt and Panst Collection vol. 3, featuring some of the most lovely, leggy Japanese AV idols ever
- For photobook fans, we've got some excellent hardcover photobooks in stock for you, including the dynamite photobook of "hitomi" (you always have to write her name in lower case), Sayaka Morimoto's charming youthful photobook, and the very sexy Sou Takanashi
- For hentai manga fans, we've got another great update for you, with many excellent new volumes, including the new hentai manga by U-Jin
- In addition, Yasu has posted fresh stock of a dozen or more volumes that have proved so popular we couldn't keep them in stock, as well as a killer new doujinshi in the Angel Pain series for you
- Also: for our yaoi customers, a major update including fresh stock of many popular books that had been sold out for a long time
- For erotic DVD collectors, we've got some great new items for you, starting with a great new No Cut!! DVD featuring 3 hours of AV performances by Tsubomi Kanno (region free)
- Soft on Demand invites you to meet their new flagship AV idol, the lovely Ruri Anno, who is very bold in her "new face" debut adult DVD (region free)
- Lovers of lesbian "deep kissing" can enjoy the erotic Chu-Doku DVD offering from Bero Zence (region 2)
- For fans of the very busty Russian Yulia Nova, whose products are only available in Japan (go figure), we've got her dynamite second video in stock
- For Japanese idol and Race Queen fans, we've got several nice new items for you, including two great DVDs featuring Yinling and others!
- For fans of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, we've got fresh stock of the My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Services DVDs (which comes with full English dubbed and subtitled versions)
- For Leiji Matsumoto fans, we've got fresh stock of the large size die-cast "completed model" of the Andromeda from Yamato/Star Blazers
- Also: for Totoro lovers, we've restocked the very cool Totoro's Wonder Tin Toys, highly collectible wind-up tin toys
- In commemoration of the upcoming Star Wars movie, we've restocked our Super Deformed Star Wars toys
- People liked our cool Cup Noodle coffee cups so much we sold out of them right away -- but we've got more for you in stock now!
- If you love Japan's bento culture, we've got some nice items for you: large size two-level bento boxes with matching chopsticks that are just great
- Also for your kitchen, fresh stock of chopsticks, Hamster Club items, onigiri makers and sushi molds, and more
- For fans of cute things, find Hello Kitty snacks, pasta, toilet paper, and those really cute mayonnaise cups
- If you are enjoying the English and Japanese bilingual comics being published by Kodansha, we've got the newest issue of Cardcaptor Sakura (vol. 10)
- Fans of Japanese snacks should sample the ume hard candies, flavored like delicious pickled Japan ume-boshi (tried, tart plums)
- Finally, one of the most successful products in the history of J-List has been Lotte's Black Black spicy caffeine gum, which uses methyl flavor and spices to keep you awake when you have things to do. Now we've got Xylish Hyper Cool, a sugarless spicy gum that keeps you awake as it improves the health of your teeth. It's great!
At J-List we sell many interesting items from Japan. One of our most rapidly growing areas is our Japanese snacks and gum categories, where we sell anything from Japanese Pocky (the original Japanese chocolate covered pretzel) to our very popular gummi sushi. If you'd like to sample a bunch of delicious treats from Japan, mosey over to our Japanese snacks and food pages and see what we can get for you!
The J-Mate site has been updated again, with reviews (and many screenshots) of new titles by Madoka Ozawa and Maiko Kazano, along with a super interview starring Anna Ohura. The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
Monday, April 08, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 8, 2002
Greetings from all of us here at J-List!
I've lived in Japan for nearly ten years now, but before I came here I got a lot of enjoyment from Japanese students who came to stay at our house through various homestay programs. Through this great system of sharing cultures, we were able to make friends with many great Japanese young people and teach them about our family while we learned from them. There's one unfortunate reality to homestay programs, and that is since host families receive money for putting up their Japanese guests, homestay has been turned into a for-profit activity by some, who host as many foreign guests as their houses will hold and greatly reduce the chance for useful cultural sharing. If you think you'd be interested in hosting Japanese students and sharing your home with them, learning from them as you help them learn about your home country, please look into what programs you can find on the web. Searching Yahoo or Google for homestay programs in your city is a good place to start. Personally, I got the most from hosting high school students and recommend hosting students between the ages of 15 and 18, especially if you have kids of similar ages.
I've heard is said that when French people learn English, the first thing that needs to be done is to re-learn how to pronounce many words in their target language, since so many words in English originate from French (a little gift from William the Conqueror). Similiarly, Japanese use many English words, but the pronunciations aren't always the same as they are in American English. First of all, you have to get "in tune" with the way words are forced into the Japanese system of syllables, which often changes the way they sound. The English word "weekend" becomes a six-syllable word when pronounced in Japanese -- "u-ii-ku-e-n-do" (oo-EE-koo-EHN-doh), and if you want people to understand you, you have to be at peace with pronouncing the word that way, instead of "weekend." Also, some words are just imported differently, according to phonetic rules that make sense to the Japanese. The two most popular search engines in Japan are Google and Yahoo, but they're pronounced "goh-guru" and "yah-hoe" -- only slightly different from how we say them in the States, but it's enough. Live in Japan long enough, and you start letting this Japanese pronunciation of English words slip back into "real" English, and the results can really be embarrassing.
Spring has come to Japan, and although I love cherry blossoms as much as the next gaijin, I could truly do without the pollen that causes terrible hayfever for many living in Japan. Dozens of flowering trees (Japanese cedars being the most famous culprits) give off their pollen, one flowering in season right after the other, and the end result is an endlessly running nose, watery eyes, sneezing, and general misery.
For our latest update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
We're making some more improvements to the J-List database system to increase speed and bandwidth. If you notice any weirdness with images displaying oddly, or anything else working strangely on your system, please let us know. Things should be running smoothly in a very short time.
I've lived in Japan for nearly ten years now, but before I came here I got a lot of enjoyment from Japanese students who came to stay at our house through various homestay programs. Through this great system of sharing cultures, we were able to make friends with many great Japanese young people and teach them about our family while we learned from them. There's one unfortunate reality to homestay programs, and that is since host families receive money for putting up their Japanese guests, homestay has been turned into a for-profit activity by some, who host as many foreign guests as their houses will hold and greatly reduce the chance for useful cultural sharing. If you think you'd be interested in hosting Japanese students and sharing your home with them, learning from them as you help them learn about your home country, please look into what programs you can find on the web. Searching Yahoo or Google for homestay programs in your city is a good place to start. Personally, I got the most from hosting high school students and recommend hosting students between the ages of 15 and 18, especially if you have kids of similar ages.
I've heard is said that when French people learn English, the first thing that needs to be done is to re-learn how to pronounce many words in their target language, since so many words in English originate from French (a little gift from William the Conqueror). Similiarly, Japanese use many English words, but the pronunciations aren't always the same as they are in American English. First of all, you have to get "in tune" with the way words are forced into the Japanese system of syllables, which often changes the way they sound. The English word "weekend" becomes a six-syllable word when pronounced in Japanese -- "u-ii-ku-e-n-do" (oo-EE-koo-EHN-doh), and if you want people to understand you, you have to be at peace with pronouncing the word that way, instead of "weekend." Also, some words are just imported differently, according to phonetic rules that make sense to the Japanese. The two most popular search engines in Japan are Google and Yahoo, but they're pronounced "goh-guru" and "yah-hoe" -- only slightly different from how we say them in the States, but it's enough. Live in Japan long enough, and you start letting this Japanese pronunciation of English words slip back into "real" English, and the results can really be embarrassing.
