This elderly couple turned their sad future around with the beauty of flowers and now thousands of people visit them when their garden blooms each year.
romance (Page 18)
The exclusive four-piece Sailor Moon marriage certificate series is finally complete with the best design in the whole collection.
As hugely popular instant messaging app LINE supplants most other forms of communication in Japan, a poll asks young Japanese people: Is it okay to break up with someone by IM?
Forget about renting an obviously unbelievable hottie; these rental boyfriends charm with more attainable good looks.
Commuter train with special heart-motif straps and box seats starts service in time for Valentine’s Day.
Japanese blogger and internationalist Madame Riri explores five prejudices and misconceptions foreign male-Japanese female couples experience in Japan.
Sagamihara City is offering Sailor Moon marriage certificates sporting an image of JAXA’s Hayabusa spacecraft.
According to Twitter in Japan, there are four main “personality types” when it comes to girlfriends: cat, dog, gorilla or penguin. Say what?!
14 Japanese volunteers tell us about moments in their lives that seemed to come straight out of an anime.
Looking for romance in Japan? Learn from our experience! Here a few things we’ve learned from foreigners who’ve dated in Japan.
Japan is pretty fond of Western-style wedding traditions. Far more people choose to have their ceremony in a chapel than a Shinto shrine, with the bride and groom dressed in a wedding dress and tuxedo instead. Other popular foreign introductions are taking a honeymoon and wearing wedding rings.
Of course, it’s also customary for a guy to present his sweetheart with an engagement ring when he proposes. But one Japanese company says there’s room for even more jewelry in the transition from boyfriend and girlfriend, and has introduced the concept of a marriage ring, which is not to be confused with a wedding ring.
It’s widely known in Japan that idol singers are often contractually prohibited from engaging in romantic relationships. The reasoning goes that if word gets out that an idol singer has a boyfriend, her fans will feel betrayed that she isn’t solely devoted to her role as a musician and entertainer, and thus stop buying her CDs (there’s also the unspoken implication that openly dating someone will destroy the fantasies of individual fans that would like to date the singer themselves).
A signed contract isn’t always enough to keep young love and hormones in check, though. And when you consider that idols are almost always attractive, outgoing young women, it seems like it should be only a matter of time until they find a guy they fancy out of their swarms of would-be suitors. That’s why in addition to legal pledges not to date, the Japanese entertainment industry has a number of sneaky tactics up its sleeve to prevent its idols from falling in love or going on a single date.
It’s no secret that in Japan selling the fantasy of an anime or video game sweetheart is big business. But is everyone with a 2-D crush simply a lonely soul using the fictional character as a substitute for a lack of real-world interaction with the opposite sex, or do some people just prefer having a virtual romantic prospect? One Japanese technology company is aiming to find out, using the power of science.