Porn star Saki Otsuka turned herself into a photographer a little while ago now when she released her photography book “Mitsubai nude” in 2012. Since then she’s produced quite an impressive body of work.

Once again working with ERECT magazine, the occasional publication with the best name in the world, Saki Otsuka has created “MEME”, a touring exhibition of her work taking in Fukuoka, Osaka and Tokyo.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Saki isn’t shooting pictures of flowers or pretty landscapes. Her photography is dark and focuses a lot on naked flesh, including her own, it seems. The images from the “MEME” series are blurry and erotic.

The first two cities are done and dusted, but the Tokyo leg is happening at AMP Cafe in Koenji from April 8th to April 12th. The special zines produced for the exhibition have already partly sold out.

Known for her immaculate bust, Otsuka clearly has an artistic bent, like her fellow porn colleague and photographer Elly Akira (Yuuka Osawa).

What to do when you get tired of doing porn? Become a singer like Yuma Asami? Become a manga-ka like Nayuka Mine?

Born in 1984 and making her debut in JAV in 2004, Otsuka seems to have found an impressive answer to this eternal question.

The Japan Times published a recent article about the fascinating — and inspiring — tale of Rie Saito.

Saito, who lost her hearing at age 1, plans to run in the April 26 election in Tokyo’s Kita Ward Assembly as a Nippon wo Genki ni Suru Kai (Party to Revitalize Japan) candidate. A best-selling author who was once the No. 1 hostess at a club in Tokyo’s Ginza district, Saito was known as the hitsudan hostess who used writing to communicate with her customers.

So this hottie would use paper to keep her patrons happy in Ginza and encourage them to buy her drinks.

Being a hostess is all about looking pretty and communicating, so Saito’s disability would surely preclude her from this exclusive world — but that’s not the case.

In her autobiography “Hitsudan Hosutesu” (“Writing Hostess”), published in 2009 by Kobunsha Co., Saito revealed her past — from being teased for sounding like “an alien” as a child, to her rebellious days of getting in trouble at school and at home, to how she wound up coming to Tokyo and eventually becoming a top hostess at a club in the glitzy Ginza district.

She reads lips to listen to people (but doesn’t use sign language) and must have been charming to converse with, though obviously things would have flowed at a more leisurely pace.

Her bestselling autobiography was then made into a TV drama with Keiko Kitagawa.

This is the two of them together. Quite a fetching pair.

Now 31 and with a daughter of 4 years old (and no father around), Saito’s next challenge is to become possibly only Japan’s second ever deaf politician.

We’ve seen lots of paizuri (titty fucking) toys in our time.

This fantasy is certainly a hard one (no pun intended) to realize in Japan — land of the flat chest — unless you are lucky enough to have bakunyuu “explosive bust” Hitomi Tanaka or Rara Anzai for your bedroom partner.

So in lieu of trying it with a real partner, Japanese guys make do with these kinds of toys.

Many are just as you’d expect — busts that you can squeeze around your member while you slide in and out. Often they have nice nubbing and so on between the breasts to heighten the experience.

The Love Titty Onahole is more unusual: you literally penetrate the breast.

And that’s a bit similar to the Oppai Other, Other Side of Tits Paizuri Onahole.

Okay, it has a long name but it’s worth it.

Here you actually push yourself through the breasts, sliding through the generously lined tunnel.

The Oppai Other, Other Side of Tits is made by Prime and it’s a full air hole release type toy. That means the penetration hole goes right the way through, making cleaning much easier…

And there’s a bonus side which even regular masturbators with full air holes don’t have. The hole doesn’t just pass right the way through — it actually has a double entrance, so you can penetrate it from either side.

In other words, you can fuck the breasts from the front or the back (due to the design of the inner hole, the sensation varies).

You can also enjoy the more conventional paizuri sensations of squeezing yourself between the buoyant breasts. The nipples are also super flexible and realistic.

So no matter how hot your lady friend is, we don’t think she can offer you this experience.

Make Room (Make-Up Room) is a new drama film about a fascinating topic: the people who do the make-up for porn stars.