Spring has come to Japan, and although I love cherry blossoms as much as the next gaijin, I could truly do without the pollen that causes terrible hayfever for many living in Japan. Dozens of flowering trees (Japanese cedars being the most famous culprits) give off their pollen, one flowering in season right after the other, and the end result is an endlessly running nose, watery eyes, sneezing, and general misery.
For our latest update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
- First, we've got some nice new magazines, including the new Gal's Dee, featuring lovely pro and amateur Japanese models of cup "D" and larger
- For fans of erotic Japanese photobooks, enjoy the lesbian grave of Izumi Morino and Yuka Asato, and the slender hair nude of Neon Yukino
- For fans of Japan's high-end bondage and fetish photobooks, we've got an excellent new item for fans of "New Half" (i.e., dick girls)
- We've got another major update to our hentai manga page, with half a dozen or so all-new volumes, as well as fresh stock of several popular manga
- For yaoi lovers, we've updated the yaoi page for you as well
- DVD collectors should check out our newly posted items, starting with the very erotic Deep Kiss 14 lesbian kissing DVD from Soft on Demand, great as always (region free)
- For fans of the very attractive Japanese "girl next door" Shinobu Kasagi, she's got a fun bondage bukkake DVD offering from SOD (region free)
- For fans of cosplay and adult performances from Japan, we've got a great "non stop mega hits" collection featuring 230 mind-boggling minutes of top adult video on one great DVD (region free)
- For fans of M's Video Group, the very rare and popular bukkake studio in Japan, we've got a great new release (VHS)
- For more erotic cosplay fun, see the dynamite Yuuna Akimoto perform in some of the sexiest costumes we've seen, including China dress, erotic ninja, anime costumes and more (region 2)
- For serious leg, stocking and boot fetish fans, we present "Boots and Stocking" with the performances of three gorgeous ladies. As the package says, "it's satisfied with the lady's leg deliciously!"
- Newly restocked adult DVD titles include the excellent Complete Compilation of Ai Nagase and All About Ai Nagase (you can see that Tomo really loves her, since he's in charge of ordering DVD titles), Shake it! (tekoki fetish), the Semen Championship Carnival, and more
- For sweet idol fans, enjoy the lovely Happy End?, a cute mini-drama in which four beautiful girls manage to fall in love with the same man
- Also: fresh stock of some cute swimsuit idol photobooks for you
- For fans of Japan's excellent and unique toys, we've got a major update of Kubrick Planet of the Apes toys for you, with stock of all the great action figures based on the original movies
- Also: fresh stock of some extremely popular items, including Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service change purses, the totally cute Soot Sprite keychain, Laputa figure sets, and fresh stock of Sun Arrow stuffed animals
- We've got some great new snack items for you, including sesame seed covered chocolate balls (yes, we know, but they're really quite good), tasty Honey Black Candy, fresh stock of gum and Pocky, and more
- Also, great foods you can prepare at home, including garlic fried rice (Japanese style), a fun Hello Kitty Milk Pudding mix, and two new varieties of furikake (food you sprinkle over rice)
- Now that the weather has gotten warmer, we've brought back a summer favorite, tea bags for making delicious Japanese mugi (barley) tea, a very healthy and delicious drink for the summer
- We have some great Hello Kitty items for you, including notebooks for school, hair care products,
- We've got more cool items for dog lovers, including an official "The Dog" cube money bank with different dogs' images on each side
- If you ever loved Ultraman, we've got another extra large soft vinyl figure from the world of Ultra-Q in stock
- Finally, find killer chopsticks made of sturdy bamboo, the most excellent push pin you will ever find, authentic Japanese incense, and bath powder containing real green tea, all in stock now!
We're making some more improvements to the J-List database system to increase speed and bandwidth. If you notice any weirdness with images displaying oddly, or anything else working strangely on your system, please let us know. Things should be running smoothly in a very short time.
Friday, April 05, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 5, 2002
Hello and TGIF from all your friends at J-List!
One reason I love living in Japan is that I love the food. Someone once told me that if you don't like the food in a certain country, it's impossible to be happy there -- well, I've got no problems with the food in Japan, that's for sure. Our favorite restaurants include Ran Ran, a local ramen and gyoza (aka "pot stickers") restaurant, Gin (Mediterranean pasta and fish), Tsukiji Sushi (conveyor-belt sushi, it's really good), and Soba-gura (a traditional Japanese soba and udon restaurant we frequent). But my family's favorite restaurant hands-down is Mahatama New Delhi, an Indian restaurant in the neighboring city, where I happened to take my wife for our first date. Indian curries are really delicious, and the soft, warm nan bread of Mahatma is the best I've tasted in all my travels around Japan. Somehow we come up with an excuse to drive to Maebashi and eat Indian food just about once a week. My own favorite is the pumpkin and chicken curry Kaduh Murgh...
Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that everything that can be different between the U.S. and Japan, will be different. In America, you make an emergency call by dialing 911, but in Japan, it's 119. Green is blue in Japan -- when the Japanese see a green traffic light, they call it blue (ao) despite all the protests of gaijin living here that the light is really green. There are very few lawyers in Japan -- a couple of years ago, the Japan Bar Association had to dispatch lawyers to several rural parts of the country where there were no lawyers at all, so that people living there could have access to basic legal services. When you buy a house, it doesn't go up in value as it does in the States, it goes down to zero almost immediately -- since no one would want to live in a "used" house, only the land retains value in Japan. Finally, when you want to lose weight in America, doctors often tell you to drink eight glasses of water a day to help flush food out before it's totally absorbed by the body. In Japan? The one thing you must not do if you want to lose weight is drink water, otherwise you'll become a "mizu-debu" (water-fat, i.e. bloated from water). Who is to say which way is right?
We've made some improvements to the J-List website, improving the ways you can search for products. Now, searching for both Aika Miura and Miura Aika will bring up results, regardless of word order. If you want to find both Madoka Ozawa and Aika Miura items, just search for "Madoka Ozawa or Aika Miura" (no quotes). To find an actual string, just put what you want to search for in quotes. As always, please let us know if you experience any problems with the new search system or the site in general.
For the big pre-weekend update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
In addition to the other rare and fun things J-List makes available to you from Japan, we sell "revolving" monthly subscriptions to dozens of anime, JPOP, hobby and other magazines. One of our favorites is Megami Magazine, a wonderful anime magazine filled with posters, pull-out cards, calendars and other amazing extras, all great for fans of beautiful Japanese anime and game characters. (A recent issue had 14 posters in it!) We think that great magazines like this from Japan, and we hope you will check out our Reserve Subscription pages and see which items you'd like to get sent to you each month.
Unfortunately the link to my son's preschool graduation got corrupted by our email listserver. If you want to see the pictures of the graduation ceremony, access http://www.peterpayne.net directly and search for "graduation" (or see the "pictures from Japan" link). Sorry about that.
Thinking of buying a region free DVD player? J-List will be offering them to our customers soon, so if you are planning on getting one, hold off and see what we're able to get for you
One reason I love living in Japan is that I love the food. Someone once told me that if you don't like the food in a certain country, it's impossible to be happy there -- well, I've got no problems with the food in Japan, that's for sure. Our favorite restaurants include Ran Ran, a local ramen and gyoza (aka "pot stickers") restaurant, Gin (Mediterranean pasta and fish), Tsukiji Sushi (conveyor-belt sushi, it's really good), and Soba-gura (a traditional Japanese soba and udon restaurant we frequent). But my family's favorite restaurant hands-down is Mahatama New Delhi, an Indian restaurant in the neighboring city, where I happened to take my wife for our first date. Indian curries are really delicious, and the soft, warm nan bread of Mahatma is the best I've tasted in all my travels around Japan. Somehow we come up with an excuse to drive to Maebashi and eat Indian food just about once a week. My own favorite is the pumpkin and chicken curry Kaduh Murgh...
