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…

It’s been another long year where we had to wear face masks a lot. This isn’t such a biggie here in Japan, where people often wear masks if they have a cold or during the annual hay fever seasons. What was common before just became ubiquitous. One frustration about this, though, is that you can’t…

Have you ever wondered which part of Japan has the most love hotels in terms of population density? These are the kinds of questions that keep us up at night. We found some data, recently shared online by translator Clara Kreft, that is perhaps surprising: it’s not the big cities full of horny young people…

We all love going to a love hotel. You get to feel a bit naughty, stealing away for a tryst in the middle of the afternoon, or it’s just a fun way to end a date or have a one-night-stand. With its amenities and fun facilities, especially in terms of the bed, lighting, and bathing,…

Nana Suzuki has rewarded her many fans by going nude again — about five years after her previous shoot. This is what is technically classified as a “semi-nude” in Japan, since you don’t see any nipples (much less bush), but Nana certainly looks stunning in profile and with much of her butt on view. She’s…

One of the regular themes of this blog is the after-lives of gravure idols, models, adult video performers, and so on. What happens after they retire? What can do they do after their time — often only brief — in the limelight? We had Reiko Nagaoka (永岡怜子) on our radar for a while in this…

A 24-year-old woman was arrested on January 22 after a 82-year-old man was found dead in a love hotel in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The man, Katsuzo Imano, was found in the room on the night of January 21, covered in blood and with box-cutter wounds on his chest. The money in his wallet was gone. The…

Why are loveless marriages so common in Japan? That’s the question that prolific bilingual YouTuber Nobita sets out to answer in a recent video. Note that he’s not talking about sexless marriages per se. Obviously that’s a factor here but his subject is marriages where love has faded, or even gone completely. That said, as…

One of the strange things about the legal system in Japan is that though the rules on alimony and divorce settlements are far less strict than elsewhere — especially if no children are involved (but joint custody also doesn’t exist) — there are some surprising things related to adultery. In short, if a spouse has…