Gravure idol Asuka Oda has announced the opening of a lounge in the Kabukicho district of Shinjuku, central Tokyo, where gravure idols will serve customers.
While we have seen similar kinds of gravure bars in the past (as well as bars with active Japanese porn stars for servers), this may be the first opened by an active gradol and staffed by her peers.
The 36-year-old Oda said, "I am pleased to announce the opening of Gravure Idol Lounge Grow in Kabukicho, Shinjuku."
Opening such a business is a long-cherished plan of hers, she shared. "Owning my own place has been a dream of mine. I am ...
Ayame Misaki is back with a new digital photo book. Shot by ND Chow, wet moon came out via Shueisha and Weekly Playboy on May 18.
Living up to its title, it features a sweaty Misaki showing off her shapely body in a bikini.
Misaki is now 37 years old and seems set to replicate the success of Kyoko Fukada and continue such gravure beach shoots into her late thirties and even forties.
Like the voice actress Yuka Iguchi, Misaki reinvented her in her thirties with an athletic look boasting muscular curves and a sun-kissed body.
Beginning in 2021, her comeback has reaped dividends for ...
There's jukujo and then there's Yuka Iguchi.
The voice actress reinvented herself in her late thirties as an athletic, sexy idol, showing off her beach body in a dazzling series of photo shoots for gravure magazines. Now she's back with her glamorous figure.
Iguchi graces the cover of Weekly Playboy this month to promote her upcoming photo book, her third overall and her first in about two years following the hugely successful More More More. The as-yet-untitled book was lavishly shot in Vietnam and Japan, and comes out July 11 from Shueisha.
"I thought my previous photo book would be my ...
This is your perennial reminder that Japan's Minister of State for Special Missions (Child Policy, Youth Empowerment, Declining Birth Rate, Gender Equality) looked like this.
Alright, she did when she was much younger. Today, she's 61 years old and has a penchant for the pants suit.
She became a politician in 2010. Despite having no children of her own (though she's had some practice -- she's on her third husband, who is 24 years her junior, since 2016), she was tasked with reversing Japan's chronically declining birth rate.
Mihara started off her career as a singer. When she was an ...
We do love the gravure comeback. Sure, it's sometimes just a marketing gimmick, a manufactured framing of a return in order to generate headlines. Other times, a comeback genuinely raises a nostalgic smile as we remember when the idol (and we) were younger, and marvel at how good they still are.
Recently, comebacks have been popular, with top stars from the 2000s returning to gravure for an anniversary or career boost: Nozomi Sasaki, Megumi Kagurazaka, Erika Sawajiri, and Atsuko Maeda.
But most of these ladies are still in their forties or even late thirties. What about those stunners from ...
The number of sex services and brothels for women in Japan is gradually on the rise. The number currently registered on the sex industry information site Kaikan is said to be around 400 nationwide. A new book, Thoughts on Money, Care, and Desire After Using a Sex Service for Women Because I Was Lonely, written by Chiaki Fujitani and published by Chuokoron Shinsha in March, discusses this rapidly developing industry.
Shueisha Online recently interviewed the author about the trend. The following is an edited translation of the article.
In recent years, female-oriented sex establishments ...
The former AKB48 idol Haruna Kojima has focused on fashion modeling and her own apparel brand since leaving the music group.
She has transformed herself into a savvy businesswomen by building a brand that puts her own popularity as a model at its center. Now aged 37, Kojiharu can claim business triumph with the sale this month of her apparel company heart relation for ¥3.5 billion ($22 million) to e-commerce company yutori.
She created heart relation in 2020 to run her (oddly named) brand Her lip to (which she founded in 2018) and Her lip to BEAUTY. She set to receive the payment in two ...
What magic is this? What elixir of youth has she drunk? Because veteran gravure idol Yoko Kumada does not look like a 43-year-old three-time mom.
The model continues to carve out a career well past the point at which most gradols have thrown in the towel. Not so with Yoko, who has overcome a fair few challenges in her personal life (not least, domestic violence and divorce) and stays in superb shape through pole dancing. She pumps out regular gravure DVDs that show off her athletic body.
In the latest proof of this, Kumada has released a video on Instagram showing a behind-the-scenes ...
It may seem strange that the Japanese interwebs is going mad over a single mom in her mid-thirties, but don't question the power of nostalgia. Because we are talking about Atsuko Maeda, the most famous idol in the original AKB48 lineup, who was ubiquitous in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
She left the group in 2012 to pursue a more serious acting career, leaving music and the gravure weeklies behind. For fans back in the day, her return to gravure is catnip, since they have grown older together, and it's like snuggling up to a former lover.
Maeda is now a divorced mom and has claimed that ...
In mid-February, we shared some initial preview pics from Atsuko Maeda's comeback photo book, Beste.
The 34-year-old single mom, who was a member of the legendary first generation of AKB48 back in the day, looks ravishing in the blue and pink lingerie in the shoot.
The most explicit shots feature Acchan nude except for thong panties, while lying on her front with her hands covering her breasts, and revealing her alluring back and side boob.
It's all nice stuff in the idol-you-can-meet tradition of AKB48, though quite tamer compared to former SKE848 idol Ruka Kitano's recent photo book, ...
