animerevue

Mikakutoh Shigekix -- Super Cola *New Package *

A wonderful and highly unique Japanese snack treat, this is one of our favorites here at J-List -- Shigekix, a wonderful ramune soda "hard gummi" (the same texture and quality as gummi, but in a chewy, harder version). Extremely sour, this thrilling treat will surely cause your face to contort as you eat it. It's great fun, and each package has only 84 Kcal. (Note: "shigeki" means "stimulation" in Japanese.) This is for the cola version, which has a "geji register" of 700. Comes in a resealable...

Yua Aida 4 Hours (region 2)

Yua Aida is by far one of the most sultry AV idols in the industry today, a woman that's known for her perfect curves and willingness to take on new sexual experiences. Although now officially retired from the AV scene, her productions live on in fantastic compilations such as this "Best of" collection courtesy of Moodyz. Featuring seven extra long scenes in a wonderful 4 hour production, you'll get front row seats to her activities of a hardcore nature - lotion play sex, slut woman full body...

Mikakuto Shigekix Super Lemon

A wonderful and highly unique Japanese snack treat, this is one of our favorites here at J-List -- Shigekix, a wonderful lemon "hard gummi" (the same texture and quality as gummi, but in a chewy, harder version). Extremely sour, this thrilling lemon treat will surely cause your face to contort as you eat it. It's great fun, and each package has only 89 Kcal. (Note: "shigeki" means "stimulation" in Japanese.) A super super sour version that contains vitamin C. (More like this) (Direct link to...

Glico Mini Pretz -- Honey & Butter

A wonderful Japanese snack, certainly the most likely snack to be eaten by the J-List staff in the afternoons when we get hungry, this is a great new Honey Butter Flavor that we're sure will be a huge hit with our customers. Lightly salted pretzel sticks from Gilico, these are a fantastic and wonderful treat, which are happy to be able to make available to you outside of Japan. A new mini version that's perfect for kids lunches or storing away in your bag for a quick treat. Each box contains...

Pen spinning is the art of spinning a pen around your fingers and doing amazing tricks with it, and J-List has recently added a line of specially weighted spinning pens to our site for you to check out. The unique activity of twirling a pen is thought to have originated in Japan with ronin, a word which once meant a masterless samurai but in modern days refers to a student who has failed his university entrance exams and must live in limbo as he studies to take the tests near year. Since these students had plenty of free time, they'd get really good at spinning their pens in their fingers while they studied. The First Pen Spinning Boom got underway in Japan around 1976, when students of several famous national and private universities became known for the ability to spin pens. It was later learned that all these students had attented a yobiko (cram school) called Sundai Preparation School, which soon became legend among "spinners" for birthing the sport. In 1997 a pen spinning fan named Hideaki brought spinning to the Internet age with the first website dedicated to the activity, which ushered in the Second Wave of Pen Spinning. The Third Wave arrived with the defining of the various pen spinning tricks (backaround, infinity, palm spin and so on -- they are frankly over my head, although they look cool) and the rise in pen spinning internationally in the form of world tournaments. How long will it be before Electronic Arts comes out with Extreme Pen Spinning for the Playstation 3? I'll let that be a question for the ages.

Last time I talked about how there are times when gaijin in Japan might find that some doors open for them if they speak English rather than fluent Japanese. I'm not sure why this, but the tendency for Japanese to react positively to someone speaking English seems to be related to the strange "English complex" they possess, the various difficult emotions each Japanese person has about the language, which most study for years but don't really master. Tomo tells me it's related to what's known as seiyo suhai shugi, translatable as Worship-of-the-West-ism, the tendency for Japanese to assume that Europe and America are more socially advanced and inherently superior to Japan. Basically, when a person speaks English, he seems to be elevated to a higher rung of the social ladder than if he spoke fluent Japanese -- even if he could recite the Tale of Genji from memory while performing tea ceremony and folding origami (sigh). One area that tends to be important to males living in Japan is, well, meeting females, and the great agony of gaijin who have studied a lot Japanese is the inverse relationship of language study to how popular you (might) be with certain kinds of Japanese girls. It seems that a fun English-speaking foreigner might just be more interesting (mysterious?) than a Japanese-fluent gaijin who can discuss the various historical causes for the Saigo Takamori's Rebellion which took place after the Meiji Restoration. Of course, this is a pretty big generalization, and I know that my wife was intereted in me because of my deeper passion for Japan rather than in spite of it. But seeing newly-arrived teachers in the JET program go drinking with girls hanging off them at the local pub made cramming for Level 1 of the Japan Language Proficiency Test just a little bit harder. Oh well.

Well, I've made the big hop from Japan to San Diego, in preparation for the upcoming Anime Expo, which is sure to be a blast. The trip is 24 hours door-to-door, which includes 3 hours on a bus to Narita, sitting around the airport, and the total flight time. It's a stressful journey to be sure, although I'm always happy to make it because one of my two favorite places (San Diego or Japan) is waiting for me on the other end. As usual, I've spent a couple days experiencing various forms of reverse culture shock, being surprised at things like "small" drinks here (quite large compared to Japan), how dirty some people let their cars get (you just don't see cars that beg to have "wash me" written in dust as you sometimes do here), or how American school buses and mail delivery trucks manage to stay exactly the same as they were when I was a kid in the 1970s. I'm also fighting off the late-afternoon jet lag that starts to slowly creep up on me, so if I fall asleep during this update, I apologize in advance.

This city is why I love to drive convertable cars like the Miata / Mazda Roadster.

Here are today's "really cool products" that I've picked out for you, out of the 30+ new items we've added to the J-List and JBOX.com sites today. Note that some products may be "not safe for work" but that all links will allow you to redirect yourself either to the J-List or JBOX.com websites. To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.