Part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that everything that can be different between the U.S. and Japan, will be different. In America, you make an emergency call by dialing 911, but in Japan, it's 119. Green is blue in Japan -- when the Japanese see a green traffic light, they call it blue (ao) despite all the protests of gaijin living here that the light is really green. There are very few lawyers in Japan -- a couple of years ago, the Japan Bar Association had to dispatch lawyers to several rural parts of the country where there were no lawyers at all, so that people living there could have access to basic legal services. When you buy a house, it doesn't go up in value as it does in the States, it goes down to zero almost immediately -- since no one would want to live in a "used" house, only the land retains value in Japan. Finally, when you want to lose weight in America, doctors often tell you to drink eight glasses of water a day to help flush food out before it's totally absorbed by the body. In Japan? The one thing you must not do if you want to lose weight is drink water, otherwise you'll become a "mizu-debu" (water-fat, i.e. bloated from water). Who is to say which way is right?
We've made some improvements to the J-List website, improving the ways you can search for products. Now, searching for both Aika Miura and Miura Aika will bring up results, regardless of word order. If you want to find both Madoka Ozawa and Aika Miura items, just search for "Madoka Ozawa or Aika Miura" (no quotes). To find an actual string, just put what you want to search for in quotes. As always, please let us know if you experience any problems with the new search system or the site in general.
For the big pre-weekend update, we've got some nice items for you, including:
- First, new magazines, including the great new Dela Beppin, filled with Japan's hottest AV idols for you
- For fans of amateur magazines, we've got several nice items for you, showing various fetishes from Japan
- Also, a new issue of Best Video Super Document, which shows many very interesting behind-the-scenes shots of Japan's famous AV idols working hard at their jobs
- For fans of Japan's unique hardcover glossy photobooks, we've posted some excellent works for you to check out
- Japan also boasts some of the most incredible high-end bondage photography in the world, and a new photobook featuring Mayumi Sawaki is just wonderful for S&M fans
- If you are a collector of Japan's popular erotic manga comics, check out the new and restocked items for you in time for the weekend
- For fans of DVDs from Japan, we've got some great items for you, starting with a new concept from Soft on Demand: four girls are put in a glass room with several heaters. Outside it's cool, but a throng of men await to take them sexually of they leave the box... (region free)
- In another unique Soft on Demand creation, Semen Bus, a group of four sexy "bus guides" actively service all the passengers on the bus (region free)
- From SOD's Natural High label, the lovely Kurumi Aoyama (star of the Moodyz title Black Zamen) challenges the erotic "Buukake Circle in the Blue Sky" (region free)
- Swimsuit idol DVDs are a staple of Japanese pop culture -- but Sayaka Hijiri plays an extremely horny idol, who has sex with the cameramen and more (region free)
- We've got another super bukkake fetish video from M's Video Group and Kazuhiko Matsumoto, not to be missed by bukkake lovers (VHS)
- Also, we've got a nice update of many DVD items, with fresh stock of The Best Oral Sex and Fellatio, Kurumi Morishita's Tekoki, The Highest Class Soap Lady, Nao Hirosue's best Selection, and several leg fetish DVDs!
- If you love slender, sexy Japanese ladies, than we suggest you check out the excellent Race Queen 2001, a superb DVD from Pioneer that features 120 minutes of the sexiest RQ's (including Toko Ushikawa and Yinling!)
- Also, for fans of Japan's sweet swimsuit idols, check out several newly posted photobooks and other idol items for you
- For anime toy fans, we've got some great items, including a new Macross Valkyrie/Battroid from Bandai (it will go fast, we fear), and two great new figures in the "SkyLuv" Love Hina series
- Also for Love Hina fans, a great trading card collection that is just beautiful
- Our Japanese snack and food items have been selling in record quantities, we're doing a major update -- look for delicious "soba-meshi" fried rice, more green tea hard candy, my own favorite Tomato Pretzels, and several flavors of Mousse Pocky (including the very popular Green Tea Pocky)
- Also: in addition to the new Japanese Bubblicious (very different from what is sold in the States), we have fresh stock of many kinds of Japanese gum, including Black Black, Free Zone (won't stick to your teeth), and the only-the-Japanese-could-have-thought-of-this Azalea flavored gum
- We've got new bento boxes, chopsticks, and other fun lunchtime items, including bento boxes especially for girls
- We have some cute items for you, including Hamutaro furikake (sprinkle it over rice) with little plastic hamster mascots, a Hello Kitty item for flower growers, cute origami, and more
- Finally, look for Japanese square scrambled egg pans, Japanese portable ashtrays, a traditional Japanese teacup with saucer, and other fun items from Japan!
In addition to the other rare and fun things J-List makes available to you from Japan, we sell "revolving" monthly subscriptions to dozens of anime, JPOP, hobby and other magazines. One of our favorites is Megami Magazine, a wonderful anime magazine filled with posters, pull-out cards, calendars and other amazing extras, all great for fans of beautiful Japanese anime and game characters. (A recent issue had 14 posters in it!) We think that great magazines like this from Japan, and we hope you will check out our Reserve Subscription pages and see which items you'd like to get sent to you each month.
Unfortunately the link to my son's preschool graduation got corrupted by our email listserver. If you want to see the pictures of the graduation ceremony, access http://www.peterpayne.net directly and search for "graduation" (or see the "pictures from Japan" link). Sorry about that.
Thinking of buying a region free DVD player? J-List will be offering them to our customers soon, so if you are planning on getting one, hold off and see what we're able to get for you
Monday, April 01, 2002
Greetings from J-List April 1, 2002
Greetings and salutations from your friends in Japan, at J-List!
Whenever you go to live in a new country, you're bound to have your share of culture shock. I experienced much when I came to live here nine years ago. A wide range of professions, from the men who guide you past road construction to the men who work in train stations, have uniforms that looked to my eyes like police uniforms, so I was constantly wondering why there were so many police walking around in Japan. Every gas station, it seemed, had a big flashing light that looked like police lights, which are really there to attract customers -- but I kept thinking there were accidents ahead of me on the road when it was just a "gasoline stand." I was amazed at the beautiful ceramic tiles on Japanese houses, which made them look, well, very Japanese. And the vending machines -- you couldn't drive a kilometer without passing twenty or thirty of them on either side of you. But one of the biggest shocks was that all but the largest streets in a Japanese city have no names. To give directions in Japan, you tell someone to turn left at the beauty shop, go straight, then turn at the pachinko parlor, or you draw them a map. I distinctly remember wanting to get my other gaijin friends together and name all the streets in our city.
English that the Japanese have invented themselves is quite famous all over the world. They're also quite good at coming up with new words based on initials of English words. If you visit someone's home in Japan, remember to take your shoes off by the front door or it will be NG, a Japanese word that means "not good" and refers to any kind of general screw-up (bloopers on TV are also known as NG). To get on a Japanese freeway, you must drive to the nearest IC, or "inter change," the freeway onramp. If you get tired of driving, pull off at the nearest SA ("service area") and get some canned coffee to wake yourself up. TV commercials are known as CMs, and a direct mailing sent out by a company is called a DM. Finally, whenever you do something, consider the TPO of the situation -- that is, the time, place, and, er, whatever the "o" is supposed to stand for (we think it means object, but that's just guessing). In other words, consider the overall situation you're in before taking any action.
