It’s another quiet evening here at the J-List World Headquarters. Kaori, who left early to get her eyebrows permed (don’t ask), is staying late today helping me get the update finished on time.
In Japan, it’s year-end gift giving season again. Companies give gifts to each other to show feelings of thanks for services rendered in the past, and to say “yoroshiku onegai shimasu” (a very hard phrase to translate — it sort of means “please continue to be of service to me in the future”) for the coming half year. The two gift-giving periods (called Chugen in the summer, and Oseibo in the winter) is a big part of the Japanese economy, and companies compete to make the most interesting gifts available. This year J-List sent a traditional Gunma gift — a boxed set of Japanese-style sweets, chocolates, and rice crackers.
It’s also time for planning bounenkai (year-end parties) and shin-nenkai (new-year parties). In Japan, you never have a New Year’s party before the new year actually arrives, you have year-end parties (or more accurately forget the past year parties). Nearly everyone is busy in late December/early January, scheduling the various parties, and they’re great fun. As you can imagine, bars and restaurants raise their prices during this time. This year’s J-List year-end party will be at our favorite sushi restaurant.
We’ve got some nice new items for you today. First of all, several new magazines are in, including the new issues of Dela Beppin, Video Boy and Best Video, all featuring a great selection of some of Japan’s most beautiful AV idols. Fans of the beautiful Kusanagi Jun (also known as Kano Mizuho) will enjoy the additional copies of her popular Kubire and Kubire 2 photobooks. We’ve gotten in a selection of other great photobooks that had sold out before, too, so check these pages. If you love J-List’s unique anime page, check out the page, for more stock of the popular Santa Girl soft vinyl figure (a timeless classic), as well as the popular Pikachu ANA Airport set (an entire airport of Pikachu toys, all die cast metal). If you’re looking for Pokemon, we’ve also got several new children’s puzzles including a really cool Kitty-chan (Hello Kitty) that Kaori wanted for herself. There is a nice selection of new special-order videos on the special order video pages (as always, new items go on page 1), and more.
We’ve also gotten in one last shipment of calendars, which we’ve posted to the in-stock calendars page. Since the new year is nearly upon us, we’re frankly eager to blow our stock of calendars out the door, so we’ve cut the prices on ALL our in-stock calendars. We’ve got two huge boxes left, with something for everyone: the four cute members of Speed, the great members of JPOP bands like Every Little Thing and Morning Musume, great anime calendars like Slayers and Trigun, and of course, the only authentic Japanese Pokemon calendars you’re going to find anywhere. If you’ve got room left on your walls for some unique, special Japanese calendars, please check out the stock we have available for immediate shipment. Yoko and Kaori will thank you!
