Blog of Japan Video World

The cart is fixed! It was down all of Tuesday the 12th due to a mistake on my part! Oops! I’m so glad I checked the site before going to bed! You could add items to the cart and they would not appear in the cart AT ALL!

I was making some slight changes to the web server. Installed a new control panel  and activated Varnish cache. Apparently it breaks the shopping cart! I deactivated that and now everything is fine.

I’m now using a fully dedicated CPU on our VPS instead of a shared one. I barely used 10% on the shared CPU and it’s not likely I needed to upgrade it, but it doesn’t hurt. 22K products in a database sure does eat up a lot of RAM!

If you could believe it, our first web server back in the early days was a fully dedicated server with only a 2ghz Celeron CPU with 80gb of merchanical hard drive space and 512mb of RAM!! They definitely overcharged us for it. I was also paying like $30/month for years for the Plesk control panel. I no longer use it, but the cheapest edition is worth every penny. It’s down to $13 I think.

The site now is faster than ever! I remember the days on my old web server and even with HTML and CSS only we could barely get under a TTFB (Time to first byte) of 190ms. Now it’s often down to 60ms!! We use Nginx and a pretty great caching software called Flying Press. It even works without messing with the shopping cart function. That’s not a common feature it seems like.

You know what’s super annoying these days when managing your own web server for a site? A massive ton of AI BOTS! I block them all! I never realize how much of a problem they are until recently. They supposedly do “training” on every site they visit.

 

 

106 new JAV DVDs just added to the site!

I’ve been on a roll adding tons of titles to the site. I bet you didn’t know that this is already the 4th routh of updates and it’s only the 10th!

Most of these came out very recently in Japan. Lots of variety in this update. Even some Lesbian titles, even the rare Bukkake new additions. As you may know, they don’t make those as much in Japan these days.

Here are some tips to navigate the site:

1. Click “Home” to see titles in EVERY genre. Previously you could click “Japan Video World”.
2. Click “Latest Updates” to see what we’ve added for each month. Or you can just click your favorite genre.
3. On the genre page you can sort by most recent titles or what is the most popular (goes by sales).
4. Want to see titles with your favorite actress? Be sure to click her “tag”. It allows you to see more of their DVDs.
5. If you want to see more previews for titles added before OCTOBER 2023 you can visit our old site.
6. Want to buy a title you’ve found on the old site? Search for it here, you may need to remove the dash (-) to find it.
7. 100% of ALL titles on the old site are available here. NOTHING has been removed!
8. We had to import all the old data and could not simply transfer over all the previews and actress info.
9. If anyone didn’t know, “All Sex” is our General or Main area. Most titles will go there.
10. If a DVD was added in the past 30 days it will now display a “NEW” label on the top right of the box cover.

I also found some technical issues that could have caused a few problems for people trying to order.

If you experienced that, please try it again!

Fingers crossed that was the issue, but maybe not.

It involved accidentally “caching” the check-out and cart contents pages. That’s FIXED.

I am hopeful I can continue the site for years. It’s going to happen!

I just need this update to be a huge success.

I am working so hard. Harder than ever before! It’s 3am and i’m still at it!

I have some huge plans for this site. I love my job so much and want to keep doing this as my full (and only) job.

I also want to assure everyone that if you have an open order, it’s 1000% going out and  ASAP. Don’t worry!

I’m working day and night.

Thank You!!

I upgraded the website server to an even faster one!

One more CPU core and double the memory.

For the past week I’ve noticed the site running very slow at random. My console would randomly report the CPU usage at 80-100% despite having little traffic. I spent a few hours troubleshooting that without any solutions until today.

It turns out it was some Cloudflare security feature. I have no idea how it could have caused this. Once I disabled that the server was back to normal. Why? I have no idea.

I’m not 100% sure this was the cause, but I also disabled some theme features which may have helped.

Now we are back to running super fast at less than 20% CPU usage.

I did a Google pagespeed test and just got this super great score below.

That’s with full page caching. With that our TTFB (Time to First Byte) is down to 60-70ms!

If any of you tried to order in the past week and had issues or timouts, this problem could be why.

It’s possible some of our security features accidentally blocked a few people (not likely though).

We’ve had a temporary issue where when registering for an account it would not send an email to setup a password.

This is now fixed! Now you can create an account with a password without clicking an email link first.

An account is NEVER required to order.

Why create an account? It allows you to save time at check-out. Your mailing address will be filled out automatically!

If you have an open order, we are working as hard as possible to get them out ASAP.

Complete marathon sessions daily. Please don’t worry, I guarantee 1000% you’ll get it.

Thank You!

BTW one important thing about accounts on our website worth mentioning. We NEVER and will never store any credit card details on the web server.

Any card details are submitted securely with encryption to our payment gateway for approval.

Today I finally finished the latest update! It’s probably the best one we’ve done in quite a long time.

Over 150 JAV DVDs were added to the site. Most of them were just released in Japan a few days ago.

