It’s mid-September and still feels like mid-August in Tokyo. It is meant to cool down soon but this summer has been a little long, with the sticky temperatures dragging on into the supposed start of the autumn.

Usually, things stay pretty hot through September and even October, but the humidity leaves the stage. Not so much this year.

Personally, we don’t mind it so much, but then we don’t have to put on a salaryman suit and commute to the office each day on a crowded commuter train.

Occasionally, it feels like all the Japanese media does is talk about food or the weather. But with the hot weather, they take an interest in how people dress.

And so do we.

These are not recent clips, yet the unseasonably humid days have reminded us of these times the media has interviewed attractive women on the street who were wearing decidedly revealing outfits as a means of staying cool (and looking good).

While you can generally see more flesh on display in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, the quality of ladies is so excessively high — even after all these years, we still find ourselves shocked by a walk around Ebisu, Shibuya, and so on — that such barely-there outfits or revealing summer choices count for more.

It’s like going to the beach on the streets of the city.

One young woman is wearing a crop top and loose bottoms, which hang so low her thong is proudly visible. “This is the current trend,” she claims.

We particularly like the athletic trainer in her twenties who says she’s wearing a “showable bra,” joking that she’s contributing to “world peace” by showing a bit of her bust (don’t get too excited, her chest is quite modest by her own admission).

Not wishing to sound glib, but if this is what climate change or the heat island effect do to society, then we’re all for it!

Does all these flesh on display mean the women are more open to being picked up by guys? We would assume that’s a logical conclusion to make, but tread cautiously and don’t be surprised if you get pushback (or just simply ignored).

And don’t make the mistake of thinking it gives you a license to touch without permission! The fans who got carried away with their hands at the recent DJ Soda concern found this out the hard way.

Just when you thought it was safe to walk by a drain in a skirt, the drain pervert is back!

If you live in Kobe, be sure to check the drains before walking over them.

Police in the West Japan city have arrested the 36-year-old Yasuomi Hirai for setting up a phone in a roadside drain in order to take videos of schoolgirls.

He was caught when the camera was filming an 18-year-old school student at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon on September 8. And he was found out because the girl was a Good Samaritan. She noticed the phone in the drain and took it to a police substation, believing it was a lost item.

The police realized it was set to record and started to investigate. Hirai was still in the clear, because the cops couldn’t get past the lock on the phone.

But then, on September 14, Hirai’s fetish got the better of him and officers found him on all fours inside a neighborhood drain.

“What are you doing?” they asked.

Hirai’s the kind of person who can’t help being honest. “I’m trying to peep up skirts,” he responded. He then aided the cops in their investigation of him by unlocking the seized phone and allowing them to see the saved videos he had shot.

This guy is a serial offender when it comes to drain peeping. He was previously arrested in 2013 and 2015, as reported here, and fined for his behavior. On those occasions, he went to even further extremes, actually lying in the drain himself for hours on end.

In 2015, his mother defended him, saying that Hirai’s actions are an extension of his childhood habit of hiding in small places.

The fetish for upskirting — get views or photos of panties from underneath, especially from underneath a skirt — is huge in Japan, where it is known as panchira. There are even photography exhibitions, special books, face masks, and bicycle saddles from practitioners.

The YouTuber Takashii, who provided the interesting video we reposted recently about Japanese women and their attraction toward foreign men (or non-attraction, as the case may be), has produced a couple more videos with interviews about the old saw: adultery.

His latest provocative topic is on adultery in Japan, especially cheating on a partner with sex workers.

He asks some women for their opinions and some men.

They give a range of responses, but the general gist is that the women don’t seem to mind if their men cheat on them with fuzoku (sex workers/services). In fact, this doesn’t “count” as adultery since money is involved and, presumably, the men have no emotional connection to the women (or men) involved, even less than they would with a one-night stand.

Both videos have English subtitles.

Here is the shorter one with the young women. (A longer video is possibly coming soon.)

And here is the longer video with men.

Short clips of these interviews with the women have circulated a lot on social media recently, especially Twitter, even though the original videos are not so recently, sparking fierce debate.

It is important to remember, though, that like all vox populi interviews, these are very edited: the interviewees are cherry-picked, as are the responses.

There are also various contextual points we would like to raise as caveats before everyone starts assuming that Japan is some paradise for adulterers.

