Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has called a snap election for February and Japan’s crowded political landscape is scrambling to catch up. As always, we can expect some wacky candidates from the fringe parties and some crazy attention-seeking stunts. There are always a few celebrities who throw their proverbial hats into the rings too. While she’s…

The disgraced actor Mei Nagano is to take her first real steps toward a comeback with the release of a 2026 calendar on December 21. The 26-year-old Nagano’s career suffered a catastrophic collapse when her alleged affair with 41-year-old married actor Kei Tanaka was reported by the tabloids in April. At the time, she was…

Here’s a story so horrible that it made us practically spit our coffee out when we first read it in the Japanese-language media last Friday. On November 6, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of a 51-year-old male owner of a massage parlor on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Act by employing a…

Pity the police officer in “no crime” Japan. Of course, there is plenty of crime in Japan, at both the highest level of government and the lowest level of society (we wrote about a horrible case just yesterday). But in terms of petty crime, it’s generally felt that Japan has less than other countries. As…

We are currently living through an AI bubble, both in financial and cultural terms, and it throws up all sorts of wacky stories every now and then. Take the tale of the 32-year-old Japanese woman in Tokyo who broke up with her fiancee after three years, and then consulted ChatGPT about what to do. Kano…

Michiko Kichise is divorced, 50 years old, and on the lookout for a new partner. The mother-of-two actress and model split from her husband in 2021 after 11 years of marriage. She was a big star in the late 2000s, fronting many campaigns and frequently starring in major TV dramas. Her career has taken a…

The Japanese porn star Rin Amasawa has revealed why she took half a year off: to get her whole back tattooed. She showed off her body tattoos, which also cover her arms, chest, and back on one leg, in a post on social media earlier this week that quickly went viral and sparked a debate…

Former porn star Anri Sakaguchi has announced her second divorce. In a sign of the times, she did so on TikTok. Sakaguchi is the daughter of actress Ryoko Sakaguchi and has had a colorful career, to say the least. The 34-year-old started off as a general tarento celebrity, but has been arrested more than once,…

It’s becoming one of prominent issues of our times: people pretending to be someone they’re not on dating apps. While there are apps and services out there specifically for married couples to find extramarital partners, some less scrupulous (or more calculating) folks like to cast their net wider and also use regular dating apps, even…

Last week, it was revealed that attractive 21-year-old female golfer Reika Miyako was dating a man 30 years her senior. That nugget of info was enough to merit a flood of articles in the tabloids, but more details have since emerged about the 51-year-old lucky gent who is her boyfriend. It’s none other than her…