Hello again from Japan, where wet umbrellas need condoms…
Today was a balmy and beautiful day, more suited for May than for February. We weren’t complaining, and gladly wore short-sleeved T-shirts to enjoy the warmth. Wearing a short-sleeved shirt too early is one of the Japanese “unwritten rules” though — short sleeves are worn in the summer and early autumn, between June 1 and November 1 (yes, they even have official starting and endings dates, basically, the official dates that high school students change from the winter uniforms to their summer uniforms). To wear “summer clothes” in February in Japan is asking for amazed remarks from all Japanese you encounter. In a similarly inflexible seasonal tradition, in Japan you never go into the ocean after September 1st — it just isn’t done. When you ask why, Japanese vaguely say that it’s dangerous (presumably far more than August 31st), but it’s clear that they’ve never deeply considered the reason.
The Americanization of Japan has taken a giant step forward recently, with the impending introduction of “MyLine.” This is ostensibly a system allowing you to choose which long distance company you want to use, but is really one big “confusopoly” designed to confuse consumers for the betterment of Japanese phone companies. Japan’s monopolistic NTT, newly formed KDDI, and several other companies are competing to be Japan’s choice for long distance with cute and amusing TV commercials, but they’re all very low on specifics, preferring to be vague about what their rates really are. NTT’s ads boast that “NTT has just lowered their rates by 50%.” What rates were lowered? What were they before, and what are they now? What is “50%” measured against?
For the weekend’s special update, we’ve got a bunch of cool items from Japan for you, including:
- First, several great new adult magazines from Japan, including the great new issues of Dela Beppin and Gokuh, as well as several other specialty magazine items
- We’ve got some cool backissues of older magazines, including some popular older issues of leg fetish magazines like Panst Freak (see magazine pages 1 and 2 for these items)
- For hentai fans, we have not one, but two cool issues of PC Angel, the #1 selling hentai magazine at J-List
- For photobook fans, check out several all-new hardcover photobooks, including Konno Saori and Asagi Sumire’s “Best Friend” lesbian-play pictorial
- Also for photobook fans, fresh stock of several older and classic items, back on the list
- For Japan’s hentai manga fans, we’ve got another major update, with more than a half-dozen all-new works from Fujimi, AV Comics, Hit and Tsukasa
- Yaoi fans, there are some very nice “boys charisma” books on the yaoi manga page, all of which feature fantastic artwork and characters
- For Japan’s underground artwork fans, we’ve got some nice single-issue postings of dojinshi, as well as some more popular dojiin-soft CD-ROMs (including more of the very cool CG Box series)
- We’ve got an unopened copy of Dokyusei 2, the popular 2-CD ROM PC bishojo game
- Another very svelte example of Japan’s erotic “V-cinema,” AV with very artistic and cinematic production values, is My Sister is a Female Teacher — this fantastic DVD (region 2) was originally shot to film for a cool look
- Fans of our Japanese snacks pages should check out our latest offerings — grape and strawberry marshmallows, fresh stock of the popular Mousse Pocky (both white and dark), and just a few boxes of Winter Limited Edition Pocky
- We’ve got some nice items on our Japanese signs & stickers page, including an enigmatic sticker that says “I love you” and fresh stock of our most popular wooden sign ever
- The new issue of JJ, a beautiful Japanese fashion magazine that’s filled with great products (and interesting Japanese ads)
- For anime fans, a PVC figure based on Kamikaze Robber Janus
- Restocked items on our Wacky Things from Japan page include more Hello Kitty chopsticks, several of our popular Japanese notebooks, the handy (and very cheap!) English-Japanese mini-dictionary, and bamboo cooking chopsticks
- Finally, we have a ton of all-new Wacky Things from Japan for you, including new Japanese notebooks (including the perfect diary notebook), a “Fumi Fumi” board for massaging your your abused feet, the world’s smallest backpack, a silly “party ticket” with English like “Don’t you enjoy our party? Let’s enjoy together!” on it, the perfect way to organize your computer’s unsightly wires, and more. All very wacky!
We got a lot of positive feedback from Paypal users. We’re glad to be of service, since Paypal is a pretty good system (partally because you don’t need a credit card to use it — which is convenient for people who want to write “virtual checks” from their checking account). We also accept Billpoint, and can probably work with any other system out there (for example, many international customers find Western Union’s money-sending services convenient). Please email us with any questions or comments.
