Seventy-seven gropers (chikan) were arrested on Tokyo commuter trains during a crackdown by the Japan National Police Agency. During the April 15 - 21 effort, 120 officers from the NPA and the Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectural police rode train routes known to attract molesters.

Six people were caught on the Keio Line and JR Chuo Line, the highest number of all the train lines. The JR Saikyo Line, notable for frequent reports of groping, installed security cameras on some trains last year. Five people were caught on the Saikyo Line during the April crackdown. All of the perpetrators were caught in cars without security cameras.

Twenty-six of the 77 victims were high school students and fourteen people were university students. Forty of the victims were between 15 and 19 years of age. Forty-two of the arrests occurred between 7 a.m and 9 a.m.

Fifty-eight of those arrested were charged under the "public nuisances" law. Four of the perps were charged with using a hidden camera to take secret photos in the train. Three were arrested on charges of forced obscene acts in the train car, and one man was charged with indecent exposure in the car.

Eleven people were charged with taking indecent photos of passers-by on escalators and on the stairs on station premises.

Twenty-nine of the 77 had previously been caught molesting train passengers. In one incident, while an officer obtained a description of a suspect from one victim, the officer saw the suspect in the first crime grope another victim in the same car. The suspect was arrested.

The NPA will post police officers on trains to crack down on gropers who target particular victims or stalk women after they get off the train. "If you get groped on a train, please tell the nearest police officer," an NPA spokesman said.

In one groping arrest in February, a 16-year-old girl who was fondled on the JR Takasaki Line grabbed the suspect’s hand, hauled him off the train at the next station, and handed him over to police. The girl is a member of her high school judo team. The 21-year-old perpetrator was charged with public nuisance.

Chikan Densha Otoko 2 Molester Trainman game (Windows PC)

Razor Ramon’s secret TV show 1 year anniversary

The entertainer known as "Hard Gay", who dominated the TV airwaves in 2005 and 2006 then dropped off the popular-TV-talent lists has been hiding out on a late-night sex-talk TV program since April 2008. In this reincarnation, the comedian and pro wrestler still wears his Village People-inspired biker costume but has retired the Hard Gay moniker and now goes by his real name Masaki Sumitani on the TV program "Konya mo Hasuru" (literal: Tonite the hustle again). The phrase "Konya mo hasuru" can mean "recently I got a girlfriend", or colloquially "a lot of sex."

Sumitani shares hosting duties with Yinling of Joytoy. (No, he is not actually gay. Yes, he has performed stereotypical depictions of gay men. No, she is not Japanese – she is from Taiwan. Yes, she has idol videos and photo books for sale.)

The hour-long "A Lot of Sex" show is broadcast at various times in early Saturday or Sunday mornings on several channels in Japan.

One segment of the program features a different adult video actress actress each week. She sits on a bed in a love hotel that is a sponsor of the program. The talent is interviewed about sex and her skills. Video clips of her scenes are shown – inappropriate parts are obscured.

Lets Japan likes Konya mo Hasuru because it might signal the return of partially naked women on terrestrial broadcast stations. We yearn for the days of programs such as Gil Gamesh Night, and Tonight 2 which featured the former porn actress and author the late Ai iijima.

Gilgamesh Night program

Tonight 2 program

Posters promoting longer skirt lengths in Niigata high schools are causing a controversy. A group of high school teachers who also act as guidance counselors made the posters and distributed them to all high schools in Niigata prefecture in December 2008. At the end of January, school principals started the "Proper dress all at once together campaign". Parents were sent a follow-up document about the dress-code campaign in February. The material asks parents to instruct their daughters about skirt lengths.

There are three posters (pictured):
"It’s undignified for women" (white); "You can smarten your mind and your skirts if you’re motivated" (pink); "Beautiful style - Why don’t you change your skirt length?" (yellow). 

Many schoolgirls object to the prohibition of short skirts. Some schoolgirls wear sweat pants underneath so they can continue to wear short skirts during winter.

Hiroshi Uchikawa, principal of Koshi High School in Niigata city, and head of the student guidance staff, said, "We’d like students to think (about the issue) through the posters, rather than ordering them to change (the length of their skirts). There are some moves to make skirts longer."

Some teachers at high schools in Japan keep watch for too-short skirts, and if a surprise inspection catches too much exposed thigh, students are told to immediately correct the situation. Sometimes skirt hemlines have been shortened by rolling up the waistband of a skirt. Schoolgirls can quickly oblige a request to lower the hemline. But once out of sight of inspectors, the gals often re-roll-up the waistband.

One TV news report determined the average school uniform skirt lengths in Japan. FNN news reported school uniform skirts come to an average of 13 centimeters above the knee. FNN said high school girl skirt hems in Niigata are 15-18 centimeters above the knee. According to FNN, the shortest school uniform skirts are worn in Niigata, Sendai, and Mito. Medium-length skirts prevail in Tokyo, Sapporo, Fukuoka and Okinawa. The longest are in Osaka, and Kobe.

