On hiatus. Probably.

Okay folks... here's the deal. Due to business and personal issues, I have been seriously stressed and pressed for time since early January and it looks like things aren't going to let up before the end of March or early April, so don't expect much in the way of new content for a while. On the back burner I have:

• About 20 pages of magazine photoshoots to scan.
• Who knows how many additional images to go through for the galleries.
• A small write up on Kitamura Hitomi's CD Romance No Kamisama ~Be Myself~
• Some interesting Matsugane Yôko DVD news which is getting older by the minute, so it's not really news anymore.
• At least two DVD reviews, Hitomi's Purin A La Mode and Natsume Rio's Naked. In brief... Hitomi's DVD is solid, but nothing to write home about, but Rio's new one it pretty damned good - old school, but wearing some seriously small bikini tops.
• A huge backlog of email, even more than usual. Sorry people... I'm getting around to it!
• Various small updates around the site... mostly the FAQ and links sections.
• GIJō 3.0... yeah. It's coming, believe it or not.

That being said, I hope to take a little time this weekend and post my review of Naked, if not get a few scans done. I don't even want to think about March 21, when four DVDs of my favorite idols are being releases simultaneously. That will be some work, albeit pleasurable work.

Anyways, sit tight... once the smoke clears, GIJō should be back to relatively regualr updayes.

Nonami Takizawa is a lighting rod for Chinese hate

Direct from the holy-shit-don't-people-have-anything-better-to-do-with-their-time files comes this report that Nonami has attracted the ire of a bunch of Chinese xenophobes/nationalists. The initial story, as well as a follow up on CNet both incorrectly label Nonami as an AV idol, but I suppose that's beside the point.

Apparently, Nonami and a crew shot a promo in rural China for Sabra and this attracted the attention of certain elements of the Chinese web surfers to decry this as "pollution" of the Chinese Way Of Life. Having essentially no knowledge of Chinese, I can't verify these claims personally, but given the history or relations between Japan and China, I can believe it when some say that the language used to describe poor Nonami was rather vulgar.

Anyway, I don't want to get into the politics of it all, so check the two links above for more complete (but still quite biased) takes on the situation. If you want to see the oh so dreadful video which is causing the disintigration of morality of China, you can check the video on a Chinese version of YouTube.

Hitomi Tanaka: Gravure or AV idol?

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.

If you're interested in seeing a little more of Hitomi, check out the preview clip from SOD.

NOTE Some people have been saying that they can't get the video to play, so here it is on YouTube:

Mail backlog

Simply put, the backlog is far too huge to even consider wading through with it - so if you've mailed me in the past few months, I'm going to have to extend my apologies to you as I simply cannot keep up with the amount of mail I get balanced with the rest of my life.

Anyways, that being said, I have changed my mail policies: if you have a legitimate question that has not been answered elsewhere on the site, drop me a line and I'll try and reply. If you just want to just say something like "Great site!", then please do so, but don't expect a response: although the compliment is much appreciated, I simply do not have the time. If you ask about the password, I will feed your email to the dogs, served with a side of beans and some beer. I don't know if dogs drink beer, but I'll give it a shot.