Hello and “Akemashite Omedetou” from all of us at J-List! The New Year has just broken in California as I type this, and the new year is less than an hour old. It feels like a good one so far!
New Year’s Day (Oshogatsu in Japanese) is the most important of holidays in Japan, a quiet time to spend visiting family and going to the local Shinto shrine to pray for good luck in the new year. In the same way that Christmas is a quiet time and New Year’s can be loud in the U.S., Christmas in Japan is an excuse to have a loud, fun party, but the first day of the New Year is something solemn and special. Although we’re in San Diego this year, we’ve had a very Japanese Dec. 31st, including eating of Japanse soba noodles (called “toshi-koshi soba,” which means “crossing into the New Year noodles,” they’re supposed to bring you long life), eating mochi (pressed rice cakes) and more. Unfortunately we couldn’t find Kouhaku, the huge music show that features virtually everybody who’s anybody in Japan, on any of the international channels on our cable TV.
Starting a new year is a good time to look back and take stock of the past year. 2002 has been nothing less than spectacular for all of us at J-List, thanks to the kind support of our many customers and readers around the world. We’ve had incredible success bringing many cool new categories of products to you, from region free DVD players to Japan’s interactive love-sim games to loose socks and Pocky and our unique Japanese adult products. We like to think of J-List as a giant dodecahedron (a 20-sided die), floating in space, and the J-List staff are little people living on the surface. Each great category of things from Japan we’re able to make available to our customers is one “face” of the die, and every few months we discover a new side to the surface (Studio Ghibli music boxes, funny Japanese T-shirts, Hello Kitty and Totoro blankets) and make new wacky things available to our customers all around the world. I wonder if we’ll ever run out of new areas to discover? I honestly don’t think so, as there will never be an end to cool things from Japan.
In Japanese, they have a phrase which is used at the start of a new year. It is KORE KARA MO YOROSHIKU ONEGAI SHIMASU, which is very difficult to translate into English accurately. It basically means “Thank you for your past support, and please continue your cooperation in the future.” All the J-List staff, both in Japan and in San Diego, appreciate your support of our little company. Together, we hope to seek out and explore new worlds of cool pop culture from Japan!
For the first update of the new year, we’ve got newly added and restocked items for you in virtually all categories. For fans of Japan’s bishoujo games, be sure and check out the brand-new Sensei 2, a great new game coming out from G-Collections, which is up for preorder now (although the game will be shipping in just a few days). Also, we’ve posted a great new DVD player with progressive scan and many high-end features to the site — it’s not in stock yet, but you can order your copy now and we’ll send it out when we get them in. Finally, we’ve really (and we mean really) slashed prices on the remaining stock of 2003 calendars — the prices are really low, so please find it in your heart to help us by taking some of them of our hands. Please enjoy all the great new items we’ve posted for you today!
