Greetings from J-List May 22, 2002

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Greetings from J-List May 20, 2002

Hello again from all of us in Japan!

One of my first instances of "culture shock" upon arriving in Japan was seeing Japanese toilets. While most toilets in homes or restaurants are the standard Western toilets you are used to, many in public places are Japanese style, which means a toilet without a seat -- just a long, oval toilet that you squat over. Using them is quite a challenge, especially the first time, when you're not sure which direction you should face (for the record, face the raised part). For some reason, all the toilets on trains are Japanese style, which means that if you ever have to take a long journey by train in Japan, you'll have to contend with a seatless toilet while on a jerking, moving train. Japanese universally prefer seatless toilets to the sit-down kind, because no matter how dirty the toilet may be, no sensitive area touches your body. Toilets here have handles that move two ways, with the characters for "small" and "large" on them. If you've only got a little, turn the handle towards "small" to let a little water out. Later, I learned that the words for No.1 and No.2 in Japanese are shouben (or "small convenience") and daiben ("large convenience"), which solved the riddle of the small/large characters on Japanese toilet handles.

Soon Japan will enter its rainy season, a month-long period when it will rain most every day and be very gloomy. The rain is funny, too -- rain during rainy season falls in larger drops, which seem to be designed to get you extra wet when you're running out in it. In fact, the word for rainy season, Tsuyu, is written "plum rain" because the raindrops are the size of plums falling from the sky. We bought our car, a Mazda Bongo Friendee, which has a foldable table and chairs inside, specifically with rainy season in mind. Rather than moping around the house during weekends, we can take the kids out in the car to have an in-car picnic, even if it's pouring outside.

Apologies for my SOV/SVO goof. That's what I get for working too hard. English is indeed a SVO language (subject, verb, object). As they say in Japan, "Even monkeys fall from trees."

For the first update of the new week, we've got another excellent volley of items from Japan for you, including:

• First, we have new magazines, including some excellent amateur, kogal and hitozuma magazines for you
  
• We have some great new photobooks for you, including the great new hardcover work from Maiko Kazano, showing her erotic "Memory of Nineteen"
  
• For fans of older magazines, we've got more classic and premium back issues in stock for you, including some issues of Boyes, which are always very rare and in demand (see them on magazine page 2)
  
• For bishoujo anime fans, two item, the Bishoujo Anime Collection art book capturing virtually all hentai anime in the past 3+ years, and a beautiful second La Blue Girl erotic art book
  
• Also, we have new and restocked erotic manga, as usual, including some excellent new works we think you will love
  
• We have some great new erotic DVDs for you, starting with a great erotic new performance by Sally Yoshino as the "enslaved secretary" (region free)
  
• SOD's Deep's label does its bid for Korean-Japanese relations with a new erotic Korean AV release (subtitled only in Japanese, unfortunately) (region free)
  
• For fans of sexy anime cosplay erotica, enjoy the Sexy Girl's Cosplay War by Big Morkal (region free)
  
• Another very nice title, Aika Miura is a "female prisoner" in a very erotic hardcore bondage release (region free)
  
• The sweet and lovely Hikari Kisuki has charmed J-List readers in her nude magazine appearances, and now you can buy her softporn from Eichi Video (region free)
  
• For fans of "OL" fetish, i.e. office ladies who look so sexy in the workplace, enjoy the new release from Dream Ticket (region 2)
  
• Another great Indies release, Super Violent Shoot, puts three "semen girls" against dozens of men in a festival of bukkake (region 2) -- comes with a free packet of "love love lotion"!
  
• Finally, for M's Video Group fans, enjoy another incredibly beautiful, hardcore video release from this, the most famous name in bukkake in Japan (VHS)
  
• Finally, we've gone through and discounted many of our indies and pro adult videos, so you can get them for a great price, and free SAL shipping too!
  
• If you love Japan's elegant Race Queens as we do, we've got some new items for you
  
• We have more cool items in the series known as "The Dog," including really cool stickers of your favorite doggie!
  
• For Totoro fans, see the very soft, very touchable Neko Bus plush we've just gotten in stock
  
• Also, really cool new Sailor Moon dolls (with outfits you can change), and a very rare and very cute Cardcaptor Sakura poseable figure from Bandai
  
• We've restocked many popular toy items, including the Japan-only Hot Wheels from Bandai, as well as the very cool sushi lights (little sushi keychains that really light up!)
  
• Look for more Hello Kitty items, too, including the popular toy refrigerator and food set, as well as a Hello Kitty herbal garden and very fun "popping straw" set
  
• We've got many new snack items in, including new delicious fried rice mix, new Pocky (both large and small)
  
• We gotten in fresh stock of the very cool Tomy "mini car" toy cars, which are standard Hot Wheels scale -- they are so unique and fun to play with
  
• If you ever loved Ultraman (as I did), we've got some very cool items for you -- recreations of the most famous battles from the Ultraman universe, with our rubber hero fighting famous monsters
  
• Finally, look for other very cool items, including a Thunder Bunny contact lens case (but we've got very limited stock), new bento boxes and sets, sushi and onigiri makers, and much more! Enjoy all the new items!
  

