Hello again from all of us in Japan!
If you’re going to travel to Japan, you’d better bring your suitscase, and make sure you wear a clean shirts and a nice suits. My favorite sports is soccer, and my favorite anime show is Fruits Basket. Sound odd? For some inexplicable reason of Japanese phonetics, some English words are imported into Japanese in their plural forms. The word for a suit in Japanese is “suits,” even though you may only be talking about one suit, and a can of fruit juice is “fruits juice.” Japanese don’t mind these words, although the misuse of English grammar tends to give English natives the heebie jeebies at first. Then you get used to the strange words, and the next thing you know, you’re accidentally using them in English while talking to your mother on the phone — how embarrassing. Sometimes the words are used in their plural forms to make them easier for Japanese to pronounce or write, and other times because to keep two words from sounding the same in Japanese. Because “fruit” and “flute” would have the exact same pronunciation when written in katakana, the writing system used for expressing foreign loan words, the musical instrument became “furu-to” and the edible stuff became “furu-tsu.”
When you learn a foreign language, especially one that’s very different from your native language, you get used to words on one side not matching up perfectly with words on the other side. Take the word “heart,” which has several possible translations in Japanese. One is “kokoro,” a concept which encompasses the philosophical elements of the heart and mind, including the soul. I watched the Matrix in Japanese the other day, and “kokoro” was the word Morpheus used to describe the “minds still wired to the system.” (Incidentally, the Japanese believe the soul is located in your chest, but Westerners would say it’s located in your head.) Another word, “shinzou,” describes the actual physical organ that pumps blood through your body. Finally, the English word “heart” (haato) is used the way it’s often used in English, i.e. to express love and heartbreak, and also to describe the famous heart shape, which has no other name in Japanese. Learning foreign languages is fun because it makes you reflect on how your own language is structured.
We love the cult status our wacky Japanese T-shirts have attained, and we thank you for your kind support. Our “Proud of my Sexual Power” shirt is one of our most popular designs, with its cool dragon shape winding around the Japanese text. When we made the silver versions of these two shirts, we made a mistake with the mixing of the silver paint, with the result being that the silver flecks come off in the washing machine, leaving a solid grey color underneath. Unfortunately we’d printed a bunch of these shirts with the improperly mixed silver paint. The shirts still look great after they’ve been washed, but since they didn’t come out quite as we intended, we decided to sell the shirts at a big discount. If you’re interested in getting one of these discounted shirts, please see them on our site.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, for fans of the excellent Final Fantasy X-2, we’ve got the incredibly detailed new soft vinyl figures from Square Enix, and boy are they cool!
- For fans of our unique Japanese footwear, we’ve got some great new zori sandals for you, with several great designs of these cool “tatami shoes” including an extra-large deluxe pair with real leather bottoms
- Japanese erasers with funny shapes are popular in Japan these days, and you can get it on it with the sets of fun Japanese erasers we’ve got for you — enjoy both fruit and vegetable and ice cream erasers!
- For fans of delicious Japanese snacks, enjoy tasty Bon Curry boil in bag curry that you can put on white rice, delicious Fruche gelatin dessert drink mix, and more delicious dried, shredded squid that goes great with beer!
- Also, we’ve got a super new ramune candy item, a delicious five-pack of ramune candy in five delicious flavors
- If you love JPOP idols, we recommend the ultracute new photobook of Aya Matsuura, the new super doll of the Japanese cute idol scene
- We love to carry Japanese films on DVD, complete with English subtitles for fans living outside of Japan — see the great new film Phantom Light, starring the stylish and lovely Makiko Esumi (region 2)
- If you or your little one loves Hello Kitty, why not play “dart balls” with a great Kitty dart board set that comes with Velcro balls for you to throw — it even keeps score!
