Ayame Misaki is one of those Japanese models and actresses who seem to have been a part of our life forever. We were a little surprised to learn that she is still only 33, but if you make your debut at the young age of 16, you can have a long career before your thirties.

The Kobe native carved out a gravure career in the late 2000s as a “Heisei-born F-cup” beauty.

We first wrote about her on these digital pages back in 2012, when she was our “idol of the week.”

In 2013, she did a nude sex scene in the film Judas that showed off her beautiful breasts.

Her acting career was mostly roles in tokusatsu and low-budget sexploitation movies, but she then seemed to branch out into “serious” films with a role in Radiance, a 2017 film made by Cannes favorite Naomi Kawase.

She married an older man in 2016 and we assumed that was the end of her gravure stuff. That marriage ended in divorce the following year, though, and Misaki came roaring back into our lives with a vibrant, active social media presence and — most importantly — a stunning gravure comeback in 2021.

This led to a couple of well-received digital photo books, and she rode this high to release her first print solo photo book since 2008. Ayame became a bestseller.

She is now set to return with another photo book this year, Sensually, which is coming out later this month from Kobunsha.

We only have the cover to share so far but it’s more than enough to whet our appetites.

We’re gonna go out on a limb here and say that Ayame Misaki is simply perfect. She pairs an athletic, toned body with a come-hither, dominant personality and subtle intelligence, not to mention professional savvy and sun-kissed skin.

In the name of research, natch, we perused some of the highlights from her successful 2022 photo book and other photo shoots from last year.

We just love Ayame Misaki’s butt, which is so shapely. These black-and-white selfies and other shots really show it off.

Despite these recent forays back into gravure, Misaki is still acting. She had a role, for instance, in the Netflix series Alice in Borderland that included a semi-nude scene.

There’s a limit to how much we can post here before our servers groan. For more and larger pictures of Ayame Misaki, see our tumblr page devoted to her.

Japanese television is a strange place: a world of shoddily acted dramas and asinine variety shows, where the aim seems to be seeing how many minor celebrities can be squeezed into a single airing, and where everything seems to come down to food and guests extolling how delicious a dish is.

And then there are the shows about breasts.

Tamori Club, the late-night TV Asahi show whose decades-long run recently ended, aired an episode in March in which the male guests ogled a woman naked from the waist up except for two carefully positioned leaves over her breasts. Of course, they tried to blow the leaves off.

Because why not? Why should anything make sense or be appropriate when it’s on Japanese TV? Woke this certainly ain’t. Truly we living through the golden age of TV!

The woman was not just a random. As beady-eyed readers will have spotted, she was 33-year-old gravure model and actress Asuka Oda, whose I-cup breasts are really quite something.

If you do want to see what those breasts look like without leaves covering them, check out her nude sex scene in the movie Anticipation, which really lives up to its name.

In 2021, she also released her fourth print photo book, which was a full-frontal hair nude one. A few highlights are below, because why not?

One of the most popular members of NMB48, Yuzuha Hongo made the surprise announcement on April 4 that she would be graduating the Osaka group.

Alongside her singing, Hongo pursues a burgeoning career in gravure (as reported before), having released her first photo book from Kodansha in 2022.

A second photo book is set for release at the end of May, shortly before she will graduate from NMB48.

Known as Yuzu to her fans, the idol is still just 20 years old and seems very young to graduate (though she joined way back in 2015, so has devoted eight years of her life to the Namba-based group). Given her solo success as a gradol, there is speculation that she will focus on that in her post-NMB life.

She certainly has the busty qualifications for the job!

Her as-yet-untitled “graduation photo book” is set to have an exotic Thai theme, shot on a visits to the Southeast Asian country. We have included the preview shots released so far (apologies for the grainy quality of some of the images).

The gravure magazine Young Magazine will also publish a book in late May about Hongo to accompany the photo book, containing her bikini shoots for the magazine.

Easter doesn’t have much name recognition in Japan — certainly compared to other Western holidays like Christmas and Halloween — but that hasn’t stopped our friends at Kanojo Toys from holding a generous sale over the period.

