Hello and TGIF from Japan, where it’s believe that if you cut your fingernails at night, you won’t be able to be with your parents when they die.
Rice is the staple food of Japan, and it’s eaten pretty much two or three times a day here. Japanese usually eat rice their rice white, steamed in electric rice cookers that are owned by virtually every household (we have two or three in our house). Rice is usually eaten as a side dish to other foods (hamburger steak, sashimi, etc.), and the food you eat as a main course along with your rice is called “okazu.” Supposedly, the idea of eating a small amount of a main dish with a lot of rice comes from Japan’s wartime past, when everyone was poor and had very little to eat except rice. The best rice in Japan comes from Niigata Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan side of the country (the Snow Country in Kawabata’s famous novel). It’s called Koshi-Hikari, and restaurants proudly boast of serving only this type of rice to their customers. The Japanese have a couple of different words for rice, depending on what form it’s in. “Genmai” refers to rice in its natural state, and “kome” (KOH-meh) is processed, uncooked white rice. Rice in its cooked form is “gohan,” and this word is also used to refer to all food, not just rice. (Similarly, “sake” refers to all alcoholic beverages, not just sake.) Eating rice is supposed to firm up your stool, and eating too much rice makes you constipated. With all the rice they eat, it’s no wonder that many women in Japan are constipated all their lives. Maybe they should eat a little less rice?
If you’ve ever been to Tokyo, it’s likely you’ve gone to Akihabara, the so-called “Electric Town” region of Tokyo where you can find hundreds of shops selling all kinds of electronic goods, computers, DVD players and more. Akihabara (or “Akiba” as it’s often called) is a great playground for shoppers, and whenever the train stops there you can be reasonably sure any gaijin on the train will get off at that stop. Unfortunately, while there’s a lot of cool stuff to find in the various stores there, the high cost of land in Tokyo even a decade of recession keeps prices quite high. When we are looking for new computers or a new “air-con” (an air-conditioning unit that also heats rooms), we know we’ll find lower prices in our own city, 100 km from Tokyo.
Whenever you learn a language, one of the first things you generally learn are the “bad” words — that’s just plain human nature. What many students of Japanese are surprised to find are, there are almost no really bad words to learn — if you define bad as words that kids aren’t allowed to use. “Kuso” (shit) is used regularly on children’s anime in Japan, and most kids use it normally while playing. “Baka” (stupid) is the catch-all insult, although my daughter takes it a step higher by saying “baka-jijii” (stupid old man), usually to strangers or to inanimate objects. The various applications of the “F” word don’t translate into Japanese at all — although virtually all Japanese know the English word, along with the English word “sekkusu,” and use them in English. What defines “bad” language in Japan is often not the words themselves, but the tone and style of speech — I forbade my kids to watch Gingaman (aka Power Ranger Galaxy) on TV in Japanese due to the rude yakuza-like tone of voices used by the villains. The only really “bad” word in Japanese is “manko” (referring to a woman’s reproductive organ) — a word as embarrassingly close to a famous tropical fruit as election/erection for Japanese speakers of English.
By the way, despite the notes on our website, we often get questions from customers asking if there’s a way they can buy from J-List if they don’t have a credit card. J-List accepts all major credit cards, and we also happily accept other payment options, like Paypal, check or money order through our P.O. Box in San Diego, and if it’s the only option open to you, cash sent carefully through the U.S. mail. If required, we can also accept Western Union. When you check out through the J-List website, select the proper payment method. As always, email us if you have any problems.
Recently we’ve started adding pictures to products below the product descriptions as well as above. For some users, these images were not appearing properly because the height and width of the pictures were not specific by our site. We’ve fixed this problem so the image links should work for everyone now.
For the new update, we’ve got a bunch of great items for you, including:
- First of all, we’re happy to announce all-new calendars, which have just come in stock — beautiful 2003 calendars for Ah My Goddess, Love Hina and Ken Akamatsu’s Mao-Chan. So cute!
- Also, we’ve updated the descriptions and added photos to another two dozen calendars, hopefully making it easier for you to choose which calendars you want. Note that many great items are starting to sell out, so please hurry and see which calendars you would like to get!
- For fans of Morning Musume, a special issue of Best Shot, the perfect bound photographic magazines — it comes with a mouse pad too!
