Hello from Japan, where love and chocolate is in the air. Today is Valentine’s Day, and in Japan, that means men getting chocolate from women. I got a nice box of chocolate pretzles from my wife, but my son Kazuki made out much better, getting chocolate from half a dozen girls in his class, as well as his teachers. Men who get chocolate on Valentine’s Day are obliged to give a gift (usually white chocolate) on White Day, which is on March 14.
In Japan, the #1 and #2 music producers who are vying for the public’s music dollars are Tetsuya Komuro (creator of TRF, Globe, Suzuki Ami, and so on) and Tsunku, creator of Morning Musume. Now Tsunku has taken Morning Musume and two other bands he produces (a four-girl group Taiyo and Cisco Moon and Coconuts Musume, a group of gaijin women from Hawaii) and mixed them up into three new units (in Japanese a “unit” is a musical group): Blue Seven, Yellow Five, and Red Four. All three new units will release singles on the same day in March. Should be good to see.
We’ve got a lot of great new items for you this evening. The new items include:
- We got gum! By customer request, we’ve added unique and hard-to-find Japanese gum to the Japanese Snacks page — including the caffeine-loaded Black Black, Lotte’s Green Gum (the gum that tastes like an evergreen), Sweetie Grapefruit gum, and more
- Excellent new idol videos, including JPOP music videos by Morning Musume, Pucchimoni and the ultra-popular Utada Hikaru, as well as Fujiwara Norika’s idol video
- By popular demand, we’ve gotten Digimon cards (the Japanese starter set) as well as excellent Digimon stickers (11 to a pack, just $2)
- For fans of Pokemon cards, we’ve got more stock of the English cards, and are closing out our stock — so check out the prices
- On the anime & toys page, we’ve got a Color Change Aki-chan, a doll with hair that changes color when you touch it, and a new Hello Kitty clock item
- New in-stock adult videos, courtesy of Kaori (who is in charge of the videos)
- For fans of J-List’s high-end S&M photobook page, a great new item, Stupid Angel, featuring an excellent selection of great fetish photos
- All-new adult wide manga, both normal Hentai Manga as well as a nice Yaoi wide manga.
And speaking of Manga… Announcing the February Manga & Dojinshi Sale! We’ve got too many manga & dojinshi in stock, and we’d like your help in getting it out the door so we can make room for new items. To help you out, we’ll offer a 10% on all manga & dojinshi if you order three or more items. Order six or more items, and get a 20% discount. Since we’ve got lots of stock of the popular Viper manga, as well as the Lunatic Party and Angelic Impact, it’s a great chance to get a lot of manga or dojinshi and save $$$. This offer will run through the end of February.
Also, a simplification on our snacks and cards policy. In the past, we’ve sold both single-unit and full-box version of snacks and cards/stickers but keeping track of the number of each we had in stock was a challenge. Effective immediately, if you order 10 or more single units of any card, snack or gum item, we’ll give you a flat 15% discount (whether it’s a full case or not).
That’s today’s update — see you on the web!