There's a really useful phrase in Japanese that can be used in a variety of situations, either to be polite or to really surprise some Japanese people you may know. The word is "okage-sama de" (oh-KA-gey-sama-deh, with a hard 'g' on 'gey', as in 'gay") which literally means "thanks to you." For some reason, the Japanese often respond to compliments by turning the thanks on the person doing the complimenting. For example, if someone were to compliment me on my being able to write a certain kanji character, I could say "Okage-sama de" to them -- "Yes, thanks to you." This seems to imply that I'm thanking that person for teaching me the kanji, even if I'd never met the person before, but that's the way the phrase is used. If you want to have fun with Japanese people, pull the phrase out suddenly and watch how they react.
For the first update of the month, we've got some great items for you, including:
Besides thousands of great items from Japan, J-List also stocks some U.S. released manga and comics in our San Diego location, including the excellent AG, the magazine of "art, sex and CG culture." A great English-language manga magazine that features great hentai artwork and stories. Also, some of the most popular Japanese artists at J-List will be appearing in AG, along with articles by yours truly. We certainly hope you'll support the publisher's efforts! AG is available via single issues as well as by resolving subscription through J-List.
Whenever you go to live in a new country, you're bound to have your share of culture shock. I experienced much when I came to live here nine years ago. A wide range of professions, from the men who guide you past road construction to the men who work in train stations, have uniforms that looked to my eyes like police uniforms, so I was constantly wondering why there were so many police walking around in Japan. Every gas station, it seemed, had a big flashing light that looked like police lights, which are really there to attract customers -- but I kept thinking there were accidents ahead of me on the road when it was just a "gasoline stand." I was amazed at the beautiful ceramic tiles on Japanese houses, which made them look, well, very Japanese. And the vending machines -- you couldn't drive a kilometer without passing twenty or thirty of them on either side of you. But one of the biggest shocks was that all but the largest streets in a Japanese city have no names. To give directions in Japan, you tell someone to turn left at the beauty shop, go straight, then turn at the pachinko parlor, or you draw them a map. I distinctly remember wanting to get my other gaijin friends together and name all the streets in our city.
English that the Japanese have invented themselves is quite famous all over the world. They're also quite good at coming up with new words based on initials of English words. If you visit someone's home in Japan, remember to take your shoes off by the front door or it will be NG, a Japanese word that means "not good" and refers to any kind of general screw-up (bloopers on TV are also known as NG). To get on a Japanese freeway, you must drive to the nearest IC, or "inter change," the freeway onramp. If you get tired of driving, pull off at the nearest SA ("service area") and get some canned coffee to wake yourself up. TV commercials are known as CMs, and a direct mailing sent out by a company is called a DM. Finally, whenever you do something, consider the TPO of the situation -- that is, the time, place, and, er, whatever the "o" is supposed to stand for (we think it means object, but that's just guessing). In other words, consider the overall situation you're in before taking any action.
There's a really useful phrase in Japanese that can be used in a variety of situations, either to be polite or to really surprise some Japanese people you may know. The word is "okage-sama de" (oh-KA-gey-sama-deh, with a hard 'g' on 'gey', as in 'gay") which literally means "thanks to you." For some reason, the Japanese often respond to compliments by turning the thanks on the person doing the complimenting. For example, if someone were to compliment me on my being able to write a certain kanji character, I could say "Okage-sama de" to them -- "Yes, thanks to you." This seems to imply that I'm thanking that person for teaching me the kanji, even if I'd never met the person before, but that's the way the phrase is used. If you want to have fun with Japanese people, pull the phrase out suddenly and watch how they react.
For the first update of the month, we've got some great items for you, including:
- First, we've got several nice new magazines for you, including the excellent new Gokuh, crammed full of dynamite Japanese AV idols for you
- We've got a few more back issues of popular magazines posted, as well as new discounted magazine items, too, for fans of our $5 and up magazine pages
- For photobook fans, we've got some really nice new swimsuit and nude photobooks, both hardcover and softcover
- We've got another great volley of newly published hentai from Japan, by some of the most popular hentai manga studios
- Also: a major update of back-in-stock hentai manga, including a dozen volumes that had been sold out-- check out the newly restocked items!
- For DVD collectors, we've got some super new titles for you, starting with the Soft on Demand Cosplay Best Selection, featuring the very best costume play (nurse, waitress, bus guide, teacher) in the history of SOD (region free)
- For fans of anal themes, we've got the great DVD release of Anal de Fuck DX ("DX" means "deluxe," see above), featuring a full range of AV, from anal virgin to CCD camera plan and more (region free)
- The beautiful and busty Megumi Osawa is an up and coming AV model, and in her latest soft porn release from Bauhaus you can enjoy her pure loveliness -- and with no censorship to get in the way! (region free)
- For fans of lesbian love, we've got a great new release: Lesbian Maniax, a super *240 minute* lesbian release featuring the "abnormal pheromone performanced by 32 lecherous ladies" (region free)
- For fans of the very popular Milky Cat, another extremely bold and erotic bukkake race queen performance, with one girl taking on an incredible 130 men! (VHS)
- For indies fans, we've got the debut DVD of a girl who was scouted in a cake shop, whose name is Monbu Ran (the Japanese pronunciation of Mont Blanc, a famous French dessert). This is an MVG production so it's highly recommended to bukkake fans (region 2)
- For fans of the lovely Madoka Ozawa, enjoy her latest new production from Moodyz, in which she assists your masturbation with a variety of fresh and interesting costumes and tekoki play
- Finally, we've gotten fresh stock of many DVD and video titles, including excellent titles featuring the busty Emily Yoshikawa, Miki Sawaguchi, and more!
- For anime fans, we've got some excellent toy items for you, including a rare fully posable Rei Ayanami doll from Evangelion, a super Totoro coin purse that is really cool, and more
- Also: two lovely anime figures from the Angelic Layer universe for you (only 1 of each, though)
- We've restocked some of our most popular Totoro items and also gotten in more of the sold out "The Dog" cups and pens
- Fans of CLAMP, the creators of Card Captor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth, we've got the *excellent* X TV Animation cards from Cardass in stock
- We've restocked our surprisingly popular Japanese miso soup, with several new varieties in stock for you
- Other newly added snack items include delicious gummi Doraemon candies, a unique traditional Japanese hard candy known as "salt candy," and "Mogi Mogi Fruits," a little gummi tree with little gummi fruits hanging from it
- Also: if you've ever wanted to taste the famous Calpis, we've got a delicious Calpis Soda candy in stock!
- If you want to try your hand at various fried rice dishes, we've got some nice easy to prepare mixes on the snacks page, too
- For fans of beautiful Japanese idols, we've got new idol photobooks and other fun items for you
- The Japanese "Maneki-neko" ("inviting cat") is famous all over the world, and we've got several nice Inviting Cat piggy banks for you
- We've added stock of several cute and fun Hello Kitty items, including cups, erasers, toilet paper, and a major restocking of our runaway seller, the Hello Kitty vibrators!
- Also, a special item: a real Japanese flower that unfolds into silk panties!
- Finally, look for more chopsticks, including chopsticks recommended for fathers (?), a funny Japanese ice cube tray, Japanese "days of the week" magnets (great for use on white boards), delicious dried, shredded ika (squid) which goes great with beer, more cute Licca-chan stickers, Japanese food erasers, and more!
Besides thousands of great items from Japan, J-List also stocks some U.S. released manga and comics in our San Diego location, including the excellent AG, the magazine of "art, sex and CG culture." A great English-language manga magazine that features great hentai artwork and stories. Also, some of the most popular Japanese artists at J-List will be appearing in AG, along with articles by yours truly. We certainly hope you'll support the publisher's efforts! AG is available via single issues as well as by resolving subscription through J-List.
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 30, 2002
Hello on a warm but windy Saturday from your friends at J-List!
