Hello and Merry Christmas from your friends in Japan! We hope you all had a warm and wonderful Christmas wherever in the world you are. We had a nice Christmas dinner on the 24th, along with our Christmas Cake (you can’t have Christmas in Japan without Christmas Cake). We settled down to open presents, American style, and had a great time.
Now that Christmas is past, Japanese will turn their attention to the most important holiday in Japan, New Year’s Day. As 2001 winds down, Japanese will prepare for the end of the old year by cleaning their house from top to bottom (called “o-soji” or “big cleaning”) so they can start the new year with a clean slate. We’ll be doing the same at J-list, stopping our normal work tomorrow and cleaning the J-List office inside and out, and washing our doors (you can’t have New Year’s in Japan without washing your doors). Before the year ends, we’ll take part in another Japanese year-end custom, the “bounen-kai” or “year-end party” (the kanji literally mean “Forget-the-year party”), in which we’ll go to a nice restaurant and order lots of good food and beer and look back on the past year for J-List.
For me, studying Japanese has always been great fun, but there are were difficult areas, to be sure. One area that proved challenging for me while I was studying is an interesting category of four-syllable adjectives that have interesting meanings. “Sokkuri” is a word that means “to look exactly like [someone else],” so if you meet a Japanese man and his son, and they look very similar to each other, you can point and say “Sokkuri!” and have some fun. Another similar word is “pittari” which means “it’s a perfect fit” (e.g., if you are trying to find the right size shirt, and you finally find it, this is the word you’d use. “Bikkuri” means “to be greatly shocked” (sometimes Japanese substitute the English word “shock” for this word), and so on. There are about 50 of these words, all with hard to learn but well-defined meanings.
Congratulations go out to our own Yasu, who got married yesterday. His wedding isn’t until March, but he and his fiancee went to the City Hall to file their marriage license yesterday, on Christmas Day. Japanese care far more about the day the paperwork for marriage is filed than the actual date of the wedding (Kaori also filed her paperwork several weeks before her wedding ceremony). Yasu said he chose that days so that Christmas would be the date of their wedding anniversary — what a romantic guy. Just as I had to give a long speech in Japanese at Kaori’s wedding, I’ll be called upon to speak to the guests at Yasu’s wedding ceremony, as the employer of the bride. The difference is that this time I’m the groom’s boss, which means first, before anyone else, and have to give an extra-long speech. It’s going to be hard…
We’ve reorganized the J-List product categories somewhat, adding new sections for anime & sexy idol trading cards, as well as a section for nude and erotic trading cards. Hope it makes things easier to find! We have so many products, and sometimes they don’t fit into established categories all that well…
For our post-Christmas J-List update, we’ve got more fun and wonderful things from Japan, including:
- First of all, a big volley of new magazines for you, including a nice selection of new $5 magazines for you to check out, with many back issues from 2000 posted (once they’re gone, they will be gone for good)
- For fans of the popular Buru Mani series of photobooks that feature beautiful young Japanese models, we’ve got the latest version for you (and it’s a good one)
- For fans of hentai manga, we’ve got several very nice items in, including a “request version” reissue of Oh My Bunny, a new hentai manga from Wataru Watanabe and an anal fetish manga that will probably prove to be very popular…
- Also, Yasu has posted fresh stock of more out of stock manga volumes, including Professor Cow God, Peach Breast Girl and the great hentai manga by Shikage Nagi, creator of the upcoming Peach Princess game Little My Maid
- For doujinshi fans, we’ve got several new titles posted for Love Hina fans — remember that our doujinshi sale will be ending soon
- If you love bishoujo games, especially the upcoming 2D RPG from Crowd and Peach Princess, Brave Soul, we’ve gotten new stock of the Brave Soul Complete Data artbook (very cool)
- For our adult video and DVD lineup today, we’ve got another nice bunch of new offerings for you. From Eichi DVD, we’ve got an excellent soft porn offering from the lovely Hitomi Hayasaka, age 18 (it’s uncensored, too)
- From Soft on Demand, enjoy some very special new releases, including Kurumi Morishita’s erotic “Aroused Bondage” offering and a fiery leg and stocking fetish title with Rumiko Hasegawa, and a totally cool DVD
- From SOD’s Deep’s label, a very special item — the “Holed Panty Series” DVD, which used tiny holes cut in panties to get around the mosaic censorship. Features the very popular Nanami Nanase of “One week only semen” fame
- From Waap, a super new Dream Shower bukkake video featuring the ultimate Japanese girl-next-door, Sayaka Hijiri
- Bunko Kanazawa fulfills your fantasies by dressing into many different costumes and performing for you in the new Costume Princess offering from Moodyz
- The lovely Nana Sakura, known for her appearances in leg fetish videos and magazines, stars in a super “How to Perfect” feature from Wanz Factory — another reason to buy a region free DVD player and enjoy J-List recent Indies offerings ^_^
- Finally, we’ve got a very nice “Lewd Sisters” video starring Nao Hirosue and Sayaka Hijiri, and a very special item, the “sayonara fuck” video of Aika Miura, retiring from her sterling career at last
- For lovers of Macross, we’ve got a single copy of the transforming VF-11A, from Macross Plus — a truly excellent toy which will almost certainly not be available to us in the future. If you want it, grab the one we have before it’s gone
- On our Japanese food and snacks page, we’ve got fresh stock of the delicious (and fast-selling) packets of Japanese miso soup (“nama” or “raw” type)
- Also, fresh stock of Tomato Pretz (one of my all-time favorite Japanese snack foods), Pocari Sweat powder (make Pocari Sweat at home!), and delicious Hamutaro furikake for kids
- We have some new cute things for you, including some fun bath stickers for kids with hamsters on them, and a Hamutaro “free notebook” to have fun with
- We have some newly posted Japanese headbands, one of our most popular sellers, including “The best in all Japan” and “Pass the test” (great for college students), as well as more silly message signs
- On our reorganized trading cards sections, we’ve got a super new card series for Morning Musume fans — the all-new Morning Musume Trading Card Part 3
- For lovers of the anime classics, relive the greatest moments of Yamato/Star Blazers with the Yamato Chronicles from Cardass
- Finally, find traditional-style Japanese trays (great if you’re tying to put a Japanese look into your home), fresh stock of the you-gotta-try-them Japanese hand warmers, a great puzzle of Mt. Fuji, more cool chopsticks from Japan, and more! Please see all the new items
The J-Mate site has been updated, with reviews of two popular DVDs — Maiko Kazano’s “Pure Heart” and the erotic “White Sexual Desire” bukkake DVD starring Shinobu Kasagi. Both have lots of screenshots, too. See them at the J-Mate site at http://www.jmate.com/
Remember that J-List is one of the few places where you can get authentic Japanese “loose socks,” the outrageous baggy socks that high school girls wear here. We have them in 80 and 120 cm length.
