Greetings from J-List August 27, 2004

I took off early from work yesterday to take my son to a movie -- the new Steamboy, a film directed by Otomo Katsuhiro. A gorgeous panorama set in 19th century London, it follows the story of Rei, a young inventor and youngest son of the famous Steam family. When a mysterious invention is delivered to his house, he's suddenly caught up in a struggle between two opposing technological forces vying for control of the future. I was thoroughly impressed with the film, one of the most expensive animated movies ever made, and my son enjoyed it too -- it was truly worthy of the director of Akira. Check out the Japanese movie trailers here: http://www.jlist.com/steamboy (the film is scheduled to open in the U.S. in November).

The Japanese often abbreviate words to make them easier to work with, such as English terms that are clumsy to use in Japanese. For example, the English word "digital camera" is often shortened to "digi-kame." There are many of these shortened words: Ame-komi (American comics), geesen (game center), pure-sute (Playstation), pasacon (personal computer), and so on. Names of famous people also get reduced to short nicknames, ala J.Lo -- handsome Japanese actor/singer Kimura Takuya is universally known as Kimu-Taku, and Brad Pitt is referred to as "Bura-Pii." The Japanese also come up with some "English" (quote unquote) abbreviations. A TV commercial is known as a CM, and when you're driving along the freeway you can stop at a PA (parking area) to take a rest. Before doing something, you should consider the TPO -- this Japanese word is short for "time, place, occasion." Several English abbreviations which sound strange to my American ear are actually British terms, possibly archaic, like OB/OG ("old boy/girl," i.e. an alumnus of a university), NG ("no good," the opposite of OK), and WC ("water closet").

A woman was hurt Tuesday in a pachinko parlor when 808,000 pachinko balls fell through the ceiling on top of her. The balls had been inside a device that delivers them to the machines on the floor, but the weight caused the pipes to break, spilling the balls into the floor below. Pachinko -- a form of gambling in which you have to make metal balls fall into little holes, which causes more balls to come out, so that you hopefully end up with more balls than you started out with -- is an extremely popular pasttime here in Japan, especially here in Gunma Prefecture. Whenever I go to the public bath, it seems all the middle-aged men in the sauna can talk about is which pachinko parlor gives the most balls this week. Whenever I see a new building being put up, I pray that it'll be something useful, and not another pachinko parlor. All too often, however, I find myself disappointed.

The J-List staff works very hard to find unique and amazing products from Japan for you every week. We're especially big fans of Shirow Masamune, and we stock dozens of his cool products. We're happy to report that the long-awaited Galgrease poster books are finally in stock, and we've got them all for you!

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

• For anyone interested in Otomo Katsuhiro's movie Steamboy, we've got full sets of a great mini figure series by Megahouse
  
• Next, by Re-Ment, enjoy a very special new series: the Asian Sundries Shop, featuring beautiful products from all over Asia, just like you'd find in a small Japanese shop
  
• We've got a new pair of photobooks by the elegant team of Mika and Kyoko Kano, two gorgeous models who appear often on Japanese TV
  
• Also, look for fresh stock of other photobooks, including Yuko Ogura's Apple & Peach and more
  
• We have a cute new toy in the Devilots (Devil Robots) series: extra large PVC figures that are great for displaying
  
• Hello Kitty fans, we've got a special item: a Hello Kitty watch set, with stylish and fun watches in different colors (full sets available)
  
• Fans of the Big G, we've got a treat: the newest film, Godzilla vs Mothra vs Mecha Godzilla (region 2)
  
• We love Totoro products, and have some cool Totoro stamps in stock for you today -- very cute and fun to use
  
• For fans of our Japanese snacks, enjoy tasty potato snacks, tasty senbei (rice crackers), and yummy ginger snacks
  
• Also, enjoy some great hard candy, including cola candy, blueberry, as well as fresh stock of sugarless Black Black caffeine gum
  
• For fans of traditional Japanese items, we've got gorgeous "tenugui" (traditional Japanese hand towel), with many great images on them
  
