Greetings from Japan, a country where, in the words of a wise friend of mine, You know no one is horcking in your food.”
Well, the Japanese recession is officially over, with the third quarter of growth reported by the Japanese government. It wasn’t much growth — 0.2% — but it’s something. Still, a new report stating that Japan could lose its position as the world’s third largest economy by the year 2015 to China is causing consternation here. Japan has great pride in being the #3 economy, after the U.S. and European Union, and is concerned about future competition from the rapidly growing China and India. Still, after doing business in Japan for four years and seeing the inefficient, black underbelly of Japan’s distribution system, and how quickly it withers at the slightest outside competition (e.g. Toys R Us), I can say that Japan has a lot to be afraid of. A lot has changed over the past few years
Thursday, the J-List crew is taking the afternoon off and heading for Ikaho, a nearby city that’s known for its onsen (hot springs). We try to take our annual onsen trip in the autumn, but got around to it later than usual this year. At the onsen, we’ll take long baths, eat Japanese style food while wearing yukata (cotton kimonos) and sitting on tatami, take more baths, drink, and eat Haagen Daaz ice cream from a vending machine late at night, then wake up in the morning with hangovers and curse the hotel for only serving green tea
For this evening’s update, we’ve got some excellent items for you, including:
- First, new magazines, including the new Dela Beppin (alert fans of Kawai Azusa and the delicious Kumano Pooh-ko) and Peach Water (great bikini and swimsuit sexual fetish)
- We have several excellent new photobooks, including Aoki Eri’s Progression and Sakurai Fuka’s Missing — both excellent for fans of Japanese high school uniforms
- For leg fetish fans, a new item — volume 3 of the excellent Rich Daughter’s Legs series
- We’ve got some excellent new adult manga posted to the manga
- For our manga and dojinshi fans, we’ve got several new items added to the “Bargain Basement” page — over-stocked and close-out manga and dojinshi, starting from just $5
- The hottest Japanese AV idol of 2000 is shaping up to be the dynamite Ohura Anna, the incredibly gorgeous and busty AV queen — see her latest AV video offering on the New releases page!
- Soft on Demand has turned five years old, and to commemorate their stellar rise — they’ve achieved sales of $55 million in that short time — they’ve released a fantastic 2-video (and 2-DVD, for the DVD version) with 240 minutes (!) of the best performances in their history. A fantastic selection of AV idol (Miura Aika, many more), theme videos (tekoki, cosplay, and more), this is a wonderful item for Japan AV fans!
- For anime fans, we’ve got the new issue of Megami Magazine, an incredible anime and game-girl focused magazine that gives you tons of great stuff, including two large posters, 14 pin-up posters, and more
- We’ve got more wacky shining stickers with Japanese messages on them, on the Japanese signs and stickers page
- We have fresh stock of our popular Japanese T-shirts, including more of the popular “Looking for a Japanese girlfriend” (red circle) version
- For our Japanese snack fans, we’ve got fresh stock of many popular items, including Mouse Pocky (delicious!), Kuro-Ame traditional candy, sake candy (with real sake in it!), and Lotte’s “Green Gum” and “Black Black”
- Speaking of Lotte, we’ve also posted an all-new flavor — Lotte’s “La France” (pear) flavored fruit gum
- For those (like me) who hate the cold of winter, we’ve got a new version of Japanese hot pocket (kairo), specially designed to go in your shoes and warm your feet for hours
- Finally, a super cool item — Japanese sushi erasers! These delicious erasers closely resemble Japanese sushi, with individually molded rubber pieces for extra realism. So good, we could eat them — see these wacky items on the Wacky Things from Japan page.
Remember that J-List has the world’s only Wacky Japanese T-shirts, funny T-shirts with bizarre messages in Japanese on them. The #1 selling T-shirt we offer is far and away the red circle version of “Looking for a Japanese girlfriend, followed closely by Hen na gaijin” (“I’m a strange foreigner”). “Philosophy of Hentai” and the basic “Watashi wa H” (“I’m H” or “I’m a pervert”). Guaranteed to get strange looks and laughs from Japanese, and in the experience of at least one J-List customer, even more!