You can get 20% off any adult toy in-store during the sale. Use the promo code EGG at the online checkout.

The campaign started earlier this week and runs through April 11, which should give you plenty of time to find something you like in between munching on those Easter eggs or chasing after Easter bunnies.

Talking of bunnies, we are particularly smitten with the Reino Crotchless Bunny Suit Costume Black, which is probably the most revealing bunny girl costume you can find! It leaves your breasts and crotch bare, while covering your back and thighs with tight straps, and your shoulders and arms with a suit-like top. And of course, your head with bunny ears. It’s modeled here by the sexy cosplayer Shione Mizuna.

Kanojo Toys is the largest source of Japanese adult toys available internationally, offering thousands of toys and adding dozens of new items each week.

Of course, you can use the 20% discount to indulge in any type of toy you fancy, but in keeping with the Easter season we recommend stocking up on some Tenga Eggs. A decade and a half on from their debut, these disposable masturbation toys remain a bestseller and a reliable choice for male pleasure.

The media narratives about Japan typically conform to a handful of familiar tropes: Japan is a sexless, childless hellscape, or Japan is a kinky, weird land of bountiful sexual fetishes.

Of course, neither is true. Japan is just Japan, with all shades and colors.

But it is a fact that the population is declining and people are having fewer children. The number of babies born in Japan dropped below 800,000 last year, the first time this has happened since records began in 1899.

The reasons for this are manifold — and we think they are primarily economic — don’t rush to assume it’s because people are not having sex, or that young people under 30 simply aren’t dating (the recent growth of dating apps and services industry seems to suggest otherwise) or choosing 2D characters over flesh-and-blood partners.

True, married and long-term couples probably aren’t having as much as they might like (or even any at all) because of the crazy work culture in Japan, plus the inevitable decline in sexual passion that sets in after a while.

But having children can also be a death sentence for a married couple’s sex life, since kids tend to sleep with their parents (or at least, with their mom) and walls are thin.

So ironically, the declining birth rate might be proof that couples actually have a decent sex life! They’re just not using it to procreate.

A recent survey that got a lot of media coverage found that half of unmarried people under 30 in Japan have no interest in starting a family.

The respondents cited such factors as economic concerns and the burden of parenting.

The survey was carried out by Rohto, a major pharmaceutical firm, as part of its annual white paper pregnancy. It is the highest such result it has found to date.

Of the 400 respondents — alright, not a huge sample — 49.4% said they didn’t want kids. And it’s not just the guys either. Granted, more men said they didn’t want offspring (53%) but the number was also quite high for women (45.6%).

The survey also noted a decline in the number of men and women actively trying to have kids, a result that may reflect a return to pre-pandemic work culture and couples spending less time together.

In March, we wrote about the former Self-Defense Force nurse and sex worker running for election for a local assembly in Tokyo this month.

Hasumin Yoshikawa has promised to debut in porn after the poll, whether she wins a seat or not.

Well, her party, the anti-NHK fringe right-wing populist Politician Girls 48 Party (aka Political Party Girls 48), has become mired in in-fighting among its leadership and accusations about misappropriate use of party funds, but Yoshikawa continues to campaign in Setagaya. In fact, we even received one of her pamphlets through our letterbox at the Tokyo Kinky offices!

We also spotted preview images online of her upcoming adult release, proving that she wasn’t lying about her pledge!

The 150-minute release from Moodyz unsurprisingly plays up Yoshikawa’s SDF background, featuring the ex-nurse dressed alluringly in camouflage gear and posing with a prop gun. The publicity also claims that she got into sex in part due to her addiction to vaginal training exercises! So she’s well qualified for her new career.

From the preview images, Yoshikawa demonstrates her athletic physique in a threesome. We love her body, with modest yet shapely breasts, and toned yet curvy thighs.

The AV makes a token effort to conceal her identity: she is performing under the name Kasumi Fujimoto (藤本香澄).

