Instructive in this announcement is the childishness with which dating, male-female relationships, marriage, and pregnancy is treated in Japan.
Here is a video of Leah’s announcement at a recent concert. Note the screams of shock and disbelief that a young 22-year-old woman would do such things. At the end of her announcement, Dizon says she will take some time off to have the baby, after which she plans to start performing again. She ends with a plea to her fans not to “toss her aside.”
With attitudes like this, it is no surprise that young people in Japan are shying away from marriage and that the population of the country is declining.
27-year-old Japanese ex-porn (AV) actress Nao Oikawa (she retired from boinking in front of cameras in 2004) seems to have completed the move from blue movies to mainstream pop idol via a girl group named G3 Princess, which also includes Yumi Sugimoto and Rina Aizawa. Ms. Oikawa is the one on the right in the following video.
For a peek at a censored but very not-safe-for-work XXX video that spotlights some of Ms. Oikawa’s more salacious talents, click here.
The Peanuts, a female pair of Japanese twins (Emi and Yumi Ito), who were a major presence in the Japanese music world back in the ’60s, are planning to release a new album to mark the 50th anniversary of their debut back on 1959.
Here are a few of their better known songs in Japan.
If you are old enough, you might remember them as the duo who sang the original Mothra theme.
To try to earn her 2009 LPGA Tour card, Wie has entered the first stage of tour qualifying next week at Mission Hills Country Club.
Score this as a first step in the direction Wie should have been following all along.
Time will tell whether this is a genuine epiphany or just another one of those phony self-discovery stunts that are so popular these days.
In any event, let’s just hope we don’t get any more of this:
After turning pro the week of her 16th birthday, Wie has stuck to a game plan that she said was always her design, even though her parents appeared to be behind the wheel far more often than she was. And along the way, Wie drove very far off track.
In her first full year as a pro, she held at least a share of the lead in three majors in 2006. Then after she injured her wrists, Wie’s fortunes changed, her game faltered, her missteps increased and her image started taking hits.
And the fact remains that Wie hasn’t won any kind of tournament since the U.S. Women’s Public Links Championship, when she was all of 13.
Almost from that moment, her peers and others have suggested that Wie learn how to win against female players, instead of constantly loading up her playing schedule against the male pros, experiences that gained her almost nothing except more notoriety. Most of that negative, by the way.
As strange as this story was, people here generally were quick to shrug the whole affair off as just another instance of some corrupt bureaucrat’s sense of self-importance running amok.
Former wife to Indonesian leader Sukarno and current Japanese media celebrity Dewi Sukarno is apparently reporting on her Japanese blog that the Foreign Ministry official in question (who is married) had been having an affair with the female president of the hotel in question for the past six or seven years. Apparently the hotel president is very much in love with the official, but he refused to leave his wife and ended up splitting with the hotelier instead.
According to Dewi, the hotel president is using the claim for 115 million yen to punish the official by publicly embarrassing him.
Japan has been undergoing a “Miyazaki Prefecture Boom,” lately, thanks to its governor, former TV comedian Sonomanma Higashi, a discovery of director/comedian Takeshi Kitano, who appeared on Takeshi’s Castle for years.
The TV comic gave up his career as a “talent” to run for governor of this rural prefecture last year, winning despite having no backing from any political party.
Since taking office, he’s shaken things up quite a bit, using his celebrity status to shed light on the wasteful construction projects that plague rural Japan and trading in his official governor’s vehicle for a hybrid. Now, his face adorns dozens of products that contain ingredients from the prefecture, and it seems you can’t go into a shop without seeing his face smiling up at you.
Miyazaki is located in the southeast corner of the southernmost island of Kyushu, one of the early centers of Japanese civilization due to its proximity to China and the Korean Peninsula, and it’s famous for mangoes, the off-season training camp for the Tokyo Giants, and a sprawling resort called SEAGAIA, which recreated a tropical beach under an 85 acre dome, although it was closed last year due to the inability of the operators to make a profit.
Here is a TV commercial for zero-calorie Kirin Fire canned coffee that features the popular U.S. enka singer Jero. Apparently, the ad is going for a play on similarity between the Japanese pronunciation of the word “zero” and the name Jero.
Former sumo champion Konishiki arrived back in Japan recently for the first time after undergoing gastric bypass surgery in February.
Since the operation Konishiki has shed 70 kilograms (144 pounds), from a high of 300 kilograms (660 pounds).
Though we would like to congratulate Konishiki on his weight loss and wish him the best in the future, we must admit that he still looks pretty hefty in the above “after” photo.
The Washington Post has an inexplicably long article on Jerome White, Jr., also known as Jero who is a Pittsburgh born and bred, 26-year old entertainer in Japan who happens to have a Japanese grandmother (now deceased) and performs old style Japanese enka songs. The article describes enka as WWII-era syrupy and maudlin music. His debut single went as high as #4 on the music charts. The article is certainly interesting and touches on many issues bandied about here on Japundit (gaijin in Japan, greying society, etc.) but the article is about three times as long as it needs to be.
If the Washington Post article doesn’t satiate your Jero needs, Japan Today also has a long bio article.
Ex-Beatle Sir Paul is reportedly horrified that an eco-friendly Lexus LS600H automobile given to him by Toyota was delivered by flying it 7,000 miles to the U.K. from Japan.
A source is reported to have said: “Paul was offered a Lexus as a gift and ordered the hybrid limo because it helps to reduce emissions.
