Weekend greetings from your friends at J-List!
I had a nice trip to Nagoya on business on Friday, and I got to ride the Nozomi 700 series, the sleekest and fastest shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan. All boys growing up in Japan go through a phase when they think that trains are the neatest things since odor-free natto, and when my son entered his train phase, I picked up a lot of information about trains in Japan from him. Japan’s bullet trains were developed in the 1960’s to streamline transportation in Japan, and as with all major construction projects, to impress foreigners who visit here. Some of the most popular bullet trains include the Hikari (which travels between Tokyo and Osaka), the Tsubasa (a bullet train that can travel on normal train tracks, too), and our all-time favorite, the two-story MAX (which stands for “multi amenity express” in case you were wondering). The Nozomi 700 series came on-line a few years ago, and can get you from Tokyo to Nagoya in 90 minutes. To see pictures of the famous trains in Japan, as well as get information on Japan’s excellent Japan Rail Pass system, see this page: http://www.japanrail.com/5_gallery/index.html . For whatever reason, there are a fair number of “train otaku” in Japan, people who love trains and travel all around Japan to ride on and photograph their favorite trains. I’ve noticed a correlation between students who studied hard to get into good high school and universities and this slightly odd “train fetishism.”
One of the first words learners of Japanese com across is the word “genki,” which means anything from healthy to energetic to “fine.” The first greeting you learn in Japanese is often “Ogenki desu ka?” which means “How are you?” (although it literally means “Are you fine?”). The reply is “Hai, genki desu” (Yes, I am fine). In another context, a man becoming “genki” in bed refers to the state of his sexual member. Whenever you learn a language, you’re confronted with words that don’t quite “match up” with words you use in your native language, such as the two words for “cold” in Japanese (samui and tsumetai), which refer to coldness in the air and something that’s cold to the touch, respectively.
We’ve got a lot of nice items for you for the weekend, including the Anna Ohura soft porn DVD that was accidentally not posted last time — sorry about that. We’ve got fresh stock of DVDs (many Soft on Demand and other DVDs in stock), many volumes restocked of hentai manga, fresh stock of photobooks, and more. We’ve also got more wacky things from Japan, a restock of several backordered anime toy items (including the popular Love Hina figures), and other items for you. Also: a great new item, just in time for Valentine’s Day, the long-rumored and very hard to find Hello Kitty Vibrators, er, we mean shoulder massagers, an item we’ve been searching for months. Check out all the newly posted items on the J-List site today!
The top 5 has been updated for the past week, so you can see what products have been selling well at J-List. (Actually the top five shows the top 10 items for each category, go figure…)
The Japanese phenomenon of the “kogal,” the bizarre combination of fashion and life style that grew out of the “Amuler” movement of the mid-1990’s (girls who wanted to look and dress like singer Namie Amuro), is a very interesting and unique one. We found an interesting article on kogalism, and wanted to pass it on to you: http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_07/uk/doss21.htm
