As Japan enjoys the honeymoon after a historic World Cup Finals victory, one starting member of Japan’s Women’s Soccer Team will be preparing for a real honeymoon sometime in the near future.

As she and the rest of the team were still on the pitch celebrating their victory, about 30 minutes after the deciding goal was scored, Japanese striker Yuki Nagasato announced her plans to get married. The lucky fellow is a classmate of hers from Tokai University where she played soccer and studied before turning pro. She currently plays for FFC Turbine Potsdam in Germany.

Because of Nagasato’s commitment to Potsdam, she and her fiance, who does not work in the sports industry, will continue their long distance relationship between Japan and Germany. She has commented that she hopes to be able to balance her personal and professional lives to hopefully continue to represent Japan in international contests, including the upcoming London Olympics.

With a huge height difference on display, 192 cm tall Masaya Nakamura and former Morning Musume member Mari Yaguchi who reaches all of 145 cm on a good day got married. Newzjapan reported the pending nuptials around which were announced around New Year’s. (Mari Yaguchi to Marry Masaya Nakamura).

The official date of the marriage is listed as May 21st, 2011. The couple have been seen spending time together for at least a year now. Yaguchi is currently 28. Nakamura is 25 years old.

The cute picture below was featured on a recent post to Masaya Nakamura’s blog.

More photos can be found on Mari Yaguchi’s Blog on Gree.

Reports say that Japanese actress and model, Koyuki has married actor Kenichi Matsuyama.

The pair met when filming the movie Kamui Gaiden, the Legend of Kamui, based on the well-known manga and anime series.

34 year old Koyuki is best known to international audiences for her leading role in the film The Last Samurai as “Taka”. Kenichi Matsuyama, known to fans as “Matsu-Ken” is known for taking eclectic roles and may be best known as the character L in the Death Note series of films. He is 26 years old.

Aya Ueto is a huge star and idol in Japan, but she is being praised for showing up and actually doing some work in the area affected by last month’s earthquakes and tsunami.

She especially received praise for showing up ready to work without her face and nails done, and for earnestly giving out food and interacting with fans. In the video below, you can see how many people appreciated her being there.

Ueto was there helping out with the volunteer effort from Ishihara International Productions, a production agency founded by legendary actor Yujiro Ishihara.

You really have to appreciate how positive this girl is about the snow that recently hit Tokyo. This Japanese high school girl got caught on camera on her way home from cram school.

She slips, loses her shoe, slips again, and still seems to be loving the rare winter wonderland around her.

Japanese singer, Hitomi, has called her own husband her greatest enemy in raising their children. She recently released a new baby clothing line in collaboration with Seven&i Holdings (the growing powerhouse behind Japan’s 7-11 convenience stores, Itoyokado malls, and much more).

Hitomi’s clothing line will be called Pomipomi, and when announcing it commented that there are many things she wants her husband, actor Masayoshi Haneda, to do, but in the end he’s an “enemy” to her child raising efforts.

She praised actor/singer Takeshi Tsuruno for his efforts to help his family around the house in addition to working.

Tsuruno was a guest at the press release.

Hitomi says that she focused her efforts on making the baby clothes easy to put on, and colorful.

Another poll from Sugoren gives us a list of the top 9 things that Japanese women want their boyfriends to learn how to do well.

I was somewhat surprised by the order of a few items, but the content was pretty predictable.

9. UFO Catcher AKA Crane Games or Claw Games (so that guys can pull cute little stuffed animals and presents out of a machine at will)

8. Car Repair (to fix minor problems with a car. I know very few non-mechanic, non-car-mania Japanese guys that even know how to change a tire or oil so take that for what it is)

7. Outdoor Skills (so that they can go on outdoor and camping dates… very different and much easier than what our American readers might think of as “camping”. I hope you like yakisoba.)

6. Massage (to soothe those tired muscles)

5. Computer Skills (to help her with her computer problems)

4. English (if you teach English in Japan, here’s a good selling point… the reason most women gave was so that he could communicate for them while traveling abroad)

3. Musical Instruments (so he can play the guitar or piano for her)

2. Martial Arts

1. Cooking (some comments mentioned how much fun it would be to cook together, some Japanese women said they wanted a boyfriend who could cook because they can’t, and others just mentioned that a boyfriend that cooks would make a good husband)

I think this is a pretty general list. The car repair one is the closest I came to actually surprised because, as I mentioned, I know so few people outside of the car industry who can do that kind of thing. Also the guys who don’t work with cars but love cars tend to be a bit obsessive about cars meaning the girlfriend may take a backseat (so to speak).

