Due to being super stretchy and low rise, Black Man briefs it seems are the perfect pants for a spot of personal package promotion.
Only available in medium and large.
Photographs from a small group of islands
Perhaps in a bid to make people think that Japanese ‘scientific’ whale hunting isn’t really that bad after all, fisherman in Wakayama Prefecture have been conscientiously continuing their regular cetacean cull; a busy day on the boats last Saturday alone resulting in around 128 dead dolphins.
Yet it may not be only the dolphins that suffer from such activities, as the potentially high levels of mercury in the resultant meat is far from healthy. A fact that prompted Health Sciences University Professor Tetsuya Endo to confess, “To be honest, I’m worried about people who eat too much of it. There is a range in the concentrations (of mercury in meat) and averages may be low, but a consumer may have bad luck and get a high-density serving. Japanese people have their choice of food. Why eat something dangerous?”
But despite such choice people still eat the stuff, with supermarkets preparing the product by balancing the amount of fat, meat and skin in each portion. A delicacy that may not look to be bad in its traditional setting of a miso-flavoured stew, but in its natural form, ‘appetising’ isn’t exactly the first word that springs to mind.
Tempted?
As well as potentially costing him his freedom, Masashi Kamata’s shoe obsession looks to have also costs him a considerable amount of money, as the footwear fiend had to resort to renting a warehouse to store his vast glut of ill-gotten gains.
Arrested back in September for the theft of just two pairs of indoor school shoes, it appears to have taken until this week for the police to unearth Kamata-san’s astonishing collection, with local officers confiscating around 5,000 pairs of children’s school shoes from the warehouse.
Seemingly unfazed by the find, the 28-year-old attempted to explain his behaviour by telling investigators, “I was enjoying their smell. Indoor shoes for school sexually stimulate me. I couldn’t throw away the shoes I obtained.”
Rumours that Kamata is eagerly looking forward to developing a similar penchant for prison-issue pumps have yet to be confirmed.
Tokyo may still be one of the world’s most expensive cities, and the Japanese capital’s capitulation to luxury goods like Louis Vuitton shows no sign of abating; however for a growing number of residents, the double whammy of protracted recession and rigorous restructuring means that a post-redundancy riverside retreat may turn out to be considerably less sumptuous than it sounds.
A relatively reasonable view, no neighbours,
and a sizeable vegetable garden being the only advantages.
If indeed you can class them as such.
“We once had one guy who’d held these feelings for a woman inside himself for six years. He’d finally built up the guts to confess his love, but wanted us to check her out first just in case she rejected him.”
Despite the likes of email and instant messaging allowing amorous admirers to approach the object of their desires without the risk of a frosty face-to-face rejection, many Japanese men it seems are still very reluctant to reveal their feelings for fear of somehow fluffing their lines or being flatly turned down. A situation that is apparently ideal for the Onayami Kaiketsu Tanteidan confession service, as for a fee — dependent on the service required — all the hard work can be taken care of by a total stranger, allowing the worrying wooer to simply waltz up at the end and claim his prize; or alternatively silently skulk away if the feelings aren’t reciprocal.
According to consultant Kimiko Yoshii, “about 70 percent of customers are men in their 30s who’ve had serious feelings for a woman for a long time.” Yet although a service to simply pass on the message to the lady in question is very cheap, many requests require elaborate preparations that can cost anything upwards of 100,000 yen (448 pound).
Simply opting for the tried and trusted ‘my mate fancies you’ method, or instead organising a coincidental coming together however would appear to be way too simple, with a system almost akin to stalking being the desired technique. “First we find the target, where she lives, what kind of guys she likes, that sort of stuff. If we approach her immediately, she’d probably be more shocked than anything else, so we pretend to be carrying out street interviews for market research and approach her that way, finding out her private details at the same time.”
And if such clandestine considerations weren’t enough, Yoshii-san also adds that, “once she gets to know the service member’s face, we can then introduce discussion about the client, saying things like how he had remarked on her being ‘cute.’ There’s not a woman in the world who’d object to being cute. If mentioning that he fancies her comes up in the course of some girl talk, she’s not likely to suspect anything.”
Despite this method being about as direct as the men it is serving, a time is eventually arranged for the client to meet the love of his life and set about awkwardly articulating his feelings. Then, once the cat is finally out of the bag, it’s simply a case of the staffer discreetly riding off into the distance.
“It’d be a bit weird if somebody who’s been claiming to be the client’s friend suddenly disappeared out of his life soon after setting up an introduction with a new partner. The staff member will suddenly announce over the phone or by e-mail that she’s got an impending marriage or move and ease out of the new couple’s life that way.”
All quite simple really.