It’s written and directed by Kei Morikawa, and stars Aki Morita as the titular make-up artist, as well as three actual porn stars: Riri Kuribayashi, Beni Ito, Nanami Kawakami.

Originally a play by Morikawa, it promises to show the behind-the-scenes of the adult video industry. It gets a limited release in Japan in May.

It reminds us of an interview we once read with a man claiming to have worked for a while as a hair and make-up artist for porn stars in Japan, such as Azusa Nagasawa.

He said they actually focus mostly on the photos shot to promote a film, rather than the main shoot of the film itself. So the make-up artists prepare the stars for stills and rarely get to see the film being shot. He said he wasn’t close to the directors.

He was paid a daily wage of ¥15,000, plus an extra fee if he was specifically requested by someone.

However, he would leave for work at 8 a.m. and finish at 10 p.m., when he would go drinking with the other staff.

So though he got to work with hot girls all day, it’s not quite the paradise we might imagine!

However, thinking about this job reminds us of that make-up room sex scene from the Erika Sawajiri movie Helter Skelter.

Our immaculate specimen this week is Yuno Akuzawa.

Born in May 1990 in Fukuoka Prefecture, Yuno likes cooking and yoga.

She is a nice 174cm tall, which makes for a fine, long figure… and wonderful legs. Of course, all that height also means a nice bust too.

Here she is in a recent shoot for Playboy March 2015 and elsewhere. A future star of the Gravure scene, we hope!

Another week, another sex-themed article about Japan gets written and hawked around.

AFP has written an article about Japan’s “silver porn” industry and the wire service has sold it to countless other publications around the world.

We’ve seen these pieces before, such as in The Guardian.

And of course, it’s hardly news.

There has been a vibrant silver porn for a long time, featuring a host of stars like Yumi Kazama and Shigeo Tokuda. And it’s not just performers: the over-sixty crowd is very active in watching porn, frequenting love hotels, and also visiting soaplands and prostitutes (young and old).

The AFP article focuses on a new star, Yasue Tomita.

Dressed in a kimono and kneeling silently on a tatami mat floor, 61-year-old Yasue Tomita looks as if she might be about to perform a Japanese tea ceremony — instead she’s debuting as a porn actress.

Fluttering her eyelashes demurely as the cameras prepare to roll, Tomita is proof that in Japan’s greying society you’re never too old to chase your dreams, however racy or unorthodox.

She has also become part of a flourishing niche market in Japan: “silver porn” — stretching the limits of eroticism among the elderly and overturning social norms in a country where people are expected to grow old gracefully.

A friend of mine with quite a lot of experience with scarlet ladies once told me the young ones were best for screwing while the older ones knew how to give the best head.

Tomita is also a little worried about her physical abilities.

Tomita confessed to being “a bit rusty” but made no apologies for her rambunctious lust for life, or her decision to put aside her knitting and crochet and launch into a career making X-rated movies.

“I like my handicrafts but I wanted to try my hand at this, while my body still works,” she told AFP before filming began.

“I do like sex, and this is my last chance before I get too old. I’m very nervous. I wonder if I should really do it, especially in front of so many people, but everyone should follow their dream.

“I just hope I can keep up,” added Tomita, who used to work in a factory manufacturing car parts and registered for an agency in Japan’s booming “adult video” (AV) industry with her daughter.

“We applied through the Internet together. I got offered a job first, which surprised her a bit.”

Of course, the writers bring in Shigeo Tokuda as the “pioneer” of the genre.

In ageing Japan, around 32 million people — a quarter of the population — are 65 or over. Thanks to a low birthrate and growing longevity, that proportion is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2060.

With statistics like that, it’s no surprise that geronto-porn is big business.

Adult movies rake in about $20 billion a year, and those featuring unashamedly wrinkly men and women account for between 20 and 30 percent of that market, industry insiders say. Sales have rocketed over the past decade as more of Japan’s perky seniors celebrate their mojo.

Though not for the faint-hearted, the genre took off thanks largely to now-80-year-old Shigeo Tokuda, the twinkle-toed king of granddad porn, who has peeled off for hundreds of hardcore flicks with titles such as “Forbidden Elderly Care” and “Manic Training of Lolitas.”

