Greetings from J-List January 3, 2004

Hello from Japan, home of cars with funny names like the Honda That's.

We've taken to spending our weekends getting to know our own prefecture, exploring the backroads of Gunma, where we live, in our Mazda Bongo Friendee. A rural prefecture with a population of 2 million located right in the center of Japan's main island of Honshu, Gunma is famous for mountains, water, poetry (a famous Japanese poet was born here), politicians (three of Japan's past prime ministers hail from our prefecture), and cold, biting wind in the winter, called kara-kaze. Some of the best hot springs can be found in Gunma, and quite frequently we roam around looking for undiscovered places to take a hot bath. There are other fun attractions, such as Gunma Flower Park, where you can see flowers from all over the world; Tobu World Square, with scale replicas of architectural wonders of the world; and Green Bokujo, a kind of mock farm where city folks can interact with farm animals. For something entirely different, go to Kronenberg, a mock-up replica of a German village in the mountains near us, complete with embarrassed-looking German gaijin standing around. But they have good beer and sausages! Last weekend we went to Gunma Safari Park, where you can see animals of Africa from inside your car, although my kids love the game Zoo Tycoon, so they were more interested in seeing zookeepers raking up poo, like they do in the game.

When I got here 12 years ago, I noticed many things that the Japanese were very fond of, which seemed odd to me and my fresh-from-the-States sensibilities. The Japanese just love corn soup, and you can buy it in most restaurants -- they even have canned corn soup sold in vending machines, which is great to hold in your hands on winter mornings. Audrey Hepburn is the favorite actress of many Japanese, and her film Roman Holiday is one of the most well-known movies among Japanese women. Sydney Sheldon is one of the most popular Western authors, and his books are all translated into Japanese and appear in most every bookstore (usually alongside the translated works of Agatha Christie). Then there are some things from the U.S. that Japanese aren't so fond of. Mexican style beans are one -- Japanese nearly always hate these when they eat them for the first time, because in Japan, beans are supposed to be sweet. (Foreigners usually hate Japanese beans for the same reason.) Another product the Japanese usually can't handle is root beer, which is detested universally by Japanese, who think it tastes like the pain relieving Salonpas. Most Japanese can handle Dr. Pepper okay. Japanese also tend to not eat bread crusts, and in fact you can buy bread in the supermarket with the crusts already cut off -- which might explain why Japanese women are seemingly all constipated.

We've become aware that more and more, emails sent from the jlist.com domain are being blocked by ISPs, due to the ever-worsening problem with spam. AOL blocks our mails quite often, which obviously makes it impossible for us to send you updates on orders have made. If you ever feel you're not getting a mail you should have gotten from J-List, please email us and we'll look into your order and try to mail you from another account. Thanks for your understanding.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:

• First, for fans of our delicious Japanese snacks, we've got delicious winter-only March of the Koalas candy, as well as a traditional Japanese "kneading candy" which you mix in the air with chopsticks to make it ready to eat -- really fun
  
• Also, we've got some new varieties of sugarless gum from Japan, featuring the popular xylitol, a delicious sugar substitute that strengthens your teeth (it's from Finland, go figure)
  
• We have a great art book for fans of Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball, featuring some of the most realistic and beautiful CG gals we've ever seen
  
• Japan is home to many cute things -- now we've got a cute little electronic pen that comes out an egg right before your eyes
  
• Also, we've got a really cute mini hamster fan which will keep you cool in all seasons, and it's adorable, too
  
• For Gundam fans, we have a really cool line of detailed Gundam candy toys, which include a Gundam toy you can put together along with candy to eat
  
• The Groomy line of plush pets, which include soft leather undersides for wiping your computer monitor -- now we have Strap Groomy, cute plush pets with phone straps, which allow you to attach them to cameras, cellular phones, etc.
  
• For our "wacky things from Japan" fans, we've got more Japanese maps, of Nagoya, Tokyo and Gunma Pref.
  
