This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

There’s a link between the arrest of habitual Filipina mutilator Hiroshi Nozaki and one of Japan’s most notorious crimes ever — the slaying of a Saitama Prefecture woman who was ignored by the cops when she complained about being stalked, according to Nikkan Gendai (4/10).

The link is Hiroshi Nishimura, who was head of the Saitama Prefectural Police in October 1999 when the stalker slaying occurred, and the now-62-year-old former top cop was lambasted by the public for his appalling mishandling of the case.

But at the same time, the same force that Nishimura headed had also arrested Nozaki for chopping up the body of another Filipina, but stuffed up that investigation so badly he was never charged with that woman’s murder.

The stalker slaying created public outcry. A young woman filed a criminal complaint to the Saitama Prefectural Police’s Ageo Police Station, saying that she was being stalked by a man threatening her with violence. Police did nothing about the case and the man she had been accusing stabbed her to death in broad daylight on the streets of Okegawa, Saitama Prefecture. Ageo cops later forged paperwork in an effort to appear a little less lax, but eventually several police were punished for their poor handling of the case, including Nishimura.

While all this was going on, Nishimura’s cops had Nozaki in their custody.

“In September 1999, he was charged with embezzlement for not returning a car he had rented. During his trial in January 2000, he said that he had mutilated a Filipina’s body in Soka, Saitama Prefecture, so he was arrested for mutilation of a corpse,” a Saitama Prefectural Police insider tells Nikkan Gendai. “Just like this case, Nozaki cut up the body in an apartment and dumped the parts in a public toilet in a park. The Saitama police tried to pin a murder charge on Nozaki, but they couldn’t find any evidence to pin him to the case and he refused to talk. He wasn’t even charged for the murder.”

Eventually, Nozaki was released from jail after serving just three years behind bars. He’s back in confinement now, having been arrested Monday, accused of chopping up the body of 22-year-old nightclub hostess Honiefith Ratilla Kamiosawa.

Nishimura, meanwhile, quickly bounced back from his tumultuous time at the head of the Saitama Prefectural Police. He was eventually transferred to Kyushu before he retired in September 2003 and landed a cushy job as the president of a security company based in Fukuoka.

“It’s the biggest security company in western Japan, with annual earnings of about 19 billion yen,” the Saitama police insider says.

Considering he let Nozaki go, perhaps Nishimura would like to comment on the current case.

“I don’t really know much about it,” he tells the lowbrow afternoon tabloid in a statement released through his company.

Ironic, Nikkan Gendai muses, considering his reply when asked for a comment about the stalker slaying not long after it happened.

“We haven’t got the investigation documents,” Nikkan Gendai quotes Nishimura saying at the time, “So I don’t really know much about it.” (By Ryann Connell)

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell (Article below by Masuo Kamiyama). Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

If a man has money in his wallet and a gnawing need to get naked and have sex, where would be the most logical place for him to mount his search?

In Japan, the first place that would come to mind would doubtless be a dimly lit alley proximate to a neon-illuminated drinking district, usually within staggering distance of a major commuter rail station.

By contrast, the last place one would think of looking would be in a suburban residential area. But thanks to magazines like Jitsuwa Taiho (April), we have learned to expect the unexpected.

The magazine’s reporter was able to get wet and go wild, not in a bar or massage parlor, but in a bathing establishment where low-income earners go to get clean. Although as we shall soon see, in his case it was more like getting cleaned out — and in more ways than one.

The incident in question occurred at a “coin shower” in Tokyo’s Bunkyo-ku, an area with a high population of students who reside in cheap apartments and boarding houses.

These coin showers, which are often set up adjacent to coin-operated laundromats, are like self-service car washes for human bodies. Catering to people whose tiny, low-budget residences lack bathing facilities, they consist of a compact cubicle for disrobing and a shower stall — with timer-equipped hot water heater — that is activated by insertion of several hundred yen, permitting a 10- or 15-minute hot-water scrubdown.

