Set to slow “simmer” is a how-to drawing from the Japanese bestseller with recent sales exceeding 30 million copies, “Practical Introduction to Slow Sex” (Kodansha, 2007).

–From bottom to top “simmer” (machine translation)

The Mainichi news paper in this article did not even think it was worth mentioned here is that in Japan 70% of single adult females live at home and sponge off their parents well into the 30s.

60 percent of married individuals ’sponge’ off parents
MDN-Mainichi, March 19, 2008– About 60 percent of married individuals received financial support from their parents or their spouse’s parents over the past year, a survey…conducted by Nihon University Population Research Institute...more...

One of the odd aspects of living in Japan is always having to explain the concept of “student loans” to Japanese folks—parents pay for everything.

UPDATE –Fun new information from the 2007/2008 Durex Sex Survey once again showing the Japan as No. 1 for the third year in the running.

The Sun / 03 Mar 2008
BRITS are among the world’s most undersexed, according to a new survey. Around 55 per cent of us have nookie on a weekly basis - making Brits the fourth-least sexed on Earth. Americans and Nigerians fared worse, coming second to last in the love stakes. Japan came bottom in the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey, with just 34 per cent of its people having sex at least once a week…

Aussies among world’s most undersexed
NEWS.com.au
About 60 per cent of Australians have weekly sex, making Aussies the sixth-least sexed nationalities on Earth, the Durex Sexual Wellbeing study …
No dating, thanks, just sex
Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand - Mar 1, 2008
The programme makers did the story after Kiwi women last year topped the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey as the world’s most promiscuous. …

Asians too stressed for sex
Singapore—- Stressed-out Asians have the least active sex lives globally, with nine countries and territories from the region making up the bottom 10 in terms of love-making, condom maker Durex said on Tuesday. Japan was bottom of the list of 41 countries and territories covered by this year’s Durex survey. Japanese have sex an average of 45 times annually, less than half the global average of 103 …Singaporeans ranked second-last with 73. Indians (75), Indonesians (77), Hong Kong residents (78), Malaysians (83), Vietnamese (87), Taiwanese (88) and China (96 times a year) …The Swedes were the only non-Asians in the bottom 10, with 92 love-making sessions a year.…more…

Over the age of 30, the Japanese don’t have time for doing it.
Under 30, Japanese sexual activity is bipolar.
Some are very active, with multiple partners. However, there many, many clueless otaku who are increasingly reluctant to do anything at all….except stay home and scare at a screen. Yikes, that sounds like what I’m doing now!

Update:
It’s that time of the year again!

AFP News. Feb. 20. 2008—Zoo staff spread a net to catch a fake zebra, which made a break for freedum from its cage, as it strolls in the zoo park during the annual exercise for runaway animals at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo on February 20, 2008. Some 150 zoo staffs and policemen participated in the annual exercise.

Every year the Tama Zoo has this “escaped” animal drill. However, the 3Yen found out last year about the scary truth in, Tama Zoo Reveals Secret. Now, there are more revelations about the zoo…

‘Don’t cry children, I was only aping about’
The Daily Mail, 20:55pm on 27th February 2007
As acting goes, it was a little too convincing.
The idea was to test the readiness of zoo staff for the escape of a dangerous animal.
But despite the ludicrously obvious disguise of the runaway beast, its pre-ordained destiny - to be shot with a tranquillizer gun - had children in tears...more...

‘Saru mo ki kara ochiru’ ‘THE NATURE OF MONKEY WAS IRREPRESSIBLE!’ [猿も木から落ちる]

—Hello Kitty monkey bobble

Just in time for Japanese princesses about to suffer heartbreak at Valentines Day…

Japanese firm offers heartache leave for staff
Jan 28, 2008 | Reuters—Tokyo-based Hime & Company, which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. “Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate…more…

What the Reuters report doesn’t cover, which your can read in the machine translation of their website, are blindingly obvious points about Hime & Company :
. . . –>”Hime” in Japanese means “princess” and Hime & Company caters to 30-something Japanese who want to be pink-and-bling princesses.
. . . –>Hime & Company is just group of six unmarried Japanese women who are working at near minimum wage so they can live their princess dreams in a rhinestone encrusted “Castle” (office and shop).
. . . –>The boss, Miki Hiradate, is one hell of a PR agent who goes to any length to just get in the news as you can see the company’s press webpage.

According to Ms. Hiradate’s blog at HimeClub.com, she is a “panic” from all overseas calls in English since the Reuters story hit the news rooms around the world. As you see in the photo on the right, “Princess” Tate Hitoshi, the office manager having a panic attack on the 30th when the French newspaper and media outlet “Libration” came to the princess company’s pink “Castle” to make a TV news segment about the company. The Hime & Company blog reports that they were, “more than nervous,” being interviewed by alien (foreign) media.