• Next, we have fresh stock of fude pens, pens that let you write as if you were writing with a Chinese calligraphy brush
  
• We have some great chopsticks too, which feature full adult length, easy grip patches at the bottoms, and chopsticks holders for you
  
• Do you travel? We have a stylish Japanese travel pouch, great for holding passport, money, or just about anything
  
• Protect your camera, iPod or other possessions with an all-purpose soft case, also in stock
  
• The live-action Sailor Moon show is proving very popular with fans - we've restocked several volumes including the first one
  
• We've restocked the dynamite illustration book Cannabis Works, by Toshiyuki Tanaka, a fantastic treat for art book collectors
  
• Star Wars fans, we've restocked the rare Japan-only Lego Star Wars toys -- very cool
  
• Finally, more Japanese "minty fresh" eyedrops, delicious Pocari Sweat drink mix, fresh stock of American food miniatures, and more!
  

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

• For fans of Japan's dynamite magazines, we have the new issue of Gal's Dee, featuring girls with "D" cup and larger
  
• Next, a very special item: a "Best of Best" deluxe photobook of Cream's most lovely girls
  
• Enjoy a full color magazine with included DVD next, the new issue of DVD Wonderland, featuring a massive 4 hour DVD
  
• Photobook fans, enjoy the incredibly sexy photos of Momo Nakamura
  
• Then, the incredibly flexible Miki Komori, the sexy girl who can stretch like an Olympic athlete, thrills with a new photobook
  
• We have some dynamite manga for you too, including the excellent CLOOP by Maki Shinonome, a great comic about a naughty secretary, and more
  
• Also: a truly amazing Tenjho Tenge manga that comes with a limited figure -- a very special item for collectors!
  
• Restocked manga include the popular Colors, one of the most amazing hermaphrodite manga works we've ever carried
  
• We've got a great volley of H doujinshi too, including many all-new books for doujinshi fans
  
• For yaoi manga collectors, we've got the excellent two-volume set of Pathos, a really cool yaoi comic series by Mika Sadahiro
  
• J-List sells many rare toys for grown-ups too -- look for fresh stock of several popular items, including Onacup "E-Jan," the Mandorian Dot, Marshmallow, and the cool inflatable Japanese AV idols
  
• For our DVD customers, enjoy some great new offerings, starting with a disc featuring the top names of JAV idols from the 1980s and early 90 -- 4 hours! (region free)
  
• Then in time for the Olympics, SOD brings us a new Zenra sports DVD featuring gorgeous girls in the buff doing volleyball, fencing, soccer, judo and other enjoyable indoor sports (region free)
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, a new "study" series work in which one male is observed and poked by 100 Japanese girls (region free)
  
• From U&K, a new "Queer" series production featuring the most amazing female performers you'll ever see including Shuri Himesaki -- wow! (region free)
  
• Ruri Anno stars in a new DVD from Wanz Factory next, featuring 2 hours of constant, non-stop action (region 2)
  
• Finally, look for a large restocking of popular DVDs, including Marina Matsushima's popular titles, the Contrary Soap Heaven starring Aoi Sora, Akira Watase's great works, Gymnastic Girls and Gold Bird.
  

Interested in learning Japanese? Remember that J-List loves Japan and always wants to promote the study of Japanese all over the world. To that end, we carry cool things like the famous Canon Wordtank electronic dictionaries, kanji practice notebooks, kanji study cards and the spiffy Zebra Check Set, a system that helps you memorize anything and test your memory. Also, be sure to see Peter's general overview of the Japanese language and his advice for students or would-be students, at http://www.peterpayne.net/

