Hello again from Japan. It’s a wet, cold Saturday afternoon today, so Chiharu and I’ve decided to take the kids out for that old Japanese pastime — karaoke. Karaoke in Japan is usually enjoyed in a “karaoke box, a private room where you can sing without being nervous about how bad your singing is. Since we’re going with the kids, we’ll try to pick a place that has lots of anime and other songs kids might enjoy. I know I’ll be asked to sing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — my five year old son’s favorite song. Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered about what the word karaoke” means, it comes from “kara” (meaning empty or air — the same “kara” from the word karate), and “oke, an abbreviation for orchestra.”
If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese often have thick accents when speaking English, part of the reason comes from the “phonetic poverty” of Japanese. In American English, there are something like twelve different phonetic vowels. depending on what dialect you speak, along with a host of challenging consonants. But Japanese has just five vowels — A I U E O (the same five used in Spanish). Further, Japanese is a syllabic language, so words are always conceptualized in consonent-vowel blocks (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
For this very wet weekend, we’ve got a very nice update for you all, with many nice new items. They include:
- First, Fake Out, a great new hybrid magazine featuring lovely photobook-quality photographs, high-grade paper, and interviews and more
- A rare item, Multiboy Vol. 3, includes photographs and video clips from some rare and hard-to-find actresses from 2-3 years ago
- We’ve got a super DVD for Kano Mizuho/Kusanagi Jun fans, from the popular Gallery series — see the DVD page for this great item
- For fans of Soft on Demand’s unique indies video offerings, we’ve got another nice “First Lesbian” series video, as well as two great “slow motion” features, capturing great moments in sex on high-speed film (see these on the in-stock video pages, or the by-order video pages if our current stock sells out)
- There are another half-dozen great hentai manga on the manga page, including the extremely busty “Sadistic Angel” by Caramel-Do
- Fresh dojinshi, including more stock of several popular titles by the Okachimentaiko dojinshi circle (Buy or Die, Pikaichi, Next, and the all-color Bura-Jiru)
- New stock of Strawberry Milk Candy and Milky white caramels on the Japanese Snacks Page
- Many back-in-stock photobooks, including Ozawa Madoka’s popular hardcover photobook, Hitomi Ryo’s Virginity, Nakamura Eri’s Yume, Yoshino Sally’s Sally! and more.
Well, I’m off to karaoke. Have a nice weekend, from your friends in Japan, J-List!