We're happy to announce that we've been able to find a new manga distributor, which helps us get books for you faster and more efficiently. Since Japan is a very regulated and organized place, still with many levels of distributors between end-user and manufacturer, we hope our new distributor will help us bring many more items to you.

Although we've gotten more stock of delicious Pocky in today, the stock we have now is just about our last before summer arrives. Unfortunately, Pocky melts in the heat and high humidity of Japan's summer, and so we don't reorder it in the summer months. If you'd like to get some of our delicious Pocky, you should hurry!

Greetings from J-List May 17, 2002

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Greetings from J-List May 13, 2002

Hello again from your friends in Japan!

Yasu and I went down to the Tokyo Toy Show at Tokyo Big Sight, and were treated to all the upcoming offerings of Takara, Bandai, Tomy and all the other big names in toys. There was some kind of device that translated what your dog was saying when he barked, more Japan-only Matchbox releases, a Gundam cockpit you can really ride in, many cool Licca-chan doll items, some fun remote control toys, new Kubrick toys, and more. They even had some real live Race Queens! Of course all of us at J-List work really hard to find fun and interesting things to carry at J-List, and we'll continue our hard work.

I remember my confusion when, coming to Japan, I went to my first Japanese juku (cram school) to teach English conversation, not knowing what a juku really was. Basically, in Japan, students attend normal school until 3 or 4 pm, and then they often attend one of thousands of these evening and weekend schools scattered around Japan where they study various subjects, math, science, English and kokugo, which means "national language" (i.e., Japanese). Some very old-style jukus teach abacus, Japanese brush writing, and so on. In every neighborhood you can find several juku run by people living in that area, each catering to a slightly different age group or specializing in this subject or that. Study during compulsory education (elementary and junior high) is relatively stress-free for Japanese kids, and they go to juku as much for the social aspect (hanging out and studying with friends) as anything else. But when students prepare for high school and college, for which an entrance exam is required, they must buckle down and study, and there are jukus that do nothing but help students get into the high school or college of their choice.

If you try to get into a college but fail, you are a "ronin" (a masterless samurai), and most ronin go to "prep schools" (yobiko) which are large schools that do nothing but prepare students for getting into the college of their choice. It is actually possible, although it's very rare, for a 15 year old to try to get into a private high school but fail, thus making them a "junior high school ronin" who doesn't go to school while they prepare to take the tests again next year. This is very rare, about one person in 10,000, but one of my students did this. Actually, since high school is not required in Japan, a certain number of youths in rural prefectures decide not to go at all, and start working instead -- to Japanese, this is the epitome of "baka" (stupid) and is avoided by most of them.

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

• First, we have the new Urecco, and it's a beautiful one, with a great selection of the best Japanese AV lovelies for you, Ai Kurosawa, Megumi Osawa, Hitomi Hayakawa, Hitomi Hasegawa, and more
  
• We have new indies, amateur and kogal magazines in stock, including the always-popular Cho Mach! featuring an erotic tribute to kogal culture
  
• Also: fresh stock of many nice discounted magazine items, including popular $5 and up issues of Urecco that had been out of stock (but really hiding in our stock room)
  
• We've got a positively dynamite leg, stock and up-skirt fetish photobook, capturing 15 famous AV stars and 17 amateur gals in their lovely, leggy beauty
  
• Look for some nice new photobooks, including the photobook of Rui Sakuragi, the top Japanese AV idol of the mid-1990's
  
• Also in stock, the lovely EX CD-ROM, which features a full color magazine and CD-ROM (video CD) filled with sample movies
  
• For bishoujo game fans, enjoy a full Japanese erotic game, Yuukan Shinshi (Bourgeoise Gentleman), and a full art book, for a great price
  
• We have a great update of hentai manga for you, with some excellent new adult comics, including the new issue of Pururun Seminar (!) and the positively beautiful Tale of G Street by Hot Milk Comics
  
• For DVD lovers, we've got many new items for you, starting with the last of the SOD Memorial DVD releases, four new full-length titles at great prices, including the "Worst 10 Titles of SOD History" (region free)
  
• Soft on Demand founder Ganari Takahashi is personally directing the career of the lovely new star child of Soft on Demand, Ruri Anno, in her excellent 2nd erotic DVD release (region free)
  
• The lovely Sara Akikawa has lovely, long legs, and you will love her new leg fetish offering from Deep's (region free)
  
• In sumo wrestling, there are 48 ways to defeat your opponent, and in Japanese traditional sex, there are 48 sexual positions -- see them all in a great new DVD we've got in stock now (region free)
  
• For lesbian fans, enjoy the new Les Gal Paradise, featuring 16 girls who show you their first hardcore lesbian sex (region free)
  
• From M's Video Group and Waap Entertainment, a wonderful new Minami Hoshikawa "Album of G Cup Semen" (region 2)
  
• Also, a great restocking of DVD titles for you, including Mai Hagiwara, Anna Ohura, Street Fucker, Lesbian Girls' School, and many more
  
• For fans of Japan's lovely Race Queens, swimsuit idols and other beautiful women, we've got new items in stock for you, including an all-new Fumika Suzuki DVD!
  
