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

I guess the important thing to keep in mind is that this poll was completed on the internet by a company called COBS. COBS is a data collection agency with members who answer polls and post reviews in return for points. This also explains the number one answer… Here are the result of the poll in reverse order:

5. 6.2% of respondents (124 votes) kiss for the first time on the fifth date.
4. 10.2% (212 votes) kiss on the second date.
3. 16% (320 votes) kiss on the third date.

2. 19% (votes) kiss on the first date.

… and the surprise (?) answer…

… the #1 vote getting option…

1. 39.5% (790 votes) answered… “I have never been on a date.”

Thanks to all who participated in the study, now get out into the real world and get yourselves some dates! Almost a fifth of you stand a chance of getting a kiss on the first date, especially if you date each other!

A new type of cram school has opened in Japan designed to help women find a husband and prepare for life after nuptials. The school targets women who are hoping to prepare themselves for dating and marriage, and help them find love and marriage. Some students include the so-called “Ara-Fo” or “Around Forty” unmarried women who are currently one of the fashionable topics for dramas in Japan.

Some of the courses include:

• Make-up
• Table Manners When on a Date
• Seminar on Writing Email
• Dating Simulations
• Attractiveness Power Up Seminar
• Manners for When Riding in a Car
• Women’s Power Up Coordinator

The following video is a news report done on the school, “Aoyama Konkatsu Yobiko”. The school charges a minimum of 200,000 yen per year for classes, and already has over 30 students.

Don’t worry guys! They say they also have courses for men!

The Japanese website “Kon Katsu News“, or Married Life News has posted an article about an easy and free way to tell if your boyfriend is marriage material.

The method?

Search all of the drives on his computer for the following types of files:
.jpg, .bmp, .wmv, .mpg, .avi, and .rm…

I’m not sure if this is supposed to determine whether he still holds a flame for his ex-girlfriend (old photos), has adult movies and pictures on his drive, has pictures of something even worse… or maybe checking if he’s smart enough to password protect or store externally anything that might irrationally make his marriage-blog-advice-following girlfriend jealous.

I post this here not because I think it’s good advice, but because of how surprisingly common it is in Japan for couples to go through each other’s pockets, bags, cell phones, computers, and who knows what else.

It also makes me wonder if other countries’ mobile phones have the same amount of secret and password protected features. Cell phones in Japan have special ways to hide information about contacts, recent phone calls, and photos.

Things to keep in mind about the list are:

Since they are things that Japanese girls want their boyfriends to STOP doing, it means that they are things a lot of Japanese guys with girlfriends do… I’m just sayin’. If you live in Japan, you probably see this kind of thing all the time. It also doesn’t look like these things are deal-breakers for the girls because these don’t seem to be reasons to break-up.

To the list (with my comments or clarifications in parentheses):

1.   Not listening to what she has to say

2.   Going out to eat alone with another woman

(not implying cheating per say, just being alone or going out to eat with another girl or female friend)

3.   Going to the “Gokon” match-making parties

(if you are unfamiliar, these are the 4-girls-sitting-across-from-4-boys-hoping-to-hook-up-or-break-into-couples parties to which some guys “innocently” attend “just to keep the numbers even”)

4.   Bad table manners

5.   (tied) Constantly checking their cell phones during a date

5.   (tied)

7.   Smoking

8.   Dressing badly when they go on dates

9.   Locking their cell phones

(OK, this is just because they want to check the guy’s phone when he’s in the bathroom, taking a shower, or asleep… a side note here that Japanese cell phones have the most amazing stealth features you can imagine, including password protection of only certain data in the address book, and things like that)

10.   Getting caught up in video games

I don’t know how scientific this Livedoor news poll was. They say they had 192 responses from women aged from their teens to their 30s. They were allowed to choose multiple answers. I imagine an open poll, or one in which they were asked to choose only one answer might have come out a bit differently. (If “he doesn’t listen to me” is on the list of possible answers, almost everyone will choose it. If the creators of the questionnaire missed something that may have been chosen such as “verbal or physical abuse”, that one is obviously not going to make the list.

Japanese entertainment site Zakzak reports that several adult video companies have approached Noriko Sakai with million dollar deals. Adult videos featuring former actresses and idols sell extremely well in Japan. A video featuring Sakai would probably be the best selling Japanese adult film in history.

Sakai is a former child star, actress, and idol. She was highly respected and revered until her husband Yuichi Takaso was arrested and she fled throughout Japan hoping to avoid authorities until all evidence of drug use was out of her system.

Sakai was convicted and sentenced to an 18 month sentence suspended 3 years.

Newzjapan Commentary:

I think Sakai is going to have no problem making a comeback. She may start out playing a bad girl or a vixen but there’s no doubt she still has Japan’s attention. Now the fascination of her fans is further fueled by rumors of her and her husband’s sexual adventures, her frequent appearances at clubs, and the way she surprised a nation by throwing away her cell phone and making a break for it once her drug use was known.

Noriko Sakai will be fine without having to do anything but just tell her story, pretend to repent, and take what money comes.

Sometimes I like to throw in some of these fun posts, like a recent poll of women in Japan about things that women do that turn men off.

