Hello again from J-List!
Japanese family names can be interesting to study. Generally, family names are written with two kanji, using the Japanese readings of the characters. Many names are made using elementary words for things around us, e.g. yama (mountain), ta (rice field, also pronounced da), village (mura), island (shima, also pronounced jima), center (naka) and so on. I would imagine that Japanese with “down to earth” last names like Yamada and Tanaka came from families that grew rice back in the Edo period, but this is impossible to verify since all Japanese seem sure that their ancestors were samurai (you get used to this when you live in Japan for a while). I’ve heard that Japanese who have the character for “gold” in their names, e.g. people named Kanai (gold + well), are probably of Korean ancestry — the Korean last name Kim means gold — much like anyone with “Mac” in his name probably had great-grandparents from Ireland. To see what some common Japanese names look like in kanji, see this link: http://www.jlist.com/d1/kanjinames.jpg
The Olympics are coming once again, and Japan is preparing for massive coverage of every event. Japanese are natural sports fans, and they love nothing better than to do well at sports and gain international recognition. Sales of high-end televisions are way up in Japan, as people upgrade their TVs so they can enjoy the games in gorgeous plasma flat-panel color. It seems that every third TV commercial on right now advertises something to do with the Olympics. We hope that judo star Ryoko Tamura will get a second gold medal!
Apple’s iPod mini has come to Japan with a big splash, and Japanese fans are going ape for the tiny digital music player. Thousands of fans lined up outside Apple’s flagship Ginza store for a chance to buy one of the stylish players last month. Even during the long recession of the past ten years, Japan has always been a country that appreciates the value of quality goods, and companies like Louis Vuitton does a third of its worldwide sales here.
At J-List, we love the unique PC dating-sim games from Japan, and carry virtually every title available. We’re happy to announce the newest title from G-Collections, Come See Me Tonight 2, which will be shipping in a couple of days. You are Kensuke, a member of the family that operates the famous Kagetsuke Shinto Shrine. When your grandfather announces that the big festival will be broadcast on television, you must choose one of the four lovely shrine maidens to make the event a success. What’s the catch? It’s the custom here that the climactic “dance of the shrine maidens” includes some intimate romantic coupling. What are you going to do?
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for Range Murata fans, we’ve got his brand new Illustration Book featuring incredible creations made from his designs
- Next: J-List is the creator of our original Wacky Japanese T-shirts, and we have dozens of great shirts for guys and girls. By request, we’ve added XS to several popular shirts for girls, so that our extra small customers can enjoy them too
- Japanese snack fans, enjoy the amazing chocolate covered strawberry creams from Meiji, mmmmm
- Also, fun cheese potato snacks, delicious ramune candies, Tomato Pretz, March of Koala Coconut type, and various restocked Japanese chewing gum varieties
- For fans of remote controlled toys, a really fun item: a RC Yellow Submarine, which you charge for 90 seconds then send it under water to go wherever you send it
- Fans of the timeless anime Captain Harlock, we have a great capsule toy set featuring all the characters of Leiji Matsumoto’s famous work — available in a full set (no need to buy duplicates and throw them away)
- Next, for Hello Kitty fans, we’ve got some amazing light-up LED magnets, which you can put anywhere — very cute and unique
- Also, some cool Sanrio Bubbling Bath tablets that are really fun to use
- Next, we’ve got an all-purpose soft case suitable for holding books, documents, laptop computers, or just about anything
- When Japanese cook in the kitchen, they usually use extra-long cooking chopsticks to protect the hands from burns — we’ve got some of these handy items in stock now
- For summer, we have an elegant fan for you, made of bamboo and kimono-like cloth material
- For Ghibli fans, we’ve done a big restocking of popular Totoro and other items — look for Totoro, Spirited Away and Porco Rosso keychains, various Totoro plush toys, and more
- Also: a big restocking of great Domo-kun items, including all three plush Domo-kun cubes, the extra-large Domo-kun huggable pillow, the HUGE stuffed plush pillow, Domo-kun post-it notes, and more
- We’ve added more wacky parody items, including funny signs for your car
- Studying Japanese? Memorize like the Japanese do — we’ve restocked the Zebra Check Sets, which make it easy to memorize any material you are studying
- We love traditional Japanese things, and we’ve added stock of the popular Hanafuda Japanese card game
- We also carry fude (FOO-day) pens, which allow you to write like you were using a Chinese writing brush — look for various restocked items
- For fans of the famous Gothic & Lolita series, we’ve gotten in additional stock of the original Homemade G&L patternbook, with many costume patterns you can use to make your own outfits
- Finally, a cute happy face pool toy, more takoyaki makers, miniature “go” that you can play anywhere, fresh stock of the gorgeous Kitty Kabuki Series dolls, and more!
For our 18+ customers, we’ve got many new products. The new items include:
- For fans of Japan’s popular magazines, enjoy the new issues of Video Boy and Best Video, both filled with gorgeous professional JAV starlets
- Also, a dynamite “mook” featuring the beautiful photographs of Tomoko Sato — complete with 3D glasses!
- For photobook fans, the incredibly beautiful Akiho Yoshizawa’s new hardcover glossy book is a real treat
- Next, enjoy the “Secret Mind” of Chihiro Otsuka, an elegant and beautiful Japanese swimsuit model
- Various photobooks have been restocked, including the photobook of the drop-dead gorgeous Aki Hoshino, one of the most popular models at J-List
- For fans of Japan’s unparalleled H manga, enjoy a bold new “futanari” manga by Tenma Comics, an excellent anthology of “companion party” manga, and a superb new work by Hirohisa Onikubo that H fans won’t want to miss
- We’ve also posted fresh stock of many manga titles, including Blooming Flowers, Amber Girl, The Den, Hallow Hallow and in our San Diego office, fresh stock of AG Super Anthology vol. 9
- For yaoi collectors, we have the new b-Boy Luv vol 10, featuring popular m/m works by the top artists in Japan
- J-List carries many unique toys for grown-ups, which are sold only in the Japanese market — we’ve restocked several popular items including the Mandorian Dot
- DVD collectors, enjoy some great new titles, starting with 4 hours of the elegance of Yui Asahina, a startlingly beautiful JAV idol (region free)
- For lovers of the popular leg and stocking DVDs from Shinkousha, we’ve got a new “see through” offering, this time starring the gorgeous Akira Watase (region free)
- Next, enjoy the best of girls in swimming suits, in a very cool new release from Soft on Demand (region free)
- Also from SOD, gorgeous Tokyo girls are put up for auction — the winners get to watch them pleasure themselves on camera (region free)
- Then from Wanz Factory, enjoy the dynamite Kaoru Sakurako allow herself to be bound and teased for the pleasure of her fans (region 2)
- Finally, we’ve added stock of several of the “Concentration” series DVDs, which are great because you get 2 full hours of quality JAV for a very low price — enjoy the newly stocked items.
Remember that at J-List, we carry the whole line of unique Japanese chewing gum from companies like Lotte and Glico. Some of our most popular items are Lotte’s “Black Black” (Japan’s unique caffeine gum, it will keep you awake!), delicious Blue Berry gum, Pocari Sweat flavored gum (Dakara), and one of my favorites, Ume (Japanese plum) gum. Check out all these items on our Japanese snack and gum pages! As usual, there’s an automatic discount for buying 10 or more packs of the same gum.