• J-List also carries Japan-only releases of anime, including the films of Hayao Miyazaki with full English subtitles and dubbed versions on the discs -- and we've gotten in fresh stock of Porco Rosso, one of my favorite of his films
  
• Look for more Hello Kitty items, and new Hamutaro cute items as well -- including a massive restocking of the most popular bento box in our history
  
• Want to be stylish like Japanese kogals? We've got a small bag with leather strap that is all the rage in Shibuya these days
  
• We've got nice new snack items in stock for you, including a Ramun geletin drink you can enjoy, delicious traditional Japanese hard candies, and a big restocking of our runaway hit, gummi sushi
  
• If you're getting ready for the World Cup, or if you're just patriotic, we've got some killer bamboo folding fans with national flags on them (USA, Spain, Britain, Germany, Korea, Japan, France, Italy
  
• We have some cute new Ultraman little Tinibiz figures in for you, and for fans of "The Dog," some extremely cute straps for your portable phone or keys
  
• Japan has a highly developed and interesting Pro Wrestling world, and we've got some more fun pro-wres action figures in stock for you
  
• Also: for fans of the anime and manga Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne (er, God-Wind Pirate Jeanne), the very cute shoujo story from Ribbon, we've got the deluxe art book for you
  
• Finally, look for authentic chopsticks from Japan, more unique Japanese pens and funny English notebooks, unique Japanese soy sauce holders, a cute traditional coin bank, more odd "flowers of the world clothespins" and more!
  

Remember that J-List carries authentic Japanese "loose socks," those outrageous baggy socks that high school girls wear. They're great fun to wear, and are good for anyone putting together anime cosplay. If you're looking for

I see we're almost out of our popular Lasonic region-free DVD players -- we have only 4 in stock as of this writing. If our stock runs out, you can still order them, and we've got 150 of the units on order.

Greetings from J-List May 10, 2002

Hello and TGIF from all of us in Japan!

One thing I've learned from my years in Japan is that the Japanese are greatly concerned with child-raising and education. All around the city I live in you can see signs with slogans of wisdom from the local PTA, like "Weak-minded children come from over-protective parents" and "Children learn respect for their parents by watching how their parents respect their own parents." (One of my goals is to find a list of all of these slogans and post them, translated, to my personal homepage.) Often Japanese parents care too much about education, and push their kids too hard to study so they can get into the best universities. Mothers who do this are a kind of caricature in Japanese society, making their kids study at after-school cram schools (called "juku"), take English conversation lessons, and study with private tutors. They're called "education mamas" (kyoiku mama), and I've met more than a few during my years as an English teacher in Japan.

I think, however, that all that has passed in the past fifty years of Japan's educational system is heading for a change. With a rapidly aging population and very low birth rate of 1.35 babies per woman, the number of children under the age of 15 at a postwar-low, just 18 million or 14.3 percent of the population here. This amounts to a "famine" of young people which currently affects much of Japan -- including educators in Japan's after-hours juku schools as well as companies that make things that kids want to buy. In parts of Japan, they have had to close public school and combine school districts because of the shrinking number of kids. In Japan, kids are made to study harder to prepare for entrance exams for high school and college, a policy that has been very good for the Japanese in the past. However, I worry about a long-range degradation in the quality of education here, as the standards of Japan's high schools and universities are lowered as more school chase fewer students. As far as my wife and I are concerned, we're planning to send our kids to school in the U.S. whey they reach that age.

I've spent the week testing out my own Lasonic DVB-090 DVD player, which J-List currently sells, and I've added to the description on our website. It really is a nifty player, with many nice touches, such as separate fast forward/fast back and chapter forward/back buttons on the remote, a screen zooming option, reliable "set and forget" region free feature which is fully reversable, and all major remote control buttons replicated on the player itself, so you can use it even if you don't have the remote handy. If you're interested in viewing all the DVDs from Japan and are looking for a great buy, we recommend the DVB-090, but if you're interested in a region free player that's a little higher-end, please wait a little while. We plan to expand our line of DVD players to include ones with more features, such as progressive scan and Dolby/DTS sound support, soon.

