A few notes about the new J-List website:
- remember, subscriptions (both magazine and snacks) and game downloads are currently removed from the new J-List site, but they will return soon
- customer history will be imported from the old system over the next week or so (really!)
There are certainly some good things about living in Japan. Volcanic hot springs. 24 hour convenience stores stocked with steamed Chinese meat buns. Toilets that wash your butt. Access to cheap sushi. There are bad things, too. For example, it’s quite frustrating when a movie you wanted to catch in the theaters is delayed for several months, as I was reminded when I saw that the film The Martian won’t be released in Japan until February 2016. There might be several reasons for the delay, including issues related to the way films are distributed internationally, but one big bottleneck is the scheduling of the translators who create the Japanese subtitles. Big-budget studios know that having a well-known translator, like Japan’s “Queen of Subtitles” Toda Natsuko, sends a signal to moviegoers about the quality of the film. If Ms. Toda is busy with other projects — say, a certain Star Wars film — studios will often change their release schedules to accommodate her.
I’ve been involved with visual novels and eroge for a ridiculously long time — our first English game was published in 1996, back when everyone still used phone lines to connect to the Internet and CD-R media cost $5 per disc. Perhaps due to my long history with these games, I’ve always been interested in the concept of “choice points” (分岐点 bunki-ten in Japanese), essentially various points in a person’s life where a single decision can change everything, like making an important choice in a great visual novel like Steins;Gate or Shiny Days. I remember back when I first started university, opening my Japanese textbook and seeing that it was filled with writhing snakes that I’d later learn were hiragana characters. I prepared to drop the course the first week, certain that no one could possibly learn this incredibly difficult language. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a major “choice point” for my life, and I’m certainly glad I kept up with my study of the language. Now my daughter is nearing the end of her high school career and we’re exploring which university might be good for her, which of course is a big “choice point” that will determine her future happiness.
J-List is famous for several things, from our “Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend” kanji T-shirt to Tentacle Grape. Our customers also love the fuku-bukuro grab bags we sell every year. This year we’ve decided to start the ecchi grab bags a little earlier than normal, and we’ve posted the first one now, filled with great goodies your more perverted customers will like. We’ll get the PG grab bags posted to the site in the coming weeks.