Since, unlike the larger neighborhood public bathhouses, they are automated and unmanned, one can slip in for an inexpensive scrub any time of the day or night. Lurking outside one such place in Tokyo’s Bunkyo-ku, Jitsuwa Taiho’s reporter encounters a kinky 36-year-old housewife named Miyuki, who has discovered another use for the establishment — as a spot for turning tricks.

To make contact with her clients, Miyuki uses a prepaid cell phone that cannot be traced to her. Her old-style ‘mama-chari’ bicycle, a standby of Japanese housewives, makes her appear to her neighbors as if she’s headed out for a perfectly innocent shopping expedition. But having a two-wheeler also enables her to flee the scene quickly, should the need arise.

Greeting our reporter with a shy smile, Miyuki’s bearing was unmistakably that of a female on the prowl.

Miyuki tells the reporter she never paid much attention to the coin shower in her neighborhood, until one day she caught a glimpse of a happy young couple, wet hair glistening, making their exit together. This gave her the idea that she could utilize a coin shower stall for illicit purposes.

She also lets him in on her secret fetish.

“I’m a little shy about taking about my sexual preferences with a guy I’m meeting for the first time,” Miyuki giggles. “But when I was young, I played around a lot. If I wasn’t doing it with a guy someplace out of doors, I couldn’t get turned on.”

But obviously in close proximity to her own residence, Miyuki doesn’t dare indulge in such exhibitionist behavior. The relative privacy of a public coin shower, however, permits her to pursue her perverse penchant for promiscuous play.

While Miyuki’s enthusiastic but unrefined techniques suggest she’d never been employed in the sex industry, she did come well equipped. Folded into a bath towel our reporter saw a tube of skin lotion, bottle of throat gargle and several condoms.

“How did I get started in this? Well, my hubby’s salary is pretty low, and I wanted to have some extra spending money. We don’t have kids, and it’s kinda boring to stay home all day by myself.”

Miyuki’s usual charge for 30 minutes, which will included stripping to the skin, slipping inside the shower, soaping up and going all the way, is 20,000 yen. For half that figure, she’ll allocate the same time, but end the occasion with oral only. This time she agreed, for an additional consideration, to pose for nude photos, so the total cost to Jitsuwa Taiho came to 40,000 yen.

After the sudsy sex session ended, Miyuki’s kinky urges were still kindled, so for an additional 5,000 yen, she took the reporter back to her apartment building for a second serving. On the topmost floor on the outdoor fire escape, the two embraced. After slipping a latex muzzle on ol’ Fido, she leaned against the banister while he did her doggy style. Now that’s about as kinky as it gets.

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Tucked in a corner of the Aichi Prefecture city of Toyota, the Homi Danchi housing estate most famous for its racial problems, may offer a vision of the Japan of the future, according to Spa! (12/4).

The estate opened in 1975 and, like many public housing complexes at the time, was then a highly desirable residence for many families.

But an influx of Japanese-Brazilian immigrants from the start of the 1990s saw the housing estate split along racial lines as Japanese residents complained fiercely about loud Latino music, cars parked illegally and rubbish dumped everywhere.

Three decades after it opened, Homi Danchi was no longer so homey. The housing estate had turned into a slum divided between its Japanese inhabitants and the descendants of other Japanese who had earlier left the country for greener pastures overseas.

The brawl between Japanese and Japanese-Brazilians saw its roots in 1990 changes to the Immigration Law that allowed any descendants of Japanese who had previously left this country to come into the country without any other visa restrictions, ironically in the belief that such a move would smooth over perceived cultural gaps brought by other foreigners lacking the blood of Yamato flowing through their veins.

Homi’s racial battle began when rules about public housing were relaxed a decade ago to allow foreigners to live there without restrictions, opening the floodgates to a swarm of non-Japanese moving in to the housing estate a short trip from the Toyota Motor Co. factories where many of the immigrants work.

