Hello again from your friends in Japan!
Rice is the national staple food of the Japanese, and almost everyone eats rice with one or two meals each day. The word “okazu” means “food that goes with rice” — i.e., any dish you eat alongside white rice, such as fish, chicken, or “hamburg” steak — and figures into most every evening meal. The most delicious rice is koshi-hikari, and the most famous region of Japan for growing this rice is Niigata Prefecture (the “snow country” in Kawabata’s famous novel). Older Japanese often imagine that bread plays the same role to Americans as rice does to the Japanese, that we plan each and every meal around what kind of bread we have today, but of course this isn’t usually the case. Japanese can be very silly about rice — the exact same stalk of rice that tastes good grown in Niigata Prefecture would certainly taste terrible if grown in California or Thailand, for example, and Japanese universally oppose the importing of rice from other countries. Rice and protecting the way of l ife of farmers who grow rice is a major political issue, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party draws the majority of their support from rural farmers and Japan’s rice farming unions, who occasionally decide to stage demonstrations in cities, driving their tractors and broadcasting loud slogans about how important rice farming is to Japan. Much of Japan’s desire to be self-sufficient with regard to rice comes from the events of World War II, when much of the population starved.
Another food the Japanese get a lot of mileage out of is the soybean (daizu in Japanese). The Japanese make many things out of soybeans, including soy sauce, tofu (soybean curd), miso (a paste that looks like peanut butter to American eyes, but is used in all kinds of cooking), abura-age (fried tofu, it tastes better than it sounds), and of course, the famous Japanese delicacy natto, or fermented soybeans. Virtually all Japanese dishes use something that comes from soybeans, and companies advertise on TV that their soybeans are the of the highest quality. Kikkoman, the leading maker of soy sauce in Japan (they were founded 400 years ago), advertises that all its products are made from “100% perfectly round soybeans.”
J-List accepts credit cards directly through our secure server, and this is by far the method most customers choose to pay for orders from J-List. But if this isn’t convenient for you, we can also accept payment through Paypal, the convenient online payment service. Also, good old-fashioned check or money order payments, sent to our PO Box in San Diego, are also more than welcome. Sometimes customers in Europe and other countries find it more convenient to send cash in US dollars, and this is fine, too, although please take careful precautions when sending.
Incredibly, we managed to sell out of *all ten* the Studio Ghibli DVD players we added on Monday. We managed to get a few more, but they will become very hard to get in stock soon. If you want one of these really cool region 2 DVD players, which are meticulously designed by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, we recommend that you order yours soon.
For the new update, we’ve got some very nice items for you. They include:
- First of all, we have yet another great and wacky
Japanese T-shirt for you (we’re on a roll, can you tell?). A remake
of one of our best-selling T-shirts, this shirt says “Philosophy of
Hentai” (Hentai Tetsugaku)
- For fans of unique toy items from Japan, we have more
Totoro items, including the very cool stuffed toys from Sun Arrow —
including, by customer request, the REALLY BIG Totoro (32 inches high)
- Also, more Japan-release Hot Wheels, including the
Japan-only Mach 5 from Speed Racer
- We love Japan’s sexy swimsuit idols and Race Queens, and
we’ve got some nice items for you
- if you love Godzilla and are a kid or a grown-up, we’ve
got two cool Godzilla “sound photobooks” with tons of pictures —
they make famous Godzilla sounds when you press the buttons!
- If you need to pour water over a gravestone to show
respect for the dead, we’ve got the perfect item for that
- For bento fans, we’ve got restocks of several items,
including a deluxe bento set with everything you need for Japanese
boxed lunch
- J-List carries authentic Japanese chopsticks for adult
and kids, and we’ve got some new varieties in for you today
- As usual, we have some cool Hello Kitty items, including
toothbrushes, pins, and more
- Also: another very rare only-available-in-Japan Hello
Kitty item for your kitchen, a super Hello Kitty oven toaster that
you can use to prepare all kinds of food and brighten your kitchen!
- We love to promote the study of Japanese, so we carry
items like notebooks that help you learn hiragana, practice your
writing of Japanese and so on. Now we’ve got in very spiffy Campus
Vocabulary Word Books which are great for studying any foreign
language!
- Finally, look for funny ways to clean your ear, super
cute erasers, and much more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of the lovely adult magazines we carry, the new
issues of Video Boy and Best Video, the great “all purpose adult
video magazines”
- For fans of hentai magazines, check out the new issue of
Push, with excellent new game information and two CD-ROMs of stuff
for you to check out
- For those who like Video CDs with their magazines, we
have the new MPEG Indies, filled with great information on the
hottest idols in Japan’s AV world
- We have nice new erotic photobooks, including the very
sexy girls of Mighty Agent (a sexy idol unit who fights evil and
poses in cute costumes), as well as a great new leg and stocking
fetish photobook
- We have a great high-end bondage photobook for fans of
the very erotic Shinobu Kisugi
- Also, fresh stock of that timeless classic, Rie
Miyazawa’s bombshell nude photobook Santa Fe
- For hentai manga fans, we’ve got a great update of erotic
works for you, including the popular Mini Suka Police erotic comic
series, fresh stock of the very popular Irodori, and more!
- For doujinshi collectors, fresh stock of The Great Work
of Alchemy (TGWOA) vol. 10
- Also, the fabulous hentai art book of Satoshi Urushihara,
Venus, available from the publisher once again!
- For DVD collectors, we’ve got some great titles for you,
starting with Nanami Nanase in a “champion ship” match with three
famous AV actors to see which can make love to her the most
skillfully (region free)
- Another great new release from SOD, enjoy tekoki at the
SOD Hand Job Clinic (region free)
- See more of the greatest works of Kurumi Morishita in
vol. 2 of her DVD History (region free)
- Cosplay is always fun, and there’s a great new Pia Carrot
erotic cosplay from TMA (region free)
- The lovely Natsuki Abe performs in a great *English
subtitled* DVD, featuring wide screen, multi-angle and multi-story
(region free)
- For fans of the excellent indies erotica from Audaz,
enjoy the Violent Shoot (region 2)
- Finally, a variety of freshly updated and restocked DVD
and VHS items!
J-List is happy to be able to carry the high-quality high school uniforms of Matsukameya, of Nagoya, Japan, through an exclusive arrangement. You can choose from several styles of really excellently made summer or winter uniforms, perfect for use in anime cosplay at conventions, etc. We have gotten many request for male high school uniforms (the black ones), and we’re happy to say that we’ll have something available for you soon.
