It’s become something of an annual tradition: November 8th is Ii Oppai no Hi (Nice Breasts Day), at least according to the Japanese Twittersphere.

Cue lots of lovely pictures of bust shared by gravure models and AV idols.

Here is porn star Kirara Asuka.

And top gravure idol (usually known for her wonderful rear) Yuka Kuramochi.

Next up, appropriately busty gravure idol Jun Amaki.

And the more subtle beauty of Sakura Nanase.

Finally, here’s Eri Kitami, really showing how to flaunt what you’ve got.

A potential scandal threatens to engulf idol group NGT48, the Niigata spin-off of AKB48… or it may just blow over.

This time it involves cute idol Maho Yamaguchi, the 21-year-old 1st generation-member of the group.

During a live streaming session on the online platform Showroom on November 13th, she is accused of having sex with a boyfriend.

This has been denied by her management, though even they admit that Yamaguchi’s decision to lie down on a bed and speak to the camera was poor judgment and likely to give the wrong impression.

In the video, which is now circulating freely on YouTube, you can hear strange panting and see Yamaguchi’s body seemingly being moved by thrusts as her words become harder to hear.

The NGT48 management is moving fast to delete all the videos so enjoy it while you can.

Personally we’ve not convinced that is a genuine hamedori sex tape. If you watch longer footage of the video it seems to be pretty innocuous.

Former AKB48 idol Satomi Kaneko has joined the growing ranks of idols who have graduated onto “sexier” and more revealing careers.

She has stopped short of doing actual porn yet her new gravure DVD (released on October 21st) is very explicit, full of close-up shots of her shaved you-know-what area.

Netizens are eagerly parsing the images to see if you can see her pussy hair. (You can’t, but it’s a close thing.)

The 26-year-old with the F-cup left her AKB career behind in 2007, since when she has turned to shedding her clothes to maintain an income.

And very nicely she does this, too. Wearing a traditional fundoshi over a paipan pussy is certainly one way to keep yourself on people’s radars.

Next stop, a visit to the offices of porn label Muteki?

Our new lust this month is the model Eriko Sato.

Eriko has posed nude in a butt-revealing series of shots for a new photo book.

First off, this is not the Eriko Sato we already know and love. She’s now apparently given up her acting and modeling career for the joys of interracial marriage.

This Eriko Sato (different kanji, by the way) is a 26-year-old race queen and gravure idol who released her first photo book in late October. “Shiriaitai” is all about her butt, and it’s easy to see why they went for that theme. The other Eriko Sato never went this far, more’s the pity.

Still, if she really wants to succeed, she should probably change her professional name or she will always be compared to the other Eriko Sato. And then there’s Erika Sato, a porn star. Okay, this is getting confusing. Let’s just concentrate on that butt and forget about names for a while.

Japanese TV is not known for its quality but it at least never fails to impress with its latest nude novelties or risque antics.

Now a TV show has appeared featuring gravure idols wearing sexy bikinis. Nothing new about that. There are even shows about gravure idol in armor.

But these are “failed” gravure idols, ladies who haven’t made it big (yet). The idea is that the minor idols make their last grasp at fame on the show, wearing everything from noren (the low curtains that hang over entrances in Japan) to toilet paper, kagami mochi (a New Year decorative rice cake) or even lids of pots. Effectively they are wearing fundoshi, a traditional undergarment that can look even ridiculous or totally sexy.

The ladies include Ami Asai, Tomomi Ijuin and an unidentified third model.

Well, these sporty lasses certainly put on a good performance and can’t be criticized for not trying their best in increasingly humiliating and trying circumstances.

The svelte, generously busty Ami Asai, in particular, certainly deserves to be more popular, as these pictures attest.

It’s the video that launched a thousand imitators (and counting).

Pikotaro’s PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen) video made “PPAP” one of the buzzwords of the year and inspired a whole meme industry.

No doubt it will blow over in a few weeks’ time.

Until them we can enjoy the variations, not least this eye-opening one by gravure idol Jun Amaki.

The busty gal is best known for her “I cup” chest and being a petite 148cm. That’s quite a combination. She’s also a former member of the masked idols group Kamen Joshi.

She has created a version of Pikotaro’s PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen) that is memorably themed around her biggest assets.