- For Totoro lovers, we’ve got two absolutely fabulous Totoro watches that will really make others take notice — both are very high quality and made by Seiko
- J-List stocks many fun items for your kitchen — see fresh stock of onigiri makers as well as a fun egg shape ring, Sanrio Shinkansen chopsticks and more
- Want to clean your ears the way the Japanese do? We’ve got some great 100% cotton swabs that come with soft hooks at the ends, perfect for gently cleaning the insides of your ears
- Like cute things with funny English on them? We’ve got some all-purposes pouches (they make nice pencil cases) with super cute English printed on them
- Finally, look for other great items like a puzzle photo frame, more all-purpose handy cases for you to store things in, authentic chopsticks from Japan, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- First, for fans of great Japanese adult magazines, we’ve got the new issues of Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, both featuring top Japanese gals like Yuko Ogura, Yinling and more!
- For fans of hardcore magazines, enjoy the new Shuffle, featuring couples in love hotels doing unspeakable things
- We also love great Japanese hardcover photobooks — check out new offerings by super Japanese cutie Eri Sakai and the elegant and sexy Sayaka Tasuta
- We’ve also restocked several nice photobook items including Yuko Ogura’s popular Rorinco, Eiko Koike’s super sexy Candy Girl and more
- Japanese “dick girls” are a popular theme in erotic culture here, and we’ve got a new photobook for fans of hermaphroditism or chicks with dicks, known as New Half in Japan
- For hentai manga fans, our staff has been working hard for you, adding a half dozen or so great hentai books including a superb new work by Bijogi Junction, the erotic sex of Zero no Mono, and more!
- Also, we’ve got a huge update of great hentai manga with several books that had been out of stock for a long time — check them all our now
- For DVD fans, we’ve got some great items for you, starting with the great Masterpiece Concentration DVD release of Aki Sawamiya, said to be the “second Aika Miura” because she’ll perform any sexual act in front of the cameras (region free)
- Sola Aoi (aka Sora Aoi, aka Blue Sky) has gained many fans because of her girl next door beauty and sexy body — see a great new DVD of her best sex just for you (region free)
- SOD, the company that brought you pretty girls kicking men in the balls, is looking for the next fun fetish to bring you, and this time it’s “cat fighting” or the joy of watching two women slap each other silly and fight it out. Enjoy a new concept for fans of pretty girls slapping the shit out of each other! (region free)
- Enjoy a host of pretty amateur girls who use their highly developed tongues to bring pleasure to men in a new erotic release from Martian Devil and SOD (region free)
- Enjoy the erotic sex of AV porn star Kay in a great new release from Waap, featuring her excellent fellatio, bukkake and group sex (region 2)
- Then see the high quality bukkake sex of Momo Hoshino in a great work featuring many men blowing their wads on her face, in her hair, and more — see it all in the new Dream Shower from Waap (region 2)
- Lesbian fans love the very erotic lesbian performances of the U&K company, a fantastic indies studio that specializes in all-lesbian indies releases — you can now enjoy vol. 4, 5 and 6 of their popular titles in region free DVD format!
- Finally, see many newly restocked DVDs, including several lesbian kissing fetish items, more all-nude sports titles, and more!
Remember that J-List carries virtually every English translated love-sim game available out of our San Diego office. We carry all titles by Peach Princess, G-Collections, Hobibox Europe, and JAST USA. We positively love these unique story-based games which accurately give you a cultural snapshot of an important aspect of Japanese popular culture. The English hentai games we carry are translated faithfully into English with no “writing down” of cultural elements for non-Japanese, and they’re also uncensored, too! Browse our great games or email us if you’d like us to give you an honest recommendation. And don’t forget that you get 20% off for buying 4 or more games!
Also, remember that J-List is the only place you can get the excellent and authentic high school uniforms from Matsukameya of Nagoya. These are extremely well made girls’ uniforms that are famous all over Japan, and they’re just beautiful. These authentic Japanese school uniforms aren’t cheap, but we know that you’ll be totally happy with the unparalleled quality of these products. We humbly suggest that you might want to wear one of these school uniforms as cosplay at this summer’s anime conventions — it will get you noticed!