Thank you, Tokuda-san!

Japan’s top cosplayer, Iiniku Ushijima, is set to make her JAV porn debut at long last.

Sadly not.

This was an April Fools’ Day joke by a Japanese porn label.

A million cocks sprung up when Prestige made the “announcement”… on April 1st.

No, Japan’s slinkiest cosplay idol is not switching over to the porn industry (yet).

It wasn’t the only adult-themed April Fools’ Day prank, though.

Feast, the lingerie line for A-cup Japanese girls designed by the cute Gomi Hayakawa, suddenly had a male spinoff. Hayakawa announced Beast, apparently her new brand of male lingerie, which look suspiciously like female underwear.

Of course, this too was a joke… although female lingerie for men does exist. We’ve blogged about it before (years ago, in fact). There are even manicure and make-up sets for guys.

It is said that half of all sex in Japan happens in a love hotel. 1% of the population uses a love hotel on any single day; something like 1,370,000 couples. A large proportion of the nation’s new babies are conceived in a love hotel. There are 500 million visits a year. Room occupancy is 600-700% in some busy establishments — 78.8 stays per room per month!

The love hotel industry has an annual turnover of ¥4 trillion yen, which is around four times the operating profits of Toyota and double the anime industry. And yet it’s cars and anime that the government wants to push as the face of Japan.

That being said, the love hotel is not unique to Japan. Similar kinds of short-stay accommodations designed for trysts can be found in South Korea, Brazil, Greece, Singapore, and elsewhere.

Where did the love hotel phenomenon start? Why has it developed the way it has?

The modern love hotel as we think of it today in Japan began in the late 1950′s. By the 1980′s there were 30,000 of them. It was during that decade that the legal definition changed, so it is now harder to calculate precisely how many love hotels exist in Japan.

While originally associated with adultery and prostitution, today the love hotel is not necessarily sleazy. It is a facility enjoyed by young couples still living with their parents or even older couples who just want some privacy away from their family, since Japanese homes and apartments are infamously small.

You are also likely to find groups using a love hotel for non-sexual means too, because there are now advanced entertainment systems like karaoke and satellite TV, as well as diverse catering services available.

Let’s go back to the pre-war period. We could go back even further and find precedents for the love hotel but this is a “short history”.

Before the modern love hotel there was the machiai (“waiting together”), a type of room for lovers. This was the kind of establishment where Sada Abe killed her lover and cut off his penis. The predecessors to the machiai were the kariza-shiki “rooms for rent” and the hikitejaya “handle tea rooms”. There were also the enshuku one-yen dwellings during the 1930′s.

The next main type of love hotel (or name for such a place) was the tsurekomi-yado, the “bring-along inn”. These mushroomed in the post-war years. By 1961 there were 2,700 in Tokyo alone. In response to the new anti-prostitution laws, there were brothels nearby and the love hotels catered to clients. This is much the same as today in certain areas of Tokyo like Uguisudani and Ikebukuro, where the hotels are essentially the rooms you take a call girl to after you make your booking at the “shop” (a type of service usually euphemistically called “hotel health”).

Magazines in the 1970′s began using various terms: shikake hoteru (gadget hotel), douhan hoteru (go-together hotel), and abekku hoteru (avec hotel).

The “love hotel” (rabu hoteru) nomenclature arrived during this decade and eventually stuck. All the other labels have fallen by the wayside and we are left with a name that has faux foreign and romantic connotations, which keeps it neutral from the sleazier nuances of previous names.

When the Meguro Emperor opened in the 1970′s, it set the tone for a trademark feature of the love hotel as we think of it: kitsch. Before long most hotels were adopting gaudy exteriors, sometimes ridiculously elaborate (castles, see below) and with luxury rooms or even themed rooms (dungeons, carousels, cars… you name it).

Most love hotels, though, while they were bold in their colors and cheesy in their pseudo-European names, were fairly basic places inside. The stereotype of the outlandish themes is just that — a stereotype that only applies to a fraction of hotels.

