Greetings from J-List December 4, 2001

Hello and greetings again from J-List!

First of all, we apologize if this mail reaches you multiple times. We’re having an issue with our mail server that causes mails to be sent multiple times to some users. We’re on the issue and should have it fixed soon.

Happiness over the recent Royal Birth continues in Japan. Department stores had special sales to commemorate the new baby, and bakeries baked special “congratulations” bread which customers lined up to buy, and in one amusement park, anyone named Masako can get in free this week. (We’ve got a friend named Masako, although she’s in the U.S.)

It’s always hard to be an expat and live in another country. No matter how long I stay in Japan, I still feel that things from home are “better.” American medicine works the best for me, and there’s nothing like American Cream of Wheat for breakfast on cold mornings (I’ve even turned my kids on to it, although my wife sticks her nose up at it, since it looks like “okayu,” a watery rice dish Japanese give to sick people). While there are many familiar things to an American living in Japan (McDonald’s, Starbucks, Time Magazine), I don’t think I could get by without the Internet to give me all the American culture I need. Amazon.com is also a Godsend for someone like me — a far cry from nine years ago, when we had to scour the town to find a store that had some imported Pringles or Doritos, or travel to Tokyo to one of two bookstores that carried English books.

It’s funny how when you live in Japan, you’ve suddenly got all kinds of things in common with other foreigners living here. For various reasons — perhaps because of the good economy in the U.S. during the end of the 1990’s, Americans are not at all common here in Japan at all. Aided by the “working holiday” exchange program (or waa-holi as the Japanese like to call it), which helps people from Canada, Australia, and many other nations get visas to work in Japan quite easily. I have more non-American friends than American friends, and it’s quite interesting to talk American politics and other subjects with people from Canada or New Zealand and see their viewpoints. Just as Japanese studying in the U.S. often get lumped into vanilla group labeled “Asians,” foreigners working in Japan are all “gaijin” (or in its more politically correct version, “gaikokujin”).

We’re now in the month of December, and we’ve still got lots of very nice anime, JPOP, Japanese idol, and sexy and nude calendars to choose from. In fact, we’ve got a few too many, so we’re having a big sale on our remaining stock of 2002 calendars, lowering prices on all calendars as our way of saying thanks for helping us get our stock levels down. Also, if you buy two or more calendars, we’ll give you your mailing tubes free. Calendars will be disappearing from the J-List site as they sell out, or as we post them to eBay, so if you see something you’d like, please snap it up. We can get calendars to you by Christmas, although the cutoff for airmail orders going to the U.S. is Dec 9-10.

For the new update, we’ve got some very nice items for you, including:

• First, we’ve got the new issues of Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, two excellent magazines that feature all-Japanese models, photographed entirely by all-Japanese photographers
  
• Also for fans of adult Japanese magazines, we’ve got the new OK magazine, for fans of “rape play” themes, as well as the very erotic new Hit Parade
  
• For photobook lovers, be sure to check out the very lovely Baccara Five, a beautiful team of bikini babes, as well as a positively dynamite item for fans of Race Queens
  
• We have a very nice erotic update to our manga page for you, with a large selection of very nice volumes by the most famous artists and publishing houses in Japan
  
• For doujinshi lovers, see several all-new doujinshi volumes posted, all nice new additions from the most recent Comic Market
  
• For lovers of SOD’s long-selling Deep Kiss series, we’ve got an extra special new offering: the Deep Kiss First Lesbian Hard Version, featuring girls going far beyond mere deep kissing…
  
• Also from Soft on Demand, a super “best selection” for fans of the lovely elf-like Nao Hirosue, and a super erotic “dick girl” DVD featuring girls with strap-on dildos
  
• Other DVD titles include a very rare and interesting limited offering for fans of SOD’s darker themes, and a rare item, a DVD featuring larger girls, a theme not handled in Japan very often
  
• For fans of Japan’s truly beautiful idols, we highly recommend the idol DVD of Megumi Yasu, the charming and beautiful model who has graced recent issues of Urecco and Penthouse
  
• For anime fans, we’re proud to bring you the Japanese DVD release of Grave of the Fireflies, a moving tale of two children growing up in war-torn Japan at the end of World War II (includes Japanese subtitles)
  
• Also: stock of “completed figures” of Rei Ayanami and Soryu Asuka Langley, with many attachable extras for super detail
  
• For those with an esoteric twist, we’ve the photobook of the charismatic prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi
  
• For kids who like to draw and doodle, we’ve got some ‘free notebook’ (meaning that you can use them any way you like) from Pocket Monster and Ham-Taro, both of which come with stickers inside too
  
• We’ve got more ‘wacky’ traditional things from Japan, including
  
• For Getter Robo fans, there are several really cool toys recreated from 1970’s versions
  
• Finally, today’s wacky things from Japan new items include the ultimate way to store and chill tofu (no, really!),
  

We try hard to keep all sizes of our wacky Japanese T-shirts in stock at all times, but sometimes one size or another sells out. We found 7 shirts with our Dirty American Devil (Kichiku Beihei) in size medium, which had been sold out — so if you’re interested in this shirt in size M, please get it before they sell out again. Some shirts, such as our “Forbidden to Urinate” shirts will not be reprinted, so if you want one, you should pick one up soon.