Claim your FREE Hanafuda Style Playing Card Deck

To celebrate the recent launch of Japanese-Games-Shop.com I am giving away a free pack of Japanese Hanafuda Style Playing Cards any time a reader of this blog does ANY ONE of these things:

1. Purchase a product at Japanese-Games-Shop.com.

or

2. Purchase an instantly downloadable audio book for your Ipod, MP3 player, or to burn to CD here.

3. Sign up FREE to the SFI affiliates program here.
Since 1985, SFI has helped tens of thousands of men and women worldwide build successful
home businesses. SFI can help you, too. Your enrollment now includes over $400 in FREE bonuses.

or

4. Sign up for a 14 day trial of the Success University program here.
(This will cost only $2 and the fee will be donated to Feed The Children.)
Success University enables you to profit from the rapidly growing personal development industry with the most powerful learn and earn referral program ever released!

After you have done any ONE of those three things just drop me a line here at hirohurl@gmail.com letting me know what action you took and request a "Free Hanafuda style playing card deck".

That's it!

I will send you a complimentary Hanafuda-style playing card deck straight from Sunny Hiroshima!

Have a good summer.

David Hurley
Japanese-Games-Shop.com
Japanese-Mahjong.com
Grasp-the-Nettle.com
100-Word-Book-Reviews.com

Mahjong Sets: The Ugly, the Good & the Beautiful.

Regular visitors to the "mahjong shop" section of my website will be aware that I offer a range of eleven Japanese mahjong sets, from a standard set all the way up to an exclusive set complete with hand-made bamboo backs.

I have now upgraded the most basic set that I offer while keeping the price below $50. The standard set is now called the Japanese "Sango" Mahjong Set. It is housed in a smart "snap shut" case that is better finished than the case the previous "Standard MJ" set was housed in. The tiles are made to Japanese specifications and are "High Grade Mahjong Tiles".

You can get a close look at the Winds, Dragons, Seasons and Red Fives to check out the quality of the finish over at my Japanese Mahjong Goods site.

Every mahjong set I offer on my site has been made to Japanese specifications. Japanese specs cover size and also quality of production, including the quality of the plastic and paint that are used to produce the tiles.

The quality of the plastic that the tiles are made of is an important point to bear in mind when choosing a mahjong set. Cheap and nasty sets have a really noxious plastic odour to them. None of the sets I offer on my site are made of that ghastly cheap (almost certainly imported from you-know-where) plastic.

However, the other week I accidentally bought one such set. It has been filling my storage space with its noxious fumes. The only benefit I can put it to before throwing it away is to photograph the tiles so you can compare a cheap and nasty set to the sets I offer on my site.

Here goes!

Here are the cheap and nasty Winds, Dragons, Seasons and Red Fives. You will notice the poor finish, ill defined characters, and rather nasty plastic sheen.

Just imagine the whiffy pong of cheap plastic to complete the picture!





It gets worse when you check out the Bamboo and the Coin suits... That ghastly brute of a peacock looks more like a turkey!







The Coins are very blotchy - the nasty glossy paint has been carelessly applied so it runs over and obliterates the sketchy patterning.

The paint looks as if it is about to peel. I hate to think how much lead is in it...




Now, compare the Winds and Dragons of the most economical set that I offer, the "Sango" set that I discussed at the beginning of this article. The difference in quality is immense.

Straightaway the cleaner finish of the tiles is apparent. The paint has been carefully applied and the engraving is more detailed.

The tiles shown here are basic tiles made to Japanese standards. They are the most economical tiles that I offer on my site, yet they are far superior in quality on every count: quality of plastic, quality of paint, quality of engraving, quality of finish.


And now, just to complete the comparison, let's bring in my favourite Japanese mahjong set, the exclusive Nintendo "New Ivory" set for inspection:


The tiles have an ivory-style "grain" running through them and the engraving seems to shimmer above the surface.

So, you can see that when it comes to choosing a Japanese mahjong set, there is a huge difference between the ugly, the good and the beautiful!

DH
Japanese-Mahjong.com
Japanese-Games-Shop.com

Hirohurl is Dead! Long Live Japanese-Games-Shop!

