It's Christmas in Tokyo, which means . . . what exactly? Well, not really Christmas in the traditional sense.
Christmas in Japan is, of course, not a holiday per se (and falling on a Monday this year, everyone will be working as normal, including yours truly), but Santa cosplay is very popular, as are "Christmas cakes" (which rarely resemble what a European might expect), German-style Christmas markets, and going on dates on Christmas Eve.
In fact, Christmas is basically just a romantic day for couples, and one of the busiest times of year for love hotels.
Gravure idols and models often ...
Professional female cosplayers are some of the sexiest women in Japan, yet they tend to be confined to conventions and such events. Likewise, gravure idols are fixtures on the pages of weekly magazines but don't usually venture to cosplay events.
While various cosplayers moonlight as gradols -- Enako being a very successful example -- their two worlds are somewhat separate, or so it seems to us at least.
It might be because gravure favors women with large breasts and fuller hips, which might limit options when it comes to cosplay (certainly more mainstream cosplay, though the more adult ...
Gravure idol, YouTuber, and keen plastic model maker Umi Shinonome delighted us with her naked butt in her debut photo book released last year.
Give the people what they want. It's an old adage but always a winner.
It seems that Shinonome is listening because she's generously giving us more of the same (and some nice side boob) with her follow-up photo book, You Love the Sea (Umi), which is released this week in Japan.
The book already entered a second print run prior to release. Her 2022 debut also went through several printings.
Here are a few other highlights from the new photo ...
In the current issue of Weekly Playboy, busty Japanese model, cosplayer, YouTuber, and plastic model maker Umi Shinonome discusses how she got into gravure.
When in her third year at university, she was invited to do a shoot with some otaku photographer friends. She says she found the experience enjoyable, not just the shoot itself but the costumes, the location scouting, and the whole process of putting the results together.
Shinonome then started using social media to recruit photographers to shoot her.
After about a year, her management agency spotted and scouted her. She made her ...
She is, in our humble opinion, the proud owner of the best pair of buttocks in gravure at the moment, and now she's just showed us even more of them.
Umi Shinonome has released her first photo book, Umi no naka (a pun meaning both "Inside Umi" and also "In the Sea"), this month, which has a decidedly summery, beach theme.
With her G-cup bust and 100-cm hips, the gradol is absolutely popular with male fans, but she has cemented her following with her videos showcasing her hobby: building models.
A print photo book is another major step in her career.
The 25-year-old is promoting her ...
Like a lot of gravure idols recently, RaMu has taken to YouTube to connect directly with fans and also occupy herself during downtime (which the coronavirus pandemic is generating a lot of for precariously employed models and idols).
These days, gradols are YouTubers, and one video that RaMu uploaded at the end of 2020 is gaining some traction (over 360,000 views and counting).
In it, 23-year-old RaMu talks about the secrets of how a gravure photo shoot works. It is all in Japanese but she has some illustrative props.
These include panties with see-through string so that the model can ...
