Greetings from Japan, where tako salad always contains fresh octopus (“tako” being the Japanese word for octopus).
Japan is a strongly democratic country, and I’ve always been impressed with how much a part of life in Japan voting and elections are, especially with older Japanese. Japan uses a parliamentary system that was based on England’s, which can be a little confusing to my American mind at times. There are many small and medium sizes political parties in Japan, including the Japan Socialist Party and Japan Communist Party (both favor abolition of the consumption tax), Koumeito (the political party formed by members of the Soka Gakkai religion), the Japan Freedom Party, and so on. But for almost the entire history of postwar Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has strong support in rural prefectures, has had almost complete run of the country, losing power only once in the mid 1990’s. An annoying aspect of elections here is that candidates are allowed to drive around in trucks with big loudspeakers on them, thanking everyone within earshot for their support and promising to work hard for their constituents. We’re in “election mode” in Japan right now, and I can hear the candidates from outside my window even as I type. It’s really quite annoying.
A major challenge for men learning Japanese is to avoid picking up the nuances of women’s Japanese, but since we’re often learning from female teachers or girlfriends or wives, a lot of the input we receive is from females. There are many specific phrases that make up “female” Japanese, such as tag particles on the ends of sentences (“ne” or “kashira” on the ends of sentences, both of which mean “Isn’t it?” or “Don’t you?”), or using first-person pronouns that only females use. To balance myself out while learning Japanese back at college, I read lots of Fist of the North Star manga, which pushed me in the other direction, making me talk like a ridiculous parody of a macho man. When learning a language, there’s no substitute for having native speaking friends of both sexes who can provide feedback to you. One great resource for me at SDSU was the Japan-America Friendship Club, a group where Japanese learning English and all students interested in Japanese could mingle and make friends. I wonder if it’s still around?
In Japan, there are many concepts that are very difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a person’s eyelid when their eyes are open — one crease (“hitoe” hee-TOE-eh), two creases (“futae” fu-TAH-eh) or three (“mie” MEE-eh). (As always, there’s no silent ‘e’ in Japanese, or magic ‘e’ as they call it here, and you pronounce all syllables.) Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with more creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese. Getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV personalities like Seiko Matsuda. I have to admit, I’d never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here — it was a totally alien concept to me, and I still can’t tell how many creases a person’s eyes have, even today. Another measure of beauty in Japan, having a “high nose” is an important feature for anyone who wants to enter modeling. I never really thought of noses as anything other than “big” or “small” before coming here, but apparently there is more to a person’s nose than meets the eye.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of Shirow Masamune, the wildly popular manga artist and creator of Ghost in the Shell (the inspiration for The Matrix)
- We love Japanese swimsuit idols, and have some nice items for you, including Anna Sakaki’s cute “million mook”
- Also, enjoy the hardcover photobook Miki Munemasa, capturing the loveliness of the slender Japanese Race Queen
- J-List carries many Japanese films on DVD that aren’t available outside of Japan — but which come with full English subtitles so you can enjoy them. We’ve got a great new film called Dolls, directed by Takeshi Kitano and starring Miho Kanno, Kyoka Fukada and more (region 2)
- For Hello Kitty fans, enjoy a really cool coin purse that will hold all your money — it’s made of the same fabric silk kimonos are made from, and features Hello Kitty sewn into the fabric
- For bento lovers, we’ve got two fabulous new items, Hello Kitty and Hamtaro bento boxes for you to enjoy your lunch with
- Enjoy more Japanese Tonkatsu sauce, a very popular item — this time we’ve gotten stock of the cute Hello Kitty sauce in handy packets
- Also, a really stylish all-purpose money holder made of sturdy canvas, a popular accessory among Japanese girls
- We love the plush and other toys from Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and carry many varieties at J-List — see fresh stock of the Totoro and Chu Totoro and the Mei and Sho Totoro keychains
- For fans and collectors of Blythe, the very stylish doll and figure series from Takara, we’ve restocked several sold-out Pucchi Blythe items
