Hello again from Japan, where you can find “goma ice” — that’s sesame seed flavored ice cream to you and me.
It’s been said that South Korea is “the nearest country and yet the farthest away” from Japan. Despite being extremely close to one another geographically and genetically, and despite billions of dollars of trade flowing across the Sea of Japan (the Koreans hate that name by the way), I’m often struck at how little understanding there is between the two countries. A couple of years ago, there was an interesting show on TV called “Japanese! This is wrong!” in which foreigners who speak Japanese talk about various aspects of life in Japan. On a special episode of this show, Koreans and Japanese openly discussed the issues between the two countries. Koreans object to Japan’s unwillingness to show real reflection over past crimes committed. “They’ve apologized, but they don’t know what they’re apologizing for,” said one South Korean living in Japan. Trips by the Japanese Prime Minister to Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s wartime leaders are interred — making it a sort of Iwo Jima memorial and birthplace of Adolf Hitler all rolled into one — also cause anger between Japan and Korea. For Japan’s part, they point out that they have abided by peace treaties signed at the end of the war, including those calling for reparations, and have on numerous occasions apologized for their past cruel acts. They feel that the events of World War II and before are far enough in the past that Koreans should stop dwelling so much on what happened — although I have yet to hear the “it happened a long time ago” discussion ever applied to Hiroshima. Thanks to the co-hosting of the 2002 World Cup as well as recent cultural cross-pollination (Korean singer Boa is really popular in Japan now, and comedian Kusanagi of SMAP learned Korean and made a name for himself over there), I have a lot of hope for a brighter future between these two nations.
Japanese sports fans have a new idol: British soccer player David Beckham, who is the hottest thing on TV right now, appearing in commercials for everything from chocolates to Tokyo Beauty Clinic, a chain of hair salons in Tokyo. Cellular phone company J-Phone, owned by Vodaphone, implies that you should carry a phone with a built-in camera in case you should find yourself next to Beckham in the supermarket (so you can snap your picture with him). The bottle of Pepsi that I’m drinking as I type these words has a bottle cap with a little replica of Beckham’s Adidas shoe on it. Even my wife, usually a fan of Japanese soccer player Nakata (who plays in Italy, and whose ratings always shoot up when he appears on Japanese TV speaking Italian), has gone quite ga-ga with Beckham-mania.
Do you have a cat’s tongue? If so, it means that you can’t eat hot food or drink hot drinks, just like a cat. The Japanese say that anyone who avoids hot food has a cat’s tongue (neko jita). What is you have lazy eye? If so, then you are “rom-pari” which is Japanese for “Rome, Paris” — i.e. one eye is looking at Rome and the other is looking at Paris. If you’re thinning on top, you might have “bar code hair,” as the Japanese say. And if you sneeze, the Japanese say that someone must be gossiping about you (this comes up in anime quite often).
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of our unique Japanese snack foods, we’ve got a delicious raspberry Pocky snack, a fun milk pudding snack and more furikake, which you eat by sprinkling over white rice
- We carry Japanese Pocky treats in the cooler months — summer is approaching, but we’ve gotten in a few boxes of Coconut Pocky, one of my personal favorites
- Also, healthy Japanese “doki-dami” tea, used for dieting and eliminating poisons from the body
- For fans of Japanese toys, we’ve got some nice items, including a deluxe high-end figure of Polno Dianno from Bastard!!
