If Instagram is to be believed, everyone has a personal trainer these days and is obsessed with developing the perfect muscles.
In Korea, it's called geongangmi (healthy beauty) and here in Japan it's led by influencers who moonlight as models and trainers like Rose Melle or Kyoka, or female celebrities who show off their sporty bodies.
And if it's sheer muscles you're really into, Reika Saiki straddles the world of bodybuilding, gravure, and cosplay with serious aplomb.
But what about female otaku? Don't they also want to build up their muscles in between pursuing their oshi ...
The media narratives about Japan typically conform to a handful of familiar tropes: Japan is a sexless, childless hellscape, or Japan is a kinky, weird land of bountiful sexual fetishes.
Of course, neither is true. Japan is just Japan, with all shades and colors.
But it is a fact that the population is declining and people are having fewer children. The number of babies born in Japan dropped below 800,000 last year, the first time this has happened since records began in 1899.
The reasons for this are manifold -- and we think they are primarily economic -- don't rush to assume it's because ...
One of the most sensational stories that has gripped the Japanese media over the past few weeks has involved the arrests and deportations in the Philippines of several young Japanese citizens, who were allegedly part of the "Luffy group" responsible robbery and fraud since 2021 (including from behind bars). The name of the gang is a reference to the manga and anime franchise One Piece.
One of the most recently detained citizens was 25-year-old Hitomi Kumai. Japanese police issued a warrant for her arrest last September on fraud charges. She is accused of making phone calls tricking people ...
We've written before about the problem of scams in the Japanese "dating site" industry, where customers think they are interacting with real women who want to meet them but are actually exchanging messages with someone (perhaps even a man) who is trying to ensure they keep paying the membership fees for as long as possible.
In a recent article on Japan Today, someone apparently interviewed two such scammers.
The first is actually just someone who worked as a cheap hostess bar. We don't think this qualifies, since though it is possible for a customer to take a hostess out on a date, it's not ...
Many moons ago, we had the misfortune to live in a "gaijin house" -- one of those sordid guest houses that cater specifically to foreign residents of Tokyo. It wasn't as bad as some of the horror stories we have heard about such places, but the walls were decidedly thin.
One weekend morning, we woke to hear sounds from across the hall (through at least two doors/walls). Our young American neighbor was clearly balls deep in his Sunday breakfast. We could hear his partner (at least, the one he had snagged that week, since he always had several on the go) groaning how "kimochi ii" (good) it ...
Once one of the most famous idols in Japan, Mariko Shinoda has divorced her husband of four years. The 37-year-old announced the news on Instagram.
A former AKB48 singer who later branched out into acting, Shinoda married an entrepreneur three years her junior in 2019 and gave birth to a daughter in 2020.
As reported on this blog, rumors emerged last year that her marriage was on the rocks due to her alleged adultery. Her husband apparently took their child away from her for a time.
The divorce follows a mediation process due to the alleged infidelity. In Japan, the aggrieved spouse can ...
The travails of the Michibata family are set to continue, it seems.
After Angelica Michibata's husband was arrested for extortion, her career and reputation were left in tatters (not least because her involvement in the crime was also suggested). She later divorced her husband and made a comeback with a nude photo book in her mid-thirties.
The latest scandal to hit the glamorous Argentine-Japanese model family affects the most famous of the sisters, Jessica.
According to police announcement on March 20, the 38-year-old Jessica Michibata (one-time wife of F1 driver Jenson Button) was ...
Kazusa Okuyama is one of the top gravure idols in Japan right now, though she went quiet for a while from the end of last year with few social media updates. The last major gravure-related thing she did was release a 2023 calendar and hold an exhibition with top gravure photographer Chikashi Kasai (both in December 2022).
Her absence was essentially explained on February 14 (yes, Valentine's Day), when there came the shock announcement that one of the most eligible ladies in the land had got married.
This typically would mean the end of a gravure career. (She also does occasional acting. In ...
You would think that a company as large and successful as Soft on Demand would have an army of lawyers and legal advisors on retainer, and that they would consult them carefully when launching a major and costly new project. Or perhaps they did and their team simply wasn't doing their job right.
Either way, our proverbial jaw hit the floor when we read this news.
On March 16, it was announced by Tokyo Metropolitan Police that the 40-year-old CEO of SOD -- the biggest porn producer in Japan -- has been arrested for violation of the fuzoku law. You might presume this is related to ...
People bemoan the lack of women in Japanese politics but we suspect this is not the solution.
The NHK Party, a fringe people whose aim is to "protect" the Japanese population again the titular public broadcaster, has gone through its umpteenth name change, now becoming the Seijika Joshi 48 To, or the Politician Girls 48 Party.
No prizes for guessing, the name (abbreviated to SJJ49) is a cheeky reference to AKB48, and yes, the candidates are all female.
Note our neutral vocabulary -- though the party itself has used joshi, or "girl," meaning the wannabe lawmakers are very young woman (and ...