Yes, adultery is common here (as it is elsewhere). On the other hand, divorce rates are lower than many other major industrial nations (though are rising). Make of that what you will.

Adultery can result in a lawsuit: the aggrieved spouse may sue both their spouse and the lover of their partner for damages. As such, adultery is risky not only for the spouse, who may end up divorced and forced to pay a settlement (though in Japan, we believe alimony isn’t legally enforced), but for their lover too.

There are exceptions, such as if you can prove you didn’t know the other person was married.

Obviously, this is easier for a sex worker to do. As such, visiting a sex worker is much more convenient and financially safer than having an affair.

Is is morally permissible? Or at least, more so than in Western countries? That’s tricky to answer, but quite possibly. We suspect that most local guys would feel that it’s less repugnant in a strictly moral sense and might even see it as the best way to fulfill certain fantasies. That said, we reckon most guys would prefer not to pay for sex, since it’s better for your ego if you know the woman is definitely attracted to you. On the other hand, many woman may be attracted to you in ways that are ultimately not so far removed from directly receiving money for sexual transactions, such as the fact that you are affluent, take her own on expensive dates, buy her fancy gifts, and so on.

Another key point to remember, and which is missing from the interviews perhaps, is that fuzoku is a catch-all term for various kinds of sex work and services, many of which do not provide full service. So these women may be professing not to mind if their man “cheats” on them in the Bill Clinton sense of the word, but they might have a different opinion if you reframed the question to specify that the session with the sex worker would involve penetrative sex.

On the other hand, there are (like elsewhere) plenty of apps and services for finding people to have an affair with, and where both sides know that there are already spouses in the picture. In other words, the true situation is pretty complicated and can’t really be summed up in bitesized snippets like this, as much as we enjoy watching them.

Aya Takanashi, the former porn star turned columnist on all things JAV, is back with another article about the porn industry.

This time, she’s spilled the beans on why some performers have rules about which other performers they are willing to work with.

In her latest column for the monthly magazine Spa!, she enumerates some of the major reasons for why co-performers are “banned” by certain AV stars.

This is not insignificant, since while the AV industry is flooded with thousands of female performers, the number of men performing regularly is tiny. If you get on the bad side of one of these men, it might seriously limit your career.

Takanashi details five key reasons.

First, there’s a physical mismatch: namely, the man’s penis doesn’t fit well inside the woman’s vagina. For reasons that should be obvious, that’s clearly a big issue for a porn shoot.

Second, and this is where it gets very personal, there are problems of odor: the performer’s body or breath smells bad. Considering the incredible intimacy of a porn shoot, this is not a minor concern.

Third, the co-performer makes thoughtless remarks and is otherwise unprofessional or inconsiderate in what they say. In short, they’re a bit of a jerk. Humility and being considerate of others gets you far, it seems.

Fourth, rumors spread about certain male performers who hit on their co-stars, and they might end up blacklisted even by women they haven’t met before, let alone worked with. This isn’t a MeToo level of reckoning for the industry but it is a way for performers to contain the problem.

Fifth, there is some other “physiological” reason that they can’t work together. This is the vaguest but Takanashi notes that it’s not uncommon for performers just to feel that they can’t stand working with a particular person.

She also writes that there are sometimes issues that emerge among female performers too, which prevents them from working together. Again, this is not a minor problem, since numerous AV productions feature packed (and stacked) casts of several female stars, so if you develop a problem with other actors, it limits the contracts you might get offered.

If you get a reputation for being difficult or picky, directors and producers are not going to cast you. Only a big star enjoys the liberty of being fussy.

And so just like with any “regular” job, there are cases when you just have to grin and bear it and work with someone you dislike because you need the money and/or it’s not practical, given your status, to demand a different coworker.

Former NMB48 idol Miyuki Watanabe has released a new photo book, Dappi, marking what seems to be a somewhat maturer look and more sensual development in her career as she enters a new stage in life.

Also a one-time member of SKE48 and AKB48, Watanabe (known as Miruki to her fans) left NMB48 in 2016. She turned 30 earlier this week. Since leaving the music group, she has worked as a model and launched a music career as a solo artist and member of girl group Ange et Folletta.

Dappi is her fifth book and marks the latest stage in this more adult part of her career.

Last year, she posed for a semi-nude shoot for a magazine, and released a book in 2019 also with semi-nude pics.

