Hello again from Japan, the country with car names like the Suzuki Joypop and the Daihatsu Nude.
One thing about Japan: it’s a very seasonal place. Spring is beautiful with its short-lived cherry blossoms, summer is hot and humid with many fun festivals, fall is filled with crisp brown leaves, and winter is cold and frosty. People are very attuned to each season, too — for example, summer is the season for girls to wear tanktops and show off their belly buttons, but all this comes to an abrupt halt at the 1st of September, when fall unofficially starts in the minds of people here. I’ve met many Japanese who tell me with great pride that, unlike America, Japan has four distinct seasons, and they enjoy every one of them — apparently these people haven’t ventured outside of Southern California. In keeping with this traditional of seasonality, products sold in one part of the year are virtually impossible to find out of season. Want to find swimwear in the fall or winter? Stores won’t stock it. Want to enjoy hiyashi chuka (a cold ramen dish) or Japanese barley tea out of season? You can only find them in the summer months. Japanese calendars are only sold a few months before the end of the year (e.g. now), but outside of this window, you can’t find a calendar in Japan for love or money. Part of living in Japan is getting in sync with the seasons around you, even if it can seem odd to foreigners who are used to a different rhythm.
One concept that enters into Japanese social interactions a lot is “enryo” (EN-ryoh), which means to exercise restraint or to defer to others. Basically, if a group of Japanese is eating pizza, it will take some time for one of the members to get around to taking the last slice, because of the tendency for each individual to defer to the others in the group — until everyone is deferring to everyone else, and the pizza is getting cold. The concept of enryo rears its head when trying to make a decision among a group, too. Say a large group of people is trying to decide on a restaurant to go to. Each person will put out some feelers, trying to nudge the collective opinion of the group in one direction or another. If even one person in the group is inconvenienced by the group’s decision (say, everyone wants to go for Indian food except one person, who wants Italian instead), the group will go back to the drawing board until they come up with an option that everyone can agree to.
Announcing the Closeout T-Shirt Sale! J-List carries many unique and funny T-shits, with bizarre messages in Japanese on them. There’s one problem: having so many cool shirts in stock takes up a lot of room in our San Diego office. In order to clear out some of the older shirts and make room for new designs, we’ve discounted the close-out shirts. In order to help you help us move them out even faster, we’re declaring a $1 shipping sale on the discounted shirts. Get a cool 100% cotton T-shirt printed in the U.S., and shipping on the shirt is just $1 ($4 outside of US/Can)! Note that sizes are subject to availability, and they will start to go fast. If you wear a larger size, it’s a great day for you, since we’ve still got plenty of stock in XXL and XXXL for most of these shirts. Some of the shirts being closed out include Hiragana Man, I’m a Strange Foreigner, and the Akira parody shirts, After shirts are gone, we invariably have people asking if they can buy them again — avoid this by getting your shirt now!
For the special Monday update, we’ve got some great items for you, starting with:
- First, Shirow Masamune fans rejoice: we’ve got our order of the Shirow poster-and-trading-card books in stock, so if you didn’t order your copies yet, you can do it now
- For Domo-kun lovers everywhere, we’ve got another “really big Domo” for you, a 24 inch tall super-huggable Domo plush pillow that will dominate any room you put him in
- Also, for fans of Tezuka Osamu, we’ve got Astro Boy and Jungle Emperor Leo (aka Kimba the White Lion) anime throw pillows — so cool!