Some of them I just can’t wait to watch and will maybe check them out later.

I think this update has some of the best variety compared to other ones.

I really really need this update to be a HUGE success. Not going to lie, but this month has been the most challenging one all year by far.  This is really bizarre considering March 2025 was one of our best months in maybe 5 years! Everything on the site is the same, so I don’t know what happened.

I think a lot of the issues were caused by our old server slowing down when it shouldn’t have. We are back to the high quality and reliable type of server we used in the past few years. No experiments to try to fix things that aren’t broken!

I try to make this site as easy to use as possible. IMO it’s a big improvement over our old & uglier site. As long as I keep doing high quality updates for everyone, things will be fine.

Right now I think many out there in the USA have switched to buying less things that are not absolutely essential. It’s just a guess. My expenses have gone up a little, but I will stick it out and not increase prices at all for awhile. That’s the last thing I want to do when sales are down!

DVDs are still $3.00 each with coupon code “DVDSALE” (without the quotes).

Free Shipping inside the USA is still available for orders of $50 or more.

PS if you have an open order, it’s being shipped ASAP.

Goal is to do some super marathon order processing sessions and get done with them all as fast as possible.

If you have ever visited the site in the past 18 days using mobile data only (not wifi) and couldn’t connect, it’s now fixed.

The site was fine with a desktop PC and over wifi. I estimate less than 5% of customers had this issue.

It turns out that I misconfigured the web server slightly due to poor documentation. It’s some strange issue on devices that only connect over IPV6 and don’t have IPV4 fallback (like my cell phone).

I’ve also created some new previews that are better for mobile devices for all the July 2024 updates. Now they will be in a single column instead of 3-5. I also had a great idea to put the previews into a gallery along with the covers too. I make these to try to save people the hassle of clicking dozens of images. You can view the July 2024 gallery. You can’t buy them from that page, but just keep a list of catalog numbers you want and search for them later (or keep the updates page up).

July 2024 is still an extremely tough month, but i’m trying everything I can to keep the site going for months and months. Right now i’m still at the point of getting a part time job on Monday if a miracle doesn’t happen. It’s only to help the site out and keep the bills paid. There is only a 1 in a million chance of the site every closing. Sales in May and June were about 75% of what they are on a normal month. Basically that puts me into panic mode daily.

I keep hoping that it’s some weird technical issue causing problems that is now fixed, but this is not likely.

Since 2002 i’ve had some difficult times running the site and got past them. This latest one is the worst by far. It’s like everything i’ve done to recover from poor sales hasn’t helped. 9 out of 10 times it’s a random Google algorithm update that causes the poor sales and eventually whatever they did is fixed. I hope this is the cause. It is also very strange considering we added a record number of new DVDs in May and June, yet terrible sales. Prices are also great IMO. I also think the site is easy to use and looks good (IMO).

If customers give me a second chance for the site and I don’t need to get a part time job, i’ve set some goals for the site. My plan is to turn the site around completely. Make sure orders get out super fast and work up to 16 hours a day if needed. I want to keep running the site full time for years! One reason for poor sales is due to me often not getting out orders fast enough. If I can get out orders lightning fast then i’d get more orders. The biggest problem the site faces really is it being run by one person. It’s incredibly difficult.

One fault of mine too is never planning for having to deal with 15,000+ DVDs. It was never a problem when I had 10,000. It’s very very hard to find discs in a collection of 18,000. I’ve been sorting them out slowly and organzing them, but it takes time.

The absolute biggest time sink when processing orders is finding discs. 75% of the time spent on order processing goes into that. This is probably hard to believe. Once I get all those discs sorted, this part is solved once and for all and i’ve getting back to normal FAST I think.

I’ve got a strategy in place to find single discs now in minutes instead of it taking an eternity. I just never imagined that one of the sites biggest challenges was finding single discs quickly!

What am I doing about that?

I put them all in long cardboard boxes and put those on a shelf. They store about 500 discs each.

Each disc is in a paper sleeve and gets a single number. Example A1, A2046, A5678.

The discs are put in numerical order so I can easily flip to the right disc.

I make a printed index and write the catalog numbers down and give each one a number.

I can now scan through a list of thousands of discs and find what I need super fast!

Eventually I will enter these index lists into my computer and search even faster.

I also upgraded the site with a new server. I’ve switched from Nginx/Apache to OpenLiteSpeed. One thing I have to say is that it’s a major pain in the butt to configure. The documentation is incredibly poor. The control panel they give you is also not user friendly at all. One reason I switched to a new server is that Plesk was going to no longer be free (it’s a web server admin control panel). Plesk is a super great software, but it is nowhere near worth the $25/month price they were asking. Especially not for one domain.

I used to never use a control panel for a web server. When I got older I just loved the convenience of using Plesk and not having to deal with using the Linux command line for everything.

The site runs on a dual core CPU with 4gb of ram and an NVME drive. I don’t think i’ve ever seen the server hit more than 10% CPU usage ever. It’s a VPS and not a shared or dedicated server.

