Hello again from Japan!
Well, the Autumn Sumo tournament is over, and Hawaiian wrestler Musashimaru has won. He defeated the top Japanese wrestler, Takanohana (the only other Grand Master in the Sumo league; all the other giants of the Sumo world have retired recently), who has been plagued by leg injuries for months. With this victory, Musashimaru has passed the number of tournament victories of Takanohana, quite an achievement for a gaijin. If you’d like to see information on these two wrestlers, see http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/meikan/rikishidata/rikishi.php?A=1 (for information on Takanohana) and http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/meikan/rikishidata/rikishi.php?A=36 (for information on Musashimaru). Sumo wrestling, the national sport of Japan, has been around for hundreds of years. Six times a year, the wrestlers meet at different arenas around Japan and fight one bout a day for 15 days. The wrestler with the best win-loss record is the victor. For an excellent overview of the sport, the Nihon Sumo Kyoukai has a very good page — the URL is here: http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.php
I remember when I first started learning Japanese, I wondered how Japanese text entry could work on a computer. I pictured some horrible keyboard with hundreds of keys, but in reality, they just use the same QWERTY keyboards we do. Japanese input is accomplished through a front-end processor, basically a program that ships with all Japanese computers, which takes the text you enter and lets you choose which kanji (or hiragana, or katakana) you want to put into your document. After typing some Japanese text, you convert it with the space bar, and the front-end processor will bring up the characters it thinks you want. When you get used to the system, you can enter Japanese text quite quickly. Some front-end processors are better than others, though — Kotoeri, which comes with Mac OS 9 and OS X, tends to get the wrong character pretty often; third party companies in Japan offer replacement front-ends that are more efficient. (The one we recommend is EGBridge, and it’s available for all major OSes including Mac OS X.)
It’s nice to see Spirited Away getting a lot of good reviews and generating lots of buzz in theatres in the U.S. We love the film and hope it does well in the U.S., especially since it may be Mr. Miyazaki’s last film. If you’re looking for showtimes for the film, you might try http://www.fandango.com/ . Of course, we’ve been selling the excellent 2-disc DVD release of the film since it came out in Japan, and we’ve got them in stock for you if you want to order this excellent film now. Since it’s fully subtitled in English (also French), you won’t have to endure any bad English dubbing that may have found its way into the American release of the film. Like all anime releases in Japan, it’s a region 2 DVD, but happily, we’ve got region free DVD players in stock for you too!
2003 calendar preorders are coming along nicely. So far, both of the Chobits calendars are in the lead, showing the strong popularity of this excellent anime show, followed this year by several of the nude calendars (Ryoko Mitake and Hitomi Hayasaka especially). Yuko Ogura, a favorite swimsuit idol of mine, is proving very popular, as is the lovely Eiko Koike swimsuit idol. Anime calendars like the Studio Ghibli and Tenchi Muyo offerings are also doing great. We’re happy to see some Japanese faces like Rena Tanaka (a cute “girl next door” type of young actress popular on Japanese TV) developing a following around the world — I wonder if they know they’ve got fans outside of Japan? JPOP calendars like Morning Musume, Maki Gotoh and Ayumi Hamasaki are selling well, and we’ve also been happy with the sales of the “sexy idol” calendars like Yinling, Fumika Suzuki and the Japan Race Queens calendar. Remember that the sooner you preorder your 2003 calendars, the easier it is for us to get them for you. J-List makes over 250 of the excellent calendars printed in Japan each year to you, and we hope you’ll browse our selection and see what we’ve got. Order 4 or more calendars and your mailing tubes are free.