In 2020, she modeled for lingerie brand Peach John and the results were awesome.

The new photo book is not more explicit than her previous publications and shoots, but it does feel maturer. Should we look forward to more interesting shoots from her as she enters her jukujo-dom?

It’s a relatively rare thing for NMB48 or even AKB48 to enter our orbit these days.

Recently, it feels like the only high-profile photo book releases are coming from members or former members of the Sakamichi girl group fold. We wrote at the start of this month about Seira Hayakawa’s semi-nude photo book to mark her retirement. Hinano Kamimura of Hinatazaka46 just released her debut photo book, and Riko Matsudaira tried to push her post-Keyakizaka46 career with a sexy photo book earlier in the summer.

We have grown used to Japanese porn stars’ prior careers as music idols, gravure models, and so on. What’s often so exciting about their entry into adult video is that those worlds generally don’t allow the women to have relationships publicly (because it spoils the illusion that you could date the idol).

This is similar with the Takarazuka Revue, a long-running all-female company that puts on musicals in Osaka and Tokyo. Some of the most famous actresses in Japan started off life as members of the company, though it is something of a closed eco-system, putting on a very particular type of glitzy and camps musical for (mostly female) fans, and with its performers living under strict conditions in company dorms.

Once the Takarasienne leave, they are finally free — including to enter porn, it seems.

It seems that a minor former Takarazuka Revue performer called Noa Ozuki (桜月のあ) is now making her porn debut. Ozuki was a member of the company’s Flower Troupe from 2016 to 2022.

Koiki Nagisa (渚恋生) is 23 years old and supposed to be a former entertainer. The F-cup newcomer is, according to Soft on Demand’s publicity, making her porn debut immediately after leaving the entertainment world. But some parts of the taglines seem to hint that her former employer was indeed Takarazuka, such as the use of a word with the same kanji for Takara in Takarazuka, which feels very intentional.

On the other hand, a lot of the promo pics show her dancing like a ballerina.

Her 215-minute debut (1stars00931) comes out via SOD Create and SODstar on September 26 for the digital release and October 26 for the physical release.

Is Koiki Nagisa actually Noa Ozuki? Unfortunately, since Ozuki was a minor performer in the troupe who mainly played background roles in the productions, decent pictures are hard to come by. Here is one from when her retirement was announced.

But if the netizens’ speculations are right, is this a first?

Perhaps, but it might not even get released, since the previous case 10 years ago of an ex-Takarazuka star’s canceled porn debut suggests that the revue giant is serious about controlling not only its performers’ lives during their time in the company, but even after they leave.

There may be a lawsuit coming this time too. Will Soft on Demand back down again or stick to its guns (and the thought of the potential sales the controversy will generate)?

Japan’s much-publicized, controversial new porn law that passed last year was ostensibly conceived to introduce safeguards against performer coercion.

Is it actually doing its job? It’s perhaps too early to say, though many major adult video stars were publicly opposed to the legislation.

The newly established rules on contracts and paperwork quickly claimed its first victim, when a production firm executive was arrested in December for misleading performers and uploading uncensored material.

Concerns, though, were soon raised about the potential loophole in the law regard private and amateur porn. Would sex tapes be covered? What if they were uploaded to streaming sites?

Certainly, you can be arrested for breaching the obscenity law for using uncensored images and videos to sell content or otherwise make money, as one woman found out in July.

A lot of amateur porn (shiroto) is actually a carefully produced genre of professional porn, made to look like it features nonprofessionals.

Real “amateur” stuff is often called uraaka and increasingly found online on social media platforms like Twitter (X), where the performers/directors/producers post clips of themselves in action. The savvy ones set up an OnlyFans or CandFans account or the like where people can pay to see the rest.

Such people often actively recruit new partners (co-stars) online. The fact that some of them have the bodies of porn stars can sometimes dispel the myth that these people are just like us, though their obvious regular gym attendance also indicates how seriously they take their craft. The only real difference, perhaps, is that the faces are censored, so you can’t identify the performers.

It seems that uraaka porn can still be prosecuted if it doesn’t follow the new guidelines over issuing proper contracts and misleading performers.

On September 19, Kanagawa police arrested a fitness trainer called Yasuo Fukamoto over violating the new porn law. It’s the first such arrest in the prefecture, according to a Shueisha online report.

