Hello again from Japan, where Velcro is known as Magic Tape.
International Girl Scouts are active in Japan, as are Boy Scouts/Cub Scouts, and they do many fun things, doing crafts and showing off their work at Japanese festivals and doing various activities. We put our daughter Rina into Girl Scouts a month ago and she’s enjoyed it so far. A funny thing happened to me when I took her to her meeting last weekend: I left to find a vending machine for some canned coffee, but to my amazement, I couldn’t find one near me. I walked up and down the nearby streets for fifteen minutes, but couldn’t find a single vending machine — a rarity in Japan, which has the highest per-capita number of vending machines in the world (one for every 23 people). In the end, I had to get in my car and drive to the nearest convenience store — truly incredible!
One category in which Japan leads unchallenged is professional voice actors (“seiyu” in Japanese). Decades of quality Japanese animation has created a very strong tradition of voice acting in Japan, and popular voice actors become quite famous among fans — there are even magazines dedicated to following the seiyu world, such as Voice Animage. Talented voice actors are quite in demand, and end up doing a wide variety of roles. Keiko Toda, one of the most famous seiyu, is best known for her roles in children’s shows — she’s the voice of Anpan-man (Bean-Paste Man) and of the Japanese Thomas the Tank Engine, and even did the voice of Lala Sun, the tragic lover of Char Aznable and Amuro Rei in the original Gundam series. She’s a very versatile actress though — she’s also the voice of Scully from the X-Files here.
One of my first instances of “culture shock” upon arriving in Japan was seeing Japanese toilets. While most toilets in homes or restaurants are the standard Western toilets you are used to, many in public places are Japanese style, which means a toilet without a seat — just a long, oval toilet that you squat over. Using them is quite a challenge, especially the first time, when you’re not sure which direction you should face (for the record, face the raised part). For some reason, all the toilets on trains are Japanese style, which means that if you ever have to take a long journey by train in Japan, you’ll have to contend with squatting over a seatless toilet while on a jerking, moving train. Japanese universally prefer seatless toilets to the sit-down kind, because no matter how dirty the toilet may be, no sensitive area touches your body — makes sense to me. Toilets here have handles that move two ways, with the characters for “small” and “large” on them. If you’ve only got a little, turn the handle towards “small” to let a little water out; turn it to “large” to wash everything away. Later, I learned that the words for No.1 and No.2 in Japanese are shouben (literally “small toilet”) and daiben (“large toilet”), which solved the riddle of the small/large characters on Japanese toilet handle. If you want to see how to use a Japanese toilet, here is a helpful page: http://www.jlist.com/japanese_toilet.html
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of the miniature toys that come with ramune candy, a very popular category of product in Japan these days, we’ve got a great new item: miniature replicas of authentic Japanese traditional dishes, with full sets available!
- For those who love snacks they can actually eat, enjoy a tasty milkshake from japan, blueberry cookies, tasty onigiri seasoning and canned sardines stewed in Japanese miso sauce — mmm!
