A rent-a-spouse vending machine? Sounds like another dose of wacky-Japan fake news that the foreign media likes to fall for, hook, line, and sinker.
Vending machines and "people rental" services are among the most popular topics for those ridiculous news stories, which tend to focus on just a single example and then extrapolate from that outlier to make general pronouncements about a society of 120+ million people.
So we're at pains to point out that we are not doing that here.
But there is apparently a vending machine where you can "get yourself" a spouse.
It is located in the ...
Japanese capsule toys are a cornucopia of choice and variety. There seems to be no end to the objects that pop out from the thousands of vending machines found at stores, train stations, and tourist destinations.
What's still often surprising, though, are the eyebrow-raising subject matters of certain toys.
Last year, for instance, we reported on the miniature vibrator capsule toys.
Slightly less risqué but just as awesome are these love hotel-inspired capsule toys. For a mere ¥300, you can get your own love hotel room key.
We have yet to spot these in the wild -- might we find the ...
So you've already got your breast-shaped fortune and your handwritten schoolgirl love letter.
The latest item available from Japan's capsule toy vending machines (gachapon or gashapon), which usually sell collectibles for kids, is a mini denma massager vibrator.
As regular readers or avid Japanese adult video viewers will know well, the denma "wand" is a massager-style vibrator that is popular with couples due to its wide, flexible head that can run all over the most sensitive parts of a female body.
Denma toys come in all shapes and sizes, plus there are various accessories for attaching ...
They say that everything is small in Japan. Small cars. Small homes. Small food portions. Small people. Only kidding about that last one.
Sometimes it seems that there really are capsule toys and model kits for everything.
In the latest evidence of this, renowned plastic model kit maker Hasegawa is set to release another miniature "retro vending machine" this July. And the fifth iteration (FA13) of the series of kits, following versions for ramen and udon noodles, is a porn vending machine.
It's not explicitly stated as such, but the weirdly anonymous-looking design and the conspicuous, ...
Tenga has produced some of Japan's, if not the world's, best sex toys. As a brand, it already has its own stores. And now Tenga finally has its own vending machines. (The Tenga Egg vending machine once spotted in Nakano Broadway, Tokyo, was apparently not an official vendor.)
Anyone now with an urge to buy a Tenga product 24 hours a day and get it right away can do so.
The only catch is that these vending machines are in Sapporo, Hokkaido -- in the far north of Japan.
For reasons known only to the sales team at Tenga, the Apple of the Adult Industry has opted for a regional city rather ...
We stumbled upon this great Twitter feed detailing a report by Shinbunka, the publishing industry trade journal in Japan, about the decline of the much-loved porn magazine vending machine. It also cites from an interview with the photographer Tetsuya Kurosawa, who has documented the vending machines (visiting some 500 locations along the way!).
It's true, we haven't seen one for many a moon. Here's why.
At the peak of the adult vending machine boom, there were some 50,000 machines nationwide in the 1970s. That lofty number has been reduced to a mere fraction now.
What are left are often ...
Just when you think the bureaucrats couldn't get any sillier, along come some to prove you wrong.
Activists and ero-manga (adult manga) fans in Japan have been shocked by the recent designation by Hokkaido and Shiga prefectures of two reference books as "harmful" to youngsters.
Zenkoku-ban Anohino Erohon Jihanki Tanbouki (Nationwide Study of Pornography Vending Machine of Yesterdays) and Ero Manga Hyogenshi (The Expression History of Ero-manga) by Yusuke Kato are about adult manga but are not adult manga themselves. But this distinction means nothing to Shiga and Hokkaido: the former ...
Japanese gachapon or gashapon capsule toy vending machines are a bottomless source of novelties, from handwritten love letters to Tenga eggs.
The latest adult surprise waiting in the capsules are omikuji, the paper strips that tell your fortune. These are normally purchased at a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple in Japan, and offer varying degrees of fortune such as "great blessing" (dai-kichi) or "curse" (kyo). Any ones you don't like the look of, you can tie up and leave at the temple.
Courtesy of adult manga and dojinshi retailer Melon Books, Nyomikuji (literally, Woman's Body Fortune ...
The visitor to Japan quickly notes the large number of vending machines everywhere.
They are typically just for drinks but there are more unusual ones around. And this now includes gachapon capsule-style vending machines that offer sealed love letters from schoolgirls.
Shocked? You shouldn't be. After all, in Japan you can get refrigerated used panties from vending machines as well as Tenga and even prostitutes.
We can't speak for the veracity of the love letters, which cost ¥200 a pop, but they are written by hand and ostensibly from a young girl called Kiki.
One ...
Tenga has a habit of turning up in unusual places.
From the garbage on a beach to a Buddhist temple, a business card holder, and even once in the home of comedian Tomonori Jinnai when accidentally shown on a TV show.
Back in 2012 some people stumbled upon this Tenga Egg vending machine in Nakano Broadway, west Tokyo.
It's a gacha-gacha capsule vending machine, which makes sense for the Tenga Egg. You get a single Tenga Egg for ¥500 and if you are lucky enough to get a ticket in your capsule, you can take it inside to the shop to claim a porn DVD.
We don't think this is ...
