Hello from Japan, the home of embarrassing car names like Mazda Bongo Friendee and Toyota ED.
It’s said in Japan that the U.S. is a “horizontal society” and Japan is a “vertical society,” supposedly due to the fact that life in the U.S. is merit-based (people get ahead in life through hard work) whereas progression up the social ladder in Japan is supposedly based on age and seniority. It’s certainly true that relationships here are very up-down, with a clear idea that the older you are (or the longer you’ve been in a certain organization), the more “erai” (high-level) you are. This concept is all around you when you’re in Japan, you can’t get away from it — it’s even built into the language. When a younger person speaks to an older person, even if he’s just one year older, he must use “keigo,” or polite Japanese, which effectively organizes everyone in the room according to level in a way that is impossible to express in English. To not use the “right” language for your level (say, speaking informally to your boss) is disconcerting to others, especially in business or school settings, and makes you sound cheeky. The whole system of vertical relationships may sound odd, but it actually makes interaction work more smoothly, because everyone knows what to expect from everyone else — it’s almost like TCP/IP for humans.
One interesting concept in Japan is that of senpai and kouhai, which could be translated into English as senior or junior or upperclassman/underclassman. Basically, higher-level individuals (either because of age or seniority in that group) in a school or organization are senpai, and those who entered the school or organization after are kouhai. Senpai have various responsibilities to their kouhai, to teach and guide them, and pick up the tab in restaurants — in return, the kouhai shows respect to the senpai and elevates his status. Senpai/kouhai works for gaijin, too: when I got to Japan, my foreign friends showed me the ropes, making it easier for me to get used living here. Later, I returned the favor when I met other gaijin who had newly arrived in Japan. One reason we like to promote the Japanese love-sim games that we sell is that they allow you to enter a very unique Japanese story complete with concepts like senpai/kouhai, Japanese name suffixes (-san, -chan), and more, all accurately translated into English with no changing of cultural elements or writing down of the story for English-speaking fans. One game that’s especially full of these themes is the upcoming X-Change 2 (which ships very soon).
One thing I can say about Japan: I really love the food here. It would be quite difficult to live here for eleven years if I didn’t. Just as Japan has taken elements from various other countries as it modernized itself over the past century, the Japanese palette has been influenced by many parts of the world. Some of the most common Japanese dishes, such as ramen and one of my favorite foods of all time, gyoza (“pot stickers”), are really from China. If the Japanese have a single staple food, it has to be “curry rice,” a mild, thick curry based on British versions of Indian curries. Spaghetti from Italy is eaten regularly, of course, and yakiniku (Korean Barbecue) is another popular food. The Japanese also imported many dishes from Europe (since the Japanese secretly wish they were a part of that continent, that’s why Europe and Japan have the same DVD region code), including doria, gratin, and hamburg steak (which we’d call Salisbury steak in the U.S.). Other foods, such as udon, sushi and sashimi, are completely “made in Japan.”
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, we’ve got a very cool item for Star Wars fans — the superb Star Wars Kubrick toys that just released by Medicom Toy. We’ve got the first series, the Bounty Hunters, all of which are extremely detailed and very, very cool. Full and partial sets available!
