Hello again from Japan and J-List!
One of my favorites from the “YBIJTLW” list, located on my personal homepage: “You’ve been in Japan too long when it takes you several seconds of deep thought to recall the first name of the President of the United States.” It’s true — you’d be surprised what living in a foreign country can do to your ability to recall seldom-used information, or even remember some English vocabulary words. Try going years without ever hearing or uttering difficult words, like “gynecologist” or “irreplaceable” — they can be quite difficult to dredge up from the depths of your memory, even if English is your native language. It’s especially bad for native English speakers who work as English teachers in Japan, because you can go for months without hearing any English except the simplified utterances of your students, which invariably begins to affect your English in a negative way. You find yourself speaking too slowly, pronouncing words too carefully, and avoiding some words you know listeners won’t be able to understand. If I lived in New Zealand, it’s natural that the Kiwi English being spoken around me would come to affect my own language — and this is what happened, actually, when I lived there for a year when I was a boy, and I had to re-learn American English when I went home. Similarly, living in Japan can affect your English language skills in mysterious ways.
Another problem is what’s referred to linguistically as interference. When speak two languages, information from one language can sometimes mess with information from the other language, causing confusion and embarrassment. In Japanese the words for splinter (a sliver of wood you get in your finger if you’re not careful) and thorn (the prickly things on a rosebush) are the same: toge (TOH-gay). I know that a splinter and a thorn are two different concepts in English, but once in the U.S. when my daughter got a splinter in her foot, I got the two words confused in my head. When my mother heard me asking to help get the “thorn” out of my daughter’s foot with tweezers she wondered what I was talking about. ^_^
Another major area of interference between English and Japanese are numbers: the Sino-Japanese numeric system, which came from China, is fundamentally clunky when converting to the Arabic numeric system. The number system used in Japan revolves around the unit 10,000 (“man,” pronounced “mahn”), rather than 1,000 as in the Arabic system; thus, the number 10,000 is “1 man” (ichi mahn), 20,000 yen is “2 man” (ni mahn), 100,000 is “10 man” (juu mahn) and so on. The conversion from one numeric system to the other is just frustrating enough that most foreigners will be happy to leave their numbers in Japanese, if the person they’re talking with understands the words. Thus a gaijin living in Japan is likely to say, “I bought a new cellular phone, but it cost me 2 mahn en” (20,000 yen), or, “My car broke, and it’s going to cost 10 mahn en to fix it” (100,000 yen).
Do you have Paypal? In addition to major credit cards, checks, bank and postal money orders and (in extreme circumstances) cash sent through the mail, we gladly accept Paypal for payment of orders. Paypal is a handy service that makes it quite easy to send money around the world over the Internet. While Paypal is quite popular in the U.S., our customers in Europe without credit cards haven’t had a single “best” way to pay for purchases at J-List. Since Paypal is available in 38 countries and can work with US$, CDN$, Euros and U.K. pounds, we strongly recommend it to customers all around the world. To create an account go to http://www.paypal.com (to open a non-U.S. accounts, click the “worldwide” link).
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for Totoro lovers we’ve got some great new items for you, including a superb set of three Totoro figures and May acting out a famous scene from the timeless animated film by Hayao Miyazaki
- Also, cute magnets of Bou from the popular movie Spirited Away, as well as restocked items from all of Studio Ghibli’s films including the large Laputian robot from Cominca
- If you love Chobits, the excellent manga series by CLAMP, enjoy the bilingual Chobits comics, with both English and Japanese printed right in the book
- For Astro Boy fans, a cute item: a Choro Q vehicle that features Atom flying on top
- We’ve got some great Japanese swimsuit idol photobook items including the sexy “May Be Dream” photobook of Makiko Fujii
- For fans of cosplay and Japanese high school uniforms (which we sell), we’ve got a superb pair of photobooks that show the prettiest girls from famous high schools, showing the prettiest uniforms you’ve ever seen
- For Hello Kitty fans, a great item, a cup with straw that your little one (or you) will love to drink from
- We’ve got a variety of authentic Japanese train pass cases, to hold your train pass, or if you don’t have one, then any other cards you may want to carry
- For fans of Japanese snacks, some great items, including Japanese Collon cookies (they’re good, really), delicious clear soda-flavored candy, super cute Mickey Mouse cookies filled with chocolate, and an ume (plum) flavored drink for the summer
- Also, we’ve gotten the cool retro package of Bon Curry, the handy boil-in-bag curry that you just pour over white rice and eat
- English can be difficult for the Japanese, and we’ve got a wacky wooden sign that welcomes guests to your home — You are Welcome!
