Some people tend to compare Japanese Love Dolls with regular western sex dolls, but in reality, they are on a whole other level. Believe it or not, people actually pay big money to sleep with a doll, at the bustling love doll brothels across Japan.
The first Japanese love dolls were created 30 years ago, so that people with disabilities could enjoy some female companionship, but they quickly became an alternative for healthy men simply to shy to enjoy sleeping with real women. A lot of Japanese men are obsessed with …

Presuming you have loads of free time, that is. So if you’ve recently lost your job or have large amounts of free time for some other reason, such as laziness, now is the time for you to go on pilgrimage. Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back for five or six weeks.
Pilgrimage, perhaps Japan’s first form of travel, is a chance to reconnect with those fundamental Japanese values of yore — simplicity, austerity and nature (or if you prefer, hiking, camping and insects). It’s about detachment: leaving behind …

Charles Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Babe Ruth, and in recent years U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev are among the many celebrities who have lodged at the Imperial Hotel, Japan’s first grand Western-style inn, which opened as a state guesthouse during the Meiji Era (1868-1912).
Looking back on its 120-year history, Tetsuya Kobayashi, its eighth president, says the core of the Imperial Hotel’s operations has always been serving important foreign guests.
"With that, the Imperial Hotel is a state guesthouse in our mind, and we …

Forget the ice ax and $500 climbing boots. The mode du jour for today’s mountain hikers in Japan is the miniskirt and leggings.North Face, maker of the Gore-Tex waterproof jacket, and Alpine Tour Service Co. are targeting “yama girls,” or mountain girls, the nickname of the growing number of women who are taking to the hills of Japan wearing short pants or fleece skirts with leggings and designer trekking boots.“I want to wear something cute like a skirt,” said Machiko Miyauchi, 25, who made her first ascent of Mount Fuji, …

Japan’s No.2 airline All Nippon Airways Co Ltd (ANA) has pleaded guilty to two separate charges of price fixing and has agreed to pay $73 million as criminal fine.
According to the Department of Justice, ANA had engaged in a conspiracy to fix one or more components of cargo rates charged for international air cargo shipments from at least as early as April 1, 2000, until at least February 14, 2006.
ANA was also charged with engaging in a conspiracy to fix unpublished passenger fares on tickets purchased in the United States …

The metropolitan government will spend ¥128.1 billion this fiscal year to relocate the Tsukiji fish market to the Toyosu district in Koto Ward, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said Friday.
His announcement drew an immediate outcry from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which holds a majority in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and opposes the move to a site deemed highly toxic. The DPJ also threatened to block the budget for the move.
"I have decided to go with relocating Tsukiji market to Toyosu based on the deliberations of the assembly," Ishihara told …

Dentsu Facility Management Inc will start taking orders for the "Chef’s Farm," a small vegetable plant that can be installed in, for example, a restaurant, in June 2010.
The vegetable plant, which will be released in the summer of 2010 in Japan, was exhibited at International Food Machinery & Technology Exhibition 2010 (FOOMA JAPAN 2010), which took place from June 8 to 11, 2010, in Tokyo. It is priced at about ¥8.3 million (approx US$90,552). Dentsu Facility Management claims that it is possible to harvest 60 heads of lettuce per day …

Passengers in Aomori Prefecture have the chance to save train tickets from a memorable journey in a way far more intimate than sticking them in a scrapbook: Eat them.
Aoimori Railway Co. on Saturday began selling an edible ticket to celebrate the extension of its Metoki-Hachinohe Line further north to Aomori in December.
The ticket, priced at 1,500 yen ($18), is made of a Nanbu-senbei cracker, a Hachinohe specialty. Edible ink is used on the ticket, which is 10 centimeters in diameter.
The railway company, a joint public-private venture, "printed" 2,000 tickets, 47 …

The Global UNESCO Network of Geoparks group has newly admitted a part of the Sea of Japan coast stretching from Kyoto to Tottori prefectures into it’s group of Geoparks.
The group backed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, conducted a screen of the area to determine if the coast allowed visitors to see significant landscapes and terrestrial formations. The coastal area is the fourth area of the country to be granted membership. Mount Usu in Hokkaido, the Itoigawa tectonic line in Niigata Prefecture, and the Shimabara …

A ceremony was held Friday in Nara to mark the 1,300th anniversary of the move of Japan’s capital to Heijo-kyo, where it remained for much of the eighth century, with both Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko in attendance.
About 1,700 guests, including representatives of nearly 50 foreign governments, gathered outside the restored Daigokuden palace on the site of the former capital, as dancers dressed in uniforms of military and civilian officers of the period and court ladies welcomed them with ancient music inspired by China’s Tang Dynasty.
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