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 ...
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 ...
Saika Kawakita is one of the biggest porn stars in Japan and a probably familiar face to most readers of this blog. She has gained global fame more recently because a GIF from one of her porn productions inexplicably became a meme on social media in December 2024.
According to a scoop by the tabloid Weekly Bunshun published this week, the 26-year-old Kawakita is having an affair with volleyball player Ran Takahashi.
The 24-year-old Takahashi currently plays for the Suntory Sunbirds in Osaka, and has played on the Japanese national team.
He is supposed to be in a relationship with the ...
Maebashi is a small city in Gunma, a short distance north from Tokyo and rarely in the news. That all changed this week, however, with the intense media response to reports that the female mayor has been allegedly conducting an affair with a male staffer.
Society seems to respond more strongly to adultery claims when it involves a woman. A male politician having an affair would result in nary an eyebrow raised (opposition party leader Yuichiro Tamaki quickly recovered from his scandal), but it's a very different situation for women in her early forties.
It should be noted from the start, ...
Hikaru is one of Japan's most popular YouTubers but the 34-year-old has hit a blip in his career after publicly declaring that he was in an open marriage in a video posted on September 14.
Within 24 hours of posting the video, his channel had bled thousands of followers, dropping to below 5 million. In a single day, he lost around 120,000 subscribers. Comments on the video total over 56,000 at the time of writing and views over 4 million.
In the video, Hikaru appears with his 30-year-old wife, Shingeki no Noa (Minori Maeda), a former hostess turned businesswoman in Osaka.
She once made ...
The implications for generative AI and porn are manifold, from fully AI-created adult videos to photo books and other content featuring AI "idols" and models.
While the government is keen to use artificial intelligence to boost Japan's declining marriage rate, the police have already started cracking down on using AI to make "obscene" content.
What about the private sector? There's a lot of money to be made from AI and companies are developing services to sell to us, including romantic ones.
As long heralded by science fiction (Black Mirror, Her, Blade Runner 2049, inter alia), we may well ...
The Japan Ladies Professional Golf Association has banned 30-year-old male caddy Ryo Kurinaga from the tour for nine years. The ban follows Bunshun reports published in March that the married Kurinaga had affairs with three separate pro players (24-year-old Miyu Abe, 22-year-old Haruka Kawasaki, and 21-year-old Yumeka Kobayashi).
It is unclear if Kurinaga carried out his philandering with the women at the same time and how long each affair continued. His ban extends to attending any JLPGA event too.
You might think that this was a private matter and unrelated to the sport. Nonetheless, ...
With a few notable and noble exceptions, politicians are mostly on the fiddle or on the pull, their hands in the expenses till or around some girl's body. It's a story as old as the hills and pretty much the same in any country, including Japan.
You might think that any politician from the Democratic Party for the People would be a bit more cautious after the leader, Yuichiro Tamaki, was caught having a long-term affair with a gravure model, but temptation plays to a different tune.
The party was forced to punish Masaki Hiraiwa, indefinitely suspending him after allegations emerged of his ...
Long-time readers may remember the story from 2019 of Kazuko Iwamoto, the nude model and actress arrested for attacking her lover at a train station after he tried to end their relationship. The 43-year-old had, it seems, revealed to him that she was pregnant, but her lover was a married cad who wanted to make a getaway at the resort town of Atami.
It was of the most bizarre stories we have ever run and, to be honest, pure catnip: a beautiful jukujo at the height of her fame seemingly caught in a destructive relationship, turns desperate -- and the result is a sensational (though thankfully, ...
