Hello again from Japan!
It seems that no recent invention has changed our lives as much as the portable phone, and this is true in Japan as well. Cellular phones (called “keitai” in Japanese) are extremely popular here, and there are currently 80 million subscribers to the various cell phone companies in Japan — more than 60% of the entire country. Cell phones have many nifty features, like Java so you can play games, GPS sensors, and vintage 80’s video game music and sound effects for the ringing sound (Yasu is really big on this). But the most popular “killer app” has proved to be phones with digital cameras built into them, which were created by J-Phone (now owned by Vodafone) as a way of competing with telecommunications giant NTT and industry-dominating Docomo line of phones. The latest phones feature cameras that are actually good — megapixel and higher, with support for removable media to store the pictures on.
In response to the rise of camera phones, an innovative company has come up with an “alibi service” for people with inquisitive spouses. After registering with the system, you can store a picture of yourself as a cropped image and paste it over other background images stored in the phone. If your wife suddenly calls and asks you to take a picture of your current location and send it to her, so she can check to see if you’re really working late, just send her a picture of yourself against a background of your desk at work, and she’ll never know you were really out drinking with your friends, or engaged in some other activity. There are other “alibi services” too. At J-List, we subscribe to a Japanese cable radio service that allows us to listen to 440 radio channels, including radio stations from California, New York, and London. Several of the channels the company offers are to help people who need an alibi, providing background sounds of pachinko parlors, crowded pubs or train stations — which allow people to fool their significant others into believing they’re somewhere they aren’t.
It can be quite interesting to analyze Japan’s car names. Above all, car names must sound “kakko ii” (cool, stylish), and since nothing sounds cooler to the Japanese ear than English, most cars here get their names from English words — like Honda Life and Subaru Legend, or Nissan’s Sunny and March (sold as Nissan Micra in Europe). But many other names come from slightly altered English, so that they cause the same emotional response while being original. Words like Carolla or Tercel or Sylphy or Premacy sound like English, but car companies can still “own” the original names. In recent years, Japanese car companies have started mining Spanish as a source for car names, resulting in cars like Daihatsu’s little van Vamos (I love that name), Nissan’s El Grand, Toyota’s Carina and Familia, and Mitsubishi’s Diamante and Viento, and the oddly named Pajero. Japanese cars must never, ever have Japanese names, since that would be “kakko warui” (un-cool, bad style) — Japanese are always amused to learn that the Suzuki Jiminy was sold as Suzuki Samurai in the U.S. However, there are some cars whose names started out as Japanese words before being “English-ified.” Toyota Camry, for example, gets its name from “kamuri,” which means crown in Japanese — which is funny, since Toyota sells a higher-priced sedan here called Toyota Crown, and in the past as sold the Toyota Corona, which means crown in Spanish.
Announcing the J-List January DVD Sale! J-List is a Japanese corporation and our fiscal year ends Jan 31st. J-List has thousands of cool items from Japan in stock, but at the end of our year we have to pay taxes on that stock. Rather than do that, we’d rather sell it to you, which is why we’re having a great sale on all our extensive stock of DVDs from Japan! For the next ten days only, you an get an extra-large 20% discount when you buy 4 or more DVDs from Japan! Check out our great selection of titles now, before the ones you want sell our and this special DVD sale ends!
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for all fans of fantastic anime figures and garage kits, we’ve got the 2003 All That Figure photobook from Hobby Japan, just loaded with fantastic photos of these amazing 3D anime statues and figures
- Also, we have a great polystone statue of Mizuho Kazumi from the great anime Please Teacher, that’d be great for your room
- Ayaya fans, we’ve got a great new hardcover Aya Matsuura photobook in stock for you, filled with great photographs of this amazing Japanese singer and idol
- We’re big fans of the detailed food replicas that are popular in Japan, and we make sure to carry all these great items — now you can find the new Dessert Shop Series 2, with ten great desserts that Japanese love (full sets are available too)
- Then enjoy a pair of cool “Hawaiian Wedding Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel” from Sanrio, sold only in Japan
- Also, a really cool trading card series based on the hentai game Street Angel Kurumi
- We’ve got another really cool Blythe doll that comes with a full-head costume to wear, very stylish and nifty
- Studying Japanese? We’ve restocked our popular J-E and E-J dictionaries as well as our 4-character word and Japanese proverb dictionaries, really fun to study
- Also, we’ve gotten in more stock of the very popular Chobits Bilingual Manga vol 1 & 2, so you can enjoy this great manga by CLAMP and see both the original Japanese and a full English translation!
