Greetings from J-List June 7, 2002

Hello again from your friends in Japan!

Well, the World Cup is going on now, and I could feel the energy right when I got off the plane at Narita. Every I looked, Japanese were anxious about the world’s most important soccer (football) event, and looked very proud to have so many foreigners coming to Japan to watch the games. Looking good in the eyes of foreigners is very important to the Japanese, and the airport was spotless and beautiful as extra guards patrolled to make sure no terrorists attacked.

Japanese names are interesting to study. Japanese put their family names before their first names, so that Ai Nagase’s name is really Nagase Ai if you’re in Japan. It can be confusing, which is part of why we developed the J-List search engine to bring up the same results. Japanese female names often have “ko” in them (Keiko, Miko, etc.), which means “child.” Boy’s names, on the other hand, often reflect their status in the family. If a boy is the oldest son, he’ll often have a name that indicates this, by having the number 1 or the word “first” in it. (I can tell that Ichiro is the oldest son in his family because ichi is “one” in Japanese.) The most “vanilla” sounding names in Japanese (i.e., the names that correspond to John and Mary Smith in English) are Taro and Hanako Yamada. Japanese names always use kanji, Chinese characters, and just as there are various spellings for Western names, there are often many ways to write a person’s name in kanji.

For the first update to the J-List site since I returned to Japan, we’ve got another fine volley of high-quality and wacky products from Japan, including:

• First, we’re happy to announce a new bishoujo game from Hobibox Europe, the Viper Limited Edition CD-ROM, which is a 2D scrolling game that’s great fun, along with a CD full of excellent CG and many other extras, including the uncensored VM1 artwork — this great title is in stock now and is only $14.95!
  
• We have some excellent new magazines, starting with the new Urecco (featuring the lovely Maiko Kazano, Rina Okada and so many more), as well as several superb amateur and kogal magazines
  
• We’ve got the excellent new Photo Shot DX, featuring no less than *44* of the most popular erotic Japanese women, including Ai Kurosawa, Rio Sannomiya and many more
  
• We’ve got some excellent new nude and erotic photobooks, including new hardcover items, and a superb new offering in the Yellows series by Akira Gomi
  
• For fans of Japan’s great hentai manga, we’ve got another big update, with some excellent deluxe and lower-priced manga volumes
  
• For fans of one of the most popular bishoujo games in history, Tokimeki Memorial, we’ve got some nice art books by the artist
  
• For DVD collectors, we’ve got some great new titles, starting with the “erotic drama” of Kurumi Morishita and Ai Nagase, detailing the strong lesbian love of these girls (Ai-chan plays a girl in a wheelchair) — just great, from Tohjiro’s Dogma label (region free)
  
• Also from Dogma, see the incredibly sexy “mother and daughter nymphomaniac pair” of Sayaka Tsutsumi and Marie Sugimoto (region free)
  
• From Soft on Demand, see the extremely erotic “cosplay jukujo bukkake” performance of the lovely Reika (region free)
  
• A cool new “zapping” erotic DVD from SOD lets you interactively switch between one of three hot girls to see what their doing with their day — who they’re talking to, who they’re having sex with, etc. (region free)
  
• For fans of Bauhaus’s excellent soft porn DVD releases, we’ve got a new offering with the lovely Kaori Kuraishi (region free)
  
• Enjoy the loveliness of Ichigo Milk in a very erotic new offering from TMA Agency (region free)
  
• For fans of Japan’s fun toy and anime items, we’ve got some nice new items, including new Japan-release Hot Wheels, a cool figure from the Ultraman universe, and a die-cast recreation of one of the coolest trains in Japan
  
• We have fresh stock of the popular Japan-only Star Wars “super deformed” Battle Droids, too
  
• For Licca-chan fans, we’ve got limited stock of the “Kogal” Licca-chan, a contemporary version of Licca with short high school skirt, loose socks, portable phone, and “jaguar style” purse
  
• For fans of our Japanese snack items, we’ve got several, including “Lamune Marshmallows,” cool Calpis candy (which is really good, trust us), new Japanese teas and fried rice mixes, and more
  
• Also, a restock of many popular items, including our very popular Sushi Gummi, fruit-flavored “fish” made of gummi on marshmallow “rice”, and fresh stock of some of our most popular Japanese gum, including Lotte’s Black Black (spicy caffeine gum), Blue Berry gum, and more
  
• Hamtaro is coming to the U.S., and we’ve got some cool Hamtaro items for you, including hamster bento boxes, Hamutaro coloring books, and more!
  
• If you love Japan’s irresistible swimsuit and sexy idols, check out the new items we’ve got for you
  
• Finally, lots of other items, including sushi making molds, funny fish-shaped soy sauce bottles, shaved ice gummi, and more!
  

We’ve updated the J-List “Top 5” (really a top 10) has been updated, so you can check out what products have been selling the most over the past two weeks.

We’re almost ready to switch the J-List site over to the new server, which will be faster and will have several new features. If anything suddenly goes wrong, we’ll get it fixed right away. Please let us know if you experience any problems with the site — thanks in advance!