Hello from Japan, where a corn dog is known universally as an “American Dog.”
For a country that loves English enough to make cars named Mazda Bongo Friendy and Mitsubishi Bravo Exceed and Nissan Sunny, you’d think there’d be a lot of English in use here. Well, outside of people who happen to work alongside foreigners in special jobs (like the Japanese staff of J-List), there isn’t any more English in daily use in Japan than there is French in the U.S. Although every can of beer and canned coffee has a decorative English description on it — “Sapporo beer is made from the finest hops for a delicious taste and refinement” — you’d be surprised how easy it is to find yourself standing on a train platform in rural Japan with not a single sign in English telling you which train to get on. Since I read Japanese, I tend not to notice it that much, but whenever I’ve got friends from the U.S. out for a visit, I realize how difficult little things like getting around the country can be. The Japanese do their best to promote “internationalization” but it can be a tall order for them, especially as you move away from cities like Tokyo.
To successfully study a language, one thing you need to do beyond learning the grammar and vocabulary is to craft overall strategies for communication, even if it means using hand gestures or drawing pictures to show meaning. One strategy for communication that’s used by Japanese when speaking English (and by me at times, in Japanese), is the non sequitur, a reply that can be used as a response to just about any question, whether you understood it or not. Back in my bachelor days, I went to a live orchestra performance and was surprised to hear that the organizers had “randomly” chosen three people from the audience to get up and conduct the orchestra: a cute old woman, a little girl, and funny American, namely me. I got up on the conductors podium, trying to ignore the hundreds of people with their eyes focused on me, and lead the Maebashi Philharmonic Orchestra in the first few bars of Beethoven’s 5th. I only got a little ways into the music, because my total lack of timing caused the musicians to ground to a halt soon after they started. When I was done, the MC asked me some questions about where I was from, how I liked my first time conducting an orchestra, and…something else, that I didn’t happen to catch. Rather than embarrass myself in front of so many people by asking the MC to repeat herself, I gave her an answer that would fit just about anywhere in Japanese: “So desu ne” (literally “Yes, that’s is so”). I hope I fooled her.
Cellular phones are ubiquitous in Japan, with people from all walks of life from elementary school students to the elderly carrying them. Japanese phones are quite advanced and cool to look at, and virtually all have full color screens. NTT DoCoMo and competing companies let you surf the web (or a subset of the web, at least) with your phone, and download Java-based applications like virtual idols and even dating-sim games to your phone. Phones can be programmed to replace your TV remote control, and phones with cameras and MP3 players built into them are quite common (some even record short MPEG-4 movies). Another up-and-coming application for phones is an alarm clock feature that gently wakes you up with natural sounds that crate alpha waves in your brain as you wake up. The 3G wars are heating up in Japan as well, with NTT’s home-grown FOMA phone system going head to head against KDDI’s system that’s based on Qualcomm’s CDMA. I personally prefer the CDMA phones, as they function as 3G phones near cities and as standard cellular phones when you’re out of the 3G area.
We’re proud and happy at the cult status our funny Japanese T-shirts, with messages like “Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend,” have attained. This month, we’re offering a special $1 shipping sale, with shipping on all T-shirts to the U.S./Canada just $1 per shirt. (International customers pay just $3 per shirt.) This is a wonderful opportunity to get a whole bunch of our bizarre Japanese T-shirts and save a bunch of money on the shipping — they make great gifts, too. All our shirts are 100% cotton quality T-shirts that are full U.S. sizes, and all are printed in the USA. If you’re unsure about your size, you can click the “T-shirt sizes” link below each shirt description to see the measurements in inches and centimeters.
Also, announcing the Spring DVD sale! To say thanks for your past and current support of J-List, we’re giving 15% off any four or more DVDs from Japan, with all the DVDs we sell included in the sale. To get the special discount, just add four or more DVDs to your shopping cart. The discount will be applied automatically at checkout. Thanks for helping to make J-List such a success!
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- We’re big fans of cool things from Japan, and we love the authentic miniature food replicas from Re-Ment. We’ve gotten stock of two cool miniature food series, Kaiten Zushi (sushi) and the authentic Chinese food of Yokohama’s Chinatown district, with full sets available for you!
