Things about gender are not always clearcut in Japan.
Some of the guys can spend as much time and money on their skincare and hair as the ladies. Styles of haircuts and clothing too are not always divided down the conventional male-female divide, from the male kimono to the elaborate styling of nightclub hosts. And that's before we even get into the deep and rich world of crossdressing and transgender.
While we will leave the cultural theory implications about this to the armchair philosophers among our readers, we were delighted to come across this story about the apparent new hit in the ...
Feti Fes is Japan's top fetish festival. We have attended before and previously posted photo reports that readers seemed to like.
It's the kind of event where every little room, cubbyhole, or booth is dedicated to a whole other fetish. Participants include chika (underground) and gravure idols, ero-cosplayers, fetish service providers, and goods and merchandise retailers.
After postponement due to the pandemic -- obviously, given the nature of the event, it's hardly compatible with social distancing guidelines -- Feti Fes 19 was finally held in April. We were not able to attend but, as we ...
The trial of former KAT-TUN member Koki Tanaka over possession of drugs has now begun in Nagoya. The 36-year-old musician and actor, who was a member of the boy band until 2013 and then a solo artist, has admitted the charge of methamphetamine possession.
Nagoya police arrested in February this year. It follows his previous brush with the law in 2017, when he was charged with marijuana possession.
But there's another "crime" that the Weekly Bunshun uncovered (in an article first published in February this year).
Tanaka was apparently affected mentally by the pandemic and being unable to go ...
Remember the awesome dinosaur-themed love hotel in Machida, Tokyo, we wrote about last autumn? It looks like it was seriously damaged by fire recently.
On the evening of June 9, flames were seen coming from the roof of the dino-inspired Hotel Artia, making it look even more like a scene from Jurassic Park than it did before. Social media was flooded with pics taken from cars traveling along the nearby expressway.
The cause was reportedly the wooden sauna located on the roof of the hotel.
No injuries or fatalities resulted from the fire. Moreover, no damage to the main structure of the ...
Papakatsu, the buzzword that refers to compensated dating for sugar daddies, is in the news again.
Takeru Yoshikawa, a politician with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has been accused of drinking with an 18-year-old girl.
House of Representatives member Yoshikawa, who is 40 but frankly looks a but older (perhaps it's the jowls), has a wife and two daughters. He was photographed arriving with the girl at a high-end hotel in the Odaiba bay district of Tokyo in late May.
According to the scoop in News Post Seven (that includes 46 pictures!), he and the girl arrived, checked in, and then ...
Maki Makie (マキエマキ) has been working since the early 1990s as a freelance commercial photographer.
Now aged 56, she gained a whole new following when she began taking self-portraits in 2015 and repositioning herself as a "selfie jukujo" (自撮り熟女) model.
This fame has had some unexpected consequences, as she revealed in a long interview with Bunshun.
Her self-portraits revel in a Showa-era atmosphere. Often shot in sketchy or remote locations (like old, rundown resorts or empty shopping streets), they mix humor with the erotic. She is currently exhibiting her work in ...
Our post yesterday featuring the confessions of a foreign female about compensated dating in Tokyo led us to this case study (from early 2021) on legal website Bengo4, which sets out to answer a curious question: What happens to your assets if you divorce your wife for compensated dating?
According to the author (a lawyer), an aggrieved husband consulted him about divorcing his wife, who had been caught doing compensated dating.
Apparently, starting from around the time they got married, his wife was meeting another man around two times a month and having sex with him. For these dates, she ...
After much legal wrangling and media speculation, Japan is apparently set to approve the abortion pill, but it would still require women to seek their partner's consent beforehand.
We have to be careful here to draw a distinction between the morning-after pill (which is already available in Japan, but a prescription from a doctor is needed and it's expensive) and the abortion pill.
The latter is reportedly to become available in Japan (as a two-drug combo, Mifepristone and Misoprostol, made by British pharmaceutical firm Linepharma International), though decades after women have had access ...
People have arrested the CEO of famous Japanese secondhand book store chain Mandarake as well as four employees in connection with the sale of obscene material.
Best known for manga but also offering collectibles, doujinshi, and anime toys, Mandarake was selling so-called "vinyl books," a term referring to pornographic photo books from the 1970s and 1980s that showed genitalia. (The "vinyl" part means the plastic that was used to cover the books.)
As regular readers will know, Japan's strange obscenity laws mean it is nominally illegal to show actual genitalia, hence adult video is ...
There's a reason that a lot of love hotel rooms have mirrors installed. Who doesn't want to watch themselves having sex?
Following on from our popular post last year about leaked sex selfies by amateur couples at Japanese love hotels, we present another roundup of nude sex selfies by couples taken in front of a mirror.
From man on woman to two men on one women, from bedrooms to hotel rooms, bathrooms, and more, from young lovers to older couples, from pre- to mid-coitus, the scenarios vary a bit, as does the quality (pictorial and physical). Sometimes the flash glare serves as an effective ...