Soccer fever continues to grow in Japan as we approach the World Cup, co-hosted by Japan and Korea, and soccer fans in Japan are getting more and more excited (our own Harumi-chan is one). The sport has managed to work its way into about a quarter of all TV commercials shown in Japan. To the Japanese, the most "kakko ii" (KA-koh EE, which means "cool") player is by far Nakata, who quit Japan's soccer league and is now a world-class soccer player in Italy. He's also fluent in Italian, and video of him speaking at press conferences are aired almost nightly here. Japanese love to have one of their own accepted internationally, especially in Europe. Remember that part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that they secretly wish they were part of Europe -- why else would they make the DVD region codes for Japan and Europe the same? You can see pictures of Nakata at his official site here: http://nakata.net/official/
Part of coming to live in Japan from the U.S. means getting used to the metric system, the system in use pretty much everywhere in the world except America. It's quite easy, really -- you just learn to gauge what centimeters, meters, kilometers, and kilograms are in your mind, and you'll be used to it in no time. I've lived in Japan so long now that I only know my shoe size in centimeters (26.5 cm), and I don't know my weight in pounds at all (not that this is always a bad thing). They also use the Centigrade scale for measuring temperature, which means that when it's 3 degrees outside, it's just a little above freezing, and when it's 40 degrees in the summer (with matching high humidity), it's time to get indoors and find some industrial strength air conditioning.
The poor cherry blossoms are really taking a beating this Spring. Blossoming a full 17 days earlier than the normal date due to warm weather, they were subsequently frozen by below-zero temperatures, doused with cold rain, frozen and rained on again, and now we've got a strong wind to blow the flower petals away. We'd better hurry and do our "hanami" (flower viewing) before the fleeting existence of the sakura disappears for good this year.
We've got lots of nice items for you this weekend, including restocked manga, DVDs, various reduced priced magazines, anime toy items, and more. Incredibly, J-List has over 2000 items in stock (sometimes we can't believe it ourselves), so there's almost certainly something really special waiting for you in our product pages. Remember that you can view the most recently updated items on the J-List site via the "three days link" on the J-List main page.
Remember that J-List offers two ways to get great magazines sent to you each month. First we have 6- and 12-month subscriptions to magazines like Urecco, Bejean and Gokuh, with 1 or 2 months free with your pre-payment. We also offer "revolving subscriptions" to other magazines on per-month basis -- we'll send you the latest issue before it's even put on the Japanese newsstands each month, until you ask us to stop. We have subscriptions to great anime, manga, bishoujo game and anime character, toy and hobby, JPOP, Japanese fashion, and other magazines available.
That's all for today's update -- we hope you are having a great weekend, wherever you are in the world!
Soccer fever continues to grow in Japan as we approach the World Cup, co-hosted by Japan and Korea, and soccer fans in Japan are getting more and more excited (our own Harumi-chan is one). The sport has managed to work its way into about a quarter of all TV commercials shown in Japan. To the Japanese, the most "kakko ii" (KA-koh EE, which means "cool") player is by far Nakata, who quit Japan's soccer league and is now a world-class soccer player in Italy. He's also fluent in Italian, and video of him speaking at press conferences are aired almost nightly here. Japanese love to have one of their own accepted internationally, especially in Europe. Remember that part of Peter's Unified Theory of Japan is that they secretly wish they were part of Europe -- why else would they make the DVD region codes for Japan and Europe the same? You can see pictures of Nakata at his official site here: http://nakata.net/official/
Part of coming to live in Japan from the U.S. means getting used to the metric system, the system in use pretty much everywhere in the world except America. It's quite easy, really -- you just learn to gauge what centimeters, meters, kilometers, and kilograms are in your mind, and you'll be used to it in no time. I've lived in Japan so long now that I only know my shoe size in centimeters (26.5 cm), and I don't know my weight in pounds at all (not that this is always a bad thing). They also use the Centigrade scale for measuring temperature, which means that when it's 3 degrees outside, it's just a little above freezing, and when it's 40 degrees in the summer (with matching high humidity), it's time to get indoors and find some industrial strength air conditioning.
The poor cherry blossoms are really taking a beating this Spring. Blossoming a full 17 days earlier than the normal date due to warm weather, they were subsequently frozen by below-zero temperatures, doused with cold rain, frozen and rained on again, and now we've got a strong wind to blow the flower petals away. We'd better hurry and do our "hanami" (flower viewing) before the fleeting existence of the sakura disappears for good this year.
We've got lots of nice items for you this weekend, including restocked manga, DVDs, various reduced priced magazines, anime toy items, and more. Incredibly, J-List has over 2000 items in stock (sometimes we can't believe it ourselves), so there's almost certainly something really special waiting for you in our product pages. Remember that you can view the most recently updated items on the J-List site via the "three days link" on the J-List main page.
Remember that J-List offers two ways to get great magazines sent to you each month. First we have 6- and 12-month subscriptions to magazines like Urecco, Bejean and Gokuh, with 1 or 2 months free with your pre-payment. We also offer "revolving subscriptions" to other magazines on per-month basis -- we'll send you the latest issue before it's even put on the Japanese newsstands each month, until you ask us to stop. We have subscriptions to great anime, manga, bishoujo game and anime character, toy and hobby, JPOP, Japanese fashion, and other magazines available.
That's all for today's update -- we hope you are having a great weekend, wherever you are in the world!
Thursday, March 28, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 28, 2002
Greetings to all of you from J-List!
Japan has changed in many ways in the almost ten years that I've lived here. One has been the elimination of Saturday as a day of half-attendance at work and school. In the "old days" (1992), many companies as well as all government offices and public schools had required half-day attendance on Saturdays, which seemed very alien to my American sensibilities. During the 1980's, Japan realized it was not an up-and-coming nation that had to work extra-hard to rebuild itself in the world economy, but instead had "arrived" and could take it easy. Half-days for government offices and public schools were phased out, and the "era of leisure" was declared. (Most private schools still elect to keep required Saturday classes, to avoid having their academic standards eroding.) Compared with what Japan was like at the beginning of the 1990's, when salarymen worked through holidays and rarely saw their families, I'd say it's certainly a change for the better. On the other hand, the economy here has gone through three plodding recessions in the past decade. One way to look at the present lack of growth in Japan's GDP might be that it has been caused partially by extra emphasis on working less and "taking it easy."
Japan has a national network of freeways, but they're quite different from what you might be used to in the U.S. or Europe. First of all, they're not free at all -- you pay a toll to use them, about $5 for us to drive 20 km to the next city over, or around $25 to go the 100 km into Tokyo. Paying to get to where you're going faster isn't much fun, but if they didn't charge the tolls then everyone would be using the roads, which would defeat the purpose. Unfortunately Japan's freeways are not linked up with each other very often, so it's quite common to have to drive a ways on one road, get off and drive on normal roads for two hours, then take the next freeway. Japan's freeways are very well designed and easy to drive on, but if you're visiting from overseas and want to drive around Japan, there's one potential challenge awaiting you: virtually all major roads are named with long, difficult kanji names (when they are named at all), rather with, say, easy to read numbers, as the interstate freeway system in the U.S. The freeway nearest our house is called the "Kita Kanto Odan Doro" which means the North Cross-Kanto Road. To get to Tokyo we head south on the "Kan-Etsu Kosoku Doro" which means the Kanto-Niigata Freeway. It's just part of being in Japan.
For today's update, we've got an extra special selection of cool items, including:
J-List brings you many interesting items, including English-translated bishoujo games, which we're happy to have been involved with for so many years. By far one of the best games to come along in years has been Tokimeki Check in!, the two CD-ROM game about an unwilling proprietor of a traditional Japanese hot springs hotel, and many interesting girls who come through the in. We're always happy to receive warm feedback from customers on this game and our other titles, and we certainly hope you'll give this fun genre a try. Tokimeki Check in! features beautiful graphics, full voice and a CD-quality soundtrack, too.