• Domo-kun fans, we've added stock of many different items, including the Domo-kun phone straps, Domo-kun plush toys and square cubes, Domo-kun stationary and more
  
• We love to promote the study of Japanese, and we've got more wacky mini-dictionaries in stock, as well as the infamous "kanji toilet paper" with kanji quizzes printed on each roll
  
• For fans of really Japanese things, we have some cool chopsticks with "lucky cat" printed on them
  
• Also, a major restocking of our bizarre Japanese headbands (hachimaki), with slogans like "certain victory" "I will pass the test" "Guts" and more
  
• We love the cool toy line Panda-Z, which features a cute panda boy who pilots a giant panda robot -- now you can play with his enemy, Black Ham Gear, featuring the evil Dr. Jangarly
  
• Japan is having a big boom of samurai dramas on TV now -- join in the fun with a toy replica samurai sword set
  
• Finally, we've got great items for your kitchen, a cute metal sign in Japanese, pocket igo for anyone who wants to try the ancient Japanese game of go, fresh stock of wacky Hello Kitty items, and more!

For our 18+ customers, we've got many new products. They include:

• For fans of Japan's extra-wide adult magazine Bejean, we've got the new issue, packed with such lovely professional JAV idols as Sola Aoi, Sakura Shiratori, Ai Kurosawa and more
  
• Next we have limited stock of the new Bachelor, featuring beautiful women from the around the world, including Eastern Europe, the U.S., Russia, and other countries
  
• For fans of Japan's beautiful photobooks, we have the lovely new hardcover offering if Miku Matsumoto, featuring her latest photos
  
• Also, a great hardcover photobook by a beautiful idol with the unlikely name of Cutey Suzuki
  
• See a beautiful selection of photos of the sexy swimsuit idol Maiko Tohno, shot in Indonesia
  
• Then follow the best indies adult videos in Indies Best Title 737, featuring sample shots of 737 different productions
  
• J-List's stock of erotic hentai comics from Japan is second to none, and we've added even more titles to our stock for you: a collection of top-notch erotic stories by Kirara Moe, sexual adventures with a home tutor (a major Japanese fetish), the newest installment of Lewd Diary, and more
  
• Next we've got even more great erotic doujinshi for you, sexually parodying the most popular anime series in Japan right now
  
• Also: a real treat, a set of four CD-ROMs with the four chapters of the Urotsukidoji (Wandering Kid) hentai series on them, a classic for all hentai fans to see
  
• J-List carries a line of Japanese adult toys and other products, including parody items -- we've got more wacky Pokemon condoms in stock for you
  
• Enjoy some fantastic new adult DVDs from Japan, with Nao Oikawa's 4 Hours Special from Million -- 240 minutes of superb sex with Japan's top JAV idol! (region free)
  
• Then enjoy the "Shameless Costume Play Venus" of Ayana Nanjo, a fanatically erotic actress who performs for you in a variety of sexy costumes, stewardess, SM queen, maid, and more, by SOD (region free)
  
• Then sit back and enjoy the erotic Kei Morikawa, a solemn and beautiful goddess who shows you her erotic kiss, tekoki, fella, and sex (region free)
  
• For fans of girl-on-girl action, enjoy a great all female production by Wanz Factory, featuring five fabulous Tokyo kogals (region 2)
  
• Then, Yui Hasegawa provides "lip service" in a great new indies release by Wanz (region 2)
  
• Finally, look for a huge number of "back in stock" items, including photobooks, DVDs, manga and more, which were out of stock but are available again for one last time. (Remember you can check the entire J-List with the View All Products link in the upper left hand corner of the site.)

Remember that J-List carries a wide variety of snacks from Japan, with about 100 different items in stock at all times, with everything from Pocky (popular chocolate covered sticks) to Japan's famous spicy caffeine gum, Black Black. Because J-List is based at the source, right there in the heart of Japan, we've got hundreds of cool and fun items that have never made it out of Japan, which you can order. We are always adding to our snack section too, so check back often!

Greetings from J-List January 1, 2004

"Akemashite omedetou" from all of us in Japan, where convertibles are known as open cars.

