A new commercial for German DIY store chain Hornbach has stirred controversy. It shows two unkempt and decidedly unhandsome white men getting all sweaty outside in the garden, watched by two scientific-looking bods. The men are then instructed to strip for the observers and hand over their apparently smelly briefs.

The scene cuts to an unnamed East Asian city that looks like Hong Kong or a futuristic Tokyo. A woman approaches a vending machine and buys a package. it turns out to be one of the hairy German guys’ briefs, sealed and fresh. The woman, who looks Japanese, gleefully opens the package and takes a delighted sniff.

“So riecht das Frühjahr” (That’s how the spring smell), says the slogan in German.

Though it is not made explicit, the ad is obviously riffing on the quasi-urban legend of used panties vending machines in Japan — actually, they do exist, but they are just very rare. As such, it suggests that Japanese or Asian women love Western men so much that they will pay for their dirty underwear, just to enjoy the pungency.

Since it was uploaded in mid-March (and presumably also airing on German TV) the ad has sparked a backlash, perhaps not surprisingly, and accused of promoting stereotypes of subservient Asian women. But to the credit of Hornbach, they didn’t do the thing that Japanese brands usually do, which is immediately take the video down and expunge it from public view as if the scandal never happened.

Instead, Hornbach has publicly defended the ad as not intentionally racist and that they also used non-Asians in similar marketing.

It remains up (for now) but there is a bilingual message from the brand about how they are taking the reaction seriously and welcome further feedback.

Invitation to Hornbach for an open dialogue about “So riecht das Frühjahr / how spring smells”

Regarding our spot “how spring smells” we received many emotional comments and stories from the Asian community.

We are taking it very seriously when people feel hurt and angered by our advertisements.

That’s why we are seeking a personal and direct dialogue with the affected users and communities and want to invite you, other speakers of the #Ich_wurde_geHORNBACHt campaign and all other interested people to Hornbach. We want to listen, learn, have an open dialogue and understand the feelings and anger that arose through this advertisement.

There has been an outcry in South Korea, where the MeToo movement has made stronger inroads recently, leading to many scandals in the film and music industries, alongside the clamp-down on hidden cameras in women’s toilets.

In Japan, the story has been picked up by the right-wing website Itai News, so expect it to spread.

In our experience, the opposite is true. Japanese women, in various states of smelliness or fragrance, package up their underwear and sell them to willing male buyers. And this isn’t limited to local guys. We know a shop where you can always order Japanese used panties, real and simulated, and have them shipped sealed and fresh to your home.

When the new Japanese era name of Reiwa was announced on April 1st, sparking intense speculation about how best to translate it into English, our first thought was: that could be a great porn star’s name!

Admittedly the kanji characters (令和) are unusual, so it would have to be a homonym. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any decent examples on a brief search

Nonetheless, the most amusing such parallel we’ve spotted so far has actually derived from the official English translation of the name: beautiful harmony.

An online search for “beautiful harmony,” though, may bring up quite a different kind of result than the government intends. It is the name of a theme song by Yui Sakakibara for an erotic anime video game called Buraban! The bonds of melody about… lesbian schoolgirls who play in a brass band!

Given their musical skills, these young ladies are inevitably very good at sucking and blowing instruments.

The Yuzu Soft adult game, which was first released in 2006 and is rated 18 and over, is hardly the kind of beautiful harmony that we expect the government bods had in mind.

The Reiwa era begins on May 1st. Will it anything like Buraban! The bonds of melody for you? Let’s hope so.

Virtual dating games and services are very well-established in Japan, and YouTube is the next logical step in this evolution. One of the biggest virtual YouTuber idols at the moment is Shiro-chan, whose videos offer private dining experiences.

Now the Japanese virtual YouTuber Note Takehana has upped the stakes with a crowdfunding campaign to remake the titular VTuber with 3D computer graphics. To encourage fans to contribute, “she” is offering supporters a range of merchandise depending on how far their wallets stretch.

