A 22-year-old self-proclaimed "talent" has been arrested for shoplifting, in the process of which she claimed to be popular actress Emi Takei. Misaki Hashikawa went to a specialist shop in Ikebukuro and tried on some 40 leotards, shoplifting 22 of them. She then sold the leotards in online auctions, rather foolishly using her own name. But if you are going to the trouble of subterfuge, at least steal something with value, right? Well, actually leotards can fetch a reasonable price. Apparently Hashikawa stole the equivalent of ¥1.1 million (over $10,000) of clothing! Hashikawa has ...

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On March 18th, pop singer Hikaru Utada has activated her Twitter account for the first time in 1.5 months. And one of her surprisingly rare tweets involved her confessing that "I have never been to a love hotel." Utada of course has been famous since a young age, making her debut at 15. Even wandering the street is impossible, let alone a secret tryst at a love hotel. She would have been carefully managed by her agency and label, plus she was married to filmmaker Kazuaki Kiriya from 2002 to 2007. Since then she has maintained a lower profile, living partly in London, where she met ...

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The winner of the coveted Miss Universe Japan 2014 title has been announced as Keiko Tsuji, a twenty-year-old student from Okinawa and representing Nagasaki Prefecture. She will next represent Japan at the Miss Universe beauty contest. Tsuji was chosen from a shortlist of around 40 after roughly 5,000 candidates applied from all over Japan. These being enlightened times, there was also a male version, with Tohru Higa, another Okinawan, announced as the winner. Such beauty contests have been marred in Japan by scandal of late. Ikumi Yoshimatsu, the 2012 winner of Miss International, went ...

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Kanazawa is a genteel small city near the western coast of Japan, sandwiched between the central mountains and the Sea of Japan. It is home to samurai houses, art museums, a famous garden, and an old geisha district. In other words, it is like an alternate Kyoto. But don't be fooled. Underneath this exterior of tranquility and grace there is a hotbed of fetishism. Local police arrested a 21-year-old fourth-year college student from Takaoka City in neighboring Toyama City on suspicion on sneaking into an elementary school in order to steal girls' indoor shoes. "I wanted to smell the ...

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A 55-year-old man interested only in money and exploiting scantily-clad teenagers in his quest to empty the wallets of naive otaku and corporations with tastes bad enough to agree to advertising campaigns featuring his minions -- Yasushi Akimoto, the producer behind AKB48 and all its spinoffs. This is a man whose only goal is to make his company's bank account richer, no matter what depths he plumbs. This is a man who still claims to be making "music" despite his constant pandering to the lowest denominator in the AKB48 music videos and ad campaigns (nothing wrong with porn, of course, ...

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Tokyo Reporter has an intriguing little report from a tabloid. In the January 31 issue of Shukan Asahi, Minori Kitahara expressed concern over the popularity of a male masturbation aid that attempts to simulate the feeling of sex with an underage girl. Kitahara is a fortysomething female "sexpert" and bestselling author. She was apparently shocked -- we weren't -- by the high sales ranks on Amazon.co.jp for such onahole masturbation sleeves as the Innocent Little Sister Onahole and Seven Teen Bordeaux Onahole, which replicate a sexual experience with a Japanese teenaged virgin. “I don’t ...

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Getting a side job where you can watch uncensored porn sounds like a male dream come true. But hang on. Uncensored porn? Oh, right, in Japan, due to bizarre adherence to a century-old regulation created to try to make Japan similar to "moral" Christian western nations, porn has genitals blurred out. Technically, if you are selling porn in Japan that isn't pixellated, you are breaking the law. (And then it gets complicated if it's just a photo with genitals that is more "artistic" than pornographic, or if it's a mainstream film with full-frontal nudity -- all of which were also censored until ...

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With the girls ever younger and the pressure to appear wrinkle-free and with the softest of skin that can stand up to iPad zooms, how do once popular Gravure models maintain a career after they hit 30? Mayumi Ono (小野真弓) was never a mega star in the idol world. Her D-cup and girl-next-door made her look like a sexy TV presenter. She had fans but not legions of them. We liked her before and treated ourselves to a selection of images for an Idol of the Week a couple of years ago. So now she's 31, how can she give her thirteen-year career a second boost now that it has started to ...

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In the past we've encountered a thief who targeted hostesses and their shoes, a violent lingerie bandit who literally tears his swag off the bodies of his victims, a bra theft addict, and even a 82-year-old panties thief. Now comes another shocking tale of lingerie larceny... The media has reported the indictment of a man in Sano, Tochigi Prefecture, for stealing more than 200 items of woman's underwear. Tsutomu Kashiwase (44) apparently stole 217 items across the three prefectures of Tochigi, Gunma and Saitama. The Japanese countryside would seem to be populated by roaming ...

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Last night in the pouring rain saw the Japan Adult Awards held in Tokyo. The annual prizes are the Japanese porn industry's chance to pat itself on the back and rewards its top actresses with trinkets for their efforts over the past year. Last year's winners include Haruki Sato for best actress and Akari Hoshino in the jukujo category. The much-coveted Best Actress prize was taken home by Yui Hatano, who made her debut way back in 2008. While we were rooting for Mei Hayama in the Best Newcomer Award, she sadly lost out to Marina Shirashi (below left). The jukujo award was won ...

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