- For Tomica (which is short for “Tomy Miniature Car”) we have a cute Pokemon bus and a Coca Cola Event Car, in stock for you
- For fans of Yuka, the super-cute Japanese idol, we’ve got the making of DVD for her hit film “When You Sing about Love” (filmed in Australia) (region 2)
- I loved the Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers anime when I was a child, and am glad to be able to carry some cool items for people in the same boat as me (no pun intended) — see the die-cast Yamato toys we’ve got in stock now
- There’s been a huge amount of interest in the Sesame Street Kubrick toys, and we’ve gotten in fresh stock of full sets — but snap them up quickly because these things have a way of disappearing from distribution fast
- For Sailor Moon fans, we’ve restocked the oh-so-cool Sailor Moon PVC figure series, look at them now
- Also, for Shirow Masamune fans, see many new items, such as his Ghost in the Shell bilingual manga and Jashin Hunter illustrated novels,
- Also, for fans of the Japan-only Hot Wheels, new Kamen Rider vehicles that are just too cool
- A dynamite item for fans of the space program: a deluxe Kubrick tribute to the first astronauts, complete with orbiting vehicle, cosmonaut Yury Gagarin and the first dog to orbit the Earth
- Also, for Final Fantasy loves, fresh stock of the high quality PVC figures released this month!
- Finally, look for a funny pencil case with French on it, a handy all-purpose wooden box that feels like old Japan, more tasty miso soup and kimchee furikake, Hello Kitty dental floss and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of lovely Japanese AV queens, we’ve got the new issue of Bejean, the oversized Japanese magazine filled with top stars like Yuko Ogura, Megumi, Saori Kamiya, and more — they come with 3D glasses too!
- Then enjoy the new issue of Gotcha!, a great hardcore bukkake magazine featuring really pretty amateur girls
- See elegant busty Japanese girls with breasts up to 102 cm in size in a great new hardcore Big Bust Paradise
- For photobook fans, don’t miss the great Million Girls hardcover photobook, a selection of great erotic photos from the top five girls in Million’s pantheon — Nao Oikawa, Hitomi Hasegawa, Saori Kamiya, Hitomi Hayasaka and Ran Monbu!
- For hentai manga fans, we’ve got several great new offerings for you including the dynamite Illustrated Maya Miyazaki, one of the most talented hentai artists we’ve seen in an age
- Yasu has also posted a ton of fresh stock of hentai comics, including Yuwaku by Mujin Comics, the Urotsuki-doji-style Tokyo Requiem, and the dynamite Colors Anthology comic — see the dozen or so restocked items
- For fans of hentai art books, enjoy the fantastic Hanafuda, the large-format full-color erotic tale of animal lust and kemono themes
- Also, a great doujinshi anthology manga, th new Lovely Collection vol. 2, featuring incredibly erotic anime parody of Chobits, Please Teacher, and more
- For our DVD fans, we’ve got the 5th and final Bring Up Ecstasy 4 Hours erotic offering from Million — see 4 hours of Ran Monbu (e.g. Monbu Ran, e.g. Mont Blanc, the famous French dessert) (region free)
- Then see the very best lesbian sex ever filmed by Dogma director Hitoshi Nimura, with six fabulous erotic stars selected for you (region free)
- Then see great sex with girls in bloomers, those elastic sports shorts, in a new offering from SOD’s Natural High (region free)
- Then enjoy a great pair of performances by Shinobu Kasagi and Shino Isshiki, featuring a tale of two sisters who learn of true love and sex, in a new offering from Soft on Demand and Deep’s (region free)
- Cosplay is a major fetish in Japan, and girls dressing up as anime characters in adult DVDs is popular too — see a great “cosplay bukkake” performance by Hitomi Hasegawa, as she get fucked and ejaculated upon by men while wearing many cute costumes (region 2)
- Then, we’ve got a superb erotic show for you by Rua Mochizuki, a new erotic offering for fans of various fetishes, by Wanz Factory (region 2)
Finally, a general restocking of all-nude (Zenra) sports including All Nude Basketball — great fun!
Remember that J-List carries many cute items for your kitchen, including bento boxes and accessories, Japanese chopsticks (both basic ones for general use and cute chopsticks), sushi and onigiri molds, wacky Japanese kitchen containers, and more. Please check out the “Kitchen and Bento” section of the Wacky Things from Japan page!
