Hello again from your friends in Japan at J-List!
It’s always fun to keep an eye on trends in Japan to see what will flower elsewhere in the world. Kickboards (those silly skateboards with handles) got big here in Japan first, for example, then went on to tempt teenagers in the U.S. and elsewhere after that. We think the next trend you might want to watch out for are “beigoma.” A kind of hand-carved metal top, which is spun by throwing it down onto a flat surface while pulling back on a wound string, beigoma are a classic Japanese toy that were played with by everyone 50 years ago, although interest in them almost completely disappeared in the intervening decades. Now Japanese toy makers (and Japanese kids) have discovered the beigoma, and are making colorful and interesting beigoma which are being received by collectors and kids all over Japan. Pokemon and Digimon beigoma are inevitable. Your kids will probably hear about them soon, if they haven’t already.
While I was studying Japanese in college, we made use of Japanese homestay students as a great way for me to practice my Japanese and learn about Japan, while exchanging information about my home country with a visitor from Japan. We had several very enjoyable experiences with Japanese homestay students. Now that I live in Japan, I’ve arranged homestays in the U.S. for several friends and students over the years, and they’ve enjoyed themselves very much. Unfortunately, more and more I’ve seen the disturbing specter of commercialism creep into the homestay system, with people opening their homes to foreign students as a money-making enterprise, and offering little or no linguistic or social experience. Students are mixed in with other students, and have no chance to experience many fun aspects of living in a new country. If you’re interested in learning more about Japan and teaching about your home country, a great way is to invite a homestay student in your home — they’re almost always housebroken. A phone call to the ESL school attached to a nearby university is a good place to start.
For this evening’s update, some new and cool things from Japan, including:
- First, several new magazines, including a killer of the new Bejean featuring several excellent features — Kanazawa Bunko, Morishita Kurumi, Fukada Miho and many more
- We’ve got several issues of Otaka Wide Show, the magazine that shows you old and often embarrassing pictures of Japan’s hot idols and actresses when they were unknown
- Also for magazine fans, a bunch of nice back-issue sets of 2 and 3 magazines, for fans of some older magazines from the 1990’s
- For leg fans, the new issue of the stellar Mini-Suka Deluxe is in, and it’s a great one — the 50th issue special issue of this great deluxe magazine
- In addition to fresh stock of several popular sold out photobook items, we’ve got fresh stock of three of our most popular photobooks: Ohura Anna’s fanatic “i-Nude,” Kawashima Azumi’s “Flowing Out,” and the incredibly cute Hagiwara Mai’s “Maichi”
- For fans of our excellent erotic manga, we’ve got several very nice erotic offerings from AV Comics, Hit Comics and Do Comix, among others
- If you love yaoi, we’ve got more yaoi for you — Satoh Ishihara’s “Charisma” and a nice Gundam Wing yaoi dojinshi
- On the DVD pages, two new offerings from the Much-Treasured Sexual Technique Lecture DVD series, which will teach you about shio-fuki (female wet orgasm), bondage and more — complete with really useful (and erotic) tips and more — see them on the DVD region 2 page
- For our Japanese snacks page, we’ve got fresh stock of several types of Japanese teas (which we recommend highly, since we drink them ourselves here at J-List), as well as Morinaga’s “Hi-Crown” high-quality chocolate
- We’ve lowered prices on several of our funny Japanese T-shirts, which we’re closing out — wear a bewildering Japanese message on your shirt, it’s funny!
- We’re got fresh stock of several of our popular Wacky Things from Japan page
- Finally, fresh stock of Wacky Things from Japan items include a new version of our popular Japanese traditional note paper (genko yoshi), a unique Japanese “money tray” (a tray with a rubberized bottom which is used for handing money to cashier), a giant clamp for your futon, and a desktop calendar that’s cool enough that we’re even bothering to offer it in February.
Remember that we can send you a text-based list of the items available on the J-List site regularly — just reply to this mail, and we’ll add your address to the J-List text updates list as well.
