Good evening from the country where “bikini” pronounced backwards means “pimple” (nikibi).
Today I was talking with my wife about money, and Rina, my 4 year old daughter, said “Men never carry money. Women carry money.” It was an interesting observation, since my wife and I handle our financial matters in Japanese style — that is, the women takes care of all budgeting and financial matters. With most of my American friend who are married, the husband pays the bills and tracks the family’s monthly expenses, but in Japan, the wife nearly always controls the family purse strings. I like it just fine this way.
One of the more embarrassing aspects to living for a long time in a foreign country is forgetting your own native language. Quite often difficult English words which I haven’t used in a long time refuse to come to me, so I have to ask Tomo how to say a certain word in English. It’s quite funny. One word I can never seem to remember in is the English for “natsukashii” (which I now know is “nostalgic”). The other day, I needed to recall the word “obstetrician” for some reason, but couldn’t for the life of me recall this difficult English word that I hadn’t used in months or years. It was actually worse when I was an English teacher, and went for weeks or months without encountering native speakers. I’d get locked into “English teacher” mode, speaking extremely clearly, pronouncing every syllable of English words, and wouldn’t know how funny I sounded to other native speakers.
For this evening’s update, we have some lovely new items from Japan for you, including:
- First, some great new magazines, including the new Cho Very Good (for fans of tanned, slutty kogals), and the best “swimsuit fetish” magazine from Japan
- For photobook fans, we have some nice hardcover and softcover items for you, including some premium items with models from several years ago (they will go fast, so see the photobooks page soon)
- For fans of magazine + Video CD combination items, we’ve got two for you: AV Collection (including many samples from pro AV video releases) and a new issue of the popular Club Indies
- We’ve got some excellent all-new manga volumes posted, including Tenma Comics’ Run After You, as well as several very nice restocked items on both New and Best-selling manga pages
- Also on our manga pages, fresh stock of those popular oversized (A4) size erotic mangas
- If you love Japanese AV, we’ve got two killer offerings for you: the lovely debut video of Fukada Miho, one of my personal favorite ladies, and a super erotic video from Iijima Ai, the Queen of 90’s AV
- The Stark Nakedness Sports series has been an incredibly popular item for J-List over the years. Now we’ve got the Zenra Challenger 2, in which 108 all-nude Japanese girls compete for up to US$100,000 by doing various wacky sports in the buff — very fun! (we are waiting for our stock to come in on this item, so please find it on the SOD Special Order video page)
- For DVD fans — the very erotic “R” DVD by the very grown-up bad-girl Ijiri Sayaka
- For Japanese actress and idol fans, see Media Girls, a great idol magazine covering the lovely actresses in Japan today (on the idol stuff page)
- We have fresh stock of our surprisingly popular furikake (vegetable and salmon type), as well as an all-new item: Japanese mabo-dofu (a stewed, spicy tofu dish) that is one of my favorites
- We’ve got a bunch of excellent items on our Wacky Things from Japan page today, including more handy oil sheets made of real Japanese washi paper, the only bamboo chopsticks you’ll ever need, more of those handy Japanese warming pads, fashionable Buddhist beads you can wear, a Japanese “massage turtle” that will make your back and feet feel great, a “kitchen net” that keeps unwanted things from going down your drain, and a Japanese noodle spoon that’s great for spaghetti, too!
Remember you can see all kinds of wacky things on my personal homepage, including seeing the ultimate “You’ve been in Japan too long when…” list, reading silly comments from my former students, and more. Now at http://www.peterpayne.net/