Greetings from J-List August 25, 2004

As you know if you've ever watched Iron Chef or Takeshi's Castle, Japanese television can be quite bizarre and interesting. Japan has a good selection of television, with five major TV networks producing dramas, variety programs, comedy, anime and other shows for their viewers. A lot of television is intended to entertain by shock value, and any kind of wacky television concept you can imagine has probably been done here -- the other day I happened to see a show in which contestants had to extinguish candles by shooting water at high speed out of their tear ducts. In addition to the normal commercial TV stations, Japan is overseen by the kind, benevolent government-run NHK, short for Nippon Housou Kyoukai, in case it ever comes up in Trivial Pursuit. NHK operates a standard TV channel and an all-educational channel, as well as two BS ("broadcast satellite") channels for people with satellite dishes -- Domo-kun is the official mascot of the two satellite channels. NHK produces a variety of entertainment programs, just like the commercial stations, but they tend to focus more on culturally important shows like histories more than regular TV. Several popular anime series, including Cardcaptor Sakura and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water were produced by NHK.

English is a difficult language to master, partially because we borrow vocabulary and phonetic rules from many other world languages. One of the most difficult areas of studying English for Japanese is pronunciation: because Japanese is a syllabic language, capable of expressing sounds like ka, ki, ku, ke and ko but never the consonant "k" by itself, Japanese have an extra difficult time of learning to produce natural English sounds. A simple word like "weekend" has to be mashed into katakana-sized chunks for Japanese to express it, producing "oo-EE-koo-EHN-doh." There are many English sounds which aren't present in Japanese, too, like the difference between L and R. One useful tool for learning to pronounce English naturally are minimal pairs, pairs of phonetically similar words such as light and right or fast and first, which students can study to master the pronunciation. Some Japanese still can't get it right, though. I had a Japanese friend who was always avoiding talking about politics. The reason? She knew she couldn't pronounce the word "election" without embarrassing herself.

In Japan, there are often concepts that are very difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a persons eyelid when their eyes are open -- one crease ("hitoe" hee-TOE-eh), two creases ("futae" fu-TAH-eh) or three ("mie" MEE-eh). Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with more creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese. Getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV stars and young Japanese. I have to admit, I'd never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here -- it was a totally alien concept to me. Another measure of beauty is having a "high nose" (hana ga takai), an important feature for anyone who wants to be considered one of the Beautiful People here. I never really thought of schnozzes as anything other than "big" or "small" before coming to Japan, but apparently there is more to a person's nose than meets the eye.

J-List carries a remarkable number of great items from Japan for you, including some things you might know even existed. Once, at our favorite sushi restaurant, I noticed a unique clock on the wall: it was a sushi clock, made with pieces of wax sushi in place of the numbers, hand-crafted by professional wax food artists (a famous Japanese art form). It had chopsticks for the hour and minute hands and a toothpick for the second hand. I was totally bowled over at the detail of this cool item, and decided to hunt down the company so that I could get some of the clocks for J-List. I was successful, and we've got these fantastic clocks on the site now. They'll transform any room into a special place, and they make unforgettable gifts too. To help you choose one of these amazing sushi clocks, we've reduced prices on all of them.

For the new update, we've got some excellent products from Japan for you, including great updated and restocked items in all categories, including snacks and gum, DVDs, anime and toy products, photobooks, manga and more. Remember, you can use the "three day" link to view products updated in the last three days, or else view all products with the "view all products" link on the left hand side of the screen. To view all new products, click this link: http://www.jlist.com/UPDATES/3/

A few customers reported problems checking out with the new J-List shopping cart system. It turns out that not all the accounts from the old checkout system had been imported to the new one. We've fixed it now so everything should be smooth sailing now!

Remember that J-List carries the famous Japanese gum Black Black, a caffeine-laced gum that will wake up you and keep you awake. Enjoyed by everyone from college students to truck drivers, Black Black has been plugged in Wired Magazine and novels by William Gibson. And as with most of our gum and snack items, if you buy 10 or more you get a 15% discount at checkout.

Greetings from J-List August 23, 2004

Hello again from all your friends in Japan!