In other interviews as shown below, Princess CEO Hiradate explained that the Hime & Company staff can also take off a half day twice a year for “sales shopping leave” to hunt for end-of-the-season fashion bargains.

Japanese samba their way to the front of Brazil’s carnival
Tue Jan 29, 3:53 PM ET, SAO PAULO (AFP) - Brazil’s strong Japanese community — the biggest in the world outside Japan itself — will be at the fore of this year’s carnival, which kicks off on Friday. In Sao Paulo, the city with the biggest concentration of the 1.5 million Japanese descendants living in the country, the carnival parade will include a 1,000-strong contingent of Japanese samba dancers… to highlight a centenary of Japanese immigration to Brazil…more…

Women bite into big sushi rolls in giant gobbling contest
2008 Jan. 29 - Mainichi Daily News, OSAKA — Female university students battled it out to be the fastest team to gobble down a huge sushi roll in a contest…
“It was a bit embarrassing,” said one of the participants, who gulped down mouthfuls of tea between bites on the sushi roll. “But we won because we put aside our pride”…more…

How can ruin this delicious moment with my inane comments?

Sadly, the damn googlebots demand that I add commentary for this to be listed a “news” so I will have to mention that the maki sushi rolls the girls are eating only make up 10-20% of all the sushi consumed in Japan (as opposed to odd Western ideas that most sushi consist of rolls). The reason that sushi is thought of as a roll in the West is that making maki rolls takes almost no talent and skilled sushi chefs are at a premium outside of Japan.

Our photographic journey today started with a silly link* to The Secret Museum of Mankind, a 1935 mystery book without any author, credits, copyright, page numbers, or index…Just photos and demented captions that targeted titillating teenage boys of the 1930s who normally willywanked to the National Geographic.

Natives of the little village of Kampanzan, in northern Formosa. Their tribe, which belongs to the Atayal group, is considered one of the least civilized on the island; but Japanese influence is slowly penetrating into the mountain recesses, and Kampanzan now boasts of a village school where small savages may receive elementary instruction under Japanese supervision.

The
Secret Album of Asia

As fun as the The Secret Museum of Mankind is, it doesn’t cover Japan well. Check out The Ama: Girl Shellfish Divers via the Ohio State University collection.

Even odder are these smiling teen courtesans locked behind wooden bars in Yoshiwara pleasure quarters of turn-of-the-century Tokyo shown below.
These photos of low-teen happy hookers come from the large Geddes Collection of old Japan.

My buddy Mulboyne offers many other links to old Japanese photographs such as IZA, one of the Sankei media group websites, who put up a series of photographs of the Showa era’s modernization(1926–1989) in Japan.
IZA photosite

My first year here in Japan, I walked into a machine gun driveby in front of a pachinko parlor while walking home from my station in Toshima ward Tokyo. Then when I moved, several women got dumped in the park right next to my apartment in Yokohama as I reported here on the 3Yen in: Killer Japanese suitcases!.

Now this chimpera (wannabe yakuza) with a blond gaijin girlfriend gets stabbed down the block from my condo. Yikes, these murders keep following me in “safe” Tokyo.

Man stabbed to death in posh part of Tokyo
Jan. 26, 2008 - Mainichi Daily News: A middle-aged man was fatally stabbed in an apartment building in an affluent part of Tokyo on Saturday, police said.
The man, who was stabbed in the back, is believed to have been a 53-year-old male resident of the apartment block in Ota-ku...more...

Damn, it’s bad enough that three different places I have lived at in Tokyo have been burglarized…Now, my neighbors keep get getting murdered. Sheesh.

UPDATE:
Here’s Japanese TBS News report giving the murdered guy’s name as Hideki Fujiie, “occupation unknown” which you can see in the video and written report.
Click to watch.

In preparation for Valentine’s Day, all the women in Japan are thinking about buying chocolates for their boyfriends and bosses–Japanese guys don’t normally give the gals any Valentine’s gifts (besides damp ones).*

Isetan Department Store in Tokyo is gearing up for the day with this Chocolate cock for their “Salon du Chocat” exhibition of over 70 different kinds of premium chocolates from around the world.

Here’s more information about the Salon du Chocolat (in French) and a funky machine translation from French to English.

*Read more about upsidedown Japanese Valentine’s Day geared to serve men in the previous 3Yen report by Yves:

Passionfruit KitKat for Valentine’s day
So what will you give to your loved one on Valentine’s day? In Japan, if you are a guy, the answer is easy: nothin’!! Because here, Valentine’s day is when GIRLS give guys presents. And not any present: chocolate. …more…

Also check out my other Japanese Valentine’s reports:
—The perfect Japanese Valentine gift: the keys to her nether regions
—Japanese women dump on Valentine’s chocolates
—Are you gettin’ any? (Japanese “Choco”)
< --Screwing Valentine’s Day