A man from New Zealand has been arrested in Japan for attempted extortion after he sent messages to a girl in her teens. The 56-year-old man, who says he is a chef but is unnamed in media reports, was arrested when he landed at Komatsu Airport in Ishikawa, a prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast. He is suspected of sending messages to a teenaged girl in Ishikawa who he met on social media. On April 18 at around 10 p.m., the man is accused of sending the girl a threatening message, warning her that if she ignores his messages he would go to her home. He told her to respond within two ...

When a foreign-born contestant won Miss Japan last month, it sparked much wringing of hands from certain sections of the commentariat and internet, and a roughly equal amount of earnest gushing about how much Japan was changing. Karolina Shiino, who was born in Ukraine but has lived in Japan since the age of five and eventually naturalized as a Japanese citizen, was awarded the title of Miss Japan in a ceremony in January. The face of Japan was now officially a white woman. This was enough of a news story to make waves internationally. Now, as they say, the plot thickens. The 26-year-old ...

Do Japanese girls want to date Western guys? It's a question that many of our readers probably want to find out. Of course, the answer is: it depends on the girl. But such obvious points aside, what do Japanese women, especially young Japanese women, think about dating non-Japanese man, particularly from Western countries? Fortunately, instead of going out and doing a time-consuming survey ourselves, we found this nice video of street interviews from a few months ago. The interviewer, Takashii, manages to score comments from some fine-looking and very eligible ladies. We're not sure how ...