The AV (code MIFD236) comes out May 2, when Yoshikawa may be a Setagaya City Assemblymember. If elected, she promises to fight against sexual harassment and porn laws. Setagayans go to the polls on April 23. She gets the Tokyo Kinky vote, that’s for sure!

Police in Tokyo have arrested a 40-year-old man for employing a 17-year-old high school student.

Takeshi Shikano runs a sex industry business in Ikebukuro. He has been arrested on suspicion of violating the child welfare law for employing the high schooler and either making her or allowing her to engage in sex work.

Media reports about the arrest do not specify what kind of sex work, which took place in a rented room in the neighborhood in November last year. The police, though, termed it JK rifure — or high female high school student reflexology — service, where cuddles and so on are offered with more intimate options available. At JK rifure services, the women are often actually older than high school age.

Such parlors began to spring up in the 2010s, though there has been a crackdown of late. This was technically a “dispatch service,” meaning the girl was sent to the room from an undisclosed location (as opposed to JK rifure where the services always take place at a fixed location like a parlor).

Shikano has denied the charge, claiming he didn’t know the girl was 17 years old. For her part, the girl is reported to have said that she wanted money to fund her fandom of a male underground idols.

Police rumbled the crime when they spotted the girl in the local area (presumably, they saw her taking customers to the room and guessed she was underage). Media reports showed Shikano, a very ordinary-looking guy with glasses, doing the perp walk, and also the police’s display of seized items, which included a variety of costumes. Somewhat ironically, these seemed to include police uniforms.

Ikebukuro in northwest Tokyo is a major transport hub and also home to a large bevy of brothels and sex services. Along with Akihabara, it is the Tokyo center for JK rifure and related JK sex services (known collectively as the “JK business”).

Ah, April. The glorious month of the cherry blossom (depending on where you are in Japan) and new starts, because both the academic and fiscal years begin.

During April, youngsters up and down the land enter school or college. It is also the time of year when the fresh intake of corporate hires kick off their careers at the company they chose. These people are typically in their early twenties and straight out of college. Many corporations hold an entrance ceremony of some sorts to welcome the newbies, who sit in formal suits looking forward to becoming corporate drones.

In the adult industry, though, they do things differently. Every year, Soft on Demand stages a “naked entrance ceremony” for new female employees and films it as a porn release.

This year’s came out as 446-minute AV (1SDJS00186) on digital release this week and as a physical format next month.

It features over 10 female employees going through their induction with no clothes on save for their shoes and a SOD name tag. In front of a cast of extras and co-performers, the debutants take off their clothing and demonstrate their sexual prowess with vibrators, dildos, and more. Their male colleagues are clearly have a very good time during the ceremony!

Alright, this whole thing is just a narrative gimmick and not a real initiation ritual for new SOD employees. That said, we are very curious to know what the corporate culture is like at SOD and how the rookies (performers and non-performers alike) get treated, especially if they are female.

There’s a similar marketing/narrative concept behind the AV debut of Haru Shibasaki, which came out this month (code 1SDJS00189). In it, she is meant to be a SOD corporate employee in the toys department. After two years at the company, she starts collecting research data using her own pussy! Now that’s dedication!

We all love to watch female streamers on Twitch, YouTube, and the like. And let’s be honest, we pay as much attention during their streams to them as their actual content — if not more.

And if you love Japanese streamers, you’ll love the Iyashino Mashumaro Pie Female Streamer Breasts.

Imagine a streamer as nerdy, cute, and busty as gravure idol (and keen gamer) Yuka Kuramochi and we reckon it’s close to the beautiful woman imagined by the people behind the breasts toy.

With a mouthful of a name translating as something like “healing marshmallow pie,” these breasts don’t go down the easy route of opting for sheer size.

Rather, these breasts are actually quite moderate in the dimensions compared to similar toys. It’s the texture and design that really counts. Let’s start with the nipples, which are very pointy and perky. If you love areolae (and frankly, who doesn’t?!), hers are very large. (Though, if you really love areolae, then this is the toy for you.) And then there’s the actual feel of the breasts, which is crafted for just the right balance of soft pliancy (for squeezing and manipulating) and firmness (for rubbing against your penis).