Before starting J-List in 1996, I taught English as a Second Language to Japanese students, usually children or high school kids. I had quite an extensive collection of ESL textbooks, vocabulary cards, and various games I would play in class. One such game was "English baseball" in which teams of students would get "hits" if they answered questions using English. Another is the popular Japanese game "fruits basket" in which you put, say, ten chairs in a circle and put one child in each chair, with one more standing in the center. This child must ask a question like "Do you like bananas?" and all kids who like bananas must change seats as quickly as they can. The one left in the center is "it" and must ask the next question to the group. I recently found another great tool for learning English, which I discovered with my kids: Mad Libs, the classic zany word game. My kids love to make up Mad Libs, and it makes them apply their language and vocabulary skills in ways that are amazingly effective. They're kids, so they have a tendency to want to choose words like "stinky underpants" but it's still a lot of laughs, and it helps their English.

If you're going to travel to Japan, you'd better bring your suitscase, and make sure you wear a clean shirts and a nice suits. My favorite sports is soccer, and my favorite anime show (and children's game) is Fruits Basket. Sound odd? For some inexplicable reason of Japanese phonetics, some English words are imported into Japanese in their plural forms. The word for a suit in Japanese is "suits," even though you may only be talking about one suit, and a can of fruit juice is "fruits juice." Japanese don't mind these words, although the misuse of English grammar tends to give English natives the heebie jeebies at first. Then you get used to the strange words, and the next thing you know, you're accidentally using them in English while talking to your mother on the phone -- how embarrassing. Sometimes the words are used in their plural forms to make them easier for Japanese to pronounce or write, and other times to keep two words from sounding the same in Japanese. Because "fruit" and "flute" would have the exact same pronunciation when written in katakana, the writing system used for expressing foreign loan words, the musical instrument became "furu-to" and the edible stuff became "furu-tsu." Other Japaneseified English words include peanuts butter, nutsmeg, and Kellogg's newest addition to the Japanese cereal market, Fruits Loops.

Driving in Japan can be different from what you might be used to. The Japanese drive on the right side of the road, like the British. Most drivers turn off their car's headlights at intersections (leaving the parking lights on), as a courtesy to drivers who might be blinded by their lights on the other side of the intersection. While honking a horn at another driver can cause road rage in the U.S., here a short "beep" is the universal way of saying thanks and good-bye as you pull away. In Tokyo, where drivers drive with consideration for others (unlike our prefecture, where drivers are very rude), a two-second flashing of the hazard lights is the correct way to say "thank you" when another car lets you in in front of him. Gaijin are always confused by the Japanese use of the word blue (aoi) to refer to green traffic lights -- they look green to us, but for some mysterious reason, they Japanese use the word blue to describe them. Finally, in Japan, there's a three second delay between the time when one traffic light turns red and the next turns green. By unwritten rule, Japanese drivers universally make use of this time to speed their car through the intersection, despite the red light, since they know they've got several seconds before the other cars will start moving.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you, including fresh stock of dozens of our popular anime, toy, wacky, DVD, Japanese snack, hentai and other products for you. We still have 80+ fantastic 2004 calendars, and prices have been knocked down yet again to help you help us reduce our inventory. Please browse the over 2000 excellent Japanese products we have available for you!

At J-List, we sell just about everything from cool Japanese items for your kitchen to rare anime toys to wacky T-shirts you don't know you need until you see them. We feel we have a mission to bring all forms of contemporary Japanese pop culture to our customers all over the world, and we love doing what we do. One item we've wanted to sell for many years are the squeaking shoes that Japanese parents buy for their children. Children love having shoes that squeak as they walk, and parents will enjoy knowing exactly where their child is at all time, from the sound of the squeaking. When our own children were small, they wore these shoes when we took trips to the U.S., and we got many comments about what a great idea these shoes were. So we're happy to be able to bring them to you!

Greetings from J-List December 31, 2003

Hello and "yoi otoshi o" from all of us in Japan!

