Hello from Japan, where the Mazda Miyata is known as the Mazda Roadster, but through unlucky phonetic accident, 99% of Japanese think it’s called “Road Star.”
Japan is a great place to live, although it’s very different from the U.S. Certain concepts that are taken for granted around the world don’t really function here. One is the concept that the house you live in has value and the value goes up over time. In Japan, land has value, and if you buy land that has a house on it already, you nearly always tear it down a build a new one — who would want to live in a “used” house? Getting my Japanese wife to believe that our house in San Diego would go up in value and was an investment for the future was a real challenge. The movement of prices is also quite different in Japan compared with in the U.S. Japan has always been a country that operated on the odd economical principal that “the inflation rate is low, but the prices are high to begin with.” True enough, for most of the past twelve years, I haven’t witnessed prices going up for anything at all — and with the beginning of Japan’s deflationary problems about three years ago, the prices from many items from Internet access to sushi to beef bowl are actually going down.
For one reason or another, some phrases in English have burned themselves on the collective consciousness of the Japanese, and are quite famous here. If you want to show your knowledge of Japan, pull out one of these phrases and watch the eyes of Japanese go wide with surprise. When an American named Dr. Clark (universally known as “Clark-hakase” HA-KA-say) went to Sapporo to help establish what would become Sapporo University, he left behind the following advice to his Japanese hosts: “Boys, be ambitious!” (i.e., strive to achieve excellence in all that you do). These three words are studied by all Japanese, and somehow manage to pop up all over the place in one form or another — there’s even a manga series called “Boys Be…” that is based on this phrase. When pop singer Momoe Yamaguchi retired from singing, she sang a tearful song to her fans that went “Thank you for your kindness…thank you for your tenderness” and as a result, virtually all Japanese over 30 know this famous phrase. Famous speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln (“Government for the people, by the people, and of the people”) are studied in school the same way we study Shakespeare in the U.S., too.
At J-List we’ve enjoyed great success thanks to the support of our wonderful customers like you — thank you! Sadly, not all the companies we do business with in Japan are so blessed, and sometimes distributors we buy products from go bankrupt. Mitsuboshi, a large toy distributor in Tokyo with over 100 employees, sent us a fax yesterday announcing that they were ceasing business operations. They’d fallen on hard times ever since Toys “R” Us entered Japan in the 1990’s, turning the Japanese toy business on its ear, and were also hurt by their old-style business practices, which were fine for the 1970’s but hardly suitable for the 21st century. We hope the employees of the company are successful at finding new jobs.
Our special $1 shipping sale on T-shirts is proving extremely popular with customers, and we’ve sold more T-shirts in a few days than we usually sell in a week. We’ve got two new designs for you — a wacky shirt capturing the uniquely Japanese Emergency Exit sign, and another with a great slogan of “Baka Gaijin” (stupid foreigner). Also, a stylish new color is in stock for fans of our newly posted “Beware of Perverts” shirt, too. Don’t forget, buy 3 or more and get 10% off too! We hope you love the fresh and wacky T-shirts we’ve got for you.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- We love the miniature toys from Japan that are so popular — and we’ve got a great set of six authentic Japanese trains rendered in great detail, and all pre-painted — and full sets of this great series are in stock and available for you to buy!
- The sushi and Chinese food miniatures we posted on Wednesday proved very popular — we’ve added stock of the Chinese food sets today, and more sushi are on their way (you can order the full set if you like and we’ll send it to you when they come back in stock)
- Also, fresh stock of two popular items in the same series: delicious Japanese desserts and family restaurant dishes!