The breasts come with a flatbed base (making it easier to place them down flat on a surface and fuck them) and a poster of the idol for added excitement during your sessions with her tits.

Makers Magic Eyes have even included a “how to” picture just in case anything was in doubt.

The Iyashino Mashumaro Pie Female Streamer Breasts is available globally from Kanojo Toys, your top source for adult toys in Japan (and with dozens added weekly).

They stock a wide and growing range of such titjob toys, known as paizuri in Japan, working hard to dispel the myth that all Japanese girls have small breasts. That said, surveys have shown that sheer size isn’t most people’s priority: it’s an attractive shape.

If Instagram is to be believed, everyone has a personal trainer these days and is obsessed with developing the perfect muscles.

In Korea, it’s called geongangmi (healthy beauty) and here in Japan it’s led by influencers who moonlight as models and trainers like Rose Melle or Kyoka, or female celebrities who show off their sporty bodies.

And if it’s sheer muscles you’re really into, Reika Saiki straddles the world of bodybuilding, gravure, and cosplay with serious aplomb.

But what about female otaku? Don’t they also want to build up their muscles in between pursuing their oshi (fandom)?

Apparently they do, hence there’s a market for this gym.

Clara has just opened its fifth branch and has a 120-strong waiting list for the counseling services. Its inaugural locations were, inevitably, in Ikebukuro and Akihabara, Tokyo, and its new one (opened April 10) is in Shinsaibashi, the most expensive retail area in Osaka.

The gyms themselves are filled with merch and oshi-related decoration.

Savvy marketing is also at play here. The gym deployed such promotional tactics as tie-ups with male voice actors to build up interest, and its publicity has put attractive female otaku front and center, including the gym’s roster of stunning male and female trainers with fashion model looks. Two examples are included below for your inspection.

Otaku are not known for taking care of their body and males are frequently on the chubby side. A service that encourages such people to do exercise and take an interest in their physique — and not just their oshi — can’t be a bad thing, even if the prospect of armies of muscular otaku walking around Tokyo and Osaka is also a little scary.

The former AKB48 idol Haruna Kojima has returned to gravure with her first shoot in six years.

She appears in a cover shoot for Young Magazine’s May 1 issue, which went on sale this week.

As you might expect, the return of the model — now aged 34, well into luscious jukujo territory — known for her pale skin and slinky body has generated reams of media coverage. The magazine shoot, which was done in Okinawa, features Kojiharu in alluring, summery swimwear.

We’ve included some highlights here.

Her last bikini gravure shoot was for Young Magazine in 2017. The comeback is being heavily promoted, including this behind-the-scenes video on Kojima’s YouTube channel.

While her AKB48 cohorts from the same generation like Yuko Oshima and Atsuko Maeda have gone on to have serious acting careers (and motherhood), Kojiharu chose to carve out a career in fashion and lingerie modeling.

In February, she announced that she was now chief creative officer of the cosmetics company she founded in 2020.

As such, this is in some ways a surprising return by someone who would not seem to “need” to do gravure again — unless she simply wanted to reward her fans. We at Tokyo Kinky welcome Kojiharu back with open arms!

Another day, another celebrity adultery scandal. Sometimes it feels like this.

But there’s something a little different about the latest (minor) scandal to hit the news.

Yukie Joji is herself a reporter. The 48-year-old is currently seen doing live reports twice weekly for a show broadcast on CBC and TBS.

Since its employees apparently have little important journalism to do, scoop-hunters from Flash trailed Joji as she enjoyed a date in Yokohama’s Chinatown in mid-April. She and a man lined up to enter a popular restaurant. They allegedly left the restaurant after their meal and held hands as they walked to a nearby hotel. Joji checked in at the front desk and they then went upstairs to their room.

Six and a half hours later, they returned and checked out. They then held hands as they walked back to the station, where they took a train together. The man, who is not named in media reports, got off the train at another station and waved at Joji until the train departed.

