One of the biggest media stories in the autumn was the salacious scoop about the female mayor of Maebashi, a small city just outside Tokyo, and her love hotel trysts with an older male staffer.
After admitting the meetings and in the inappropriateness of them, but continuing to denying she was having an affair with the married man, 42-year-old Akira Ogawa eventually resigned as mayor in late November.
Most voters interviewed by the media found Ogawa's explanations unconvincing and it was clear that her position was untenable. The city set up a special hot line and received over 12,000 phone ...
Last week, it was revealed that attractive 21-year-old female golfer Reika Miyako was dating a man 30 years her senior.
That nugget of info was enough to merit a flood of articles in the tabloids, but more details have since emerged about the 51-year-old lucky gent who is her boyfriend. It's none other than her married coach, Shinobu Ishii.
She has since apologized on December 1 with a handwritten letter posted on social media that confirmed that she was breaking up with Ishii and ending their professional relationship.
"I have been dating my coach, Shinobu Ishii, since last year. ...
It's becoming one of prominent issues of our times: people pretending to be someone they're not on dating apps.
While there are apps and services out there specifically for married couples to find extramarital partners, some less scrupulous (or more calculating) folks like to cast their net wider and also use regular dating apps, even ones that do not require you to make your marital status known.
When does this stop being a white lie and become a more serious form of deception?
As an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun reports, one case indicates that lying about your single status can land ...
Former porn star Anri Sakaguchi has announced her second divorce. In a sign of the times, she did so on TikTok.
Sakaguchi is the daughter of actress Ryoko Sakaguchi and has had a colorful career, to say the least.
The 34-year-old started off as a general tarento celebrity, but has been arrested more than once, done a stint in porn, and worked as a hostess, stripper, and call girl.
In 2022, she announced her marriage (after just one month of dating) to a transgender, biracial host called Shinichi Fukushima, but then split from him a mere two months later. The marriage was officially ...
The Japanese porn star Rin Amasawa has revealed why she took half a year off: to get her whole back tattooed.
She showed off her body tattoos, which also cover her arms, chest, and back on one leg, in a post on social media earlier this week that quickly went viral and sparked a debate over her decision.
As of writing, the original post on X has been viewed 44.6 million times since November 17, which demonstrates either the size of the response or the arbitrary nature of the current X algorithm.
Rin was relaxed about attracting a potentially negative response from people, noting: "I ...
Michiko Kichise is divorced, 50 years old, and on the lookout for a new partner.
The mother-of-two actress and model split from her husband in 2021 after 11 years of marriage. She was a big star in the late 2000s, fronting many campaigns and frequently starring in major TV dramas. Her career has taken a slight back seat to motherhood in recent years, but it seems she is ready to move on in her personal life.
She recently appeared in a talk show in which she revealed that she is "now recruiting" a boyfriend.
"I don't know what type I am," she confessed. "When I was younger, I used to like ...
We are currently living through an AI bubble, both in financial and cultural terms, and it throws up all sorts of wacky stories every now and then.
Take the tale of the 32-year-old Japanese woman in Tokyo who broke up with her fiancee after three years, and then consulted ChatGPT about what to do.
Kano then became dependent on its answers, after sending dozens of questions daily -- sometimes up to 100. She eventually trained the AI to develop a personality and particular speaking style, and then gave it a name: Klaus Lune.
Kano fell in love with and "married" Klaus in a ceremony in ...
Pity the police officer in "no crime" Japan. Of course, there is plenty of crime in Japan, at both the highest level of government and the lowest level of society (we wrote about a horrible case just yesterday). But in terms of petty crime, it's generally felt that Japan has less than other countries.
As such, cops sitting their police boxes or substations (known as a koban) have relatively little to do much of the time. Instead of twiddling their thumbs, though, some cops are up to mischief, it seems. With each other.
Two police officers in Kanagawa, the large prefecture that neighors ...
Here's a story so horrible that it made us practically spit our coffee out when we first read it in the Japanese-language media last Friday.
On November 6, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of a 51-year-old male owner of a massage parlor on suspicion of violating the Labor Standards Act by employing a 12-year-old Thai girl.
The girl first came to Japan with her mother and police believe she was a victim of human trafficking. She was forced to provide sexual services to male customers at the parlor.
According to the announcement that was widely reported by media outlets, ...
The disgraced actor Mei Nagano is to take her first real steps toward a comeback with the release of a 2026 calendar on December 21.
The 26-year-old Nagano's career suffered a catastrophic collapse when her alleged affair with 41-year-old married actor Kei Tanaka was reported by the tabloids in April.
At the time, she was also supposedly in a relationship with a Korean actor, Kim Moo-jun, with whom she costarred in a TV drama.
Both she and father-of-two Kei Tanaka denied an affair, though admitted they were close and that he had stayed over at her apartment. Various damning photos ...
