October is an auspicious month here at J-List. It’s our birthday, and a special one this year since it’s our 15th anniversary! It was a mind-boggling 15 years ago this month that I officially quit my job as an ESL teacher and started J-List, with one employee and two computers networked to each other directly. We started out selling Japanese music CDs in a big list made in Excel (which is where we get our name), and as each month went by we added new products to our lineup: anime figures, calendars, magazines, our first “Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend” kanji T-shirt. 1996 was very different from 2011. The web was much less developed than it is currently, with no social networking or viral videos or blogs, and Google (or as we call them, “the new kid”) didn’t even exist yet. One thing it did have plenty of was people with a fascination with Japan, and no matter what aspect of the country you were interested in — anime or manga, music, JAV or H-games — the web was the place to come to share it with others. J-List has been extremely happy to serve as a bridge between Japan and the outside world for the past 15 years, and we’ll be here another 15 if we can! Arigatou gozaimasu!
Happy 15th Birthday to J-List
