Hello again from your friends in Japan!
First and foremost, an apology about the site going down for a few hours yesterday. Our current (aging) server knew it was being replaced in a few more days and did a HAL 9000 on us. Things are running smoothly now though.
Companies have had to find new ways to survive in the lackluster Japanese economy, and one way is to make tons and tons of new products. Japan’s big four beer companies have a staggering forty different varieties of beer and happoushu (a low-malt beer that’s taxed lower than beer, so it can’t be called by the same name) on the market, as they constantly try to come up with new ways of taking market share away from the others. They’re really good at coming up with new ideas, too, like beer with extra CO2 in it, beer marketed at young women, a keg of beer that chills itself as you pour, dark versions of popular existing brands and the old standby, “limited” beers sold in each season, like Sapporo’s “A Winter’s Tale” and Kirin’s “Aki-Aji” (taste of autumn). Digital cameras are also seeing many new developments, as manufacturers refresh their product lines every three months to keep from losing ground to their competitors, and to keep consumers looking for the newest thing. Camera that are incredibly small, Bluetooth cameras and phones that have high-end digital cameras built into them, complete with removable media up to 512 mb, are all helping Japanese electronics companies flourish in the new Japanese economy.
In Japan, there are often concepts that are very difficult for Westerners to grasp. One measurement of beauty here is related to the number of creases in a person’s eyelid when their eyes are open — one crease (“hitoe” hee-TOE-eh), two creases (“futae” fu-TAH-eh) or three (“mie” MEE-eh). (As always, there’s no silent ‘e’ in Japanese, or magic ‘e’ as they call it here, so you pronounce the final ‘e’ in words.) Single-creasers have slender, traditionally Asian eyes, while those with more creases have larger eyes that look European to the Japanese. Getting plastic surgery to change the appearance of your eyes is quite popular among TV stars and young Japanese people in general (mostly women). I have to admit, I’d never considered that people had different numbers of creases in their eyelids until coming here — it was a totally alien concept to me, and I still can’t tell how many creases a person’s eyelids have, no matter how closely I look. Another measure of beauty, having a “high nose” is an important feature for anyone who wants to enter modeling. I never really thought of noses as anything other than “big” or “small” before coming here, but apparently there is more to a person’s nose than meets the eye.
For whatever reason, Japanese men are fond of urinating outdoors. When driving around Japan, it’s not uncommon to happen on an older man relieving himself by the side of the road — even walking from my home to J-List, a mere 100 meters or so, I sometimes see one of our neighbors peeing in the ditch by the side of the road. It’s partially a rural thing — with a population of 140,000, our city is not large, and there’s a lot of agriculture — but I’ve seen friends from Tokyo and Yokohama do it when the need took them. It can get so bad that people occasionally put signs that say “It is forbidden to urinate here” (Tachi-shon kinshi) in front of their homes. Well, we’ve captured this great concept in a new wacky Japanese T-shirt just for you — see it on the site now!
In other news, we’re happy to announce the arrival of Kango Shicyauzo 2 ~ Is The Sorority House Burning?, the great sequel to the best-selling bishoujo dating-sim game from G-Collections. In addition, a new 2-CD version of Kango Shicyauzo ~ I’m Gonna Nurse You, with full character voice, is in stock and available for immediate order. If you want to get both Kango 1 Voice Plus and Kango 2 and save some money, you can order the special KANGOSET we’ve set up for you — both are just $75!
