Amazon got busted! Not even the biggest online retailer in the world is safe from the cops. The Japanese police have raided the Amazon Japan office on suspicion of assisting the sale of child pornography. On Friday, cops raided the Tokyo headquarters of Amazon Japan, plus the distribution center in Chiba Prefecture (ironically, you can spot it on the way to Disneyland). The charges are that Amazon let products be sold on its website which broke laws against child pornography. The photo books featured nude girls under 18 and police suspect Amazon knew what the products were -- and ...

     Read More     

Like that perennial stumper "Where do elephants go to die?", the question of what happens to all the scores of AKB48 idols once they "graduate" is often on our minds. Sure, some go on to mildly successful acting careers. But for the most, there is only oblivion or a career in porn. Faced with this dilemma, Anna Mori decided to go to the grassroots. She launched this crowdfunding campaign to get her first photo book into publication. Why should only the "top" ladies get all the kudos and merchandise? She has her fans too! As she turned 20 (and thus an adult -- yes!), she set a ...

     Read More     

The threat announced by ISIS to execute two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, unless the government pays them $200 million shocked many. But not Japanese netizens. They responded with amusement -- by mocking the extremists through a series of composite images on social media. Yes, a Photoshop contest is apparently the best response to terrorism. Maybe the government will follow suit with its own montage. There are allegations that the video is a fake -- the shadows are strange and the background coloring looks imposed -- but regardless, two lives are potentially at ...

     Read More     

Another day, another media article about sexlessness in Japan. This time it was an article by Jiji that got republished on The Japan Times. It focuses on a survey from last September by the Japan Family Planning Association about married couples. It found that 49.3% of people said they had had no sex in the past month. "There was a disparity in the sexes," the article claims, though in fact the numbers are almost the same: 48.3% for men were sexless, 50.1% of women. So around half of people don't have sex! Of course, it's natural that married couples have sex less frequently ...

     Read More     

A few years ago people started talking about the "Chiisai Ojisan" -- the "tiny uncle". He was first reported in 2009 and is said to live around a shrine in west Tokyo. Apparently measuring no more than 20cm, the small man may be some sort of yokai (Japanese sprite). As we've written before, Japanese erotica has a fetish for "small" people, such as the koonago fantasy of having sex (and even eating) with tiny girls. This time it's a benign leprechaun-like Japanese guy who apparently hangs around. Don't be scared if you stumble upon him as he is harmless. Just don't accidentally ...

     Read More     

It just goes to prove: being an middle-aged otaku does not mean you stop being attractive to the opposite sex. Toshio Okada, the famous anime producer and writer, and co-founder of Gainax (Evangelion), has been exposed as a mass philander. The 56-year-old chubby otaku had his cat let out of the bag when a picture of a smooch with a younger lady was leaked online. The 21-year-old girl posted the purikura (photo booth) pic on Facebook on December 31st, along with screen captures of her exchanges with Okada on Line where he says he loves her. The girl did it because she claimed ...

     Read More     

Remember the Zettai Ryouiki Flashing Skirt? We blogged about it late last year as a cool gadget-cum-cosplay item that really draws attention to that sexy area of the upper thigh, known as zettai ryouki ("the absolute zone"). In this skirt, developed by Kiyoyuki Amano of Kayac Inc, multi-colored flashing lights have been added to a Hatsune Miku miniskirt. It looked awesome before but now the creators have set up a proper Tumblr account with lots of great images of the flashing skirt in action. So next time you see a girl in Akihabara with what looks ...

     Read More     

Over the weekend we reported on the bizarre case of the 55-year-old lecturer found completely naked on the campus of Taisho University, where he worked. It was at 3pm that students stumbled across the man in a corridor without any clothes on. Then there were few details so we could only speculate... Now the truth has emerged and boy, is it good! Media reports are now running stories explaining that the unnamed man, who has since resigned, was a part-time computer science lecturer who had taught at the college for a decade. Why was he wandering the campus without his ...

     Read More     

We're a bit late with this but we love it. Live2D Euclid is a system created by Live2D to animate characters in a rich 3D environment. Reported by the reliable chaps at DigInfo, the technology allows you to interact with 2D illustrations in a 3D space. Of course, the demo is an anime girl character! Live 2D models can be animated and moved freely, while retaining the defining characteristics of the original illustrations, which are difficult to reproduce with regular 3D models. Due to this unique feature, Live2D has been used in over 100 commercial products since its release ...

     Read More     

A 55-year-old adjunct professor at Taisho University, a private college in the Sugamo area of north Tokyo, has resigned for stripping off on campus. The university announced that one of its faculty staff has performed an act that was "counter to public morals" at around 3pm on January 8th. The unnamed lecturer was swiftly taken into care by his colleagues. He was then apparently very repentant and handed in his resignation the same day. What the hell happened? Why would a teacher at a respectable Tokyo college do such a thing? If this was Kabukicho, it would be business as usual -- ...

     Read More