Some high school students from Niigata on a school excursion to Okinawa received complaints about the length of their skirts from Okinawa locals. The students were told their short skirt length was "unpleasant." The average high school uniform hemline in Okinawa is 7.7 cm above the knee.

Hiroshi Uchikawa, head of Niigata City Taka-shi high school and chairman of the Niigata District Student Guidance Liaison Council Assembly, says he’s aware that girls change clothes on the way to and from school. "The child shortens it according to surroundings and changes into a long skirt at the station on the way to school. A station employee confirms that."

Lets Japan asked two Japanese ladies about skirt lengths, Yoko (age 27) and Keiko (33).

LJ: Do public and private elementary, junior high, and high schools have rules about length of girl’s skirts?
Yoko: Girls is not allowed to shorten their skirt…also.. too longer skirt is not ok.
Keiko: It depends on the schools. There are a lot schools which have the rules about "appearance" including uniforms, hair styles, nails, make-up, shoes, and so on. Some schools are very strict and they never allow the students to make it short. Other schools don’t say anything.

LJ: Who sets the skirt-length rules?
Keiko: I think individual schools set the rules on their own.

LJ: How do the students know the rules?
Keiko: Parents knew the rules because they needed to go to the school orientation meeting. Parents and students receive the document at the orientation. In my school days the rules were written in the student’s pocketbook.

LJ: What is a pocketbook?
Keiko: Pocketbook is a small notebook that students have. It’s combined with student ID in my school. Students receive it from the teacher on the first day of school.

LJ: What about in Japan’s history – the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s – surely students tried to wear short skirts then?
Keiko: I guess that teachers at that time had much more authority/power than they do now, and they didn’t permit students to wear the uniforms in untidy way. Or the ordinary students just didn’t have the idea to make the skirt short. Rogue students used to wear too-long skirts instead of too-short skirts when I was a kid.

LJ: Is the Niigata skirt poster the first time a poster was made about skirt lengths?
Keiko: I’ve never seen such a poster in my life before.

LJ: Why is the poster such big news?
Keiko: Because Mainichi and Asahi have such stupid editors. (I hate both of them.)

January
A letter a Kawasaki schoolgirl sent aloft by balloon in 1993 was found fastened to a fish by a fisherman off Choshi port,150 kilometers away from where the balloon was launched.

February
A 39-year-old man wearing a high school girl’s uniform and a long wig loitered near a Saitama high school and was arrested for trespassing and avoiding police by trying to blend into a group of teenagers on school grounds.

March
Cartoon robo-cat Doraemon named Japan’s "anime ambassador".

April
A city council employee in Kinokawa, Japan makes 780,000 hits on porn websites in nine months, on his office computer.

May
Homeless woman lived in man’s closet for year. Disappearing food leads to discovery in home of man who thought he lived alone.

June
Investigation finds "pub cabs" popular as hundreds of government bureaucrats routinely receive free beer, snacks and sometimes cash from taxi drivers competing for late-night business from public servants.

July
Dummy clown mascot "Kuidaore Taro" makes final appearance as 59-year-old Osaka restaurant goes out of business.

August
Wild macaque monkey causes chaos during morning rush hour at Tokyo’s Shibuya station.

September
(1) The Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare plans to set up counters in all prefectures and large cities to offer counseling to "hikikomori" – people who suffer from a kind of agoraphobia and who further isolate themselves from society.

(2) Fifteen officers all fail to realize "corpse" wrapped in plastic found in forest was actually a life-sized sex doll.

(3) Two employees of Japanese confectionery company open can of red-bean paste, notice paste has strange odor, decide to eat some to check the quality, then suffer numbness in limbs, and are rushed to hospital.

October
(1) British tourist swims naked in the moat of Imperial Palace then leads cops on foot chase around palace grounds.

(2) A camera-police-hotline-alarm-equipped Coca-Cola vending machine is installed in a park in Toyohashi, Japan, and is vandalized three days later.

November
Man releases hundreds of beetle larvae inside moving express train "to see women get scared and shake their legs.”
December
Japan police cancel plan to fine drivers aged 75 or older who fail to display a maple-leaf-shaped sticker that indicates to other drivers that they are elderly. Some elderly have said the sticker resembles a dead leaf, and police will also consider redesign of the sticker.

Fujikawa was elected in April 2007. After an in-depth local TV news report about her in January 2008, she became a hot topic on internet forums and attracted nationwide attention. Her personal website received more than 230,000 hits per day and at times overloaded the server. Her personal website was soon taken offline and replaced with a more businesslike site.

Following the TV broadcast, she hired an agent to handle numerous requests to pose for photo shoots and appear at events. Since taking office in 2007, Fujikawa had often been asked by a Pony Canyon Inc. producer to make an idol-style DVD. Following the attention in April, she agreed to make the DVD provided it would promote Hachinohe.

