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| Jasmine Tea: Nakano | |||
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Since the demise of the excellent Hong Kong film store in Aoyama a few years ago, Hong Kong film fans have had a hard time finding videos and DVDs of the latest movies from the Chinese film industry. Thankfully, Jasmine Tea is a DVD store dedicated to importing all the latest Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China movies into Japan at very reasonable prices.
Jasmine Tea has DVDs at prices comparable to foreign mail-order stores. Since they are all Hong Kong made, most of the discs are region-free and often feature subtitles in at least Chinese and English, and sometimes amazingly in three Chinese variants, Japanese, Korean, English, and French. These are made for parallel importing - much to the chagrin of film distributors everywhere. The shop also stocks a good selection of films on VCD, that peculiarly Asian format that offers very cheap, poor-image-quality movies that play on almost any computer - but not your DVD player. While the shop carries some US region 1 movies at bargain prices (1000 or 2000 yen), and a small section on Taiwanese and Chinese arthouse films, the main focus is on Hong Kong entertainment. Sections on all the big stars (the late Lesley Cheung and Anita Mui featured prominently recently), and all your other favorites - Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stephen Chau, Nicholas Tse, Andy Lau, etc. If you wish to see the big hit films from HK six months to a year before they are released here, check it out. Where else can you find the epic "Infernal Affairs," the Godfather of Hong Kong triad films, or "PTU" - Johnny To's riveting film of a police unit on nocturnal patrol in the mean streets of Hong Kong, set to an atmospheric guitar soundtrack? by Richard Jeffery |
Jasmine Tea
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