Well, 2003 is at an end, and we're all ready for our final J-List update before turning our faces to the coming year and all that it holds. Japanese usually spend New Years Eve quietly, with the family gathering to enjoy a special night of TV. Virtually all of Japan's famous singers, comedians and other "talents" (a word the Japanese use as a catch-all for television performers) appear in Kohaku (lit. "red-white"), a great year-end variety show in which the male singers battle the female singers to see which group is more talented. Japanese eat soba, or buckwheat noodles, which supposedly helps you live longer (because the noodles are long) and wait for the New Year to commence. At 15 minutes before midnight, Kohaku winds down, and NHK broadcasts quiet, solemn images of shrines, temples and churches all around Japan, lit up to allow eager visitors to get their New Year's prayers in as early as possible. The bells in shrines and temples ring out 108 times, to purify the 108 delusions that humans are supposed to be subject to, and to ring out hope for the coming year. Then, without any fanfare or countdown, the clock on NHK's video feed flashes 0:00, and the new year is here.

One thing that took some getting used to when I first got to Japan was the sharp distinction between this year and the coming year in the Japanese language. In the U.S., a New Year's Party is something you throw on December 31st, to ring in the new year with friends and champagne. But in Japan, it's not the "new year" until January 1st, and so a party with friends is a "bounen-kai" (Forget-the-past-year Party) if it's in December, and a "shinnen-kai" (New Year Party) if it's in January. In December, you wish someone a Happy New Year by saying "Yoi otoshi o" (YOH-ee oh-TOH-shi oh, lit. "have a good year"), but on or after Jan. 1st you can say "Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu" (ah-kay-MAHSH-tay oh-meh-deh-toh go-za-ee-mass, lit. "congratulations on opening the new year"). New Year's is the most important holiday in Japan, and most businesses are closed for the first few days in January as everyone takes a rest. But one group of people are busier than ever: Japan's postal workers, who must sort and deliver millions of Japanese New Year's greetings cards, the sending of which is a huge custom in Japan.

The past year has been a phenomenal one for all of us at J-List. We found dozens of great new ways to bring fun and bizarre things from Japan to our customers who are not fortunate enough to live here, and helped spread interest in the country that we love to tens of thousands of people -- including the 50,000+ readers of our regular J-List update emails. Thanks to the warm support of all of you, we've been able to be an even better "wonderful toybox of things from Japan" this past year. From all the staff of J-List in Japan and in San Diego, we thank you for your support, and hope you'll let us serve you in 2004!

For the new update, we've got an extra-special update for you. The new items include:

• 2003 has been the Year of Shirow Masamune, and we've got a very special item for you: the Intron Depot Figure Series 2, featuring six incredibly detailed sexy characters from the mind of Japan's foremost artist. Full sets are in stock -- there's no need to buy many duplicates to get the items you want!
  
• Then for Nausicaa fans, we've got a very special item: a highly detailed PVC replica of Nausicaa on her Meve flying wing, an incredible item for any fan's display area
  
• Also for Miyazaki fans, we've got a very soft, high-quality Jiji plush from Japan's famous Sun Arrow toy company, and fresh stock of Makkuro-Kurosuke (er, Soot Sprites)
  
• The Japanese film Battle Royale has become a cult classic, and for collectors, we've got the very special Battle Royale II Requiem Special Edition Box, loaded with cool things for you
  
• Every summer and winter, tens of thousands attend the Comic Market, an underground convention where fans can buy doujinshi, or fan-created comics -- we've got some really cool "doujin cosplay photo CD-ROMs" in stock for anyone in love with high-quality anime cosplay
  
• We carry tons of cool Hello Kitty items from Japan -- enjoy a great Kitty pocket tissue holder that will hold J-List tissue as well, great Hello Kitty art kits for making watercolor and sand paintings, and more
  
• We have a great new Japanese fude pen, a brush-writing pen that allows you to write as if you were using a Chinese ink brush
  
