Hello from your friends at J-List!
There are some words that the Japanese are doomed to have problems with, due to the fact that Japanese is a rather phonetically impoverished language, with just 5 vowels and a limited repertoire of sounds produced normally. The sounds of L/R are not differentiated in Japanese, which makes some English words hard for them — hence, jokes about the Japanese sending Viagra to the U.S. last November because we couldn’t get an election. “Cone” and “corn” are impossible to separate in Japanese, and Japanese may be apt to think that cones for Ice Cream are made out of corn. I’ve lived in Japan for 9 years, but I’ve never seen a Japanese spell the word “flea market” correctly — it’s usually “free market” (as in, a market you don’t need to pay to get into), and I’ve even seen “frea market” once. A curb is something by the side of the road, and a curve is a turn in the road, but don’t ask a Japanese which is which. And finally, one of the most famous pizza chains in Japan is Pizza Hut, but 120 million Japanese all think it’s Pizza Hat (as in Red Hat Linux).
Well, after 6+ years, Kaori and her boyfriend Hitoshi finally tied the knot, and they did it with style. The wedding was a big success, and all the J-List team was there to congratulate her. Kaori was beautiful — actually, that my son Kazuki told me, “She’s so pretty, I didn’t know who she was.” If you’d like to see the pictures from the wedding, along with short MPEG movies, they’re at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=KAORIWEDDING&Category_Code=PC
Well, the first calendars have come in, and we’ve dually processed them for those had had them preordered. If your calendars didn’t come in yet, don’t worry — we’ll get some more in next week or so. We’ve posted about 30 calendars that are now in stock — everything from sexy idol to art to nude calendars, so you can buy them now with no waiting. Unfortunately, we received word that one of the most popular calendars this year, the 2002 Evangelion calendar, has been canceled by the publisher.
In addition to the calendars that have been posted, we’ve got a bunch of very nice new items for you, including:
- First, we’ve been bringing Japan’s unique bishoujo games to you for years, and we’ve had great fun making them available to you. As a way of saying thanks, we’re lowering the price of Virtual Reality Dating Simulator May Club to match Three Sisters’ Story and Season of the Sakura, just $14.95
- We have some new magazines, including the new issue of the bold Shuffle (an amateur kogal hardcore magazine), and the new issue of Push!, a great Japanese hentai/bishoujo game magazine with CD-ROM
- We’ve got some very nice new soft- and hardcover photobooks for you, including Eri Kimura’s solemn nude photobook, and a rip-off of the famous “Yellows” nude photobook series, as well as fresh stock of several popular items
- For fans of famous Japanese adult video idols, check out Body Shop, featuring the “photographic of 11 girls hair nude” including Ichigo Milk, Ami Ayukawa and my own fave, Manami Yoshii
- Also, we’ve got fresh stock of the very popular Tennyo photobook series (Ichigo Milk, Aoi Minami, and Hikaru Shiina), which features a different girl in each volume, photographed by Masaaki Miyazawa
- For lovers of Japan’s highly developed bondage and S&M photography, check out the new issue of “the Most of Beautiful Slave” (we love these titles…), which features 16 different models
- We’ve got a major update of erotic manga for you, with many new volumes posted by some of Japan’s most famous manga artists, as well as a major restock of popular manga by Chataro, Narise Ayumi, Yutaka Tanaka and more
- For yaoi fans, see the new manga works we’ve posted for you, too
- We’ve got new doujinshi, a selection of very nice erotic works that will probably go quickly again — check them out as quickly as you can
- We’ve got some excellent items for DVD fans, including the Bunko Kanazawa Best Selection (see her best work at SOD), and a very nice new Zamen Gokkun (“Semen Swallowing”) DVD with two complete productions on it
- Also for DVD lovers, we’ve restocked the hard-to-keep-in-stock Mai Hagiwara soft porn DVDs, and also the incredibly popular Anna Ohura “Heartful Summer”
- For lovers of Japan’s ever-sexy Race Queens, be sure to see the new Pony Canyon Race Queen we’ve posted — you get to view the girls from the angle of a dog, and more
- For anime/manga fans, we’ve reposted the sold-out Bilingual comics to the English manga and anime pages, and we’ll get fresh stock of the English/Japanese Card Captor Sakura and Love Hina in soon
- Also for anime fans, we’ve got more stock of the very-cool Gatchaman Complete Figure series
- We have some new “wacky” Japanese signs for you, including “Please take off your shoes,” and fresh stock of our popular Japanese emergency exit signs
- Also, more stock of our most popular Japanese “hachimaki” headband ever, “Watashi wa H” (I am a pervert), always a fun item to have around
- We’ve got some nice items on our “traditional things from Japan” page, including beautiful Japanese “Chouchin” lanterns made of paper, as well as fresh stock of our popular Japanese designer chopsticks
- For fans of silly English, we’ve got more of the beautiful notebooks with the “punch out” design on the cover
- An item we’re quite excited about are the first collectible sumo trading cards we’ve seen, featuring wonderful photos of Japan’s most famous sumo wrestlers (along with their names in English), great for sumo fans
- Finally, our Wacky Things from Japan main page brings you a nifty “rice shaper” for making Japanese or Thai dishes, a cool portable phone holder for your car, oversized boxing gloves that look ridiculous, a new set of brushes for those who want to try their hands at Japanese calligraphy, and more!
About a month ago, I posted some information on how Japanese is pronounced. At the time, my homepage was down, but now that the site is up again, anyone wanting a primer in how to pronounce Japanese can check out the site at http://www.peterpayne.net/Merchant3/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PP&Product_Code=J-PAGE1&Category_Code=BJ
