Hello again from your friends in Japan!
In general, when movies are released in Japan, there’s a gap of a few months, which can be agonizing if you’re a gaijin trapped in Japan, waiting for a movie you want to see that’s being shown back home. The second Lord of the Rings film has finally opened here, so although I’d already seen it in December in San Diego, I took the family to see it again. Since it costs $18 for adults and $10 for children to see movies in Japan, you can tell I’m a pretty big Tolkien fan. When I was a child, I lived for a year in New Zealand, and have many fond memories from there. Perhaps that’s part of why I enjoy the films so much…
The Japanese love movies, and many Japanese follow Hollywood and European films quite closely. Virtually all American films are shown over here, and they do very well (Titanic did 30% of its gross in Japan). American films must be translated into Japanese, and this can take time, which causes delays in the release schedules. Studios who want to have a successful film run in Japan make sure they get their films translated by the #1 movie transltor, Natsuko Toda, who is so in demand that she basically determines what movies Japanese people see and when, based on what movies she chooses to translate. In the case of Lord of the Rings, though (the Japanese title for which sounds like “Road of the Ring” to Japanese fans, unfortunately), the choice of Toda for the translation of the Rings movies may have been a mistake, because of her lack of familiarity with the books, either the English originals or Japanese translations. As a result, there are several mis-translations and errors in the movies. Japanese fans are really upset about the errors, and are taking their case to Peter Jackson directly. Even my wife said that she had to stop reading the subtitles and listen to the movie in English to follow the story line.
There’s one problem for movies for kids in Japan — Japanese children are too young to read the subtitles, so movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are shown in two versions, one subtitled and the other dubbed. When we saw The Two Towers, my kids were the only children in the entire packed theater, since they can understand the English — all the other kids were in the dubbed version next door. One interesting aspect of the Japanese watching a film via subtitles — a Hollywood thriller and say, a French art film are both grouped together, since the Japanese are getting information through the subtitles and are not understanding the spoken lines in the film. Thus, films that might not get attention in the U.S. because they are “foreign” and have to be watched through subtitles, can have greater success in Japan.
At J-List, we love finding really cool thing to bring you from all over the world. One cool item we feel strongly about are the very bright LED lights that are so handy to have, and now we sell the best light ever made, the Micro Light X-Light. Featuring an excellent design, incredibly bright LEDs, a strong polycarbonate case and long battery life, we’re happy to carry all four colors of these handy lights from our San Diego warehouse. I’ve personally used many of these lights and can truly say that the X-Light is the best that has ever been made.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, we’ve got a really cool miniature toy item that’s guaranteed to make you feel “natsukashii” (nostalgic) about Japan even if you never lived here — a meticulously designed school desk from the Showa era, with everything Japanese kids know from their childhoods
- For fans of fun Japanese snacks and food, enjoy many unique items today, including tandori chicken flavored Chip Star (like Pringles), delicious strawberry milk chocolate, and a great new flavor of Pretz — milk & cocoa
- Also, an old favorite that goes great with beer, spicy rice crackers and peanuts, called “kaki no tane” in Japanese (which means “persimmon seeds” since they’re the same shape)
- Japan’s swimsuit idols are fabulous — and the shining star of Japanese idols is Yuko Ogura, the super-pretty angel in a bikini. Now we’ve got a dynamite photobook + DVD combination item for her fans!