From December 2022 to April this year, the muscular Fukamoto appeared in porn that he shot and edited with women he recruited online. He is alleged to have not explained properly to the four women in their twenties what would happen to the content, and to have not provided a contract even though he was selling the content.

The 42-year-old Tokyo resident also offered the content for sale with the faces of the women uncensored for those willing to pay a higher fee. It was this that got him into trouble, because the women noticed and complained to police. The women had agreed to appear if their faces and genitalia were pixellated.

Fukamoto has admitted the charges.

Like many such uraaka porn producers, he has an X account called Kintoretokei (literally, muscle training clock) where he promoted his content to his 100,000 followers. He regularly received messages from women attracted to his hunky body. We’re not sure how long it will stay online but at the time of writing, Fukamoto had posted content as recently as June, showing him having sex with beautiful women.

His earnings from the pay-to-view AV fan site content were apparently over 1 million a month.

The syphilis epidemic in Japan is something that has featured on this blog countless times.

Just last year, we wrote about its alarming further growth.

We wish we had something more positive to share with readers, but the news just keeps getting worse.

The total number of cases in 2023 has already exceeded 10,000 — the fastest time this has ever occurred. Medical experts are advising people to get tested even if they exhibit no symptoms in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.

Cases hit 10,103 on September 3, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. That is a full two months and 1.24 faster than last year, which recorded the highest numbers (13,228) ever.

It means that 2023 achieves the dubious distinction of being the fastest since 1999 to hit those infection numbers. It is also quite certain that total numbers for 2023 will exceed 2022’s, which would mean rise in cases three years in a row.

The rise is actually due, in part, to spikes in cases in prefectures outside Tokyo. Though the capital has 2,490 cases and the second biggest city, Osaka, has 1,365, cases reported in more rural provinces like Saga, Nagasaki, and Ishikawa have jumped, indicating syphilis is spreading like wildfire nationwide.

Incidentally, the third largest number of cases is in Fukuoka (not one of the bigger cities like Yokohama or Nagoya).

Cases are highest among men between their twenties and fifties (so, pretty much all sexually active men) and women in their twenties.

There are several factors at play here: the notoriously low condom usage in Japan (not helped, arguably, by the portrayal of sex in adult video, which tends to hide the condoms), the rise of dating apps that have made hooking up for casual sex easier (though other common venues for hooking up, like clubs and bars, have fallen), and the rise of foreign tourists since the 2010s, which might have a small impact.

The sex industry might be responsible to a certain extent too, though sex workers will generally insist on a condom (and a lot of services are nonpenetrative). On the other hand, women engaged in other forms of prostitution like compensated dating and papakatsu, may not.

The explosion of syphilis cases seems unaffected by Covid, even rising during the height of the pandemic, despite the virus (or rather, the lockdowns and so on) being touted for its potential harmful impact on dating for a generation of young people. The rise of syphilis in Japan might also stand as a useful foil to lazy international media articles about “sexless Japan,” since it’s definitely not spread just by coughing near another person.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do otaku date non-2D women?

These are the eternal questions of our times. In the case of the latter, it seems that are some otaku who are keen to branch out into three dimensions.

So much so that, well, there’s an app for that.

Otakoi (Otaku Love) is a dating app for otaku. The promo images are just awesome. If you’ve seen these ads popping in your feed, you know you’re in trouble!

Needless to say, these images are AI-generated. The presence of fake photos of couples might be a warning sign for a dating app, but since the target demographic is otaku, the slightly plastic, 2D look of the images is actually just right.

Is this a realistic (albeit brutally honest) depiction of the target male user — or an insulting one?

The app is free for women but only free for men until they match with someone, after which there’s a monthly fee. (Women also pay a fee for certain options.) We’d be very interested to know how many female users they actually have, though! (They may all be offline, getting fit at the otaku gym.)

Otakoi has been around for some time (several years, from what we can tell) but has received renewed attention in August and September for its viral ads with AI-generated couples.

If these ads don’t seem believable, it’s for a good reason!

You might remember Chika Yuki (or Yuuki) (結城ちか) from back in the late 2010s.

The formidably busty gravure idol made her debut in 2014 (when she still at school) and enjoyed some initial success, but then left her agency and switched to another name — Chika Takahashi — in 2020, followed by yet another name — Maiha Hinata — in 2021.

