We spend a lot of time bashing AKB48 on this blog but we have to finally admit the truth. We think Haruna Kojima is hot. Actually, keen-eyed readers will likely have already deduced this from certain drooling articles in the past. We previously blogged with glee about Haruna’s new work modeling for Peach John, Japan’s…

Japanese cops have guns and in theory can shoot someone if necessary. Well, some shoot other things. Kozo Shirakawa, a 46-year-old sergeant in Kagawa, was nothing if not ingenious. He attached a special spy camera to his shoe so he could film up women’s skirts. The camera was on the inside and could shoot from…

We love documenting the intriguing fetishes that exist out there — and be sure, we don’t do out of any sense of judging! Quite the opposite, we are kind of celebrating difference. Anyway, another example has just come to light. A man was arrested in Kanagawa prefecture over the weekend for stealing. Nothing new in…

Just imagine you like AKB48. Now imagine you like AKB48 so much you will commit a crime. That’s what four teenagers did. They mugged a man in order to have cash to buy special clothes to “look good” for a meet-and-greet hand-shaking event with the idol group. Aged between 15 and 17, the kids came…

That’s a question I devote considerable time each day to thinking about. Well, luckily we have some hard data to back our speculations up. Triumph, the underwear brand, has released some statistics on its bra sales and so we have some nice data on which cups sell most — and thus, can presumably infer on…

Four men have been arrested in Tokyo for theft by Kanagawa police after they blackmailed a man they met through a smartphone deai-kei app. Deai-kei refers to the portals online and off where men go to meet girls for sex. It is somewhere between adultery and prostitution, but the variables are huge. You might be…

AKB48‘s Asuka Kuramochi has grown up. She will release her first solo photo book on September 11th called “Mimi-tabu”, which means “earlobe”. We’re not sure if this has some sort of coded meaning or whether the photos will showcase Asuka’s lovely ears. Saying that, Asuka is known as an “ear sommelier” and apparently has a…

Hardly the biggest surprise of the week but a worthy topic of news, Tokyo Reporter has highlighted an interesting report of the arrest of a Nigerian club owner arrested by police for drugging and stealing from his customers. Officers took Emanuel John, the 44-year-old manager of Little Cat, which is located in the in the…

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice but such rules don’t apply to Japanese pornography, which has always proved tempting to aging or waning Gravure idols and actresses. And former AKB48 girls who find themselves a defacto porn star during their time in the group — and upon “graduation” discover it’s a mere side step to…

It has just been announced that Tokyo will host the Summer Olympic Games in 2020. Will the city try to expunge all its unsavory elements ahead of the event? The last time the city hosted the Games there was a similar campaign to “clean up” the streets, and when the Winter Games were held in…