BTW it’s possible the lack of sales lately is due to less people using physical media. I don’t believe this to be the case in my situation. Why? Sales were amazing in February! There are always going to be those like me that love and prefer physical media. I even refuse to buy video game systems that are digital only.

You can now view ALL the full sized covers of the May 2025 update on all one page!

If you want to buy any of them you’d just have to write down the catalog numbers and search for them or just copy and paste them into the search box.

This gallery makes it easy to see the large images without clicking each one.

Desktop PC users can also download a zip archive of full covers (right click and “Save Link As”). It allows you to view them all offline with your own picture viewer more quickly. I wouldn’t suggest it if you’re not familiar with zip files or extracting them. Some people find it easier to find what they’re looking for with these zip files.

I also put back online the OLD SITE. It was up last week for awhile, but I had to temporarily remove it.

Why don’t I just let it die already? Well, it’s still too useful I think! There is a TON of information there for collectors. Plus way more full length reviews, actress names and picture previews for DVDs added from 2002 until November of 2023.

I will add all that information to our current site, but to be honest it would take months of work.

 

Over 82 very recent releases were just added to the site on July 8th 2024.

This is possibly one of the best updates i’ve done in months.

Most of them came out in Japan in the past week or two. Lots of variety and something for everyone.

Please check them out when you have time.

I really really really need this update to be a huge success. If it’s not, I might not be able to do updates for at least another few months. It’s one of my “last-ditch” efforts before I possibly need to go get a part time job to help the site keep going.

You might not realize how much I love what I do and want to keep doing this full time (without a part time job).

Remember how I was saying that search traffic and sales were at their all time lowest point? I’ve been doing some investigating.

It turns out that ALL my meta descriptions for 1000+ titles were set all wrong. Due to an error on my part.

This caused all of those products to have really spammy (looking) descriptions in google search! That’s now fixed!

When searchers see that garbage they are not going to click it!

So what I did was accidentally enter my review and put a link to a picture gallery in the wrong area.

I put it under “Product Description”. I wasn’t aware that my Ecommerce software automatically used that for a product description!

This issue could have caused Google to flag my site or some of it’s pages as spammy or low quality.

I’m hoping for a miracle and they will pick up the changes quickly and this is the reason for poor traffic from Google search etc.

I really need a full recovery. Sales should not have magically fallen 75% in just the span of two months.

I’m hopefully I can get things back to normal soon. It’s going to happen!

 

PS I’ve also got the site running super fast now with page caching!

I don’t know if anyone will notice the speed difference, but I hope so.

Most pages won’t take more than a half  a second to load.

We are using Litespeedcache on an actual Openlitespeed server!

I just added 139 DVDs to the site. You can see them on the New Releases page. First 139 on that page.

Nearly every single one just came out in Japan just recently. So many look pretty amazing to me, especially the big bust DVDs.

As you may know, May 2025 was a nightmare month for the site in terms of sales  (down 75% at least!). We really need this update to be a huge success.

If you are thinking about placing an order please, please consider doing it soon if at all possible. It would really help us out and keep the site going long term. The end of the month is always the hardest for our site.

I think the shopping cart issue was happening for longer than I originally thought. That’s my idea. Now it’s fixed and working great.

It looks a little bit different now, but is basically the same.

BTW  I need to watch more of what I sell! I was thinking of getting back to reviewing maybe 5 or so movies per week when i’m not working.

One type of movie I absolutely love so much right now is gravure big bust movies. They’re non-nude and no topless scenes at all. They usually feature swimsuits, nice costumes and lingerie. They’re so hard to find and usually are never listed on adult sites due to usually not even being sexual in nature. If you’ve never seen them, check into Rui Kiriyama. She has dozens of DVDs and even some blu-rays. I don’t sell any because they wouldn’t sell well here I think. I was completely unaware of the greatness of this genre until 2025! I actually even prefer the Non nude ones. I love the beach scenes with the swimsuits etc.

They were actually put on my radar when I realized I really liked Yulia Nova. She was a Russian model who was very popular in Japan who had a lot of Japanese photo books and DVDs released.  They’re so old, but still going for hundreds of dollars on Ebay!

My current favorite gravure model is Sachiko Aizawa. She doesn’t have a lot of DVD releases, but below is the cover of her latest one I think. I guess she is an I-cup model!

 

I noticed when adding lots of titles to the cart on a cell phone you could click “View Cart”and then it would say the cart was empty!

The cart really wasn’t empty though. The problem is now fixed.

It was caused by my caching software caching the cart page (which you NEVER want to have happen!).

BTW if you ever browse the site while logged in and add DVDs to the cart, it will save these to your logged in account only.

When you logoff, the cart will be empty until you login again It’s a “feature” I guess.

I also added back some Full Cover Galleries for every update this year.

It lets you see all the full covers with one click instead of dozens.

 

Here they are:

July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

April 2024

March 2024

February 2024

January 2024