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

Hello again from Japan!

In Japan, the oldest son in a family has certain responsibilities to their household and parents, and as a general rule, will stay at home even after finishing school, taking over the family business (if there is one) and taking care of his parents as they get older. When a son in this situation gets married, the woman he marries has to agree to live in his house with his parents, which is called "yome o morau" (to receive a bride) -- she then is listed on her husband's family register and is completely a part of hew new family, and when she dies she is buried in her husband's family's grave.

If there is a son and a daughter, the responsibility to take over the household usually falls on the son, even if the daughter is older than the son. If there is no son, or if the son is unable to take over the household, the daughter must take care of her parents, and must find a husband willing to come and live in her family's house -- called a "muko" or "son who comes from another house to live." In cases where a man comes and lives in his wife's family's house, he generally takes his wife's last name. Because my wife is an only child, she was in a similar situation -- she really wanted to live in America, but had to return to Japan because of her parents. I married her and live in her home, however I didn't legally take her last name but kept my own. This makes me a "Masuo" (named after the husband of Sazae in the long-running anime Sazae-san).

A J-List customer from Germany has sent us the correct versions of some of the non-English words the Japanese use in their daily lives, and the original words they come from. Here's a list:

randoseru <- raenzel = bag (German)
arubaito <- arbeit = work (German)
anke-to <- enquete = inquiry (French)
karute <- karte = medical records (German)
karuta <- carta = letter (Portuguese)
pan <- pan = bread (Portuguese)

J-List has close relationships with several doujinshi artists, including Blue Eyes creator Tohru Nishimaki. J-List makes available the very nice "Daki-Makura" or large-size hugging pillows (the largest is as big as Kaori-chan), items which are unavailable to fans outside Japan. We've posted several new versions of the giant pillows for you to browse, and lowered the prices, too. Also, you can now have these giant character pillows shipped by either seamail or EMS. Finally, full-size poster versions of Mr. Nishimaki's lovely characters are now available, too.

For the pre-weekend update, we've got a great lineup of cool items for you, including:

• First, we've got some excellent new magazines for you, including both new Japanese Penthouse issues, loaded with beautiful models from Japan (and Taiwan, and Russia)
  
• Everyone likes our discount magazine pages, so we've got some newly reduced magazines, starting at just $5, as well as some nice older issues of Japanese magazines (on magazine page 2)
  
• We've also got some fantastic soft- and hardcover magazines for you, including Yuko Oguro's wonderful new photobook and the lusty nude photobook of Megumi Osawa
  
• Yasu has worked hard to restock many of the photobook items that have proved very popular, including Fumika Suzuki's excellent "JAM"
  
• Mini-Suka Deluxe ("Mini-skirt deluxe") has long proved one of the most popular items in J-List history, and we've got a new issue of the wonderful leg fetish photobook for you
  
• For manga fans, check out the excellent new items we've posted for you, including the dynamite "Fruit Body" by Tomu Tamio
  
• Also, an excellent restock of our hentai manga pages, with fresh stock of many excellent volumes we'd sold out of (region free)
  
• J-List carries many interesting Japanese adult toys, including the "Pink Rotor" (tiny pink egg-shaped vibrators you may have seen in Japanese AV). We've got several new variations of this popular item on the page for you now
  
• For DVD fans, we've got another volley of the popular discount-priced SOD Memorial Series, with four erotic productions by director Tohjiro (region free)
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, a fun DVD production in which three girls tease and punish men and make them feel small (region free)
  
• In "Eighteen Paradise," Yellow Box explores the sexuality of ten girls who are eighteen years old, standing at the threshold of youth and sexual experience -- and it's a *4 hour* DVD (region free)
  
• The Shake It! series continues, with more excellent tekoki (handjob fetish) from Japan (region free)
  
• Audaz has a great new Super Violent Shoot offering out, featuring interesting themes of group sex in Japanese erotica (region 2)
  
• For fans of M's Video Group and their fine brand of erotica, enjoy The Countdown Sperm featuring a real Japanese newscaster and incredibly detailed video editing
  
• For fans of the lovely Yinling of Joytoy, the incredible photobook featuring Taiwanese Race Queen Yinling, we've got a special treat: the complete DVD edition of this extremely erotic and highly aesthetically penetrating world (region 2)
  
• Also, another treat for fans of Yinling, a super idol DVD in the Myriam ("Miho, Yinling, Ran") series, capturing the charm of this wonderful lady
  
• We have many nice new anime toy items, including a super Anpan Man (Bean Paste Bread Man) toy set, Hello Kitty stuffed characters in Japanese style and a really nice Lupin strap
  
• Also: fresh stock of dozens of cool toy items, including the Japan-only Hot Wheels (including the Lupin vehicle set), new Tomica mini-cars, a great way to play with Totoro in the bath, and a big restocking of the Love Hina "SkyLuv Project" figures
  
• For fans of the new Hayao Miyazaki film Spirited Away, we've got some cool "complete figures" in stock
  
• Something that I personally love and recommend to everyone, we've got a giant (and I mean GIANT!) Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro in stock, measuring a full 32 inches long!
  