The election in the U.S. is heating up, making everything more political than usual. Politics in Japan are a bit different from in the U.S., with a different set of issues associated with each side of the political fence. Unlike the two-party system used in the U.S., there are several large and small parties in Japan, including the Liberal Democratic Party which has controlled the country for most of the postwar period; the Democratic Party of Japan, an attempt to create a strong alternative to the LDP that can win actually win elections; the Komeito, the former political arm of the Soka Gakkai religion; the Japan Communist Party, and so on. In Japan, the "right wing" usually represents conservative economic thinking, support of government subsidizing of agriculture, pride in Japan's military, and love of the Emperor, while the "aka" ("red") side of the aisle encompasses the old socialist ideals like trying to create a flat society, support of labor unions, opposition to sending Japan's military abroad for any reason and criticism of Japan's long military alliance with the U.S. Japanese politics are quite confusing, and I can't really pick up on what each party actually believes, since the conservative LDP seems to be happy keeping things pretty much the way they've always been, and the opposition parties spend all their time violently opposing whatever the LDP is trying to do. Some day I'll figure it out, and I'll let you know.

The other day I was walking through our local Don Quixote (a popular chain of import stores) and I saw a mountain bike with the Chevrolet logo and "the heartbeat of America" printed on it. I was reminded of one of the basic truths about Japan: by and large, Japan is one of the most pro-American countries in the world. Whether it's embracing America's culture of music and movies, wearing clothes with the Union 76 logo on it or sending troops to Iraq, despite the fact that virtually no one wanted Japan's military to participate, Japan is generally very supportive of the U.S. That's not to say that things are always rosy between America and Japan. There is constant friction between the American military stationed in Okinawa, with the latest problems occurring when a military helicopter crashed into a university building and the U.S. military refused to let the local police investigate the accident. But by and large, the average Japanese on the street usually has a positive impression of the USA.

Employment in Japan is very different from in the U.S. When J-List goes to hire Japanese staff members, we first call up the local Hello Work (that's what the local employment office is called) to see if they've got anyone in their lists with the skills we need. We also run advertisements in the newspapers, and also in some weekly "employment journals" that are published in each city. When candidates come for their interviews, they always bring a filled-out Japanese "rireki-sho" or standardized resume form, which has spaces for writing all pertinent information about education, job experience, interests, and of course, blood type. Free-style resumes aren't used in Japan at all -- you just fill out the standardized form with a black pen and stick your photograph to the proper area. In the past, it was commonplace for jobs to be posted for "women" and "men," with statements that only applicants under the age of 30 would be considered. However, this practice has become illegal, an example of Japan taking America's lead in workplace law.

Well, the new J-List shopping cart is finally up and running, and things seem to be going pretty smoothly on this end. The new checkout system adds many new features, like allowing you to update your billing address, email address, or password easily. Also, the "express checkout" allows you to finalize orders quickly after you've used the new checkout system once. We have had a couple of customers report problems getting the system to recognize their passwords -- if you do have any problem checking out, please make an order via the secure email form (upper left hand corner of the site), and tell us about the problem (browser, OS, etc.)

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

• First, for fans of Japan's famous custom of dressing up as your favorite anime character (cosplay), we've got the great new issue of Cosmode, the beautiful cosplay photomagazine that comes with lots of instructions on how to make cool costumes
  
• We love Macross, one of the most influential anime series of all time, and have the very rare Yamato die-cast armored VF-1J in stock now -- so cool, and fully transformable!
  
• Naruto fans, we've got a dynamite candy toy miniature figure set for you featuring all characters -- full sets are available, too
  
• Next we've got a great item for fans of My Neighbor Totoro: dynamite message stamps that are incredibly cute
  
• Do you love sushi? We've got a very cool traditional sushi tea cup featuring the names of all sushi on the cup, in Japanese
  
• For fans of Japanese DVD, we've got the fifth volume of the very cool live-action Sailor Moon TV series, really fun to watch (region 2)
  
• We have a great new series for fans of Panda Z, the cool panda robot who protects the world from danger -- a great color and "retro" black and white set is in stock
  
