Some people to go to ANY lengths to catch a glimpse of the holy grail, it seems. Hyogo police have arrested a twenty-six-year-old company employee from Kobe for hiding in a 30-by-45-inch grate in the side of the road in order to spy on girls’ panties as they went by. Yasuomi Hirai has admitted his…

A three-party group has put forward a bill proposing to extend the ban on so-called child porn to anyone even just possessing it. The ruling LDP and its allies Komeito and Japan Restoration Party (led by Shintaro Ishihara and Toru Hashimoto) proffered the new bill to the Diet at the end of May. The manga…

We recently came across a bilingual interview with a hostess on Jagr Magazine. It seems genuine, though the hostess is apparently not Japanese (shame!). Here are some highlights. Interviewer: How does a hostess club work? Hostess: I came to Tokyo years ago, and I never knew what a hostessing job was, but my dad’s friend…

The new “child porn” proposal put forward by the ruling LDP, the Komeito and Japan Restoration Party immediately stoked controversy in the manga and anime worlds, with insiders suggesting it would destroy the industries. Now there is a suggestion that under the rules of the new law, even scenes from the famed and beloved kids’…

Ama are Japanese free-divers who are usually women and are most famous for fishing for pearls. The mermaids dive into the sea with no equipment and just a net to get their catch, and are often naked except for a fundoshi. Eishin Ozaki has been taking photographs of the mermaids for half a century, starting…

Another day, another new brand opens up a store in Tokyo. This time it’s Desigual, the Spanish clothes shop, which held a “seminaked [sic] party” to celebrate the opening of its new Japanese branch in Harajuku on June 22nd. People started to appear the night before and numbers had already exceeded the 100 limit by…

The days of deai-kei websites are looking numbered as high-profile cases of arrests and suing continue. Deai-kei sites are ostensibly dating sites, though many are actually run all by men, who pose as women — sometimes as idols — in order to extract fees over long periods of time. Police arrested the thirty-four-year-old executive of…

Want to canoodle with a former AKB48 idol? Just go to one of Erena Ono’s “handshaking” events. Such meet-and-greet sessions are controversial staples of the AKB48 itinerary, and since graduating from the idol supergroup in 2010, Erena has been using similar tactics to entice fans to buy more CDs. After purchasing a copy of her…

With the ink on her 2012 divorce to an Austrian actor still fresh, singer Ayumi Hamasaki is rumored to have taken up with another “white” lover. The pair were spotted at a luxury resort in Bali, where they apparently shared the same hotel suite. Ayumi seems to have been around for an eternity, though she…

We’ve looked at surveys before — from men who never date to the best breasts, habits and the most-viewed Wikipedia pages. Now Sagami, one of Japan’s leading condom makers, has released the results of a big nationwide survey, Nippon no Sex, it did in January this year. It surveyed 14,100 men and women online (plus…