• For fans of Japan's lovely swimsuit idols, check out Idol DVD & More page for newly posted items
  
• We've got fresh stock of several of the Cardcaptor Sakura Bilingual Comics published by Kodansha -- Japanese manga with both Japanese and English printed on the page!
  
• Fans of our Japanese snack and food pages, see several new items, including Tropicana Orange soft candy, buttered corn flavored caramels, the ever-cool "Choco Samurai" candies, and another favorite of mine, Himo Q, a 1.2 meter long string of gummi that is delicious
  
• For fans of authentic Japanese "loose socks," the cute baggy socks that Japanese high school girls wear, we've got fresh stock of both the 80 cm and 120 cm versions
  
• Finally, look for new Japanese hot springs powder for your bath, more fun Hello Kitty items from Japan, Ultraman monster figures, vocabulary study cards to help you learn Japanese, and more!
  

J-List pioneered the field of "Wacky Japanese T-shirts" four years ago, and our signature T-shirts are still a J-List original. We're sure you've noticed that we're running low on stock of most of our shirts. We'll be getting new stock of our shirts soon, and we thank you for your patience.

Greetings from J-List April 24, 2002

Hello again from all of us at J-List!

The big event has finally come -- my son has started his first day at Japanese elementary school. School in Japan is a very complex thing, really a very structured machine designed to create happy, productive Japanese citizens who get along with each other, something important in a country in which half the population of the U.S. is crammed into an area smaller than California. Also, Japan's education system aims to eliminate differences between the kids so they can all be on the same level, another important aspect to life in this country where 80% of people describe themselves as being middle class. The wearing of school uniforms, which is done in Junior High and High School, also aims to remove distincations between rich and poor in public schools.

To build "chowa" (harmony) into the kids, the Japanese educational system makes sure that everyone does things the same way -- the kids wear the same yellow hats, carry standard backpacks (red or black, and although other colors are available, the only colors I saw were red and black). The focus on conformity can freak out Westerners, who can't understand why people would strive to be so similar to each other. I had a British friend who left Japan to return to England, mainly because he was not comfortable having his kids become the same as all the other kids (like baby ducks following their mother, he said). In the end, all these rules and having exactly one way to do things aims to make a strong feeling of being part of a group, something that's very important to the Japanese. Since we take frequent trips to the U.S. with the kids, we're hopeful that we'll be able to get in lots of individuality-building while we're home, to counter the Japanese school system.

The school Kazuki is going to is Misato Elementary School, and this is the school that Kazuki's mother went to 30 years ago...and also the school that his grandmother went to! That is so far outside the experience of my American mind I can't describe it. I've moved many times during my youth, living in on the East Coast, in New Zealand for a year, finally ending up in San Diego, and the idea of going to the same school as my mother, much less my grandmother boggles the mind.

Anyway, if you'd like to see pictures of my son in his new school, the URL is http://www.peterpayne.net/ (click on "Pictures from Japan" and choose the "first day of School" link).

It's the middle of the week -- only a few more days to go to get to the weekend again. We've got a bunch of great new items for J-List, including:

• First, we've got some nice new amateur and kogal magazines in for you, including a new magazine, Yes!! with great love hotel shots
  
• The older and premium issues of Japanese magazines we posted last time sold out so fast, we've posted some more
  
• Look for some great new photobooks, including new hardcover and softcover photobooks capturing some extremely beautiful Japanese women, both nude and swimsuit
  
• We've got new manga for you, of course, with new works posted by Wataru Watanabe, Rinu Monota and more, as well as a great restocked items, including some of our most popular recent manga works
  
• For yaoi fans, we've got both new and restocked manga for you, so check them out, too
  
• For fans of Japan's excellent bishoujo games, we've got some nice art books, including the art book for the dynamite game by Elf, Ashta no Yukinojo
  
• We have some very rare doujin-soft CD-ROMs with great images on them, along with some interesting experiments in "digital manga" that you can play on your computer (we're selling them cheap)
  
