Hello again from J-List!
It’s summer, and at MOS Burger, the popular alternative to McDonald’s here in Japan (MOS stands for “mountains, ocean and sky” in case you wondered), it’s time for their Summer Nan Festival. Nan is the soft Indian bread that’s very popular here in Japan — Indian food is to Japan what Mexican food is to the U.S., I’d say, the #1 most popular ethnic food — and MOS Burger has brought out a line of “Nan Dog” (a hot dog folded into a piece of Indian bread). There are three flavors: spicy curry, salsa and my favorite, caeser salad. I found the combination of nan, hot dog and caeser salad to be just delicious
The Japanese have several collective quirks that are interesting to observe. For some reason, they find it easier to pronounce words like JAL (Japan Air Lines), ANA (All Nippon Airways) and even VIP as words (i.e. “jal” “ana” “vip”) rather than as a series of letters. The word VIP sounds very odd when you hear it pronounced as a word for the first time. They don’t do this for all words, though. When I pronounced ELT, the universal nickname for the Japanese pop band Every Little Thing, as a word — i.e., elt — Kaori corrected me.
Tomo, Kaori, Cristian and myself have been working hard on today’s update. The new items include:
- First, more new magazines, including the excellent new issues of Bejean and Suppin, two of the most popular magazines from Eichi Publishing
- More popular back-issues of older Japanese magazines, including a really cool issue of Urecco with Yuuka on the cover (premium)
- Several excellent new photobooks, including “Secret Idol, Rank A, several wonderful leg fetish items, and more — see the new items at the top of the Photobooks page 1
- The wonderful first portlait” (sic) of Takamatsu Ai, a magazine & Video CD combination item, at the top of the CD ROM page
- Also new, the first A4 size “gouka-bon” format book we’ve seen, for fans of beautiful high-end “traditional bondage in Japan, on the S&M/fetish photobooks page
- We’ve got fresh stock of some of our best-selling photobooks, too, including the red-hot Miura Aika 1999 Photobook and Kusanagi Jun’s Memorial”
- For fans of wacky, we’ve got several varieties of disposeable chopsticks on the Trendy Goods page (on the Anime master-page), including beautiful balsa chopsticks, and my own favorite, old reliable bamboo
- Also on the Trendy Goods page, a brand new category for J-List — Japanese “cooling pads.” A great item that’s widely used here in Japan, these menthol pads are placed on parts of your body that are sore or stiff — your feed or thighs after walking, for example, or your neck after a hard day’s work. They’re even used if you’re feeling feverish or frustrated. Carried by customer request, we’ve added these items to our selection of Interesting Items from Japan.
It seems my comment about Murasaki Shikibu inventing hiragana might was not correct (similar to Al Gore inventing the Internet). There’s an interesting article on the evolution of Japan’s unique writing system at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCJAPAN/WRITING.HTM .
Well, see you on the web — http://www.jlist.com/check.html
