Hello again from Japan. While traveling back from the States, I read an interesting article in Forbes listing the current most wealthy men in Japan. Below I list some of the more interesting individuals, what they own, and how much they’re worth in US$.
Masayoshi Son; president of the pasocon shop and online phenomenon Softbank; $19.4 bil
Takei Yasui; owner of high-interest loan company Takefuji; $9.3 bil
Nobutada Saji; inherited the Suntory beer fortune, $7.1 bil
Ito Masatoshi; owns Ito-Yokado, Seven Eleven Japan and Denny’s; $6.2
the Kinoshita family; another high-interest finance company, Acom; $5.0 bil
Fukuda Yoshitaka; yet another high-interest finance company, Aiful; $4.7 bil
Yamauchi Hiroshi; the principle owner of Nintendo; $2.5
Miyamoto Masafumil; Square Soft, makers of Final Fantasy 8; $2 bil
Fujita Den; owns half of McDonald’s Japan; $1.4
Fukushima Yasuhiro; owns Enix, makers of Dragon Quest; $1.2 bil
Kozuki Kagemasa; Konami; $1.2
It’s interesting to see how the list reflects changes in the Japanese economy over the last ten years. Three of the individuals have climbed the wealth ladder on the backs of the consumer debt trend that has grown so much during the current Japanese recession: these companies will loan money to anyone at an annual interest rate of 20-30%, and bombard late-night Japanese TV with cheesy commercials. Four others are fortunes made from the rise of Japanese video games during the last fifteen years. The areas which Japan was famous for during the 80’s — building quality cars and dumping steel — are nowhere to be found.
Poor Kaori: no sooner did she get a dented fender in her car fixed, when a 77 year old man sideswiped her, doing about $4000 worth of damage. The police ruled that the man was 70% at fault, so he’s got to pay most of the cost to repair her car. The dream of fixing her dropped Strawberry iMac is now delayed a little longer…
By request, we’ve cleaned up the in-stock video pages, reorganizing them so that you can find your favorite videos more easily. Instead of video pages 1-4, we now have four separate categories: AV Gals Today (featuring all newly released Japanese AV titles and videos by newer AV stars, such as Hirosue Nao and Aoi Minori), Classic AV Stars (the “classics” of Japan AV, videos by Fubuki Akira, Miura Aika, Kanazawa Bunko, etc.)
We have some truly unique items for tonight’s update, including:
- First and foremost, a cache of excellent “back from the dead” videos, best-selling Japanese AV offerings by Fubuki Akira, Ozawa Madoka, Yuki Maiko and more that had been taken out of print. We’ve got a great new supplier for these excellent items, so check them out on the Classic AV Stars page
- Second, we’re happy announce another one of our popular $5 magazine sales. Magazine page 3 has a great selection of dozens of excellent overstock and close-out magazines, almost all available for just $5. History has shown these items to be very popular, so please check out the items you want soon.
- In addition to our excellent low-price magazine items, we have several new items spread throughout all three magazine pages, including several great one-shot magazines, and the new issue of the popular Milkiss, the magazine of rape-play, and Otakara Wideshow, a magazine that presents early and embarrassing photos of Japan’s hottest idols and actresses
- DVD and Video CD fans will enjoy the new one-shot items, and we have some interesting new CD ROM items, too, on the CD ROM page, including some cool Japanese games for Mac and PC
- There are new photobooks, including Minai Hiro’s lovely “Horizon” hardcover offering, and Ichinose Megumi’s “Canary”
- If you love erotic older women, check out the new item on the gouka-bon page
- For the Pokemon fan in your house, we’ve got *full sets* of the excellent Pokemon Friends stuffed animals & candy sets, on the Japanese snack page
- Last, but not least, we have fresh stock of the wacky Japanese headbands, on the T-shirt and costume page, including more stock of “looking for a girlfriend” “looking for a boyfriend” and “I’ll do anything.”
Incidentally, if you are a member of the Star Wars generation and haven’t seen George Lucas in Love yet, run, don’t walk, to http://www.mediatrip.com/ . The quality of the Real Movie they have posted there isn’t very good, but it’s a great way to see this excellent short film.
