Each Friday, in honor of the #FollowFriday tradition on Twitter, we will be featuring one of our own Featured Users on the blog.
Today we hear from Peter Payne of J-List, who lives and works in Japan. On Twitter, he’s JList.
Peter Payne of J-List
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Peter Payne and I run J-List, a kind of fun/wacky web shop based in Japan selling everything from anime to bento boxes to a few wacky adult products. Stuff like the Hello Kitty shoulder massagers.
How (and when) did you first come to be on Twitter, and how has the experience evolved for you?
One of our programmers is involved with Zappos, and he evangelized it to me, so I thought, what the heck. Having not really “gotten” Facebook that well — what’s the point of sending virtual Star Wars figures to people? — I was cautious, but right away Twitter was really fun for me and, I think, for my customers who want to follow my life in Japan in a new way.
Where are you located? What’s your favorite thing about where you live?
We’re located in Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, and we like to say, “If there’s a bright center to Japan, we’re in the prefecture that it’s farthest from.” Actually we have a lot of fun there, lots of mountains and hot springs. If you know the anime Initial D, it’s based where we live.
What are you most excited about sharing with your followers?
I love having conversations with people about obscure anime references and feeling how we’ve built a mini-society of people who can get the subtleties of this aspect of Japan or that. I also love being able to have a two-way communication with my customers, so I can say things like, “Hey readers in the U.K., is this word a British slang that you’re familiar with?” and get an instant reply back. Blogging is great — I’ve been doing it before the word existed — but being able to instantly hear from customers about whether a certain layout is good or bad, is really beneficial.
What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not online?
Definitely hot springs in Japan. Right now I’ve taken some time off to bring my son up to Hokkaido to check the place out. There’s a train tunnel that goes from Hokkaido to Aomori, with a train station that’s underwater, and we’re going to check that out on Sunday.