So what’s the top perk? If you fork out ¥1 million ($9,000), you get a bottle of Note Takehana’s virtual breast milk!

Being, well, virtual, the character’s milk won’t actually be drinkable, so the lucky (and very generous) backer will essentially get a bottle of milk to suck on while Note Takehana provides visuals that complement the experience of nourishing on her nipples.

If this all sounds crazy, know that Note Takehana’s creator has already exceeded the crowdfunding campaign’s ¥3 million (nearly $27,000) goal thanks to more than 120 backers, and all with 51 days still to go on the campaign. And the most expensive perk with the breast milk has sold out (only one was available). So someone is going to get a nice drink from a 3D virtual idol in the near future.

But here’s a reality check for y’all: Note Takehana is actually male. The character on screen is very much female but the real-life artist behind the digital character is apparently a male illustrator. That being said, the character/YouTuber’s nickname is “mama” — and this latest lactophiliac stunt will only enhance that reputation.

We think we probably do more than enough damage to Brand Japan by our daily blog posts without perpetuating media myths about “sexless Japan.” We see a lot of articles and coverage of this topic, which we feel is a real problem but nonetheless also exaggerated by sensational, mostly foreign reporting.

Nonetheless, we like to share interesting twists on this familiar trope.

Something like half of married couples are no longer having sex, the studies would have us believe. But this may start younger, since one survey apparently claimed the majority of college students are virgins.

This is now developed by newly announced research by the National Fertility Survey of Japan that says one in ten of people in Japan in their thirties has “never had heterosexual sex.”

That doesn’t meant they are all actually virgins, since the survey tellingly did not cover gay sexual experience (that is, same-sex intercourse) — which may well be around 10% of people in their thirties. (Moreover, the survey did not ask respondents if they were currently sexually active, only about their sexual history. This might alter the results a little.)

So we highlight this research, carried out in seven rounds between 1987 and 2015, to indicate some of the problems with these surveys and the need to look beyond the headlines.

In 2015, 11.9% of women aged 30-34 and 12.7% of men in the same age group reported having had no heterosexual sexual experience, the data showed.

In the 35-39 age bracket, the figures were 8.9% for women and 9.5% for men.

In both age brackets, the number of self-reported virgins had increased by several percentage points from the earlier surveys conducted in 1987 or 1992.

Each round of the survey is administered to people aged 18-39 years old, and in total the researchers from the University of Tokyo found around a quarter of men and women in that demographic reported having never had heterosexual intercourse in 2015.

For some context, here is American data.

Data from the United States, for example, found just 1.9% of women aged 30-34 and 0.9% of women aged 35-39 reported no sexual partners of the opposite sex.

The figures for American men were just 3.1% for those aged 30-34 and 1.4% for those between 35 and 39.

The study rather intriguingly suggested that, when compared to data in other developed nations, “Japanese adults tend to become sexually active later in life and that a substantially larger proportion remain heterosexually inexperienced into their thirties.” So does this mean your sex life will get better after 40? Let’s hope so.

But the report does clarify that sexual inexperience among those under 40 in Japan seems to be on the rise. If true, even in part, this does not bode well for the government’s efforts to tackle the low birthrate.

The researchers tried to grope for some causes, noting a “correlation between sex and money, with men more likely to have had intercourse if they had permanent, full-time employment.” Logical, perhaps, but we were much more sexually active when we had less money — partly because we were working fewer hours and were able to hit up Tokyo’s nightlife on a more regular basis.

It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a way of linking maid cafes and hostess bars with digital idols and adult virtual reality.

Behold the VR hostess cafe.

Yumenographia is not a physical space, but exists purely in a digital realm: it’s waiting for your patronage whenever and wherever you put on a VR headset. It is staffed by hostesses/maids who are, of course, entirely “fake” — in the sense that they are digital avatars. But, and this is a big “but,” the hostesses are real in the sense that they are the avatars of genuine people, rather than characters. At some remote location, women also apparently wearing Oculus Rift headsets to control the avatars and interact with the customers in real time.

