Hello again from all your friends in Japan!
Happy faces in email are now a part of Internet culture. The Japanese have embraced this form of communication with a vengeance, and have come up with some really cute Japanese faces that are used in email messages here. See an interesting page of Japanese emoticons, along with a link to another page of one-byte face graphics, here: http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/body.html#character . I hope you enjoy them! (^_^)/
In the Japanese system of prefectures and cities is quite different from what we’re used to in the States. The current Japanese system, which was based on the French prefectural system (or at least that’s what the Japanese believe), came about when Japan modernized its infrastructures during the Meiji Restoration. Basically, there are 47 prefectures (“ken”), along with the northernmost island of Hokkaido and the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which like the District of Columbia in the U.S. is separate from the normal system of prefectures. Inside each prefecture, there are three kinds of incorporated areas: cities (“shi”), towns (“machi” or “cho,” two readings for the same kanji character) or villages (“mura”). Inside the large city areas, such as the city we live in, there are small “town” areas designated, so that a person may live in Sakura Town, Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Streets are not generally named in Japan, so a physical address will just be a numbered block inside that part of the town. If you think it’s terribly confusing to have a whole country with no named streets or numbered houses, you’re right! Basically, if you don’t have a clear map to wherever it is you’re going in Japan, you’re probably not going to get there. As populations rise and fall in Japan (usually fall, it’s sad to say), sometimes a new city is born, as small municipalities join together to try to make their region more attractive for tourism and industry. Japan’s newest city is Minami Alps City, in Nagano Prefecture. Located in the heart of the Japan Alps (the main mountain range running down the middle of the country), this city is newsworthy as the first place name to write its name in the katakana writing system (since the word “alps” is a foreign loan word).
No matter how long I live in Japan, there are some things I just can’t go without. Although the Japanese have a long tradition of pickling vegetables (including making kim-chee, delicious Korean spicy pickles), they’re just not a replacement for good, crunchy Vlassic pickles that I am used to from home. Fortunately, through the Foreign Buyer’s Club (http://www.fbcusa.com) expats in Japan can get anything from home quite easily, with the only catch being you must buy it in supermarket cases (e.g., 8 jars of pickles, 12 boxes of Raisin Bran, 24 boxes of granola bars). It’s very convenient.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of the incredibly popular Dragonball Z we’ve got an extremely cool bottlecap-like figure series — it’s really cool
- For fans of the best-selling Studio Ghibli music boxes, another wonderful Spirited Away music box that features Sen and the Kao-Nashi (No-Face)
- Also for fans of cool things from Japan, some beautiful “Maneki Neko” (Inviting Cat) coffee cups
- For Japanese snack lovers, enjoy fun Power Rangers furikake for your rice, delicious ramune and cola “fizzing candy,” and great vitamin C hard candy, too
- In addition, various food and snack items have been restocked, including authentic Japanese teas, delicious kim-chee furikake, and more
- Also, a delicious new flavor of fun Japanese chewing gum, fresh pear
- For fans of the cool lighting Star Wars character necklaces that are only sold in Japan, we’ve gotten in tons of fresh stock, including all the popular ones — check them out now!
- For bento fans, various fresh stock of popular bento items including the pink bento boxes with the included water bottle
- Also, if you’ve been wanting to buy the cool Japanese beginning driver’s mark, which is one of our most popular “wacky” items from Japan, we’ve restocked them for you
- For Hot Wheels collectors, fresh stock of popular items that were sold out, as well as a new limited Japan Official Fan Clob collector’s car (rare)
- Also very cool, fresh stock of the popular Ichiro figures that we’ve had in the past
- For Yamato/Star Blazers fans, we’ve got a dynamite item that I personally love — the die-cast metal Yamato that’s fully featured!
- Finally, look for fresh stock of super-cool Japanese food erasers, handy cotton bags for your bento, a great way to remove hair from your bath, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of beautiful Japanese girls with huge breasts, enjoy the new Gal’s Dee, which is loaded with busty gals like Moe Yamasaki (95 cm, G cup), Mai Uehara (86 cm, F cup) and Anna Ohura herself
- For fans of Japanese love hotel magazines, that show amateur couples in love hotels, enjoy the new Shuffle
- If you love Japanese photobooks, enjoy some great new items, including Penthouse Japan’s first hardcover photobook and the super-sexy offering of Harumi Nomoto
- Also, a lovely all-leg and stocking fetish photobook featuring two positively beautiful leggy princesses
- For fans of extremely beautiful Japanese women, we’ve got two excellent combination photobook + DVD capturing the loveliness of two models
- Enjoy excellent erotic hentai manga from some of Japan’s top artists, including a super-deluxe large-format manga by Ruu Michian, as well as fresh stock of the famous “A Wonderful Feeling” manga by Azuki Kurenai
- Also, a dynamite and rare treat for Yu-Gi-Oh fans, we’ve got an erotic doujinshi Nyu-Gi-Oh (the “nyu” means “breasts”), by the famous doujinshi circle Kenix
- For DVD lovers, a superb “Japanese sci-fi porn feature” that is extremely beautiful and bold in its imagery and tribute to the movie Blade Runner — see “I.K.U. ~ This is not LOVE, this is SEX” on our site now (region free)
- We love the beautiful Ichigo Milk, and have a new offering from Million featuring 120 minutes of her best erotic work (region free)
- We are fans of Akira Watase because of her extremely sexy style and sass — see her in another “fucked from below” DVD in which she has sex on a large Plexiglas sheet, with the camera positioned below her (region free)
- Soft on Demand has brought us many great erotic concepts over the years, and now they’ve got a great compilation of Love Gun (a vibrator that’s a gun) and Holed Panty fetish (very innovative) for you to enjoy (region free)
- We also loved the extremely busty Moe Yamasaki (95 cm, G cup) performing in her first lesbian experimentation (region free)
- For fans of Bauhaus’s innovative soft porn and sexy idol DVDs, we’ve got a great item featuring Moe Yoshizawa that will blow you away (region 2)
- Finally, enjoy fresh stock of DVDs such as Nao Oikawa’s Beautiful Breast Idol (a great cosplay experience), more lovely Russian Girls Manko, Yuka Sakurada’s Endless Semen and more!
Interested in learning Japanese? Remember that J-List loves Japan and always wants to promote the study of Japanese all over the world. To that end, we carry cool things like study cards (blank cards that make it easy to study vocabulary), and the spiffy Zebra Check Set, a system that helps you memorize anything and test your memory. See the “Notebooks, Study Aids” category inside Wacky Things from Japan for these items. Also, be sure to see Peter’s general overview of the Japanese language and his advice for students or would-be students, at http://www.peterpayne.net/
