Most of us can only dream of dating a Japanese model. Usually, only actors, singers, sports players, or other male celebrities get to live out that fantasy. Recent examples include the boyfriends of hotties Risa Yukihira and Miyu Murashima. So if you were lucky enough to be dating a Japanese fashion model or gravure idol, you'd be crazy to throw it away, right? Well, it happens. Perhaps after a while, you taken it for granted. Gravure idol Sena Natsuki recently revealed on a late-night TV show that she was single again, having broken up with her boyfriend of five years. She met him ...

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Be careful when something seems too good to be true. Especially when it's with someone you don't know. Dating apps have made it a lot easier to meet people and arrange hook-ups, but you're still interacting with a total stranger when all's said and done. According to a media report by Shizuoka TV last week, a man has been arrested for sexual assault on a woman he met through an app. The 36-year-old man from Hamamatsu admits having sex with the woman but says he believed there was consent. The women says there wasn't consent. The incident took place in late June at a love hotel in Yaizu, ...

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Tech is going to solve all our problems, right? Tech -- and especially AI -- is the Band-Aid, the panacea. Or so we are led to believe, and so the government certainly seems to believe. We wrote before that the Japanese government is turning to artificial intelligence to fix the chronically declining birth rate, and that many prefectures are now involved with matchmaking services in a desperate bid to reverse the drop in marriages and, more importantly, babies. While we personally think the issue is much more about the work culture in Japan and (like in other countries) the dilemma women ...

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Revenge porn cases hit a record high in 2023, according to a report by the National Police Agency released on April 8. The agency said that it received 1,812 consultations from people during the 2023 about nude images leaked by a partner or ex-partner. It's up 4.9% from 2022 and marks the seventh year in a row in which cases have risen. It is a worrying trend but, with the complete proliferation of phones and online culture, likely only to get worse. In part, the increase is also due to greater recognition of revenge porn as a phenomenon and a legal category, and criminalization of it ...

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Dating apps like Tinder are ways to meet Japanese girls. There's always the chance that you will meet the girl of your dreams, your future wife, your next hookup -- or even a celebrity. Former AKB48 idol and model Rina Hirata has shared publicly that she is using dating apps to look for a partner. She didn't disclose which one(s) she uses -- we imagine it's not the app for otaku -- but she hasn't had any luck so far. "I met about 10 guys but none of the dates went well," the Arizona-born hottie shared at a recent event in Tokyo to launch her latest gravure image DVD, Showa ...

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Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do otaku date non-2D women? These are the eternal questions of our times. In the case of the latter, it seems that are some otaku who are keen to branch out into three dimensions. So much so that, well, there's an app for that. Otakoi (Otaku Love) is a dating app for otaku. The promo images are just awesome. If you've seen these ads popping in your feed, you know you're in trouble! Needless to say, these images are AI-generated. The presence of fake photos of couples might be a warning sign for a dating app, but since the target demographic is ...

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Dating websites and apps were big before but are even bigger now, no doubt influenced by the pandemic that made it harder to do the usual things like go to nightclubs, konpa group dates, or even your school campus to hook up with someone. There are many such apps on the Japanese market: Tapple, with, Dine, Pairs, Omiai, and more. We're not sure if it's the local market leader based on current user numbers, but Tinder must be the most famous because of its overseas prevalence and the money it spends on advertising (even recruiting Kiko Mizuhara to front its campaign). Its just gave a big ...

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It's common enough to read reports about male celebrities dating women a decade or more their junior. What about the ladies? The actress Chiharu Niiyama is now 41. She married a famous baseball coach in 2004, gave birth to a daughter in 2006, and then divorced in 2014. Along with small acting roles, she has continued to maintain a public profile, most recently through social media. Last year, to mark her fortieth birthday and twenty-fifth year as an actor, she did a swimsuit gravure shoot for the first time in two decades. The results were jaw-dropping, as we wrote at the time. No doubt ...

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