Given that a lot of “women” in dating sites and pay-to-use chat rooms in Japan were exposed as fake (that is, actually men), we wonder if these employees are actually female. The people behind this scheme will somehow need to ensure transparency without breaking the fantasy of the characters.

So in theory, Yumenographia means you are drinking or eating with a real woman — but who happens to look like a perfect anime idol.

There are no details available yet about a launch/open date or about pricing. After all, how do you put a price on a digital experience?

In the meantime, Ichikawa, the company behind Yumenographia, is set to hold some preview events in Tokyo on April 19th, April 20th, April 29th, and April 30th. They also offered a taste with a brief video clip posted on Twitter, which garnered a strong response.

What they show off to the public later this month may well constitute the future of maid cafes and hostess bars.

Who doesn’t like to get clean? And getting clean intimately with someone else is even more fun, hence the soapland is such a wonderful experience. Seriously, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried a nurunuru massage at least once.

One of the features of a soapland can be a stool for the male client to sit on while his female partner attends to his special region. The stool is designed to allow particularly close access to his under-area.

We spotted our friends at Kanojo Toys offering a great update on this seat: the Luxury Sex Chair. It’s deluxe but also minimal.

The new style of soapland-inspired stool, which is available in clear or brown versions, is even more open, meaning you and your partner can have more comfortable foreplay or even full sex with the chair. Unlike similar seats, this one is particularly suitable for a woman to use as the “receiving” partner in a session.

Its thick acrylic material makes it stable for any need and, thanks to anti-slip rubber, also safe for use in a bathroom.

The Luxury Sex Chair is available now from Kanojo Toys.

NMB48’s Miru Shiroma is hoping to establish herself as a stand-out star in her own right among the very crowded AKB league of idols with her debut photo book.

Lavishly shot on the Gold Coast of Australia, the 21-year-old’s unnamed first photo book will be released in Japan on June 19th.

Clearly hoping to up the sales and her fan numbers by revealing some bust, the preview shots that have now appeared position Miru as a seductress Down Under. Goodbye cute, hello sexy.

What do you think of this new direction for Miru?

Until more images for the as-yet untitled book become available, here are few older shots to keep you satisfied.

The latest example of the transition from music idol to adult video idol is Eri Haruno, formerly of the girl group SAY-LA.

She makes her porn debut this month with “The Last Idol Debut” (84MKMP00270), released April 12th by the label million. As is typical, Haruno changed her professional name as part of her career switch and now goes by the moniker Uta Yumemita (夢見照うた).

We like her hinnyu flat chest with its pointy nipples.

As Eri Haruno, she was a member of SAY-LA for most of 2015. Now as Yuta Yumemita, perhaps she has a brighter future ahead of her…

A scandal can derail any career but the world of idols (music or gravure) is particularly sensitive to such scandals, especially those involving sex or drugs. Heaven help you if it is revealed you have a boyfriend. You may have to shave your head or quit the industry.

Related to this, we stumbled upon an interesting example of what happens when an idol is “freed” from the shackles of an agency.

The minor idol Sayuri Madoka announced that she had left her management agency on April 7th, ostensibly because her “real job” had become too busy. Regardless of the truth behind this, what is interesting is what happened next.

The 24-year-old, who apparently entered the gravure industry in 2017 and released three “image videos,” started posting barely censored nude selfies and lurid images of her enjoying herself with a male partner. Can we speculate that it was the presence of this man that prompted Sayuri to quit (or be fired)? After all, she clearly wanted to flaunt rather than hide her relationship — and good for her!

Either way, so now we know what it looks like, at least, to suck her breasts. Oh, to be that lucky guy’s ear!

She followed this with a post saying, literally, that she has a “medically recognized amazing pussy.” If only she would let us test that out.

If you thought that when Sola Aoi got married, you would see the last of her, think again.