All this seemed to suggest her gradol career was in free fall. Despite her obvious talents and assets that made her more than qualified for the job, it’s a competitive industry that favors the flavor of the month for cover shoots and big gigs. She was seemingly on her way out.

At the end of 2022, she did her final shoot and announced the end of her gravure activities. One DVD came out in January 2023 but her career was apparently over, having released numerous DVDs since 2014 and two photo books in 2014 and 2018.

Only she’s back — under yet another professional name, Ren Gojo (五条恋). And she’s made the switch to porn.

Her adult video debut comes out as a physical release October 24 (or streaming from October 20) from the major Japanese porn label S1.

The 25-year-old beauty with the J-cup chest from Yamanashi will thankfully be part of our lives once again, and in much more explicit detail than ever before.

The only preview images from her 155-minute debut (SSIS00928) currently available are pretty tame. In fact, they make it look like a gravure “image video” but that can’t be right. It’s being clearly labeled as an AV debut, so there’s got to be sex involved.

Let’s hope it’s a good production and sells well, so Ren Gojo’s new AV career doesn’t fade straight after her debut, like a lot of new performers’ careers sadly do.

The recent edition of Feti Fes in Tokyo was a packed event with the usual wide array of fetishes and subcultures.

The festival on September 17 had around 100 booths of both individual exhibitors and groups across five floors, showcasing ero-cosplay, debusen, zentai, and much, much more. Many of the women work as freelance porn stars and ero-cosplayers, though various subculture/fetish circles are also at the venue.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to attend in person due to other commitments that day, but fortunately DXBeppin-r.com could and has put together a nice photo report with portraits of the exhibitors.

We’ve included a few highlights below.

This is larger porn star and cosplayer Nozomi Kanae (aka Nozomi Shinjo).

The stunning porn star Maria Nagai.

Ero-cosplayer Nana Matsuoka opted for alluring cowgirl cosplay.

Satsuki offered something for schoolgirl and panchira (upskirting) fans.

Busty porn star Mion Hazuki in maid cosplay, ready to serve.

Porn star Kotori Shima looked spectacular in succubus cosplay.

Foreign-born JAV star June Lovejoy was at the festival (and braless, by the looks of things).

Tokyo Zentai Club members in their figure-hugging gear.

For more pictures, and full links to all the featured women’s social media accounts, readers should check out DXBeppin-r.com for the full photo report.

The next edition of Feti Fes will be in January 2024.

If you’re big into labia, have we got a treat for you.

With onaholes and other pocket pussy toys, the emphasis falls inevitably on the vaginal canal itself, but many pride themselves on their skin textures and their exterior design, including realistic or enlarged labia.

There are plenty of examples of this, like the Choppiri Ureman Onahole or Nurse CQ Penetration Onahole.

But we’re talking about taking things one step further: making the labia a key (if not THE key) part of the design and appeal of the toy.

Ride Japan’s Long Birari-na Labia Fetish Stroker is a masturbator toy with especially prominent labia, so much so that they function almost like petals or flaps that welcome your penis. Pull, spread, pinch, and flick them before or during penetration. She won’t complain.

If your kink is pussy lips, you’re going to love kissing the Long Birari-na onahole, which is available from our friends at Kanojo Toys, the most extensive and comprehensive international source of Japanese adult toys online.

As Kanojo Toys notes, this isn’t just a cheap gimmick. In addition to those amazing pussy lips, the toy has an incredible vagina “filled with lumpy, grooved protrusions that swirl and swell throughout the vaginal canal.”

The shape of the vagina twists tight in the middle and squeezes your cock. Keep on pushing and reach the wider opening at the end, popping out to reward your hard thrusts.

Sticking with this labial theme, we also noted earlier in the year the Biraman Mom Big Pussy Lips Masturbator, which is a Japanese MILF pussy with extraordinary labia that you can really stretch and tug, feel wrap around your penis during penetration.

People in Japan sometimes look over the water at South Korea, where plastic surgery among women is relatively common, and tut in disapproval. But the truth is, plastic surgery also happens in Japan — and is something of an open secret in the entertainment world, where models and actors have work done early in the career but keep it under wraps.

Only a few go public about it, though internet rumors persist over several other celebrities.

