I happened to see an article on the BBC website that asked, “Do the Japanese run the best meetings?” It seems that among all countries in the world, companies in Japan (and Germany and Austria) run the most efficient meetings, with participants aware of what goals everyone needs to accomplish during the meeting ahead of time, and everyone taking care to avoid wasting time with unnecessary interruptions. This was interesting to me, since J-List has been running “Japanese” meetings every month for years. After we go over the sales figures for the past month, each buyer will state his or her goals for the coming month — to start working with a new bento distributor, to increase speed answering customer tickets, to finalize the designs for the latest J-List pocket tissues, etc. — as well as going over whatever the goals for the last month were to see if they were met. We’re usually done with the meeting and back to work within 45 minutes.
Anime is an interesting platform for creating stylized stories that couldn’t exist in the real world, and one tool animators use to subtly manipulate our perceptions of the characters we’re watching is hair colors. Black or brown can be considered the basic anime hair colors, usually used for “normal Japanese” characters, and male main characters often have dark hair and normal Japanese-style features, the better for the majority of fans to identify with them. Blue hair on females is often used to create an air of purity or mystery or communion with nature, while white or grey hair are usually an indicator of a secret, including hidden super powers. Red haired characters like Asuka from Evangelion are fiery demons who are quick to anger and capable of amazing feats of physical prowess. Hair styles also play a role in how we perceive characters, and you can always tell right off the bat if a character is going to be an older, more worldly oneesan type because she’s wearing her hair in that kind of style, while a rebellious spitfire of a girl will usually have short hair, and ojosama rich girls will signal that with their hair styles, too.
J-List loves to carry fun doujin products, made by groups of artists and distributed at events like the Comiket, the famous doujinshi convention held twice a year in Tokyo. We’re also a ZUN-approved Touhou shop, so we’re able to sell tons of awesome Touhou figures, keychains, tea cups and other products, as well as all the games, of course. We also love the Touhou and other doujin music made by top amateur and semi-pro musicians, and there are many sample tracks to listen to embedded in our products.