“They literally popped up everywhere in no time at all,” a Japanese resident of the housing estate for over 20 years tells Spa! “Before you knew it, you would never see Japanese in the housing estate anymore.”

Many of the gripes Japanese residents had about their Brazilian “brethren” seem trivial, such as the propensity for partying and loud Latin music, but others point to the old adage of being in Rome and doing as the Romans do, urging the immigrants to lead a quieter lifestyle along the lines of the inhabitants who had been there longer.

But the Brazilian-Japanese were not going to take things lying down. When confronted by a group of right-wing thugs driving a loudspeaker screaming out messages along the lines of “Foreigner Go Home,” the foreigners took on the harassers in a very non-Japanese way: they firebombed the soundtruck.

Homi’s battle lines had been drawn and threatened to flare, but the government intervened, brokering a peace deal between the Japanese and Japanese-Brazilians. Now, the housing estate is a peaceful place, but Spa! notes that doesn’t mean the two groups get along, with the Japanese sticking to themselves and the foreigners clustering among their own, with each group ignoring the other.

Foreigners blame the Japanese for the uneasy stand-off.

“All the Japanese ever do is complain about us,” a Japanese-Brazilian resident of the housing estate tells Spa! “They don’t accept us at all. We try to greet them and they just ignore us. They don’t want to have anything to do with us.”

And here’s where Homi can serve as a harbinger. Danchi housing estates across Japan are losing their inhabitants as the country’s population shrinks. Japan’s current population of 126 million is estimated to drop below 100 million by 2050 unless something is done. More than likely, foreigners are going to be needed to make up for the lost 20-odd million. More and more public housing estates are going to become like Homi, where over half the current 8,000 inhabitants are non-Japanese.

With Homi’s Japanese and Japanese-Brazilians agreeing to mutually ignore each other, the weekly notes it’s not possible to say the problems between the two groups have been solved. But, to its credit, the magazine argues that the issue needs to be cleared.

“This is an issue that should be of prime importance,” Spa! says, “For Japanese, for foreigners, for governments and for businesses.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Modern day members of the Tokugawa clan — the xenophobic dynasty of Shoguns that shut Japan off from the world for centuries — are up in arms because the man set to one day become head of the family has married a non-Japanese, according to Shukan Shincho (9/20).

Iehiro Tokugawa, who is poised to one day become the 19th head of the clan that ruled the country as Shoguns from 1603 to 1868 and maintained a rigid ban on foreigners entering Japan, has tied the knot with a Vietnamese woman.

But his father, Tsunenari, the current clan chief, is among the members of the family who are supposed to be outraged that the most Japanese of non-Imperial families is about to receive an injection of non-Yamato blood.

Iehiro Tokugawa graduated from posh Keio University before completing a doctorate of economics at Michigan University. He went off to work for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, spending time at its Rome headquarters before being transferred to its Hanoi branch. The 42-year-old heir apparent of the Shogun’s dynastic name now works as a translator.

“He met the Vietnamese woman about 10 years ago,” a close pal of Tokugawa’s tells Shukan Shincho. “He was working at the FAO’s Vietnam office at the time and met her through his work. She comes from a good family. She’s petite and pretty. She’s a complete contrast to Iehiro, who is only 174 centimeters tall but weighs 105 kilograms. She’s 11 years younger than him, too. And she looks even younger still. Iehiro said he fell in love with her charms.” Iehiro apparently set his mind on marriage not long after he started dating, and he soon let his parents know of his intentions.

“Iehiro knows that he is a member of the Tokugawa clan and fully realizes exactly what that status entails. He told his parents he spent three years in elementary school in the United States and that he has very liberal ideas about marriage. On top of that, she is the woman he chose,” the buddy says. “But Tsunenari, important as head of the clan, and his mother were bitterly opposed. They said they didn’t mind if their son dated a foreigner, but there was no way they were going to let him marry one.”