For the pre-weekend update, we've got an extra-special update for you, with some really nice new products, including:

• First, we've got some very nice new magazines in stock, including Pink Labyrinth, a very stylish erotic amateur magazine featuring kogals in love hotels
  
• The double-thick bukkake magazine Gal's Shower remains one of the most popular magazines in our history, and we've got the great new issue for you
  
• A beautiful item for sexy swimsuit idols, the new Scholar DX features a great look at Japan's most lovely girls
  
• A rare and special treat for photobook collectors, we've got two deluxe works featuring Bunko Kanazawa and Reina Muragami, which feature incredibly beautiful nude photos -- and they're, ahem, very, very detailed!
  
• We have other new photobooks for you, too, including the beautiful photobook of Mayu Koizumi (107 cm J cup, wow!), photobooks by Rin Tomosaki and Aya Otosaki, the erotic Shinobu Kasagi, and fresh stock of some older items (Aida Garo)
  
• We've got a good offering of erotic hentai manga, with some excellent new books this time, including Body Language, the fantastic illustrated manga with 32 color pages!
  
• For DVD fans and collectors, we've got some very nice new items for you, starting off with another four 2+ hour releases in the oh-so-popular SOD Memorial series, with Bunko Kanazawa, Mai Kazama, an erotic psycho-drama, and more (region free)
  
• Also, by happy fortune, we were able to restock the full sets of the SOD Memorial DVDs -- you can own ALL 40 of these fabulous titles, over 8 days of constant AV viewing, for a very low price! (region free)
  
• Dogma, the label of famed AV director, has gone independent, splitting off from their parent company Soft on Demand -- see a great new "female bukkake teacher" performance starring Kurumi Morishita commemorating their independence (region free)
  
• Also from the new Dogma, a super lesbian performance, Do the Lesbian Act! (region free)
  
• We've got a super "Private Observation of Female Body" performance by the excellent Wanz Factory, allowing you to learn everything about the erotic Yuka Igarashi (region 2)
  
• Finally, we've got fresh stock of several titles, including the highly recommended Yinling of Joytoy and several other titles
  
• For anime fans, we've got some nice new anime toy and other items in, including a really cool new My Neighbor Totoro wooden alarm clock,
  
• Also, we've gotten in fresh stock of the popular Kiki's Delivery Service 2-disc set DVD, truly the best release of this film anywhere in the world
  
• Newly added Hello Kitty items include Kitty sushi makers, Hello Kitty chopsticks, Hello Kitty savings banks, and more
  
• Also, we've got some really nice new bento-related items in, including a deluxe new 2-section bento box, more of the complete sets of bento boxes and other items, and just in time for Hamtaro to be broadcast on American TV, more cute "Hamster Club" bento box sets
  
• For your kitchen we've got some nifty items, including a great way to cook fish or mochi (rice cake), a bowl-and-chopstick set, a spiffy cutting board from Japan, and a really cool Hello Kitty coffee cup!
  
• For collectors of Licca-chan, the cute fashion doll by Takara, we've got a very cool "Major League Baseball Licca" series in stock for you
  
• For snack and candy fans, we've got fresh stock of furikake, including red salmon for making onigiri with, delicious soft candy with cherry gummi inside, and a cool item, Lord of the Rings chips
  
• Finally, look for spiffy Japanese pens that write in many colors, Japanese play money, some very cool plastic hiragana letters for learning Japanese, and more!
  

Did you know that Kanazawa Bunko is named after a train station in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Yokohama? If you read J-Mate, you would -- you can read interviews with her and with dozens of lovely adult video idols from Japan on J-Mate. And the site has been updated, with new interviews (Rio Sannomiya and AV director Turbo Muigo), as well as reviews of many great DVDs, English bishoujo games and more!

When you order something from J-List, you don't just get service with a smile from Kaori, Harumi and the rest of our Japanese staff, you also get Japanese advertising tissue. J-List includes a pack of advertising tissue (which are handed out in front of train stations in Japan) with every order. If you want to get more, we sell a box containing 12 packs of our special pocket tissue at our cost, just $1.60. Then you can give this fun and unique Japanese pocket tissue out to your friends! Just search for 'tissue' on our website to find this item.

Greetings from J-List May 8, 2002

Greetings again from all of us at J-List!

The Japanese have invented a new product category to help combat traffic problems at toll gates: Electronic Toll Collection, which is basically a computer system you put in you car, which lets you speed through toll booths, paying the toll automatically as you drive through. It seems kind of silly, but if it helps reduce traffic in Tokyo, I am all for it -- and already Japanese makers are competing to bring out the smallest or the thinnest ETC hardware for your car. i wish they'd chosen a different name for it though -- when I look at the ETC lane, my gaijin eyes see "etc." as in "et cetera," as in, this lane is for these types of vehicles, and that lane is for all others. It's confusing for me, and I know what ETC is -- I imagine that somewhere in Japan, foreign visitors are driving through the lanes, thinking that they are special toll booths for non-Japanese to use.