Former AKB48 idol Kana Kobayashi has admitted to having had plastic surgery.

The model Tenchim (Tenka Hashimoto) has confessed to a boob job (the results are amazing).

The porn star Kirara Asuka has attracted mockery for her plastic surgery.

It is certainly true that some people get “addicted” to the quick fix of the surgeons knife and take things too far, with bizarre facial results. We were particularly saddened to see how surgery changed the way Yuuri Morishita looked.

A music idol called Cuca (くーか) of the group Level7 has openly discussed how she transformed herself from an ordinary-looking schoolgirl into a more glamorous performer.

Makeup and dieting played a big part, of course, as did getting braces and dying her hair. But surgical procedures were involved too.

She went from this.

To this.

She is very open and positive about this on social media, claiming it has changed her life and allowed her to be her true self.

It came at a price, literally: ¥5 million, which is a lot when you are in your teens (Cuca is now 21). Some of the before-and-after shots she has posted, though, may not make sense to everyone. We, at least, think she looked perfectly fine pre-surgery (and everything else), as per the picture below.

But she has succeeded in becoming much more famous because of her recent social media posts on her transformation. So in that way, she’s definitely getting a career boost due to the surgeon’s knife.

Alluring jukujo gradol Tomomi Morisaki has previously shown off her naked butt and nipples. What more could she have to show her fans?

Not much, it seems, because she has announced her “retirement release.”

There was some confusion about this, perhaps an indication of behind-the-scenes shenanigans or uncertainty on the idol’s part. In July, Morisaki held an event to mark the release of her 22nd DVD and denied she was retiring from gravure.

It appears the timing was right now in the autumn. Her 23rd image DVD and Blu-ray, suitably titled Lady Climax, is to be her final release and comes out at the end of October.

She has announced she is to retire from gravure. What that means in concrete terms is still unclear. Will she focus solely on generic TV “talent” work? Or leave the entertainment world completely? Will she continue to do isolated gravure shoots but not releases like DVDs and photo books?

However it works out in the end, the upshot is that we’re sadly going to be seeing a lot less of Tomomi.

She is now 31 years old and quite a veteran, having made her debut in 2010. She is known for her slinky body and G-cup breasts.

A free photography exhibition, “Queen,” is also taking place this from October 17 to October 22 at Tokyo Arts Gallery.

One of the biggest trends of the year has been the crackdown on prostitution in Okubo and Kabukicho, especially very young women soliciting customers on the streets.

Most prostitution in Japan operates through structured services, such as “delivery health” call girl services that send a sex worker to your hotel room.

With the gentrification of the main parts of Kabukicho into a tourist attraction, it can be easy for some to overlook the seedy nature of the backstreets and forget that it borders an entire block of love hotels that stretch all the way to Okubo. And that streetwalkers are rife.

Most streetwalkers in Japan (known as tachinbo or 立ちんぼ) tend to be non-Japanese Asians, since they run the highest risk of arrest.

In many ways, that has driven the recent mainstream and social media interest in the situation in Okubo, since it is so flagrant and clearly involves young Japanese women.

They stand in a row, a few paces apart, waiting for clients to pick them up.

The police have responded by arresting the women (though we are fairly confident no charges are brought).

The latest police figures indicate that the crackdown is still ongoing. According to media reports, Tokyo Metropolitan Police announced the arrests of 80 women between January and September for soliciting customers for prostitution.

This is reported as Kabukicho in Shinjuku ward, but to be precise, the exact area in Kabukicho is around Okubo Park, which neighbors the love hotel district.

The numbers far exceed the 51 women arrested in 2022. There was a drop in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid pandemic’s impact on the sex industry, but 2022 saw the numbers of streetwalkers and arrested sex workers rise to 2019 levels, and have since climbed further.

We suspect, though, that the police crackdown is partly driven by the high level of exposure that the Okubo Park sex workers have received on social media and in the tabloids this year.

It is not a crime to hire sex worker in Japan, nor is prostitution itself illegal (strictly speaking, from what we understand, it is illegal to profit from prostitution, so freelance sex workers are in a gray zone). If arrested, the women may face a six-month prison sentence or a ¥10,000 fine (which is probably far less than a client would pay them for sex). We hope, though, that no charges are actually brought against the women. (The police announcements and media reports are vague on this.)

