Recently a Saitama civil servant got himself arrested for entering a female-only changing room at a spa while in drag.
Perhaps he should have gone to Tokyo...
Because Josokko Koishitsu (literally meaning "cross-dresser changing room" but with the English name Locker Girls Club) has just opened in Nichome, Shinjuku's gay district. Josokko Koishitsu (or "Kouishitsu" depending on your Romanicizing preferences) is a changing room facility especially for newhalf, otoko no ko cross-dressers and other types of transgender.
After all, if you are heading out to Nichome for some fun, ...
Fetish Festival (Feti-Fes) was held in Tokyo on Sunday January 25th at an inconspicuous venue near Harajuku.
There were 96 booths, including cosplayers, idols, bondage artists, and more, spread out over six seriously packed floors, plus a basement showing the "Underground Fetish Film Festival" screenings.
Feti-Fes was first held in January 2013, since then it has been held eight times around Japan. This festival -- the fifth in Tokyo -- was the biggest so far and there seemed to be hundreds of visitors by our estimate.
Due to legal reasons, there was no nudity allowed in the ...
We're on a bit of a cross-dressing roll at the moment. After blogging about a major new josou club and bar in Osaka we now want to introduce a new photography exhibition at Ginza's Vanilla Gallery.
It features portraits Tachibana has made over six years of newhalf (shemales) and josou cross-dressers.
The exhibition is called "Traces of josou and the Theory of Happiness". Tachibana runs a studio that specializes in portrait photography for cross-dressers and shemales, as well as hair and make-up services. She has worked with top idols to old-timers in their seventies -- more than ...
Onna no ko Kurabu (Girls' Club) is where the action's at if you want an easy way to sample Japanese cross-dressing subculture.
Man or woman, you can go to the club -- currently one in Tokyo, with a new club in Osaka's down-and-dirty Dotonbori district from December 1st -- to try on girls' clothing. The club keeps a wardrobe of rental clothes and wigs for joso (or josou) cosplay, dressing up as a girl.
As we know, otoko no ko cross-dressing cosplay is big in Japan, though it is a hard-to-define point somewhere between "transvestite" and "cosplayer". Joso is the more conventional ...
We already know that there's a strong subculture in Japan for cross-dressing -- and one which doesn't fit easily into any western ideas of gay culture -- but here's something new.
Metrosexual Japanese men worried about their nipples showing through t-shirts may be turning to these nipple stickers to cover up.
There are several products out there on the market, it seems. The "Nipple Shields" by Tex Mex are marketed as "fashion help for men", especially young high-fliers in the business world who don't want their muscular chests with pokey nipples showing through their tight white ...
Otoko no Ko "male daughter" cross-dressing cosplay is really getting big in Tokyo now. The fetish subculture has its only monthly event in Shinjuku called Propaganda. There are shops, maid cafes and even special photobooks.
Even more intriguingly, there are many Otoko no Ko cosplay adult toys too, mostly created by Tama Toys -- from anus smell sprays to manicure sets, panties, bras, garter, wigs and more!
Well, now there is a way to check the time online with a Otoko no Ko flavor!
Keen-eyed readers may see a connection here to the successful Bijin Tokei series of digital clock ...
It's high time we talked about otoko no ko (also written otokonoko) (男の娘). The name of course is a play on the word for "boy" but whose characters mean "male daughter". As we know, the word for daughter (musume) is also employed a lot to mean "cute young girl", and that's the nuance here.
The phrase has been used since the 2000's. A otoko no ko is a cross-dressing cosplayer, who dresses as a girl for certain occasions. It's an unusual combination of cosplay culture, sexuality, and (in a way) otaku culture (it's quite geeky as subcultures go). It took the world of men dressed as ...
One of the most slippery and ambiguous of terms in Japanese sexuality, otoko no ko sounds like the word for "boy" but is written with in hiragana and with a final character that usually means "daughter" or "girl". In the simplest of definitions, it's a type of cross-dressing where boys dress up as girls.
This doesn't mean you are a shemale or a transexual in the western way of thinking, but it does bend the usual lines between gender, sexuality and appearance.
There are lots of clothes for cross-dressing cosplay, including stockings, bras and dresses, negligees and even wigs. ...
These ladies look pretty hot, right?
Well, actually these are otoko no ko (男の娘), crossdressing males, photographed by Naoko Tachibana.
They feature nine crossdressers from the cafe and bar New Type, which opened in Akihabara in May 2009. Tachibana has put these together as a photo book, "Yuri Danshi", 10,000 copies of which have been printed -- that's quite a demand!
We think you'll agree that these ladies look lovely.
Otoko no ko culture -- a mixture of cosplay and crossdressing -- is huge in Japan, with its own magazines, shopping sites ...
Shotacon or Shotaro complex (正太郎コンプレックス) is a tricky subject to get into and we have been hesitating for a while, since we know it might get a harsh response from some.
On the surface it looks like a gay fantasy, describing an attraction to young boys and their wily charms.
But nothing is quite so straightforward.
We often bang on about this but ambiguity is such a strong part of Japanese erotica -- there are no clear definitions.
Japanese fans of shotacon are probably not definable just as "gay" and in fact much of the fantasy seems to involve boys who are possibly ...
