Greetings from Japan, where “that’s true” means “no” and people bow while talking on the phone (I do it too…).
Some things in Japan are beyond easy comprehension to those outside the country. One are “Yakult Ladies.” Yakult (always pronounced “Yakuruto” in Japanese) is a popular “drinkable yogurt” that is sold in supermarkets and convenience stores. It’s also sold direct by the company by an army of “Yakult Ladies” who ride around the town on their bicycles (outfitted with packs to keep the drinks cold) and sell their drinks directly. When a woman has pedaled her bicycle all the way to where you work to bring you something to drink, it’s hard not to accommodate her and dig into your pocket for 100 yen — they make great use of this “giri” (obligation) to make sales. The Yakult Ladies are a unique way to market products, and they’re probably worthy of some study if you’re ever writing a book on Japanese business practices. They all dress the same, wearing one standardized green uniform throughout all of Japan, and they have company songs and great pride in their work.
Japan and Korea are very close to each other, and much of Japan’s culture is actually imported from Korea. A favorite dish of the Japanese is “yakiniku,” Korean Barbecue, served both at home and at many yakiniku restaurants. Basically, you order a big plate of pieces of beef and chicken and vegetables, and fry it directly on a big hot plate in the middle of the table. It’s fun to have everyone gathered around, picking pieces of meat out of the fire before they burn, dipping the meat into sauce and eating it with rice. I like another korean dish, kim chee, but the kimchee in Japan is never spicy enough (Koreans complain of this too).
Another food that is popular is “nabe” (NAH-beh) a word which means “pot” and which loosely describes any kind of food you make in a big pot and eat with everyone gathered around, talking while taking things from the pot (boiled fish, tofu, vegetables, miso, etc.). Chanko-nabe is the delicious food that sumo wrestlers eat to get so big, and kim chee nabe is also delicious. Sukiyaki is a form of nabe, and is both food to eat and a social event at the same time. Nabe is eaten in the winter — I’m looking forward to eating some sukiyaki soon.
After years of faithful service, the game Season of the Sakura has sold out. We still have stock of Three Sisters’ Story and May Club, the two games we’re offering on sale for $24.95, but our stock levels won’t hold out for long, so please pick these games up if you’re interested in trying them.
For the pre-weekend update, we’ve got an extra volley of new things for you, including:
- First, we’ve got new magazines, including the new Urecco (Eri Yukawa is so cute at her “busty picnic”), a new “Otakara” (treasure) magazine with embarrassing and nude pictures of famous idols from years ago, and the new Gal’s Shower, the #1 selling “wet” fetish magazine
- For photobook fans, some new and back-in-stock items, including the hardcover “comeback” photobook of Momo Aida (one of Peter’s old faves from the 1990’s)
- Also: be sure and check the new issue of Mini-Skirt Deluxe, a fantastic square-back magazine featuring the best leg-fetish photography in Japan
- Those enamored of anal themes should check out “Sweetie,” which features ass-centric photos of some very erotic idols
- For fans of Japanese adult idol trading cards, we’ve restocked the Crystal Card 2000 vol. 2 series (we have three whole boxes of 20 cards each in stock now)
- For manga fans, we’ve got another great selection of new wide manga works, filled with some of Japan’s most talented hentai artists for you, as well as a major restock of almost a dozen other books that had been sold out
- If you love G-Taste, the popular erotic art book series from Yagami Hiroki, we have fresh stock of volumes 2 and 3
- Also for manga lovers, a restocking of the Electric Fighting Daughters hentai game girl parody mangas
- For doujinshi lovers, check out Nyu-Gi-Oh, an erotic parody of Yu-Gi-Oh by the excellent doujinshi circle Kennix
- For DVD fans, we’ve got some excellent items for you, including DVD releases of Bukkake Circle vol. 1 (one of our most popular semen items), and good old Ball Breaker Erika (beautiful girl who kicks ass on would-be rapists)
- For fans of Ai Nagase and Mirai Hoshikawa, we’ve got a super “2 in 1” DVD featuring two complete releases for you — great for fans of sailor uniforms
- Japan has many lovely swimsuit idols, and one of the most popular is Kaori Manabe, who takes time off from her career as a college student to make a super busty swimsuit idol DVD for her fans
- For Japanese toy fans, we’ve got a deluxe fully posable Mobile Suit Gundam toy that is very cool, followed by a super set of Ultraman and his most famous foe, Alien Baltan, two highly collectible figures similar to the Kubrick toy line
- On our “cute things” wacky page, we’ve got a new bento box and cute spoons and forks based on a cute Japanese character “Hamster Club”
- For anime fans and card collectors — the very cool Yu-Gi-Oh “Struggle of Chaos” card series in stock
- We have restocked that old favorite, Japanese sake candy, a delicious hard candy made with real sake inside
- Also, we’ve got fresh stock of unique Japanese chewing gum, including Black Black (caffinated spicy gum to keep you awake), No Time (gum that brushes your teeth for you), and the ever-delicious Blueberry
- For those studying Japanese, we’ve got a nice new Campus Word Book (great for studying a language), and an improved version of our traditional Japanese writing paper (which sells very well, although we’re surprised at this)
- Finally, we’ve got many new “wacky” items for you, including some nice Japanese chopsticks (you can never have too many chopsticks), Japanese shiatsu boards for your feet, more wacky Japanese signs with messages on them, and more bizarre items!
J-List is the only place where you can find the Lunatic Party, Angelic Impact and Paradise Lost erotic parody doujinshi anthologies from Fusion Product. Each volume in the series is an excellent wide manga in B5 format, with the compiled works of a dozen hentai doujinshi artists. They offer excellent erotic parody of Sailor Moon and Evangelion, and are a great value, too, since each book has 160+ pages. They are out of print, so we’re never sure when they’ll stop being available to us.
