Greetings to all of you from J-List!
Japan has changed in many ways in the almost ten years that I’ve lived here. One has been the elimination of Saturday as a day of half-attendance at work and school. In the “old days” (1992), many companies as well as all government offices and public schools had required half-day attendance on Saturdays, which seemed very alien to my American sensibilities. During the 1980’s, Japan realized it was not an up-and-coming nation that had to work extra-hard to rebuild itself in the world economy, but instead had “arrived” and could take it easy. Half-days for government offices and public schools were phased out, and the “era of leisure” was declared. (Most private schools still elect to keep required Saturday classes, to avoid having their academic standards eroding.) Compared with what Japan was like at the beginning of the 1990’s, when salarymen worked through holidays and rarely saw their families, I’d say it’s certainly a change for the better. On the other hand, the economy here has gone through three plodding recessions in the past decade. One way to look at the present lack of growth in Japan’s GDP might be that it has been caused partially by extra emphasis on working less and “taking it easy.”
Japan has a national network of freeways, but they’re quite different from what you might be used to in the U.S. or Europe. First of all, they’re not free at all — you pay a toll to use them, about $5 for us to drive 20 km to the next city over, or around $25 to go the 100 km into Tokyo. Paying to get to where you’re going faster isn’t much fun, but if they didn’t charge the tolls then everyone would be using the roads, which would defeat the purpose. Unfortunately Japan’s freeways are not linked up with each other very often, so it’s quite common to have to drive a ways on one road, get off and drive on normal roads for two hours, then take the next freeway. Japan’s freeways are very well designed and easy to drive on, but if you’re visiting from overseas and want to drive around Japan, there’s one potential challenge awaiting you: virtually all major roads are named with long, difficult kanji names (when they are named at all), rather with, say, easy to read numbers, as the interstate freeway system in the U.S. The freeway nearest our house is called the “Kita Kanto Odan Doro” which means the North Cross-Kanto Road. To get to Tokyo we head south on the “Kan-Etsu Kosoku Doro” which means the Kanto-Niigata Freeway. It’s just part of being in Japan.
For today’s update, we’ve got an extra special selection of cool items, including:
- First, several great magazines for you, including the new Bejean (which is fantastic), new Kogal magazines, and more
- We’ve got the very nice DVD Japan in stock, which features a full color magazine and 138 minute sampler DVD for a great price (region 2)
- For photobook fans, we’ve got several very nice items, including the hardcover nude photobook of the lovely Manami Shimizu, fresh stock of the famous Rie Miyazawa nude photobook, and more
- We have some very nice hentai manga for your enjoyment, including works by EC Comics, AV Comics, and more
- For yaoi fans, we’ve got two excellent new items for you, with very bold and hardcore shonenai for your enjoyment
- For our DVD customers, we’ve got several top-quality items for you today, including a superb lesbian kissing DVD from Deep’s featuring some of Japan’s most lovely AV idols (region free)
- The waif-like Nanami Nanase shines in her latest erotic performance, The Santa Claus is Coming to My House, in which she plays a very lovely “Santa girl” giving a special present to her boyfriend (region free)
- One of my personal favorites is the lovely Kyoka Usami, and now her great indies production CC Idol, one of the most interesting peeing fetish productions I’ve ever seen, is available on DVD! (region free)
- Then: we get a lot of requests for unique items at J-List, and one of the most unlikely are requests for videos of Russian adult video idols, which are extremely popular inside Japan for some reason, and very hard to get. See Yulia Nova’s fabulous large breast videos in stock now! (VHS)
- For fans of incredible bukkake performances, enjoy the latest Fuuka Sakurai offering from Waap, with the odd name of “Disgrace Novel Story of the Spermatozoon Palace” (region 2)
- For anime lovers, we’ve got a very special item for you: the DVD release of Porco Rosso, aka The Crimson Pig, aka Kurenai no Buta, a popular Hayao Miyazaki feature release film which features English and French subtitles and dubbed tracks on 2 DVDs! (region 2)
- For fans of our anime toys, we’ve got a great update for you, with a deluxe Cosmo Zero (aka Astro Fighter) from Yamato/Star Blazers, a very rare blue Battroid from Macross, and a deluxe Devilman “completed figure” for fans and collectors
- Also: fresh stock of Ah My Goddess competed figures, the Kiki’s Delivery Service figures, and the Japan-only Hot Wheels from Bandai
- If you love My Neighbor Totoro, we’ve got a beautiful Neko Bus (cat bus) plush from Studio Ghibli and Sun Arrow, with incredible detail and a soft plush feel
- Other hopelessly cute items include a lucky Totoro strap that’s very cute, a rare item for fans of Bambi, and some new and back-in-stock Hello Kitty items (including fresh stock of our oh-so-popular Hello Kitty vibrators)
- We have some cool “traditional” Japanese items for you, including a complete Japanese calligraphy set, a beautiful savings bank patterned after the collection boxes in temples, and moer
- For anyone who loves trains, we’ve got two great bullet train toys for you, with great all-die cast construction and detail
- We’ve got some great new snack items, including candies flavored after popular Japanese drinks (CC Lemon, etc.), and a fragrant and good-tasting gum from Lotte that smells like azaleas (really, we’re not kidding)
- Also, we’ve had a major restocking of our candy and snack items, including fresh stock of Black Black Candy, Sushi Gummi, sake candy and traditional kuro ame, the super-tart shige-kix “hard gummi,” and the popular Pocky with Morning Musume limited edition stickers inside
- We’ve got fresh stock of several varieties of the popular “The Dog” stuffed plush toys from Japan, with cute, oversized heads
- Finally, look for other cool items, including Hello Kitty toilet paper, new funny bento boxes with funny English on them, delicious and healthy miso soup mix, real chopsticks from Japan, and ways to help you learn Japanese!
J-List brings you many interesting items, including English-translated bishoujo games, which we’re happy to have been involved with for so many years. By far one of the best games to come along in years has been Tokimeki Check in!, the two CD-ROM game about an unwilling proprietor of a traditional Japanese hot springs hotel, and many interesting girls who come through the in. We’re always happy to receive warm feedback from customers on this game and our other titles, and we certainly hope you’ll give this fun genre a try. Tokimeki Check in! features beautiful graphics, full voice and a CD-quality soundtrack, too.