“He’ll be horrified after learning it was delivered by plane. Paul has always campaigned for green issues and he can’t understand why anyone would send an enormous car from Japan to Britain on a plane.”
Carbon offsetting firm CO2balance.com said the plane journey would have caused a carbon footprint of 38,050kg, compared to 397kg for a three-week boat journey.
It’s one thing to idolise someone who happens to be stupid. It’s quite another to idolise someone because they’re stupid.
Japan’s pushy mothers may be missing a trick by keeping her offspring in juku (cram school) until late at night every day, when there is a clear alternative - professional idiocy.
There used to be a time when we were pretty undemanding of our entertainers provided that they had at least one marketable skill or talent. You’d forgive a good singer for being daft as a brush. Likewise you didn’t hold it against a great actor if he couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket.
Arise, おバカイドル (o-bakaidoru - a portmanteau of ‘baka’, meaning idiot, and ‘aidoru’, meaning idol) - the professional idiot.
Take the trio Suzanne (スザンヌ), Yukina Kinoshita (木下優樹菜) and Mai Satoda (里田 まい). All equally as daft as each other, and all over your TV screen all the time. See them at their ‘best’ on FujiTV’s Quiz Hexagon, hosted by the ‘punchy’ Shinsuke Shimada, where they will be set up and mocked for your delectation.
So taken were they with the girls’ talents, FujiTV execs even made the girls into a pop trio called Pabo (which is apparently Korean for, you guessed it, ‘idiot’).
And to prove it’s not all bimbos, there’s quite a selection of himbos too. Check out Shuuchishin (羞恥心) if you haven’t been driven to distraction by their played-to-death current single already. They’re another baka trio made up of Takashi Tsuruno (つるの剛士), Yuusuke Kamiji (上地雄輔) and Naoki Nokubo (野久保直樹).
With a name like Satsuki Mitchell, I’m guessing that Daniel Craig’s girlfriend must be half-Japanese and half-Caucasian. It also appears she’s getting married to him. Some say her name is one of the weirdest on the planet, but really. Nothing confusing about her name to a bunch of Japundits!
North Korea reportedly has invited legendary rock guitarist Eric Clapton to play a concert in Pyongyang. This would make Clapton the first Western rock start to be invited to play in North Korea.
“Eric Clapton is a well-known musician and guitarist, famous throughout the world,” said [an] official, who declined to give his name. “It will be a good opportunity for Western music to be understood better by Koreans.”
A spokeswoman for Clapton, however, says that no agreement has been reached, yet.
“Eric Clapton receives numerous offers to play in countries around the world,” she said. “There is no agreement whatsoever for him to play in North Korea, nor any planned shows there.”
Though North Korea has long shunned rock music and pop culture, it is rumored that Kim Jong Chol, the son of national leader Kim Jong Il, is a big Clapton fan.
The big talk of Japanese news right now is the arrest in Saipan of Kazuyoshi Miura, a businessman who was once convicted of complicity in the murder of his wife in Los Angeles in 1981, only to have his conviction overturned by the Japanese supreme court in 2003. Saipan authorities arrested Miura for the murder of his wife 27 years ago at the request of authorities in Los Angeles.
Miura has always maintained that he and his wife were attacked by unknown assailants. Miura sustained a gunshot wound to leg in the alleged attack, and his wife was shot in the head. At the time, Miura made numerous statements to the press about violence in the U.S. While he was playing the grieving husband in front of the cameras, however, he also was filing claims on insurance policies totaling 160 million yen that he had taken out on his wife shortly before her murder.
The police both in Japan and the U.S. were not fooled, and immediately started treating Miura as the main suspect in his wife’s murder. According the Daryl Gates, chief of police in L.A. at the time of the killing:
“I remember the case well. I think he killed his wife,” said Gates, who had not heard about Miura’s arrest before he spoke Saturday afternoon. “We had Japanese police come over; they believed he was guilty, we believed he was guilty, but we couldn’t prove it.”
Miura did go on trial in Japan and ended up sentenced to life in prison by the Tokyo District Court in 1994. However, his conviction was thrown out by a higher court, despite the fact that it also found him guilty of a previous conspiracy to kill his wife.
Miura reportedly was shocked at his arrest in Saipan, saying that he thought his acquittal in Japan had ended the affair. However, police in the U.S. are citing “fresh evidence” in the new warrant.
Though this has been ongoing news for quite a while now, we have chosen not to say anything about it because the main players in the Cantonese version of Sex, Lies and Video Tape had nothing to do with Japan.
Until now. . .
According to a report on the digital gossip rag Hollywood Grind, Chen’s collection of 1,300 dirty pics may include shots of Japanese movie star Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill fame, and other Japanese starlets.
It should be emphasized here that this is only rumor at this stage and as far as I know there is no photographic proof at this time.
Evidently, Edison Chen is a real playboy who likes to shoot trophy photos of his conquests. Judging from the expressions of the girls in the photos that I saw, Chen apparently had no trouble getting well-known young women to perform like porn stars for him and on him in front of the camera.
Trouble struck when Chen took his laptop, photos and all, in for repairs, and a technician copied the hard disk. The photos are now all over the Internet, and you can see a bunch of them here at Hollywood Grind.
A word of warning. . .NSFW!!!
The photos at the other end of the above link are as explicit and raunchy as they get.
Again, there are no Japanese actresses in the current set of Hollywood Grind photos, but they claim they will be posting more in the days to come.
The big talk of Japanese news right now is the arrest in Saipan of 
According to a report on the digital gossip rag 