• For our DVD fans, we've got another volley of low-price DVDs, with nice erotic releases by Soft on Demand, all full-length and just $10 each! (region free)
  
• Also by Soft on Demand, the elegant and very erotic Sally Yoshino performs as the ultimate female teacher in "My Only Pet is Female Teacher" (region free)
  
• The very lovely Mirai Hoshizaki (one of my faves) stars in the dynamite Super Angle of Manko, in which 90% of the footage is shot from between her legs (region 2)
  
• The fresh and lovely Kirari Koizumi appears in a great 3-for-1 presentation, featuring 180 minutes (3 hours) of excellent adult video (region 2)
  
• For bukakke lovers, be sure and check out the new M's Video Group release, directed by Yama Dachin
  
• For fans of Japan's incredibly lovely Race Queens, we've got a very special 180 minute DVD featuring all the very best of Japan's sexy RQ's, including Yinling (a J-List favorite)
  
• For those who want to learn more about Japanese film, Tomo has posted some more Japanese films on DVD that feature English subtitles, so you can enjoy the movie and understand the stories -- also, see the new links to online reviews we've posted for these items
  
• New and back-in-stock snack items including delicious nori flavored crackers, Vitimin C In Candy, Tomato Pretz, caffinated coffee candy, and new Pork and Small Fish Japanese fried rice mixes
  
• For gum fans, a big restocking of Black Black by Lotte, as well as several other popular flavors of Japanese gum
  
• For fans of Japan's swimsuit and JPOP idols, be sure and see our Idol Photobooks, DVDs and more pages for some great new items, including the brand-new Morning Musume photobooks!
  
• For collectors of beautiful Totoro items, see not one but two new music boxes in stock, as well as Totoro magnets and cute little mascots from the new Miyazaki movie Spirited Away
  
• We've got a lots of cool Hello Kitty items, including Hello Kitty oil removing sheets, Hello Kitty chewing candy (it looks like a stick of gum, but it's really a long piece of sweet taffy-like candy
  
• We kept running out of socks glue, the funny glue that you use to hold up your loose socks, so we've gotten a few dozen in
  
• We love the fun "sushi lights" (realistic-looking pieces of sushi with lights inside), so we've restocked all of these
  
• Finally, see a funky rice scoop that won't stick to rice, a traditional Japanese "one flower" flowerpot, Japanese bento separators, the ultimate tofu storage box you'll ever need, and fun new bento related items!
  

J-List carries lots of interesting items from Japan, including the very nice resin anime statues only available in Japan, such as the very nice (and very large) Belldandy cold cast figures. Check these very nice items out on the Anime Figures page.

That's all for now -- thanks for being a part of J-List, and we'll see you on the web!

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

Hello and TGIF from Japan!

I often look back on my years of teaching English as a Second Language to Japanese students with fondness. Besides being a good way to interact with a lot of interesting Japanese people (including gorgeous girls), teaching ESL allowed me to learn my own language in ways I'd never expected. They say that the way to learn something is to teach it, and I agree completely. You never think about the structure of two-part verbs in English -- words like turn on, turn off, turn up, work out, take in, speak out, -- until suddenly you need to explain it to ESL students. As a native speaker, I know when something is right or wrong just by hearing it, but as a teacher, it's important to be able to present the rules of English to your students in a clear manner. I remember trying to explain the nuance between the words "another" and "other" (as in, "another book" vs. "the other book") and being stumped for weeks trying to explain it to them so that they could understand.

As Japan's economic troubles continue, I've started to realize that the real problem Japan is up against is one of leadership, and lack of it. Despite the high expectations of Prime Minister Koizumi (Japan's first "cool" leader, who listens to rock bands like X-Japan), the consensus is that none of the painful reforms Japan needs to take are happening. Yet there is one man who is kicking ass and taking names: Shintaro Ishihara, the mayor of Tokyo and author of the book "Japan that can say No." When he took office four years ago, the Tokyo Municipality was bleeding red ink everywhere, but he turned things around with many reforms, including cutting the salaries of high level city officials (including his own salary), renting out his office in Tokyo's massive city office, and passed special taxes on hotels and trucks that pollute as a way of generating income for the city. Although he's a little right leaning politically (he angered the foreign population of Japan by warning that, in a disaster such as an Earthquake, foreigners living in Japan would riot and commit crimes), you can't argue with results. His son has used his father's popularity to his advantage, and has become quite a popular actor in TV commercials and in dramas.

Have you been having mail problems? Our server has been really taxed lately, and our ISP warned us that mail might be lost as a result. If you've sent mail to us and haven't gotten a reply, please resend it and we'll reply right away.