In the 1970′s, certain hotels became popular for offering dendou or engata circular revolving beds, which were surrounded by mirror panels. There were some S&M rooms, but these were rare and usually out of town. Osaka has always been more exuberant in its love hotels, it seems. Osakan hotels often have youkai kanban — ornate signage with frescoes and so on.

Popular days for visiting a love hotel remain Valentine’s Day (introduced in Japan in 1958), White Day (March 14th, where the guys give the ladies chocolates), and Christmas Eve (the big night for couples to go on dates). However, there are surprising spikes in occupancy caused by international sporting events, where love hotels offer comfortable, reasonably priced places to watch Japanese players and teams compete late at night in a foreign country on a nice TV screen. Rather than squeezing into a crowded bar or staying up at home, you can watch the sporting event and then sleep, waking up in the city center the next day. This has been the case with the World Cup and Japan’s growing soccer culture.

The standard system is a “short stay” (2-3 hours) or overnight stay. Rates vary for weekdays and weekends or holidays. Lobbies are typically unmanned and discreet, ensuring privacy and speed of access. Often you will never see any other guests or members of staff, though you might hear them having a good time!

Love hotel districts in Tokyo include Shibuya, Uguisudani, Ebisu, Gotanda, Kabukicho and Ikebukuro. The love hotels eventually came to occupy the edges of drinking areas in major commercial hubs like Shinjuku and Shibuya. After all, alcohol and food have a tendency to lead to something else. However, sometimes hotels are located between shrines and temples, which would be unthinkable in a Judaeo-Christian society. One of Osaka’s main love hotel areas is right by its main cluster of Buddhist temples.

Is the love hotel surviving these uncertain economic times? Yes and no.

Love hotels are usually owned by private families, chains such as the Aine System Group (which owns 150 hotels), or the Yakuza mafia. Cleaning staff tend to be low-paid foreign immigrants.

A falling population and tighter regulations have conspired to force the industry into partial decline. Prices have gone up and even in city centers like Shibuya, it is common to see shabby or even closed-down hotels.

Its heyday may be long gone but then so is the Bubble. Rest assured, the love hotel is certainly not going away.

Today there has been a big push towards new kinds of amenities such as bathing (a big part of Japanese culture), karaoke, Wi-Fi, tanning beds, exercise bikes, massage chairs, TV entertainment systems, and food (from whole meals to snacks, and complimentary breakfasts). Moshi Moshi Pierot in Osaka even hired a five-star chef to provide meals to patrons. There are also party rooms aimed at single-sex groups.

The love hotel is now as much about comfort and enjoyable as the erotic or titillating.

In 1985 the law changed, forcing hotels to hide behind other legal categories or continue in accordance to harsher regulation. The semi-legal former became the majority, sometimes called “statutory love hotels”. There were 11,000 in 1985; by 2000 there were 7,000. But today there are perhaps only as few as 3,500. For every new opening, some say there are two closures.

And yet, the “statutory” hotels are often operating now as a third category, “non-love hotels” (regular hotels) on paper, so it is hard to speculate on the true health of the industry. As one random example illustrates, sometimes what we think is a love hotel is actually legally speaking a religious facility.

Just to end on a funny anecdote. The late Hiroshi Yamauchi set a up a love hotel in the early 1960′s when he was trying to diversify his business operations. However, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of industry and his hotel failed. He then steered his company’s towards the nascent video game industry. The company was called Nintendo and the rest is history.

Further Reading:
Sarah Chaplin, Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History
Philip Cox and Hikaru Toda, Love Hotel
Kotaku, Inside Japan’s Pleasure Hotels
Nippon.com, Japan’s Affection for Love Hotels: Learning from the Research of Kim Ikkyon

Japan is a country where the Kanamara penis festival (held yesterday) is fine but the depiction of the female genitalia is not.

The two arrests of Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi) have caused a furore around the world — to be accurate, mostly around the world, not in Japan. The overseas press is much more interested in the tale of Igarashi and her arrests for distributing “obscene” materials.

Igarashi calls herself a “vagina artist”. Her artist name means “Good-For-Nothing Girl” and she has proved up to the image, not least in the eyes of the vice squad.

