In December 2023, the Japanese media went briefly crazy about a real-life harem manga scenario where a man claimed to have four wives.
Though only married to one of his partners legally, Ryuta Watanabe was living comfortably as a househusband in Sapporo while the women worked to support the household. With his common-law and legal spouses all in their twenties and together under one roof (except for the fourth "wife," who lived separately), 35-year-old Watanabe had three young children.
So what happened to Watanabe after all that media attention? Fortunately, Weekly Friday has chased the ...
Regular readers will remember the cautionary tale of gravure idol Miyu Murashima, who was forced to apologize and put her burgeoning career on ice in mid-2024 after her affair with a married basketball player came to light.
She was effectively sacked by her agency and announced later in 2024 she would no longer do gravure, instead focusing on producing her own content on YouTube and TikTok.
The basketball player with whom she had an affair seemed to suffer no professional consequences.
Over two years on from the scandal, what is Murashima doing?
Now 27 years old, the former idol announced ...
Akita Prefecture officials have issued an apology after it came to light that an public servant conducted a video conference call about luring AI data centers, from a love hotel -- in a bathrobe while smoking!
Now that's what we call multitasking.
And if this is the AI revolution, count us in!
The manager, Takahiro Ono, claimed he was in his home, but was rumbled when footage from the public conference call leaked online. Those pesky internet sleuths with too much time on their hands were able to track down the exact room of the love hotel that Ono was staying in due to the particular ...
The gravure idol and actress Nanaka Yano has done her first sex scene.
Yano is shown riding her lover in the adultery-themed TV drama Saretagawa no Fukushu (Revenge of the Betrayed). She rides him in the cowgirl position, though with her hands clutched to her chest to cover her breasts. His hands are also caressing her tits, which is great for him but not for the viewer. She arches her back as she rides him. The man then sits up to kiss her and hold her body close to him.
As far as we know, this is her first sex scene (and one of her first major roles).
Nanaka Yano won Best ...
And she's back. Just weeks after she was forced to resign over a sex scandal, Akira Ogawa has won re-election as mayor of Maebashi in Gunma.
Ogawa resigned in late November after a series of love hotel trysts with an older, married city worker were exposed by a tabloid scoop.
The 42-year-old Ogawa tried to claim the hotel meetings with the 54-year-old subordinate were just that, meetings related to work, but the public was unconvinced, and both she and the unnamed senior male civil servant resigned their positions. We speculated at the time that her career was then over, but she clearly had ...
In September, one of Japan's most popular YouTubers, Hikaru, experienced a major backlash when he announced that his new marriage with his beautiful 30-year-old wife was an open one in which they would both have other partners.
The 34-year-old faced heavy criticism for declaring so brazenly that he wanted to seek out extramarital partners.
Now comes the quite unsurprising news that Hikaru and Shingeki no Noa (Minori Maeda), a former hostess turned businesswoman and model, have divorced after just seven months of marriage.
Hikaru announced the news on his YouTube channel on December ...
The popular YouTuber Ikechan has launched her photo book Afterglow, which is advertised as her final gravure release following her adultery scandal in July.
Published by Kodansha, the book came out on December 10. To promote it, Ikechan has made her first public appearance since her scandal in July, when it emerged that she was having a relationship with a married man, Kosuke Minowa, a prominent editor at publisher Gentosha.
They were pictured by a tabloid photographed after a Korean BBQ date. The images of Ikechan, puffing out her cheeks and looking cute and happy with a belly full of ...
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 ...
Does regular sex with a prostitute count as adultery? It's not just a moral question, but a legal one, because it could be grounds for divorce and a lawsuit, since an aggrieved spouse can sue the lover in Japan for damages if it can be proved they knew the man or woman was married.
FNN recently reported on a father of four married for 24 years who had a secret. He was secretly meeting a woman he met at a brothel at a love hotel once a month, paying her ¥30,000 each time. Upon learning of his betrayal, his wife directed her anger at the other woman, and sued her for ¥3.3 million.
All three ...
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. ...
