Meet Shigeo Tokuda, a robust 74-year-old man and rising (erhm) star of a strange yet growing niche of Japanese adult movie industry: elder porn!

Michiko Toyama wrote this fascinating article for TIME Magazine:

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years
ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that’s because he’s kept his part-time job — as a porn star. [...]

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he’s just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

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“Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” says CEO Miki Hiradate, of Tokyo-based Hime & Company. The company gives “older” staff (over 29) more time off, under the theory that break-ups are more serious when you’re older.

You can read the rest of the article here. Via Tokyomango.

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New-born babies in Japan who can't make it round to visit all their relatives can now send them proxies instead - cuddly bags of rice.

Yoshimiya, a small rice shop in Fukuoka, southern Japan, has been swamped with orders for "Dakigokochi" rice-filled bags shaped like a bundled baby and printed with the new-born's face and name.

Each rice bag is tailor-made to weigh as much as the new-born and shaped so the rice fills the bag up. Holding the round-edged bag would feel like holding a real baby.

It is customary in Japan to give people gifts or money on occasions such as births, and the recipient then responds with other gifts, often worth half the amount they received.

The rice bags have made perfect "half-return" gifts, Ono said, although relatives face a dilemma once they are done with the cuddling.

"People say they have a hard time opening them up and eating the rice," Ono said.

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Here’s a piece of trivia for you: Pufferfish or fugu is a delicacy in Japan. The fish is eaten raw as a sashimi. When prepared correctly, the flesh of the fish gives a tingling sensation on the tongue. This, turns out is due to a non-lethal dose of tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin with no antidote.

If prepared improperly, say if the chef cut into the liver by accident, then you could die from it. Because it is a neurotoxin, you would be completely paralyzed and cannot breathe. Death occurs within 4 to 24 hours, during which you are completely conscious over what’s happening.

Because of this reason, fugu is the only delicacy officially forbidden to the Emperor of Japan. For his own safety. Now you know.

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Mainichi Daily News reports on Kegadoru, a Japanese fashion that can be spotted in the legendary Harajuku precincts, where fashion is ten years ahead of the rest of the world (and sometimes, ten dimensions over).

Kegadoru ("injured idol") is the practice of wrapping your head and body in bandages as though you were badly injured.

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For those who don't mind splurging a bit this holiday season, a Japanese department store is offering a Christmas tree with 400 diamonds for a cool $1.8 million.

Takashimaya department store chain is selling the tree - actually a small tower of preserved roses with a teddy bear - for a symbolic ¥200.7 million from Wednesday to kick off its year-end sales campaign.

The tree, which stands 40 centimetres high, features about 100 carats of diamonds from southern Africa and Australia, the department store said.

The smaller diamond pieces "sparkle charmingly like morning dew on petals, while two-carat and three-carat pieces mesmerise admirers with their noble glow", the store said in a statement.

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Japanese kids take it to the extreme when it comes to fashion. Extreme sunless tanning is a bit much.

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Japan has invented the world’s first subatomic toilet, suitable for the grunting evacuations of dust mites.

The photograph above was taken by nanotechnologist Kaito Takahashi and won the “Most Bizarre Award” at a conference on electrons, ions and photo beam technology.

Although actually a photograph of an integrated circuit magnified at 15,000 times its original size, it was still christened the “Tiny Toilet.”

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Cup Nude is an "adult toy" purchased in Japan. The peel off lid really throws down the gauntlet. The label, in first-person prose, extols the virtues of this "Onna Hole" and challenges the user to last more than 3 minutes when using it.

The satisfying sensations come from noodle-like tentacles inside the cup. Apparently, it feels "like thousands of worms".

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Here is a fascinating story about a series of photos taken of Peeping Toms in Japan in the 70’s. These furtive voyeurs were sneaking around parks late at night in search of romantic encounters. The photos were taken by photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki while he was taking a walk with a friend through a park late at night. He noticed a couple on the ground, with a small but growing ring of men crawling towards them.

“I had my camera, but it was dark,” he told the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki in a 1979 interview for a Japanese publication. Researching the technology in the era before infrared flash units, he found that Kodak made infrared flashbulbs. Mr. Yoshiyuki returned to the park, and to two others in Tokyo, through the ’70s. He photographed heterosexual and homosexual couples engaged in sexual activity and the peeping toms who stalked them.

“Before taking those pictures, I visited the parks for about six months without shooting them,” Mr. Yoshiyuki wrote recently by e-mail, through an interpreter. “I just went there to become a friend of the voyeurs. To photograph the voyeurs, I needed to be considered one of them. I behaved like I had the same interest as the voyeurs, but I was equipped with a small camera. My intention was to capture what happened in the parks, so I was not a real ‘voyeur’ like them. But I think, in a way, the act of taking photographs itself is voyeuristic somehow. So I may be a voyeur, because I am a photographer.”

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The Japanese are an incredibly efficient people. They work harder, stronger and faster than their American and European counterparts, and seem almost allergic to the idea of taking sick days and holidays.

With that said, perhaps this is why I wasn't surprised to discover this sign outside a chic bar in Shibuya, advertising a 26:00 closing.

Now, although I've never been in the military, I'm fairly certain that after 24:00, the clock is supposed to roll back to 0:00 with the start of a new day.

I guess this brings about a simple question: if you had 26 hours in a day, what would you do with your extra time? Perhaps this is the real reason why the Japanese are so efficient.

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