- Also, after several months of being backordered all over Japan, we’ve managed to get in more of the Ghost in the Shell Bilingual Manga too, which features color pages and an all-new translation of this most excellent work (much better than the Studio Proteus one)
- Japanese smoke a lot, but they try to practice good smoking manners, which one TV commercial calls “Smokin’ Clean” — if you smoke, you can do your part by carrying a portable ashtray which allows you to avoid dropping ashes and butts on the ground
- We’ve got some great snack items for you today, including traditional “tonkotsu” ramen flavored snacks, traditional “sakura daikon” snacks, and delicious poppable castella cakes that have been popular in Japan for centuries
- Also, a cool candy version of the famous ramune bottle soft drinks, but you can eat these!
- One of our favorite foods in Japan is gyoza, aka Pot Stickers, the delicious Chinese dumplings you dip in a sauce that contains soy sauce, vinegar and spicy sesame oil — now you can try to make your own with cool gyoza makers that we have in stock
- If you’re a collector of antique teddy bears, we’ve got a rare and cool item: Japanese miniature toy replicas of the most famous teddy bears of the 20th century
- Finally, we’ve got more cool Japanese maps, fresh stock of the rare “socks glue” which you use to glue your loose socks to your legs, more disposable chopsticks, and more!
- For our 18+ customers, we’ve got many new products. They include:
- For fans of Japan’s professional JAV stars, we’ve got the new Video Boy, filled with great stars like Nao Oikawa, Kurumi Morishita, Alice Ogura, Aoi Sora and more
- We’ve also got the new issue of Meets Girl (as in “boy meets girl”), featuring real sex in love hotels by gorgeous amateurs
- Then enjoy the new Video Girls, a special magazine with 120 minute DVD for you to enjoy
- For photobook fans, enjoy the delightful sexy swimsuit photos of Moeco Matsushita, a charming and beautiful swimsuit idol from Japan
- For fans of Japan’s bondage and domination fetishism, we’ve got the new Eve Grande all-color photobook, brimming with great photographs for you
- We’ve got some great new erotic comics for you, including Tsukasa Comics’ Milk Communication, fetish with Female Teacher Izumi or Maid Ayaya, and an erotic comic detailing sexual between people who used to be just friends — you will love these new books
- We’ve also added fresh stock to our manga pages, with great works like Kuikomi Scanty, The Secret of Me and Her, Yuwaku – Seduction, Gothic Taste and more
- We have another dozen or so all-new doujinshi from the past Comic Market, with great erotic comics based on famous anime shows
- For our DVD fans, we have some great new DVD titles for you, starting with Azumi Kawashima’s delightful softcore release – “Azumi’s Smile & Nude Make Us Happy” (region free)
- Then enjoy the very nice new project from Soft on Demand, in which female friends must look at various girls’ genitalia and guess which belongs to their friends (region free)
- Also from SOD, a massive harem of beautiful girls who give themselves willingly to men (region free)
- There’s a great new release in the “black men vs Japanese girls” series by Moodyz, this time featuring Ann Nanba (An Namba) taking on a roomfull of black guys from the U.S. (region 2)
- Then enjoy the wonderful new release of “Nao.” (she always has a period after her name, in imitation of Morning Musume.), featuring some of her best cosplay and bukkake work ever (region 2)
- Finally fresh stock of several DVDs including cosplay, lesbian, and other great titles, just in time for our special DVD sale!
Remember that J-List sells wacky T-shirts with message like “I’m looking for a Japanese girlfriend” (our most popular shirt ever), “Respect the Emperor, Expel the Foreign Barbarians” “It is forbidden to take a bath with your tattoo” and so on. Why not browse our selection of T-shirts today? Because your satisfaction is important to us, J-List goes the extra distance for you, stocking a wide range of sizes (from small to XXXL for most shirts), so everyone can enjoy our fun Japanese T-shirts. They’re printed in the USA and all sizes are full American sizes. If you’re not sure exactly what size you need, the measurements for the shirts in centimeters and inches is displayed via the “Click here for size info” link. We also have hoodie and long-sleeve sweatshirt versions of our unique designs, too!
