At a recent press conference, MEGUMI was spotted with an engagement ring. No formal announcement has been made, but the obvious bastard… er… lucky guy is the lead singer for j-rock band Dragon Ash, Kj. MEGU has been seeing him for a couple of years and are currently living together.

Anyways, congrats to the lucky couple, although I suppose this puts a dampner on any possible return to gravure for MEGUMI - married idols just aren’t part of the cultural landscape in Japan.

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The most recent Flash magazine (#989) had a short, and very odd, pictorial of Hanai Miri. Delving into the artsy side of things, Miri did a four-page spread, seemingly wearing nothing but bopdy paint. Not my cup of tea, and gives me flashbacks to her disappointing book Aikakko Runrun.

The final page of the spread had a short bit of text, and if nothing else, Miri suffered for this one - it took about 13 hours total to apply all the paint to her body - 3 for the front, 10 for the back. Ouch. Anyways, she said that the paint covered everything so she didn’t feel very nervous during the photo session, but also mentioned that she would be willing to pose nude if the right project came along.

Now, far be it for me to raise an eyebrow at that statement, but considering the Miri has already appeared essentially nude save for some pasties and a thong in various photoshoots and one DVD (Yarujan!), I don’t really think that she has much left to hide at all, and hence not much to gain career-wise. But for the LCD, two small patches of skin and some hair (or perhaps lackthereof) make all the difference. Still, if that’s route she choose, I can’t say I won’t be watching with great interest.

I don’t think I’ll be adding these photos to Miri’s proper gallery as IMHO they aren’t really to my taste. But if that’s your thing, enjoy!

And finally, for those of you who have already dropped your pants at the thought of a nude Miri - at least wait until you go look for proper porn. Perverts.

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When I checked my email earlier today I had no less than five inquires about a new idol: Takana Hitomi. My brain, being the fine-tuned machine that it is, deduced that something must be afoot in the world of big-busted idols, so I set out to investigate. Sure enough, Hitomi-chan is indeed an impressively busty and cute woman, although leaning a bit towards towards the gyaru asethetic, which I’m not a particular fan of.

However, I seriously doubt she is going to be doing straight modelling for long: the publisher of her debut DVD, Bakunyū J No Shōgeki, is Soft On Demand, which produces AV (that’s Japanese porn, just in case you didn’t know). I suspect this is just part of the build towards her AV debut - fanning the flames as it were. Long time reader Gavin has mentioned that it looks like she might be doing a topless photoshoot soon for a magazine.

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Yes, more useless event info unless you happen to live in Tôkyô. Club Vo will be hosting Matsugane Yôko and Oda Arisa in the same week, but, sadly, not the same event. Yôko will be appearing on Sunday, August 19th, then Arisa will be closing out the week on Saturday, August 25th.

The usual stuff about registering for the event and fees applies. I had never heard of these guys before, but I quick glance through the site makes it seem pretty standard. Check their website for more details. Lucky bastards.

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While surfing around, I came across this article about Nemoto Harumi saying that she is not retiring. After completely missing the link to the original Japanese article at the top of the page, I googled the watermark on the image (which I completely missed as well the first time) and found the article. Damnit. So much for powers of perception.

In anycase, according the article on the Nikkan Sports website, Nemo-chan is not retiring from modelling just yet, so good news for those of us who worship the very ground she walks on.

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Hot on the heels of that Nozomi announcement, Yôko will also be having a photoshoot this month on the 24th december 2007 at Office Den. The link to register is still not working, but keep an eye on the page if you’re interested and in the area to get your change to do some amateur photography with Yôko.

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Hanai Miri has done something a little odd: she’s changed her name.

If you don’t read any Japanese (as it’s pronounced the same way) or don’t obesses over little detail like I do, this won’t make a lick of difference to you, but for reasons unknown to me yet, Miri has announced on her blog that she has changed the kanji for her first name from 美里 to 美理. Just purely from a marketing standpoint, this would seem to be a bad idea, but it’s her life. I’m going to plow through her blog tomorrow and see if I can come up with a reason for the name change, but at the moment it’s too late and my crappy kanji skills can’t handle it at the moment.

Maybe she and Rio are planning to merge into some kind of super idol or something now that the kanji match: MIRIO!!! (美理緒) Okay. That was lame. Sorry.

Updated

Okay… I had a chance to read through her blog and on the advice of a fortune teller Miri decided to change her kanji. In someways, it’s not that surprising considering how prevalent this kind of thing is in Japan.

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I know I’m a bit late on this, but sad news for Harada Ôrei fans if you hadn’t already heard: it seems she has decided that enough is enough and announced her retirement on her blog at the end of March. By the time I got wind of this, her blog had already been taken down, the Internet Wayback Machine proved fruitless, and I am relying on Japanese Wikipedia, but, as we all know, Wikipedia does not exactly have a sterling reputation for accuracy, but let’s face it… who the hell in their right mind is going to vandalize a page about a extremely minor model?

In any case, she apparently hasn’t left the entertainment industry: she mentioned she would be interested in working as talent, but there are already enough of these brainless “celebrities” on Japanese TV, so she might have a hard time fitting into the already crowded TV scene. Personally, I think she had a good gig with her niche modelling, but bigger aspirations, I suppose.

On a personal note, I hope comes back to modelling (I’ve only seen her once on TV), but I wish her the best of luck in whatever she tries.