Greetings from Japan!
It’s looking like Saturn’s foray into Japan hasn’t been all that successful. After two years of effort, I still haven’t seen more than a handful of Saturns driving around on Japanese roads. Saturn of Shinjuku Station has closed, and Saturn of Maebashi, the nearest dealer, has quietly been turned into a Mazda dealership (although they still handle repairs for Saturns). Saturn is a great car, and I love my SW2 (we bought the first Saturn in Gunma Prefecture), but the Japanese recession has been very tough on car makers, forcing them to really compete on price and value — for the same price as a Saturn short wagon, you can get a really nice Nissan Liberty or even a Bongo Friendy (one of my favorite Japanese mini-vans, I just love the name so much). I hope things turn around for Saturn in Japan.
October has rolled around, and that means a birthday for J-List. It was four years ago Sunday that Kaori and I started out in our tiny home office, with our networked Macs and our fledgling database, which I was building as we went along. Our scanner was an old Microtek that required three passes to scan a magazine, which Kaori dutifully operated from her Power Mac 7500. We outgrew our tiny stockroom so fast, we had to literally walk on manga and magazines to fill orders. It’s been a wild four years so far, and the best is still to come. As the Japanese say each new year to friends, Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu, a phrase that’s difficult to translate accurately, but it means something like “we thank you in advance for your future help and support.” Thanks!
One note about playing region-2 DVDs on computer DVD drive in computers. It’s true you can set the region code through software, but be aware that recent DVD ROM drives only allow you to change this setting 5 times — after that, they’re set permanently. If you want to view some of the region-2 discs from Japan but don’t have a code-free player, you could do what I do: leave your computer permanently set to region 2, and view region-1 discs on your normal DVD player.
As usual, we’ve got another great slew of cool items from Japan for you this evening, including:
- First, we’ve got excellent new magazines, including the new Milkiss and Cho Very Good!! issues, for your beautiful magazine life
- We’ve got several premium and cool back-issues of Japanese magazines on the backissues page, including a nice issue of the extremely “natsukashii” Beppin (Magazines -> back issues)
- For leg fans, we’ve got a great new leg fetish books, Slit skirt, with excellent photos of sexy high-heeled women with skirts that go all the way up (Photobooks -> leg fetish)
- Also for photobook fans, more stock of Yamauchi Mihoko’s “Brilliant, Hirai Rio’s first photobook, and a new item, Asaoka Ayane’s lovely Manual” busty photobook (Photobooks -> page 1)
- For SM fans, see Yoshii Miki’s excellent “SM Photo Memories” photobook, on the S&M photobook page
- For our erotic manga fans, we’ve got another very nice volley of new books, including manga by IC Comics, Hit Comics and Fujimi — also, several “back in stock” titles, on the manga “classics” page
- If you like adult dojinshi, find the dozen or so new items posted to the dojinshi page — including several excellent new Ah My Goddess adult books
- To go with our yaoi sale (see below) there are 20+ new yaoi dojinshi posted to the yaoi page. See these excellent and compelling male/male works, now!
- For our SOD fans, we’ve got a great new item — women raping men, a fantasy from the mind of female AV director Sugawara Chie
- For DVD fans, a very special item — Costume Play Perfection, a super DVD (code-free) featuring erotic anime and game cosplay fun. Featured are Evangelion characters, Chun Li and Sakura from Street Fighter, Sakura from Sakura Wars, Gundam Wing uniforms, and more!
- On our Wacky Things from Japan page, we’ve got several cool items: a Japanese “sign pen” (specially made for signing things so they’ll show up boldly on the paper) and a smaller size of our popular Japanese mugi-cha (barley) tea bags
- Finally — we’ve got ika! You’ve heard me mention the dried, shredded ika (squid) that is popular in Japan, and now you can get it from J-List. The soft squid is enjoyed with sake or beer, and is a deliciously unique treat from Japan. Find this item on the snacks page!
Announcing the first and last J-List Yaoi sale! We’ve got a large number of excellent yaoi manga and dojinshi, and we’d like you to buy them from us. To help you, we’re going to offer buy-2-get-1-free off of any yaoi dojinshi manga/dojinshi items.