- For Japanese snack lovers, we’ve got some nice items for you, including soy sauce flavored popcorn (simply delicious), Japanese senbei crackers with tasty “sauce” flavoring, and delicious Japanese blueberry pudding
- For anime fans, we’ve gotten in stock of a superb series of soft vinyl figures from Love Hina, usable as keychains or else display them on the included stands
- Also a very cool item, we’ve got limited stock of the deluxe Medicom Tron toys, sold only in the Japanese market — these are large-sized toys that comes with figures and various accessories, that are really something special
- Our “Emergency Exit” sign T-shirt is a big hit, with its wacky Japanese design — we’ve gotten in some actual plastic emergency exit signs now too, for you to decorate your personal area with
- The Japanese are a very meticulously people, very good at designing small things with excellent precision — we’ve got a line of 0.4 mm gel-ink ballpoint pens in stock that are very enjoyable to write with
- We love to encourage people to learn Japanese, and we’ve gotten in fresh stock of some of the handy mini dictionaries we stock including the four-character word dictionaries
- Finally, look for accessories popular with kogals in Tokyo, cute erasers based on Japanese products for hamster fans, more cool maps from Japan, tasty “mill make” that Japanese elementary school kids all love, and more funny English notebooks!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of great Japanese adult magazines, we’ve got some nice ones for you, including a special issue of Actress loaded with lovely shots of our favorite Taiwanese sexy idol Yinling
- Also, really nice amateur sex in love hotels and a giant poster of Harumi Nemoto for you, and a new twist on a popular Japanese fetish, married women
- Enjoy the lovely Karami photo magazine featuring Kaito Nakatani and Miyuki Hourai in a beautiful girl on girl erotic photoshoot
- We’ve restocked several photobook items, including hardcover photobooks by Yuko Ogura and the popular high school uniform pictorial series
- For manga fans, we’ve got another great volley of high-quality comics including vol. 2 of the best manga from Zero Shiki and the erotic dick girl manga “Girls’ Secret”
- We’ve done a major restock of hentai manga too, with fresh stock of such popular comics as Trickster and the Manual of Maid Training
- Also, we’ve got a great complete set of a two-volume yaoi story by Youka Nitta, great for fans and collectors
- In sumo wrestling, there are 48 ways to defeat an opponent — and in sex, there are 48 different positions the Japanese know of for having sex. Enjoy illustrations of all 48 of these unique positions in two unique Japanese joke items we’ve got for you
- For DVD collectors, we’ve got some great discs in stock for you, starting with a superb Hitomi Hayasaka offering with no less than 150 minutes of her bukkake and hardcore (region free)
- Then enjoy the sexy loveliness of Nami Maita in another bargain priced Blue File DVD, featuring 3 full hours of AV for you to enjoy (region free)
- For fans of bukkake and more, we’ve got a new Gokkun Bazooka fetish DVD from Soft on Demand, featuring the unashamed sex of Rina Takase (region free)
- Then, in a new concept from Soft on Demand, the extremely erotic manga of Naoki Honda set to motion with quality voice acting and many innovative camera effects — check out the great work in stock now (region free)
- For fans of high-end lesbian lovemaking from japan, enjoy the new Le-zu-bian release from Queer/U&K, starring Ryo Fujihara and Kyoka (region free)
- Then, from Moodyz, enjoy the newest “Clothed Female Naked Male” series release, this time featuring lewd women who want to study and tease men’s penises at the workplace (region 2)
- Finally, look for several restocked items, especially some of the popular lesbian kissing DVDs!
Remember that almost all of the DVDs that J-List carries are zoned for “all” regions, meaning that you can view them on any DVD player as-is. The exceptions to these are anime DVDs issued in Japan (such as the Studio Ghibli DVDs of Spirited Away), Japanese films released in Japan, and most “indies” adult DVD titles by companies like Moodyz, Wanz Factory and Audaz. To view all the great DVDs J-List sells, we humbly suggest the feature-packed region free DVD players we stock, but if you’re mainly interested in non-indies adult DVDs that we stock, then you can play them with no problems on your current equipment.
The J-Mate site has been updated with a totally look and new content. We think it’s pretty cool, and hope you will stop by for a look. You can read tons of interviews with famous Japanese actresses like Cocolo, Sayaka Tsutsumi and Bunko Kanazawa, which allows you to really come to know these girls and how/why they ended up doing Japanese AV. Do you like Japanese dating-sim games? If so, stop by and see the reviews of these and many other products J-List sells. The URL is http://www.jmate.com