Over the past few years, Iehiro’s Vietnamese partner traveled back and forth between her country and his before finally settling down together in his home.

“He’s got a photo of when they went on a trip together to Kamakura displayed prominently in his study. They’ve visited the Tokugawa family in Gotenba and have also been on trips together to Hakone and Karuizawa. Iehiro has often gathered his friends at his home and let them taste her delicious Vietnamese cuisine. They’re having a great time no matter how much his parents may oppose their bond,” the future clan head’s friend tells Shukan Shincho.

The opposition of the clan boss to the union has not deterred the loving couple.

“They actually registered their marriage a year ago,” the friend says. “They’ve tried countless times to get his parents to approve their marriage, but the parents have steadfastly refused. It’s more convenient for her to be married if she’s in Japan, so they formalized their bond. Iehiro has often said he’s going to have a big wedding ceremony in the spring of next year.”

Even if the couple is actually married as the friend claims, Iehiro Tokunaga’s worries don’t stop there.

“Only a few very close friends and relatives actually know about the marriage. And they haven’t reported it to anyone in the Tokugawa clan. He’s gonna face huge problems if their marriage goes public,” the friend says.

Meanwhile, Iehiro remains dignified about the situation.

“I’m going to do exactly what I have been doing until now,” the future head of the once xenophobic Tokugawa clan tells Shukan Shincho. “I’ll keep trying again and again. I believe in the end they will approve my marriage.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

A disgusting and twisted restaurant in the Tokyo entertainment district of Roppongi is enticing warped rich folk with the opportunity to figuratively have their cake and eat it, too — with animals, according to Jitsuwa Knuckles (9/25).

Roppongi’s bestiality restaurant is being regarded by its main nouveau riche patronage of young company presidents and venture capitalists as a decadent practice only possible among the wealthy.

“Apparently, the restaurant started off quietly in the basement of a building that a real estate agent in Roppongi who couldn’t find any other tenants,” an S&M club worker identified only as M tells Jitsuwa Knuckles. “News about the restaurant spread through word of mouth and it became popular.”

M says she visited the members-only restaurant about half a year ago after being invited there by one of her regulars, a well-heeled lawyer.

At first glance, the first floor restaurant appears fairly nondescript. When a customer goes in, they give their name to a receptionist. When they are approved, they pass through a wooden door to be greeted by another door, this one made of metal. Passing a membership card over a scanner outside the door will automatically open it. Inside is an eatery that resembles just about any other Italian restaurant.

Membership in the restaurant is open only to those with an annual salary of at least 20 million yen, and a minimum cash flow of 100 million yen.

“After we got into the main restaurant, an employee escorted us down to the basement,” M says. “The walls were pitch black and the floor covered in a blood red carpet, so I guess the place must be a refurbished S&M club.”

Once the customer feels prepared, they will be presented with beast of their choice. In the lawyer’s case, it was a sow.

“I’d been told what to expect, but when I actually saw what was happening, it was as shocking as you’d imagine it to be,” M tells Jitsuwa Knuckles. “Later, the lawyer told me the appeal of the place just came about because when people have got money and done everything else, they turn toward bestiality.”

Once the lawyer had finished porking the pig, the couple returned to the first floor and sat at a table to dine. M says she was totally shocked when staff members carried in roast pork — made of the same sow the lawyer had earlier been with.

“I was about to vomit,” M says. “It was the same pig that had been squealing just moments before. Now, it had been roasted whole. I managed to avoid eating it by only having salad.”

Incidentally, prices range from 200,000 yen to 500,000 yen for a chicken, dogs cost somewhere between 300,000 yen and 800,000 yen, while pigs and goats start at around 800,000 yen. Charges are higher depending on whether the creature is female and how active it is.

“The owner says he is prepared to cook up any kind of animal at all,” M tells Jitsuwa Knuckles. “He even said he’d prepare elephants … but I think he might have been joking about that.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Posh women are increasingly returning to the arms of their old beaus, even if they’re as fat, bald and stinky as their husbands, in a phenomenon Shukan Gendai (8/18-25) labels “recycling sex.”

