Hello again from all of us in Japan!
Sometimes gaijin get all the luck. While I was in college, my favorite band was a Japanese group called Psy-s (pronounced “size”). They’re quite a minor band, not even known to many Japanese, although anime fans know a few theme songs they did (the “Angel Night” open song from City Hunter, the opening theme from To-y, and a few others). When I came to Japan ten years ago, I naturally wanted to attend my favorite band in concert, which I did, taking the train down to Tokyo where the concert was being held. It was fun, although slightly unnerving being the only gaijin in a crowd of about 5000 Japanese fans. It turns out that the vocalist of the band, Chaka, had seen me in the crowd (since I stood out so much); I wrote her a fan letter, one thing lead to another, and we became friends. It’s kind of unfair to all the Japanese fans who didn’t stand out quite as much at the concert, but I didn’t mind of course. One good thing you can say about Japan: unlike most of life, sometimes it’s unfair in your favor.
It’s funny how the Japanese are more advanced then the U.S. in some areas, and very far behind in others. Areas that the Japanese excel in include home electronics (duh), but they’re also very good at manufacturing incredibly soft blankets made of acrylic fibers. We’ve given these soft, warm blankets as Christmas gifts to our family in the U.S. and they’ve been very well received. Japanese refrigerators are quite pricey ($1000-1500 or so), but they’re cool, with many neat features like the ability to open from the left or right side, family voice mail, and on ours, a special pull-out drawer made specially for storing wine. Japanese toilet seats that wash your butt (and dry it) are famous, but Japanese toilet paper holders are also really cool, too — you can replace the toilet paper roll with a single smooth movement of one hand. They have nifty accessories for cars here, including curtains for the inside of your car and neon lights that illuminate the bottom of the car, used by Japanese young men to attract girls. Whereas American electrical cords are apparently required by law to all be blocky and ugly, Japanese extension cords are cute and come in many colors. On the other hand, they have no Mexican food to speak of here in Japan, no salsa, no nachos; bagels are also an alien thing to the Japanese, and are very hard to find; and Japanese peanut butter is, well, so over-sweetened that no American could be happy eating it.
J-List has thousands of cool and unique things from Japan for you. Many of the products we sell would be excellent Christmas gifts for the ones close to you, such as our 2003 calendars, as well as many other fun and wacky things from Japan. Why not consider giving wacky things from Japan this year? If so, it’s a good time to start making plans, as the holidays will be here before you know it!
For the new update, we’ve got an extra-cool selection of items for you, including:
- First, for fans of our Japanese T-shirts, we’ve got another cool item for you: yet another excellent and very wacky T-shirt, this one featuring a famous message found in 7-11 convenience stores
- If you love Japan, why not get a Japanese flag? We’ve got some in stock now
- We love the sexy swimsuit angels of Japan, and have stock of the new Sayaka Yamamoto magazine and DVD combo item (region 2)
- Also, we’ve got a superb DVD featuring six lovely swimsuit idols for you, including Sachie Koike and Erika Ito (region 2)
- Our bento boxes are a consistently popular item, and we’ve got two new ones for you for fans of the cute character Elmo
- The Domo-kun character good we posted last week proved very popular, so we’ve got more items for you: a Domo-kun “eye pillow” that helps you rest, a keychain, and fresh stock of the phone/camera straps that are so cute
- We have some cool Hello Kitty items for you, including Kitty fax coversheets (very cute), and Hello Kitty pocket tissue. Let’s be friend — we’ll have a cheerful time!
- For fans of Japanese pro wrestling (there’s a worldwide cult out there, believe it or not), we’ve got some very cool Japanese Pro Wrestling figures in stock
- Japanese boys like trains, and so the creators of Hello Kitty have created “Shinkansen,” a cool character series for boys, and we’ve got some nice items in stock
- At J-List, we love to promote the study of Japanese, and so we sell Japanese study aids. We’ve got a new item for you, a cool Zebra Check Set that helps you memorize anything from Japanese to English to History
- For Hamtaro fans, a really cute Hamtaro letter and sticker set
- Also, if you like Kubrick, we’ve got more of the cool “generic” Kubrick figures that you can use to customize your own
- Finally, look for other cool items, including new Race Queen items, fresh stock of the Spirited Away film comics, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For magazine fans, we’ve got the new Urecco, and a lovely issue it is, with Race Queen Ran Enoki on the cover and many lovely gals inside
- Also, we’ve got some other nice magazines for you, including a rare issue of Top Speed
- We’ve got some nice photobooks in stock for you, including Rei Ito’s beautiful nude hardcover offering, and a spunky new “Chinkame” format nude photobook starring Mai Hagiwara (!)
- Also, a dynamite photobook entitled Costume Play featuring the best hentai anime cosplay we’ve seen — and it comes with a pair of girls’ underwear, too!
- To go along with our hentai manga sale mentioned above, we’ve posted a bunch of brand-new hentai comics for you, with a half-dozen all-new manga posted to the site, and all part of the 15%-off sale
- Also, we’ve got new doujinshi, including two books from the Plump Pop series (good for fans of er, large girls)
- For fans of hentai DVD, enjoy our new postings, with several very nice uncensored hentai anime titles newly posted (and stocked in San Diego too!)
- We’ve got lots of nice AV DVD titles for you, starting with the very debut hardcore performance of Aoi Sora (whose name means “blue sky” in Japanese) (region free)
- Enjoy 4 hours (240 minutes) of amateur and pro AV from Big Morkal, in their great new Ultra Nuke Max (region free)
- Soft on Demand has a very cool “Female Cat Fight Championship” release in which six AV stars fight it out in the ring, pulling each other’s clothes off and more (region free)
- Also from SOD, enjoy the newest Idol Semen series, featuring superb bukkake action with the beautiful adult video idol Eri Imai (region free)
- For fans of the new rising star in the Japanese AV world, Nozomi Momoi stars in the erotic new AV Special Training Department from Wanz Factory (region 2)
- For swimsuit idol fans, we’ve got Girl’s Pop, a sexy swimsuit idol DVD that’s just lovely (region 2)
- Finally, Tomo has restocked some titles from Waap, including DVDs by Akira Watase, Aika Miura and the excellent Gokkun Best Selection.
Remember that J-List sells really nice region-free DVD players, and we’ve got three different ones to choose from: the Sampo DVE-612, a solid, fully-featured play that should fill most everyone’s needs; the Lasonic DVB-090, a small-size portable player that will fit just about anywhere; and the deluxe Sampo DVE-681P, Sampo’s first region-free player with progressive scan. All our DVD players are fully region-free, and also support PAL and NTSC playback on any TV. Best of all, these players are all very affordable, and are all backed by the manufacturers full 1-year warranty, as well as J-List’s policy of standing by anything we sell. If you’re looking for a player that lets you play all DVDs, including RCE discs, we’ve got three excellent choices for you!
