Greetings from Japan, where red is the opposite of white.
I had great fun at my friend’s wedding in Iwate Prefecture. It wasn’t the snowy wasteland I was expecting, although it was cold. Fortunately for me, Hanamaki is a famous onsen (hot springs) town, so I got to enjoy the best onsen in Japan (according to the hotel employee). Getting naked in front of other men has never been so good… (See pictures of the happy couple at http://www.myjapan.net/peter/wedding3.html.)
The Tohoku area (the northern part of the main Japanese island of Honshu) is a great area, and I did some hitchhiking when in my days as a single gaijin. What it lacks in castles and battlegrounds and shrines it makes up in charm. Known for enka, the eerily beautiful music of rural Japan, it’s interesting because all the place names are very un-Japanese, being derived from original Ainu names. One place I enjoyed going to in the past was Aizu-Wakamatsu, the scene of one of the last battles of the conflict between the feudal samurai and the pro-reform Restorationists, who were trying to modernize Japan. Rather than submit to becoming “modernized, the last remaining group of samurai chose to commit seppuku. It’s a grim but fascinating place to visit.
For tonight’s update, we have some great new items:
- Famed photographer Akira Gomi’s Last Loose Socks” — a great multimedia documentary of the lives and loves of Japan’s high school girls (on the photobook and CD ROM pages), for Mac and Windows
- For photobook fans, we’ve got a bunch of popular photobooks, including Sendo Emi’s “Tomadoi”, the Nama-Ashi, and an item that is destined to sell out quickly, three copies of Fubuki Akira’s “Impressive”
- A lovely new photobook by the sweet and charming Uehara Rinka, Minet
- More copies of the popular CG artbooks, Find Love 2 and Renkin Jutsu no Musume, on the anime page
- For Pokemon fans, we’re closing out our inventory of delicious Pokemon cookies and choco snacks, as well as those cool Hello Kitty phone strap & heart-shaped carmel treat sets
- Finally, for our loyal hentai manga fans, we’re happy to announce that Paradise Lost, the excellent series of Evangelion hentai dojinshi anthologies, is *back in print* and available on our site now!
We’re moving right along with the two upcoming Milky House hentai games, Legend of Fairies and Fairy Nights, and expect them to ship by May 1. You can pre-order them from J-List and get the games sent to you as soon as they’re released, and get free shipping to boot. See them on Hentai Games page 2, or the CD ROM page.