The arrested women were between the ages of 20 and 46, though we suspect there are even younger sex workers operating in the area.

The sex workers themselves apparently refer to themselves as koen joshi (交縁女子), or “connection girls.” This is a kind of play on words since “koen” can also mean park (the main gathering spot is near Okubo Park).

Just last month alone, 35 women were apprehended, almost all of whom were Japanese and around 70% were in their twenties. Some 40% said they were doing it to pay for visits to host clubs or for their boyband fandom (especially underground idols). Some are doing it out of genuine poverty and apply for social welfare after their arrest.

Around 90% of the women are first-time offenders, suggesting that the streetwalkers around Okubo Park are effectively amateurs trying to earn some extra yen on the side, rather than full-time sex workers with experience in the professional.

Police have told the media that they try to encourage the women to seek help through welfare institutions and counseling services. They have also advised dozens of host clubs in the areas about encouraging their patrons not to engage in prostitution to pay for their visits.

The former Japanese porn star Shunka Ayami is said to be dating the male singer Ryoichi Tsukada.

The 36-year-old Tsukada is a member of the boy band ABC-Z, which is part of the roster of troubled (and recently renamed and soon-to-dissolve) agency Johnny & Associates.

Ayami reportedly introduced Tsukada to her parents last month, and they have supposedly taken overseas trips together.

Weekly Bunshun claimed the scoop when earlier this week it published photos of the two together traveling by Shinkansen. They certainly make a glamorous couple.

Tsukada took a well-publicized break from activities with his band for a few months over the summer, which he seemed to spend in the company of the comely Shunka Ayami.

The 30-year-old Ayami retired from porn in 2019 but remains popular and famous in the industry. Her videos are still available to buy and view, plus her toys are on sale like her full-body sex doll and blowjob mouth toy.

The mainstream media in Japan has, as always, reported this using the strange euphemism of “sexy actress” rather than adult video performer.

It comes a month or so after reports broke that recently retired JAV superstar Yua Mikami was dating not one but two boyband members at once, and even scheduling their visits to her apartment on the same day.

We have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we are pleased to see mainstream exposure and celebrity for JAV performers. Perhaps one day, the media won’t feel the need to use such silly euphemisms, and then we will have maybe reached a genuine level of acceptance of and respect for porn performers.

On the other hand, we’re obviously envious of these male celebrities who get to sleep with our favorite porn stars!

But sour grapes aside, we’re also really curious to know their mindset, since they must be very aware that they are following in the footsteps of so many men — hundreds perhaps. Some were just random amateurs but others were muscular, attractive sexperts whose sole job is to provide. Isn’t that kind of intimating? Don’t they worry they won’t match up to the professionals like Ken Shimizu? Or are male celebrities so confident and assured about things in life that they don’t even worry about such matters?

This completely passed us by at the time but thanks to the diligent efforts of Nude Asian Film on Twitter/X to chronicle movie scenes, we realized that gravure idol Yuki Kiyose had done a nude scene.

She appears in the low-budget film Gekkako, which was released in Japan in 2022. It is about Ami, played by Yuki Kiyose, who has an affair with a married painter.

It’s a full nude scene, but sadly not a sex scene. Rather than showing Yuki Kiyose in action with a lover, it has her posing completely nude for a painting.

Still, her body is as slim yet curvy as you would expect from a gravure idol, and there is a wonderful closeup of her beautifully shaped breasts.

You’ve gotta love the movies, which can get away with gratuitous nudity whenever there’s a scene involving art: from Kate Winslet in Titanic to Emmanuelle Béart in La Belle Noiseuse, create a character who’s a painter and it seems you’re allowed to have a nude scene just for the heck of it.

Yuki Kiyose was born in Kanagawa in 1997 and made her gravure debut in 2018. She is a member of the gradol girl band sherbet.

Gekkako marked her first lead role. She hopes to pursue more acting in the future.

She also posed nude last year in a shoot for weekly magazine Friday by veteran gravure photographer Koki Nishida, showing off her shapely buttocks, though keeping her stunning G-cup breasts hidden with the exception of some alluring side boob.

If you’ve ever stayed at a traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan, especially a somewhat smaller one, you have likely encountered the women who run them, known as the okami (meaning proprietress, not to be confused with okami — pronounced with a longer oh — that means wolf).