For the pre-weekend update today, we've got a very nice selection of items for you, including:

• First, we've got some nice magazines for you, including new amateur and kogal magazines, as well as reduced prices on many of our in stock items
  
• We have two fabulous hardcover photobooks for fans of Russian nude idol Yulia Nova, the only woman who looks like the girls in Blue Eyes
  
• Also, for fans of lovely Race Queens, we've got a killer "first and last" photobook featuring Yinling, Miho Yoshioka and Ran Enoki
  
• The Yellows series by photographer Akira Gomi captures the grace and beauty of nude women from Japan, China and America -- we've restocked all of these books now
  
• If you are a collector of hentai manga, we've got some excellent volumes in stock for you, including works by AV Comics, Megastore and more
  
• Also, fresh stock of many great items, including Yui Shop 1, G-Taste, and great manga by the famous Chattaro
  
• Also for hentai manga art lovers, a beautiful erotic illustration book featuring the best hentai artwork of the Tsukasa Manga Studio
  
• We've added to our popular new Adult Toys page, with an interesting "side swinging" Japanese vibrator and new variations on the classic "pink rotor" -- great for those who like that they see in Japan's erotic videos
  
• For DVD fans, we've got some nice items for you, starting with a super 4-in-1 Zenra (all nude sports) DVD, with 230 minutes of start naked Japanese girls for you to watch (region free)
  
• For fans of anal sex, see some interesting "torture play" with the lovely pro AV idol Karen (region free)
  
• We have another great Milky Cat erotic bukkake video for fans of this rare high-end fetish studio (VHS)
  
• Also for bukkake lovers, another excellent M's Video Group offering directed by Kazuhiko Matsumoto
  
• For fans of bold indies adult video, we've got a slick DVD featuring the sex of Ruri Ikenouchi, shot almost entirely from erotic angels between her legs (region 2)
  
• Also very erotic, Miss Semen Mania, a bukkake fetish DVD featuring three gorgeous AV idols (including my own fave Mirai Hoshizaki) (region 2)
  
• Finally, we've got a really cool psycho-erotic soft porn image video, which features the lovely Mai Gotoh stripping and posing erotically with a black man (region 2)
  
• There are cool items from Japan, and then there are really cool items. We've got stock of the popular Sushi Light series of rubber sushi which light up when you squeeze them -- so convenient!
  
• For our anime and toy fans, we've got some cool new items, including a drop-dead awesome die-cast recreation of the Yamato from Yamato/Star Blazers, cool Laputa figures, and more
  
• Also: a much requested item, the very popular DigiQ miniature remote controlled cars, which are just 5 cm long but are highly advanced R/C cars -- see our newly created Car Related Toys page for more information on this great item
  
• Also posted on the Car Toys page, fresh stock of some of the most popular Japan-only Hot Wheels toys (including the Delorean and the very cool Thunderbird Hot Wheels)
  
• If you are a fan of Japan's lovely swimsuit and Race Queen idols, check out the newly posted items (including some nice DVDs)
  
• We've done a great update to our snacks page, with Snoopy, mango flavored Pocky, new Japanese animal crackers, super-strong caffeine candy, and Meiji Banana Chocolate (candy bananas with chocolate inside, they're great), as well as fresh stock of other items
  
• Also: fresh stock of one of the most popular food items in J-List history, Sushi Gummi!
  
• We've added a huge amount of stock of some popular Hello Kitty items, including the legendary Hello Kitty Vibrator (which is of course a shoulder massage), and the makes-a-great-gift-for-someone, Hello Kitty toilet paper
  
• Finally, find cool ways to help you study Japanese, new bento and chopstick items, Socks Glue for Japanese loose socks, fresh stock of the very cool Ultraman rubber mask, excellent Zippo-style lighters with beautiful Japanese images on them, and more!
  

We've updated the "Top 5" links today, and added two new categories, so you can easily see what the most popular magazine, manga, snack, DVD, and bishoujo CD-ROM items were for the past week.
Remember that J-List carries some fun items to help you learn Japanese, if you're so inclined. For learning hiragana and katakana, the two syllable based writing systems used in Japan, we suggest the practice notebooks we carry. We've also got Japanese vocabulary cards for practicing vocabulary, and even fun Japanese notebooks with silly English on them. Much of these products we carry because I remember what it was like to try to learn Japanese back in the 80's without any of these cool products available to me. If you are interested in learning Japanese and want to get a head start, I've got a general article on the language posted at my personal homepage (http://www.peterpayne.net).

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:

• 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/

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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

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:

• 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.