- For customers interested in a great region-free DVD player that won’t take up a lot of room, we’ve added the Lasonic DVB-8092 to our site, a great player that will fill all your DVD viewing needs
- Also, we’ve restocked the popular and full-featured Cyberhome DVD CH-500 that has proved to be a very popular and reliable unit
- For fans of Totoro and Studio Ghibli toys, we’ve got some super cute Mei “kigirumi” plush toys by Sun Arrow, as well as fresh stock of several large and small plush items
- For fans of Japanese snacks, we’ve got some nice items for you, including cute PostPet strawberry snacks, tasty dried ika on a stick (don’t ask what ika is if you don’t already know), and delicious fresh miso soup with wakame (seaweed) in it
- Also, new flavors of healthy Japanese teas that lower blood pressure and are good for dieting
- For fans of parody goods, another fun toilet paper item, with fun pictures in which you must find the differences
- We love cute things from Japan, and have some cute erasers for you which let you play cake shop or hamburger stand — so cool and unique
- We love to find cute Hello Kitty and other Sanrio products that you can’t find outside of Japan — we’ve got some cute Kitty prism stickers and really nice printed paper bags that are so cute to look at
- For customers who want to eat with traditional Japanese bowls, we’ve got another large bowl and tray set in stock for you
- For Japan Hot Wheels fans, we’ve got a great vehicle from Thunderbirds — very cool
- Also fun, we’ve got a set of Pepsi Choro-Q toys that are fun to play with and collect
- Look for fresh stock of notebooks with funny English on them, a J-List best-seller
- For fans of Japanese bullet trains, we’ve restocked the very popular full sets of Star Train, featuring six excellent replicas of famous trains from Japan
- Finally, look for more wacky Japanese signs for your personal space, ukiyoe chopsticks, cute Hello Kitty bottles to hold any liquid, fresh stock of cute “Pop Animal” items for your kitchen, sushi makers, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of Japanese adult magazines, we’ve got some nice ones in stock for you, starting with the new issues of Video Boy and Best Video, two great general adult video magazines that let you see all the popular actresses in Japan at once
- Then for fans of amateurs in love hotels, we’ve got the very nice SP Evolution, featuring lovely authentic Japanese girls with their boy friends in private places
- Also, up and coming AV stars perform real hardcore for the camera in a new magazine, Project H — very nice
- Enjoy the excellent hardcover photobooks we’ve got for you, including the pure and lovely photographs of Sayaka Numajiri, age 18
- Also, we’ve got the sweet first nude of cutie Arimi Mizusaki, a “nude idol who sells dreams of Spring” according to the cover
- Harumi Nemoto is one of the top swimsuit idols (also known as “gravure idols,” from the French word for “engraving”), and she really shines in her latest sexy hardcover photobook
- For manga fans, we’ve got more great hardcore hentai comics, including a great parody on Sailor Moon and sentai shows (Saint Sex) and a man for those who are curious about how women are curious about sex in Japan (My Sweet Plum) — freshly restocked manga, too
- Also, a rare treat: a small book of very erotic “shunga” (spring-drawing) showing sex from the Edo Period in Japan, a great example of the very first hentai manga of Japan
- For fans of amateur comic art, we’ve got some great hentai doujinshi in stock for you, including some cool and rare Dragonball items
- We’ve got a great new brand of cute Japanese condoms, for all who are interested in the thinner, closer-fitting Japanese condoms — and the box is really cute
- Also, we’ve gotten a new version of the vibrating “Rabbit Rotor” that’s one of the most popular adult toy products we sell
- For DVD collectors, we’ve got more top-quality Japanese adult DVDs for you, starting with a super bukkake offering from the super cute Monbu Ran by Million (region free)
- Then enjoy a whopping 4 hours of lesbian sex with a new DVD from Yellow Box (region free)
- For fans of “penis study” fetish, we’ve got a new DVD in which naive and innocent girls study the male phallus for the first time — it’s great to watch their shy reactions (region free)
- See the first anal sex of Kokoro Amano in a new work from Soft on Demand — great for fans of anal themes (region free)
- From the bold Indies maker Waap Entertainment, a sexual desire novel on DVD media about two women who discover a bizarre penis one day, and how it changes them (region 2)
- Then, enjoy a very satisfying large breast bukkake DVD, with the beautiful breasts of 10 stars and lots of bukkake action (region 2)
- Finally, look for fresh stock of various other items including the extremely popular Testicles Kick of Amateur Girls and more!
Remember that at J-List, we carry the whole line of unique Japanese chewing gum from companies like Lotte and Glico. Some of our most popular items are Lotte’s “Black Black” (Japan’s unique black gum, it will keep you awake!), delicious Sweetie (grapefruit) gum, and don’t forget honeydew melon flavored gum. Check out all these items on our Japanese snack and gum pages!
Are you a Mac user trying to learn Japanese? We found a pretty cool freeware game that combines reading with Space Invaders. Check it out here (OS 8 or above supported, works in Classic mode in OS X)ÅF
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/JapanProj/KanjiInvader/KanjiInvader.html