Yes, behold POOP. Don’t worry, it’s not THAT kind of video. The title stands for “Pen Oppai Oppai Pen”. In case you don’t speak Japanese, we’ll let you guess the meaning of “oppai” from the video. It’s not hard.

Jun Amaki is not the first gradol to attempt a busty cover of PPAP. Here is Chika Yuuki’s version.

One of our ongoing preoccupations is what happens to gravure and music idols after they stop being famous. Once they have faded into obscurity, how do they survive? Get married and become homemakers? Go into hostessing or even prostitution? Or a totally different line of work?

Some evidently advance into careers in AV.

We also previously looked at the case of Yuka Kosaka, who now runs a nursery school in Chiba.

Others make the unexpected leap into mainstream politics.

Here is another cautionary tale.

The tarento Hanako Takigawa is only 28 but already has had a troubled, up-and-down career.

She made her gravure debut in 2005.

In 2011, at the age of just 23 and after less than a year of dating, she got married to actor Masaki Nishina. After they divorced in 2012 (rumored to have been caused by Nishina’s liking for hostess clubs), he went on to date the incredibly hot model Haruna Yabuki, but she then came home to find him in bed with a hostess. He seems not to know what a lucky guy he is.

Takigawa felt humiliated by her “speed divorce” (they were married less than two years) and particularly ashamed for her parents. She recently revealed on a TV show that in her early career she had effectively coasted on the name of her mother, who was a successful actress.

To make ends meet, she started working part-time last year at a real estate office, earning an hourly wage of just ¥1,150.

Takigawa continues to act, though she now goes by the name of just Hanako. She appeared in A Courtesan with Flowered Skin, which starred a nude Yumi Adachi.

Disgraced gravure idol and now one of AV’s top porn stars Shoko Takahashi/Takasaki has joined her fellow porn newcomer Yua Mikami (Momona Kito) for what must be the sexiest photo shoot of the year.

These nude shots, taken for Weekly Playboy in the autumn, really show off both their voluptuous bodies to the full.

What’s more, in a more recent subsequent nude photo shoot the two were joined by none other than Mana Sakura, who is already a major star in her own right. There was even a 30-minute video to accompany the “lesbian threesome” shoot.

Shoko Takahashi and Yua Mikami’s commercial success are anomalies. Many others have tried to move from more mainstream careers as music idols or gravure models into porn without establishing a foothold. Remember Rina Nakanishi? We didn’t think so.

In fact, every year hundreds of women make their debut in Japanese porn. In total, thousands of performers appear in the industry’s annual output. But only a small number survive the vicissitudes of the scene to appear in more than one or a few features, let alone maintain a large following.

There are far better financial awards waiting for those lucky few — far exceeding any reimbursement they might expect from a career in gravure modeling. Plus they can earn lots of extra cash by keeping rich lovers who pay for their time together, a practice exposed by the recent case of Yuria Satomi and her back taxes.

The others slide back into prostitution, hosting and other related occupations. And the relentless beast that is JAV marches on.

Here is an awesome, belated Christmas present for you folks: nude photos of Moemi Katayama that have leaked ahead of the official release of her new photo book out next year.

The 26-year-old Katayama has become increasingly better known over the past 1-2 years. She released her first photo book in September and the new one, “Rashin”, comes out on January 5th. Since 2015 she has been a favorite gravure idol for weekly tabloid magazine shoots, and even appeared in a Kirin ad in May.

This, though, is by far the most explicit the busty G-cup gravure idol has gone.

It’s not quite “hair nude” full-frontal nudity territory, but it’s close enough for now. You can see some bush and nipples, and an awesome shot of her ass. (This seems a trend this year. After teasing us for so long, Manami Hashimoto also finally showed us her naked butt.) Next stop, AV debut?

Some of the shots are just grainy scans right now but we will be updating as better images appear.

For now, all we can say is — thank you. Moemi, 2016 has been a tough year, what with the deaths of great music and acting legends as well as the UK referendum, US election and all the shit going on the Middle East. Now here is finally something to look forward in 2017!

Recently we’ve been admiring a nice trend for weekly magazines in Japan to produce fantastic photo shoots featuring a host of stars showing off their naked bodies.

