Hello and Happy Friday from all of us in Japan!
One of the coolest “needless items” that can be found Japan are the massage chairs, made by National (Panasonic) and several other companies. These chairs use little wheels built into the unit to massage your shoulders and back, and they’re really quite advanced. The newest models massage your legs and feet along with your back, and have optional “minus ion” (negatively-charged ion) generators that makes the air around you feel like it does when a thunderstorm has just gone past. Another neat needless item the Japanese have come up with are the famous washlets, toilet seats that will wash your butt for you with a stream of warm water, then dry it with warm air — they have bidets, too, if you have guests visiting from France (ha-ha). Other features of toilet seats in Japan are lids that close slowly when you let go of them, and a heating elements built into the seat, which are great in the winter (these toilets are called “warmlets”).
You’ve been in Japan too long when you get a ‘nihongo ga jozu’ and feel really insulted. It’s an odd fact of life in Japan, but foreigners who are learning Japanese strive for that magic moment when people will stop complimenting them on how good their Japanese is. Being told “your Japanese is very good” (“nihongo ga jozu”) is a sign that your language ability is good, but not quite good enough — if it were, the person you’re conversing with would just shut up and talk to you normally. After studying Japanese for four years at SDSU and living in Japan since 1992, I am hopefully as fluent as I will ever need to be, although there are still occasional difficulties. I went to KFC a few months ago, but for some reason, I couldn’t make myself understood by the girl taking my order. It turned out that she was a foreigner herself, a university student from China, and hadn’t understood my American Japanese accent.
The Japanese can be very expressive with English words sometimes, making new words that capture emotions in interesting ways. Soft-serve ice cream is called “soft cream” here, and the love between a parent and child is called “skinship.” Sometimes the Japanese take English words and turn them into sexual things — words like “fashion,” “health,” “image” and “pink” all tend to be sexual in nature, usually related to establishments where men can go for professional service of one kind or another. The Japanese also make up some interesting words of their own, too. Opening a bag of potato chips down the middle so that it opens like a flower, allowing everyone to share the contents, is called “manko-ake” which means “to open the bag so that it looks like female genitalia.” Also, that really cute thing that Japanese actresses do of leaving their panties on one leg while making love is called “kata-ashi-pan,” literally “one-legged panties.”
For today’s BIG update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for all fans of wacky things from Japan, we’ve gotten in the next Vermilion Pleasure Nights, a wacky selection of late-night short films that has a huge cult following in Japan — fully subtitled in English! Our favorite story is the one about the girl who finds herself in an OH! Mikey like world of mannequins
- Speaking of OH! Mikey, we were able to get more stock of the very popular first three discs, so fans of this bizarre and funny Japanese creation can enjoy them all
- If you don’t have a region free DVD player yet, we humble recommend the three units we have — two great transportable players and a new low-cost model that’s just $78, all in stock now!
