A man has been arrested for molesting a woman on a train, known as chikan in Japan. Nothing new in that. Another day, another groper. But this time the 26-year-old man from Osaka claims the whole thing had been arranged via a special online forum. On the website people who want to molest and a…

Outspoken Osaka mayor and founder of the Japan Restoration Party, now Japan’s third largest party, Toru Hashimoto has got himself in hot water over some comments he made about the “comfort women” during the war and his recommendations for how to avoid rapes in Okinawa. Hashimoto, no stranger to getting noticed by provocative comments, told…

No one is above the law. An ex-cop from the riot police has been arrested for the attempted abduction of a 15-year-old school girl in Akishima, Tokyo. Former police sergeant Koichi Omura (32) left the force in March but has been busy since then. He is accused of coming up to a fifteen-year-old high school…

There is magic in Japan and it’s called cosmetics. It’s well-known that Japanese women spend more time and care on their make-up than women in other countries. Shiseido and its peers are respected for being some of the most successful and effective cosmetic brands in the world. Here we can see it in action. S…

A 31-year-old man has been arrested for pretending to be a comedy duo’s manager in early March and approaching gravure model Momoko Tani (28) in a department store. There she tried on some clothes and he put on a show of being helpful. “It’s dangerous so I’ll carry your bag for you,” he told her,…

Think you like a bit of MILF? Think again. You’ve got nothing on this guy. An unemployed man in his mid-forties has been arrested in Aichi, central Japan, for groping a pensioner. The man professes to be mad about mature women — so-called jukujo — and couldn’t resist the woman he saw in her seventies….

It’s that time of year again. With the AKB48 “elections” taking place to see who gets to sing in the next song, Twitter is awash with pictures of boxes of CDs and tickets purchased by passionate otaku fans. One fan has shared images of towers of boxes, boasting that they spent 1,917,800 yen on them…

Here’s something we always suspected! A Japanese tabloid has published rumors that the founders of AKB48 may not simply be sickening old men with a liking for teenaged girls — but have close connections with the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Given that the Japanese government is using public funds for its risible “Cool Japan” schemes,…

The culture of chikan and up-skirt photography is catching, it seems! Police in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, have arrested a petty officer third class stationed at the nearby US naval base. The 22-year-old took a bus in the town but decided to take in the view not just from the window. At around 8:20 in the morning…

It’s election time for the AKB48 idols. But lurking under the surface right now are several unsavory rumors. For a start, the alleged connections between AKB48 executives and the yakuza. These have emerged again even after AKB48 big wig Yasushi Kubota sued the Shukan Bunshun last year for such remarks. Now there are also suggestions…