Greetings from J-List August 8, 2001

Hello again from the original home of Pocari Sweat!

If you ever need to communicate with Japanese people but don't know any Japanese, just remember this word: "Domo." Domo basically means "very" and is found in such phrases as "Domo arigatou gozaimasu" (thank you very much), "Domo sumimasen" (excuse me), and even "Domo otsukaresama deshita" (thank you for working so hard) (said at the end of the day when you leave work). If you can't memorize these words, just remember the word "Domo," since Japanese people use this word all the time, leaving the rest of the words unsaid (since they're picked up from the context anyway). So if you're ever greeting a Japanese person after a long time away, meeting someone for the first time, saying goodbye, etc. you can usually get along with just "Domo."

Well, Obon is almost upon us. Obon ("oh, bone!") is a Japanese Buddhist holiday in which the spirits of the dead come home for a visit, although in reality, it's a summer version of the "Golden Week" holidays, an excuse to take off work and go have some fun. Tokyo becomes a ghost town during Obon week, as millions of people pour into the countryside to enjoy mountains, the beach, or go home for a visit. Like Thanksgiving Weekend in the U.S., it's a time when people return home to their "actual house" (the home of their parents) and spend time with the family. There are many festivals held during Obon week, where Japanese eat watermelon, drink cold beer, and do a special summer dance called "Bon-odori" while wearing yukata (summer cotton kimonos) and happi coats. Of course there are lots of fireworks, too.

Speaking of summer festivals, my kids recently performed Japanese "Taiko" drums at a summer festival. If you want to see pictures, they are at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=TAIKO&Category_Code=PC

Well, we lost one of our video pages. For the past week, the Soft on Demand DVD page was not appearing as an active DVD category, effectively hiding all the SOD DVDs we have. We've fixed it, so you can see all our DVD titles in stock now.

For this mid-week update, we've got some nice items ready for you, including:

• First, some very nice new magazines, including the new Beppin School (always a very popular item), as well as some other nice new items
  
• For fans of Japanese AV idols, we've got a deluxe item for you: the Best Video AV Idol Perfect Guide, a photobook with video CD, featuring 123 of Japan's most lovely and popular adult video idols
  
• For photobook fans, we've got an interesting and artistically cool hardcover photobook for you: A trip to BONDAGE in Japan, as well as fresh stock of Garo Aida's very nice "Strawberry Diaries" photobook
  
• For doujinshi fans, we've got -- more doujinshi, including some nice rare items that we don't usually have access to
  
• Also for doujin lovers, we've got several very nice CD-ROM offerings of "doujin-soft" (that is, software and CG images made by doujin underground artists) that are very rare and beautiful
  
• We have some excellent new erotic manga volumes for you, including "Love Game" (romantic tale of love & sex and girls with glasses), a bold manga, "The Ropes that Suck the Juice," and more
  
• Fans of Soft on Demand's DVD releases should check out the "new" titles, which were not showing up on the site before Monday
  
• Also for DVD lovers, some new releases: "AV 2001 vol. 1" (a super compilation of some of the best Japanese AV of this year), and Bunko Kanazawa's delightful "The Invitation of Pandora"
  
• For those with region-free DVD players, be sure to check out the excellent "Beautiful Lady" with 180 minutes of performances by eight very beautiful Japanese women
  
• We have a nice new adult video release by Atlas on the adult video page, featuring the charming Manatsu Hirose
  
• It's summer, and in Japan that means mugi-cha, a delicious and refreshing tea made from barley. Never served sweetened, mugi tea is very healthy and promotes weight loss by forcing retained water out of your body. We have fresh stock of our cold-water mugi tea bags, on the Japanese snack & food pages!
  
• Also on our Japanese snack pages, we have fresh stock of our Japanese sake candy
  
• We have fresh stock of one of our most popular (and wacky) product categories: Japanese hachimaki (head bands) with messages like "Certain Victory," "I'm looking for a boyfriend" and more
  
• Finally, new items on our old, reliable Wacky Things from Japan pages. including the ultimate remote control holder, an authentic Japanese traditional wooden cup for drinking sake (or organizing your desk), a recreation of an old Japanese wooden monkey toy, something cute for Hello Kitty fans, and -- just in case you ever needed to pretend to be an angel -- delightful angel wings for any occasion!
  

Greetings from J-List August 6, 2001

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

Summer is here in a big way, and that means heat and humidity in Japan. Companies always compete during the summer to capture the extra dollars consumers are spending on exotic drinks. Coca Cola is doing their usual "summer upgrade" of cans from 350 ml to 500 ml (that is, from a 12 oz. can to a taller can with more cola inside), while Pepsi is back with Pepsiman bottle caps (this series shows Pepsiman doing various sports). Kirin has developed a "bottle can," a steel can with a resoluble cap, as a way of attracting consumers to its teas and other drinks. McDonald's, meanwhile, is onto a new idea, selling its "Fruche" frozen drinks -- just frozen fruit in a vanilla shake, but it's really good.

It's said that Japan is 25 years behind the U.S. in terms of social development, or 10 years behind, depending on who you ask. Seen from a certain viewpoint, there does seem to be a "society gap" between Japan and the rest of the world, from the Internet to attitudes about women and men and more. When I came to Japan, I was amazed to see that there was no child carseat law, and you could regularly see kids standing up in the front seats of cars driving around town. Embarrassment as being "behind" the West, though, caused Japan to enact a child seat law two years ago. We sometimes wonder if anti-smoking sentiment will take root here as it began to do a decade ago in the U.S. It would be nice, but we don't think it will happen -- Japan Tabacco (aka JT) is a massive tobacco interest, and until a few years ago was actually operated directly by the Japanese government before it was privatized, so that, like NTT, it still enjoys semiofficial status. Even the message printed on packs of cigarettes here -- "There is concern that smoking too much can affect your health" -- is an obvious concession to the tobacco companies due to the massive tax revenues cigarettes generate here.

For this special Saturday update, we've got some very nice new items for you, including the following (see below for clickable link that will show all new items at J-List):

• Many new adult products for our adult customers
  
• If you love Japan's race queens, we have fresh stock of the very hard-to-find (even for us) Gal's Paradise 2000 cards
  
• We have fresh stock of Japanese oolong tea on the Japanese snack page, as well as a great for fans of traditional Japanese sweets (or for anyone who wants to try some Japanese candy with hundreds of years of history)
  
• For anime fans, we've got an extremely cool new item: a superbly crafted figure set of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, aka G-Force/Battle of the Planets in the U.S. that will surely sell out fast
  
• On our various Wacky Things from Japan pages, we've got a new fashionable wooden sign for when you want privacy in the bath, and a collection of positively zany funny "message buttons" in Japanese.
  

This is your *last chance* to pre-order Tokimeki Check in!, which is in transit from the CD duplicators even as I type. If you like Japan's excellent bishoujo games, please stop by the Peach Princess BBS (http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi). This is a great place where you can talk about all things Bishojo from anime to manga to games, so please stop by and say hello.

Want to learn Japanese? We recommend Yes Japan, a very cool online course that allows you to study through your computer. Online flash cards, downloadable sheets for practicing hiragana and kanji, and pronunciation are all available. The URL is http://www.yesjapan.com/