- Also, a superb hardcover photobook featuring Sayaka Isoyama, with incredibly beautiful photographs and printing
- Also, see fresh stock of several great Race Queen and idol items, including Yoko Matsugane’s popular hardcover photobook
- We love the new crazy and funny Japanese TV that’s being released on DVD, complete with English subtitles — enjoy Grasshoppa vol. 1, a series of incredibly funny short films by some of Japan’s top creators (region 2)
- For fans of the only-sold-in-Japan Hot Wheels, enjoy fresh stock of some of our most popular items, including the Delorean III from Back to the Future part III, the Night Rider Kitt 2000 and one of my favorites, the Mach 5 from Speed Racer
- Also, for Macross fans, we’ve got limited stock of the sold-out red and blue Valkyries from the 1983 series
- If you like Blythe, the excellent dolls from Takara based on the fashions of the 1970’s, we’ve got fresh stock of the “Paisley Star” doll
- We’ve got some fun new Hello Kitty items for you, including a Kitty portable phone, a Kitty notebook, and fresh stock of some popular items
- For Tokyo Mew Mew fans, we’ve also got a fun “free notebook” in stock for you
- We love Japanese study items and stationary goods, and we’ve got a fun item for you — wacky Japanese erasers that do things like change color when you erase when them!
- Something that’s all the rage in Japan these days, we’ve got a Paper Stitch Lock, an advanced devices that “stitches” sheets of paper securely together so you never need to use staples — it’s fun and so convenient!
- For anime fans, see the beautiful cold cast statue of Serio from To Heart, just beautiful
- Also, for fans of Inuyasha, we’ve got a super cute character keychain/phone strap
- For bento fans, see fresh stock of several items, including the fish soy sauce bottles, chopsticks, and more
- Finally, look for super cute “Pop Animal” magnets for your refrigerator, a super handy wallet with key holder built into it, a fun way to keep your PET bottle cool, a cool Edo style coin bank, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of Japan’s excellent adult magazines, enjoy the new Gokuh, filled with fabulous adult AV idols from Japan like Nao Hirosue, Maiko Kazano, and Shinobu Kasagi
- Also, we’ve got some great hardcore magazines like Gotcha, which features beautiful Japanese girls in love hotels
- The beautiful Maiko Kazano is one of the most lovely nude idols in all Japan — enjoy her fabulous new photobook offering featuring some incredible pictures of her!
- Also, see fresh stock of other popular photobooks, including the delicious Kyoko Ayana’s “Delicious” photobook
- Look for MPEG Typhoon, a great magazine and video CD combo item loaded with sample “quickies”
- For fans of excellent adult manga from Japan, we’ve got several great new titles for you including Tag, a great story by Suehirogari about a girl who is “tagged” through magic, forcing her to go totally naked until she can “tag” another girl and remove the curse
- Also, a superb new offering from Kurenai Azuki, the Equation of the Immoral
- Also, a great treat for fans of hentai Evangelion doujinshi, a new Next Climax Magazine from Okachimentaiko, with 100+ pages of dynamite all-Eva material
- We just love Yui Toshiki’s Yui Shop series, and we’ve gotten in a major restocking of all three volumes, including the very popular vol. 3!
- For DVD fans, enjoy many new titles, starting with a superb “The Idol” release featuring three complete releases with Yuki Kotono, a pure and lovely Japanese girl that we recommend (region free)
- We love the Adult Video Wrestling series from Kings Video, and now enjoy a new 120 minute AVW special featuring men and women who really put on a great show — who will be the victors? (region free)
- Akira Watase has a huge following of fans at J-List, and now you can see her in another great release, the newest in Tohjiro’s Restrictive Chair Trance series from Dogma (region free)
- For fans of the fetish known as “black bukkake” — a Japanese girl being handled roughly by a roomful of big, black men from Los Angeles — see the newest release with Aimi Yoshii (region 2)
Remember that two great love-sim game collections, JAST USA Memorial Collection and the Milky House Memorial Collection, are going to be shipping soon (they’re at the duplicators being reproduced right now). The JAST Memorial title gives you JAST USA’s three best-selling games — Three Sisters’ Story, Runaway City and my own favorite, Season of the Sakura — on one CD-ROM, with a super updated engine that’s fully compatible with Windows XP and 2000. The new features, like anti-aliased graphics and resampled music tracks, really add to these superb games. The Milky House Memorial set gives you Nocturnal Illusions, May Club and the original Borderline CG collection. Preorder them now and get free shipping when they’re ready in a few weeks!
