Greetings from Japan, the country where cars have curtains.
One concept related to Japanese politeness is “enryo, which means hesitation.” Basically, if a group of Japanese is eating a pizza, it will take some time for one of the members to get around to taking the last slice, because of the tendency for each individual to defer to the others in the group — until everyone is deferring to everyone else, and the pizza is getting cold. If you watch a group of Japanese people, it’s interesting to see how this comes into play. The concept of enryo rears its head when trying to make a decision among a group, too. Say a large group of people is trying to decide on a restaurant to go to. Each member of the group will put out some feelers, trying to nudge the collective opinion of the group in one direction or another. If even one person in the group is inconvenienced by the collective decision, you can be another decision will be made.
The Japanese sometimes take an English word and change its meaning. One example is the word “corner, which means area” in Japanese usage. A smoking area in a train station is known as a “smoking corner.” Similarly, a room for breast-feeding babies is called “junyu (giving of milk) corner.” But the one I like best is the Japanese word for ATM, or automated teller machine: “cash corner.” Words are alive, of course, and their meaning are changing constantly. I do love the spin the Japanese give to English.
For this evening’s update, we’ve got some excellent items for you, including:
- First, excellent new magazines, including the super Gal’s Dee (featuring Yamasaki Akari!), and the great new issues of Video Boy and Best Video — superb magazines that offer snapshots of the entire Japanese AV world in one great issue
- We’ve also got some of our popular single shot magazines, as well as more $5 magazines on our discount magazine page (magazine page 3)
- Photobook fans should check out the excellent new additions, including Inoue Harumi’s dynamite “Foxy” photobook, and a hardcover offering from swimsuit idol Katsumura Mika
- If you love Japan’s AV world, check out the new in-stock videos, on Videos (new releases) — Mitsumoto Ami’s “Heart Throb of Woman” and Takemoto Rio’s “Wet & Messy”
- We have more great AV DVDs than anyone else in the world, and we’ve updated our selection: Yuki Hitomi’s Gallery offering from Video Bank, and a super DVD featuring a woman near to my heart, the dynamite Ms. Aida Momo (!)
- We’ve got a bunch of fresh adult manga posted, with many previously sold out and popular manga volumes by Hit, Mujin, and more
- By request, we’ve added stock of the latest excellent “Crystal Card” collectible AV trading card series –see it on the photobooks page
- For our yaoi fans, there are two excellent new yaoi manga posted to the yaoi page, including the latest issue of the popular B-Boy Zips
- We’ve got a classic for Noripii fans — Sakai Noriko’s “Lovely Times” photobook, photographed in London, on the Idol DVDs and More page
- For fans of the lovely idol group Morning Musume, we have a lovely item, a “photograph card” that shows the lovely members of Morning Musume in great poses — and each photo card is only 50 cents!
- We’ve got fresh stock of our wacky wooden signs with funny Japanese messages on them
- On our Wacky Things from Japan page, we’ve got fresh stock of the extremely handy and useful Japanese Hot Pockets (Kairo), hideously useful little pouches that warm you for up to 24 hours; and fresh stock of our patented Japanese origami paper
- Finally, a really esoteric New Year’s decoration from Japan, Shinto “Kadomatsu” or “gate pine” decorations, little bamboo and straw assemblies that bring a fresh, new feeling of renewal around New Years. A wonderful item — see it on the Wacky Things page!
Just another plug for calendars! We still have many excellent JPOP, anime, idol and nude calendars in stock, and we’d like your assistance in getting rid of them. L’Arc~en~Ciel, lovely Race Queen Suzuki Fumika, computer generated sexy idol Terai Yuki, Evangelion, the very sexy Asakura Megumi. We’ve knocked prices down yet again, as we try to get our stock moved out. We thank you for helping us by checking out our excellent oversize, glossy Japanese calendars!
