Hello again from your friends in Japan!
Now that Harry Potter-mania has died down, it’s time for Lord of the Rings to make its debut in Japan. Starting March 2nd, all of Japan will thrill to the adventures of Tolkien’s famous fantasy work. The official title of the film in Japanese is “Lord of the Ring” in English (written in the katakana syllabary, as these are foreign words), rather than “Yubiwa Monogatari” (The Tale of the Ring), as the novels were named. Through an unfortunate accident of Japanese phonetics, millions of Japanese will think that movie is called “Road of the Ring” (as in, the road that the ring travels in its various adventures). Other words that are difficult for Japanese include Pizza Hut (everyone thinks it’s Pizza Hat), cone and corn (Japanese think that ice cream cones are so named because the cones are made from corn), and curb/curve (two different words in English, but they get mixed together in Japanese).
It’s very hard to get along in Japan without learning some Japanese. Contrary to what you may think about living in a country, it is very difficult to pick up a language automatically, and even if you are living in Japan, effort is required. One of the best ways to learn Japanese, I’ve found, is to set a goal and work towards it all year long. The Japanese have given us a perfect goal in the Japanese Ability Test (Nihongo Noryoku Shiken), a test given each December which is a standardized way to know your Japanese level. There are four levels to the test, starting with level 4 (hiragana, katakana and about 100 kanji), and going all the way up to level 1 (which is required for any foreigners who wish to enter a Japanese university). You can take the test at various cities around Japan, and also around the world. For more information, see this http://www.jflalc.org/proftest/ Incidentally, I’ve made some information and general advice on what is involved in learning Japanese on my personal homepage, at http://www.peterpayne.net/ in case it’s useful to anyone.
We knew the cute little plush toys in “The Dog” series are cute and fun to touch and play with, but we had no idea how popular they’d prove with J-List customers. We’re glad, but we’ve started to sell out of these cute little dogs, which have cute, oversized heads and small bodies. If you’re interested in more cute The Dog items, we’ve got more for you, starting with the line of The Dog pens (they have little doghouses on them, with cute pictures of dogs inside).
For the new update, we’ve got a bunch of very special items for you, including:
- First, we’ve got the excellent new issues of Video Boy and Best Video, two great magazines for fans of professional adult video idols in Japan
- For fans of amateur adult magazines from japan, check out several new items we’ve posted for you, too
- For photobook lovers, we’ve got the lovely hardcover photobook of Sachie Koike, fresh stock of the super photobook of Maria Yumeno, and more
- The Yellows series has long been a popular item at J-List, and we’ve restocked the very nice Yellows 3.0 China Version, featuring nude photography of models from mainland China
- For hentai manga fans, we’ve got fresh stock of all-new books, including the excellent manga works of Amanojack (aka Amanoja9, with the 9 read as “ku” in Japanese), of dick girl manga fame
- Also for manga collectors, a major restock of popular books that had sold out, including Stripper Mai, Mercy’s File, and Reflection
- If you prefer yaoi manga, we’ve also gotten in stock of several of the popular B-boy Zipz, the anthologies of homosexual comics with each volume organized around a certain theme
- For fans of great manga for adults published in English, we now carry single issues and subscriptions for Pulp, the very nice manga magazine from Viz
- For fans of erotic DVD from Japan, we’ve got some great items for you, starting with the 2-in-1 “Cock Suckin’ and Fuckin’ Shakin’ Contest” for bukkake/tekoki fans (region free)
- If you like Japanese AV idols dressed up in anime costumes, we’ve got the outrageous Big Morkal Cosplayers DVD, featuring Sayaka Hijiri in a variety of cute anime costumes having sex (region free)
- Another bold release from Japan, we’ve got the Adult Video Wrestling Special, featuring erotic hardcore professional wrestling (region free)
- A favorite of mine, Mirai Hoshizaki, stars in her very lovely “How to Perfect” release, which lets you know everything about this lovely girl
- Finally, three very lovely professional AV idols star in Semen Drunkers, a very nicely done production for fans of high-quality indies DVD from Japan
- Since The Dog has proved such a big hit, we’ve followed it up with another really cool item, official The Dog pens, which each feature a little doghouse with a different dog inside, atop a quality ballpoint pen
- From Bandai come more Japan-only Hot Wheels toys, with some truly cool Hot Wheels toys from Thunderbirds and Ultraman
- If you love and follow Japan’s cute idols, be sure and check out the issue of Kindai, a “break idol” magazine that features information on all the up and coming idols in Japan
- Our bento boxes (authentic Japanese lunchboxes as seen in anime) continue to grow in popularity, and we’ve added fresh stock of new “Picky’s Bear” bento box today
- For fans of our popular Japanese snack and food pages, we’ve got a very special item by customer request: the Morning Musume limited edition of Pocky and Men’s Pocky, which feature cool stickers of the cute girls from Morning Musume
- Also, a major restock of our snack and food pages, including the ever-popular Sushi Gummi (little gummi sushi on marshmallow “rice”), Green Tea Pocky, Shigekix (super-tart hard gummi), and Japanese Kuro Ame (black candy)
- For gum lovers, fresh stock of the bizarre but tasty Lemon Tea Gum, and an all-new item, Fruit of the Bubble, from Lotte
- For Hayao Miyazaki fans, we’ve got a very nice Black Cat purse from Gibli and Sun Arrow
- Finally, we love to sell wacky things from Japan, like Japanese maps for your wall, or funny Japanese notebooks with funny English on them and what not, and we’ve got lots of fresh stock for you!
We’ve enjoyed selling the best bishoujo games in English to you over the years. Several games, including Virtual Reality Dating Simulator May Club and Three Sisters’ Story, are nearing the end of their print runs. If you’d like to get these very nice games, you might want to snap them up before we run out of them.
J-List customers tell us that the #1 way they hear about us is through word of mouth. This makes us happy, since we love what we do and wouldn’t trade it for anythiing. If you know anyone interested in fun things from Japan, why not tell them about J-List?