- For Japanese snack fans, enjoy delicious kim chee flavored fried nori, tasty rice crackers, tasty dried sardines which Japanese actually eat, and delicious Milk Cocoa chocolate cakes by Morinaga
- Also, we’ve done a major restocking of popular snacks for you, with Pocky (Sweet Pumpkin, Almond Crush, Cocoa Powder and Men’s), Pretz (Tomato, Milk and Cocoa, and Crispy Pizza), and the very last stock we’ll be getting of the best-selling Gummi Sushi (fruit flavored sushi pieces on marshmallow rice)
- A rare item for fans of the Ragnarok Online game and characters, we’ve got the Premium Illustration File in stock (but stock is limited)
- For Godzilla fans, we’ve got a most excellent soft vinyl Godzilla toy from Bandai, for the new Godzilla film in Japan — 12 inches long
- We’ve got several great photobooks back in stock, including Boa, Yuko Ogura, and the Encyclopedia of High School Uniforms
- We have two positively beautiful soft vinyl pre-painted figures from Welcome to Pia Carrot, which would look great in your room
- Also very cool, we have a highly detailed series of figures from the longest-running TV show in history, Mito Komon, a samurai drama that’s been on the air without a break for 34 years
- Do you like Crayon Shinchan, the Bart Simpson of Japan? We’ve got plush versions of Shinchan and his dog, Shiro
- We love cute things from Japan, and one of the cutest things around is the Usagi Collection series — see some cute Usa-Colle erasers with little flying rabbit pods inside
- We love to bring you bizarre things from Japan, and we’ve restocked our “beginners’ mark” magnets which you stick to your car — they’re really for anyone whose been driving for a year or less, but I had one on my car while in college because I thought they looked cool
- We’ve got more wacky pins with funny images and messages on them, and more Japanese signs and stickers too
- For all your wacky interior decorating needs, we have more maps of Japanese cities, including Tokyo and Osaka
- A popular board game played in Japan is Shogi, the Japanese version of Chess — we’ve got a deluxe Shogi board with wooden pieces in stock for you to play with now
- For bento fans, we’ve got some great items for you, including the Kyoto DX and Kani Kani bento sets, fresh stock of chopsticks, and more
- For Hello Kitty fans, we’ve got more of the popular Kitty mayonnaise cups, onigiri makers and printed chopsticks, too
- Totoro and Hayao Miyazaki fans, we’ve got several excellent new items for you, including toys and music boxes from Laputa, Kiki’s Delivery Service and more
- For students of Japanese, we’ve added stock of our inexpensive mini dictionaries
- We’ve restocked our Japanese “kairo” hand/pocket warmers, amazing little pockets of sand that keep you toasty for up to 18 hours, which we highly recommend to everyone living in cold parts of the world
- Finally, we’ve got some great “wacky things from Japan” for you, including a portable opener that can open anything, a handy cutter, and more!
For our 18+ customers, we’ve got many new products. The new items include:
- For fans of deliciously beautiful Japanese women, we have the new issue of Urecco Gal, filled to the top with stylish and sexy kogals
- Photobook fans, we’ve got some great items for you, starting with a new sassy nude photobook offering by Miwa Tosaki
- Then enjoy the dynamite nudes of Ryo Uehara, a fantastic new busty idol who has exploded onto the scene here
- Next up is a super cute hardcover photobook by swimsuit idol Junko Fukada, with the ponderous title of “Bloody Cherry”
- Also, various restocked photobooks for you, including hardcover works by the super Kaori, Mayu Koizumi’s “Bazooka” and Miri Hanai’s “First Experience”
- For fans of the fetish of “New Half,” we have a new gouka-bon deluxe photobook in stock
- Then enjoy our great new hentai manga, with many newly posted adult comics for collectors, including Glossy Leg by Mint Mizutani, as well as a giant update of sold out titles for you
- For yaoi customers, we’ve also got several popular books in for you, including several issues of Muscle Men and b-Boy Zips
- We’ve got another bunch of great brand-new doujinshi for you, including parodies of many of the top anime shows
- For our DVD customers, we’ve got some great new titles for you, starting with the super Max-A Anniversary Special, a whopping 4 hours of sex from the best names in Japan (region free)
- Then for fans of the super-busty Marina Matsushima, one of the most buxom women we’ve ever seen, we have a great new offering from TMA (region free)
- From Dogma and director Hitoshi Nomura, enjoy superb girl/girl action with Akira Watase and Yui Kayama (region free)
- From SOD, we have the Sperm Bible, in which you will learn about the Seven Deeds of Bukkake Happiness, starring Kokoro Amano and directed by the famous Kazuhiko Matsumoto (region free)
- Then we’ve got a great performance of all “girl on top” (called “horse riding style” in Japanese), a great DVD release from Soft on Demand (region free)
- Finally, enjoy a major update of DVD titles for you, including Marina Matsushima, Anna Ohura, Mizuho Kano, Aoi Sora, Asuka Sawaguchi and more.
Remember that J-List still has many great 2004 Japanese calendars in stock, at great prices because they’re all being closed out. We’ve got anime, traditional, cute character, JPOP and nude calendars available for you — click to see our remaining stock. Still over 50+ great calendars to choose from, starting at just $3!