A couple of weeks ago hirohurl.net went dead! The domain name was supposed to renew automatically, but it didn't. By the time I was able to do anything about it the name had been snapped up by a shark who I presume was hoping that I'd buy it back from him at an inflated price.

I didn't, and if you head over there you will find a link farm.

Mindful that "Crisis = Opportunity" I decided to break up the site into its constituent parts, each with its own domain name, and today the Japanese Shop has been relaunched at:-

http://japanese-games-shop.com

Regular visitors will recognize the familiar format - somewhat tweaked and improved upon, I hope - and offering the same range of games and goods as before...

So, we are back in business. Today, even before the launch, Japanese-Games-Shop.com made its first sale - the search engine spiders must have been over the site already!

As well as http://japanese-games-shop.com, three other sites are up and running in various states of development. They are:-

http://japanese-mahjong.com

http://100-word-book-reviews.com

http://business-success-online.com

I am hoping to launch two more sites over the course of the long and humid Japanese summer!

Best wishes,

David Hurley
http://japanese-games-shop.com

Rokudenashi Blues and Ginga Densetsu Weed

Rokudenashi Blues - Summer Time Offer!

I just posted a special limited manga offer on http://japanese-games-shop.com/manga.html.

Rokudenashi Blues is a popular manga series by Morita Masanori it focuses on a delinquent Japanese high school student called Taison Maeda who is into boxing, street fights and motorbikes. His name is a combination of wrestler Akira Maeda and former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.

The manga originally ran in Japan's Shonen Jump comic, a weekly comic that has run many of Japan's most famous comic stories.

The story is very popular in Japan but it has not been serialized in English so it is quite difficult to get hold of outside of Japan.

I have been meaning to add this series to my manga listings at $3.50 a pop. For the time being, however, I'm running a summer time THREE FOR FIVE DOLLARS offer.

As manga go, this series is relatively easy for the Japanese language student to read. The Japanese is not so difficult, and all the Kanji in the speech bubbles come with furigana to assist reading. The stories are fast paced and easy to follow. The series makes for excellent Japanese reading practice and are enjoyable to read in themselves - much better than "Nihon No Kiso" and other classroom textbooks!!

If you'd like to take advantage of the offer head over to http://www.japanese-games-shop.com/manga.html

Ginga Densetsu Weed - More Volumes Now Available

Until today fans of the canine animation series Ginga Densetsu Weed were only able to buy volumes 1-10 directly from my manga site.

The good news is that I have finally got around to making the first forty volumes directly available from my site.

The forty-fifth volume has just been published, so as you can see, I am trying to keep as up to date as possible with this popular series.

Now You Can Shop For Japanese Manga and Books On Amazon.co.jp

For Ginga Densetsu Weed fans who want to get the very latest GDW volumes, or any other Japanese manga or book for that matter, I am in the process of launching an "Amazon.co.jp buying service" so you will be able to buy new stuff direct from Japan.

Head over to http://japanese-games-shop.com/manga.html and run a search on one of the Amazon.co.jp portals. When you find what you want, send me the link and I will purchase it for you and ship it to you.

If you can't use Japanese script let me know what it is you are looking for and I will search for it for you.

I will shortly be adding all the details of this new service to the manga site. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more about what is on offer and the fees involved, drop me a line and I will send you full details.

In the meantime, best wishes from hot and humid rainy-season Japan!

DH
japanese-games-shop.com
3rd July 2007

Japanese Anime Card Decks

Two Japanese t.v. cartoons that have recently gained nationwide popularity and are all the rage with kids but also appeal to adult viewers are Lilly Franky's "Oden-kun" and Tetsuo Yasumi's Zenmai Zamurai.

Nowadays you can find a lot of spin-off goods based on those animations in the shops. As I number myself among the fans of these two whacky anime, I have been meaning to introduce them to visitors of hirohurl.net and today I finally got around to it! I have added a page to my site offering playing card decks featuring characters from Oden-kun and Zenmai Zamurai. They will make the perfect present for game-playing afficionados of Japanese popular culture!