- For Race Queen fans, we’ve attained more stock of the popular Cool Girls EX, a fantastic photobook featuring all the top stars
- For bento fans, we’ve got several restocked bento boxes and bento sets, including related items like sushi makers, and fresh stock of the classic fish-shaped soy sauce bottles that are so cool
- We carry a wide array of station goods and items to help you study Japanese, and we’ve gotten in some unique pencils, pens and cute notebooks for you today
- For fans of Japanese lovely idols, enjoy Mayuka Suzuki’s very nice DVD and magazine combination (region 2)
- For collectors of Hello Kitty items, we’ve got many new items that are only available from Japan, including two fantastic bento boxes, more of our popular Hello Kitty cups for your kitchen or office and some super-cute Hello Kitty kimono plush dolls
- We love limited edition toy items from Japan, and we’ve got a nice new item: a collection of nostalgic items from the Showa period in Japan, which bring you back to the Japanese postwar era — full sets are available, too!
- We have some handy Japanese carrying cases that will allow you to carry just about anything from a CD player to an iPod and more, and they come complete with funny English on them
- A popular food in Japan is “Tako-yaki” which is balls of fried batter with a piece of octopus (tako) meat inside — well, we now carry delicious Takoyaki flavored pretzel sticks!
- Also, we’ve restocked many snack items, including furikake, Meiji’s Choco Banana, fresh stock of the popular edible Candy Bubbles, and more!
- For Tomy mini-car fans, we’ve got a cool item, the official bus of Japanese pro wrestler Noah — we didn’t know what it was either, but it’s cool and very Japanese
- Finally, look for a bracelet that emits “negative ions,” more Japanese hot spring powder, onigiri makers so you can make Japanese rice balls, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. These new items include:
- First, a red-hot special issue of Gokuh Gold, a square-backed Photoshot-format magazine featuring just about every major AV idol in Japan today
- Also, enjoy very beautiful Japanese girls in love hotels in the new issue of Yo! as well as some very sultry “beautiful wife hackers”
- With her 101 cm bust (I cup), Anna Ohura is an incredibly amazing naturally busty Japanese woman — enjoy her beautiful new hardcover photobook!
- Also, enjoy a very artistic look at Japanese bondage themes in an erotic photobook featuring Yu Kinoshita
- We’ve got another nice volley of items for hentai manga fans, including a superb hentai cat-girl comic from Lei Nekojima, and a very realistic erotic manga about sex and discovery
- Also, look for restocked hentai comics, including Chobits hentai, Puri Puri Mermaid, Very Satisfied with Five Body Parts and more
- Also, we’ve got a great item for Yaoi fans, including an erotic manga based on the relationships in Prince of Tennis
- For DVD lovers, we’ve gone through and reduced the prices of a bunch of overstocked items, bring them way down and also giving free shipping (SAL) for these items — so check out these bargain items
- Then, see the Leo Best Girls Collection, with 200 minutes of excellent AV by 20 fabulous amateurs (region free)
- From Glay’z comes a superb collection of Lesbian XXX, with beautiful women making tender love to each other (region free)
- Also, the sultry “swimming girl” Sanae Mizushima will thrill you in her erotic swimsuit as she performs boldly for the camera (region free)
- From Soft on Demand’s Natural High label, Asuka Sawaguchi performs a great bukkake performs in St. Semen School (region free)
- See a solemn and beautiful girl, Chisaki Aihara, performs beautiful sex in her first hardcore release (region free)
- Finally, enjoy a great hardcore performance by the mature and lovely Miki Tachibana, a mature and elegant professional AV actress (region 2).
The J-Mate site has been updated again, with new reviews (with lots of screenshots) of two great productions by Akira Watase, one of our favorite indies idols from Japan. You can see dozens of reviews of DVDs, love-sim games, and other items, as well as read English interviews with famous adult video idols, allowing you to learn more about what makes them dick. J-Mate is sponsored by J-List as our way of sayin thanks for making us so successful! The URL is http://www.jmate.com/
Work continues on the upcoming JAST USA Memorial Collection and Milky House Memorial Collection, sets of three previous released classic bishoujo games. The JAST collection features the first three JAST USA games — Three Sisters’ Story, Season of the Sakura and Runaway City, in great updated versions for modern Windows machines. The Milky House collection gives you Nocturnal Illusion, May Club and the original Borderline Collection. We’re really excited about these two products, and think that you will be too — they’re going to be great. You can preorder them from our website and get free shipping when they ship (by January 2003, we’re sure).
