Greetings from J-List November 7, 1999

It’s a cool, silent Saturday night here in Japan, as I finish up the weekend update and prepare to send off the update emails before I steal home for some a quiet evening taped Ally McBiel and X-Files reruns from America. I usually go down to the liquor store for a beer and some kakipea (spicy rice crackers and peanuts that are shaped like persimmon seeds, since the name kakipea), although recently I’ve rediscovered the joy of dried, shredded ika (squid) with my beer. The longer you’re in Japan, the stranger you become…

My wife has a new portible phone. Made by Kyocera, it’s so light it feels like one of those samples they have in stores, with the electronics removed (so you won’t steal the phones). Whereas the previous generation of phones let you program your own song for the ringer, this model lets you harmonize, allowing her to enter Pachelbel’s Canon, which was impossible before. It receives and sends email, has a daily horoscope feature, and you can even speak the name of the person you want to call into the phone, and it will dial for you. Other phones on the cutting edge of technology feature color LCD displays, and even have tiny cameras

We’ve got a bunch of great items for you in tonight’s update. Firstly, we’ve got a super volley of new adult manga on manga page 2, including some of the coolest new titles hot off the Japanese manga presses. There are new dojinshi, including Final Fantasy VIII and Street Fighter adult dojinshi from the “Kaiten” series that are excellent. Our new cards & puzzles homepage is off to a great start, so we added even more cool collectible cards — cute Japanese idol cards, anime game cards, excellent Ah My Goddess metallic cards, and more. We’ve also heard the many requests to increase the number of Pokemon-related Japanese snacks, so there are some great new items on the Japanese snacks page, including collectible Pokemon key holders and “mascot pins.” There are new Japanese adult videos posted to the Video Catalog pages

J-List takes pride in the products we sell, and in the high rate of return customers we have. So to make sure we’re serving everyone as best we can, we’ve decided to start a price-matching policy. If you ever happen to find any of the in-Japan items (manga, photobooks, magazines) that J-List sells at another other Japan-based site for a lower price, please let us know, and we’ll match or beat their price.

We hope you’re having a great weekend. See you on the web!

P.S. We’re still getting the kinks out of the new list-server software. If there are any problems with this message (funny characters, getting two copies), please let us know.