• We've done a major restocking of Japan Hot Wheels, sold only in the Japanese market (Knight Rider, Speed Race, Back to the Future Delorean), as well as some new Tomica die-cast cars (including the popular Prius)
  
• For your kitchen, various new bento and chopstick related items, great for fans of Japan's boxed lunch culture
  
• Also, bizarre new Japanese pin badges for people who love strange things from Japan
  
• We have two bizarre "head puppets" from Japan that are great for parties or to amuse your friends with
  
• We have more cool dictionaries of Japanese proverbs, 4-character compound words and more, fun for anyone studying the language
  
• We have some cool English-language manga and DVD items shipping out of our San Diego office, take a look at them
  
• We have some amazing snack items for you, including a cool Japanese good luck charm (daruma, lucky cat, etc.) with chocolate cookies
  
• Also, a huge update of restocked items, including Men's Pocky, our world-famous Gummi Sushi, Hello Kitty Strawberry Pretz, Dice Caramel, and more
  
• Finally, we've got some authentic Japanese "zabuton" or sitting pillows, which make it comfortable to sit on the floor like the Japanese do.
  

For our adult customers, we've got many new 18+ products. They include:

• First, we have the delicious new issue of Urecco Gal, the super magazine of stylish pro and amateur kogal nudes, with some of the boldest and most erotic photography found in Japan
  
• From Soft on Demand, we've got a very special item: SOD's special magazine, with a 2 hour sampler DVD, at a great price!
  
• For photobook fans, enjoy the wonderful nude photographs of female pro wrestler Noumi Kayo
  
• Also, the super-sexy Momo-Mune Musume ("Peach Breast Daughter") Hiroko Akamatsu's first sexy hardcover photobook
  
• Then see the lovely bondage play of Japanese adult video star Rin Tomosaki, captured in a high-quality photobook for you
  
• Doujinshi fans, rejoice: we've gotten a bunch of great new erotic doujinshi books for you, fresh from Comic Market 65, which was held yesterday -- enjoy all the great new underground comics posted for you, however stock is limited...
  
• We have some great new erotic manga for you, including the delightful Slave Need Pleasure by the famous hentai artist Hindenberg, a new issue of Tende Freeze and more
  
• We've also got the new issue of Electric Love Princess, featuring super erotic anime parody doujinshi, collected into a perfect-bound manga volume for your manga collection
  
• For our DVD customers, we've got some fabulous items in stock for you, starting with an exploration of the eros of stewardesses, with top names like You Natsuki, Ran Asakawa and Ryoko Yada (region free)
  
• Then get ready for the luxurious sex of Sora Aoi, aka Sola Aoi, in her fantastic new release from Alice Japan (region free)
  
• From Soft on Demand, a new project from Hajime, the wacky Japanese adult video director -- see amateurs from all around Japan showing their beautiful breasts to the camera (region free)
  
• Then it's time for the "Ernest Lesbian Play & Deep Kiss with Semen" from Waap, an extra-special 2-disc work featuring the last performance of the erotic Nao. and Kirari Koizumi (region 2)
  
• Kyoko Ayana gives you her "Big Breast Fruits" in an erotic new release from SOD's Princess label, a great offering for fans of extra-voluptuous girls from Japan (region free)
  
• Finally, we've got more freshly restocked DVDs, along with even more of our popular free shipping adult DVDs -- check them all out!
  

J-List carries dozens of top-quality Japanese dating-sim games for you, with virtually every English-translated interactive game in existence available for immediate order. We've gone through and updated some of the pictures and descriptions to our games so you can get a better view of how beautiful the characters and graphics are in these insanely great games from Japan.

Remember that J-List stocks the incredible detailed classic food replica items from Re-Ment and other companies, which recreate famous food of the world -- sushi, Japanese traditional dishes, desserts of the world, Chinese food from Yokohama's Chinatown -- in such detail you won't believe they're not edible (you even get little silverware/chopsticks). All of the food replica items we have in stock right now are out of production, so the stock we have will be our last. We hope you'll consider picking several of these unique items up -- full sets are available so you don't have to buy lots of duplicates!