The popular former adult video star is now heavily pregnant but isn’t content to sit back and wait for nature to take its course. No, even the imminent start of maternity is a way for her to connect with her legions of fans and, if we’re frank, take her fame (as in 655,000-Instagram-followers-level fame) to new extremes.

“Welcome to the world, Sola’s baby [sic],” says the publicity for Abema TV’s live broadcast of the birth of her twins. Yes, 35-year-old Sola (sometimes spelled Sora) is going to stream her birth to the entire world.

This is how the adult video legend currently looks, just days away from giving birth.

The live broadcast can be scheduled in advance because Sola Aoi has opted for a Caesarian section delivery on the due date, April 30th.

Do you want to see Japan’s one-time top porn star giving birth to twins? Then tune in on April 30th from 10pm on the Abema TV website. Considering how popular she remains outside Japan (especially China), we imagine Abema TV is going to get a lot of traffic from this broadcast.

Best of luck, Sola!

We can’t help but think that adult brand Maccos Japan was thinking about “baseball girl idol” Ami Inamura when they came up with the Upper Swing Sexy Batter Girl Onahole.

Femdom princess Ami Inamura is famous for her curvy body and powerful arms that let her swing and pitch very well. So just imagine how good she would be at jerking you off!

We’ve noticed in a very welcome increase in the popularity (or prominence) of certain Japanese models and idols who have sporty and athletic bodies. The latest example is the stunning Kazusa Okuyama.

We reckon this is all due to the approaching 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

But what about sporty onaholes and masturbator toys?

Well, they exist, as the Upper Swing Sexy Batter Girl Onahole more than amply demonstrates. This is a Japanese girl who is more than capable of hitting a few balls with her “arm tentacle.”

She is determined to take your member to a stadium full of nubs. Two big strike points on its inside will show you that she certainly knows how to hit a curveball, while the end of her love tunnel stimulates with a choice of two endings. Imagine each of your thrusts as moving you closer to that creampie home run!

The Upper Swing Sexy Batter Girl Onahole is available now from Kanojo Toys.

We all like to use our hands to grind out some pleasure. Now you are almost literally do this with an adult toy that is brilliantly low-fi yet effective.

The Generator Onahole is fitted with a hank crank that lets you grind the inside of the toy around your member for incredibly enhanced stimulation.

Given the likelihood of total planetary collapse in a couple of generations’ time, we may not have the means of electricity left to power regular sex machines. Perhaps the Generator Onahole truly is the future in all its stripped-down tech glory.

It is available in four versions, all with awesome names: Mystery Cyclone, Twin Spiral, Feather Tornado, and Splash Typhoon.

You can enjoy a “powered” hole sensation without needing to worry about actual batteries or staying near a power outlet. Pick one of the four versions with varying inside structures depending on your preference – and let the good times roll!

The Generator Onahole is available now from our friends at Kanojo Toys.

After doing a “hair nude” full-frontal shoot last year, we wondered where the gravure idol and actress Bambi Watanabe would go next.

It seems she went to TV Tokyo and for a visually tame but nonetheless sensual sex scene in a late-night drama series.

In episode two of Kabukicho Bengonin Rinka (Kabukicho Attorney Rinka), which is about a female lawyer working among hostesses, Bambi is show stripping off in a love hotel room to reveal her largest chest, albeit hidden within a bra or under her arms. An old dude looks on with obvious interest. He then has sex with her, even though she is clearly not enjoying it.

This being mainstream Japanese TV, Bambi even covers her chest while someone is having sex with her.

Still, if you want to see what she looks like nude, you know where to go.

The same drama, which is based on a manga, has also featured semi-nude scenes with the smolderingly hot actress Aki Asakura in the lead role as well as the famously busty gravure idol Arisa Deguchi. Sorry, folks, this is about as risqué as regular Japanese TV drama gets. For anything better, we have to go to streaming channels.

The cast also includes favorites Mami Yamasaki and Mari Yamachi.

