Hello from Japan, where the turn signal light on a car is called a “winker.”
Well, the Season of Cold has come to Japan, bringing frosty mornings and the beginnings of winter in addition to the beautiful colors of autumn. Japanese love to talk about how Japan has four seasons as if this was the only country that had four seasons. In practice, the time between “hot and humid” and “cold and windy” is mighty short, at least in this part of Japan. Part of the problem with winter is that although Japan is a modern country, Japanese homes are not built to hold heat in efficiently. Also, there’s no such thing as central heating here — you heat the room you’re in, usually with a portable kerosene heater, which means that as you go from room to room you are chilled
One way to stay warm, Japanese style, is with a kotatsu (koh-TA-tsu). A kotatsu is basically a low table with an electric heater inside it. You pick up the top of the table, which is removable, and put a blanket (futon) over the table, then place the tabletop on top of the blanket. Stick your legs in the kotatsu, and you’ll be as warm as you like. Kotatsus are a favorite place for small creatures to sleep, like cats and my kids, who climb inside the heated space and go out like a light.
There’s a fun game Japanese kids play, called Shiritori (“take the end” or “take the ass”) Game. To play, someone things of a word — say, chopsticks, which is “hashi” in Japanese. Then the next person takes the last syllable — “shi” — and thinks of a word that starts with this syllable, say, shiatsu (although a child wouldn’t think of a word like that). The next person continues, with a word that start with “tsu” and so on. In Japanese phonetics, the only consonant that can appear by itself without a noun after it is the letter N, so in Shiritori Game (such as lion, “raion” in Japanese). This game is played universally in Japan and is a fun way for kids to pick up vocabulary (although there are darker uses for it, as you can see below).
We’re happy to make available three new bishoujo games for preorder. From Peach Princess, there are two titles forthcoming. The first, Brave Soul, is an excellent game from Crowd, the first adult fantasy RPG (2D scrolling) game brought ot the English language. It features a host of characters, combat, a variety of campaigns for your party to wage, and excellent uncensored erotic CG. Look for Brave Soul sometime next summer (but you can preorder it now and get free shipping when the game is ready).
In Gibo, a multi-scenario adventure game also to be released in coming months, you were only a child when your mother cheated on your father, causing the destruction of your happy home and your hatred of the concept of “mother.” When your father suddenly marries a young, beautiful woman, you find yourself with a new stepmother, or Gibo. How will Misako’s entry into your life change you? The choices are endless in this Freudian tale of erotica and forbidden love. This game will ship around Spring 2002.
Then, from Hobibox Europe, we’re proud to announce Love Love Game!, from LOVE GUN, an exciting puzzle game that’s actually three games in one. With fantastic hentai graphics and great game play that is a breath of fresh air to the English-language bishoujo world, we think this will be a great title to pick up. It will ship in a month or so.
Aside from the Japanese bishoujo games that are available for preorder, we’ve got some excellent items for you, including:
- For fans of the “Pure Beauties” series of soft-porn erotic DVDs we made available last week, we’ve posted the rest of these great items, with new DVDs from Jun Kusanagi, Sally Yoshino, Aya Andoh and Ai Iijima — these DVDs are all excellently priced, and we send them to you from San Diego, too. For fans of our very nice adult magazines, we’ve got some nice items for you, including the new Gal’s Dee, some cool “submitted by readers” magazines and more
- Also: you can always find discounted magazines on Magazine page 3, with many items at just $5
- For photobook fans, look for fresh stock of some great items, including the fabulous Anna Ohura hardcover photobook “i-Nude” which must be seen to be believed, as well as lower prices on many of our hardcover photobooks
- If you love erotic manga, we’ve got a nice bunch of all-new manga works for your perusal, along with a major restock of previously sold out works (about 12 manga volumes in all)
- For doujinshi lovers, we’ve restocked Tropical Princess vol. 5 and 6, from the talented hentai doujinshi circle Kennix
- If you love Soft on Demand’s excellent erotic DVDs, we’ve got two: Shirtori Samurai, in which ten Japanese girls play the Japanese “shiritori” game, and whoever loses must endure being raped. Then, we’ve got a “deluxe re-mix” of Nanami Nanase’s One Week with Only Semen DVD
- For fans of Bauhaus’s wonderful DVDs, we present the very lovely nude performance of Maiko Kazano, who recently started appearing nude (she is one of my favorites)
- For adult video fans, a very special item: a sterling performance by Miki Sawaguchi, the incredibly busty AV idol from Japan
- We’ve gotten a fresh shipment of very cool 2002 Japanese calendars in. If you had preordered some of the calendars we got in stock, we’ve already contacted you to let you know your calendars are on their way. Newly in stock: You’re Under Arrest, Gackt, Ryoko Hirosue, and more
- For fans of lovely Japanese swimsuit idols, we’ve got some new photobooks posted to the Japanese idols page
- On our popular Japanese signs and stickers page, we’ve restocked several items, including Japanese signs that say “Please don’t use portable phones” “I’m suffering from a broken heart” and more
- For Japanese snack fans, we’ve got fresh stock of Japanese Hi-Chew Kids soft candies, in aloe and cream soda flavor (don’t you just love Japan?)
- On our “traditional things” page, we’ve got more Japanese “masu” cups, which are perfectly square cups made from white pine wood. You can use them for drinking sake, or to hold things on your desk, since they are really cool to look at
- Finally, we’ve got many nice “wacky” items for you, including fresh stock of our Japanese resume forms, more of our popular sushi maker mold, fresh stock of Japanese chopsticks, the best cotton swab you will ever find, and more!
The J-Mate site has been updated, with an all-new interview with Mai Hagiwara (is she really retiring?), a great review of Fairy Nights, and something for Kyoko Fukada fans… See it at http://www.jmate.com/
J-List has a very popular line of “wacky” Japanese T-shirts with funny messages on them. As we’re always coming up with new designs for our shirts, we won’t be reprinting most of our older designs as they start to sell out (as in the case of our “it is forbidden to urinate here” T-shirts). In the past, we’ve seen many customers gnash their teeth when the design they wanted to buy goes out of print permanently. To keep this from happening, why not pick up the wacky T-shirt you want now?