We got some comments on Japanese adaptions of food from around the world, so we thought we've give some more details. One popular dish in Japan is "gratin" which is, to the Japanese at least, pasta that's cooked in a white or cheese sauce, then baked. (In the anime Nadia of the Mysterious Sea, the "Grandis Tank" is nicknamed the Gratin, a joke that's hard for Americans to get.) One of my favorites is "doria," which is rice with white sauce (sometimes ketchup), put in a casserole dish with cheese on top -- then everything is baked until the cheese is crispy and hot. One of my favorite foods of all time is "hamburg doria," doria with a hamburger (salsbury) steak, baked into it. Another delicious food my wife is sure would be a hit in the U.S., are croquettes (from France), which to the Japanese, at least, are potato patties that are fried all crispy (they're great with curry powder inside, too). Finally, Japanese love castella, a tasty sweet cake from The Netherlands.

Unfortunately we had a problem with Tomo's computer -- several days of outgoing mail had not been sent, but was sitting in the outgoing mail box. The end result was that some customers who had paid for their orders received "awaiting payment" notices. We apologize for any confusion -- if you received a mail from us and don't know what to make of it, email us and we'll straighten it out.

For our new update, we've got a ton of very nice new items for you, including:

• First, we've got in several nice magazine items for you, including several new amateur and kogal magazines, and a new and rare item for busty Japanese girl fans
  
• For photobook lovers, we've got several excellent adult photobooks, including the interesting erotic photobook of a love doll named Candy Girl which have to be seen to be believed, as well as new Chinkame erotic works
  
• Also, check out fresh stock of Anna Ohura's fantastic photobook "Mischief"
  
• We have some excellent hentai manga works for you, with newly published works by some of Japan's most popular artists and manga houses -- also, fresh stock of a dozen or so back in stock manga titles, with some very nice ones for you
  
• For DVD fans, we've got another large update, starting with another volley of the oh-so-popular SOD Memorial Series -- four new value-priced DVD releases for SOD fans (region free)
  
• Then, ever since Nanami Nanase went off her all-semen diet, she went and got fat -- so SOD president Ganari Takahashi has put her on an erotic training program designed to slim her down (region free)
  
• SOD's Magic Mirror Bus (a bus with one-way glass inside, called a "magic mirror" in Japanese) helped make them famous, and now we've got the full boxed set available for order (stock is limited, but more are already on order) (region free)
  
• Adult Video Wrestling, which features real sexual "pro-wres" up on the stage, is a huge hit with J-List fans -- so we've gotten a new DVD in stock for you! (region free)
  
• We were also happy to see the interest in Korean adult video, and we've got a new title posted -- For Fairy, starring the lovely Charin Gahee (region free)
  
• Another beautiful soft porn offering from Bauhaus, enjoy the lovely beauty and youth of Kaori Kuraishi (region free)
  
• We've got another excellent "Super Angle of Manko" release in which 90% of the camera angles are from the point of view of the woman's genitalia -- this stars Ai Nagase and Mai Kuramoto (region 2)
  
• Also, we've restocked a large number of our popular DVD titles, including Kyoka Usami Best Selection, Touching Breasts for the First Time, Let's Do Sex with Ai Nagase, How to Perfect and many more!
  
• Tomo has added to our new Japanese film DVD collection, with a very interesting psychological tale of fear and triumph (region 2, English subtitled)
  
• Anime fans should check out the very cool Ceramic Totoro light, which casts a beautiful orange glow when you turn it on
  
• Also: the very nice glossy artbook of Ken-ichi Sonoda, featuring all of his best works printed in a beautiful book
  
• We've got some great new "The Dog" plush toys in stock, including a whole new series (The Doggie Mascot 2nd), with Longhair Chihuahua, Shetland Sheepdog, Maltese, and more!
  
• Also, we've made full sets available of the "The Dog Small Size" plush toys, the super-small and cute plush doggies -- so you can buy the whole set and save
  
• Look for some cool Hello Kitty items, including a new (less expensive) Kitty Wall Clock that is really cool, Hello Kitty fans in time for summer, delicious Hello Kitty snacks, and more!
  
• If you've got kids who are into Pokemon, we've got a deluxe Pokemon play house, which comes with cute little Pokemon figures, a great item for any little 'un
  
• We have a big update of delicious new snacks from Japan, including peanuts and rice crackers, delicious red salmon furikake, Strawberry and Coconut Pocky, more chocolate filled banana candy, and a great new item: a gummi tree that has all the signs of the zodiac on it for you to eat
  
• Also: the super-spicy sugarless caffeine gum Xylish Hyper Cool is a hit, and we ran out, so we get more in stock for you to order!
  
• For those who want to be in sync with Japan's lovely female culture, we've got limited stock of the new Girl Pop
  
• If you love Japan's Race Queens and other sexy idols, check out the new offerings on the Idol DVD and More page
  
• Also very cool: Morning Musume Bottle Mascots, cute little Mo-Mus characters you can put on any standard bottle
  
• Finally, see a fun map puzzle of Japan, more Japanese chopsticks, and more!
  

