Greetings from J-List March 8, 2001

Hello and “Hoppy Thursday” from J-List!

Has a Japanese ever told you are “good head”? If so, it’s a complement, although it might not sound like one. In Japanese, the phrase for “smart” is “good head,” which sometimes gets carried over into English. The English words “smart” is used in Japanese to mean slender, well proportioned (as in, “That girl is very smart and stylish”). Other words are used in English in interesting ways. For example, when a man wants to win a woman’s love, he prepares to “attack” her — the English word attack means “to vie for the affection of another” and doesn’t carry the violent connotations it can in English. That’s good.

Near our house, we can see the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and many other interesting wonders. These are pachinko parlors, a major source of entertainment for many Japanese men and women in Japan. An odd game which I don’t pretend to understand, you basically buy a bucket of balls for $50, then sit for hours trying to hold a controller in just the right position to make most of the balls go into certain holes in the pachinko machine. Since “gambling” is illegal in Japan, except for certain events like horse, boat and bicycle racing, you don’t win money if you get more balls than you started out with — you get valuable prizes which you redeem at a shady building next to the pachinko parlor. Pachinko is quite competitive, and operators (who always seem to be getting involved with some crime or another) work very hard to bring in the newest machines (with little video screens, for example), and interesting names to attract customers (there’s one a few miles from here named Al Pacino). Despite the efforts of the pachinko industry to make the activity seem like a friendly and family-oriented thing to do, pachinko always seems to go hand in hand with the yakuza, and people who engage in pachinko don’t seem to be the brightest or most savory. (A while ago, a woman left her baby in the car while she played pachinko; the baby died.)

For this evening’s update, we’ve got some special items for you, including:

First, some excellent new magazines, including the Urecco — it’s a fabulous issue this time, featuring many charming models and “fresh nudes”
We have several other interesting magazines, including “Lip Mate,” a popular item
For photobook fans, see several new items posted, including Yano Emi’s “El Amor” and Ayami Shiho’s “Elopement,” both very beautiful
Also, we have fresh stock of some wonderful photobooks including Kawashima Azumi’s “Flow Out” and “Azumi II,” new stock of the dynamite “Sweet Trap” deluxe hardcover photobook, more stock of Futari and Love Session, and mor!
We’ve got a positively wonderful photobook for leg fetish fans, Hyper Low Angle, on our unique Japanese leg fetish page
For dojinshi collectors, we’ve got a few single issues posted to the dojinshi page now, including some nice items from the 1990’s
For manga fans, we’ve got our usual strong update of manga, half a dozen or more excellent items back in stock, and several more all-new offerings — including Tanuma Yuichiro’s excellent Princess of Darkness
On our DVD (Main) page, a nice new erotic DVD fraturing the sultry Sakura Makoto’s erotic performance — and this one is subtitled in English and Chinese!
Also newly posted, a selection of rare and bargain Video CD titles, including some by Miura Aika (we only have one of each though, so they will go fast)
We’e got some nice new AV videos in, including some nice S&M offerings from the excellent AquaWave
If you love Japan’s erotic bishojo games, check out Bishojo Wonder Land, a CD-ROM + magazine combo with many samples and demos on the disc
For anime fans we’ve got some nice anime items, including Dengeki Animation Magazine, filled with pictures and images from Love Hina, Sakura Wars, Card Captor Sakura, and more
On our popular Japanese snacks page, we’ve got the all-new Pokemon Gummi candies, featuring Pikachu and Pokemon, in two tasty flavors (we’ve found that if you hate Pikachu it can be fun to eat his gummi body slowly
Finally, on our Wacky Things from Japan page, including some cool stainless steel “cooking ring” to make pancakes and eggs in various shapes, an ultra-cool “parasol type” Japanese hanger that allows you to hang all your clothes in a small space, as Japanese do, and the ultimate Japanese address and “print club” book for you!
Due to a mail server glitch, the update went out multiple times to some people on the list last time. Very sorry about that — we’ll watch it and try to make sure problems like this don’t happen again.