Greetings from Japan, where it’s not polite to stick your chopsticks straight up in your rice (“only dead people” do this).
I’ve got a new “keitai,” or portable phone. Seeing all the interesting things Kaori and Harumi did with their phones, my wife and I broke down and bought new ones. The model we got is the latest thing from J-Phone, one of several cellular phone companies that compete to bring interesting services to Japanese consumers. It features a full color display and a tiny camera on the back, and can take pictures and send them as email attachments. It has a built-in calendar application, can send and receive email (including images sent by others), and can even browse the web, although it doesn’t have enough memory to view normal pages (sites have to be specially formatted for the small screen). It has dozens of sounds and songs you can set for your phone’s ringing effect, from Canon in D minor to dogs barking to new songs you download. It also can execute Java applets, allowing you to download dozens of games — there’s even a bishoujo game you can play on your phone. Online banking, JR train schedules, fortune telling and a “digital character” Yuki Terai are some of the things you can do with the phone. This phone set us back about $75 per phone, but most of the other phones in Japan with fewer features can be had for around $20 each — very cheap. If you want to see some samples of the pictures the phone takes, here are pictures of the lovely ladies of J-List (including the newest face at J-List, Mayumi-chan, who started work two days ago).
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I got my phone the same day my iPod arrived (J-List is an all-Macintosh company, after all), so I’ve got my hands full of cool techno-gadgets right now, I can tell you…
The “name suffixes” (such as -san) used in Japanese are a well-known part of the Japanese language, and the various nuances attached to them are quite interesting. In several of JAST USA’s bishoujo games, the translators chose to leave the suffixes in the English translation, allowing the nuances to be experienced even in the English version. “-san” is the “basic” name suffix that everyone has heard of. It is very polite, and is used to create distance between the person speaking and the person they are speaking to. Usually used with the last name (e.g. Fujita-san), it’s also used with the first name (Tomo-san) to show politeness while also showing familiarity at the same time. Two other name suffixes, “-chan” and “-kun,” are ostensibly used when talking to girls and boys, or women and men (e.g. Kaori-chan, Yasu-kun). Add the -chan or -kun suffix to a name denote closeness and friendship. Younger people never use “chan” or “kun’ to refer an older person, it would be rude. Another name suffix, “-sama”, is a used when talking to extremely high-ranking people (e.g., a feudal lord), but it isn’t used today at all, outside of anime.
Several customers told us they had problems logging into or otherwise accessing the J-List site yesterday. We think we’ve found the culprit, but if you experience any problems with the site, please email us at [email protected] right away. As always, if you have a problem with the J-List shopping cart but want to make a purchase, you can use our secure email form at https://www.jastusa.com/Merchant2/contact.mv?
- For this evening’s update, we have a very nice update for you, with many new items, including:
- First, J-List carries all the excellent bishoujo game titles from Himeya. Two of the best sellers are the Eve Burst Error and Adam the Double Factor, a two-game series. We’ve made a special set for customers who want to get both games and save $15
- We’ve got some excellent new magazines for you, including the new Urecco Gal, a special issue of Urecco for those who love beautiful kogals, and also a brand-new issue of the ever-popular Cream
- Also for adult magazine fans, several very nice amateur girls, one magazine dedicated to anal fetish themes, and something for fans of “komadam” (more experienced women aged 26-38)
- We have new photobooks, including the lovely hardcover photobook of Emily Yoshikawa, and a bold photobook featuring Chinese model Yinling
- We’ve got some excellent new erotic manga for you, including several very hardcore works with popular themes, and another restocking of very popular manga volumes that had sold out and been removed from the page
- If you like yaoi manga, we’ve got a very nice shatacon book filled with classic story and themes
- For fans of Japan’s “doujin” (underground) culture, we’ve got several CD-ROMs featuring “doujin-soft,” erotic CG images that doujin artists distribute in digital form, rather than printing books (doujinshi)
- For Soft on Demand DVD fans, we’ve got some excellent new DVDs posted for you, including a super “SOD Semen Best Selection,” a tribute to the company’s bukkake and zamen productions over the years, followed by Kendo Women vs Rape Devil, another excellent “erotic martial arts” release
- For Ai Nagase fans we’ve got not one, but two new DVDs for you: Ai wo Kudasai, an erotic production from Big Morkal featuring the cute indies idol, and She is my Little Angel, a new erotic release with Ai-chan decked out in the outrageous fashion of a Kogal
- When is seminude more erotic than nude? When the model is the lovely Serika Utsunomiya, and the director is the famous TOHJIRO from Soft on Demand
- In a rare “reverse fucking” video that only SOD could bring you, three lovely women perform rape and humiliation with strap-on dildos
- We’ve got several new wacky Japanese signs with messages on them, including a sticker that reminds you to keep everything neat and in its place
- If you’re studying Japanese, we have some things to help you, including kanji practice notebooks, very cheap Engligh to Japanese and Japanese to English dictionaries, and more
- We’ve restocked several “cute” items, including more Hello Kitty toilet paper, more Hello Kitty printed lunch bags (my 4 year old daughter recommends these), and fresh stock of the Picky’s Bear bento box
- We have an update in our Japanese snacks and food page, with new furikake (delicious food you sprinkle over rice), more delicious Tomato Pretz (tomato flavored pretzel snack, go figure), and more traditional Japanese hard candy
- Finally, for fans of our “wacky” items from Japan, find more funny ice cube traps that make funny-shaped ice, a new “ball point type” fine-tipped correction pen (the Japanese make them the best), a handy highlighting pen you can turn into a fashion accessory, a cute traditional Japanese game, and more!
The top 5 lists have been updated, so you can see what’s selling well at J-List these days.
J-List takes great pride in the wide range of Japanese popular (and just plain crazy) culture we’re able to bring you. For example, if you’re a fan of older Japanese AV idols who have retired and whose videos are quite hard to find, we’ve got a selection of re-release DVDs featuring their performances. If you have hobbies like models or anime or Japanese rock music, we carry monthly subscriptions to magazines on our pages. We’ve also got Pocky!
