No one can accuse Ibaraki prefectural government of being behind the times. With their feet planted firmly in the present, and their gaze set resolutely forwards, they’re tackling the problems of the modern world with appropriately modern laws and ordinances.

That’s why they recently enacted an “ordinance outlawing minors from selling their underpants”. And a certain Kenji Tomita, “46, a part-time worker from Ishioka”, is aware of this as he was the first lucky punter to be arrested under the new law.

According to a Mainichi report,

Tomita was the first person to be arrested under a clause of the ordinance that outlaws the practice of minors under 18 from removing their underwear and selling it.

Presumably, then, the law doesn’t cover selling freshly laundered panties. Perhaps the lawmakers, who know more about these things (the law, I mean), deemed there was no market, and no legislation was required.

Police in Sapporo have discovered a treasure trove of child poonography in the home of Takayuki Hosoda, an elementary school vice principal they recently arrested for paying minor girls for sex.

A police raid on Hosoda’s home netted hundreds of pornographic photos and movies of underage girls and he received payments totaling about 18 million yen for submissions made to pedophile publications during the period from 2000 to 2007, where he used the alias Aspirin Snow.

“I’m really famous among readers of magazines where you can send in pictures,” he was quoted as telling acquaintances.

Upon raiding Hosoda’s home, police found DVDs and photos of underage girls, school uniforms for girls, and other items. They also found out that Hosoda had taken part in a panel discussion for a magazine about how to seduce young girls, and even wrote a regular column for another pedophile publication.

A Florida man is facing up to 250 years in prison for possession of child pornography that included images of Japanese pedo cheesecake model Saaya Irie.

According to a Martin County Sheriff’s report, a deputy saw Downs’ blue Ford pickup illegally parked in a Jensen Beach construction zone with Downs sleeping inside. When the deputy searched the truck, he found marijuana and 51 CDs or DVDs with printed labels like “Asian girls in various stages of undress,” according to reports.

Many of the girls appeared younger than 12 and a receipt in the truck listed titles like Saaya Irie Legend 11 years old and Pretty Sexy Teens Series, according to reports.

Downs told a deputy he bought the pictures on the Internet, according to reports.

Publications containing photos of prebubescent models such as Irie are legal in Japan.

A man in Cambodia has been arrested after using a syringe to inject his blood into a woman’s rib cage and waist in an attempt to win her affections.

The assailant fell in love with the woman when the two were classmates in 2004, Tan Sophal said. After the woman refused his advances, he came up with the scheme to inject her with his blood, he said.

“He thought that if he could not marry her, at least his blood can stay inside her body,” Tan Sophal said. “That’s why he injected her with his blood.”

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a series of stories about a man who has been randomly slashing women as he drove past them on lonely roads in Saitama Prefecture.

Well, I am happy to announce that police have arrested the creep, who turned out to be a construction worker who lives in Saitama.

The reason he gave to investigators for his crime is a familiar one. . . “I did it to blow off steam after problems at work.”

Here is a video of gravure idol Aki Hoshino showing off her jumping skills for the camera.

And we always thought that Hoshino’s only skill is bending forward for the camera. . .

It appears as if a 38-year-old man may have picked the wrong target when he apparently forced a 15-year-old girl into his car and took her out into the woods. Though the details of what exactly happened still are not completely clear yet, the man apparently abducted the girl for nefarious purposes, and the girl ended up fatally stabbing him with an ice pick that was in his car.

Police found the 38-year-old victim, Hiroki Matsushita, lying dead on a road in Shimada at about 1 p.m. on Tuesday, with stab wounds to his chest and stomach.

A 15-year-old girl in the area admitted having stabbed Matsushita. Police said there was a possibility the girl, who had sustained serious stomach injuries, had been forcibly taken to the area by Matsushita. They are waiting for her to recover before questioning her further over the incident.

Investigators found an ice pick and other weapons believed to have been used in the attack in the car.

Based on the teenager’s statements, police said there was a possibility the teen had been forced into Matsushita’s vehicle near the bank of the Abe River in Shizuoka after parting with her friends on Monday evening, and was taken to the scene by Matsushita.

The two apparently got into an argument near the scene of the attack, and the girl apparently stabbed Matsushita with weapons inside the vehicle.

- - - - - - - - - - Update September 6

Police have determined that the man killed by the girl had a record for adbucting young girls.

Local police view the arrest as evidence that supports the credibility of the 15-year-old girl’s claims that he forced her into his car after threatening her with an ice pick and drove her around Shizuoka Prefecture with her hands tied.

“I stabbed him because I thought he would murder me,” she was quoted as telling investigators.

The 38-year-old man was arrested in June 1992 after he threatened a high school girl in Hanno with a knife, forced her into a light truck. He then drove her around for three days. During her captivity, he treated her violently, leaving her with injuries that took one week to heal.

This time around the guy picked the wrong member of the weaker sex to mess with.

In the latest incident, the girl, an assistant beautician, claims that the man threatened her with an ice pick on a bank of the Abe River in Shizuoka on Monday night, and forced her into his car, according to local police. The man then drove her around Shimada. During her captivity, he stabbed her with the ice pick.

Fearing for her life, the girl reacted by fatally stabbing the man and asked a passer-by for help. Investigators believe she stabbed her abductor in a bid to escape. The girl is currently in hospital receiving treatment for her stab wounds.

