Greetings from Japan, where “that’s true” means “no” and people bow while talking on the phone (I do it too…).
Japan is watching the Microsoft monopoly case unfolding with interest, and rumblings are starting to be heard about Japan’s own monopoly — NTT. A massive, sprawling company, NTT supplies local telephone service to nearly all of Japan, and nearly all Internet traffic moves through undersea cables that it leases for as much as it likes. To get a telephone in Japan, you must buy an $800 bond from NTT, a system which provides nearly limitless free capital for the company. Finally, while the U.S. and Asia are investing in high speed cable modem and DSL technology, NTT is strongly pushing ISDN, despite the fact that ISDN clearly plays no part in the future of the Internet at this point in human history. (For our from-Japan Internet access
Continuing our before-Christmas theme, we’ve got some more really special items for you. First, the excellent soft-vinyl “Santa Girl” was reissued by Sub-Zero, so we’ve got some of those excellent items for you on the anime page. For the Pokemon-lovers in your family, we’ve got — Pokemon cards! They’re cool, they come in full packs, and they’re in stock on the Cards & Puzzles page. To go with the cards, we’ve got official Pokemon card holders, and the complete guide to Japanese Pokemon cards in stock, as well. Fans of the excellent Microman/Micronauts toys will see some new items on the anime page
Moving along to other items, we’ve got some excellent new and back-in-stock magazines and photobooks, including Wet Heaven, Memories in Palau, and more. If you like the super beautiful model Inoue Harumi, check out her dynamite photobook, which is great. There’s a great volley of special order adult videos on the Video Catalog pages (page 1 has newer items), including some great new offerings by Wakana Sena, Aoi Minori, and more. Finally
Announcing the J-List December Video Sale! To help you choose that very special Christmas gift this December (maybe yourself), we’ve lowered the price of every over-18 video on J-List, both in-stock and special-order videos! Enjoy the new lower prices!
J-List lost its internet access for 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday. This didn’t affect our site at all, only ability reply to email and process orders. Everything’s running fine now though. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Last weekend, Kaori and I attended two weddings, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. It was a real “shutter chance” (i.e., an opportunity to take some nice pictures), so I brought my little Sony digital camera along and documented both days. See my “two weddings, no funeral” special report, including pictures of Kaori’s Miffy the Rabbit doll, pictures of many lovely Japanese girls all dressed up, and observations on how to write “Live long, and prosper” in kanji