Japan has changed in many ways in the almost ten years that I've lived here. One has been the elimination of Saturday as a day of half-attendance at work and school. In the "old days" (1992), many companies as well as all government offices and public schools had required half-day attendance on Saturdays, which seemed very alien to my American sensibilities. During the 1980's, Japan realized it was not an up-and-coming nation that had to work extra-hard to rebuild itself in the world economy, but instead had "arrived" and could take it easy. Half-days for government offices and public schools were phased out, and the "era of leisure" was declared. (Most private schools still elect to keep required Saturday classes, to avoid having their academic standards eroding.) Compared with what Japan was like at the beginning of the 1990's, when salarymen worked through holidays and rarely saw their families, I'd say it's certainly a change for the better. On the other hand, the economy here has gone through three plodding recessions in the past decade. One way to look at the present lack of growth in Japan's GDP might be that it has been caused partially by extra emphasis on working less and "taking it easy."
Japan has a national network of freeways, but they're quite different from what you might be used to in the U.S. or Europe. First of all, they're not free at all -- you pay a toll to use them, about $5 for us to drive 20 km to the next city over, or around $25 to go the 100 km into Tokyo. Paying to get to where you're going faster isn't much fun, but if they didn't charge the tolls then everyone would be using the roads, which would defeat the purpose. Unfortunately Japan's freeways are not linked up with each other very often, so it's quite common to have to drive a ways on one road, get off and drive on normal roads for two hours, then take the next freeway. Japan's freeways are very well designed and easy to drive on, but if you're visiting from overseas and want to drive around Japan, there's one potential challenge awaiting you: virtually all major roads are named with long, difficult kanji names (when they are named at all), rather with, say, easy to read numbers, as the interstate freeway system in the U.S. The freeway nearest our house is called the "Kita Kanto Odan Doro" which means the North Cross-Kanto Road. To get to Tokyo we head south on the "Kan-Etsu Kosoku Doro" which means the Kanto-Niigata Freeway. It's just part of being in Japan.
For today's update, we've got an extra special selection of cool items, including:
- First, several great magazines for you, including the new Bejean (which is fantastic), new Kogal magazines, and more
- We've got the very nice DVD Japan in stock, which features a full color magazine and 138 minute sampler DVD for a great price (region 2)
- For photobook fans, we've got several very nice items, including the hardcover nude photobook of the lovely Manami Shimizu, fresh stock of the famous Rie Miyazawa nude photobook, and more
- We have some very nice hentai manga for your enjoyment, including works by EC Comics, AV Comics, and more
- For yaoi fans, we've got two excellent new items for you, with very bold and hardcore shonenai for your enjoyment
- For our DVD customers, we've got several top-quality items for you today, including a superb lesbian kissing DVD from Deep's featuring some of Japan's most lovely AV idols (region free)
- The waif-like Nanami Nanase shines in her latest erotic performance, The Santa Claus is Coming to My House, in which she plays a very lovely "Santa girl" giving a special present to her boyfriend (region free)
- One of my personal favorites is the lovely Kyoka Usami, and now her great indies production CC Idol, one of the most interesting peeing fetish productions I've ever seen, is available on DVD! (region free)
- Then: we get a lot of requests for unique items at J-List, and one of the most unlikely are requests for videos of Russian adult video idols, which are extremely popular inside Japan for some reason, and very hard to get. See Yulia Nova's fabulous large breast videos in stock now! (VHS)
- For fans of incredible bukkake performances, enjoy the latest Fuuka Sakurai offering from Waap, with the odd name of "Disgrace Novel Story of the Spermatozoon Palace" (region 2)
- For anime lovers, we've got a very special item for you: the DVD release of Porco Rosso, aka The Crimson Pig, aka Kurenai no Buta, a popular Hayao Miyazaki feature release film which features English and French subtitles and dubbed tracks on 2 DVDs! (region 2)
- For fans of our anime toys, we've got a great update for you, with a deluxe Cosmo Zero (aka Astro Fighter) from Yamato/Star Blazers, a very rare blue Battroid from Macross, and a deluxe Devilman "completed figure" for fans and collectors
- Also: fresh stock of Ah My Goddess competed figures, the Kiki's Delivery Service figures, and the Japan-only Hot Wheels from Bandai
- If you love My Neighbor Totoro, we've got a beautiful Neko Bus (cat bus) plush from Studio Ghibli and Sun Arrow, with incredible detail and a soft plush feel
- Other hopelessly cute items include a lucky Totoro strap that's very cute, a rare item for fans of Bambi, and some new and back-in-stock Hello Kitty items (including fresh stock of our oh-so-popular Hello Kitty vibrators)
- We have some cool "traditional" Japanese items for you, including a complete Japanese calligraphy set, a beautiful savings bank patterned after the collection boxes in temples, and moer
- For anyone who loves trains, we've got two great bullet train toys for you, with great all-die cast construction and detail
- We've got some great new snack items, including candies flavored after popular Japanese drinks (CC Lemon, etc.), and a fragrant and good-tasting gum from Lotte that smells like azaleas (really, we're not kidding)
- Also, we've had a major restocking of our candy and snack items, including fresh stock of Black Black Candy, Sushi Gummi, sake candy and traditional kuro ame, the super-tart shige-kix "hard gummi," and the popular Pocky with Morning Musume limited edition stickers inside
- We've got fresh stock of several varieties of the popular "The Dog" stuffed plush toys from Japan, with cute, oversized heads
- Finally, look for other cool items, including Hello Kitty toilet paper, new funny bento boxes with funny English on them, delicious and healthy miso soup mix, real chopsticks from Japan, and ways to help you learn Japanese!
J-List brings you many interesting items, including English-translated bishoujo games, which we're happy to have been involved with for so many years. By far one of the best games to come along in years has been Tokimeki Check in!, the two CD-ROM game about an unwilling proprietor of a traditional Japanese hot springs hotel, and many interesting girls who come through the in. We're always happy to receive warm feedback from customers on this game and our other titles, and we certainly hope you'll give this fun genre a try. Tokimeki Check in! features beautiful graphics, full voice and a CD-quality soundtrack, too.
Monday, March 25, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 25, 2002
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Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 20, 2002
Hello again from Japan, where having kids means never getting to take a bath by yourself.
Tomorrow is a big day for many of the Japanese gaijin community, the annual Macworld Expo in Tokyo, a day to head out to Tokyo Big Sight and see the new Luxo Jr. iMacs and whatever Apple will have for us. For many of my friends, it's an excuse to spend a night on the town in Tokyo, bouncing from bar to bar in Shibuya and Roppingi, and this year will be no different. For whatever reason, frozen margueritas are impossible to find in Japan, however the T.G.I. Friday's in Shibuya has some frosty ones.
Japan has had a decade of bad economic news, with no less than three separate recessions during the ten years I've lived here. As bad times continue, a more or less "official theme song" for the Japanese recession has emerged -- "Ashita ga aru sa" (There's always a tomorrow) by Kyu Sakamoto, the talented singer who also sang the famous Sukiyaki Song. A happy, uplifting song about keeping your chin up so you can enjoy the happier days ahead, it's found its way into numerous TV commercials and is played on the radio quite a lot here. You can hear the song and see a picture of Sakamoto at this site: http://www.manasepro.co.jp/kyu/tomorrow.html . See the lyrics, in romaji (roman character) and Japanese, at http://www.japankiku.com/lyrics/Ashita_ga_aru_sa.html . Sakamoto was killed in the most famous plane crash of Gunma Prefecture, where J-List is based -- it was one of the only ones, too, as there are no airports anywhere in our prefecture.
