yuri, plus Japan’s love of fax machines.
I started another anime series last night called Koufuku Graffiti (Gourmet Girl Graffiti in English), a new show by animation studio SHAFT that can be best be described as “Sakura Trick meets Hidamari Sketch meets Japanese food pr0n.” It’s a slice-of-life show about a girl named Ryou who learned to cook various Japanese dishes from her grandmother. When Ryou’s second cousin Kirin comes to Tokyo to attend a preparatory school in order to to pass her high school entrance exams, the two girls develop a friendship based on deep enjoyment of food. I like the show because it’s well paced and visually pleasing, and calming in a way similar to Non Non Biyori, another show I recommend a lot. It’s also a fun way to learn about Japanese cuisine that you might not have experience with, and the way the characters obsess about food – for example, the joy they experience when cutting open a perfectly-prepared omurice omelet and letting it drip down over the ketchup-rice and demi-glace sauce – is a big part of the show. It’s also surprisingly yuri-tastic, and the jealousy of Kirin is super cute to see.
One theme I write about a lot is how, although we think of Japan as a shining bastion of advanced technology, in reality things can be quite low-tech here. I was reminded of this fact the other day while preparing business cards for J-List staff members using Adobe Illustrator. Knowing that Japanese printing companies are often behind in software versions, I saved the files in Illustrator CS3 format, which was released back in 2007, but later J-List’s manga-and-artbook buyer Yasu told me, “The printer is asking for files saved in version 9 format,” which went all the way back to 2000, 15 years ago. While fax machines have largely receded in the minds of most of us, they’re still going strong here in Japan, and you still see new models in electronics stores, like Sharp’s popular Fappy® series (slogan: “FAX makes it happy”), or another type that lets you log with your smartphone and check what faxes you’ve received via the cloud. Whenever people ask me for information about working in Japan, I do my best to offer helpful advice, but I’m usually not keen on recommending ESL teaching as it’s not a terribly good industry to be in. One area that is quite high in demand is web design and programming using up-to-date technologies, since Japanese companies are often well behind the curve where the web is concerned. If you have some of these skills and want more information on the possibility of working in Japan, here’s a blog post with some information that might be helpful to you.
In recent years we’ve been reprinting our popular English-translated eroge and visual novels in handy 2-for-1 combo packs, with the second game given to you for free, since customers really hate it when games go out of print in physical form and are only available as a download. Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve got the combo set for The Sagara Family + Chain in stock, so you can enjoy these great games for one low price! Like all our games, they’re fully translated to English, uncensored, and are also DRM free. Both games also feature animated “H” scenes for extra enjoyment too!
