On September 15, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested 27-year-old hostess and influencer Rino Tazawa on suspicion of possession of cocaine.
Tazawa, who lives in plush Minato ward in Tokyo, is a highly successful hostess at the club Jungle Tokyo in Roppongi, where she is known as Rino Yamato. She claimed that she once earned ¥230 million for her club in her birthday month, and owns a Bentley Continental GT supposedly worth ¥28 million.
She was arrested with her boyfriend, a 28-year-old executive at a construction company, at her apartment. She is alleged to have had 0.4 grams of ...
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 ...
The top hostess Himeka has spoken out about her current feelings after winning a lawsuit in which a former male client had sought ¥38.5 million in damages from her.
"There were times when I was filled with despair," she said of her experience during the trial.
Himeka (also known as Himeka Nakamoto), who currently works at a club in Osaka and is famous for her high-earning hostess lifestyle, was sued by a former client in March last year.
Kakeru Kikuchi, the former CEO of a venture capital firm that went bankrupt, made various accusations of "romance and marriage fraud" on social media and ...
Young entrepreneurs are always worthy of praise. Young female entrepreneurs perhaps especially so. But the response to Mizuho Ieiri has been more muted, particularly among male netizens.
The International Christian University student has just opened a luxury Korean BBQ restaurant in Shibuya, central Tokyo, using ¥60 million of her own money.
Aiming to become financially independent and retire early, the 24-year-old has spent six years at the prestigious college but has still not graduated because she was so busy working. Doing what? Well, she wasn't interning at an office (or, ...
A college student. A pachinko parlor worker. A hostess. An influencer. What do all these young Japanese women have in common?
While not as famous (or perhaps infamous) as a place like South Korea, plastic surgery is not uncommon in Japan among models, idols, and porn stars, and also sex workers and social media influencers.
Some female celebrities spend millions of yen on multiple surgeries, though few admit it.
Which is why it tends to make the news when someone does break the taboo and talk about this industry secret.
On a recent edition of the Abema TV show Hyena of Love Season 5, ...
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 ...
What happens to all those millions of yen that flow through the coffers of Japan's hostess clubs?
A lot goes into the pockets of the hard-working hostesses, of course, plus plenty is spent the expensive decor and upkeep of the venue.
Not very much goes to the taxman, it seems.
At the end of September 2025, a high-end hostess club in Roppongi was found to have concealed approximately ¥500 million in income. In addition to Fabric Lounge Tokyo's owners reporting lower income and fabricating fictitious expenses, the National Tax Agency said that some of the top hostesses themselves had failed ...
Readers with long memories may recall the story we published in 2015 about Rie Saito, the beautiful hostess who happened to be deaf from childhood.
At the time, Saito was a single mom, Ginza hostess, and author of a bestselling memoir that was turned into a TV drama in 2010. She was also an aspiring politician.
She successfully ran in an election for Tokyo's Kita Ward Assembly in 2015, serving her full four-year term. She had national ambitions and was subsequently selected as a proportional representation candidate for the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan in the House of ...
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 former HKT48 idol Haruka Kodama has announced that she has worked as a hostess in Ginza.
After making a stunning comeback in gravure last year and released a digital photo book in January, is the model and actor in need of some regular work to keep herself in clover?
Not quite. Along with some ravishing pics of herself in full hostess garb, Haruppi released a video in which she "snuck" into a club for one night and got to try out a shift as a hostess.
The 28-year-old is playing a hostess in the April episodes of Tokyo Kanojo (a YouTube drama series), so she says she was gaining ...
