Hello from Japan, the country with tartar sauce flavored corn chips!
First of all, the main J-List site was down for about 45 minutes. We caught the problem and put it back up again. Later in the evening, there was an unrelated problem with the J-List images server, which caused product images to not appear on the J-List site for 90 minutes or so. We’re sorry for the inconvenience!
Today my daughter Rina entered the First Grade, a very proud day for my wife and I. Japan is a very education-oriented country, with a very strong sense of the need to educate children so that they can grow up and be happy and productive members of the Japanese society. At school, Japanese children start to learn all subjects, including shakai (social studies), sansuu (math), and kokugo (“national language,” e.g. Japanese). Japan is a very ordered place, of course, and there is usually only one way to do a certain thing — one way to put your school backpack in your cubbyhole, one way to sit at your desk, one route to go home after school — some of which is frankly a little strange to my American individualistic sensibilities. This Japanese sameness doesn’t just extend to the prefecture that we live in — since almost all facets of education in Japan are specified by the Education Ministry in Tokyo, this “one way of doing things” system extends from Hokkaido to Okinawa. My daughter is something of unique girl, more American than Japanese, and she does things her own way, at her own pace — something the Japanese call “Going My Way.” There’s more than a little anxiety in my wife and I that the various things that make our daughter so special will be damaged by the insistence on uniformity in the Japanese school system.
One of our favorite TV shows in Japan is TV Champion, a show that organizes interesting competitions and films the results. In one show teams of carpenters were given three days and a limited budget to remodel hundred year old houses. Cameras followed the two teams as they worked furiously, but with beautiful results in the end. In another show, artists created different works of art using origami paper, with the winner creating a fabulous “Planet of the Cranes” display with prehistoric origami cranes slowly evolving into super-intelligent space-faring cranes in four stages. Other shows feature sushi eating competitions, exotic cake decoration competitions, Disney trivia challenges and more — every week is a new treat.
Well, the new wacky Japanese T-shirts we posted last Friday are sure selling well! It makes us very happy to see our bizarre and fun Japanese T-shirts proving so popular. Remember that we’re having a $1 shipping sale on all our T-shirts, so you pay just $1 for shipping to the U.S. or Canada (international customers pay just $3). Don’t forget that you get an extra 10% off if you buy 3 or more.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for Dragonball fans, we’ve got vol. 1-4 of the deluxe re-releases of the original Dragonball manga, in a great wide format with many extras for fans — get them all as a set!
- For fans of Japanese film on DVD, we’ve got a superb new work in stock for you, complete with English subtitles: Tokyo.Sora, an interesting collage of the lives of six girls living in Tokyo (region 2)
- For fans of the popular My Neighbor Totoro music boxes, enjoy a new offering, featuring Totoro holding a giant flower while Sho Totoro looks on
- For fans of Takara’s superb Blythe fashion doll series, a deluxe pair of new dolls that come with many accessories and a magical pop-up backdrop — they are so stylish and cool!
- For fans of Tomy’s unique die-cast cars that are the same scale as Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars, we’ve got some new vehicles in stock, including a Japanese mail truck and more
- For fans of Japanese snack treats, we’ve got many great items, including delicious “raw type” miso soup with spinach, tasty dried squid to eat, and fresh stock of some popular traditional Japanese candies
- For those interested in exploring Japanese health related products, we recommend Japanese and Chinese teas, which we’ve added various stock of today (good for dieting too)
- For Hello Kitty fans, we’ve got some cute snack items in stock for you, including a new series of Kitty lollipops, and a fantastic Kitty strawberry mint that includes a refillable case and a little Kitty charm that actually hands you the mints — it’s so cute
- If you love Tokyo Mew Mew, the cute anime show from Japan, we’ve restocked our Tokyo Mew Mew “free notebooks” (notebooks that you can draw or write anything in)
- Also, we’ve got fresh stock of the very popular Tokyo Mew Mew pins that sold out in record time, and more Tokyo Mew Mew wafer cookies with stickers
- We love to carry the meticulously crafted miniature toys from Japan
- For bento fans, we’ve got several new bento items in stock for you, including a new double-decker bento box and a new Hamster Club bento set as well
- We’ve restocked our popular Paper Stitch Lock, a cool device that “stitches” sheets of paper together so you never need staples
- Finally, look for a cute money bank that looks like a Japanese mailbox, fresh stock of our popular portable ash trays (for smokers who want to practice what Japan Tobacco’s TV commercials call “Smoking Clean”), fresh stock of onigiri seasoning and furikake for white rice, new Japanese signs and handy keychains, and more!
- For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- We’ve got a new issue of the wonderful KARAMI, which features a single lovely model on each page of a full magazine, in this case the lovely Megu Anrai
- For fans of Japanese hardcore magazines that show kogals and amateurs in love hotels, we’ve got some great items for you, including the new Sen Nin Giri and “I’ll Love You”
- If you love Japan’s gorgeous Race Queens, see the all-too-sexy Miki Munemasa (MOO-nay-MAH-sah) in a super new sexy hardcover photobook
- Also, the lovely 19 year old “Lost Virgin” of Tokyo Rich Girl Tokiwa Sakurako
- For fans of Japan’s highly-developed erotic manga, we’ve got several great volumes, including Grifon’s uncensored “Condensed Milky” and the super erotic “Space Nurse Peperon”
- Also, fresh stock of some great manga volumes including the Denno Butto Musume (Electronic Fighting Girls) doujinshi anthologies, which compile dozens of great game girl hentai doujinshi into perfect-bound
- Also, fresh stock of the beautiful “Girl’s Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall” art book by Mamito Tayama
- For fans of adult DVDs, we’ve got some great new items for you, starting with a Kuki Special Remix with 240 minutes of prime AV for you (region free)
- Fans of Azumi Kawashima can enjoy a great new release of her best works, including a collection of “off shots” (funny and cute moments when she didn’t know the camera was rolling) (region free)
- Chisaki Aihara performs lesbian sex for the first time in a new “Forbidden Private Garden” release — great for fans of “yuri” lesbian themes (region free)
- In Japanese, “NG” is short for “no good” and refers to bloopers during filming — enjoy a great DVD from SOD’s IEnergy label featuring embarrassing and funny moments from Ai Nagase’s long career (region free)
- Enjoy the erotic bukkake “Semen Fight Club” DVD series from Audaz, two separate DVDs for fans of bukkake fighting and the lovely Aoi Fubuki (region 2)
- Finally look for fresh stock of great DVDs like Aika Miura’s 180-minute “Fantastic” DVD, Alice Japan’s best of 2003 special, and the popular Euro Angels (for fans of East European and Russian AV, very popular in Japan right now).
Remember that J-List carries virtually all English-language Japanese dating-sim games available, so you can find all the best games in one place, and at great prices. Peach Princess, G-Collections, Hobibox Europe, Himeya Soft, JAST USA and Milky House, we’ve got them all and all are in stock in our warehouse in San Diego. If you’re unsure which games you think you’d like, feel free to email us for a recommendation! Order 4 or more games and get 20% off, too!
Also, remember that J-List has a great assortment of interesting and bizarre gum from Japan, from the runaway best-selling gum Black Black (per number of units, the best-selling single product in J-List’s hitory), delicious Xylitol Hyper Cool (a sugarless caffeine gum), delicious melon gum and “No Time” (gum which brushes your teeth for you). Check out the Japanese Gum page now!