As we prepare for the extended Golden Week holiday in Japan from this weekend, we’re naturally looking around for adult video content to keep us entertained.

We spotted a porn debutant who really should be on everyone’s to-watch list.

Rena Kuroi (くろいれな) released her first AV from Kuki on April 2nd. “Hatsuhana” (ADZ327) is meant to be one of just two AVs that the 22-year-old Rena will make.

According to her official profile, she lives in Kamakura and is an “Earthling,” which is reassuring (though alien sex is a whole other subgenre of JAV). Her second (and potentially final) AV will come out on May 1st, the first day of the new Reiwa era, and will be a “gokkun” cum-swallowing fetish special.

Let’s hope she doesn’t stop there but continues to carve out a career in AV throughout the upcoming Reiwa period. Come up, producers, get those contracts ready for Rena to sign!

To be honest, when we first spotted her we got our hopes up. Is this stunner none other than gravure idol Ren Ishikawa? Though she does look a bit like her, it is apparently just a resemblance and Rena Kuroi is not Ren going under a new professional name. More’s the pity.

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 contained in shed-like structures in the countryside. One up side of the vending machines remaining almost entirely only in rural areas is that they can exist beyond the long arm of the law to some extent. And so you will find black market (like uncensored) porn on sale at such vending machines, which you certainly can’t get from DMM.

Revised Fuheiho legislation in 1985 cracked down on peep shows but also led to a crackdown on vending machines. Once common even in residential areas, it all started to change from around this period, though selling videotapes ensured sales remain strong as the AV industry began to enjoy the fruits of this new technology (even as, paradoxically, it contributed to decline in other aspects of the adult industry — pink films and specialist porn movie theaters).

A further boost was provided by the arrival of DVDs, which could likewise be easily sold from vending machines.

But all these were blips along a declining curve as consumer tastes and choices inevitably evolved.

The ones that are lingering on often exist, it seems, in administrative gray zones near municipal borders. You can also find a healthy proportion of jukujo mature women fetish content among their wares, catering to the preferences of the generally older rural population.

Something the thread (and presumably, its sources) does not explicitly mention is the spread of convenience stores in Japan in the 1990s, which mades porn magazines and other adult content widely available, as well as the growth of video rental chains like Tsutaya, whose outlets usually have an adult section. All this had an impact on specialist stores and services.

Finally, the Internet has also made viewing and buying adult material only a click away, and even more discreet. It’s not hard to see why the vending machines are dying out. Since older consumers in the countryside may not shop online as much, it means there are still people who need such mini porn havens inside roadside sheds.

But as rural populations further decline, whither the humble porn mag vending machine?

And will we see something happen with convenience stores happy to offer porn? After all, the pre-2020 Olympics crackdown has already started…

The Japanese adult industry loves to be topical, hence the large number of up-to-date parodies you can see in both porn and toys.

That being said, we haven’t so far seen anything notable about the imminent end of the Heisei period and the start of the Reiwa era on May 1st. Perhaps we just haven’t looked hard enough. Please share in the comments any ones you have spotted.

Either way, we did find this great (and useful) example: the Heisei and Reiwa Lubricants.

As the name suggests, these recently released lubes from top adult manufacturer SSI are inspired by the two Japanese era names. Reading between the lines, the lubes are effectively the same but they come in a choice of two commemorative labels to mark the change in imperial period.

For use with adult toys like onahole and masturbators, or with a partner or just yourself, this lube lets you take it slow and gentle, perhaps while you wax nostalgic about the zeitgeist. The Heisei lube features a glittery gold label and the Reiwai a silver backdrop. Both have quintessentially Japanese artwork. Choose which of the two eras you want, or the timeless option of getting both!

The Heisei and Reiwa Lubricants are available now from Kanojo Toys, your best one-stop store for all things adult about Japan ever since the Heisei period and continuing through into Reiwa for many, many years to come!

Today is the final day of Heisei. As the emperor abdicates this afternoon, we are remembering the past three decades and all those lovely ladies that have passed through our lives (in actuality or through the lens of gravure and adult video).