- My wife and I are fans of Takara’s Licca dolls, a cute fashion doll that is the “anti-Barbie” because she’s a demure Japanese school girl — we’ve got stock of the very cool Kogal Licca doll, one of our favorites
- Also, see a very cute figure from Yujin’s Figure Maniacs series, Lune Cardiff
- For Totoro fans, we’ve restocked the best-selling My Neighbor Totoro DVD release, which features both English and Japanese soundtracks and subtitles as well as many extras added by Hayao Miyazaki
- Also, look for fresh stock of the very detailed PVC statues of Totoro and Laputa, by Cominca
- For swimsuit idol fans, enjoy the super-cute photobook offering of Asaki Yoshida, as well as fresh stock of Yuko Ogura’s delightful photobooks
- If you love Japanese snacks, we’ve got some great items for you, including Mitsuya Cider hard candies (these are really good), and Astro Boy hot chocolate
- Also, by customer request, we’ve got the delicious cola flavored bubblegum made by Marukawa, a popular gum with Japanophiles all over the world
- If you remember Speed Racer, we’ve got a treat for you: the only-sold-in-Japan Speed Racer Hot Wheels car, with great detailing and full Hot Wheels quality
- For students of Japanese, we recommend the Canon Wordtank electronic dictionaries, which is a superb way to find any Japanese word quickly — we’ve restocked the best-selling IDC-310 and IDF-4600 for you
- We’ve got some soft all-purpose bags which are great for carrying anything, popular with young Japanese girls in Japan these days
- For Hello Kitty fans, we’ve got more Kitty goods you can’t find outside of Japan, like a cool contact lens case set, cute Kitty notebooks, the Kitty toy camera and cash register, and more
- For Blythe fans, we’ve restocked the Cinnamon Girl and Hollywood Returns doll sets, very stylish and sleek
- Finally, find more adult length chopsticks, a restocking of bento related items, and more!
For our 18+ customers, we’ve got some great products for adults. They include:
- For fans of the excellent Penthouse Japan and Penthouse Special, magazines that feature only Japanese models photographed by Japanese photographers, we have the great new issues in stock for you!
- Also, additional stock of discounted magazines, starting at just $5 — check them out!
- For photobook lovers, don’t miss out on Erotic Revolution, the fabulous lingerie photobook by Race Queen Akane Souma
- Also, we’ve got the pure and lovely nude of Mirano Matsushita for you, too, a lovely book that we recommend, as well as the delightful pocket photobook of beautiful girls in costume paradise
- For fans of girls’ cat fighting, a growing fetish in Japan, we’ve got a fun all-cat fight bondage book, featuring pretty girls slugging it out
- For hentai manga fans, we have some great new books for you, including a tale of petite sexual robots, a great doujinshi anthology, and the excellent Shot Through the Heart by Mujin Comics
- Also, we’ve got some dynamite new doujinshi, fresh released at the past Comic Market — enjoy Gundam Seed, Please Teacher and game girl hentai doujinshi for you, as well as several new CD-ROM collections of hentai images
- Also, Yasu has made a general restocking of manga and doujinshi, with many items back in stock, including the great works of Fujio Okamoto, Capricious of You, Festival for Lovers, Branded, and the popular “dick girl” books of Behind Moon
- For yaoi lovers, we’ve got another very interesting collection of erotic stories, this time with a focus on men who wear glasses
- Then from Wani, we’ve got a fabulous art book of gothic hentai art compiled by four talented artists, something that’s not to be missed
- Also, fresh stock of the excellent erotic art books of Satoshi Urushihara
- If you like our unique adult toy products, which feature products made exclusively for the Japanese market, we’ve restocked the popular “Japan Rotor” egg-style vibrators, as well as the inflatable Hitomi Hayasaka Love Pillow
- For our DVD customers, we’ve got some great new items for you, starting with a new Masterpiece Concentration of the tragic Nozomi Momoi — celebrate her life with her latest release (region free)
- Maria Tagaki star is really rising fast — see Super Star, her great new release from Calen (region free)
- Explore the world of lesbian kissing and sex in a new release from Soft on Demand, featuring pure lesbian sex with only women (region free)
- Then enjoy more all-nude volleyball, this time with erotic and experienced “jukujo” or older women, aged 25-30 (region free)
- Then from Moodyz, enjoy the “G-Style” sex of busty AV gal Yuria Yoshinaga, G cup, whose delightful sex will thrill you (region 2)
- Then, the lovely Ayana Minami is sacrificed at the altar of Black Bukkake, in a new “Japanese girl vs. big black men” bukkake special (region 2)
- Finally, look for freshly restocked and price-reduced DVDs, including Nao Oikawa’s Bukkake Ittassho in Los Angeles, Amateur Bukkake, lesbian offerings and more!
Remember that J-List carries excellent magazine by our “reserve subscription.” This means that you can get great anime, JPOP, fashion and other magazines sent to you as soon as the new issue is out in Japan — a few days earlier than newsstands receive them here, in fact. We recommend great items like Young Magazine Uppers, a superb manga magazine that features Shirow Masamune’s newest posters in special issues as well as great comic art from some of Japan’s best manga-ka (manga artists). Payment through any method is fine (credit card, Paypal, check or money order) and you can stop your subscription at any time.
