Greetings from J-List again, on this lovely Friday evening. This update is coming to you from Tokyo. I’m here on business, but wanted to complete the day’s update on time, so I’m sending it via my iBook.
In Japan, there’s a famous chain of restaurants called Anna Miller’s. A great American-style establishment serving “Boston style” food that’s really good, and their pies can’t be beat by any restaurant in Japan. But Anna Miller’s is famous for another reason: their sexy waitress uniforms, which feature very short skirts and, er, support for various parts of a woman’s anatomy. As part of the general Japanese boom in “cosplay” (costume play, i.e. dressing up in various uniforms or costumes), the Anna Miller’s sexy waitress uniforms have become famous throughout the country, and are as recognizable to Japanese as the Playboy Bunny is to Americans. To see what the uniform looks like, just search for “waitress cosplay” on the J-List site and see what comes up — the bishoujo game Viper M1 also features a girl wearing this famous costume on the cover. Supposedly, the best place to experience Anne Miller’s is the restaurant in Meguro, Tokyo (the girls are supposed to be the prettiest there, according to Tomo, who is an expert). I’m heading there for dinner tonight with a friend, so I’ll check it out. The official homepage of Anne Millers can be seen at http://www.imuraya.co.jp/annamillers/index.html . (It speaks volumes of the company that they don’t have their own .com or .co.jp site in the year 2002.)
Tomorrow is the official unofficial opening of Star Wars: Attack of the Cones in Japan, and all around the country theatres are showing special sneak-previews. I’ll be waiting in line with the rest of the fans, despite the fact that I saw the film in the U.S. last month — it’s sort of a “fan thing” to want to wait in line and see the movie on the first day. One thing I will not do is pay to see the film in a “standing room only” showing, though. In Japan, they cheerfully continue to sell tickets to movies even after all the seats are sold out, although more modern theatres are slowly switching to an assigned seating system, where you are pre-assigned to a certain seat as on airline flights. You can generally buy beer in most modern Japanese theatres (“I’m talking about a glass of beer”). Movies in Japan are unfortunately very expensive — $18 for adults in most showings, but better theatres in Tokyo charge $24 for an event like Star Wars. Of course, we willingly pay these prices.
If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese people may seem to have a thicker accent than people from some other countries when speaking English, the fault lies with Japanese being a relatively impovershed language phonetically. In the various dialects of American English, there are 12 phonetic vowels which we pronounce, but in Japanese, there are just five, and all sounds in the language are limited to a strict syllable-based sound system. Also, the Japanese have only one set of sounds that corresponds to L and R, which causes much confusion for them when learning to pronounce some words. As a result of these incompatibilities, some English words just don’t work very well when imported into Japanese. As I’ve said before, most Japanese think the film “Lord of the Ring” is really “Road of the Ring” because the words lord and road are the same when said in Japanese. There’s an anime called Bubblegum Crash, but I’m not really sure it’s “crash,” since “clash” and “crush” would also be the same when pronounced in Japanese. One of the most famous problems caused by incompatibilities in the Japanese phonetic system is the word “election,” a word whose meaning changes quite a bit if you get the L/R wrong.
For the update today, we’ve got many nice new items for you. Our anime, snack, wacky and other items include:
- For fans of Japan’s lovely swimsuit idols, some new items, including a great card series featuring the beautiful Yumiko Shaku
- Various snack items, including new fried rice mixes from Japan that are delicious, new miso soup, and more
- A new bento set, perfect for fans of Japan’s boxed lunch culture
- For anime and toy fans, several new items, including a fabulous recreation of Astro Boy with a high-quality case, new Japan-only Hot Wheels, and more
- J-List loves the high-quality pre-painted anime statues produced in Japan, and we’ve gotten stock of two positively incredible items from Final Fantasy VII
- We have new Hello Kitty items, including Hello Kitty wet tissues perfect for removing your makeup at the end of the day (great for carrying with you, too), a deluxe Hello Kitty dish, cup and chopstick set that makes a great gift, more Hello Kitty onigiri (rice ball) maker, and more!
- Many other wacky items that could only come from Japan.
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- First, new magazines, including the new Gal’s Dee, the popular magazine for fans of Japanese women of “D” cup or larger — the new issue features the lovely Yui Morishita and many more
- Also, for fans of our bargain priced magazines on page three, we’ve got new discounted items for you
- We have some nice photobooks for you, too, including Do Ero, a very interesting fetish photobook
- For fans of manga, we’ve got new volumes for you, along with several back-in-stock popular items — also, the excellent volume 5 of Blue Eyes has finally been released!
- Also, a nice new doujinshi item that’s all in English, a very interesting work for fans of Japan’s unique fan-made doujinshi comics
- For DVD collectors, we’ve got some nice new titles for you, including “Itsuki Kinoshita Answers the Flagrant Requests of Semen Maniacs,” an excellent new bukkake/semen fetish title from SOD
- Also, a new release in the best-selling No Cut!! DVD series, which gives you three full video releases over three hours on one DVD — this one features the lovely Asuka Ozora
- Also, a new release from M’s Video Group’s famous president Kazuhiko Matsumoto and Soft on Demand, the first tie-in of a famous manga story with an amazing bukkake AV production
- Many more items!
Remember that J-List carries a wide variety of snacks from Japan, with about 100 different items in stock at all times, with everything from Pocky (popular chocolate covered sticks) to Shigekix (super-sour “hard gummi”) to Japan’s famous spicy caffeine gum, Black Black. All items have a “freshness date” printed on the packaging, and we guarantee that all the items we sell are within the date when the items are sent to you. So check out our fun snacks section!
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