Well, we think this sounds quite sweet and romantic, especially for a lady pushing fifty — a time at which romance and sex are sadly all too often in short supply. Older woman, too, have sexual needs (as Yuki Saito’s affair amply demonstrated), and yet the daily grind of work and family frequently conspire to leave them unfulfilled.

Talking of family, Joji is married and gave birth to a child in 2001. The other man is a director and also married with a child. The affair is alleged to have continued for seven years.

Ironically, as many have noted, Joji was a reporter who has covered past celebrity adultery scandals, such as Ryuji Harada in 2019 and Ken “toilet sex” Watabe in 2020.

Here is a pic of Joji (on the right) at the Harada press conference.

The questions she asked him at the press conference have now come back to haunt her.

“Are you thinking of divorce?” “Were you attracted to your partner?”

Has the woke brigade, as some disparagingly call it, finally caught up with Japan?

The gentrification of Kabukicho is still ongoing and a new commercial complex, imaginatively called Kabukicho Tower, recently opened in the Shinjuku nightlight and red-light district.

Many noted that though it has conventionally gendered toilets on the upper floors, its ground-floor restrooms are “all genders.” The only segregation is by whether you want to stand or sit down (at least, according to the pictographs, though in reality the systems means there is a toilet de facto just for men and then another for everyone to share).

Some have hailed this as a step in the right direction; others have noted that it may be exploited by people who wish to grope or spy on others.

And now comes the news that some junior high schools in Japan are introducing genderless swimwear for their students.

The swimwear comes in two parts: a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved top with a main zipper. There is a pocket/slot for adding padding if you have breasts.

It’s sold by the Tokyo-based Footmark. Though announced last June, it only went on sale earlier this week. Three public junior high schools in Tokyo and Hyogo have currently adopted the design and allow students to choose it.

The product has attracted massive media coverage this week, which is likely to result in interest from more schools.

Will this mean simply diversification of choice for school students? Or does this spell the end of the classic schoolgirl swimsuit that had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s?

With its figure-hugging design, plain navy color (sometimes with white trim), and alluring shoulder straps, female school swimwear is such a staple of erotic fantasies in Japan, fueled no doubt by male content creators who lusted after their female cohorts at school and still retained those memories decades later. You can find such swimsuits on the pages of adult manga, in eroge games, and of course in scene after scene in Japanese porn.

It goes without saying that you can buy costumes based on the classic schoolgirl swimsuit to answer your role-play needs and fantasies.

Here is a chart showing the evolution of the school swimsuit in Japan. No prizes for guessing which era of female swimsuit is preferred by guys.

At regular intervals, it is common to see media articles breathlessly discuss the future of sex and sexuality in terms of robotic vaginas and dolls, especially combined with augmented reality tech. That hasn’t really come to pass, mainly (we suspect) because of the cost of making and owning such toys. Likewise, the hype about virtual reality’s implications for porn and sex toys has plateaued; though the tech is still around, it hasn’t quite ushered in the immediate revolution we were led to believe it would.

But the Artificial Intelligence Vagina No. 01 Onahole is advertised as an industry first and truly seems to indicate an exciting new direction for adult toys.

They say that AI is going to come for all our jobs eventually but this is one application of the tech that makes us want to get down on our knees and welcome our new computer overlords.

This “AI onahole” is not a pocket pussy sleeve actually integrated with artificial intelligence (i.e., a toy that is able to learn from your strokes to what you want). The makers used AI to hone the design over the course of several months and achieve the perfect vagina in terms of hole shape and structure.

Penetration begins with geometric folds that entangle your manhood in ways that a naturally born orifice simply can’t. The canal then evolves into a central section with two blocks of folds arrayed asymmetrically for better friction and grip. Finally, the vagina ends with an uterus structure that squeezes every last drop of cum out of you.

The makers recommend you warm up the toy to amplify the sensations.

AI is, as we now, incredibly deceptive. Is that sexy cosplayer pic a real photo or AI? It’s increasingly hard to tell. AI is certainly going to impact our dating in the years ahead, and we may end up falling in love with entirely digital gravure and music idols created by AI. But if the tech also means brilliantly made physical toys like this, we don’t think anyone’s going to complain.