Her “art of the vagina” series consists of figures, models and other artworks based on her genitalia. Most originally she even created a “vagina kayak”.

The 40-something artist has been arrested twice. She displayed a plaster cast of her vagina in an exhibition at an adult shop in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, between October 2013 and July 2014. She was eventually charged for this “offense” when she was arrested in December 2014.

Her first arrest was in summer 2014 because she used 3D data of her pussy to create things, and then distributed the data to people who had crowdfunded an exhibition.

Images of genitalia is still “obscene” in Japan and only occasionally permitted (“tasteful” hair nude photo shoots, certain comedic scenes in films).

Igarashi has now written a book about her experiences.

“What is ‘obscenity’? Rokudenashiko, who was called ‘self-proclaimed artist’” (ワイセツって何ですか？-「自称芸術家」と呼ばれた私-ろくでなし子) refers to two main issues in the case.

Firstly, what is “obscene” and why is it only the police get to draw up the arbitrary definitions? Secondly, why did the domestic media belittle Igarashi by always introducing her as a “self-proclaimed artist”? The qualifier is indicative of the suspicion and lack of sympathy the mainstream media had for her plight. So much for freedom of expression.

Proving her critics wrong, Igarashi has even written the book as a manga comic — now is still a “self-proclaimed” artist?

Yoo Ra-seong is not one of the most famous Korean actresses but she has made a big splash in “Affair” (Mil-ae), released in 2014.

The erotic film is about a torrid love affair — no surprise! — between a curator and photographer.

Yoo Ra-seong also made headlines just before the film got its July release in Korea, when she appeared in a see-through black dress at the 18th Puchon International Film Festival. As we’ve blogged about before, Korean actresses have scandalized the film festival circuit with their dresses that leave little to the imagination.

First scene is a seduction on a sofa, followed by a session up against a wall and then from behind against a mirror. Nice.

The next sees Yoo Ra-seong seduce her man on a bed, where she undresses him and then sucks his cock. Then she rides him on the bed with some impressive close-ups of her sliding his cock inside her, and then her butt grinding on his groin.

The last scene is the most explicit.

Yoo Ra-seong is naked while she lies on her back on top of a man screwing her.

One odd thing is that she tends to leave at least one item of clothing on her. But don’t worry that changes soon enough. The moments when she is being screwed horizontally from behind, as filmed from above, are very nice.

Regular readers will recall the big fuss that was made when Yui Ichikawa appeared in a film last year called Umi wo kanjiru toki (When I Sense the Sea).

People got excited because it promised to have some nude scenes with the popular twenty-something actress.

She also stripped off for Anan, a women’s lifestyle and fashion magazine that occasionally likes to indulge in semi-pornographic photo shoots with various Japanese models.

Well, the film came and went, and now has been released on DVD, so the web is already full of screen grabs of the “sexy” scenes.

As we expected, the fuss didn’t really merit the results. There are just a few shots of the slim Yui Ichikawa’s body.

A few of her modest bust and one of her butt.

It’s hardly stuff to rival the Korean ladies’ cinematic achievements.

As we’ve written about before, very few Japanese actresses do nude scenes (called nureba, literally “wet points”), with the exception of the ever-reliable Rinko Kikuchi and Naoko Watanabe (and sadly just once, Yuriko Yoshitaka), and even films overtly sold as “erotic” are actually pretty tame.

Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and Yui does look lovely in the film.

Japanese TV is even tamer than mainstream movies.

However, Yui Ichikawa has previously tempted us with her body in the drama Last Cinderella.

A “trailer” for “Pizap Shake Your Body & Soul” by Marvelous Entertainment has been generating some horny mirth in Japan and overseas.

The virtual reality game parody video has been created by the “Department of Hyper Enormous Boobage Development” to showcase “New Rinjokan”, a game machine offering a more realistic experience.

The solution to the problem of perfectly swaying breasts was apparently “Pizap” (don’t ask us how this is different to what they call “New Rinjokan”).

To use the product, the player has to run on a conveyor belt to make the breasts on a mannequin shake. This will give you infinite pleasure.