“Mie,” as we’ll call the 38-year-old housewife, comes from a more expensive part of Tokyo and is a case in point.

“I live in a brand-new expensive condo with my doctor husband and our daughter. My husband makes 30 million yen a year. My favorite labels are Chanel and Hermes. I’ve recently joined a member’s only gym, which I visit two or three times a week. I belonged to a tennis club that recently had a reunion, where I met up with my old boyfriend,” Mie tells Shukan Gendai.

A week after the fateful meeting, Mie and her ex met again, this time at a swank hotel in Yokohama where they had wild sex.

“My husband is in a relationship with a Roppongi nightclub hostess, so he hardly ever comes home on weekdays. It’s not like I’m disappointed with my husband. And I haven’t fallen back in love with my ex-boyfriend. But we just have more and more of our secret trysts. Recently, I’ve probably been inviting him out more than he’s asked me. If your lover is someone you’ve known for a while, it’s much less risky than finding someone on a personals site. Sex with my ex-boyfriend is a simple way for me to get refreshed.”

Relationship counselor Fusako Ando is seeing more women like Mie.

“These women care about their looks and are keen on keeping up with the latest trends. They’ve often graduated from prestigious women’s colleges, married elite husbands, shop at exclusive parts of Tokyo like Aoyama or Roppongi and enjoy luxury labels. They’ve finished raising their kids and want to enjoy being fashionable again,” Ando says. “They’re the types who use eco bags while shopping and drive hybrid cars. They have a strong awareness of protecting the environment. And they have no worries about going back to old boyfriends. That’s why I call what they’re doing ‘recycling sex.’ ”

There are certain signs men should watch out for that can be a giveaway for wives into “recycling sex,” the men’s weekly says. The first signal is when she prompts him to get into shape. A “recycling sex” wife explains.

“Thanks to sex with my ex-boyfriend, I’ve begun to feel beautiful myself again. It’s not a good idea if I’m the only one to get in shape, I want my husband to look good, too. And ‘recycling sex’ has given me the urge to have more sex with my husband, too,” the 36-year-old Yokohama woman says. “And if my husband and I are going to have sex, it’d be more enjoyable if he was in good shape.”

And a wife doing yoga should also get alarm bells ringing, according to another “recycling sex” wife.

“I don’t know whether yoga increases your female hormones, or what, but since I’ve been doing yoga it’s made sex feel so much better for me,” the woman tells Shukan Post. “Yoga improves your shape and I always have an excuse for getting out of the house by telling my husband I’ve got a yoga session on.”

Note: The article below was originally in 週刊現代 (Shukan Gendai). The title of the original was『デブでハゲで臭い旦那から、昔の恋人に抱かれに行く人妻』

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

The Japan Defense Ministry
Lolita Manga (Click to enlarge)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

From the successor of the government ministry that gave the world Pearl Harbor and the Rape of Nanking now comes a cutesy little girl cartoon character dressed as a maid with a hawkish stuffed teddy bear to give a simple explanation of Japan’s defense policies, according to Cyzo (August).

Growing numbers of government agencies have used borderline pedophile manga characters to promote their activities in recent years, but it’s the Defense Ministry’s little girl character that is attracting attention among Japan’s otaku, the monthly says.

The Japanese translation of the opening, thanks to the 2ch whingers: サイゾー(８月号)によると、世界に対して真珠湾攻撃とレイプ・オブ・ナンキンを行った後継者の政府が、タカ派的なテディベアのぬいぐるみを持ったメイド服を着るかわいこぶった少女漫画キャラクターを使って、日本の防衛政策の簡単な説明をさせるという。近年、多くの政府機関が、彼らの活動を広報するために、ペドフィル（小児性愛）ギリギリのマンガキャラクタを使っている。しかし、日本のオタクの間で注目を集めているのは、防衛省の少女キャラクターであると月刊誌は言う。

In the “Manga de Yomu Boeisho Hakusho (Defense Ministry White Papers in Manga)” series printed in 2005, a little girl wearing “Lolita” fashions and an apron is involved in exchanges — sometimes violently — with a hawkish stuffed teddy bear as they rumble over the way Japan should defend itself.