The Artificial Intelligence Vagina No. 01 Onahole is produced by Tama Toys, one of the most innovative adult brands in Japan and well known for its gimmicks. This, though, is a bit more serious and potentially represents a whole new frontier in sex toys.

It’s also a serious step up from the previous 3D scanning tech we have seen used on various masturbator toys in the past to replicate a realistic and natural hole.

The Artificial Intelligence Vagina No. 01 Onahole is now available internationally from our friends at Kanojo Toys, your largest source for all things adult about Japan.

We’ve always had a soft spot for Yuriko Yoshitaka, not least because her young debut means she seems to have been with us forever.

She has one of the most recognizable faces in the land, plastered on ads for drinks, banks, and more.

And she remains unmarried, despite being her looks and fame. Or perhaps it’s because of her looks and fame: she may be fussier than others and unwilling to settle down with someone unless they

If so, good for her.

But her father seems to think otherwise. In a bizarre interview with Bunshun last month, Yuriko’s father suggested that his daughter hadn’t married yet because of her devotion to her work.

His solution for her? Marry a foreigner.

Drawing a comparison with actress Shinobu Terajima, who married a Frenchman in 2007, he suggested a foreigner might be more willing to accept her work ethic.

Mentioning that her peers are all already married, her dad might be worried that Yuriko is over the hill now at 34 (turning 35 this year — ripe jukujo territory!) and missing her chance to snag someone.

Incidentally, Yuriko is no nepo baby. Her father apparently runs a convenience store in Tokyo.

Of course, anyone would be lucky to have Yuriko Yoshitaka for a wife. She is quite flat-chested, though, and we wonder if that might be off-putting for a foreigner, though we suspect many of the readers of this blog would be willing to overlook this and step up to do their duty.

She made a breakthrough with a lead role in the film Snakes and Earrings, which famously featured explicit nude sex scenes when she was just 18 or 19 years old. In the erotic drama, she plays a hostess with a self-destructive, masochistic personality who becomes increasingly drawn to tattoos and body piercings. Yuriko shows off her nude breasts and butt, and her co-performer is filmed eagerly licking the former.

If you want to know what she looks like naked, it’s where to go, and it’s why we gratuitously mention her chest (unless she’s changed a lot in that area in the intervening 15 years).

As is common, though, she quickly changed courses and settled into a career of very safe and boring TV dramas that kept her in the public eye, and milking her image as a cutie for TV ad campaigns that made money for her agency.

According to internet rumors and tabloid scoops, her past boyfriends include actor Hiroshi Tamaki in the 2000s, her Snakes and Earrings co-star Kengo Kora in 2015, actors Genki Amakawa and Toma Ikuta, singer Yojiro Noda for several years, male idol Tadayoshi Okura also for several years (ending due to his alleged infidelity with a hostess), and (more recently) Ryo Narita and Kouhei Matsushita.

Here at Tokyo Kinky, we pride ourselves on how we strive to keep up with the latest research and fieldwork. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

And so when we see an academic article titled “Exploring sexual contact networks by analyzing a nationwide commercial-sex review website,” it’s a no-brainer whether or not we read. Even if it’s written by ecologists.

Though framed in academese, the article is essentially looking at reviews for soaplands on a website that covers 66% of establishments in Japan (784 soaplands) and has more than 2 million members and information on 38,964 sex workers. That’s quite a lot of data. There were 1,185 soaplands registered with the police in 2021. (Soaplands, where clients receive an intimate bathing experience, are regulated and licensed according to prefectural ordinances and monitored by local police.) However, just 3% of the website members wrote reviews on the site, so reviews constitute just a fraction of the real scale of sexual contact.

The review website is not named in the paper, from what we can tell, but we suspect it’s Soap BBS.

The article was actually first published online on an open-access academic website last November but has been picked up by the Japanese media this month.