So what are the two cartoons all about?

Oden-Kun

Oden-kun is set in a world that exists at the bottom of a Japanese stew pot, a place where the stewed eggs, potatoes, sausages, rolled cabbage, fish-paste tubes, and other weird and wonderful Japanese culinary concoctions go about their daily lifes until a large pair of chopsticks rends the soupy firmament and plucks one of them up and onto a customer's plate in the human world of the Oden stall.

However, once consumed by a ravenous customer, the plucky little oden characters go on to fight the various diseases and disorders they encounter inside the humans...

And as soon as the Oden stall owner gets around to preparing some replacement items, and popping them into the stew pot, the characters miraculously reappear back in the village at the bottom of the stew pot.

Zemai Zamurai - The Clockwork Samurai

In his early days Zenmai Zamurai was a warrior thief and to atone for his sins he has been sent to the future world of "Karakuri Oedo" - a kind of "greater Edo" - by Daifuku no Kami, the God of Good Fortune.

To keep tabs on the little samurai Daifuku no Kami took the precaution of sticking a clockwork key in Zenmai Zamurai's head to keep track of his good deeds. Zenmai means "clockwork" in Japanese.

Zenmai Zamurai carries a sword with four dango stuck on it. When he draws his sword and strikes at his enemies they swallow the dango and are turned into happy goody-goodies.

Oden-kun and Zenmai Zamurai Cartoon Character Playing Card Decks

Get yourself a piece of the latest Japanese animation craze! Two crazy, colourful playing card decks featuring Oden-kun and Zenmai Zamurai are now available at:

http://japanese-games-shop.com/japanese-animation-decks.html.

Luxury "Ran" Mahjong Set with Bamboo Backs.

The "Ran" mahjong set that is - or rather was - available on my mahjong site at http://www.japanese-mahjong.com/mjgoods.html has gone out of production.

Apparently, the artisan who produces those sets is retiring.


However, the company that employed him is seeking someone to replace him and to produce a different version of the set, with hand-made bamboo backs complete with the traditional dove-tail joint that fixes the bamboo to the back of the tile.



Unfortunately, these sets are very few and far between and I am not sure that they will be able to find anybody with the skills needed to make the tiles.



Just before the artisan retired he made a few of the new style sets. I was able to obtain a very small number of them. Right now I have only one left!

I have no idea whether or not it is the last one that will be produced and I keep badgering my supplier to see if he can ferret out any more sets that may have been squirreled away somewhere, but so far without any luck.

The set also features a strikingly unusual calligraphic style most evident in the design of the Wind and Dragon tiles, as you can see in the photograph.

So, if you would like to own a hand-finished bamboo-backed Japanese mahjong set of unusual design, drop me a line at hirohurl@hotmail.com and I will send you more details, if it is still available, that is!

HerbaGreen Teas Now Available at Japanese-Games-Shop.com!

In April 2007 Japanese-Games-Shop.com affiliated with SFI marketing group and has recently added their range of HerbaGreen Teas to Japanese-Games-Shop.com.



Naturally sweetened with lo han fruit extract--which promotes fat burning and soothes the digestion process - HerbaGreen Teas also contain lotus leaf (rich in isoflavones), kudzu (for promoting circulation), and 100mg of polyphenols, equivalent to at least 15 cups of the strongest brewed green tea.



PLUS - HerbaGreen Teas contain NO calories or caffeine.


Each bottle equals 60 servings.

Choose from among Original flavor, Heavenly Honey Lemon, or Mandarin Mango Swirl. Then, simply add a dropper full to hot, warm, or cold water and stir for a naturally delicious, wonderfully healthy drink!


BENEFITS OF GREEN TEA POLYPHENOLS:
* Maintains healthy cells, cell growth and development.
* Supports a healthy cardiovascular system.
* Promotes healthy weight control by blocking carbohydrate absorption.
* Fights damaging free-radicals, which attack healthy cells and promote aging.
* Supports the immune system.
* Helps the body maintain its toxin-free condition.
* Promotes healthy blood sugar balance.
* Supports dental and optimal gum health.


