Hello from Japan, home of squid pizza, octopus balls and green tea flavored ice cream. The year 2000 is five days old, and rocket packs and flying cars haven’t suddenly materialized, allowing us to jet to the moon and back. As a card-carrying fan of Arthur C. Clarke’s SF stories, I have to admit that it’s kind of disappointing to me…
One sign that my wife and I weren’t in our 20’s anymore is when we started getting most of our entertainment from NHK, the network of four channels run by the Japanese government. One day we realized that the most interesting shows to us weren’t anime or young idols singing on Hey Hey Music Champ, but the excellent content of NHK. The other day we watched a very interesting documentary on “kikoku shijo, or Japanese kids who have lived abroad for many years, then returned to experience culture shock in their own home country. Ally McBiel (which I watch in Japanese) and Beverly Hills 90210 (which my wife watches in English) are shown on NHK, too. Foreigners living in Japan complain about the 2000 yen they have to pay the NHK man who comes collecting every month, but it’s good to have something that’s worth watching.
Unfortunately, Masako-sama, the princess expected to bear Japan’s future Emperor, has suffered a miscarriage, making all the silly festivities about her pregnancy by the Japanese media somewhat empty. It’s a sad way to start off the year. In happier news, however, the man who robbed our liquor store back in November was caught by the Japanese police, trying to break into another area house. It turns out he was a younger man than we’d thought, only 27 years old member of a street gang. My mother in law is especially glad to hear that the man was caught.
We’ve got some nice items for you this evening. First, there’s a large update of manga, including some really nice new adult wide” manga items — a half dozen or more. (The “Isane ~Break Out~” cover picture has also been corrected, thanks to those to let us know that we had the wrong picture posted.) We’ve added a large number of very nice new in-stock adult videos, including offerings from some of Japan’s most popular AV gals. New videos have been added to the special order video page, as well. There are some gorgeous illustration books on the anime page, too. We’re closing out our current stock of collectible cards, including both our Bejean & Crystal Card series as well as our anime and idol cards, so check out the cards & puzzles page.
Finally, we’ve slashed our remaining stock of 2000 calendars yet again, and to help them go, we’ve taken pictures of the insides of many of the calendars — so please check out the 40+ calendars we’ve got left before the ones you want are gone.
