Hello again from all your friends in Japan!
I’ve lived in Japan for twelve years now, and I’ve had some really fun times. Japan is famous for having vending machines selling just about anything you can think of, from fresh eggs to rice to underwear, and there are more vending machines here per capita than any other country — one for every 23 people. Beer vending machines that sell beer and other alcoholic drinks until 10 pm are quite common, too, and I’ve made use of these from time to time in the past. Back in my days as a single gaijin, you could probably find me hanging out with friends in front of the Sapporo Black Label vending machine near Maebashi Station, enjoying a cold one and having conversations with whoever walked by on their way to the station. It was a Good Time in an almost Hemmingway-esque sort of way. Now that I live in a liquor store (the first floor of our house is a liquor store, which my wife’s parents run), I’m afraid I don’t get out to the old vending machine much.
America may lead the world in military technology, but Japan clearly has an advantage when it comes to vacuum cleaners. Since Japanese houses are smaller than those in the U.S., the vacuum cleaners are much smaller, too, which makes them easier for Japanese to use. Since consumers are buying up “minus ion” (negative ion) products these days, most vacuums advertise this as a feature — improve your well-being just by vacuuming your floor. Other vacuums have somehow managed to eliminate the exhaust that comes out of the back of the unit altogether, don’t ask me how. Cordless vacuums are popular with young housewives who want to clean the entire house without worrying about where the plug is. But our favorite feature are bagless vacuum cleaners that put all the dirt from your floor into a plastic cup that you can easily empty. It gives us a good feeling to see all the dirt that we’re removing from our house when we clean. We like this kind of vacuum cleaner so much we brought one to my mother for Christmas last year.
A joke that’s currently making the rounds among elementary school kids in Japan: if Doraemon and Barutan-seijin (Alien Baltan, the crab-like alien from the 1960’s Ultraman TV series) were to fight, which one would win? Doraemon, of course, because his hands are balled up into fists (e.g. rock) but Alien Balta’s hands look like scissors, thus Doraemon would win every game of Rock, Paper, Scissors they played.
Most gaijin who are interested in Japan come to love the kanji character set, the way it blends complexity and beauty to communicate meaning. For fans of the aesthetic look of Chinese characters, we’re starting a new service for you: you can get any message or slogan written on a traditional Japanese “shikishi” writing board, penned by our own Daisuke, who holds a 2-dan level in Japanese calligraphy, the equivalent to a Black Belt.
We’ve updated the descriptions and added new pictures of the Canon Wordtanks, to better help students of Japanese in making a buying decision. We’d missed a few of the features, like the display quality and cool scrolling features on the two higher-end models, but have added them for you now now. We’ve also done a “quick and dirty” translation of manual for the low-cost IDC-300, for people who want to take advantage of this bargain unit (which is now just $100) but need help with its operation. You can download all the Wordtank manuals in Adobe PDF format from our site, too.
For the new update, we’ve got some excellent products from Japan for you. They include:
- First, in a special rare treat from Japan, Disney has released one of our favorite animated movies on DVD — Sleeping Beauty, available now in a wonderful 2-disc release, sold only in Japan! If you’ve got a region free DVD player, you can enjoy this fantastic film (region 2)
- For fans of cool Japanese toys and other rare items from Japan, see the really cool figures of the famous faces of Japan’s Meiji Restoration — talk about cool!
- If you love Japanese idols and Race Queens, be sure and catch the lovely Cool Girls, which features many great Race Queens inside, including Taiwanese bombshell Yinling
- Also, for fans of incredibly pretty Japanese girls, see Real Blue, a photo tribute to Asuza Yamamoto
- We’ve got a great update for our snack fans, with green tea chocolate snacks, delicious limited edition March of the Koalas (the food loved by Crayon Shinchan), tasty spring Kit Kat, and banana Hi-Chew
- Also, delicious gummi treats and collectible cards from Meiji’s cute Angel Blue character line
- Another cool item from Japan, we’ve got more funny erasers, this time shaped like traditional Japanese sweets
- For fans of Sailor Moon, several cool items including a great new card series in stock, a positively fantastic cold cast anime statue of Sailor Saturn, and fresh stock of the Sailor Moon Musical 10th anniversary DVD
- Totoro fans will flip over a cool pack of Totoro playing cards, which feature superb illustrations by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki
- Also, Morning Musume fans have a second chance to pick up Mo-Musu playing cards before we sell out again
- If you’re a Godzilla fan, we’ve got more of the cool Godzilla Movie Poster History Magnets, which feature the posters of all the Godzilla film of the past and present — so cool!