The authors, who falsely claim that soaplands are “the only type of sex industry in Japan where sexual intercourse is publicly permitted” (full service is not officially permitted and soaplands are just one of several sex services that are only available), say that their paper “clarified the network structure of commercial sex, characterized by small-world, scale-free, and disassortative mating properties.” We have no idea what this means but perhaps reading beyond the abstract will enlighten us.

So we did. And the conclusions?

“We determined that active female commercial sex workers (FCSWs) constitute an important pathway of infection propagation in commercial sex networks, but male clients (MCs) also play an essential role as weak ties.”

So going to soapland forms a sexual contact and can create a pathway for infection if one of the parties involved has a sexually transmitted infection. We knew that already but OK.

But wait, they thoughtfully clarify!

“We emphasize that our study should not give the impression that soaplands (and many other types of sex trade industry in Japan) are possible hotspots of STIs. In fact, our analysis does not provide any evidence or relations between STIs and sex industry; furthermore, a previous study reported that the incidence of STIs among FCSWs in soaplands was relatively low.”

So that’s a relief.

The paper is ultimately trying to form a sexual contact network that is large and nationwide (in fact, they claim the review website allows them to obtain the largest such network to date). This shows us pathways for potential infection — but it’s just potential.

By formulating the sexual contact that occurred between the review writers (MCs) and “review receivers” (FCSWs), the authors built visualizations of the sexual contact networks that these reviews constituted. “This study provides important baseline material for the structural characteristics of large-scale commercial sex networks.”

Reading on, though much of the language in the “results” and “discussion” sections was beyond our mediocre minds, the study notes the cross-prefectural nature of soapland visits (since some prefectures ban them or because clients want to visit a particular establishment).

We could, at least, parse the implications of this part: “FCSWs constitute an important pathway of infection propagation in commercial sex networks, and MCs play an essential role as weak ties. Therefore, our results reveal the potential STI diffusion effects of active MCs who use multiple brothels in different areas.”

Perhaps the long and the short of this is that visiting a soapland and writing a review of your trip could benefit scientific research, so there’s now no reason not to go (as long as you use protection).

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 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 book.

Of course, what we really want to see is her naked breasts (a Japanese G-cup), not just her ass (as lovely as that is). Perhaps we can hope the busty 26-year-old does a Kyouka and goes nude for her retirement photo book (not that we want Umi Shinonome to retire any time soon).

Though we remain loyal to the buttastic delights of Yuka Kuramochi, we think Umi Shinonome now wears the crown of the current Best Ass in Gravure. C’mon, just look at this!

How to turn Japanese women on? Or even, how to turn just any women on?

This is a question that keeps us up at night.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of advice out there if you know where to look.

And one such source of pearls of sexual wisdom has been added to the mix in the form of this new YouTube video.

Over the course of roughly 12 and a half minutes, the male and female hosts share five tips. It’s in a mix of Japanese and English, but with English subtitles throughout.

The video is made by standup comedian Meshida and Eri Natsume, a sex counselor who has recently begun posting online tips and insights about sex in English on Twitter.

The dilemma, Meshida claims, that foreigners face is that they find their Japanese partners too passive in bed and don’t know how to give them pleasure. “They don’t know how to enjoy making love with Japanese women.”

Well, we could flip them around and say that especially passive women don’t themselves know how to enjoy making love, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

To be fair, Eri herself says as much five minutes into the video when she notes that Japanese women aren’t good at expressing what they want from sex or even if, for example, they are in pain during sex because they don’t want to make the guy “nervous” about his performance. In our modest experience, that’s not always true, but perhaps readers can share their own experiences in the comments.

The video gets down to the concrete tips at about the halfway mark, beginning with the obvious-sounding advice to give a woman compliments.

So what are the tips?

Firstly, treat dinner as part of foreplay: a good meal helps a woman relax and become more comfortable (and so more aggressive, the hosts claim).

Other tips include having a soft touch (don’t be too rough), using sex toys (like vibrators — and we know where to get the best Japanese toys money can buy), and showing her your hentai (pervert) side.

Here’s the video.