News of the story spread through Japan’s Internet and by word of mouth and turned the manga into a hit, with second and third editions hitting the bookstores rapidly. It seemed a given that the publisher, Japan Defense Foundation for Mutual Aid, would be given the contract to print last year’s manga version of the ministry’s white papers, but things didn’t quite turn out that way.

“Publishing rights are decided in public bidding and another company undercut us,” a spokesman from the Japan Defense Foundation for Mutual Aid tells Cyzo. “But it was such a popular book that we didn’t want its success to end after only a single year. We asked the same author of the 2005 edition to draw up another manga using the same characters in a way that would help readers to understand what’s going on with the defense of Japan.”

The new book “Heiwa no Kuni no Nebaarando (The Neverland of the Peaceful Country)” has also proved to be as popular as its predecessor, with sales going well since its January release.

Japan Defense Foundation for Mutual Aid is confident its cutesy manga characters can drum up plenty of support for an industry that revolves around defending people.

“It’s pretty serious contents,” a group spokesman tells Cyzo. “But we figure the manga characters are easy to relate to and will make the difficult issues more accessible for kids and young adults to understand.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Japanese schools are getting filled with more kids that stink, according to Sunday Mainichi (7/8).
Growing disparity between the country’s haves and have-nots is believed to be behind the increase in unhygienic children. But broken homes and the increasing number of foreigners in Japan are also being blamed.

“We have a lot of kids from homes where the parents aren’t financially blessed and few have a decent education. There are a few kids who live in really shoddy apartments,” a third grade teacher at a public elementary school in Tokyo tells Sunday Mainichi. “You can tell from the way they look and the way they talk that their lifestyle gives them something that makes them clearly different from the other kids.”
Often that leads these children to become the subject of teasing and bullying from their better off classmates.

Other teachers blame the widening gap between the rich and poor for the situation.

“There are definitely more smelly kids around,” a Tokyo junior high school teacher says. “Both parents are working during the day and some have to moonlight with bar work at night to make ends meet, so they’re never at home. Kids just go to sleep whenever they feel tired, and a lot of them nod off without having taken a bath. Some kids stop coming to school because their friends keep telling them that they smell, so you can’t treat the problem lightly. I tell the kids not to say things about the smell in the classroom, but frankly I find the reek to be disgusting, myself.”

Since Japan’s economy slipped into the doldrums in the early 1990s, companies have been shifting away from employing people as permanent staff and instead have been relying more on irregular hires. The upshot of this has been an increase in what’s being called the “working poor,” the people in paid employment who make barely enough money to stay above the poverty line. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported that last year 27.2 percent of Tokyo families are now living on less than 3 million yen a year, a 9.3 percentage point increase over the past five years.

It’s not just money worries, either. Parenting standards are also apparently in decline. In a central Tokyo school, teachers were worried when one little girl stopped turning up for class. Her mother, a single parent, was not forcing her to attend and willingly let her stay away whenever she felt like it.

“Her homeroom teacher went out to the girl’s home to check up on the situation. The little girl was sitting there with her hair done up in curls and dressed up like a princess. The homeroom teacher was shocked that the child was being treated virtually like a pet,” a teacher at the school says. “Turns out the mother got lonely at home by herself and wanted her daughter to be around with her.”

Growing numbers of foreigners are also having an influence on Japanese schools.

“There seems to be a lot of trouble surrounding couples where an older Japanese man has married a young Southeast Asian woman who’s come to Japan to make some money,” an education insider says.