- We’ve got fresh stock of several popular DVDs, including Yuko Ogura’s cute and sexy Endless Summer, and the wacky Vermilion Night, avant-garde Japanese late-night TV available to you
- For fans of really cool traditional items from Japan, we’ve got some “lucky frog” phone strap/keychains in stock for you
- If you love Japanese Hot Wheels or Speed Racer, we’ve restocked the cool Hot Wheels Mach 5, sold only in Japan
- For students of Japanese (or of any other language), we’ve restocked the excellent vocabulary study books from Campus — very Japanese and very cool
- Finally see a nifty sandwich box with cup, a cute way to sweep up spills, more funny signs in Japanese, some unique bath salt for your bath, cool chopsticks from Japan, and more!!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For fans of beautiful adult video actresses from Japan, we’ve got the super new issues of Best Video and Video Boy, both of which are great for seeing a huge swath of top-name actresses and lots of glossy nude photos
- For fans of amateurs, we’ve got a great “Peach Ass Girl” magazine in stock featuring many lovely girls inside
- Enjoy great hardcover nude photobooks like the new offering by the incredibly sexy Natsuki Abe, and a beautiful photobook capturing the loveliness of Sally Yoshino
- For leg fetish fans, we’ve got a great photobook featuring super sexy girls in colored tights, a great fetish item
- We’ve got more excellent manga posted for fans of Japan’s culture of erotic art — we especially liked the erotic O-Rouge from Angel Comics for its incredibly good artwork
- Yasu has also posted a major restocking of some great hentai manga works, including Nami SOS, Pururun Princess, and more
- For yaoi fans, a great new “extreme yaoi” work collecting the artwork of many talented artists — get it before it sells out
- For fans of our hugely popular Hello Kitty vibrators (which are unfortunately out of production forever), we’ve got another wacky item for you — a waterproof personal massager that you can use safely in the bath or shower
- For our DVD collecting fans, we’ve got another huge selection of great works for you, starting with the new Mejiri (“Ass of Woman”) series release from Alice Japan, featuring the incredibly lovely Ryoko Mitake taking on her first anal performance ever (region free)
- From Soft on Demand, a superb Sayaka Tsutsumi Memorial featuring her best works, on the eve of her retirement from adult films (region free)
- We love Akira Watase for her silky, sexy style, and now you can see her best works in a new Remix DVD release (region free)
- The lovely Juri Matsuzaka is trying out her first bukkake performance ever, and she really puts her all into it for her fans (region free)
- From Queer and U&K, another excellent lesbian offering for serious fans of this Japanese fetish (region free)
- From Idea Pocket, another great 2-DVD release featuring 20 stars and 180 minutes of great works from some of the most beautiful gals of 90’s AV, including many girls who are retired now (region 2)
- Finally, look for great restocked DVD titles including Ran Asakawa’s “Queen & Slave,” Sora Aoi’s “Happy Go Lucky,” International Lesbian, and more!
The J-Mate site has been updated again, with new reviews of great product that you can find at J-List, including the Stairway to Heaven, Highway to Hell lesbian DVD and and I.K.U. Stop by and read interviews with real Japanese AV actresses in English. The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
Remember that J-List’s famous Japanese T-shirts, with bizarre messages like “Dirty American Devil” and “I’m proud of my sexual power,” are in stock and available for immediate shipping from our San Diego warehouse. All shirts are printed in the U.S. and all are full American sizes. If you’re unsure what size you are, note that you can easily check the sizes of our shirts in inches or centimeters — just look for the “Shirt size” link below each shirt. This is great for our customers outside the U.S. who may not be sure what their size is in U.S. sizes. If you buy 3 or more of these cool shirts, you get an automatic 10% off through the shopping cart, too.
—
________________________________
J-LIST http://www.jlist.com
You’ve got a friend in Japan at J-List.