We saw it in the 51 naked porn stars in Weekly Playboy and then 50 semi-naked gravure idols last year. More recently we also blogged about the great “threesome” shoot with former music idol Yua Mikami, ex-gravure idol Shoko Takahashi/Takasaki, and Mana Sakura.

Mikami is back in this new shoot, which is a naked “feast” also starring Kirara Asuka, An Tsujimoto, Miharu Usa, Riku Minato, Moe Amatsuka, Arina Hashimoto and Minami Kojima… which is more AV stars than you could probably ever fit in your fantasies. Too much of a good thing? Not in a million years.

Feeling hungry now?

The inclusion of Mikami (formerly Momona Kito of SKE4) in this lineup only further cements her place among the top echelon on big-name JAV stars.

Unfortunately, as is typical for these print magazines, the actual nudity — even nipples — is censored but you still get a very nice view of their flesh on display.

It’s always a sad day when we spot news that our favorite gravure idols have got hitched.

Back in 2015 Yumi Sugimoto produced probably her sexiest and most naked photo book ever. “Chiamata” showed off quite a bit of flesh, even if it wasn’t quite full-frontal stuff.

Well, enjoy those images for all they are worth, folks. That photo book may well be her last, assuming the common pattern repeats here. Sugimoto has now gotten married to a man four years her junior after around a year of dating, it emerged at the end of December. Typically gravure idols stop working as glamor models after they wed or revert to a very mainstream career as television “tarento”.

Also adding to the end-of-year marriage rush was Manami Marutaka, a more minor gravure idol but still a favorite of ours since around 2012. The 26-year-old married her boyfriend, the soccer player Yoichiro Kakitani, in December.

It’s going to be a lonely January!

Is Shoko Takahashi/Takasaki the perfect soapland sex worker?

She certainly looks and acts the part in her latest AV release from Moodyz, aptly titled “Gravure Soap”. The former gravure idol with the mega bust, whose switch to a career in porn last year was one of the highlights of the calendar, demonstrates how an awesome soapland experience should look. We have to use our fertile imaginations for how it feels, though.

After all, she certainly has the breasts for paizuri and a curvy body that is ideal for rubbing herself all over a very lucky, prone male customer.

That being said, this looks like the most decadent soapland venue we’ve ever seen! Normally there is hardly enough room to turn around in the room, let alone spread yourself out in a luxurious hall like the one in this AV.

Judging by her skills here, if her AV career ever starts to decline — not looking likely at the moment — Shoko will definitely be able to pick up some work in Yoshiwara or any of the other soapland districts scattered around Tokyo.

Arashi’s Jun Matsumoto has been dating the actress Mao Inoue, if the rumors are to be believed, but their agencies prevent the stars — who are not getting any younger and perhaps about to pass their peak — from making their relationship public, yet alone marrying.

So what to make of these latest tabloid allegations? Matsumoto is now apparently cheating on Mao with another woman. And she’s a porn star.

Yes, it seems that being a member of Arashi is a ticket to date and (supposedly) live with a popular actress while also having fun with a member of the adult industry.

At the end of December, Shukan Bunshun reported that 33-year-old Matsumoto had been having an affair with 26-year-old porn star Tsukasa Aoi for four years, all while carrying on his relationship with Inoue.

This is pretty scandalous stuff, though the “evidence” seems to be only that Aoi was spotted leaving the apartment where Matsumoto lives (possibly with Inoue).

Still if a comedian old enough to be a grandfather can enjoy the fruits of a porn star (step forward, Sanma Akashiya), then it’s hardly unimaginable that Matsumoto could bag such a young hottie.

Many leading porn stars actually make extra money by dating sugar daddies, receiving very generous compensation for their “time”. Perhaps that’s what’s happening here. Mao doesn’t give him everything he needs, so Jun has an arrangement with a porn star.

Previous cases of pop stars dating porn actors include V6’s Go Morita, who apparently dated Alice Miyuki a while back, and there were allegations that Kirara Asuka was dating Kei Inoo of Hey! Say! JUMP.

Regardless of the truth, the scandal has led to Tsukasa Aoi cancelling a book-signing event, and she stopped tweeting in late December due to the abuse she was receiving on the social media network from Arashi fans.

It’s also amusing to see this reported in the mainstream media, where as always in these cases euphemisms are employed. Aoi is not an AV star, she’s a “sexy actress”. Hmm…

As we prepare for the joys that await the adult world thanks to virtual reality, you can currently get a taster of the kind of things we might see a lot more of soon.