It will extend your life and lead to a healthier life, “some scientists say”. And the more you play the more popular you become with ladies… apparently.

However, there is a “anti-crime system” that stops overly enthusiastic guys taking off the bra to see the bust.

Swaying and shaking giant busts (bakunyu) are a big fantasy in Japan, which has also inspired more than its fair share of parodies.

The “game” is supposed to be under development by Marvelous Entertainment (of course, not really), the publisher of “Senran Kagura”, a game loved for its busty female characters.

The new PS4 game “Senran Kagura: Estival Versus” has just come out so this is a neat marketing ploy.

The publisher also released another sexually themed parody last year, the Head Mount π-Play.

We all like to compare numbers, especially when it comes to the number of people you’ve slept with.

But we accept defeat when it comes to Yuhei Takashima, who has apparently admitted to sex with over 12,000 women.

That’s not a typo: more than twelve thousand!

The former Yokohama school principal was not just into the sex itself. He also catalogued his incredible feat.

Over 27 years he allegedly archived almost 150,000 photographs of his sexual exploits with prostitutes in 400 neatly filed red albums.

Takashima is aged 64 but his “career” goes back to 1988 when he went to work at a Japanese school in Manila for three years. A strong yen and a cheap sex industry made for an unhealthy combination.

Since his first encounter, Takashima reportedly went on three sex tours a year to the Philippines. His 65 visits totalled up to 12,700 sexual exchanges, which is an average of one per day for every day of his life since his first visit. Obviously he was in Japan most of the time so he must have been frequenting multiple prostitutes every day (and night).

These prostitutes were aged between 14 and 70, indicating the catholic nature of Takashima’s tastes. 10% were under the age of 18, Takashima is said to have admitted to police.

He has said he enjoyed the “strong feeling of liberation from the restraints of ethics”. The last photo in his collection is labelled “12,660″.

His downfall? He was arrested in January 2014 for having sex in a Manila hotel with a minor. Philippine police also gave the Japanese police information in September 2013 when they caught Takashima paying a girl aged 13-14 around ¥2,500 for sex. However, because they could not identify the girl, he was not charged with soliciting a child prostitute.

Police have now seized his amazing 147,600-strong catalogue of sex.

He faces charges of possession of child pornography because he took photos of what he did with the underage girl.

Kanagawa Prefectural Police can prosecute Takashima under special laws for crimes committed overseas.

He may also have to return his retirement bonus to the education board. Since his retirement as junior high school principal in 2011 Takashima had been working as an editor of an educational publication.

Tenga is having a massive year to celebrate its tenth anniversary.

It has continued its series of special new releases for the milestone with the Tenga Condoms.

While the condoms themselves are regular sleeves (natural color, natural-type tip), the packaging is awesome. Each of the condoms in the six-pack comes in its own mini case (common in Japan) with an individual pop art design.

The six are then stored in a round case that looks like it could house almost anything (sweets, snuff, a monocle) except condoms! As discreet and stylish as Tenga always is.

As usual the marketing is also fun, with lots of shots of young couples posing with the condoms.

This year is turning out to be a bonanza and it’s still only spring.

We have already seen the Tenga Vacuum Controller last month, which is Tenga’s first sex machine and works with the Onacup series.

And in January Tenga kicked off its celebrations with the special Premium Vacuum Onacup.

As you can see from these products and its past ones, the “Apple of the Japanese adult industry” still maintains its usual chic, yet minimal approach to the design of its products.

The new Tenga Condoms are more pop and playful, but this also isn’t new. In the past Tenga has released Keith Haring-themed products.

The Tenga Condoms also come at a time when Japanese condom makers are really doing interesting things.

Okamoto recently released its Zero One Condoms, which are a mere 0.01mm — the world’s thinnest possible condoms.

Cynics and/or enthusiasts will also spot that Okamoto’s ultra-thin contraceptives are a kind of rip-off of a much-acclaimed condom by Sagami, the Original 0.01 Condom (as the name suggests, also 0.01mm), though hopefully the Okamoto ones won’t be as hard to find as the notoriously rare Sagami model.

