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…

Michaela Wako Sato (佐藤ミケーラ倭子) is the proud owner of probably the longest tongue in Japan, and possibly one of the longest in the world. The 25-year-old is a former fashion model and member of idol group Idoling!!!, whose members included Ai Okawa and Rena Sato. As her name suggests, she is biracial (half Japanese, half…

We love a good comeback story. After some time quietly doing her own thing on YouTube and Instagram, Yukina Kinoshita (木下優樹菜) has returned to the mainstream entertainment world. As a kind of de facto apology for her recent scandals, the 34-year-old mother of two is releasing a nude photo book. “CORRECT” is published by Futabasha…

April marks the start of the 2022 fiscal and academic years in Japan. It also brings with a major change for young people: the age of adulthood will come down from 20 to 18. Eighteen- and 19-year-olds can already vote, so this change has already been in the works for a while. One of the…

When does an orgy become a crime? If it’s group sex among consenting adults, there should be no issue, right? That’s today’s legal conundrum. One man in Japan found himself arrested for hosting an orgy (in Japanese, ranko party). So what was his crime? Strangely enough, it was fraud. He had booked a hotel room…

She teased. The mainstream media lapped it up. She delivered. Now the publisher is looking to see the impact on the sales figures. The former top fashion model Yukina Kinoshita has attempted her comeback with a page straight out of Angelica Michibata’s book: when in doubt, take off your clothes. As we continue to revel…

Tenga is, as regular readers will know, one of Japan’s leading adult toy brands, and surely the one that has the most success overseas, helped by its very clean and universal design (a far cry from the kind of highly Japanese style of hentai illustrations you find on box art on releases by Tama Toys,…