Friday, the weekly tabloid published by Kodansha, has got together with former gravure model and now top porn star Shoko Takahashi (Shoko Takasaki) to produce three “virtual reality” scenes featuring the busty lady in the nude.

The 3D scenes are viewable in three dimensions: view them here, here and here. Use your cursor to move around and find Shoko waiting to entertain you. We assume this promotion is only available for a limited time and the footage may disappear eventually.

Notwithstanding our rather click-baity headline, you don’t get to have actual virtual reality sex with Shoko, but the scenes are still nice nonetheless. It’s like looking at an grainy anime version of Shoko, though we imagine it is better with VR googles.

Still, the implications are obvious. We haven’t seen so many examples of interesting use of 3D and VR technology yet involving gravure and porn idols, though the possibilities they offer for getting more intimate with top stars are immense. Bring it on!

Are there still any famous ladies left in AKB48? That’s a question we often ask ourselves these days. Well, yes and no. The big guns are basically gone but there are still popular idols.

And they are determined to stay in the public eye with eye-catching photo shoots.

Here are the idols of AKB48 like you’ve never seen them before: as wrestlers! Participants in the shoot were: Jurina Matsui, Sakura Miyawaki, Mion Mukaichi, Kaori Matsumura, Miru Shiroma, Haruka Shimada, Yui Yokoyama and Haruka Kodama.

The shoot was actually a promo for Tofu Puroresu (Tofu Professional Wrestling), a new late-night TV series starring the AKB48 idols and produced by Yasushi Akimoto. No prizes for guessing that it’s about female wrestling.

As much as we like the idea of young ladies getting all sweaty, does anyone believe that the super skinny girls of AKB could ever cut it in the ring? If you really want to see sporty, athletic women with bodies to match, you can’t go wrong with boxer Tomomi Takano, gymnast Risa Izumi, and baseball lady Ami Inamura.

And if this is really your sort of thing, check out our other sexy sports athletes content.

You may recall our glee when advance images appeared showing busty gravure model Moemi Katayama fully in the buff — bush and all — for her new photo book, Rashin.

It’s rare for a gravure model to make the switch to a hair nude shoot (okay, so she’s wearing clothes but they are see-through, so this is basically full-frontal stuff) just as her career is starting to get going. Normally they wait until they are over 30 and things are not looking great for them, such as Haruna Yabuki did recently (though hair nudes were originally used by some stars to launch their careers).

Or perhaps Katayama knows that, already in her late twenties, her gravure career — which only just started to take off — will be too short and she needs to milk her body. Or maybe she just loves taking off her clothes. Who knows. But the visual results are great, regardless of the raison d’être for the photo book.

We promised to blog again with some more images. Well, true to our word, we have been biding our time, hoping more quality scans would appear online.

Unfortunately, they are few and far between, but we do have these to go on. We’ve thrown in an older image just for some extra fun.

See the other images from Moemi Katayama’s hair nude photo book Rashin.

We love to see old favorites coming back into our lives — and we love to see women who aren’t 22 being celebrated for their beauty and older sex appeal.

And so we are delighted to see that Hiroko Sato is making a comeback, bush and all. The actress is best known for her early gravure career and nude scenes in such films as the low-budget A Night in Nude — Salvation (2010) with Naoto Takenaka and directed by the veteran Takashi Ishii, who also made the soft-core porn films Flower and Snake with Aya Sugimoto, Sweet Whip with Yuki Mamiya, and Hello, My Dolly Girlfriend with Kokone Sasaki.

She is also a veteran of the hair nude (full-frontal photo shoot) and clearly isn’t afraid of showing us how she has ripened with age. After all, she looks amazing.

Now aged 31 and having entered the gravure world way back in 2002, she still has a lean and slender figure with stunning nipples. (We’re not sure her ass her aged so well, though.)

Sato gave us her first hair nude in 2010. She is back with a new one in a photo book called “1262” that is published this month. Her signature long face and come-hither eyes are still just as sexy as when we first laid eyes on her all those years ago.

Sato is also a single mother now and let’s hope her the book sells well so she can support her family.

We’ve had this post planned for a few months and finally we think we have enough examples to make it work.