Japanese condom makers have to try hard, though, because a lot of (most?) couples don’t use condoms (Japan is ranked among the lowest in world for condom usage). As such, they are forced to employ unusual marketing strategies to draw interest to their rubbery products.

Art imitates life, as the aphorism goes, but life also imitates art.

Visitors to Japan are sometimes disappointed that the country doesn’t live up to the stereotypes: Where are the geisha? Where are the robots? Where are the hordes of anime girls?

Where are all the molesters on the trains? Wait, what? Yes, some people are actually expecting to see this.

Japan may be paying the price for being the empire of porn.

It’s overseas reputation is not quite as “cool” as the government might like. Instead, foreigners are seemingly coming to Japan expecting the nation to be like they have experienced it through porn. Naturally this leads to some problems.

A story, which we can’t verify, has been spreading that three Chinese foreigners were recently arrested in separate incidents (the source of the news is Chinese-language media).

They face up to six months in prison, possible 10 years if it is assault, or fines of ¥500,000 (over $4,000). All because they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.

What happened?

One suspect tried to snap a photo up a girl’s skirt on an escalator.

The second apparently touched a girl’s ass in an adult good store.

The third lifted up the skirt of a woman while on a train.

So it’s not just the Italians who commit sexual offenses on public transport in Japan!

One of the suspects is alleged to have expressed surprise at his arrest. He told police: “I watched Japanese adult videos and thought the people here were open about sex. I thought gropers were everywhere.”

There is an irony to all this. When US soldiers commit sex crimes in Okinawa, they are usually not even charged by the Japanese police (the jurisdiction instead likes with the US military).

Somehow we doubt the police will be so “generous” with Chinese tourists.

Some ladies on Twitter have amused us by trying to copy an anime character.

Well, there’s absolutely nothing new about that. But this is cosplay with a particular focus on one body part — one of our favorites.

The girls attempted to copy Hestia from DanMachi (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) and her trademark costume: revealing white shirt and blue ribbon, which runs tantalizingly under her boobs and around her arms.

The TV anime adaptation of the light novel was shown on TV for the first time recently and it got some lovely ladies thinking…. Could I do what Hestia is doing?

Image: @aiya23mt08cos

Image: @keno_kasumi

Image: @keno_kasumi

Image: @keno_kasumi

Image: @sekaisouzousin

Were the girls successful?

Well, the response was fairly muted so I don’t think we have Japan’s next big meme quite yet.

Still, there are apparently male imitators too.

Anyone who has ever seen some of the more extreme or, ahem, unusual entries in the pantheon of Japanese adult video will be aware of ryoujoku (or ryojoku).

It’s where the woman is treated in a “degraded” way, as someone violated or disgraced — like a shamed woman. (The actual meaning of ryoujoku can be sexual assault, i.e. rape, or also “disgrace”.)

A common scene in Japanese porn will have the girl treated like a “human toilet” and phrases written on her body to “shame” her.

Here is Mika Osawa demonstrating the genre.

The graffiti might say things like “¥200 for one use”, “pervert urinal”, “slut”, “penetration this way” and so on.

The Ryoujoku Stockings allow you to indulge in this power fantasy without the hard work of doing the writing.

All you need to do is slip these tights on and you are instantly transformed into a degraded woman, with the insulting text written on the skin-colored stockings.

So put your pens away but get your darkest fantasies out.

It’s the Chinese turn to be Weird Asians of the Week.

An AFP-Jiji article doing the rounds promises that “high-end China sex dolls offer alternative to adultery”. Well, nothing wrong with that. Japan has been doing it for years!

Still, we think they need to do better branding. Apparently the “stand-in companion” is simply called “156″. Hardly has the same ring as “Candy Girl”, does it?

Named for her height, she is a high-quality sex doll made of thermoplastic elastomer, a rubbery material softer than silicone, with adjustable hands, a removable head and genitals, and available from specialist shops in Beijing for around $2,500.

Elastomer is used in Japan for many masturbator toys but the best dolls are actually made of silicone, as opposed to latex in America.

The article focuses on the clients for the Chinese dolls.

