Greetings from J-List September 14, 2000

Hello again from Japan, the original home of the salad pretzel.

2000 is shaping up as the “year of the recall” in Japan. Of course the Bridgestone/Firestone scandal in the U.S. is at the forefront of everyone’s minds (I have an American friend who works for Bridgestone, one of only a few foreigners in the company, and he’s been quite busy with damage control meetings for the past few weeks). Mitsubishi has also gotten itself into trouble, for failing to recall a model of TV set and a car that had manufacturing defects, and covering up the reports of the problems in the first place. Also, major milk manufacturer Yuki-jirushi (Snow Brand) failed to recall improperly prepared milk, which resulted in thousands of people in the Osaka area getting sick.

In the last update I talked about Japanese typhoon season. As I was sending the update, Nagoya was getting pummeled by a huge typhoon, which flooded the entire prefecture and killed seven. Also, the rain shut down the Tokaido bullet train line, which forced 71 trains loaded with people returning home from Tokyo to spend the night inside the trains, unable to leave the train or get food. We have several friends in Nagoya, but fortunately they all managed to come through it without any damage.

For this evening’s update, we have some nice items for you, which we’ve all been hard at work on. They include:

• First and foremost, several new magazines are in, including two popular “liquid” fetish books, Gal’s Shower and Pakkun Mecha-Ike, as well as the new Top Video
  
• We have limited stock of other magazine items, including some value-priced back issues of The Best (on the magazine back issues page) and several in-stock issues of the popular E-Login (on the magazines (hentai) page)
  
• We have several nice new photobooks, including Mori Hiroko’s elegant hardcover photo work (on photobooks page 1) and a positively wonder “campaign girl” fetish photobook on the leg fetish page
  
• We also have several back-in-stock photobook items, including Enra (lovely Japanese idols in kimono nudes) and the very popular and erotic “Cosplay Cuties” photobook
  
• For our manga fans, we have several new items, including “Picture Diary of Sexual Abandonment, an excellent new manga from Hit Comics, a complete three-volume set of erotic manga, and more
  
• For dojinshi fans, we have great stock of several new titles, including two great erotic Sailor Moon parody dojinshi by Energya
  
• The special order” video (new AV idols) page has been updates with new videos you can special order — see the excellent titles by Asakura Kaori, bitch of bitches Yanagi Haruka, a bathing suit & sex fetish title with the amusing title “Pheromone Bikinies, and more
  
• For our JPOP fans, we have several new JPOP CD singles posted — remember our final JPOP sale, where you can buy 2 and get 1 free on any JPOP album or single
  
• We had such success with our two previous Japanese wind chimes that we’ve got another one — a deluxe bamboo wind chime, which makes a pleasant bamboo sound as wind blows. We really like finding items like this from Japan for you… Find this on the Wacky Things from Japan page.
  
• J-List carries Japanese congratulations envelopes (shugi-bukuro), which are traditionally used for presenting money to people as congratulations for happy events, but you can use them for anything. We have a new deluxe congratulations envelope on the Wacky Things page, which features a beautiful metal wire wound into the shape of a crane.
  
• Finally, in the you didn’t even know you needed it, category, we’ve got the perfect small pan for making Japanese-style scrambled egg (tamago-yaki) in little squares. Perfect for sushi, putting in your bento-box, or doing anything creative with eggs. When my mother came to Japan, she couldn’t buy enough of these for her friends when she went home.
  

Friday is a Japanese holiday, Keiro no Hi, or Respect for the Aged Day, so it’ll be quiet around J-List. Today, my son went to visit the members of a nearby elderly home where they danced and sang songs. If you have any elderly people in your lives, be extra nice to them — they’ll appreciate it.