The uncommonly warm days have done their work on Japan, and the millions of cherry trees around the country have officially started their blooming for which they're famous -- the season of the sakura has once again come to Japan. Sakura season is very short, usually about a week, and during that time Japanese make any excuse possible to go to a park with cherry trees and engage in "hanami" or "flower viewing" to enjoy the beauty of the sakura before their fleeting existence is over. We'll be holding our annual J-List flower viewing, as we always do.
For the middle-of-the-week update, we've got some great new items for you, including:
Remember that J-List carries many fun items from Japan. One of the most fastest sellers in recent memory has been the Hello Kitty Vibrators, long rumored and thought to be an urband legend, but made by Sanrio for limited distribution in Japan. We've got about 100 in stock right now, so check this cool item out -- makes a unique and thoughtful gift, too.
Tomorrow is a big day for many of the Japanese gaijin community, the annual Macworld Expo in Tokyo, a day to head out to Tokyo Big Sight and see the new Luxo Jr. iMacs and whatever Apple will have for us. For many of my friends, it's an excuse to spend a night on the town in Tokyo, bouncing from bar to bar in Shibuya and Roppingi, and this year will be no different. For whatever reason, frozen margueritas are impossible to find in Japan, however the T.G.I. Friday's in Shibuya has some frosty ones.
Japan has had a decade of bad economic news, with no less than three separate recessions during the ten years I've lived here. As bad times continue, a more or less "official theme song" for the Japanese recession has emerged -- "Ashita ga aru sa" (There's always a tomorrow) by Kyu Sakamoto, the talented singer who also sang the famous Sukiyaki Song. A happy, uplifting song about keeping your chin up so you can enjoy the happier days ahead, it's found its way into numerous TV commercials and is played on the radio quite a lot here. You can hear the song and see a picture of Sakamoto at this site: http://www.manasepro.co.jp/kyu/tomorrow.html . See the lyrics, in romaji (roman character) and Japanese, at http://www.japankiku.com/lyrics/Ashita_ga_aru_sa.html . Sakamoto was killed in the most famous plane crash of Gunma Prefecture, where J-List is based -- it was one of the only ones, too, as there are no airports anywhere in our prefecture.
The uncommonly warm days have done their work on Japan, and the millions of cherry trees around the country have officially started their blooming for which they're famous -- the season of the sakura has once again come to Japan. Sakura season is very short, usually about a week, and during that time Japanese make any excuse possible to go to a park with cherry trees and engage in "hanami" or "flower viewing" to enjoy the beauty of the sakura before their fleeting existence is over. We'll be holding our annual J-List flower viewing, as we always do.
For the middle-of-the-week update, we've got some great new items for you, including:
- First, we've got new magazines, including the great new Urecco (filled with tons of positively beautiful women), as well as some popular amateur magazines for your enjoyment
- If you like value, enjoy the new DVD Perfect Guide, which brings you a whopping 3 video CDs of MPEG "quickies" spanning a great range of amateur and professional adult video from Japan
- We've got some great photobooks for you, including the hardcover and light bondage photobook of Minami Kurihara, and more
- We've got a great update of erotic hentai manga for you, including some dynamite works by Action Comics, Toen Comics, Hot Milk Comics and more -- check out the very nice items we've added for you
- We've also restocked several volumes of the popular Paradise Lost, the excellent "doujinshi anthology manga' which compile the best Evangelion adult parody doujinshi in a keep-forever manga volume
- Also: Trans 3, a "hard boy's love adult comic anthology" for yaoi fans
- For fans of Japan's very special erotic DVDs, we've got some nice items for you, starting off with a fantastic new Maiko Kazano erotic soft porn presentation from Bauhaus
- There's a great new "No Cut!!" series DVD, featuring a massive 180 minutes (3 hours) and three complete video productions for a great low price
- For fans of the high fetish Milky Stop M's Video Group, we have a very rare bukkake video offering
- We've got a great 2-in-1 Tekoki Series Special featuring dynamite Japanese hand-job fetish material
- Tomo has restocked several popular DVD titles, including our popular Anna Ohura DVDs and erotic Adult Video Wrestling DVD that has been such a hit
- Also, look for reduced prices on many DVDs and videos, and with included free shipping, too!
- We have many great Japanese candy and snack items in stock, including Good Stone Choco (a chocolate snack that looks like stones), Jersey Milk milk-flavored hard candy, and the limited edition Kit Kat Orange flavor from Nestle
- Also, fresh stock of the Green Tea hard candy and chocolate covered sunflower seeds (which are really good!)
- We've seen a lot of interest in our Tomica Japanese mini-car toys, so we've posted some more: the Toyota Celsior (sold as Lexus 400 in the US), the Prius, and the Hilux Surf, all very cool
- Japan is very big on cute hamsters, and we've got some cool items for you, including hamster message stamps that say "Konnnichi wa" in hiragana, a Hamutaro "free note" (meaning a notebook that you can do anything you like with), and a deluxe stuffed Hamutaro stuffed toy complete with sunflower seed in his little hands
- One of the most popular items in our history has been the Hamster Club bento boxes, but we keep selling out of them whenever we get some in -- well, we've got 20 in stock now, so they should last a little while
- We've got fresh stock of some "kawaii" (cute) items, including Hello Kitty mayonnaise cups (which you can use as contact lens cases if you're so inclined), more Hello Kitty toilet paper, and more!
- If you want to add a touch of Japanese to your room or house, we've got some nice Japanese signs and message boards for you, some of which are very wacky
- Finally, look for other fun items, including a marijuana wristband ("good fit!"), fresh stock of some great tools to help you study Japanese, new health and fun items, and much more!
Remember that J-List carries many fun items from Japan. One of the most fastest sellers in recent memory has been the Hello Kitty Vibrators, long rumored and thought to be an urband legend, but made by Sanrio for limited distribution in Japan. We've got about 100 in stock right now, so check this cool item out -- makes a unique and thoughtful gift, too.
Monday, March 18, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 18, 2002
Hello again from your friends at J-List!
One thing you learn when you learn a language like Japanese, is that a meaning in one language will not necessarily match up with meanings in other languages perfectly. In English, there is one concept for cold, but in Japanese, there are two, one for coldness in the air (samui) and one for something that's cold to the touch (tsumetai). When you learn very basic word like "life" in another language, you realize how difficult it can be to match meanings of some concepts up with their counterparts in other languages -- some of the words used in Japanese which correspond with the English word life include "seikatsu" (which means a person's life, as in, a new life in a new city), "jinsei" (which is a person's life, from their birth to their death), and "seimei" (used, say, to refer to life on other planets, and also life insurance). Implementing the Chinese character for "life" was evidently difficult for the Japanese, too, and as a result, this character has many possible pronunciations, compared with most characters, which have two pronounciations (one Japanese and one Chinese). To see this character for yourself, click here: http://www.jlist.com/c2/life.jpg
The Japanese have an interesting sense of things sometimes, which never fails to impress me. A balding man with a comb-over and lines of hair on the top of his said is said to have "bar code hair," which is certainly an interesting way to look at things. (On one Japanese TV show I caught, they touched a bar code reader to men's hair to see what amount came up on the register, then they gave that amount of money to each man.) Opening a bag of potato chips at the middle, so that it opens out to be a single sheet for the chips to sit on, is known as "manko-ake" (MAHN-ko AH-keh), or "opening as a woman's sexual region" ("manko" means the woman's sexual organ, and is the only truly "bad" word that exists in Japanese). And I never thought that Tic Tacs came in "toothpaste flavor" until I Japanese pointed it out to me -- now I can't eat Tic Tacs anymore.