Liu has been married for more than a decade, and does not want to be unfaithful, but still needs to satisfy his sexual appetite.

“Honestly, it is very easy to just pay a little money to find a woman in China, but I simply cannot bring myself to cheat on my wife, so I have never considered it,” he said with a nervous laugh.

But a blow-up alternative was not an option.

“There was no way I would have sex with that kind of cheap inflatable plastic,” he said.

Instead he forked out 15,800 yuan, almost a month’s pay, for his more realistic Chinese-made 156.

Her removable parts make cleaning or replacement easier, but despite lengthy prior research — Liu can explain subtle differences between an exhaustive list of Chinese and foreign doll brands — he was disappointed.

“As an industrial designer I can’t neglect the lack of realistic details,” he lamented. “So I just used it a few times.

“The only way a doll is better than a woman is that it won’t resist, so people can do whatever they want with it,” he added.

Not realistic or detailed enough? He should have tried an Orient Industry model!

The article claims that sometimes it is even users’ wives who make the purchase.

“The Chinese sex toy market is estimated at up to 100 billion yuan per year,” it says, though that hasn’t been without pressure from the puritanical Communist Party.

The one-child policy has also led to too many men and not enough men.

“Many young men in China have difficulty finding girlfriends or socializing with women… That’s why they might use a doll as (a) replacement.”

Go into a kiosk in a station on the Tokyo Metro subway system and take a look at the drinks.

There’s always a colorful selection of beverages.

But perhaps none quite so colorful as this.

In fact, the energy drink is proving so popular you may not even be able to find a can of Ojo-sama Seisui, which translates as “fair lady’s holy water”. Since April 1st the drink has been on sale at Tokyo Metro station shops.

There’s even a catchy bit of copy: “The goddess inside me awakens”!

The drink is apparently full of healthy and beautifying ingredients, but the name is a jaw-dropper.

Of course, regular readers of this blog will know that seisui or “holy water” is a euphemism for urine or golden showers, and has inspired its own kinds of adult products.

Take a look at the brand’s ad, which seems more like an anime fantasy film, full of maidens on horseback.

According to the tabloids, Ojo-sama Seisui is getting popular with male commuters.

The product is actually part of a series of “beauty energy drinks” and other unusual cosme items marketed in the same moe way.

Still, wouldn’t you rather have some of the real thing?

Sometimes Japan, you defeat even us.

We love all its kinkiness and its vibrant sex scene, and we deplore the hypocrisy of the establishment that puts people like Megumi Igarashi on trial or who censor gay art.

We’ve seen a lot of Japanese porn — perhaps too much. Surely nothing can take us by surprise anymore.

Wrong.

Take this segment of a game show called “Tekoki Karaoke” (Hand Job Karaoke).

Mainstream entertainment, this ain’t.

The contestants have to sing karaoke while being jerked off by a girl. Who is wearing a hot nurse uniform (playing on porn tropes, natch) and whispering sweet things into your ear.

Obviously you don’t see the cock being tugged by the lady, so this might all be fake (we suspect it is), but one lady even has a go at giving her victim a foot job too.

Can they rack up enough points without letting their load go?

If they get over 90 points they stand to win ¥1 million.

The three ladies in the TV show are supposed to be a trio of sex workers skilled at giving hand jobs to patrons.

The show is Tokui Chuck, presented by Yoshimi Tokui and the lovely Gravure model Risa Yoshiki.

It claims to be “adult entertainment” and is broadcast on Sky Perfect, a satellite channel. The same broadcaster gave us the 24-Hour TV: Eroticism Saves the Earth event (which includes the very worthy Boob Aid) and the annual Adult Broadcasting Awards.

We have to take our hats off to the producers for their originality here. There is a precedent, though.

Another segment of a show called “Poko x Tate: Orgasm Wars” once had straight (and now disgraced) porn star Ryou Sawai being sucked off by oral sex expert (and gay bar owner) Takuya. The action itself was hidden in a box but the noises were more than enough to keep you entertained.

Still, compared to reality TV show “Susunu! Denpa Shonen”, which some have called inhumane, this is tame material!