Anyway, on to the list:

10. Being too fickle about food.

9. Not making an effort to dress up.

8. When it comes time to pay, they don’t even reach for their wallets.

7. When you ask them to go somewhere they respond, “OK… if you are treating!”

6. Badmouthing friends.

5. Everything they say is a complaint about something.

4. Asking about your ex-girlfriends.

3. Talking about how many men they’ve been with.

2. Using foul language.

1. Acting differently when there is a good-looking guy around.

Sounds like a pretty international list to me… I don’t see anything that is especially Japanese which is good. I like it when things like this show people’s similarities rather than differences. This comes from an article in Japanese on livedoor news.

This story is an interesting one because it is a modern view of what’s going on in Japan. If you are already confused about fashion in Japan, school rules about hair coloring, and what people think of all the bleached blonde boys and girls running around the streets here, this story is not going to help you understand anything.

The following tweet on Twitter caused a stir in Japan:

A concise translation is that “motyli” the author of the tweet was riding the train and a very cute young girl was standing in front of motyli. The girl was telling her friend that her mother had said, “These days girls with black hair are being targeted by strange men. Just go bleach your hair,” and handed her some money.

If you come to visit Japan, especially during the summer time, you’ll see a lot of girls with bleached hair, or at least highlights in their hair. Some will even have this unnatural orange color. However the Japanese idols that seem the most popular with men are ones with straight black hair. As the schools tell the girls not to color their hair, often claiming that girls with their hair colored are more likely victims of assault (I don’t know how common this claim is, but I’ve heard it on more than one occasion), this mother is using the same logic as a reason for her daughter to color her hair.

The idea behind the hair bleaching seems two-fold. One is that she won’t seem so innocent and attractive to the “otaku” types or the older men who lust after the young teen idols. (I am referring to the kind of guys that say they are going to kill themselves or someone else when a manga character they like gets a boyfriend, or it’s implied that she’s not a virgin… god forbid an actual human teen idol singer gets a boyfriend or is seen smoking.) The bleached hair sort of destroys the image of innocence. Another reason this mother may think her daughter should bleach her hair for her own protection is that mom may think it’ll make her daughter look like a tough girl.

My opinion is that in a country with a NEED for women’s only cars on trains, hair color is not going to be a big preventative weapon in the battle against sexual harassment and “chikan” or gropers. I think, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, that the problems need to be dragged out into the open. The girl with black hair being stalked for looking pure and classically Japanese is only going to be changing the demographic of her stalker when she changes her hair color.

What we need is for Japanese men AND women to start educating Japanese boys and girls about being proud of themselves, loving themselves, and protecting themselves. Maybe Twitter and blogging and the like are the kind of anonymous places that can kick start a revolution of openness in Japan, or maybe I’m too optimistic as usual.

It seems that a Japanese husband and wife, supposedly for the sake of being non-sexist and fair, have decided on prices for various things the wife does around the house. The man is a 48 year old company employee married to a 42 year old woman. They claim that since the husband has started paying for services, he’s begun complimenting his wife more and the whole household’s become more fun.

The story says that the man always comes home late to find his wife and kids sleeping, and a note on the dining room table asking him to circle yes or no for whether he needs a bento lunch the next day. The memo asks him to leave the 400 yen fee on the table as well.

The wife also demands 5000 yen each time the couple have sex.

Some thoughts:

OK, taking care of the kids and home is hard work for a woman even if she’s home all day, but if this couple really wants to be fair shouldn’t the whole thing be a big fun concerted effort at home? Why does it have to be about money? Why does the guy have to pay his wife? Maybe she should pay him, or if compensation is the point of it all, they can pay each other 5000 yen each and call it a day?

So sex one time is worth 12 bentos? I don’t really know what to do with this information. Maybe they can get away from money and start up a point system. Does food making go both ways? If he makes breakfast lunch and dinner for the family one Sunday does that add up to more than 12 meals and entitle him to a night of sex? Does she get to refuse his business at will or is she also bound to let him eat a bento or sleep with her as long as he makes with the cash?

Is 5000 yen cheap for sex with the wife? She’s competing with the “water business” and prostitution services in Japan, and although I don’t know how much they cost, it might be worth it for the man if the service is some how better or more appealing. People pay more for quality, skill, or style.

I’m not taking this story too seriously, but I’m pretty sure this will end badly, but we probably won’t get that news.

I wonder if the guy’s friends are also allowed to order a 400 yen bento or (ahem) other services from the woman. Actually, I don’t really care, but it’d be a shame if the kids grow up thinking about the world this way. What of love, family, community?!

Well, if making it all about the yen makes everybody happy, then who am I to say?

A recent study by the Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has shown marriages in which the couple is already expecting are currently 26.8% and seem to be on the rise. Some wedding planning companies are saying that number may be as high as 40%.

There is a movement to rename the shotgun weddings from “deki-kon” or “dekichatta kekkon” (meaning something like “we really did it” or “we made a mistake” or “we messed up” marriage) to something more positive like “omedeta-kon” or “congratulations wedding”, or “angel wedding”, or “sazukari-kon” which I’ll translate here as “gifted wedding” considering the baby a great gift

Some other creative names include the magazine Zexy which gave us mamarraige… an obvious play on the words mama and marriage. (I kind of like this one.)

The wedding planning services interviewed say that some of the special services they offer for these mamarriages or gifted weddings are:

• wedding dresses with more room around the middle for the brides expanding belly
• buckets under the tables for just in case the wife gets morning sickness
• staff at the ready with drinks and towels for if the bride starts to feel ill