CONCENTRATED HERBAGREEN TEA VS. "TEA BAGS"

Scientific documentation has shown that the majority of the therapeutic benefits of green tea are due to the polyphenols. Steeping a tea bag in hot water is a very inefficient means of extracting these polyphenols. HerbaGreen Tea contains concentrated extracts, with over 90% polyphenols. One serving provides 115 mg of plyphenols, the equivalent of more than 15 cups of brewed "tea bag" green tea.


Furthermore, a lot of green tea from tea bags contains caffeine, which many people want to avoid. HerbaGreen Tea has only caffeine-free green tea extracts. You get ALL the benefits of green tea polyphenols with HerbaGreen Tea!


Finally, each small bottle of HerbaGreen Tea is a much more convenient source of healthful antioxidants for a busy lifestyle. Just add a single dropper into your water bottle and enjoy while working out, walking, or on the go... or add some tea into your water while dining out.

Shipping Costs of Pilot Pens Fixed $5! - No Matter How Many You Buy!!

Yes folks, its true!

I've been meaning to do it...

I've been promising myself to do it...

I've never quite got around to doing it...

Well, I had some free time today and you know what? -

I FINALLY BLOOMING WELL DID IT!!

From May 2007 you can buy as many pens as you like and just pay $5 shipping and handling! Buy one Pilot pen, or one hundred, and you'll pay the same fixed $5 for ALL shipping and handling, Paypal and packaging, sweat-of-the-brow and shoeleather charges!

Oh, and I also fixed the "turning Japanese" Paypal order form phenomenon - or at least it looks good from where I'm sitting here in Hiroshima right bang smack in the middle of Golden Week.

Thanks to J. J. from San Francisco for the feedback that finally spurred me into action. Free pens will be winging their way to you with your next order!

Happy Golden Week!

DH

Hand-Carved Shogi Pieces in a Dynamic New Style

The very best Japanese chess pieces ("shogi koma") are hand carved by craftsmen who each has his own particular style.

Styles vary in elaboration and cursive style as well as in the depth and thickness of the cut.

Apparently one of the craftsman who specializes in carving the deep-cut (fukabori) style pieces has changed his style and also now only works with the finest Japanese boxwood (tsuge). Japanese boxwood is the most prestigious of all the different types of wood used to make shogi pieces.

The new style is quite stunning, more dynamically cursive than the old. These two photos show the old style (left) and the new style (right). The old style is more angular and carved on Siamese boxwood.

Japanese boxwood is warmer in tone and with a finer grain (especially noticable on the rear edge of each piece). When you place a Japanese and a Siamese piece side by side the Siamese piece, beautiful though it is, pales in comparison with the warm lustre of the Japanese boxwood.

The old Fukabori Koma were priced at $280 a set but are no longer available. The new Fukabori Koma, carved on the most prestigious Japanese tsuge wood in a new dynamic style will be priced at $320.

However, I'd like to make it available for the month of May at the same price as the old set - $280 (plus shipping and handling) to readers of this blog.

So if you would like to own a unique piece of Japanese craftsmanship, something that will last a lifetime and retain its lustre for future generations, act now! Go to

http://hirohurl.net/horikoma.html

and order via the "Matsu Fukabori, Siamese Tsuge, $280" Paypal button. I will upgrade the order to a "Matsu Fukabori, Japanese Tsuge, $320" set for no extra charge.

Hand Made Ceramics by Two Master Craftsmen from Hiroshima.

A section dealing with Japanese arts and crafts has recently been added to Japanese-Games-Shop.com. The first page to be uploaded introduces the works of two noted Hiroshima ceramics craftsmen.

Every item they produce is hand made.

The father, Nishimoto Eisen, works in the traditional style of the Jomon era, producing ceramics reminiscent of those of pre-historic Japan.

Nishimoto Eisen's son, Nishimoto Naofumi, works in a contemporary style to produce ceramic vessels for everyday use as well as vases and more abstract ornamental pieces.

Both potters have received several prizes for their ceramics in Japan and on the international stage.

Samples of their works can be viewed at: http://www.japanese-games-shop.com/geijutsu/nishimoto.html