• Find delicious snacks from Japan on the site, including delicious "black & bitter" Toppo stick snacks, traditional Kinako snacks, and the only pineapple yogurt-flavored caramel corn chips you're likely to find in your lives
  
• Also, we've restocked other popular items like Hi-Chew Kids Blue, Sushi Gummi, No Time Gum that brushes your teeth for you, Sake Candy and more
  
• A super item for little babies, we've got a cute My Melody Ball that can be played with anywhere, even in the bath
  
• For fans of traditional Japanese things, we have a cool Buddhist altar offering box that's really a coin bank
  
• Next, we've got cool stationery items for you -- traditional Japanese report writing paper and Japanese resume forms, required with all jobs in Japan
  
• Look for fresh stock of the popular electric erasers -- handy erasers that vibrate, erasing pencil marks easily
  
• For Hello Kitty fans, we've restocked the oh-so-cute Kitty Ring Memo pads
  
• Make your closet happy with a Nico Club hanging all-purpose bag, which makes it easy to keep oddly shaped things in your closet
  
• Then we've got a great soft travel kit from Synapse, great for carrying any small items (iPod, hard drives, makeup, anything).
  
• Finally, we love sushi at J-List -- look for the sushi ball-point pens, back in stock again, great to write with or just display on your desk as a conversation piece.
  

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

• For fans of Japan's great 18+ magazines, we've got the new issue of Yasashiku Shite Ne, or Please Be Gentle with Me, featuring real couples in love hotels
  
• Fans of magazines that come with DVDs for lots of enjoyable "quickie" samples, we have the new issue of Good DVD 5 Hours, a superb value for you
  
• For fans of gorgeous Japanese photobooks, check out the new offering of Misako Yasuda, the gorgeous angel in a bikini
  
• Also, we've got the superb hardcover photobook of Rio Kurusu, a truly lovely Japanese model
  
• We've restocked several photobooks too, including the High School Uniform and OL pictorial pocket books, Yuko Ogura's excellent "Talking to Myself" photobook, and more
  
• For fans of our dynamite H manga, we have some great new books in stock, including Take On Me by the dynamite Yukino Takemori, the excellent Overnight Wife by JCC Comics, and a delightfully cute H comic by Setsuna
  
• Restocked manga includes many popular titles, including Shining Musume, Misty Ryoko and other great sold-out books
  
• We've also got another selection of top quality H doujinshi for you, including Dead or Alive, Capcom, Precious Heart and more
  
• Also, for fans of the amazing hermaphrodite themed artwork Japan is famous for, we've got fresh stock of the popular Behind Moon CG collection
  
• For our DVD customers, enjoy some great new discs, starting with the dynamite Mico, a gorgeous new star debuting with Dogma (2 discs, region free)
  
• Then see a new work from Soft on Demand featuring gorgeous girls getting naughty in front of those "print club" sticker machines -- directed by an 18 year old female JAV director! (region free)
  
• The lovely Mai Sakashita stars as Pegasus, a gorgeous fighting heroine who protects Tokyo from the evil Spider (region free)
  
• From U&K's Queer label, enjoy the best in high-end all-female video from japan, starring Kina Juri Matsuzaka and Kao Sugimori (region free)
  
• From Waap Entertainment, we have the delightful wet performance of Hiyori Koharu in the latest Dream Shower series -- 150 minutes of amazing action starring one of the top new indies stars (region 2)
  
• Finally, enjoy the restocked DVD titles we have for you, including more Zenra Gymnastics and Japanese Drums, Deep Kiss, Marina Matsushima's dynamite Non-Stop, Anna Ohura's cosplay DVD and more!
  

Remember that the new JLIST and JBOX websites feature a handy "tree browsing" feature which lets you quickly view all the products in any category and click on the products that you want to see. It's great for people who want to browse the 2000+ products J-List has quickly, and it's also excellent for slower connections, too. Just click the "text browsing" link on the left of every page.