It’s the end of another San Diego Comic-Con, and as usual it was a blast. We sold tons of J-List T-shirts, kawaii plush toys and bottles of Tentacle Grape, and talked with many avid fans. I’ve been attending the show since the mid 80s, back when it was small enough to fit in the tiny San Diego Civic Center. I laugh as I look back at how “big” I thought the show was back then, at around 12,000 attendees, less than 1/10 the current number. If you visited the convention and walked by our booth, one of our staff probably handed you some Japanese pocket tissue with our website information on it. Advertising businesses with printed pocket tissue has been popular in Japan ever since 1969, when a paper manufacturing company in Kochi Prefecture hit on the idea of using inexpensive packets of tissue to advertise products. Just about anywhere you go in Japanese cities, you’ll see people standing on street-corners, handing tissues to passers-by and thanking them for considering the business that’s being promoted — usually a bank advertising this week’s rates, or in Akihabara, the newest cat girl maid cafe. J-List has been printing these tissues and shipping them with orders for more than 15 years, and also brings them to conventions to hand out to people, sometimes getting ironic laughs for some reason. Of course you don’t have to attend a convention to get free J-List tissues: just make an order from our site, and you’ll get a packet included with your order, along with our super-cool “anime eye glasses.” (Note that J-List tissues aren’t included with orders that would be damaged by their inclusion, such as a thin doujinshi comic, and are subject to availability.)
You’ll never be without tissue in Japan.