One teacher approached a Japanese father and spoke of how his wife, who worked as a nightclub hostess and saved whatever she could while living in squalor in Japan so she could build a palatial home in her native country. The teacher, pointing out that Japan is living through an age of internationalization, encouraged the father to help his child learn Tagalog, the native tongue of his mother’s homeland, the Philippines. The teacher was shocked by the father’s response.

“There’s no need to do that,” the teacher tells Sunday Mainichi the 60-something Japanese father said. “If Japan had won that war, they’d all (Filipinos) be speaking Japanese by now.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Japan’s ever-inventive sex industry’s latest innovation is an adaptation of the facial — a mud pack for the penis, according to Spa! (3/27).

Authorities have in recent years taken a harder line on the flesh trade, prompting operators to come up with up an increasing variety of services aimed at providing pleasure but circumventing the long arm of the law.

The mud pack for the penis, which follows a wine bath for the gonads, is part of an Italian-style esthetic treatment offered by a Tokyo-based service called The Aromani.

“A whole lot of operations similar to ours sprung up in a short time and we needed to provide a service nobody else was offering and this was it,” The Aromani’s boss tells Spa! “Our sales point is that we also offer variations, including having the service performed by multiple workers (groups of two or three women), or you can have it performed by a shy woman or another who’ll do it while talking dirty.”

The Aromani’s boss says the service began with the motto of “providing health and beauty to the willy and anus.”

The service involves using a hotel sink or face-washing basin and filling it with warm water and wine. This is aimed at improving the circulation. Instead of inserting the face, however, the client places their bottom in the bowl, allowing the penis and anus to be soaked in the suds of their sommelier.

Spa! notes that the washing is performed by at least one woman, who The Aromani insists must be in her 20s or 30s at the oldest.

Once the basic basin service has finished, the genitals are swathed in a chunk of mud supposed to cleanse the skin. Once they are completely covered, the woman (or women) providing the service, then show their handiwork, so to speak, until the client reaches climax, or what Spa! calls the “ascent to Heaven.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)

This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

A chance encounter on a Tokyo street gave a spunky half-American model a chance to make sure the capital’s uncouth law enforcers copped a blast, according to Shukan Asahi (1/19).

DJ-cum-model Yurika Amari ended up giving some of the Metropolitan Police Department’s plods a lesson in good manners.

She was making up for some rough handling she received from the long arm of the law after they suspected she was up to no good apparently because her big bust and lanky looks made her stand out from the crowded streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya district.

Amari, whose father is an American, was walking along the streets in late December when a couple of uniformed cops came up and grabbed her from behind. They whirled her around and demanded she tell them whether she was a foreigner and if she could speak Japanese.

One of the cops reached for Amari’s handbag. When she refused to give it to him, he snatched it away from her and began rifling through it. When the fuzz failed to find anything untoward, they began walking away, but Amari wasn’t letting them off so easily after what they’d just put her through. She asked their names and they simply flashed their police notebooks (the Japanese equivalent of a Western cop showing their badge) and sauntered off…

Amari filed a complaint with the MPD over the way the cops had handled her. She demanded a meeting with the officers who had accosted her and an apology. She ended up speaking to their boss, who refused to apologize for their behavior. With police refusing to express any regret, Amari asked for — and was given — the opportunity to educate the police on boorish behavior.

Tokyo’s cops acknowledged Amari taught them some lessons.

“Among the opinions she expressed were some that could be useful when it comes to questioning people in the future. She also works as a teacher at schools and places. We thought she may be able to provide us with some interesting views, so asked her to give a speech for us,” an MPD spokesman tells the Weekly.

Amari spoke for about 1 hour to around 80 police officers, most of them men in their 40s and 50s. She was pleased with the results.

“I used the experiences I’d been through to tell people about the best way to deal with women and advised them not to come up from behind people and grab them by the shoulders,” Amari tells Shukan Asahi. “I said everything I wanted to. There’s no bitterness left now.”

〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜★〜

(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)