J-List carries many interesting products, and one of our favorites are the "bishoujo games" (which means "pretty girl games") from Japan. These are basically interactive love-simulation games for Windows (a few are for Macintosh), in which you play through an interesting story, interacting with pretty anime girls to reach one of several possible game endings. In one game- X-Change, you play a boy who is changed into a girl through a chemistry accident, and it leads to some rather interesting adventures. You can see all the bishoujo game products we carry under the Bishoujo/Hentai Game link on our site.

Greetings from J-List May 6, 2002

Hello again from your friends in Japan, J-List!

We're right in the middle of Golden Week here in Japan, and yesterday, we re-learned the rule that you should never try to go anywhere in Japan during Golden Week. We decided to take the kids to a small town in the mountains of Gunma famous for flying huge koi-nobori fish kites, so we set out in our Mazda Bongo Friendee. Well, this seemed like a great idea to about 500,000 other people, mostly from Tokyo, and we all ended up sitting in one long, unpleasant traffic jam on mountain roads so narrow you couldn't turn around. We stuck it out for a while, but in the end decided to find a nice mountain stream where the kids could splash around instead. Whenever making plans to visit Japan, be sure to avoid the last week of April/first week of May!

In Japan, there are often concepts that are very difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a person's eyelid when their eyes are open -- one crease ("hitoe" hee-TOE-eh), two creases ("futae" fu-TAH-eh) or three ("mie" MEE-eh). (As always, there's no silent 'e' in Japanese, or magic 'e' as they call it here.) Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with more creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese, and getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV stars. I have to admit, I'd never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here -- it was a totally alien concept to me, and I still can't tell how many creases a person's eyes have, even today. Another measure of beauty, having a "high nose" is an important feature for anyone who wants to enter modeling. I never really thought of noses as anything other than "big" or "small" before coming here, but apparently there is more to a person's nose than meets the eye.

In case you were wondering what the Japanese use to estimate the size of a person's privates, well, we'll tell you. For a man, the size of his nose in relation to his face supposedly indicates whether or not he is well endowed. So if you've got a large nose and come to Japan, you may find yourself popular (your mileage may vary). In similar silly Japanese fashion, the area inside a woman's ear (the little cavity formed by the bottom of the "S" shape) supposedly indicates the general closeness of her womanhood. And in case you wanted to know, a popular slang word for the genitals of men and women are "son" (musuko) and "daughter" (musume).

We've got some nice items for you tonight, with newly restocked and posted manga, magazine, photobook, DVD, Hello Kitty and other fun pop culture items. J-List carries nearly 2000 products at all times (this really bowls us over, too), so if you browse our site by category or search for items you're interested in, we're sure you can find some cool things from Japan either for yourself or as great gifts for others.

Greetings from J-List May 3, 2002

Hello again from Japan! Today is the first day of the string of Japanese holidays known as Golden Week, so things are quiet around here. But Tomo, Yasu and myself are here, working hard to bring you more interesting stuff from Japan.

One thing I can say about Japan: I really love the food here. It would be quite difficult to live here for nearly ten years if I didn't. Just as Japan has taken elements from various other countries as it modernized itself over the past century, the Japanese palette has been influenced by many parts of the world. Some of the most common Japanese food, such as ramen and one of my favorite foods of all time, gyoza ("pot stickers"), are really from China. If the Japanese have a single staple food that everyone eats, it has to be "curry rice" which is a mild, thick curry based on British versions of Indian curries. Spaghetti from Italy is popular, of course, and yakiniku (Korean Barbecue) is another popular food. The Japanese also imported many dishes from Europe (since the Japanese secretly wish they were a part of that continent), including doria, gratin, and hamburg steak (which we'd call Salsbury steak in the U.S.). Other foods, such as udon, sushi and sashimi, are completely "made in Japan."

Do you know what year it is? I often don't. In additional the Western calendar, the Japanese have a unique system of counting years based on the reign of the current emperor. The current era is the 14th year of the Heisei era (Heisei means "peach and prosperity"), when the Emperor Hirohito died and was succeeded by his son, so this year is Heisei 14. Before Heisei was the Showa era (from 1925 to 1988), before that was Taisho, and Meiji, and so on -- Japanese students have to memorize them all. Incidentally, the current Emperor of Japan is 125th in an unbroken line of emperors going back 2000 years. His name is Akihito, but since he's always called "Emperor Heisei" in Japan, it's quite common for Japanese to not know the name of their own emperor (Yasu didn't when I just asked him).

J-List carries unique anime, manga, fashion, JPOP and other magazines by "reserve subscription," allowing you to get the current issue each month sent to you automatically, until you tell us to stop. We're happy to report that we've gone through and lowered our prices for all of these magazines, allowing you to get the fun and unique magazines you want each month and save some money, too. And we've added three new magazines: Model Graphix, the excellent magazine of anime models and toys that is a real treat to read each month; Dengeki G's, a magazine that follows all the pretty girls from Japan's bishoujo games and anime; and S Cawaii, a new Japanese fashion and kogal culture magazine for those who want to follow Japan's fashion trends.