- For fans of Japanese snacks and food, we’ve got some great items, including ebisen shrimp crackers, Astro Boy boil-in-bag curry, and more
- Also, for fans of delicious and healthy miso soup, we’ve got miso in stock, both Tokyo and Osaka style
- For Hello Kitty and Sanrio fans, enjoy a fun package of character candy, almost too cute to eat, as well as a cool Kitty Photo Frame Magnet in stock
- We love Totoro and Sun Arrow’s line of licensed high-quality Studio Ghibli toys — see two new plushes in stock, from Totoro and Spirited Away
- Also, look for fresh stock of the popular Studio Ghibli music boxes, including the Kodama from Princess Mononoke
- We’ve got some cool anime cards sold only in Japan, too, including Tokyo Mew Mew and Inuyasha
- For fans of Shirow Masamune’s new Ghost in the Shell anime series, we’ve got vol. 4 in stock with you, featuring the 7th and 8th episodes of this incredibly popular animation (region 2)
- Also, we’ve restocked the popular high-end designed computer mice by Shirow Masamune and Hajime Katoki — check them out
- We’ve gotten in two nice bento boxes that are of large size and good for hungry eaters, and come complete with chopsticks
- Also, for fans of our traditional Japanese items, we’ve got a traditional tray and two miso bowls in stock for you
- We’ve got fresh stock of cool portable ashtrays for those who smoke but want to protect nature
- Finally, look for cute keychains for Paddington fans, delicious Mill Make chocolate milk mix that’s a favorite of Japanese school children, authentic Japanese chopsticks, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- First, we’ve got some great Japanese adult magazines for you including the new Gal’s Dee, just loaded with beautiful and busty Japanese AV stars like Cocolo and Honey Morimura and Mai Haruna
- Also, the new issue of Bjam, a super amateur magazine featuring real kogals picked up off the street and taken to love hotels
- The new issue of Bachelor is in, for fans of really busty women from Russia, Eastern Europe, America and Japan — this is a special Yulia Nova pin-up issue!
- Also, a new issue of Anal Shower, a great gouka-bon format photobook featuring some lovely anal girls
- For fans of Japanese photobooks, we’ve got some great items, including the sweet nude of Akiho Yoshizawa and a bizarre and fun leg fetish S&M photobook
- For hentai manga collectors, enjoy the new volumes we’ve got for you today, including Mamoru Hayakawa’s “Lecherous Noble Lady” and the very erotic “Shake” by Mujin Comics
- Also look for fresh stock of many manga volumes, including the Pururun Seminar series!
- Also, we’ve stocked some new doujinshi for you, recently released volumes, although stock is very limited!
- For DVD fans, we’ve got some great items for you, starting with a great Azumi Kawashima re-release DVD at a “thanks price” (region free)
- For fans of the popular European Girls adult DVDs, we’ve got a super new one, Japanese men vs. beautiful Berlin Girls of Germany — they will knock your socks off! (region free)
- For fans of the sultry Ran Asakawa, enjoy super erotic performances in authentic fuzoku (soaplands) in Tokyo (region free)
- There are thousands of beautiful girls dying to break into the professional AV world, and in a new SOD project, you can see how far they’re willing to go in the SOD AV idol job interviews (region free)
- The Black Semen series from Moodyz, which pits beautiful Japanese girls against a room full of big black guys from Los Angeles, continues, this time featuring the lovely Kirari Koizumi as the lovely target (region 2)
- See the double lesbian kogals Reiko Kikuchi and Ria Nanase in an incredible slutty performance that shows some of the great innovation of Japan’s indies studios (region 2)
- Finally, we’ve got a great restocking of popular DVDs for you, including Oshiri Factory, Let’s Lesbian vol. 2, Kuru Milk 2003, the new Sperm Lesbian, and the oh-so-popular Testicles Kick of Amateur Girls, for fans of the Japanese ball-kicking fetish known as tamekeri!
Don’t forget that J-List has a super sale right now for fans of DVDs from Japan: buy 4 or more DVD titles, and get 15% off! Since J-List has hundreds of fabulous titles in stock — would you believe we’ve got over 700 different DVDs? — we know there are some great items waiting for you to find them. The 15% sale covers *all* the great DVDs we stock!
Remember that J-List carries authentic Japanese “loose socks” in two different sizes, and also carries “socks glue” which you can use to glue your socks to your legs to hold them up. Worn by virtually all Japanese high school girls (except those who go to strict schools where they are forbidden), they are similar to the leg warmers worn in the 1980s in the U.S., and look great when bunched up just so. Enjoy a little slice of Japanese fashion culture courtesy of J-List — they also go great with the authentic high school uniforms we sell, too! Great for cosplay at anime cons.