The author Dennis Cooper has something of a Japanese porn extravaganza going on, over at his blog.

Looks like Japan is not the only country where women are not safe riding the trains and subways. New York seems to have similar, if not worse, problems of its own.

A police officer was nabbed in a citizen’s arrest when the father of a 9-year-old girl noticed him trying to photograph up her skirt at a game arcade in Yokosuka, Japan.

The man strapped his camera-equipped cellphone to one of his shoes in an attempt to shoot upskirts of young girls playing games.

A man from Kagoshima, Japan is in custody for being a serial festival molester.

After his arrest, the main told police, “I have habitually visited festivals around the country and molested women. I preyed on women who were trapped in crowds.”

Kotani was in Kyoto on Tuesday to watch floats parade during the time-honored Gion Festival. He allegedly pressed his crotch against the bottom of a 24-year-old woman for several minutes. She had trouble moving because of the huge crowd, but managed to free herself and grabbed his arm, calling him a molester. Police officers soon arrived and arrested him.

Kotani, a company employee, took a day off work on Tuesday and visited Kyoto by plane, police said.

Thanks to Mr. Pink.

OK, at first this story from Kanagawa reads quite simple:

According to the board of education, the teacher, who is in his 20s, attached the note to the student’s back as punishment after a female student complained that some boys were trying to sneak into their changing room. Without confirming the facts, the teacher accused the boy and made him wear the note which read: “I am an idiot. I tried but failed to sneak into the girls’ changing room.”

Teacher punished for pinning humiliating note on student’s back, yes, I can see why he might merit being disciplined.

However, at no point in the article is there any comment on the fact that the said teacher pulled the student up about his failure to spy on girls getting nekkid. We can only assume had he succeeded then teacher would have given him a gold star.

Japan Diet members seem to be holding firm in the face of U.S. government demands to make possession of child pornography a crime in Japan. According to the U.S. Japan’s current Law for Punishing Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and for Protecting Children possession of child pornography for the purpose of selling or supplying it crimes, without criminalizing possession for personal use.

Sources said that senior U.S. government officials met with Foreign Ministry executives and other Japanese government officials, along with influential lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party between April and May. U.S. government officials said “hundreds” of Japanese names were included in image purchase records in child pornography cases that have been uncovered by U.S. investigative authorities.

U.S. government officials explained that current laws in Japan which do not ban mere possession of child pornography are creating a market for such material.

Japan and Russia are the only G-8 member countries where personal possession of child pornography is not a crime.

In an interview with the Mainichi, U.S. government officials said there was a “huge contradiction” in Japan, where it is illegal to sell child pornography, but it is legal to buy it.

“This legal loophole creates a massive demand for these images,” an official said.

Though there are voices in the Japanese Diet that are calling for criminalization of child porn possession, others are resisting “over fears that this will lead to the abuse of authorities’ investigative powers.”

When an assistant police inspector in Kagoshima looked out and saw what looked like a Japanese schoolgirl, sailor uniform and all, trying to steal his wife’s underwear, no doubt he knew right away that something just wasn’t quite right. The off-duty cop was out the door in a flash in hot pursuit of the thief, who he collared after a short foot chase.

The “schoolgirl” turned out to be Junichi Uchikura, a male part-timer at a pachinko parlor.

Subsequent investigation revealed that the schoolgirl uniform Uchikura was wearing had been stolen from another residence earlier the same day.

When police searched the one-room home of a 60-year-old man after arresting him for stealing a women’s kimono, they were suprised to find it packed with some 8,200 items of women’s underwear and other clothing items. According to police, the man had the habit of wrapping himself in women’s clothing when he slept at night.

According to the man, he had been randomly stealing women’s clothing for about a decade.

Meet Hideo Tsuchia, president of Orient Industry, a company that manufactures sex dolls that run any where from 140,000 to 650,000 yen.

A young woman is suing the Japanese government for 11.15 million yen because she claims she was pressured to resign from the nation’s Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) after being sexually molested by a superior.

According to the woman who was an airman 1st class when the incident occurred, an ASDF staff sergeant called her at 2:30 a.m. one day and asked her to meet him. When she did, the sergeant fondled her breast. When the woman told her direct superior of the incident, he advised her to resign from the ASDF.

“I’d like to fight against the state in order to restore my personal rights and dignity as a woman,” the plaintiff said in a statement.

Representatives of the ASDF declined to comment pending the results of an internal investigation.

The following article may be NSFW.

Account by a young British woman from the U.K. describing how she was stalked and sexually taunted while serving as a JET in the Tottori Prefecture, Japan.

Lindsay Ann Hawker, the 22-year old woman who recently was beaten and suffocated before being buried in a bathtub full of sand, was in Japan because she thought it to be a safe place with a good society.

“Before coming to Japan, she had researched extensively on the Net. We all agreed that Japan was a safe place and a good society,” [Lindsay's father said in a recent press conference], adding that he and his wife and another daughter had visited Lindsay at Christmas and had been proud when they saw where she worked and lived.

According to friends, however, once she got here she quickly found out that Japan may not be the dream world she originally had expected it to be.

A friend revealed that Lindsay was planning to come home next month — as she found Japanese men “creepy”.

Toby Wheeler, 30, who worked with Lindsay in Tokyo, said: “She found Japanese men weird. Some made inappropriate gestures and sexual remarks.

“She got increasingly upset and wanted to come home.”