Man, Apple’s Airport is really great. Today’s update is being brought you from my living room, via my Powerbook and a booster antenna. Kazuki and I are about half way through Zeta Gundam, and we’re watching an episode while I finish up tonight’s update.
In any language, there are little areas that are especially difficult or challenging. When Japanese people study English, they get hung up on idioms (“it’s raining cats and dogs”), and two word verbs and their many nuances (throw up, throw off, throw away, etc.). Also, because it’s quite hard to find native English speakers to practice English with, Japanese have trouble getting used to understanding spoken English.
For me, studying Japanese has always been great fun, but there are were difficult areas, to be sure. There’s an interesting category of four-syllable words that were quite hard to get down when I was studying Japanese: sokkuri (“it looks exactly the same”), pittari (“it’s a perfect fit”), bikkuri (“I’m quite surprised”), and so on — there are about 50 of these words, all with hard to learn but well-defined meanings. But the most challenging area of Japanese study for non-Chinese, non-Taiwanese, non-Korean students of Japanese is definitely kanji. An extremely complex system of pictures and meanings
For tonight’s update, we’ve got some nice new items, as always, including:
- First, great new magazines, including another new issue of the popular Cho Very Good, for fans of outrageous Japanese cogals
- If you like legs, we’ve got some great items for you, including several new and back-in-stock let fetish books — including Panstopia, Panst Dream, Leg’s Queen, See-Through Fetish, and more
- For photobook fans, we’ve got some wonderful new ones for you, including Girl Friends 2000, a super hardcover book featuring 36 AV idols for you, Yamazaki Akari’s erotic “Mellow Fruits, and an interesting bishojo ass” book
- We’ve also got more copies of such popular photobooks as Miyazawa Nude vol. 2, Secret Idol, and Yamada Mariya’s “Mariya 2”
- We have more copyes of the excellent hentai art books that had been sold out, The Season of L (L no Kisetsu, L standing for “ero” to the Japanese ear) and Cherry Soft, on the hentai art books page
- We have some great new videos in stock, including the lovely Aoi Minori’s “Fetish Virgin” (gotta love a video with a title like that)
- We have a dozen or so *all new* dojinshi posted to the dojinshi page, some really nice ones from last month’s Comic Market
- JPOP fans are responding to our “final JPOP sale, picking up a lot of JPOP albums and singles with our buy two, get one free.” We’ve sweetened the pot, with 20+ new items on the JPOP page, including limited stock of Amuro Namie, Suzuki Ami, and more
- For today’s additions to the “wacky things from Japan” category, we’ve added a wonderful Hello Kitty spoon & fork; a nifty pair of hooks that you attach to the back of your car’s seat to hang trash bags, food the the kids, and more; and by request, more of the surprisingly popular “Japanese word cards”
Remember that J-List has the only “bizarre Japanese T-shirts” you’ll find, with great slogans on them, from “Looking for a Japanese girlfriend” to “I’m a strange foreigner” to the fun favorite, Philosophy of Hentai. Check them out on the T-shirts page!
