It's not looking good for Akihabara's maid cafes as customers drift away from paying exorbitant prices for cups of coffee where there are no "extras".
According to a media report, maid cafes started in Akihabara in 2001 and then you get visit on for a drink for a mere ¥500. (These days it is more like double that or more!)
Based on national database figures, there were a mere 132 maid cafes in Akiba at the end of 2011. Since the peak was 282 cafes, this means 150 -- over half -- have closed.
In the decade the world economy has hardly done so well and Japan in particular is ...
It's a classic trick. Pretend to help when your motivations are much less pure.
A female high school student (15) was in the part that connects two train carriages on a train in Wakayama prefecture hen a company employee from south Osaka groped her breasts.
The twenty-one-year old's fantastic lead-in on the busy evening rush hour express from Osaka's Namba Station to Wakayama City was to be a good citizen.
"It's dangerous. It's shaking!" he said as he grabbed her. No doubt he thought that her fear of the shaking carriage corridor would distract her from the hands now on her ...
It sounds like the plot of an ero manga but it's true, and could it only happen in Osaka?
A female teacher in Osaka working at a prefectural high school has been suspended for work for six months after it came to light that she was moonlighting as a prostitute.
The twenty-nine-year-old educator responded that "there is no excuse" for what she did and resigned.
Having accumulated debts of two million yen (at least two thirds of her salary, perhaps more) on credit card purchases of cosmetics and clothes, she turned to her other skills set to work off her loan.
She actually did ...
A 42-year-old man has been arrested for having sex with high school girls.
The company employee would approach girls on the street, offer to pay them ¥70,000 or even as much as ¥300,000 if he could also film the exploits.
After they were all finished at a hotel in Taito ward in Tokyo he would then ask them to wait on the street while he went to fetch money. Of course, that would be the last they would see of him.
He has claimed to have had sex with close to 100 high school girls in this way.
Likely if he had actually made good on his promise and paid the girls there ...
Imagine you are a young Japanese girl. You are on a train. You sit down. You put on some earphones and listen to music. You close your eyes. Probably you are tired and just want some rest on the way home. You have made a fatal mistake.
That's what one Japanese girl in her twenties found out on a train in Saitama on April 25th. She was rudely awakened from her semi-slumber to find that a stranger's lips were locked around hers.
While her eyes had been closed, a man, Toshimitsu Ishibashi (49), had decided to kiss her. The man was from Saitama's Kasukabeshi and worked as a ...
Sorry, it's been a while since we did a photographic profile of a idol but we've been wanting to do Ruriko Kojima (小島瑠璃子) for a long time now!
Ruriko was born in 1993 and is more of a TV tarento than straight-out gravure idol, but boy, does she look nice in a bikini.
What a cutie. We love her big rabbit-like ...
An online survey has found some surprising results about identification with otaku, proving that we have come so far since the days of Tsutomu Miyazaki.
137,734 people were asked, "Do you consider yourself somehow an otaku?"
Yes: 42.2%
No: 57.8%
That's a lot of supposed otaku!
Here's the breakdown per generation:
Teenagers: 62.0%
Twenties: 55.6%
Thirties: 46.4%
Forties: 44.8%
Fifties: 36.7%
Sixties: 26.9%
Seventies: 23.1%
Eighties: 23.3%
Of course, these days the definition of "otaku" is wider, and can apply to soccer fanatic or just about any passionate fans of ...
Finally do we have proof that plastic surgery has gone too far in Korea?
Right now the Japanese internet is enjoying just such a gloat as they peruse the entries for Miss Korea.
Why? Because the ladies look so similar it is virtually impossible to tell them apart unless you look at the Hangul names.
It's no secret that plastic surgery is rampant in Korea -- as opposed to Japan, where it is common in the celebrity world but kept an open secret -- but does this mean that everyone starts to look the same, with the same kind of generic beauty?
The girls look lovely but ...
We've long been a fan of Korean actress Bae Doo-na.
The cutie (33) has been on our screen for years already, including in a couple of Japanese films as well as several major Korean hits.
She is not afraid to strip off either, having shed her clothes for Plum Blossom and Sympathy For Mr Vengeance in some quite explicit sex scenes.
One of her Japanese roles was as a blow-up sex doll, for which she was frequently nude.
Now she is working in America too, with a role as a sexy android in Cloud Atlas, which is adapted from the sprawling novel by ...
With fame and sudden popularity comes unwanted side-effects.
Curvy over-thirty sexpot Mitsu Dan is not afraid of stripping off and revealing all, but she has acquired some undesirable fans among her legions of admirers.
After her home was shown on a TV program, she has had men apparently hanging around in her neighborhood.
Most celebrities and idols move to luxury condos when they hit the big time, but Dan (32) has continued to live in her modest apartment since her break happened almost over night and she hasn't had time to catch up with her new-found lifestyle.
She ...
