Oh no. One of those surveys has appeared.
Despite our best efforts to celebrate the diverse and exciting sexual landscape in Japan, these perennial surveys reporting on sexlessness in the country get lots more attention and tarnish the reputation (probably made worse by our own regurgitation of them on these digital pages).
Of course, decline in sexual activities between long-term partners is common across the world and so is a decline in dating and sex among the young, though the reporting on it in Japan tends to veer toward the orientalist.
This latest survey is a bit different, because ...
Who's your favorite gravure idol? Who do you like to see grace the covers of the tabloid magazines every month?
These are the questions constantly running through our minds on an almost daily basis -- and we're clearly not alone.
If you want to let the world know which lady you love best, you can now do so via a contest run by gravure magazine Weekly Friday.
The Grademy Award seeks to find Asia's top gradol. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Friday, voting is now open online via the dedicated website.
Friday is taking a broad definition of gradol -- basically anyone who does ...
Hot Powers is best known as a retailer but it also produces its own toys to great acclaim and success.
One example is the high-quality Favorite Things Hole, which take the best elements of a masturbator and packs them into a single toy.
It was created in collaboration with the YouTuber efty, who is known for innovative use of 3D printers to make stuff.
We were exploring efty's YouTube channel and came across this video made of a visit to Hot Powers' factory in Saitama, which probably marked the start of their creative collaboration.
We once visited the factory of renowned sex doll ...
How many idols find true happiness? Of course, the majority who do tend to retire and live the rest of their lives in quiet obscurity.
The ones who remain in the news often do so because their post-idol lives are filled with hiccups, personal or professional. If you just read the celebrity news, you might be forgiven for thinking that all former music and gravure idols were divorced or rocked by one scandal or other.
Nonetheless, we suspect that divorce rates among idols is a bit higher than the general populace, perhaps because their jobs and the closed nature of the idol industry means ...
The revelation that the head of Japan's third largest opposition party, Yuichiro Tamaki, has been having an affair with a former gravure model, Miyuki Koizumi, sparked a media frenzy at the start of this week.
The tabloids have continued to pump out stories about the affair, much of which is just speculation.
Of course, adulterous politicians is a story as old as the hills but this one has has longer legs because Tamaki is so prominent right now (his party arguably holds the keys to keeping the minority Liberal Democratic Party government in power) -- and this is surely why the tabloids ...
Continuing a time-honored tradition of using up-and-coming celebrities for its models, the leading Japanese lingerie brand Peach John's new choice of model is announcer Kasumi Mori.
Mori has recently established herself as a model and general celebrity, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Minami Tanaka, who launched a new career as an actress on the back of a bestselling photo book. Mori also released a debut photo book earlier this year, which revels in her shapely butt and pale skin, and has remained in the public eye through regular TV appearances.
Her shoot for Peach John ...
Over the years, we have seen a wide range of inspirations for masturbator toys, from numerous parodies of franchises to things like a hand grenade, heart, human brain, milk carton, or sea anemone.
Sticking with the latter's marine theme, the spiral valve (scroll valve) is a part of a shark's digestive tract that prevents backflow of liquid -- and it has now inspired not one but two Japanese pocket pussy toys!
The corkscrew-shaped portion of the intestine is sometimes called a Tesla valve because it resembles a valve designed by the famed inventor.
The aptly named Shark Spiral Valve ...
The Japanese female TV announcers who present the news and other shows do pretty well, but some of them branch off to pursue even more successful careers in other fields: as a general celebrity (Crystal Takigawa), as a fashion model (Kasumi Mori), as an actress (Minami Tanaka), or even as a gravure idol (Akane Takiyama).
Hoping to emulate these predecessors, the former Fuji TV announcer Nagisa Watanabe has made her first foray into gravure in the current issue of Weekly Post.
The 27-year-old left the channel at the end of August after a period of illness suffering from PTSD.
A graduate ...
We are used to Japanese politicians, both male and female, having affairs with hostesses, party workers, foreign musicians, and even other lawmakers. But what about gravure idols?
In a case that recalls Kensuke Miyazaki, who had advocated for fathers to take paternity leave but was caught having an affair with a gravure model while his wife (another lawmaker) was giving birth, a tabloid has broken a scoop on Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki, who is alleged to have been having an affair with a former gradol.
Flash has revealed that the 55-year-old Tamaki has been ...
The founder of Japanese video hosting site FC2, Riyo Takahashi, once ran unsuccessfully for election in Japan's upper house.
His campaign platform was to "crush mosaic censorship," referring to the pixellation that covers genitalia in Japanese porn to protect producers and retailers from prosecution under Japan's obscenity law, which is usually interpreted as drawing the line at showing a penis or vagina. (This same logic is applied to nudity in mainstream movies too.)
Now Takahashi has been arrested by police in Japan when he returned to the country. The 51-year-old was arrested on ...
