It's possible that my first sexual relationship began just like yours. I met someone cute and we started talking on instant messenger, where we exchanged an embarrassing number of kissy face emoticons. We held hands at the high school football game, followed by a fumbling attempt at making out underneath the…

You thought the full body tights stopped at Totoro? That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are more nightmares to be had. Many more.

Teasing tomorrow's release of the official Hitman: Absolution E3 trailer, Square Enix teases us with an image depicting eight ladies dress in vinyl nun costumes wielding a wide variety of powerful firearms. Could Hitman: Absolution feature the world's first nun-based online multiplayer? God I hope so.

Fire up a Japanese video game, and you'll see it—just look at the newly released Final Fantasy XIII-2, if you don't believe me. There it is: hair. The West has its bald Space Marine. Japan, where it's not cool to be bald, has hair wax and luscious locks.

Seventeen-year-old Mana wasn't in school. Heck, she wasn't even in her school uniform. Wearing a white bikini, the student-by-day, idol-by-night took the stage earlier this month at the Sofmap in Tokyo's geek district, Akihabara.

Another night. Mahni Aino (above) fired up her computer and flipped on her camera. The sexy posing would come later, but now she was just talking about what food she liked cooking. Comments streamed across the screen, like "You're so cute" and, even, "Do you use a Dell PC?" Then, she started doing yoga on a sofa,…

Another weekend. Another photo session for 21-year-old Mai Fujiko, no stranger to string bikinis that are more string than bikini. She wasn't embarrassed in the least, proud of the figure DNA bestowed her. But photographers pressed close and snapped off pic after pic of her mug. She smiled. "I always feel like my…

It began, as so many things do, with sweaty men in tight underpants. And they wore masks. Let's not forget the masks. Lucha Libre masks. Those masks might have started in Mexican professional wrestling, but they live on in Japan, whether that be in fashion, manga, pornos and, yes, video games.

Like so many things do, it all started with a drunken tweet. This time, though, it ended up with girls licking doorknobs.

The heat was unbearable. A group of kids scurried to find shade, but they did't find it under trees.

Pure plastic love. It lives on desks. Its lives on shelves. But in Japan, it lives everywhere. Figures are more than collectibles. They're sculpted fantasy that reflect the artistic tradition of the country's past and its present.

Games of leather and rubber. Not video games, but real games with impossible heels and spankings. Those might be the trappings of S&M, but in Japan, S&M isn't only about trappings or artifice. It's something deeper.

There was supposed to be chaos. There was supposed to be confusion. There was supposed to be collapse. There's wasn't any, of course.

Damn, they're cute. Not the girl—her ears. She is a catgirl—a female with cat ears. To underscore their feline traits, some have cat teeth,and even cat eyes. In Japan, the cat ears are called "nekomimi", and they're more than a simple personification of cats.

In approximately 90 days, walk into any bar in the State of Ohio. If there aren't any signs stating otherwise, feel free to carry your concealed weapon in that watering hole. But don't order a round. You can't legally drink if you are packing heat.

The 3D breasts were inevitable. After Nintendo revealed its glasses-free 3D portable, the Nintendo 3DS, it was only a brief matter of time before gamers in Japan could ogle 3D boobs them. Senran Kagura, the first of what's likely to be many games with that feature, includes a bevy of top-heavy, jiggly ninjas.

Dicks. Cocks. Penes. Half the population has them, and they've been the object of fascination for centuries—whether that be the physical organ itself or the phallus. You know what the Washington Monument is, right?

Someone once told me, "Half-Japanese kids grow up to either be TV celebrities or porn stars." Flip on television, and there's half-British male model Joy selling Samurai Road 4 or singer Becky promoting her latest CD single. Turn on a dirty movie, and there's half-Brazilian actress and Yakuza star Rio getting naked.

When reality star Angel Porrino stepped out in front of the cameras for a Memorial Day party she was hosting, the starlet stopped and smiled. She tucked in her chin and ran her tongue over her teeth.

Lipstick. Long hair. Cute dresses. They're beautiful women, but they're not necessarily all women. In Japan, they're called "男の娘", or literally "male daughter".