Housewife hooked on host club hunks amasses debilitating debt

TOKYO (TR) – A mother of two has confessed to women’s rag Josei Seven (Mar. 3) that she has racked up 3 million yen in debts at a host club over the past eight years. Read more

Boris live at I’ll Be Your Mirror in Tokyo

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, February 27, 2011) Read more

Autolux live at I’ll Be Your Mirror in Tokyo

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, February 27, 2011) Read more

The kindergartners

(Cartoon by Politicomix, February 28, 2011)

Illegal Azabu playpen for filthy rich gets busted

At around 22:50 on the evening of Feb. 4, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Feb. 27) investigators from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Dept. raided “United Lounge Tokyo,” a high-class cabaret club allegedly operating illegally in Tokyo’s ritzy Azabu district.

Once their eyes adjusted to the surroundings, the cops blinked and ogled in astonishment.

“It was like we were standing in a deluxe hotel,” one is quoted as saying.

Occupying all 80 tsubo (about 265 square meters) — an entire floor in a four-story building in one of Tokyo’s swankest residential areas — United featured private rooms equipped with karakoke, expensive sofas and an enormous wine cellar stocked with Chatau Margaux, Romanee-Conti and other premium labels priced as high as 1.5 million yen per bottle. Read more

Chinese pandas Bili and Xiannu settle in to their new home in Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo

(Cartoon by Politicomix, February 26, 2011)

Kyoto sex-club guide spots go underground

Recent local legislation in Kyoto is causing sex-club recommendation centers to emerge in highly unlikely places, reports weekly tabloid Shukan Jitsuwa (Mar. 10).

Following the enactment last November of a law that prohibits the existence of fuzoku navigational shops, the operations have gone underground in the Gion and Kiyamachi districts of Japan’s former capital.

(For non-regular readers of Shukan Jitsuwa — shame on you — such places will typically offer computer terminals, area brochures, and guidebooks featuring local clubs that potential customers may use to seek their desired form of debauchery.)

The new variation has taken shape inside usually mundane shops.

“On the surface, ticket stores, second-hand clothes shops, used-book stores, and other types of second-hand stores operate as advertised,” says an individual related to a fuzoku shop, “but some are also engaged in providing guidance to fuzoku shops, kyabakura joints, and girl’s bars.” Read more

New teacher no sooner moves in than makes a move on

“I commute from home to an occupational training school close by. The new bookkeeping teacher is just the kind of hunk that I like. Anyway, completely by coincidence, he wound up moving into the apartment building that my parents operate.”

Thus begins another titillating account of lurid female fantasy, from the December issue of women’s soft porn mag Ai no Taiken Special Deluxe, as appearing in Shukan Bunshun (Mar. 3).

“One day I decided to drop by his place, which I could see from mine, just to say hello,” she writes. “I had just turned 20, and being of the legal age to purchase alcohol, gave him a six-pack as a house-warming present.

“He seemed pleasantly surprised, and invited me to drink some with him. We started feeling mellower and mellower, and the next thing I knew we were rolling around and balling on the floor, amidst the boxes of stuff he had only partially unpacked. It was simply wild, and I had a great time of it!” Read more

In which Lenny learns Radiohead won’t be playing in Tokyo

(Cartoon by Politicomix, February 20, 2011)

Tokyo rewind: Right-wing groups commemorate assassination of politician Inejiro Asanuma 50 years later

TOKYO (TR) – By any measure, the assassination of socialist politician Inejiro Asanuma in Tokyo in 1960 was a shocking event — and five decades later the impact of the incident continues to reverberate in unpredictable ways.

During a political debate at Tokyo’s Hibiya Public Hall in October, a 17-year-old rightist, Otoya Yamaguchi, broke free from the assembled crowd, rushed the stage, and stabbed Asanuma with a small sword two times before being apprehended. He committed suicide three weeks later while being incarcerated in a detention cell.

Right-wing groups had strongly opposed Asanuma, who criticized the Liberal Democratic Party and the United States, proclaiming the latter to be the common enemy of the Japanese and Chinese peoples during a speech in Beijing one year before. Read more

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