Greetings from J-List September 25, 2002

Greetings, programs, from all of us in Japan!

There’s a wacky thing that Japanese do to money: fold a 1000 yen bill so that Souseki Natsume (the 19th century novelist who adorns the Japanese 1000 yen note) makes sad or happy faces, depending on which way you look at the bill. We’ll teach you how it’s done so you can amaze your friends with this great Japanese trick. First, take a bill and make an outward fold where each of his eyes are. Make an inward fold through the middle of his face, so that his eyes are higher than his nose (like little mountains). If you look at the bill from above, the face will look sad; from below, and he’ll look happy. Virtually all Japanese known this silly trick, and would be surprised if any non-Japanese knew it. To see pictures of what it looks like when done with Japanese money, look at this picture: http://www.jlist.com/c3/souseki.jpg . If you don’t have any Japanese bills lying around, it should work pretty much the same with other bills, too. (Souseki Natsume, author of many famous novels in the Meiji Era, is the face on our wacky “I am a Hentai” T-shirt, in case you were wondering who he was.)

While stand up comedy is a staple of humor in the U.S., the style of the jokes don’t necessarily translate to other countries, such as Japan. In Japan, there are several traditional forms of comedy, which have roots going back a century or more. One popular form of Japanese comedy is called Manzai, a kind of comedy routine from the Kansai region of Japan that hails back the days of Abbott and Costello. It consists of a team of two (usually) men, a straight man (“tsukomi”) and a dumb partner (“boke” [boh-kay]). The two spar off against each other, with the straight man getting angry and short-tempered at the mistakes his dumb-witted friend makes. Manzai is a very popular form of comedy here, and many of the most famous comedians in Japan got their start in Manzai comedy. I have a theory that, when he was mining Japan for inspiration for the Star Wars films, George Lucas got the idea for C-3P0 and R2-D2 from Japan’s Manzai comedy.

Our funny Japanese T-shirts continue to be an extremely popular items — thanks to everyone for making them so successful! Because our shirts are printed in the USA, all our shirts are full U.S. sizes. Some customers, especially those outside of the U.S., have expressed confusion about how the sizes translate to actual measurements, so to help you find the right size for you, we’ve added a size table with the width and length measurements of all shirts. See the new “size information” link posted below each T-shirt item for this new size information.

We’re doing an experiment with the mailing list this time to try to solve some problems with line feeds appearing twice (making our message appear double-spaced). If you have any problems reading this message, please let us know (if possible, a screenshot would be appreciated too).

For the new update, we’ve got some excellent items for you, including:

First, we’ve got a great new magazine available by monthly revolving subscription: Figure King (Figure-Oh), a great magazine that presents hundreds of anime figures and toys in each issue
For fans of unique Japanese toys, we’ve got several cool items from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and up-and-coming anime and manga that will be showing in the U.S. soon
We’ve got new swimsuit idol items for you, for fans of Japan’s cute bikini babes
Trying to learn Japanese? J-List carries many items to help you, and we’ve got a cute new one: a Hello Kitty hiragana practice workbook that comes with stickers and a hiragana poster you can hang up
Also, we’ve restocked the handy Campus Word Books, which are great for learning a foreign language because you can organize the words you’re studying
We’ve got some great Hello Kitty items for you, including a beautiful large-size wedding photo stand that’d make a thoughtful gift for any happy couples you know, another super cute Hello Kitty car, a Kitty paper shredder, and more
We’ve got some great bento items for you, including a cool new three-piece bento box complete set, as well as fresh stock of our Giraffe and Deluxe bento sets
For Chobits fans, we’ve got some new items in stock, including (limited stock) of the very nice postcard book
Diablock is a funny Lego’s like block set that’s been sold in Japan for years. Now they’ve released very cool Diablock figure keychains, and we’ve got them for you
For Japanese snack fans, we have two delicious new flavors of Mousse Pocky — White Chocolate and Strawberry — along with delicious new furikake, fresh stock of miso soup, and more
Finally, look for pencil leads for standard mechanical pencils (like the funny injection needle pencils we posted last week), funny chopsticks, more fun fish shaped soy sauce bottles, and more!

For our adult customers, we’ve got many new 18+ products. These new items include:

For magazine fans, we’ve got the very nice new Urecco Gal, which features dozens of beautiful kogals and famous AV stars dressed in flashy kogal style
For fans of beautiful Japanese swimsuit idols, check out the issue of Megumi, an entire magazine dedicated to one of the top sexy idols in Japan today
Also, a great photobook featuring the lovely Otoha, one of loveliest busty idols in Japan, and a cool pocket-sized photobook with the lovely Madoka Ozawa
Look for other new and back in stock hardcover photobooks, including an interesting look at Japan’s bondage themes through photography and art
We have some nice new hentai manga items posted for you, including some excellent “That Beauty of Neighbor” featuring excellent girl-next-door type stories
Also, a restocking of great books for you, including the Magical Love, Blue Eyes, After School Seven and Sexbeast Vaginass comic items
For yaoi fans, we’ve got a nice new issue of b-Boy Zips, the anthology manga with great yaoi art and stories (and 240 pages per book)
For DVD fans and collectors, we’ve got another great volley of items for you, starting off with a new Endurance Contest in Blazing Inferno, in which four lovely AV idols must endure a heat-filled room — if they leave, they will must have sex with a room full of men waiting outside (region free)
The lovely Ruri Anno stars as the Highest Class of Soap Lady in a new “soapland play” DVD from SOD (region free)
From Dogma, enjoy a great release from Kurumi Morishita in which you get to be her “virtual stalker” (region free)
Also from Dogma, enjoy a top-quality lesbian DVD featuring two lovely girls who must have sex with each other despite the fact that they’ve never met each other before — pretty cool (region free)
For region free DVD player owners, enjoy a new Super Angle of Manko offering from Wanz Factory, featuring the beautiful and erotic Chika Kawamura (region 2)
A new item from Moodyz, four lovely AV idols who work in a Sperm Bank will accept your deposits (region 2)
For fans of the Pure Venus Japanese soft-porn DVD series, we’ve added limited stock of these very nice items, including very limited stock of the Maiko Yuuki soft porn offering and fresh stock of Akira Fubuki’s out of print soft porn DVD — check them out
Finally, we’ve restocked several DVDs, including Ami Ayukawa’s Bejean title, the excellent Shake It! tekoki series, and the first work we ever carried by Ai Nagase — see all the new items!

Remember that 2003 calendars are currently available for preorder, but since the window for ordering is so narrow, we won’t be able to reliably accept orders for calendars past the 20th of October or so. There are so many wonderful calendars from Japan, far too many for us to stock enough so to guarantee a great selection we ask that you get your order in quickly. Thanks! We’ve got many wacky calendars, like the Joy of Sushi and a calendar featuring beautiful bento displays of Japanese boxed lunch, traditional photos of Japan, great Japanese contemporary artists, and great anime calendars. Please check out our 2003 calendar pages today! Remember, too, that preorders are never charged until we get your calendars in and they’re ready to go out to you.