It’s election season in Japan, which means posters of candidates everywhere as well as election broadcasts on TV. Pretty soon the streets will be filled with the soundscape of the trucks trundling around, calling out the local candidates’ names to all and sundry. As always, though, it’s the more unusual candidates vying for a well-paid…

The Japanese are relatively tame in public. Though times are changing, it’s still less common to see couples holding hands or kissing outside. But there are always exceptions — and perhaps inevitably these occur in places where there is such a flow of people that the participants presume or hope they won’t be noticed. From…

The former AKB48 idol and now gravure model Rina Hirata (平田梨奈) releases her first DVD and Blu-ray, “Hirari Time,” on July 20th. To promote it, Rina has posed semi-nude, covering her F-cup breasts with her hands. The 21-year-old joined AKB48 in 2011 and graduated in 2016. She previously released two VR videos in February of…

It’s a job that apparently one in four Japanese women have some experience of doing, but how well do we know the role of the hostess? Meet Kurumi Hoshino (星野くるみ), who is described as the “number 1 hostess in Japan.” The 28-year-old Hoshino is currently based at Club Lalah in Roppongi, where she is the…

The Japanese entertainment world has been shaken recently by a widespread scandal involving 11 comedians at leading agency Yoshimoto Kogyo who did side jobs for a criminal organization. The initial scandal broke in June, when many comedians were found to have worked at a party in December 2014 by a criminal group engaged in fraud….

Back in the bad old days before smartphones, we remember our early days in Japan and having to visit Internet cafes to check stuff online or write emails to friends and family. This was pretty much the same situation as back home, but one key difference was that the Internet cafes were also rigged up…

Japanese porn and adult parodies are apparently getting faster and faster. The new Makoto Shinkai anime, Weathering with You, is still in movie theaters and dominating the Japanese box office. Masturbation With You is an “ejaculation app” whose name and design shamelessly parodies the Shinkai film (天気の子 vs. 天気のマ●コ). The publicity image shows a porn…

The sexual assault in December 2018 of Maho Yamaguchi shocked fans and the idol industry, exposing the mismanagement and abuse of the performers in Japan. Yamaguchi was forced to apologise for the incident but, appalled at the treatment she received by her handlers, quit the Niigata idol group NGT48, which is part of the AKB48…

Research regularly shows that Japanese women’s breasts are getting larger. And now we have data to prove it over a 40-year period. Bra maker Triumph — known for its rather silly concept bras — nonetheless takes mammaries seriously, as you’d expect, and knowing the size of its customers’ boobs are inevitably top of its list…

Tenga has produced some of Japan’s, if not the world’s, best sex toys. As a brand, it already has its own stores. And now Tenga finally has its own vending machines. (The Tenga Egg vending machine once spotted in Nakano Broadway, Tokyo, was apparently not an official vendor.) Anyone now with an urge to buy…