Hello again from your friends in Japan!
The Japanese love of saving money is world famous, and as a nation, Japan has a mind-boggling US$9 trillion in savings, most in cash-based accounts that earn almost no interest. Getting a 1% return on savings is considered great in Japan right now, what with the government’s “zero interest policy” of keeping money practically free to borrow to try to get the economy moving again. We don’t mind this policy at all — when we built the J-List office and remodeled my wife’s parents’ rural liquor shop, we were able to borrow money for around 1.9%. (No, we can’t arrange any loans for anyone outside of Japan, sorry.) Incredibly, the per-household average amount of cash savings for Japanese families is a whopping US$100,000. They have enough money to save this much and still have some left over for toilet seats that wash your butt for you when you’re done going to the bathroom. As the economy has grown worse, Japanese households are saving more and more, which is of course a big corse reason for the problems with the economy in the first place.
Japanese banks became famous as the expanded out of Japan in the late 1980’s, but the granddaddy of them all isn’t a bank at all: it’s the Japanese Postal Savings System, established back in 1875 when Japan was going through a period of rapid modernization. About 20% of Japanese savings is done through the Post Office here, making for a staggering amount of money — supposedly, if it were considered a bank, it’d be the largest bank in the world. Since the Post Office doesn’t loan money out to individuals or businesses, this money is put to use in various ways, funding Japan’s public works and building various projects all over Japan.
One of these projects is a beautiful onsen (hot springs) hotel situated in the mountains above Nikko called Melmonte. It features many baths and saunas, a sprawling heated pool with many water slides and fountains, and the coup d’grace, an observatory where you can go view the planets and stars after your bath. Built with public funds, the hotel is partially a PR campaign for the Japanese postal system, and historical items of interest relating to the postal service are on display. Postal workers get a discount when they stay there — which really gives our local mailman in San Diego a laugh. Since my son and I love Japanese baths so much, I’m taking him there on Saturday as a special treat for him. So you know we’ll be very clean this weekend!
For the pre-weekend update, we’ve got a bunch of nice items for you, including:
- First, we have some great new magazines for you, including the new Urecco, laden with beautiful models for you, including the new “too big poster” (very large nude poster of Hitomi Hasegawa and Hitomi Hayasaka)
- We’ve got a new bust fetish magazine for fans, Oh! Pai
- For photobook lovers, we’ve got several nice items, including an all-new photobook by the lovely Risa Tani, as well as fresh stock of several of our popular leg, stocking and mini-skirt fetish photobooks
- Also: a very rare and interesting photobook of the lovely Mariko Mise, which comes in a limited edition box with a poster and T-shirt (available by special order, only 5000 of these have been made)
- For hentai anime fans, we’ve got a rare “complete work book” (art book) on the anime OAV “A Kite” by La Femme Nikita
- Look for another large update of adult comics from Japan on our manga page, with several really cool works that really stand out, including an incredibly hentai parody of Love Hina, Rayearth, and Utena
- Also: Yasu has worked hard to restock our manga pages, with fresh stoc of many popular items so you can get them with no waiting
- For DVD collectors, we’ve got two new 180 minute “No Cut” DVD releases, which feature three full video releases of two very lovely professional AV idols
- From Soft on Demand, a great new “Penis study with innocent girls” release, in which girls without much sexual experience see and touch a man’s penis for the first time
- A great item from SOD’s Deep’s label, we’ve got a 120 minute DVD which collections the best cum shots from 61 actresses in a great item for you
- There’s a great new “chijo” (lewd woman or slut) performance by Hitomi Ikeno, Yuuki Tsukamoto and Riran Mizuho for fans of bold, erotic women who pursue their sex with a vengeance
- Finally, Tomo has updated the video and DVD pages, with fresh stock of many items, including videos by Akira Fubuki and Anna Ohura, and the popular new items by M’s Video Group
- Because we love The Dog, we’ve got more The Dog stuff for you, including some very cool (and in Japan, hard to buy) The Dog bento boxes, and cute colorful tape with images of dogs on it
- Our only-available-from-Japan Hello Kitty items continue to be popular, and we’ve added many all-new items for Kittyphiles
- Also for Kitty fans, an entirely new category of item — Hello Kitty stick-type chewing candy, which looks like sticks of normal gum but is really delicious soft, fruit-flavored candy you can chew and swallow
- Other newly added snack items including delicious rice crackers, tasty “pudding flavored Pocky,” a reduced-salt version of our popular miso soup, and delicious ume flavored hard candy
- When we saw the very cool Sesame Street character pens from Sony Creative Products, we were bowled over and got some stock for J-List, even though it’s not our usual area of business
- For anime & toy fans, see the cool “miracle action figures” of Devilman we’ve posted, along with a very, very cool Cyber Trooper robot figure from DNA
- For fans of the bilingual comics series from Kodansha, which let you read Cardcaptor Sakura, Ah My Goddess and Love Hina in English, we’ve got a general restocking of several volumes that had sold out
- We’ve restocked one of my favorite anime movies, Kiki’s Delivery Service, a 2 DVD set released only in Japan, which comes loaded with the English and Japanese versions (both dubbed and subbed), interviews and extras from the creators, the storyboard version of the film, and more! It’s region 2 and highly recommended for collectors!
- Finally, an item I’ve wanted to sell through J-List for years, the extra-large cat bus tissue box holder, which accepts any standard box of tissue and lets you take the tissue out through a hole in his back.
Remember that J-List now carries some interesting U.S.-published adult comics from White Lightning, including the first three volumes of the English version of Tohru Nishimaki’s Blue Eyes. These are all stocked in our ever-growing San Diego office for your ordering convenience. See the English hentai manga page for these items.
The “top 5” list has been updated, so you can see what other J-List customers have been buying over the last week.
Well, that’s all for now — thanks as always for being a valued part of J-List and making it all fun for us. We’ll see you next week!