Though younger women are often busy doing many of the tasks, a slightly older woman is usually in charge. Like the mama-san who runs a hostess club, she’s a more mature yet still alluring prospect.

Well, we are likely romanticizing things because the gap between reality and fantasy gets misty here: ryokan ladies are the stuff of sexploitation and porn, and such an ingrained trope that it can be hard to remember what they are really like.

Fortunately, we now have help. Collectible cards.

If you have a hankering for the older charms of such ryokan women, you can now indulge your fantasy with these collectible cards that come with, er, popcorn.

Yes, this is pretty incongruous. Popcorn and ryokan women. Not a marriage made in heaven, but the cards are great.

They feature pictures of the women, many of whom are a comely thirty or fortysomething (and at least a couple seem to be even younger), with their name, information about their inn, plus points for “physique” and “support.”

The cards, then, effectively function as advertising, but we love the gimmick of “collecting” cards of Japanese jukujo waiting in the countryside for your custom.

All the women work at 20 ryokan in Ibaraki Prefecture participating in the campaign. The cards come with packs of Frito Lay’s oddly named Mike popcorn.

Will the pictures entice you to stay at the ryokan on the card in the hope that the lady featured will be there to greet and show you to your room?

The Ibaraki brainchild of a tourism organization, the cards even seem to include a foreign-born female proprietor.

The bags of popcorn with the cards are available until December 31 at selected stores in Ibaraki.

About a year ago, we wrote about SwipeMart, the convenience store set up by dating app Tinder in Shibuya. We included a nice video by Asagi, a dating consultant who specializes in intercultural and interracial relationships.

Asagi is herself now married and has a young family with a non-Japanese partner, so you could say that she knows what she’s talking about.

But she doesn’t just give guys advice about how to date Japanese ladies. She also posts other kinds of content, such as this video about an issue that we have frequently covered here on Tokyo Kinky: chikan, or public groping.

Though the foreign mainstream media has an annoying habit of framing chikan in the usual “wacky Japan” narrative, it is a serious societal problem that deserves careful attention. While Japan is generally a safe place to live, those women-only carriages on trains aren’t going away any time soon.

The rise of “public arrests” by YouTubers and the ability to publicly shame someone instantly on social media may have some impact in the end — fear of getting caught is a great deterrent — but molesters can still get away with touching women (and it’s almost always men touching women) on crowded trains.

In her video, Asagi weighs in on what she calls “Japan’s never-ending issue.” She includes personal stories such as her own experience of being groped and being asked to sell her used underwear.

We’ve called this post “What Japanese women think about chikan” for reasons of expedience, though Asagi obviously brings a very international perspective to the issue. That editorial caveat aside, her short video is full of insights and well worth a watch.

Asagi also made another video some time ago about being harassed in public (and even caught someone in the act of doing it).

With the exception of some high-profile series on Netflix, which almost seem to be trying to attract viewers precisely because they are explicit, most Japanese TV dramas have pretty tame sex scenes.

Some of the late-night ones, especially if they are shown on a streamer like Abema, can be pretty erotic, but rarely do not show actual nudity. They tease and titillate, then pull back from putting breasts on screen.

The TV drama Kusuburi Onna to Sundome Onna on TV Tokyo is a case in point, featuring a sex scene between a married couple that doesn’t show any nudity.

But it caught our interest because it doesn’t play out like a regular sex scene at all.

We all know that things in the bedroom can become stale in a long-term relationship. This couple resorts to some interesting tactics to keep things exciting, at least for the male partner.

The husband has sex with her wife (played by Naomi Nishida, who remains clothed throughout) while wearing virtual reality googles and watching VR porn. (Weirdly, and incredibly unrealistically, we are supposed to believe that the content he is watching is also non-nude porn.)

We are curious to know if a woman would actually ever agree to this and what it must feel like to have a man so hampered by cumbersome apparatus over his head having sex with you. We’re all guilty of thinking of other people during sex, but this is taking that to a whole other level!

As weird as the scene looks, and probably as weird as it feels, might it be a way to save Japanese marriages from sexlessness? Not that it will be much fun for the woman, we expect.

Incidentally, the series is produced by and co-stars Megumi, the former gravure idol who, now in her forties, has aged into a fine wine (and back on the market after divorcing her rock star husband over his infidelity).

Perhaps she based the marital situation depicted in the series on some of her own experiences?