In August, Fujikawa played taiko drums in the Hachinohe Festival. She wore a shoulder-revealing sarashi.

In September Fujikawa disclosed the DVD project, and a video clip was released. In the video, Fujikawa wears a white swimsuit and is shown posing on the beach. The reaction among locals was generally favorable. Though some people objected to her appearance in swimwear. In addition to the beach scenes, Fujikawa also wears yukata, haori coat, and hakama as she visits tourist spots and attends festivals.
Japanese news reports are unclear about any connection between Hachinoe City and the production of the PR video.
Fujikawa’s father, Tomonobu Fujikawa was a council member and vice-mayor of Hachinohe city.

More Japan news report videos: ( 1 ) ( 2 ). Yuri Fujikawa blog.

Female attendants on JR Tokai line trains are being issued personal protection cayenne pepper spray devices. The spray mixture causes temporary incapacitation. Female employees who sell food or work as conductors on the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet trains and other Tokai trains are being given the devices. The first JR Tokai female conductors were hired in 1999 and female employees on the trains have since been required to carry personal buzzer alarms. In March and April 2008, two female "green attendants" were assaulted in the Green Car first-class section of late night and early morning Shinkansen trains. JR Tokai has distributed four hundred pepper spray canisters to Shinkansen female staff. The railway company will give the palm-size spray device to a total of 1300 female employees. The Mace-brand Triple Action Pocket product is offered by Mace Security International, Inc. and retails in the US for about USD 15.00, and in Japan for about JPY 2500. It’s designed for use by women. The ingredients contain UV dye that will invisibly mark an assailant. The unit sprays 6-12 feet and contains 5, one- second bursts.

photos: green car; 3 cannisters. video:TBS News

A man who challenged a 1999 groping accusation by a female commuter won his court case against the accuser Nov. 7, 2008. The Japan Supreme Court revoked the charge of "public nuisance" against the man. In September 1999, a woman accused the man of rubbing his groin on her thigh as they stood on the Chuo line railway train in Tokyo. The man was arrested and charged with a crime but denied the accusation. He filed civil lawsuits against the woman. The Nov. 7 TBS Tokyo Evening 5 news program reported on the case. At two points in the TBS video story, computer-generated imagery characters on a train illustrate the woman’s description of being rubbed against from the side. The video depicts a circular and simultaneous up-down motion. The complete CGI scene is at 1:17 in the video.

chuo line photo

One man. One beautiful woman. One Vulcan, a demon and a peon.

This is a two-part story by the creators of Shin Angyo Onshi: Youn In-Wan and Yang Kyung-Il. Vulcan Markovic lives in a small fishing village in Croatia. He has only two things on his mind–designer goods and losing his virginity. When an indescribably beautiful girl shows up asking for directions to Heaven’s Gate, Vulcan takes his first step into "thrilling world-salvation action!!" Synopsis from MyAnimeList:

Let’s Bible forum discussion: ChristianComics.net. Two chapters can be downloaded here Let’s Bible-part1[ETC].zip and here Let’s Bible-part2[ETC].zip. Download links via: Anizeen.com

Experiment Confirms Transparent Swimsuit Concern

Swimsuits that can be "Photoshopped" see-through may distract Japanese Olympic swimmers at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The Shukan Post quotes a spokesperson for the Japan Swimming Federation. The spokesperson says that following the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, official swimsuit manufacturers were asked by the JSF to "ensure their products would not become see-through when filmed in infra-red." Asics, Descente, and Mizuno are the official suppliers to Japan’s swim team. Speedo’s high tech LZR bodysuit, which the team may be allowed to wear, is also susceptible to digital manipulation. Descente developer Toshiharu Tsubouchi told The Shukan Post the Descente swimsuit utilizes polyurethane for adhesiveness, and adds "depending on the way light shines on it, the color can brown a bit. That may make it look a little bit transparent." He points out a tight fit is essential for athletes, thus some body parts will bulge out more than others. Shukan Post Via Daily Mainichi: Faustian swimsuit gives Japanese swimmers the edge while revealing the points more: Japanese denied ‘high-tech doping’ Speedos Japanese swimmers could do U-turn on bodysuits

Bathing Gapers Sneak Peeks

Mixed bathing at a 320-year-old hot spring is being jeopardized by naked male bathers who stare at the nude females in the onsen. The 260-square-meter bath area at the Sukayu Hot Spring Resort does not have a wall to separate the men’s and women’s sections. Due to recent complaints from female bathers, members of the newly-formed Protect Mixed Bathing Association are encouraging visitors to follow the "no staring" rule. news source

photos: No Staring; Men’s and Women’s sides ; Mainichi; Sukayu Mixed Bath More reading: Sukayu Onsen Ryokan ; Onsen guide ; more Sukayu photos; How To Onsen