About the J-List team

JBOX.com is a limited corporation (yuugen gaisha) based in Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Gunma is located 30 km from the geographic center of the main Japanese island of Honshu, about two hours by slow train from Tokyo, and is known for mountains, clean water, hot springs and cold, strong winds in the winter (kara-kaze). It's also known for strong-minded women (my wife, the president of the company, made me write that). Isesaki (pop. 140,000) is the hometown of "Touch" artist Adachi Mitsuru, a manga artist that not many Americans know very well; it also has a very nice Ferris wheel and roller coaster about three minutes from JBOX.com, and many pretty sakura (cherry blossom) trees which bloom in the Spring.

My name is Peter, and I taught English as a Second Language in Japan for four years. I enjoyed teaching ESL and have some advice on my homepage for anyone wanting to teach in Asia. Be sure and check out the "You've been in Japan Too Long" list located here.

I got interested in Japan like many Americans, by watching Japanese television shows when I was young and impressionable. Not content to just like the country, I studied Japanese for four years at San Diego State University, then came here, yearning for that mythical day when I finally would "learn Japanese." (Some postulate that I left America because I committed some heinous crime.) I've lived in Japan since October of 1991, and have loved nearly every minute of it. You can see some of my life works, including links to translations of the two Kimagure Orange Road novels I have translated, on my personal homepage. I've recently started a "side blog" to J-List for people who read small print like this. See it here.

Meet Tomo Fujita. A former teacher of test English at a Japanese cram school, Tomo's interest in the Internet and promoting Japanese pop culture all over the world was a key reason he wanted to work with us. At age 27, Tomo's main love is movies, and he's seen just about every film you can name. He's a big Kubric fan, and his favorite book is Catcher in the Rye. If you want to chat with him about stuff, his email him here.

This is Yasuhiro Nieda, aka "Nieda-kun." He studied for two years in Philadelphia, and his English is great. Before coming to J-List, he worked for "Sun Produce," an agency that put on fashion shows, where he worked with famous Japanese actresses (he ate Ryoko Hirosue's bento and Rie Miyazawa once got mad at him). He recently became a proud father.

Daisuke Furuta is a hard-working member of J-List, who has lived in the Chicago and San Francisco areas while he was studying english. He is a former AD, assistant director, and is experienced with editing and working with computers. He's from Kyushu and tells all of us in Gunma how funny our Japanese is. He recently married a Gunma bijin (a beautiful girl from Gunma Prefecture).

This is "Mom," Peter's mother, who's been a member of the JBOX.com team from the very beginning. She holds things down in San Diego for us, and makes sure everything goes smoothly. She's amazed to see how far her son has taken his love of Gamera, Kimba the White Lion and Star Blazers.

This is Laura, who works hard in San Diego to organize things and make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. She has worked at many jobs in the past, including as a registered nurse, factory floor manager, artist, and more. She's an experienced web designer and has many other talents.

This is Carlos, the T-shirt meister who prints the world-famous JBOX.com T-shirts. He's an extremely good at what he does, and takes great pride in the quality of the shirts he prints for you.

Chancee hails from Austin, Texas, and is proud of it, and no one works harder making sure things go smoothly at our San Diego office. She's a dynamo of efficiency who will get you your T-shirt, game or DVD player order in record time.

Paul is the man in charge of sales at our San Diego location, and works hard to make sure lots of people find out about our unique products. He's originally from New Jersey but loves the beach scene in San Diego.

Dawn keeps track of everything in San Diego, and makes sure all the important stuff gets done. She loves playing classic arcade games on her modified Xbox.

Charlie does just about everything you can think of at our San Diego location, from packing your order to assisting with printing of your T-shirts. He's on the job to make sure your order arrives in a timely manner.

This is Pawel, our head programmer and the man in charge of making sure the JBOX.com website runs smoothly. If anything goes wrong with the site, we'll have him fix it. His interests are karaoke, Japanese, classic arcade gaming, gadetry, and being Hirosue Ryoko's #1 fan. He's got a wonderful new Japanese wife, too -- congratulations!

Chiharu is my lovely wife, the cruel taskmaster who keeps us all in line at J-List. She studied English for two and a half years in Steven's Point, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles, and has had many interesting adventures in the U.S. I met her in an an "English conversation coffee shop" operated by a friend of mine.