We recently wrote about Urara Uraraka’s new “maternity nude” photo book, citing the precedent for such pregnancy shoots in Japan among celebrities and idols. One of the examples we mentioned was Angelica Michibata, who posed for a fairly modest (technically non-nude) one in 2018. Now Angelica Michibata is back in the news with reports that…

Old love hotels in Japan have long enjoyed a special brand of fandom, either for their garish visuals or their increasingly haikyo-style “abandoned” status. But a new sort of love hotel otaku is emerging. And they are young women who visit the establishments by themselves. We previously mentioned the 20-year-old student whose YouTube channel was…

Japan is known for its large numbers of seniors. Not only are seniors numerically significant — almost 30% of the population are over 65 — but they still dominate politics, bureaucracy, and even entertainment, with older people (especially men) remaining in respected positions. This can lead to trouble. After the notorious case earlier this year…

What kind of female bust do you like? It’s a question we often ponder in various ways for far too long each day. Apparently, we’re not alone and a lingerie company in Osaka even went so far as to do an online survey to find out the answer. In mid-September, Maruko asked 800 people, even…

It takes a lot to stand out amid a crowd, and this love hotel just did it. Shibuya’s Dogenzaka is famously jam-packed with love hotels and they use garish colors and strange names to attract the attention of potential guests. That said, most are pretty tame in terms of the exterior design: with some exceptions…

There are weird films. And then there are weird films. Japanese cinema has previously produced such masterpieces as the Hentai Kamen. And now comes the latest offering from Shin’ichiro Ueda, the director of sleeper hit One Cut of the Dead. From the poster and trailer, Popran appears to be a comedy-horror film about a penis…

Given the mosaic (pixelization) in Japanese porn and the extent of censorship in mainstream movies, it can be hard to forget about what you can’t see: pubic hair. But that is one of the things so shocking about “hair nude” full-frontal shoots, especially the older ones in the 1980s and 1990s: not only is the…

We’ve all felt horny at work. Some of us have snuck off to the toilets to rub one out. Perhaps a few of us have even thought about getting intimate with a coworker. Ever fewer of us have actually done that. But the proportion is perhaps higher among firefighters. The Nagoya municipal firefighting bureau, reports…

Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases announced the grim news on December 14 that cases of syphilis were at a historic high in the country. This year’s number of reported syphilis cases hit 7,134 from January to December 5. The number is the highest since measurements began. Syphilis is increasing nationwide, though Tokyo, Osaka, and…

Another week, another chikan story. As regular readers to this blog will know, groping on public transport is a serious problem in Japan, so much so that it has its own name (chikan) and tactics to deal with it — primarily women-only carriages. This doesn’t seem to stop the perpetrators, though, but we also seem…