Greetings from J-List October 28, 2002

Greetings and salutations from your friends in Japan!

First, notes on the site. J-List may be experience some minor problems with some users, who try to view adult items on the site (but are unable, they are stuck in “PG” mode), and with some other users, who are unable to view product images. If you have any problems with our website, please email us right away and we’ll help get on of the problem.

When you become bilingual in a language, you learn a lot about how your own brain works, what processes go on when you learn new vocabulary words (every act of learning involves a physical change in your brain, the creation of a new synapse from one cell to another), and so on. It makes you think about the nature of language in general and consider deeply parts of your own native language that you’ve taken for granted all your life — in short, it’s really cool. The act of translation from one language to another is really something, too: it takes place deep inside your brain, on a level below your conscious thoughts, like a process in a computer that’s running in the background. You place some English in the “buffer,” and then something happens in your brain, and in a few seconds Japanese is waiting for you to retrieve it. You can almost hear the “ding” in your mind as the translation “cooks” and is done, without any conscious awareness, at least as far as I’ve experienced.

When it comes to translation, though, there’s one direction to go: from your second language to your native language. If I am translating from Japanese to English, I’ll be able to do it just fine; but woe is me if I try to translate from English to Japanese. I know this because I tried it once. My father, who was a nautical engineer who built advanced hydrofoils, had to get a patent of his translated into Japanese, so he asked his Japanophile son to do it for him. Wanting to impress my Dad, I agreed, and two months of hard labor later had produced what had to be the most tear-jerkingly hilarious patent translation ever seen in Japan. I learned my lesson and now politely refuse any requests for translations into Japanese. I believe that 90% of the “wasei eigo” (literally “made in Japan English”), the silly English words the Japanese come up with, are inadvertently created by Japanese asked to translate from Japanese to English — they are doing their best but are basically translating the wrong direction.

We’ve mentioned some things that are especially nice in Japan before, including the extra-soft and very warm acrylic blankets they have here. Well, we’ve finally got some for the list, very nice Hello Kitty half-blankets (or lap blankets) that are very soft and warm and are also very cute. See them on the page! If there’s interest in these items, we’ll get more in the future.

For the new update, we’ve got some great items from Japan for you, including:

• For fans of lovely swimsuit idols, we’ve got several nice items including the very lovely hardcover photobook of “Chisato” and more
  
• For fans of wacky Japanese signs and other items, we’ve got some more for you, with Japanese plastic sign plates with many uses
  
• Show your love of Japan or of your home country with the cute cloth flags (Japan, USA, Germany, France, Canada) we’ve got in stock
  
• We restocked some of our favorite items, the only-sold-in-Japan Sesame Street pens and mechanical pencils, very cute and great for collectors (or those who just want something special from Japan)
  
• Also, fresh stock of another popular item, the cute plush Totoro magnets
  
• For fans of the Dirty Pair, we’ve got extremely limited stock of the Dirty Pair figure sets (including a complete set)
  
• We’ve restocked many fun Japanese items for your kitchen, including onigiri makers and several new bento sets with everything you need to enjoy Japanese bento
  
• For fans of our Japanese snacks, some nice new items, including Every Burger (chocolate cookies that look like little hamburgers, fun to eat), gummi pizza, fresh stock of Japanese miso soups, and more!
  
• For Japanese toy fans, we’ve got a great Ultraman item, the cool Kubrick Green Hornet and Kato set, and more
  
• For Hello Kitty lovers, a great Kitty item for your car, some fun Kitty stamps and magnets with bobbling heads, Kitty chopsticks, and more
  
• Also: the really soft acrylic blankets (mentioned above) with cute images of Kitty on them
  
• Finally, find more Japanese fude pens (which let you write as if you were writing with a Chinese writing brush), a handy “package opener,” a super-fun dress-up-doll set for Hamtaro lovers, and more!
  
• For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
  
• For magazine fans, we have more excellent magazines from Japan posted, including new issues of Let’s Do Something Good and I’m Sure I Love Married Women After All (we just love these titles)
  
• For fans of kogals, those lovely Japanese bad girls, we have the new Cho Mach, filled with lovely girls in love hotels for you
  
• We have more great hardcover photobooks from Japan for you, including a new Garo Aida work that’s lovely, and the super sexy leg fetish photos of Aki Mizuki
  
• For bondage fans, don’t miss the excellent Maiko Yuki photobook we have — it’s wonderful
  
• For hentai manga fans we have even more great works for you, including Muchan ga Kitayo, about an sexually active little animal who has many adventures with beautiful women, and more
  
• For doujinshi lovers, we’ve got a great new book by Kenix, Orange Pie 2 (great One Piece hentai!)
  
• For adult DVD fans, find many nice items in stock, including a new Big Morkal Cosplayers release featuring Sayaka Hagiwara as super-cute Japanese game girls (region free)
  
• Ryoko Mitake is a red-hot Japanese nude idol who recently began career as an AV performer, and we’ve got her newest hardcore work — it’s great! (region free)
  
• Nao Oikawa is a “virgin hunter” who hunts inexperienced boys and steals their virginity in a new SOD release (region free)
  
• There’s a nice new Man’s Juice release from SOD featuring Mayumi Yoshida in a great festival of bukkake (region free)
  
• From Moodyz, enjoy the hardcore debut of the lovely An Namba, a sexy new AV actress who’s eager to please you (region 2)
  
• A great lesbian offering from Wanz Factory, two card-carrying lesbians show the secret of lesbian sex to Kyoka Usami in a great “lesbian training” production (region 2)
  
• Finally, a big restocking of DVDs, including new No Cut!! titles, Sora Aoi’s Happy Go Lucky, The girl scouted in the Cake Shop, lesbian kissing DVDs and more!
  

J-List carries many cool things. One item we like are the bilingual manga which feature Japanese comics (Ah My Goddess, Cardcaptor Sakura etc) with both English and Japanese in them. They’re great for anyone wanting to pick up some Japanese, and also fun to read. We’re closing out our stock so our prices are great, check out what we’ve got for you (try searching for “bilingual”).