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of Star Trek, we’re extremely happy to announce that the Furuta series of Star Trek ships has come in — see these great sets of items on our site now, but we recommend that yu hurry! (you can still preorder the other series by Yamato too)
- For fans of our Japanese snacks, we’ve got some delicious items, including salmon ochazuke (one of my own favorites), two new varieties of miso soup and fabulous “soup type spaghetti sauce” with clams that’s really good
- Also, fun gelatin dessert mix that you can drink, just add milk
- For Kubrick collectors, we’ve got a super *full set* of the new Back to the Future Kubricks, with five extremely well designed and very detailed block toys in the set
- Take an authentic Japanese hot springs bath with sweet smelling peach bath crystals from Japan
- For fan of unique Tomica cars, we’ve got a set of four McDonald’s vehicles that are really cute and cool (one is a replica of a Mazda Bongo Friendee, the car we happen to drive in Japan)
- We’ve got great Japanese items for your kitchen, including a sandwich box and matching thermos that are both very cute, as well as a cool onigiri maker that makes rice balls in various shapes
- If you’re stopping smoking right now, we’ve got a wacky Japanese sign for you
- For fans of Hello Kitty, two variations of a really cute Kitty “Flying Character” which you put in your ceiling, and Kitty flies around your room, along with other new items
- For Totoro and Miyazaki Hayao fans, a great new plush Jiji keychain that’s one of the coolest we’ve seen yet, along with fresh stock of many other Totoro items for you as well
- Finally, check out many new items such as the popular Kitty pachinko and Kitty darts set, fresh stock of the incredibly popular Zelda Box data book with figures and full game soundtrack, traditional Japanese candy, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of great Japanese magazines, we’ve got the new issues of Video Boy and Best Video, both loaded with super erotic photos of Japan’s most famous AV idols and stars
- Then we’ve got the new issue of Dick, the “World Hard Skin Magazine” featuring beautiful adult stars from America and Europe — see Japan’s fascination with busty western women through the eyes of the Japanese
- We’ve got the superb Mai Hagiwara Mirukuru Love 2003 Bauhaus Mook, a complete magazine dedicated to the glory that is our little Mai-chan
- For photobook lovers, we’ve got some nice items including the beautiful nude photobook of Yuka Kotono, who looks damned good in tight underoos (trust us), as well as restocked panty and stocking fetish and other photobooks
- Also, a super “Nude Gallery” photobook featuring the lovely nudes of Japan’s top stars — Cocolo, Jun Kusanagi, Maria Yumeno, and many more
- For fans of Japan’s erotic comics, we’ve got several great new books, including a superb manga of cherry blossoms in the spring by Shinyusha and the erotic and mysterious series of short stories called Female Panther
- Also restocked manga such as Married Women’s Lecherous Discipline (love those Japanese manga names), and New Century Big-Breasted Legend Natsumi
- For fans who want to read the excellent English translation of Tohru Nishimaki’s best-selling Blue Eyes manga series, we’ve gotten all copies in stock again in San Diego — and you now get a discount of 20% off if you order 3 or more issues together, too
- Also for Yaoi lovers, we’ve got the new issue of Kinniku Otoko (Muscle Man) for fans of big manly men
- For DVD fans, we have more incredible DVD titles for you starting with the Bring Up Ecstasy offering of Saori Kamiya — four hours of her best hardcore (region free)
- For fans of Japanese erotica who want to sample tons of great material, check out the Big Morkal DVD Anthology, with 4 hours of quickies from 70 titles (region free)
- From Soft on Demand, enjoy a massive festival of female masturbation, with female friends being challenged to touch each other and see how it feels — great for fans of “manko study” fetish (region free)
- Also from SOD, a great new chapter in their erotic lesbian anime, Lesbian Hospital 2 (region free)
- Also for Saori Kamiya lovers, a superb “Fetish and Erotic” offering that shows you all about the lovely AV girl, with many costumes and fetishes satisfied — and at a great price too (region 2)
- From Waap, enjoy “Double Moe” (MOH-eh), Moe Yamasaki and Moe Nishimura, two fabulous girls who get it in on for you in Sperm Lesbian of Friends (region 2)
- Finally, fresh stock of several great titles, including Aika Miura’s Respect, Kurumi Morishita’s Beautiful Slave, Ran Asakawa’s Endless Semen and the wonderful “Let’s Lesbian!”
Remember that J-List offers you discounts for buying multiple items. Want to get some great bishoujo games? Pick up 4 or more and get 20% off. Looking for hentai manga? Get 4 or more books and get 15% off. You can also get 15% off 4 or more DVDs. All discounts are calculated automatically at check out.
I had a typo in one of my Japanese phrases posted last time. It should have been “Chotto futorimashita ne” (You’ve gained weight, haven’t you?). Sorry about that.
A friend of mine is taking a dream trip around the world with his BMW motorcycle, going from Japan, through Mongolia and Russia to Europe and then beyond. If you’d like to see his adventures in Siberia, his page is here: http://www2.gol.com/users/chrisl/travel/ (the page is in English and Japanese, but the Japanese text seems to have gotten corrupted during uploading).