For the pre-weekend update, we've got some great items for you, including:

• First, we've got some nice new magazines, including the new issues of amateur and kogal magazines such as Mini Teen, Yo! and the bukkake magazine I'll Love You
  
• Also: more discounted magazine items for those looking for bargains, although our stock is always selling out fast
  
• For fans of indies AV, check out the new issue of MPEG Indies, a spiffy magazine that comes with not one but two Video CDs full of sample AV for you to watch -- a great bargain!
  
• We've got several beautiful new photobooks in stock for you, including Akane Souma's wonderful sexy photobook, a new offering from Queen of the Race Queens Fumika Suzuki, and a great new hardcover photobook from Yoshino Sally!
  
• We've got several nice issues of Japan's newest adult comics for you, including the excellent "Immoral Maria"
  
• Also, a restocking of some classic comics, including the popular Electric Fighting Daughters series (all hentai game girl comics), as well as (limited) fresh stock of the damned-cool "Irodori"
  
• We have some great new DVD offerings for you today, starting off with a first for J-List and Japan: Korean adult video, published by Deep's to commemorate the upcoming Japan/Korea hosted World Cup -- it's as different from Japanese AV as Japanese is from American, and very beautiful to see (region free)
  
• Also from SOD, we've got a fantastic new erotic performance by Sally Yoshino, as she hunts down male virgins and steals their cherries (region free)
  
• We've got another volley of the fast-disappearing SOD Memorial DVDs, including bondage, under-skirt fetish, "first lesbian" and more (region free)
  
• We've got a beautiful new soft porn offering from Bauhaus, with a powerful lineup of lovely stars: Aoi Minori, Sally Yoshino, Rio Sannomiya, Rin Tomosaki and Akira Watase! If you buy no other Japanese cosplay DVD this year... (region free)
  
• Finally, for region 2 collectors (including J-list customers who have purchased the region free players we now sell), the lovely Airi Niiyama's 180 minute erotic performance "The Idol" (region 2)
  
• As mentioned up, see the great new magazines available by revolving subscription: Model Graphix, G's Magazine and the super-cute Super Cawaii!
  
• Also, a great new direction for J-List, we're going to start carrying the beautiful "character clocks" by citizen, and we've got a cute dancing Hello Kitty wall clock and one of the coolest items I've ever seen, a deluxe Totoro Cockoo clock that is truly amazing. Our initial stock of these clocks is limited but more are on order already
  
• Another great new category of item at J-List, we now carry inexpensive Japanese fans which are both beautiful to look at and useful for keeping yourself cool this summer!
  
• For Japanese snack and food fans, look for some nice new items including a smooth and delicious coffee candy from Japan, new "raw type" miso soup mix, plum flavored sesame seeds (which taste better than they sound), Sakuma mint candies, and fresh stock of the popular Japanese Mugi-cha (barley tea) that's great for summer
  
• We've got some nice Hello Kitty items for you, including Hello Kitty cookies, a nifty tiny tupperware container,
  
• J-List customers tell us they want Maneki Neko, the cute "inviting cat" who invites good luck, love and money into your life, so we've obliged with several new items
  
• If you're a fan of our Japanese Race Queen and idol items, be sure and see what we've got in stock for you today!
  
• We've gotten in fresh stock of the Spirited Away color film comics, for fans who want to collect these beautiful all-color anime books, by Hayao Miyazaki
  
• Finally, look for more wacky stickers from Japan, a useful took for cutting your children's hair, a super all-purpose canvas bag with many uses, and more!
  

J-List customers tell us that word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends is the #1 way they've heard of us. This makes us very happy. If you've got a friend who might appreciate the unique Japanese pop culture and "slice of life" we bring you from Japan, please tell them about us!

Well, that's all for now -- we hope you have a very nice Golden Week, and we'll see you on the web!

Greetings from J-List May 1, 2002

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Greetings from J-List April 29, 2002

Hello again from Japan, the country where no one eats Cream of Wheat (because it looks to them like Okayu, a watery rice dish eaten by sick people).

No matter how long I live in Japan, there are some things I just can't go without. Although the Japanese have a long tradition of pickling vegetables (including making kim-chee, Korean spicy pickles), they're not just a replacement for good, crunchy Vlassic pickles that I am used to from home. Fortunately, through the Foreign Buyer's Club (http://www.fbcusa.com) expats in Japan can get anything from home quite easily, with the only catch being you must buy it in supermarket cases (e.g., 8 jars of pickles, not just one, 12 boxes of Raisen Bran, not one). When Japanese go to the U.S., they often pine for their own Japanese pickles, called tsukemono, which aren't easily available. I guess there's something about pickles that makes the ones from home taste the best.