I learn something new every day I live in Japan. Last weekend, my son and I were headed off to Nikko to see the temples and the resting place of Ieyasu Tokugawa (the third of the three unifiers of Japan), and the day before, we were worried if the weather would be good for us. So my son took off his shoe and threw it on the ground. It landed upright, so he knew it would be a nice day the next day. If the shoe had landed upside down, it would have meant rain. It didn't rain while we were in Nikko, so who knows, maybe there's something to Japanese children's weather prognostication.
Peach Princess's upcoming sci-fi bishoujo game, Critical Point, is being printed right now, and should be back from the duplicators very soon. This is a great game, with many different unique game endings and excellent graphics. The story for Critical Point was written by Kenichi Matsuzaki, who was heavily involved with Macross (Robotech), the original Gundam series, Orgus and Bubblegum Crisis, and it has the "look and feel" of classic 80's anime series. You can preorder the game still, and get free shipping as soon as the game ships. Each copy of the game comes with a spiffy numbered Moon Base ID badge, too!
For our first update of the new week, we've got some great items prepared for you, including:
The J-Mate website has been updated yet again, with new photobook reviews, and a great interview with the lovely Hirose Manatsu. The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
J-List customers tell us that the #1 way they heard about our unique little site was through word of mouth. If there's someone you think would be interested in our fun products from Japan, or just in our slice-of-life email updates from Japan, please let them know about us! Thanks very much.
One thing you learn when you learn a language like Japanese, is that a meaning in one language will not necessarily match up with meanings in other languages perfectly. In English, there is one concept for cold, but in Japanese, there are two, one for coldness in the air (samui) and one for something that's cold to the touch (tsumetai). When you learn very basic word like "life" in another language, you realize how difficult it can be to match meanings of some concepts up with their counterparts in other languages -- some of the words used in Japanese which correspond with the English word life include "seikatsu" (which means a person's life, as in, a new life in a new city), "jinsei" (which is a person's life, from their birth to their death), and "seimei" (used, say, to refer to life on other planets, and also life insurance). Implementing the Chinese character for "life" was evidently difficult for the Japanese, too, and as a result, this character has many possible pronunciations, compared with most characters, which have two pronounciations (one Japanese and one Chinese). To see this character for yourself, click here: http://www.jlist.com/c2/life.jpg
The Japanese have an interesting sense of things sometimes, which never fails to impress me. A balding man with a comb-over and lines of hair on the top of his said is said to have "bar code hair," which is certainly an interesting way to look at things. (On one Japanese TV show I caught, they touched a bar code reader to men's hair to see what amount came up on the register, then they gave that amount of money to each man.) Opening a bag of potato chips at the middle, so that it opens out to be a single sheet for the chips to sit on, is known as "manko-ake" (MAHN-ko AH-keh), or "opening as a woman's sexual region" ("manko" means the woman's sexual organ, and is the only truly "bad" word that exists in Japanese). And I never thought that Tic Tacs came in "toothpaste flavor" until I Japanese pointed it out to me -- now I can't eat Tic Tacs anymore.
I learn something new every day I live in Japan. Last weekend, my son and I were headed off to Nikko to see the temples and the resting place of Ieyasu Tokugawa (the third of the three unifiers of Japan), and the day before, we were worried if the weather would be good for us. So my son took off his shoe and threw it on the ground. It landed upright, so he knew it would be a nice day the next day. If the shoe had landed upside down, it would have meant rain. It didn't rain while we were in Nikko, so who knows, maybe there's something to Japanese children's weather prognostication.
Peach Princess's upcoming sci-fi bishoujo game, Critical Point, is being printed right now, and should be back from the duplicators very soon. This is a great game, with many different unique game endings and excellent graphics. The story for Critical Point was written by Kenichi Matsuzaki, who was heavily involved with Macross (Robotech), the original Gundam series, Orgus and Bubblegum Crisis, and it has the "look and feel" of classic 80's anime series. You can preorder the game still, and get free shipping as soon as the game ships. Each copy of the game comes with a spiffy numbered Moon Base ID badge, too!
For our first update of the new week, we've got some great items prepared for you, including:
- First, we have new magazines including some really nice new amateur magazines that feature contemporary Japanese girls aged 18-22 in love hotels with their boyfriends and more
- For fans of various Japanese sexy uniforms, we've got Seifuku Invitation, featuring many lovely AV idols like Yuna Akimoto, Nao Oikawa and more
- Also, we've added many new discount magazines for you, posted to magazine page 3
- We've got some nice newly posted photobooks for you, including the lovely nude photobooks of Minako Fujimoto, Honami Seki and more, as well as restocked photobooks
- We have a great stock of new hentai manga volumes for fans of Japanese adult comics, including "Sakura Sakura," an erotic celebration of Spring, as well as fresh stock of several new manga items
- Also: for Yaoi fans, enjoy the newly posted items for your enjoyment
- For DVD collectors, enjoy several newly posted items, including two great "No Cut!!" DVDs featuring 180 minutes and three complete video productions each (one region free, one region 2)
- For fans of Deep's unique Holed Panty series, which gets around mosaic laws by cutting a small hole in the actress's panties during her performance, we've got a new "2-in-1" DVD for you (region free)
- If you are a fan of Japan's bondage fetish DVDs, enjoy the new Bondage Battle ~ Beautiful Soldier (region free)
- For fans of extremely beautiful lesbian performances, we've got an excellent new DVD by Cinemagic, featuring 12 different actresses, including the very rare and popular Miki Sawaguchi (region free)
- A special bukkake DVD from Wanz Factory, Semen Love, featuring the lovely Milk Asaoka
- Finally, we've got another special 2-in-1 Angel DVD release from Attackers/Idea Pocket, featuring the lovely Sally Yoshino and Yuki Tazaki
- For anime fans, we've got some great items for you, starting with limited edition figures of Capcom game girls shyly giving chocolate to you
- We get many requests to carry Japanese high school uniforms, and we've got one for you -- a joke item which consists of everything you need to be a wacky high school girl, with skirt, vest, wig, hair flower, and loose socks (both men and women can wear this)
- For lovers of the terribly cute "The Dog" character goods from Japan, we've got stock of some cute new items, an excellent set of "The Dog" chopsticks with holder, and a very high-quality all-purpose pouch for keeping anything
- For fans of Mobile Suit Gundam, see the most excellent and most complete transforming Gundam RX-78 we've seen to date, from Bandai
- We've got new Hello Kitty items, including a great Hello Kitty "congratulations envelope" which you use to bring money to people at weddings (but you can find many uses for it), a really cool My Melody tissue set, and more
- Japan is far ahead of the West in many areas, one of them being really cute pencil cases -- we've got a cute "Study Bear!!" pencil case in stock for you now
- The three-tiered bento box, which separate compartments for rice, your main meal and an included water bottle, sold out in record time, amazing all of us -- fortunately, we've got more of this great item for you, in a new color
- We've got fresh stock of the best ear-cleaning item you will ever find, a cotton swab made of ringed cotton that feels great (I bring them to family members as gifts from Japan)
- Finally, look for other cool items, such as the ultimate way to grind sesame seeds (or just about anything else), a cute cash book for recording incoming and outgoing money payments in a cash account, fresh stock of our really cute metal Hamster Club pin, and more!
The J-Mate website has been updated yet again, with new photobook reviews, and a great interview with the lovely Hirose Manatsu. The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
J-List customers tell us that the #1 way they heard about our unique little site was through word of mouth. If there's someone you think would be interested in our fun products from Japan, or just in our slice-of-life email updates from Japan, please let them know about us! Thanks very much.
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Greetings from J-List March 13, 2002
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