Hello from your favorite island nation, Japan!
Olympic Fever continues to grip Japan, as everyone watches the various events taking place in Australia. Japan has won 5 gold medals as of Monday night, including the first ever marathon gold medal by a Japanese female runner. The most famous Japanese athlete at the Olympics, Tamura Ryoko (nicknamed “Yawara” after the famous manga series), was finally able to get a gold medal in Judo after eight years of enduring of silver and bronze. Being able to hold their own in international competitions like this is very important to Japanese, and they’re pleased with their standing at Sydney.
Thanks to a reader in France for filling us in on the meaning of “gravure, which is used in Japanese to mean a busty, buxom idol (Yuka is a good example of a gravure idol”). The original meaning in French is “printing” or “engraving” — a far cry from the meaning the Japanese have assigned the word. I’ve been in Japan so long, of course, I forget what words are English — therefore you’ll see us use “gravure” in our product descriptions sometimes. It can be funny that way — for whatever reason, I never encountered the English word “cover” (as in, to cover a famous person’s song, to sing a version of the song) before coming to Japan. I remember how careful I was, asking if I could use the word in English, as I wasn’t sure if it was a Japanese word or not…
When we started our unique line of wacky Japanese T-shirts, with funny Japanese slogans on them, we had no idea how that they’d be a runaway success. It’s been an interesting year, and we’ve had a lot of fun thinking of funny and esoteric things to put on our shirts. To celebrate the first anniversary of our T-shirts page, we’re happy to be able to announce our Baby Doll T-shirts for girls! Made of 100% pre-shrunk cotton, the three Baby Doll shirts we have are colorful, cute, and are guaranteed to cause confusion and fun when you run into Japanese people. See the new shirts on the Wacky T-Shirts page!
In addition to our new T-shirts, we’ve got a huge number of other new items this evening, including:
- First, more of what we do best, Japanese magazines — find the new issues of the best-selling Dela Beppin and Beppin School, as well as the new Pink Gold (Kurumi-chan fans, take note) and a new issue of Momo-Mizu, the popular “bathing suit only” magazine
- For photobooks, we recommend the lovely photobook “Cupid, by Sawada Yuri, a really nice and elegant collection of hairnude photos in a nice hardcover book
- Also for photobook fans, several back-in-stock items, including Wonderful (vol. 3 and 4), Secret Idol, and several books for leg fetish fans
- We have an excellent new Multi-Boy issue featuring many lovely performances, and a special DVD version of Cho! Very Good!! (on the CD ROM and MPEG page)
- For fans of Japan’s unique AV videos, we have a host of new in-stock items for you. Look for new videos posted at the top of the Classics page (Miura Aika & Fubuki Akira compilation videos), on the New Releases page (Sakurai Fuka’s Violent Lips” and more), and on the Theme Videos page (an interesting ass-centric new release)
- Also for video fans, a first at J-List — female-to-female molesting videos, an interesting category of Japan’s ever-creative SOD. See this video on their in-stock page, or on the Special Order Videos (SOD) page if the ones we have in stock sell out
- We have many excellent volumes of manga for you, both popular items we’ve gotten back in stock (Rich Girl’s Specialist, Teaching the Virgin Boy and more) as well as several beautiful volumes that are new to the list — please see the manga pages (especially New Releases and Best Sellers)
- J-List customers ask for more anime cards, so we’ve obliged: see the new cards from Kanon (a wonderful bishojo game that’s taking Japan by storm this year) and Gundam War (featuring all Gundam characters and mechs) on the Anime Cards page
- Speaking of anime, we’ve got stock of the new Pokemon Choco Snack, a delicious chocolated maltball snack that comes with one of sixteen chromed cards — very cool. See the Anime Snacks or the Snack pages for this item
- On our Wacky Things from Japan page this evening, please see two very cool items. One is a handy wooden back massager, which allows you to really relax the muscles of your back. Also, for those with “ear cleaning fetish” (people who love having their girlfriends or wives clean their ears for them), we’ve got a great Japanese-style ear wax pick that has a built-in flashlight, so the person doing the cleaning can see what they’re doing
- Finally, fresh stock of some items we just couldn’t keep in stock: more loose socks, socks glue (to hold up your loose socks), Japanese vocabulary study cards (for studying vocabulary words, use them to learn Japanese), and one of our best sellers, the Hello Kitty printed chopsticks.
Please remember that we’re looking for J-E translators who are interested in working on exciting projects involving translating of games and manga. If you’ve got these skills, please drop us a line. Thanks!