If you’re keen to learn more, and frankly who isn’t, Meshida and Eri have another video available for the former’s Patreon members with the very clickable title of “What J-Women hate about sex.”

Another video on Meshida’s Patreon claims to teach you how to enjoy a trip to a happening bar (presuming you can find one — they are something of an endangered species these days due to police crackdowns).

Japan is a great nation of customizers, adapters, and modifiers. You can see it in the cuisine, which is often a fusion of different influences and turned into something new.

It’s also evident in various subcultures.

Though original content is common too, Doujinshi (privately printed/bound magazines and manga) are sometimes a type of fan fiction, where people make their own versions of popular professional manga and anime.

Cosplay is similarly derivative. Fans dress up as their favorite characters and put a new spin on the franchise.

But when does derivation go too far? When it’s commercial? Or when it’s sexually “inappropriate”?

The question of copyright infringement has long haunted the doujinshi market, which operates in a kind of loophole at present and tolerated by the copyright owners of the original IPs.

But a man in Kyushu who modified anime figures and sold them was fined recently for copyright violation.

The man took heads from existing figures and skillfully added them to the bodies of other figures in more sexually suggestive poses.

Amusingly, the police covered the face of Fujiko Mine (from Lupin III) when they put the figures on display for the media, as if trying to protect her modesty (though the more overtly sexual parts of her body were still visible).

In March, Kyoto police had no such qualms when it came to displaying similar customized figures of Nezuko from Demon Slayer, which were made by a 48-year-old man in Wakayama who sold several such figures via online auctions in 2021 and 2022. He was arrested for copyright infringement.

There was a similar case in May last year involving a man in Okayama making modified figures of Asuka (from Evangelion) and selling them online. He was likewise arrested by Kyoto police.

These are, to us, examples of creative and talented modification that doesn’t compete with regular figures available via the mainstream commercial market, but the court in Kagoshima, southern Japan, saw otherwise, and fined the 46-year-old ¥300,000 in a judgment handed down on April 27.

He sold 14 such figures on online auctions as well as accepted specific commissions from clients, charging as much as ¥25,000 to produce a remodeled figure.

Such modifications of figures (or cars) for “malicious” purposes is known as makaizo (魔改造) in Japan, literally “devil’s modification.” But who is the devil in these circumstances? The people who make the figures for a bit of extra cash and to bring happiness to other private individuals? Or the police and big publishers, who punish fans for pursuing their passion?

And does this apparent crackdown have worrying implications for the parody products and releases that are very common in the Japanese adult toy market (especially from Tama Toys) and adult video porn industry?

In the fast and furious world of gravure, it feels like every month, if not every week, brings a newcomer. Many debut, then quickly disappear. A lucky few endure and build careers.

But every month also seems to bring a gravure comeback of sorts. In mid-April, for instance, we celebrated the return of former AKB48 Haruna Kojima to gravure after years of focusing on fashion retail.

And so we are very pleased to welcome back Rika Adachi, who has recently done a stunning cover shoot for an issue of Weekly Playboy (April 24) with a sunny bikini theme that has us yearning for the summer to kick off in earnest so we can see more shoots like this.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a new digital photo book La vie en rose, shot by popular gravure photographer Luckman.

Weekly Playboy has also released a making-of video.

The behind-the-scenes pics that Rika teased on social media are almost better than the actual photos from the shoot.

To be strictly accurate, Rika Adachi never really went away per se, but had recently fostered a career more as a TV tarento than a gradol.

She actually returned briefly to the gravure limelight last autumn with a photo book to celebrate turning 30. Back then, we praised her more mature look, though this new Weekly Playboy shoot seems to turn back the clock and show she’s still got that twentysomething girl-next-door charm.

She became famous in the early 2010s, especially for her winning smile and shapely butt (despite her slender waist). She made it onto our popular list of Japanese babes with great asses.

In the past, she has faced accusations of plastic surgery, like various other gradols (plastic surgery is a bit of an open secret in the gravure and music idol world, though few admit to it — a notable exception being Yuuri Morishita).