Diamonds for Tokyo Tower

TOKYO – December marks Tokyo Tower’s 50th anniversary, and to commemorate the occasion the landmark will be getting a special luminary treatment.

From the evening of December 1st, Tokyoites will be able to view both the default “Landmark Light” illumination, lit by 180 floodlights, and a brand new “Diamond Veil” design, whereby the tower’s middle exterior will appear to be strung by vertically running diamonds.

Motoko Ishii, president of Motoko Ishii Lighting Design, the company behind the lighting spectacle, says that many have told her that the 333-meter-tall tapering steel structure resembles a classy woman in a skirt. “I thought to myself about what would be the best present that I could give her,” explained Ishii in an interview with The Tokyo Reporter in October. “I ended up coming up with the diamond idea.” Read more

Death by Viagra causing grief for love hotel owners

“It appears that with more widespread usage of Viagra, more older men are dying with their boots on, if you know what I mean.”

The anonymous love hotel proprietor tells Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 29) that over the past three years, he’s had to deal with two fatalities.

“I guess when men are having affairs, they tend to push themselves beyond their own limits. For an older man to take Viagra and then jump on a young girl’s bones, he’s asking for trouble.” Read more

Dimmed-down ‘LED-men’ disappoint incandescent damsels

A fortyish section head at a manufacturing company is seated in an izakaya pub, watching as a group of younger guys and gals interact. The women all order mugs of draft beer. One guy asks for a glass of chilled oolong tea and his buddy goes with a cassis syrup and orange juice cocktail.

“The women do the ordering for the guys, and lead the conversation,” the older man observes bemusedly. “The fellows just sit and nod politely. It looks like the gender roles have become topsy-turvy.”

In current parlance, reports Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 26), such unassertive males have come to be referred to as “LED-otoko” (light-emitting diode males). In other words, they twinkle brightly without emitting any heat. Read more

The snake lady at Hanazono Shrine

Last week, Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku once again hosted its fall festival, featuring around 200 food stalls, game booths and a tent for the 蛇女さん, or the Snake Lady. For 800 yen, visitors could watch her, flowing scarfs and all, bite off the head of three-foot long snake and slowly swallow its body. Photography was prohibited inside.

The show’s barker promised that the activities were indeed suitable for women and children but as these Youtube videos reveal it is some gruesome stuff:

The third festival of the month starts this Friday and continues through Saturday.

Strippers in Aoyama

On Saturday, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School presented a live show at La Boheme in Aoyama. As careful inspection of the below photos taken during the burlesque show will reveal, nationalist sentiment in Japan even extends to the stripper crowd. Who knew? Read more

Oscar-winning animator bemoans prime minister, state of Japan

TOKYO – At a press luncheon last week, Japan’s most successful contemporary filmmaker expressed great displeasure with Prime Minister Taro Aso and concern for the future of the nation’s children.

Animation director Hayao Miyazaki, whose smash “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” this year topped the box office over the summer, said that rather than raising children in an environment filled with nationalist ideals young people should be taught crucial skills, such as building fires, climbing trees and using knives and ropes, before learning to read and write.

“Instead of looking for ways to stimulate domestic demand by building bridges or roads,” said Miyazaki at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Thursday, “we should have the proper environment in place for our future generation.” Read more

Beard Papa on Broadway

NEW YORK – As a line trickles out of this tiny shop onto Broadway’s sidewalk, a customer’s order is called out from the register: “Ni ko hairimasu!” Two cream puffs, “pipin’ hot,” as the Beard Papa motto reads, are then plucked out of a nearby box by a female Japanese staff member and tossed into a paper bag. The other chef-hat-wearing employees behind the counter continue their tasks of dispensing the custard and retrieving baked shells from the oven.

“The customer can watch the making and baking. That is very attractive,” says Koji Tsuda, general manager in the international division of Muginoho Co., Ltd., the Osaka-based restaurant company that created the Beard Papa brand. A feeling that the puffs are being made “just for you,” the customer, as opposed to any faceless person is the intention, he emphasizes. Read more

Muneo Suzuki hits the comeback trail

TOKYO – It wasn’t a prank, and neither is his comeback.

Flashbulbs popped and cameras rolled for Muneo Suzuki’s speech entitled “Ethics In The Japanese Political World” on April 1st at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

“I actually thought that I was being set up for a joke,” said the Diet member from Hokkaido of the fact that he asked his secretary to confirm that he was indeed invited to speak on April Fool’s Day. He didn’t mention the irony within the speech’s title.

Politics and ethics make for a sizeable contradiction in Japan, and former ruling Liberal Democratic Party member Muneo Suzuki ought to know. Once the ultimate symbol of greed within Japan’s political world, he is now set for a comeback. His speech was light on political morality, but it made two things clear: He has done nothing wrong and Japan hasn’t seen the last of the man with the eternal smile. Read more

Shibuya scouts roll with regulation

TOKYO (TR) – The train car doors open, dispensing hundreds of passengers in the direction of the Shibuya Station ticket gates. Meanwhile, a half-dozen young men standing and chatting in nearby Hachiko Square extinguish their half-finished smokes in anticipation of the exiting horde.

Often attired in well-worn black suits and sporting wavy dyed hair, these “scouts” repeatedly scan the oncoming crowd. Tokyo’s Shibuya district is the ultimate gathering point for young, fashionable females dressed for attention in remarkably short skirts and snug tops, and it is this demographic that comprises these scouts’ prime target.

If one spots a particular look or set of measurements that meets his company’s needs, he will quickly moves up beside and smoothly inquire as to whether she wants a part-time job. Should she stop, utter a peep, or acknowledge him in the slightest (all very rare occurrences), he will get down to brass tacks: “Do you like sex?” Read more

Hentai manga to take the world

TOKYO – Toshio Maeda is doing some touch-up work on a drawing of a female athlete possessing muscular arms and perky breasts that bulge from around her tight-fitting blue bikini. He begins on her face and scrolls down his 2-in-1 computer screen and digital drawing tablet, making small additions to her already highly detailed form.

Just before he advances the drawing stylus down to work on her lower half, the bespectacled 49-year old explains that most of his fans don’t like looking at simply a muscled woman. He then grins and taps the stylus once more. The screen regenerates with a large phallic protrusion from her crotch area. “So I like doing something different,” he says. Read more

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