We should put together a proper “adult Heisei” post soon but it might be too mammoth an undertaking. In the meantime, we are recalling recent good times and looking forward to the future with these two ladies.

The dancer and model Karen Kimijima has made a comeback since her drug arrest in early 2018, which is a very fine thing because she has frankly the best ass that Heisei Japan has to offer.

And now she is locked in a lesbian embrace with Lisa M, who seems to be an interracial and intercultural (Japanese, Korea, American?) nude model. In a series of alluring images generously posted to their respective Instagram pages a few days ago, the two ladies slide their alluring naked bodies on top of each like the most delicious meal to be served in this corner of East Asia.

Presumably this was done for commercial appearances and will pop up in some magazine or online media at some point. Or it could be simply the kind of lark these ladies pull with their (lucky) photographer chums just for the fun of it. In which case, it’s even more awesome.

Lisa M is the current belle of our lives, and we find ourselves frequently checking out her Instagram for her latest sexy shots. Four prime examples are below.

Thank you, Heisei, for this last one last triumph!

It’s May 1st, the inaugural day of the new Reiwa era. And what better time to take a gander at some old porn from this cache of images recently shared online?

Strictly speaking, we reckon these adult magazines come from the Showa period, which ended in 1989, rather than the past three decades of Heisei, but there might be some overlap. Online searches seem to reveal nothing, so they are probably quite obscure.

We just love the titles: from “Visual Communication Magazine for Young Adalt” (sic) and “Fucky-up” (sic) to “Rape me” and “Sexual Les Girls.” The shoots themselves range from the tender to the down-right crazy (is that a man in a kind of monster mask have sex with one woman?) and lesbian.

Though we sadly can’t identify any of the specific models in the shoots, they are pretty explicit and show full-frontal nudity, even while respecting the Japanese custom of censoring the actual genitalia. Plenty of bush still on display.

The Reiwa era has got off to a bang in some ways. For starters, the popular gravure idol and actress Mai Hakase announced her marriage.

The documents were submitted to a ward office in Tokyo on May 1st, the inaugural day of the new Reiwa era.

They have been dating for just ten months, which will surely lead to speculation that 32-year-old Mai is pregnant, though nothing of the sort has been announced.

The man is apparently a doctor and three years older than the G-cup goddess.

Congratulations, Mai, though we can’t help but feel sad that someone got to you before us!

Continuing this trend, former AKB48 member Minami Takahashi also announced that she got married on the first day of Reiwa.

This was not a wholly unexpected development, considering the now 28-year-old was spotted with a boyfriend almost as soon as she graduated from AKB48 in 2016.

Girlfriend and boyfriend “rental” services are one of those “wacky Japan” narrative favorites, though they do actually exist. They are also not as crazy or sleazy as they might sound — after all, if you want someone to date and then sleep with, there are countless prostitution services or “compensated dating” clubs out there.

So what’s different about this kind of rental service? What do you get for your money?

Asian Boss, the awesome YouTube channel behind interviews with porn stars Emiri Okazaki and Taka Kato, tried out one service to demonstrate what it is like.

Host (and handsome haafu) Max takes “Shihomi” on a date in Tokyo one rainy day.

Shihomi is actually a model whose real name is Minami Aoyama. She has a minor following on Instagram.

Either way, for the duration of the “date,” Max and Minami call each other Bae and Shiho-chan. Things start off a bit awkwardly, not least because of the umbrellas, but then they start to relax and enjoy themselves.

Minami/Shihomi can speak some English and, with a little help from her phone, is able to communicate with Max, though her choice of fish semen as a dish for lunch threatens to derail the date at one point.

During their meal in a Shibuya cafe they talk in detail about how the girlfriend rental system works and the rules, so there are lots of insights here. Sorry to disappoint any cynical readers but there is no happy ending to finish off the date.

By way of comparison, Asian Boss also rented a girlfriend through a similar service in China last year.