Hello again from Japan, where “bimbo” refers to someone without any money…
I’ll teach you four words of Japanese, which have to do with family relationships — oniisan, oneesan, ojisan and obasan. They mean, respectively, older brother, older sister, uncle and aunt. But the words have a different nuance when applied to peopple who aren’t related to you. Oniisan and oneesan can be applied to any friend aged 12-28, while ojisan and obasan are generic words for “middle-aged man” and “middle-aged women.” Whether a given adult is an “oniisan” or an “ojisan” (i.e., perceived as being young or old) depends on the person who is perceiving, and sometimes it can be a grey area. At 32, I consider myself young at heart, certainly nowhere near middle age, yet from Japanese kids’ point of view, I fall squarely into the “ojisan” demographic. A cornerstone of Japanese humor falls around these concepts — a young woman who is called “obasan” by a child, when she consideres herself to be an “oneesan.” It comes up in anime all the time.
The sounds coming out of people’s cellular phones here in Japan continue to get more and more interesting. In addition to selecting many different songs that play when your phone rings, and allowing you to download them off the Internet, Yasu’s phone allows you to select various sound effects from 80’s video games — so instead of a normal ringer, his phone plays sounds from Xevious or Space Invaders. Another recent addition is the “get on the train, the train is leaving” music that plays on the train platform on the Tokyo Yama-no-te train line. Nearly everyone in Japan carries a “keitai” (cellular phone) or a “pitch” (the nickname for PCS, aka PHS, phones), and competition among phone providers is always cutthroat.
The About J-List page has been updated, with information and pictures of Yasu, the newest face here at J-List, along with manga-ized pictures of my kids.
The J-List site had some problems on Wedesday, and was inaccessible off and on for several hours. We apologize for the problems, and are working on a permanent, long-range fix that will also incorporate many often-requested features. Currently, many of the large graphic images have been removed from the site and will come up as dead links. Please view the smaller images until we get this problem fixed.
For today’s update, we’ve got some great new items for you, including:
- For one thing, we’ve got some nice new magazines, including a new issue of Peach Water, a super swimsuit and sailor suit fetish magazine, and Cotton, a deluxe “Photoshot” format item for all fans of Japanese girls
- On magazine page 3, we’ve posted several new low-price magazines, including some of our popular $5 items that always sell so well
- For MPEG lovers, there’s a cool item — the DVD & Video CD Perfect Guide, a hefty magazine with *three* Video CDs filled with cool Japanese AV sampler mateial — 3 hours in all!
- For fans of Japan’s elegant hardcover glossy photobooks, a very special item — and one that saddens us. We’ve posted stock of the *final* photobook of the delictible Hagiwara Mai, and the beauty of this girl must be seen to be believed
- We have fresh stock of several items on the leg fetish photobook page, including Bikyaku Club, for lovers of Japanese legs
- We have a nice update of erotic manga for you, with several all-new offerings, as well as fresh stock of the “A Wonderful Feeling” series, re-released by the publisher
- For dojinshi lovers, we’ve posted some nice limited-stock items, too — check them before they’re gone!
- We’ve also posted some nice and elegant Gundam Wing yaoi dojinshi, too
- For DVD fans, we’ve got two very nice offerings — a great double “Mature Flowers Blossoming” set, featuring two lovely mature women who definitely know what they’re doing; and Morishita Kurumi’s performance as the “masochistic nurse” in Tohjiro’s Female Body Laboratory
- For collectors of region 2 DVDs, another very special item — a super 3 hour sexual performance by the lovely Ichigo Milk, who attained popularity with J-List fans with her great “Tennyo” photobook release last year
- For Japan AV video fans, two cool items: a re-release of Iijima Ai’s “Mejiri” AV performance (great for collectors of this series), and a super erotic anime cosplay video, featuring Chun Li, Lum, Cutey Honey, Sakura, and more
- For those interested in the new biligual comics from Kodansha, we’ve posted vol. 2-4 of the Love Hina English manga volumes for pre-order, on the Anime & Toys page
- Also for anime fans, we’ve posted some back-issues of Newtype, the excellent Japanese animation “moving pictures magazine” — see the Anime & JPOP magazines page (on the Anime master category)
- We’ve had great success selling Japanese tea on J-List, and now we’ve posted two new varieties to the Snacks & Food page — authentic Chinese Jasmine tea, and a cool item, Chinese Diet Slim tea, great for dieters
- There are new items on the Stickers & Signs page, including new wacky wooden signs with Japanese messages on them that only J-List could bring you
- Finally, we’ve got some cool items on our Wacky Things from Japan page for you, including fresh stock of our popular hiragana and katakana study notebooks, an elegant Japanese replacement for your fannypack, and more!
Remember that you can find many interesting (?) articles on Japan, such as the “You’ve been in Japan too long when…” list, on my personal homepage at http://www.peterpayne.net/ . You can also search past J-List updates since the beginning of J-List.