For the new update, we’ve got lots of cool stuff from Japan for you, including:
- For fans of the rubber hero Ultraman, the original hero to defend Japan from terrible monsters, we have a deluxe large-size soft vinyl figure that is very cool
- For fans of the very Japanese “Mi-ke Neko” alarm clock and picture frame, we’ve got two very nice Japanese mirrors that feature these very cute characters and traditional settings
- If you like Japan’s lovely swimsuit idols and Race Queens, enjoy the new items we’re posting for you today
- Also, we’ve got fresh stock of some nice items, including the Morning Musume photobooks and more
- We’ve also got a new high-quality My Neighbor Totoro music box from Sun Arrow, a great item for collectors of Totoro items
- We have some cool Hello Kitty items that you can’t get outside of Japan, including two very cool Kitty notebooks (complete with funny English on them), Kitty pencils and erasers, and a cool Japanese Kitty correction tape dispenser
- Also, a very cute Hello Kitty “Dental Care Kit” with everything you need to take care of your teeth on the road
- Parody goods are popular in Japan right now, and we’ve got a nice item for you: a series of ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil that look like injection needles full of blood
- Want to get attention? We’ve got a cool rubber mask of the golden Great Buddha statue in Nara, Japan, that’s just too wacky
- For fans of our snack foods, enjoy the new Pucchi Kitty Chocolate, delicious squares of chocolate in three flavors for Kitty fans
- Also in stock, we’ve got new items like Okinawa Black Sugar Pretz, new miso soup and furikake, fresh stock of Pucca (chocolate filled fish-shaped crackers),
- Also very fun, we’ve got tubes of Japanese wasabi and “karashi” mustard that are really fun keychains with lights inside them
- We love Tomy’s line of Tomica mini-cars, small die-cast toy cars that are compatible with Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars, and we’ve got new cars in stock for you (including the Toyota Prius)
- Finally, look for Japanese diet tea, a handy way to cut hard-boiled eggs, more fun with bento boxes, wooden signs with messages on them, Thunder Bunny goods, and more!
For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. They include:
- For magazine fans, please enjoy the new issues of Best Video and Video Boy that we’ve posted for you, two very nice all-purpose adult video magazines that track all AV companies in Japan
- Also, we’ve got the new issue of Shuffle in, which is very popular because it really pushes the limits on amateur sex in love hotels
- We’ve got an older issue of Photo Shot in stock too, featuring such lovelies as Hikaru Kawamura, Mai Shiina and Akari Yamasaki (girls who are hard to find these days since most are retired
- Also very cool, the “goodbye” nude photobook of Megumi Osawa, and a beautiful bondage and lingerie photobook featuring some lovely models
- We’ve got fresh stock of many nice items, including the sexy photobooks of Rio Sannomiya and Maiko Kazano, and more
- For hentai game fans, the new issue of Push is in stock, featuring two CD-ROMs of demos and other goodies just for you, as well as tons of information on the current bishoujo games selling in Japan
- For bargain hunters, we’ve got the very nice Adult DVD Paradise, which features 150 minutes of AV on a Japanese DVD (region free) along with a magazine
- For hentai manga fans, we have an extra cool selection of hentai comics, including a great large-breast dick-girl offering from Suzuran Comics, a compilation of the classic “Cambion” Vampire Savior hentai manga, and much more
- Also, newly posted issues of the popular Angelic Impact, compilations of hentai doujinshi from Fusion Project, and fresh stock of the cool Chobits hentai anthology Chokotto
- Also, we’ve got fresh doujinshi for you, including some extremely rare and special items from Koh Kajiwara (!)
- Look for fresh stock of many sex toys that are only sold in Japan, including the New Magical Mitten, the inflatable love pillows of real Japanese AV idols, the deluxe Hello Kitty massager, and more
- For DVD fans, we’ve got some great new items for you, starting with fresh stock of the best-selling Big Breast Girls’ School, which stars a host of famous AV idols like Wakana Sena — and it’s subtitled! (region free)
- See the lovely Ryoko Sawayama in a huge festival of bukkake in Soft on Demand’s Endless Fucker, directed by Tohjiro (region free)
- See eleven lovely Japanese girls show you their masturbation in a new release from Deep’s (region free)
- Enjoy the lovely “peach colored lesbian deep kiss” brought to you by the bold and popular Aroma Planning, a very cool AV studio highly recommended by our own Yasu (region 2)
- We love Akira Watase, and there’s a super new DVD release from Wanz Factory for fans who want to inspect every crack and crevice of their favorite AV idol (region2)
- For fans of sexy Japanese Race Queens, enjoy the new DVD of Toko Ushikawa (region 2)
- Finally, look for restocked DVDs like Nanami Nanase’s “Body Reconstruction,” the lovely Stars 3-hour release from Megumi Osawa, the very erotic Mini Skirt Police parody from IEnergy, and more!
Remember that J-List is having a free shipping sale on the Peach Princess bishoujo games. Get any of their currently shipping titles and get free shipping in the U.S. or Canada, or half off your shipping for international orders.
Also remember that J-List makes dozens of magazines available through our “reserve subscription” system. Basically, we’ll pre-reserve the current issue of each month’s magazine for you and have it in the mail to you by the time it’s in bookstores here in Japan — a few days earlier, since we get our stock earlier than most bookstores. We’ve got many different anime, toy, JPOP/JROCK, idol and other magazines available. (We also sell adult magazines like Urecco and Gal’s Dee via a 6- or 12-month subscription system as well.) See the magazine subscription pages on our site for more information.
