Japan denies report gov't sought S. Korea's help for Yokota family meeting
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura on Friday denied a report that Tokyo had asked Seoul to act as a mediator with North Korea in setting up a meeting between the daughter and former husband of abductee Megumi Yokota and Yokota's parents in South Korea.

Norika Fujiwara meets empress at Red Cross meeting
Actress Norika Fujiwra, 36, this week met Empress Michiko at the annual National Red Cross conference held in Tokyo. Fujiwara, who does PR for the…

Haga Kenji, Watanabe Jiro Facing Prison Terms

Prosecutors sought an eight-year prison sentence for disgraced actor Haga Kenji (46) at the Osaka District Court yesterday. In the ongoing trial that began in February, Haga is accused of attempted blackmail and fraud of over ¥370 million. Also on trial is former world boxing champion Watanabe Jiro (53), for whom prosecutors are seeking a four-year sentence. Both defendants have pleaded innocent. Haga, real name Toma Mikio, once again turned on the waterworks, shedding tears as he has done at most of the hearings over the last few months. But prosectors said he has shown no sign of repentance and there is no room for taking extenuating circumstances into consideration. The case dates back to 2001, when Haga sold an acquaintance shares in a medical consultancy business at three times their value. When the company went bankrupt in 2006 and the man came looking for his money back, Haga enlisted the help of Watanabe and others. Using threats of violence and worse, they coerced the man...

Eating alone in Japan
Eating alone is something I do quite a bit myself, and I do find it relaxing to have peace and quiet for a few minutes every day. To see what image Japanese people have of this, MyVoice recently conducted a survey into this topic of eating alone. Demographics Over the first five days of April 2008 14,878 [...]

Fear of outing drives cross-dressing druggie sadist into deadly night-long orgy of torture
Fears of exposure of drug use, kinky sex habits and a "harem" of women led a Tokyo man to batter his ex-wife to death, but his trial revealed an even more chilling side to his actions than the heinous acts he was accused of, according to Shukan Gendai (5/10-17).

Oguri Shun, Yamada Yu are a Couple

Actor Oguri Shun (25) and actress-model Yamada Yu (23) are the latest young power couple. Though management for both stars refuse to acknowledge their relationship as anything more than good friends, it is widely believed that they are serious. They first worked together on the Japanese dubbing of U.S. animated movie "Surf's Up" last October. And in January they appeared together in the NTV drama series "Binbomen," which was Oguri's first starring role. Both ended romantic relationships last year, Oguri with model Tanaka Miho (25) and Yamada with actor Itoh Hideaki (31).

• Up-and-coming American enka singer Jero (26) has his first TV commercial contract. From May 21 he will appear in...

News site usage patterns in Japan
Not too surprisingly, Yahoo! comes out on top as the most frequently used news site in Japan, but there are still many interesting results in this survey from MyVoice into news sites. Demographics Over the first four days of April 2008 14,913 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the [...]

Suicidal porn princess with a fetish for funny men chooses gassing over flaming
A "fallen angel" porn starlet -- whose biggest claim to fame was an online assault brought on after threatening to expose celebrities she said she'd slept with -- has tragically become one of the growing number of Japanese taking their lives through toxic hydrogen sulfide inhalation, Flash (5/13-20) says.

YMO Provide Movie Theme for Tokyo!

Japan's most famous techno trio have teamed up with a trio of international movie directors for the omnibus movie "Tokyo!" The members of HASYMO - Hosono Haruomi (60), Sakamoto Ryuichi (56) and Takahashi Yukihiro (55) - are better known as the pioneering 80s band Yellow Magic Orchestra. They wrote the instrumental "Tokyo Town Pages" between them, mixing in station platform announcements and other sounds familiar to anyone who has been to Tokyo. The song, which features as the movie's ending theme, will be released as a double-A side single with the TBS "News23" theme "The City of Light" on August 6. The trio were chosen for the movie for a variety of reasons, among them being that they are all Tokyo natives, and the fact that their number matches the number of directors - Frenchmen Leos Carax (47) and Michel Gondry (44), and Korean Bong Joon-ho (38). The movie is to have its world premiere later this month in the "Un Certain Regard" category at the Cannes International Film Festiv...