Just when you thought it was safe to walk by a drain in a skirt, the drain pervert is back! If you live in Kobe, be sure to check the drains before walking over them. Police in the West Japan city have arrested the 36-year-old Yasuomi Hirai for setting up a phone in a roadside drain in order to take videos of schoolgirls. He was caught when the camera was filming an 18-year-old school student at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon on September 8. And he was found out because the girl was a Good Samaritan. She noticed the phone in the drain and took it to a police substation, believing it was ...

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It's mid-September and still feels like mid-August in Tokyo. It is meant to cool down soon but this summer has been a little long, with the sticky temperatures dragging on into the supposed start of the autumn. Usually, things stay pretty hot through September and even October, but the humidity leaves the stage. Not so much this year. Personally, we don't mind it so much, but then we don't have to put on a salaryman suit and commute to the office each day on a crowded commuter train. Occasionally, it feels like all the Japanese media does is talk about food or the weather. But with the hot ...

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When you've been at this game as long as us, you start to see patterns and cycles in the mainstream media's reporting about Japan -- including by the Japanese media itself. Perennially, we spot articles about sexless Japan based on a new survey with minimal data. Sometimes even the same content reappears, slightly rejigged for a fresh article. In 2017, we reported on the private sex museum run by a photographer from his own home. Yoshitaka Hyodo's extraordinary museum in Yashio, Saitama, is still around and going strong. It has received the latest boost to its publicity with a recent ...

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Japanese adult video fans will probably already know who June Lovejoy is, one of the most successful foreign performers working in the JAV industry. Lovejoy made their porn debut in early 2020. Not content to sit on her AV laurels, Lovejoy newest passionate project is now up and running. They have launched a rival to Tokyo Kinky. Just kidding. Tokyo Love District is (in Lovejoy's words) an online "guide of Tokyo and Japan in general with a focus on people working in the Japanese adult industry, JAV industry members, fetishists, artists, models, and anyone that is working in the unseen scene ...

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It seems in the TikTok and Instagram age, the usual route to stardom is not (just) through working as a fashion model, music idol, gravure idol, or something similar. You can first build up your own following as an influencer on your own platform and then opt to move into lingerie modeling with a photo book. The influencer Amichi (あみち) is proving that approach can work: with her 190,000 followers on Instagram and a million on TikTok, she is now set to release her first photo book after already spending much of her teens and high school years online. The previews from the debut ...

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Last week, we reported on the sexual assault that Korean music artist DJ Soda suffered at a music festival in Osaka during a part of her performance on August 13 in which she got close to fans. Since DJ Soda first went public (initially to her five million followers on Instagram) with her distress over the assault, the case has ignited a furore in Japan and elsewhere. Netizens in Japan -- who tend to be male, nationalistic, anti-Korean, and not known for their sympathetic attitude toward women -- have accused her of being anti-Japanese because she claimed it was the first such ...

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Last week, Japan was hit by Typhoon Lan. While Tokyo just suffered a bit of rain and wind, the west side of Honshu had more serious weather conditions, and public transport ground to a halt. And before that, Typhoon Khanun hit Kyushu and Okinawa. 'Tis the season. One small consequence that nonetheless caught our attention, though, was for the sacred wooden phallus at Inyoseki Shrine in Miyazaki. It was washed away by the typhoon and is reportedly floating in a small lake by a dam! So if you encounter a giant cock in the water, don't panic and try to get it back to where it belongs. Your ...

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Japanese rope bondage master Osada Steve has launched the World Kinbaku Federation, a new organization that "strives to protect and preserve authentic kinbaku as practiced in Japan." Osada notes the rich and layered history of kinbaku (also known as shibari), which traces its origins back to the use of rope in the martial arts and developed into forms of rope torture and, in the postwar period, a type of erotic and BDSM practice. Thanks to the internet, kinbaku is now globally known and practiced, and Osada's own proactive efforts with his online platforms have definitely played a strong ...

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At the risk of sounding like a broken record to readers, it's no secret that the real hot ladies in Japan are not the fashion models, the music idols, the gravure idols, or even the adult video stars. It's the TV announcers. These newsreaders and presenters combine a sophisticated intelligence -- often accrued from graduating from prestigious private colleges like Sophia University, Aoyama Gakuin, or International Christian University -- with a sultry office lady allure. The results are nothing stop of adorable. And many of them are happy to move into side gigs in fashion modeling or even ...

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One of the most-profile experiments in genderless toilets in Japan has ended quickly rather ignominiously. When Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, the latest example of the gentrification of Shinjuku's red-light district, opened in the spring, its decision to have genderless restrooms on the second floor immediately attracted attention -- largely in terms of concerns over female safety. The toilets are all in stalls but the hand-washing station was shared by all users. Soon social media was flooded with footage of men loitering around the entrance and wash basins for seemingly no reason than perhaps to ...

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