- From Takara, we’ve got two deluxe new Blythe dolls, decked out in bright clothes that are so fashionable — they have a totally redesigned eye system too
- Another very stylized toy from Japan are the Kubrick figures, which look like the Lego block toys — we’ve got stock of the very cool Tokyo Tribe 2 Kubrick series for you, as well as a new Kaws-Kubrick playset for you
- For Macross fans, a super treat: the VF-11B Valkyrie fighter from Macross Plus, a deluxe *transforming* toy that comes with extras like heat shields and opening cockpit
- As you know, cute is king in Japan — we’ve got some cute items for you, like some Usako Friends origami paper (use it as stationary too), a Kitty watch that blinks when your portable phone rings, and more
- Also, a cute Nohohon Park small towel, mirror and packet of tissue, great for carrying around with you
- For bento aficionados, a deluxe set that includes bento bag, box, chopsticks and cup
- We are really in love with the Furuta Star Trek starship set — in addition to the convenient sets we’ve got on our site now, we’ve added individual random boxes, for those who want to see how excellent these pre-painted plastic models are before buying
- We love Japan’s beautiful swimsuit idols — see a great new photobook dedicated to fans of Harumi Nemoto
- For fans who grew up with Japan’s classic monster movies, we’ve got a treat: the original Gamera movie released in 1965, in beautiful wide screen and with full English subtitles (region 2)
- For fans of traditional Japanese baths, some Japanese bath powder with the fragrance of yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit with a strong odor
- For fans of the only-sold-in-Japan Hot Wheels toys, we’ve got several freshly restocked vehicles for you
- Japanese people usually smoke, and they try to practice good smoking manners, what Japan Tobacco calls “Smokin’ Clean” — you can do the same with the portable Japanese ashtrays we’ve got in stock
- Little kids will like the Hamtaro ice cocoa mix we’ve posted, great for the summer
- For Japanese film buffs, several restocked DVD titles with English subtitles, including Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls and OH! Mikey vol. 1 through 3 (region2)
- Finally, make coffee the way most Japanese do, enjoy onigiri makers and chopsticks, carry your notebook computer safely in the soft cases we’ve got in stock, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of great adult magazines from Japan, enjoy the new issues of Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, featuring superb all-Japanese content, including the incredibly lovely Yinling (well, she’s Taiwanese, give us a break)
- Then enjoy the new issue of Let’s Do Good Things, a hardcore amateur magazine featuring girls in love hotels
- Also for hardcore sex fans, the new issue of Mitsumete Hoshii (I Want You To Look At Me), another Japanese magazine with a funky name, but great girls inside
- For photobook fans, many excellent items, including the Lingerie Complex offering of Sumire Ogawa, a super sex and delightfully erotic model, and the erotic nude of Kaori Yamaguchi
- For our manga customers, we’ve got another half dozen all-new hentai manga from Japan for you, including the erotic Flora Comix by A10 Booster Unit, the superb sex of Tsukino Jyogi’s Delusion Diary, and super cute sex with Soft Cream
- In addition, see another huge restocking of popular Japanese comics like Rough & Ready by the famous Naoki Yamamoto, Michael Plan 1 & 2 by artist Distance, Please Older Sister vol. 1 & 2, and more!
- Also, Blood Gallery, a superb anthology of famous game girl and anime parody doujinshi including Samurai Spirits, Wedding Peach, Nadesico, Dead or Alive and more
- For DVD collectors, enjoy 4 hours of the best sex of Minami Fujisaki, aka Bauko Eichi, a delightful adult video star with an incredibly small body, very popular over the past few years (region free)
- Enjoy the best sex Germany has to offer in Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! with Berlin Girls, featuring Japanese directors filming lovely German girls getting it on (region free)
- Nao Oikawa is the top star in Japan today because of her elegant body and erotic sex — see her best tekoki, bukkake and other works in the Remix of Nao Oikawa, by Soft on Demand (region free)
- Ai Kurosawa, the erotic and sexy AV star with a 95 cm G cup, debuts in Soft on Demand in a great new DVD release — see the hardcore erotic sex of this great lady as only Japan’s indies labels can show (region free)
- For lesbian fans, a delightful performance from Bunny’s Bunny (region 2)
- Then enjoy some classic Japanese women vs big, black men in a new Black Fuck & Semen release, from Moodyz (region 2)
- Finally, fresh stock of some great DVD titles, including Maiko Kazano’s Pure Heart and Slight Fever, and a major restocking of the lovely erotic titles of Mai Hagiwara!
Remember that J-List’s famous Japanese T-shirts, with bizarre messages like “Dirty American Devil” and “It is forbidden to urinate here” are in stock and available for immediate shipping from our San Diego warehouse. All shirts are printed in the U.S. and all are full American sizes. If you’re unsure what size you are, note that you can easily check the sizes of our shirts in inches or centimeters — just look for the “Shirt size” link below each shirt. This is great for our customers outside the U.S. who may not be sure what their size is in U.S. sizes. If you buy 3 or more of these cool shirts, you get an automatic 10% off through the shopping cart, too.
Also, remember that we’re having a sale on photobooks right now. Order 4 or more of our beautiful photobook items and get 20% off automatically at checkout. Since we have hundreds of fantastic photobooks in stock, we know you can find something great for yourself, or for a friend!
