Hello again from Isesaki, Japan, the official city that stands for respect for human rights” — a declared nuclear-free zone, as proclaimed by the mayor.
Well, the San Diego Comicon is over, and my wife Chiharu and son Kazuki have returned to Japan. (See pictures of our booth at the con, as well as pictures of the summer festival, at http://www.jlist.com/shop/pics.html). Kaz was in the U.S. for a whole month, staying with his grandmother, going to a half-day activity school in San Diego where he interacted with other children. I said goodbye to my son, a somewhat shy Japanese boy of five who had good comprehension of English (since I’m always speaking it to him) but who generally only spoke Japanese back, and was worried about not being able to speak. What I got back was cute American boy who spoke excellent English, after only a short time in the U.S.
The issues of raising bilingual children can be quite complex, and my wife and I have spent many evenings discussing the situation. We want to have well-balanced kids who feel happy and at home in either America or Japan, and we want them to have confidence in making themselves understood, so they don’t feel stress associated with going to the States. I’ve read books on the subject, which all seem to say, The best way to raise bilingual kids is to speak one language at home, and another at school. Well, it’s not as simple as that in execution. We have the most “international” kids at our children’s school by far — Kazuki’s passport is about to expire, so we have to get it renewed.
Since it’s Monday, we’ve got our usual bang-up update for you. The newly added items include:
- First, lots of exceptional Japanese adult wide manga, each with 160-200+ pages of quality Japanese erotic manga artwork — see the new titles on the Manga New Releases page
- Related to Japan’s manga are the unique genre of artistic creation known as dojinshi, and we’ve got an interesting new item — an uncensored *English language* dojinshi based on Gunsmith Cats and Gunbuster
- Our back-issue magazine page remains to be popular, with most items selling out right away. We’ve posted some premium Urecco issues to the page, as well as a great Dela Beppin for Aonuma Chiasa fans
- J-List has the best selection of Japan AV videos on the web, and we’ve added more fresh stock, to both the “Classics” page (several new in-stock videos by Kanazawa Bunko, Yuki Maiko, and more) as well as the excellent SOD videos — with fresh stock of Sperm Angel and Cosplay Doll by Nagase Lum
- Practically in a class by herself is the incredible Sawaguchi Miki, whose much-requested video we also got fresh stock of
- For fans of Japanese trinkets, we’ve got phone/camera straps featuring “Domo-kun, the lovable spokes-monster for the NHK TV network. Domo-kun basically is a big brown, square-shaped monster who bows to the viewers and says domo” (roughly “Very nice to make your acquaintance”).
- Also on the anime toys page, see a great Gundam RX-78 & Zaku II toy set, based on the artwork of Okawara Kunio — very cool for Gundam fans
- I’m personally a huge fan of Japanese artist Haruyo Morita’s classic-style contemporary Japanese artwork. See a beautiful new puzzle on the Cards & Puzzles page, under the Toys & More master category
- If you’ve ever been bothered by middle-aged Japanese men urinating in front of your house, we’ve got a great item on the headbands page — a sticker that says, in Japanese, It is forbidden to urinate here.
- J-List carries a large selection of JPOP CD singles, at extremely good prices, allowing the curious to sample several kinds of music to find what kind of JPOP they like. We frequently get requests for JPOP albums, but aren’t always able to bring a good selection of albums to you. However, we’ve got a great bunch of new albums for you today — over a dozen of them! Check out the new items!
J-List carries “revolving subscriptions” to popular anime, JPOP, and general interest Japanese magazines through our “reserve subscription” system. This is the best way to guarantee you’ll be able to get the issues of Animage, J-Rock, PC Angel, or whatever it is you want to get from Japan. We’ve also got some great issues of Japan’s interesting magazines in stock, on our new in-stock anime, manga, JPOP and other magazines, including cool issues of Zappy (a JPOP magazine with a free CD)
We had some hiccups with the shopping cart during parts of Saturday — many apologies for the inconvenience. As always, if you have problems with J-List’s ordering system, you can use the “secure email” form and give us your order
