Yasu and I continue to have fun in Georgia, visiting various tourist sites and finding interesting foods to eat, like fried okra and black-eyed peas and more fried chicken than I usually eat in a year. We headed down to Savannah to do some sightseeing — including visiting the site of the Forest Gump bench — and soon we’ll head back to Japan. It’s been a fun trip!October 1st was the 17th anniversary of the founding of J-List. Yes, it was 17 years ago that we started this strange, wonky company dedicated to finding interesting Japan-related products that people might want to buy. Even before I officially quit my job as an ESL teacher to start the company, I’d run a year-long “proof of concept” by buying used JPOP music CDs and selling them to people on USENET. (The name J-List comes from “The Japan List,” a giant Excel spreadsheet I used to track the items I had in stock.) Doing something totally crazy like quitting a safe English teaching job to start a company was a big step, and my conservative Japanese family was sure I was off my rocker. Happily it all turned out okay, and now J-List is almost old enough to buy products from J-List! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the many years of support — we are blessed to have the most awesome customers in the world!
Thanks for 17 years of support for J-List!