- For fans of Takara’s Licca fashion doll collection, we’ve got some super-cute mini dolls based on popular dolls released 30 years ago
- Also, we stock the Japanese Hot Wheels, which are licensed Hot Wheels cars sold only in Japan — look for the Kamen Rider Black RX Rideron in stock now
- Japan’s Race Queens and Campaign Girls are super cute — see dozens of beautiful gals in a new issue of Gal’s Paradise, including coverage of the 2003 Tokyo Auto Show girls, too
- The works of Shirow Masamune are incredibly popular right now — and we’ve got two excellent works in stock, the color animation comics for Ghost in the Shell, and the Illust & Data book for Appleseed, as well as fresh stock of his bilingual Ghost in the Shell comic
- For anyone studying Japanese, J-List is here to help you — we’ve got a cool dictionary of four-character vocabulary words that’s fun to read and study
- Also, look for reduced prices on the handy Canon Wordtank IDC-300
- For fans of Japanese soba, we’ve restocked our soba trays, very traditional and cool
- For Hello Kitty fans, a really beautiful “aromatic lamp” that carries a beautiful aroma throughout your room
- For fans of the wonderful miniature toys that are so popular right now, we’ve stocked individual boxes of the Family Restaurant and Famous Desserts series
- We’ve restocked several popular DVD titles, including the runaway hit Samurai Fiction, the Oh! Mikey first DVD, and more — if you’ve got a region free player and want to enjoy bold and interesting DVDs from Japan, J-List has plenty of cool stuff for you
- We’ve got some cool “Japanese health sandals,” indoor/outdoor slippers that message your feet from below while you walk on them
- For fans of our lineup of authentic Japanese bento boxes, we’ve got a new super i.Kotoba series bento set that comes with bento box, chopsticks, chopstick holder and a high-quality cloth bag with zipper to carry it all
- Finally, look for more handy Japanese accessories, Japanese origami paper, fresh stock of onigiri makers and Hello Kitty items for your kitchen, fresh stock of miso soup, 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, including the new issue of Top Speed, featuring lovely and famous AV idols and also embarrassing pictures of famous stars before they were famous (including Yuka)
- Also, we’ve got the new issue of Shuffle, which features real Japanese amateurs in love hotels
- Also, see the hardcore sex of Akari Yamasaki in a new erotic photobook, which comes with a life-sized poster
- Also, a superb new issue of Minisuka Deluxe, the dynamite perfect-bound magazine dedicated to fans of stocking, panty and mini-skirt fetish from japan
- We’ve got some excellent glossy nude hardcover photobooks, including the next in Garo Aida’s “Imoto” series, with the lovely Ai posing for the famous photographer
- Look for some great hentai manga in stock as well, including a new hentai comic by Sengoku-kun (creator of the Cambrion doujinshi series)
- Also, doujinshi and manga with “dick girl” themes are always a popular item, and we’ve restocked the popular Shemale Behavior doujinshi books for you to enjoy
- For fans of erotic DVDs from Japan, we’ve got some great new items for you, starting with a new The Idol series DVD from Kuki, featuring 200 minutes of the lovely sex of Ayaka Oishi (region free)
- For fans of Russian girls, we’ve got a super new offering featuring three beautiful girls from Moscow who will knock your socks off (region free)
- From Soft on Demand, a great new “Hand Job Clinic” series DVD for fans of tekoki fetish and nurse fetish (region free)
- Also, a deluxe DVD from SOD featuring 120 minutes of the best “gokkun” (swallowing) by four lovely AV actresses (region free)
- For fans of the high-end lesbian sex of Queer and U&K, we’ve got another great DVD, featuring the lovemaking of Chinatsu Nakano and Yuka Natsuki (region all)
- For fans of Akira Watase’s pouting sexuality, we’ve got a great new work from Wanz Factory featuring her superb “wet sex” (region 2)
- We carry uncensored hentai DVDs in our San Diego office, and have posted several excellent new works, including the DVD boxed sets of Fragile Hearts (region 1)
- Finally, find fresh stock of several popular DVD titles, including Lesbian Fight, more lesbian kissing, and the fun “Touching Breasts for the First Time” DVD from Soft on Demand. And don’t forget our Spring DVD sale!
Remember that J-List makes dozens of magazines available through our “reserve subscription” system. Basically, we’ll pre-reserve the current issue of each month’s magazine for you and have it in the mail to you by the time it’s in bookstores here in Japan — a few days earlier, actually, since we get our stock earlier than most bookstores. We’ve got many different anime, toy, JPOP/JROCK, idol, manga, toy and other magazines available, we just know there’s something you’d love to get each month. See the magazine subscription pages on our site for more information.
We got several responses to our mention of TV Champion and their origami competition. If you’d like to see some really nice origami creations that were made by one of the participants in the episode of TV Champion that I had seen, his homepage is here: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~qr7s-kmy/index.html (Japanese with English on the page)