As for cooking, suffice it to say that future husbands of Japanese wives could do well just to make a few dishes like the classic “dad” food sukiyaki.

Through all the scandals, Mona Yamamoto has remained strong and true to herself. Vilified by some after being photographed going to a love hotel with married baseball player, Tomohiro Nioka in 2008.

In some media Yamamoto was treated as a femme fatale while Nioka escaped too much consternation. She refused to take all the blame and instead decided to return to school to further her education. She registered and began taking distance classes at University of Wales toward earning a Masters in Business Administration.

The program she completed may be the University of Wales distance learning MBA in Japanese.

She married last year, and her husband (who is in real estate) who has been supportive of her studies as she spent a lot of late nights skyping with classmates and writing reports.

Look for the Norwegian-Japanese announcer to get even bigger than she was before the scandal and MBA, returning to Japanese TV as an “expert analyst”, host of news-entertainment shows, and a contestant on quiz shows.

The photo is from her blog.

Mezamashi TV (video at the bottom) did a not-so-academic study of what sports men can do that impress Japanese Women. Some of these may surprise readers so I’ll do my best to help interpret the results.

Let’s start with our top 5 with my comments below:

1. Soccer and Futsal -

(not much explanation necessary here, some people in Japan consider it a “soccer country”, but an inspection of local parks on a Sunday afternoon will show this not to be entirely true. Most kids play at school, but it’s a bit organized. It is true however that soccer seems to be a “moteru” sport as they say.)

2. Basketball

(I guess the implied height here works in basketball’s favor. Also it’s not a real smelly or equipment laden sport so there’s that.)

3. Surfing

4. Snowboarding

(Although it’s probably cool to say you are a surfer… I don’t know how many people you’ll find who actually surf competitively so I kind of want to throw this result out the window. The same goes for skiing and snowboarding… I’m discounting them as a group… let me clarify – Very cool if done as a sport, but I just don’t think many people who say they are surfers/snowboarders/skiiers actually compete.)

5. Baseball

(Why is baseball so far down the list? Some commenters on the net pointed out that if someone is a pro baseball player, this rank goes way up, but think of your typical high school baseball players in Japan and you might have a clue. While the high school baseball culture in Japan produces some of the best students and people you’ll know, it also produces a good amount of arrogant kids with feelings of entitlement based only on the fact that they are on a sports team they chose in a country that doesn’t usually cut members off of a team.)

Now let’s take a look at our worst 5, some surprises here:

1. Table Tennis

(Table Tennis players have a reputation for being kind of geeky.)

2. Golf

(I’m not sure why this is. Some of the young golf players on the circuit are popular, but maybe it has an arrogant or geeky reputation. Again, I think most of the women responded based on their high school memories, and not pro players.)

3. Volleyball

(I’m not really sure about this one. There could be some implied height in there…Hmmm.)

4. Kendo

(A lot of kids planning to be police officers or who have a love of Japanese traditional history and sports join Kendo. It’s not a sport that gets a lot of accolades or necessarily stands out. Some commenters in Japan mentioned the smell the equipment tends to get over time…)

5. Tennis

(I’m not really sure about this one either. See volleyball.)

6. Rugby

(I think this might be a similar situation to baseball without the benefits of a high profile and the chance of future fame.)

Here’s the original video from Mezamashi (for as long as it lasts before being deleted on YouTube).

Japanese Announcer Miku Natsume has recently lost her job over photos released which show her, fully clothed, holding up an unopened condom box. Other photos in the set showed her with a man, her boyfriend at the time. Rumors are that an ex-boyfriend released the pictures.

She is a very good announcer with an atypical, slightly deeper voice than the average female Japanese announcer.

Most people on the net have commented about how stupid this decision is, but tv stations sometimes go to great, almost suffocating lengths to control the images of their announcers.

This is a shame. I really hope she lands on her feet. This is no sex tape, in fact, it can be spun into a positive message for the Japanese use with whom condom use is far lower than it should be.

See the “controversial” photo to the below.

UPDATE: Miku Natsume Comeback – Her Return to TV