Last year we noticed something of a trend for popular models and actresses to show off their sporty bodies. Perhaps this is part of a push towards the Olympics in 2020?

As we know, there are plenty of hot female athletes in Japan, from boxers to gymnasts, snowboarders, volleyball players, bodybuilders, para-athletes, and more.

And then there are “idols” whose entire schtick is that they are sporty, like Ami Imamura and her powerful baseball swing. She can dominate us on the field any day she wants!

The muscular Reika Saiki, in particular, has turned her sporty body into her career.

So is this all creeping into the mainstream? It might seem so. We spotted a handful of examples over the course of roughly the last year.

One of the most prominent was Nana Eikura, who showed off her sleek body for an Adidas campaign. She then went and spoiled it all by getting married.

The usually anodyne gravure model Ruriko Kojima has also tried to give herself some more personality by rebranding as a sporty idol.

Aya Asahina, whose popularity is growing, has also done a shoot as a sexy athlete. Have hurdles ever looked so tempting? Leap over us, Aya!

Quite a fuss was made online when Aya Asahina also appeared on a TV show last year in very tight bicycling gear. Check out that crotch.

The actress Hikaru Osawa, meanwhile, has shown us that holding a basketball can be hot.

The model Anne Nakamura has presented a public image as a sporty girl who likes to get sweaty at the gym — all in the name of advertising something, of course (this time, Reebok).

Hell, even the skinny girls of AKB48 have tried to convince us that they are wrestlers!

Considering far too many girls in Japan think that having sex means lying down and doing nothing, this trend towards sports and outdoor activities might even have a knock-on effect on performance in the bedroom. We can hope.

Either way, we can console ourselves with fantasies about how energetic Anne Nakamura must be in the sack.

A Japanese newswire article about sexual harassment among aspiring models and idols is doing the rounds, confirming what we’ve been saying for years.

Apparently, a government survey has shown that 26.9% of Japanese young female models and starlets have received “unwanted requests for sexually oriented photo shoots”.

This comes hot on the heels of last year’s controversy about widespread coercion in the porn industry.

In the first survey by the Cabinet Office on sexual abuse against young women, 7.7% of respondents had been offered contracts to become models or starlets.

Asked about details of requests for pornographic shoots with multiple answers allowed, 58.5%, the largest group, cited pictures in bathing suits or other revealing clothes.

The second-largest proportion of respondents, 35.8%, were asked to take off part or all of the bathing suits for photographs, followed by 22.6% who were asked for shooting of sexual acts and 20.8% who received requests for photos of their breasts or sexual organs being touched.

The proportion of respondents who accepted such requests was 32.1%.

Of them, 35.3% said that they were motivated by money, followed by 29.4% who were told that such requests were agreed upon in contracts and 23.5% who were told that many people would be annoyed if the requests were declined.

The survey was conducted online from Dec. 9 to 21, covering 2,575 women who were offered or applied for work as models and starlets. Of them, 515 were teenagers and 1,030 were in their 20s or 30s. In a preliminary survey, the agency asked 20,000 women aged 15 to 39 across the country whether they had been invited to or applied for such jobs.

We love gravure and AV but we want it to be a healthy industry for everyone: the performers and models, the staff and the fans. For this to happen, the industries need to expunge the widespread sexual harassment and the ingrained presence of gangsters.

As we know, idols and models often have to sleep with people to advance in their careers.

Let’s hope this new survey prompts some serious action.

We’ve long been fans of Rina Aizawa and her charmingly slender and waif-like body, which despite having a very petite build still offers something in the way of a pert rear. That’s a combination we don’t turn down lightly.

So we are pleased to see the 25-year-old gravure idol is getting some mainstream exposure in a late-night TV drama. Sadly, this is regular Japanese television so there’s no nudity per se but we do get to see what Rina might look like in bed.

Based on a manga by Mengo Yokoyari, Scum’s Wish (Kuzu no Honkai) on Fuji Television is about high schoolers and their various crushes. Rina Aizawa plays a private tutor who gets entangled in a love triangle. Whatever. We just want to see Rina in the buff.

Okay, this ain’t HBO. Given her anodyne career so far, this may be the closest Rina gets to a nude scene, so let’s enjoy every frame of it.

The series also stars Miyu Yoshimoto.