- For fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s Totoro, we’ve got another excellent ceramic music box, super for collectors and very cute, as well as a major restocking of Studio Ghibli plush toys
- Also, a really cool item, a deck of high-quality playing cards for fans of Spirited Away
- J-List carries various anime and idol trading cards, and we’ve got the cool new series of You’re Under Arrest in stock for you
- For Tokyo Mew Mew fans, a new series of chrome gold cloisonne pins (e.g. “pin badge” as they’re known in Japanese)
- Also, we’re big fans of the large-scale pre-painted anime statues that are so popular in Japan — enjoy a beautiful cold cast figure from Love Hina, in stock now
- We’ve got some great Japanese food and snack items for you, including a deluxe package of Pucca fish-shaped chocolate-filled cookies, and authentic salmon chazuke, delicious food made with green tea that you sprinkle over white rice then eat as a soup — yum
- Also, we’ve got two great varieties of tea, including tasty oolong tea bags Tochu tea, which absorbs sugar in your system (great for dieting)
- We love Japanese swimsuit idols and Race Queens, and have a great photobook for fans of Yui Ichikawa featuring the lovely girl modeling many Japanese high school uniforms in fold-out posters
- Also, for fans of Japanese swimsuit idols who want to sample the most beautiful, we’ve got a superb Hyper Product Revolution, featuring the sexy works of 14 famous idols including Yuko Ogura, Chinatsu Wakatsuki, Megumi, Eiko Koike, Harumi Nemoto, and more (region free)
- Look for fresh stock of several popular items by master illustrator Shirow Masamune, including his bilingual Ghost in the Shell manga and Jashin Hunter illustrated Japanese novels
- For fans of anime DVD from Japan, we’ve got the 5th and final DVD for She, the Ultimate Weapon, the popular anime OAV series that’s released with full English subtitles (region 2)
- We love items with funny English on them, and have some cool pencil cases and other items for you today
- We’ve got a deluxe super-size bento box with included chopsticks, a great item for bento fans with hungry appetites
- We carry uncensored hentai anime DVDs in our San Diego office, and have several cool ones in stock for you, including Kamyla, Pure Mail, DNA Hunter and more — see them all today
- We’ve got fresh stock of several cool sushi and kitchen related items, including Japanese miso soup bowls, sushi making molds and more
- Finally, look for cute “Pop Animal” items, more of the three-colored cat Japanese mirrors, fresh stock of the red-hot Hello Kitty block figures, Japanese bento items including cutters that make a sausage into a cute octopus for bento, some great Japanese study items, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of Japan’s popular adult magazines, we’ve got several nice items for fans of authentic Japanese amateurs, including Magazine Junk and I Want You to Look At Me
- Also, for fans of Japan’s street kogal erotica, a new issue of Sen Nin Giri
- We just love Japan’s gorgeous hardcover photobooks, filled with high quality glossy photos — enjoy yet another red-hot Yuko Ogura item in stock today!
- For fans of Japan’s beautiful nude photography, we’ve got a “Chinkame” format pocket sized photobook featuring the lovely Nao Oikawa
- For hentai manga fans, we’ve got some great new books in stock, including a new Excellent series anthology work featuring waitress uniform fetish themes, a superb bondage manga from Apple Comics and the ultimate “Manual of Maid Training” by Hit Comics
- We’ve also got a new comic for Japan’s yaoi comic fans, by the talented Kazuna Uchida
- Also, for doujinshi fans, we’ve got a selection of new items for you, including the incredibly talented Galaxy 999 erotica of Q-Bit and cat girl hentai doujinshi
- If you love the popular Viper hentai games from Sonya, we’ve got the new Viper RSR art book back in stock for you
- Also, don’t miss out on getting Hana Fuda, a supremely illustrated erotic story told in glossy color pages
- We’ve also posted G-Taste Vol. 6 for preorder, for fans of Hiroki Yagami’s popular hentai illustrations
- For our DVD fans, we’ve got many great new items for you, starting with the sweet sex of Sora Aoi (whose name means “blue sky”), one of our favorite Japanese “good girl” idols (region free)
- Enjoy the bukkake of the Japanese-style beauty Miki Amatsuka in a new release from Soft on Demand (region free)
- Also from SOD, the lovely Kokoro Amano experiences her first lesbian sex in a super release featuring man innovative concepts including plastic wrap and filming from below through plexiglass (region free)
- We’re big fans of Sayaka Tsutsumi’s cute face and erotic sexual performance style — enjoy a super new “gorgeous actress meets semen shower” release from Moodyz, featuring some of her best bukkake work ever (region 2)
- From Audaz enjoy the lovely bukkake works of Ami Hinata featuring some of the incredible action that made this company so famous in Japan
- Finally, look for various newly restocked DVD titles from Japan’s top indies and pro studios!
Remember that J-List carries great region free DVD players, with three different models to choose from. Our lowest-priced model, the Sampo DVE-612, is a great buy and we recommend it for anyone wanting to play DVDs from different regions, as well as PAL discs from Europe. Unfortunately the 60 or so units of the DVE-612 we’ve got in stock are the last we’ll be getting, so if you want one of these great players we recommend that you hurry. Also, we’re backordered on the OITO small-footprint players and hope to get them in within 2 weeks or so. We’ve got plenty of the Cyberhome progressive scan player in stock.
Also, we carry all the current varieties of Glico’s delicious Pocky chocolate pretzel snack. Unfortunately, summer is a hot and humid time in Japan, and chocolate melts, so we’re unable to carry Pocky after May 15 or so. If you want some delicious Japanese Pocky, order it now!