It sometimes seems to outsiders living here that Japan is a very death-oriented society. Don't give gifts in multiples of four because the number four is read "shi" in Japanese, which also means death. Don't put you chopsticks straight up in your rice, since that's only done as part of a ceremony for the dead. Likewise, don't sleep with your head facing north, as bodies about to be cremated are laid facing this direction. Yet for all the customs that have to do with death, nearly all of which spring from Japan's various versions of Buddhism, the Japanese have almost no concept of estate planning. As far as I can tell, virtually all the things we do in the States to prepare for the event of one's death, from writing wills to making living trusts to investigating how to avoid death taxes, are not practiced here in Japan at all. Since my wife's parents have some land that will be transferred to my wife's name at the time of their death, I brought the topic up with them, to see if there was anything we should be doing ahead of time -- but it seem like this is something you just don't talk about in Japan. Likewise, I asked our accountant to recommend some options we might want to keep in mind about our own property in Japan, but he said no one really did anything to prepare for death estate-wise. Even the concept of drafting a will is not really practiced here. Because all Japanese have strong "common sense" built into them, a natural sense for the "way things should be" that all Japanese are in tune with, wills are not as necessary here. If I were to die without a will, common sense dictates that my wife and children would receive all my possessions, and this logic is rarely contested here.

We've been selling DVDs from Japan since the first ones started to emerge back in 1996. While the vast majority of the DVDs we sold were region free, over time we saw more and more DVDs coming out that were encoded for region 2 (Japan and Europe), mainly anime and the specialized adult DVDs known as "Indies." We have recommended some of the lower-cost players that could be found online, but many customers have told us they'd rather buy from J-List, who they trust, than some third party online seller. So, after much forehead slapping over missing out on a great idea, we're happy to report that we now carry our first region-free DVD player, the Lasonic DVB090, a solid region-free portable DVD/VCD/MP3 player that's also really inexpensive! And stocked in San Diego for your ordering convenience.

For the last update of the month of April, we've got some great items for you, including:

• First, we've got the special 16th anniversary issue of Dela Beppin, featuring a great lineup of beautiful Japanese AV idols and models for you
  
• We've got some great amateur and "wet" magazines for you as well, including kogals and another Japanese fetish, women who are unfaithful to their husbands
  
• We have some great hardcover photobooks for you, with beautiful Japanese angels, and the sexy leg fetish photobook of Yuka Sawachi
  
• We have excellent all-new hentai manga for you, including the erotic "Hidden Room" by artist "Beauty Hair" as well as new Yaoi volumes too
  
• Also: a general restocking of a dozen or so volumes of hentai manga for your perusal
  
• We've got more volumes of the very popular Bishoujo Grand Prix CD-ROMs by Lyceen, full of cute CG "hair nude" for Mac or Windows
  
• For DVDs, first we've got another volley of the popular SOD Memorial Series, at just $10 each (region free)
  
• Hina Uemura, a tantalizing new face at SOD, assists your masturbation with a great lineup of cosplay and fetish performances (region free)
  
• There's a new Bukkake Circle in Blue Sky for bukakke lovers, by SOD's Natural High label (region free)
  
• Fans of the lovely Azumi Kawashima will love her "Final Visual Collection" soft-porn DVD, which is just lovely (region free)
  
• Also very lovely, the excellent return of Mai Hagiwara to Bauhaus, Platonic Love (region free)
  
• Lovers of erotic Japanese girl-next-door Nao Oikawa (and they know who they are) should check out the new AV Special Training Department featuring Nao-chan, a sizzling new production from Wanz Factory (region 2)
  
• Finally, we've got another great M's Video Group bukkake special for die-hard bukkake lovers
  
• For anime and toy fans, we've got a great lineup of items, including a fantastic new Cosmo Tiger (Cosmo Zero) from Yamato/Star Blazers, and some all-new totally cool Japanese Hot Wheels cars
  
• We've got some beautiful anime art books, including Cardcaptor Sakura and the very interesting Angel Cave, in stock!
  
• Hello Kitty fans should check out the newly posted items, including a cool Hello Kitty cash register that really talks (you run food products over the bar code reader), and a Hello Kitty refrigerator you can put food in
  
• We have some cute new items from The Dog series in stock, including cute The Dog pocket tissues that are so cute
  
• Finally, newly posted snack items include Doraemon Gummi snacks, fresh stock of Mill Make (which all Japanese school kids drink), more delicious miso soup mix, Japanese wasabi, and more!
  

Along with my other hobbies, I am a big fan of 80's sci-fi movies. While watching my copy of Blade Runner late at night over some Sapporo Black Label beer and rice crackers, I happened across the ultimate Blade Runner fan site and movie FAQe, which I thought I'd pass along to you. The URL is http://www.brmovie.com/

Greetings from J-List April 26, 2002

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Greetings from J-List April 24, 2002

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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:

• 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/

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:

• 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!

Greetings from J-List April 12, 2002

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