Jessica Kozuka

Jessica Kozuka is a freelance writer and editor living in the exciting, interesting and sometimes perplexing city of Tokyo. Her work has appeared in Wine Spectator, CNN Travel, and The Japan Times, as well as numerous other print and online media outlets. She writes a column on NPO/NGOs and volunteer work for Metropolis, the largest English-language magazine in Japan, and specializes in EFL educational materials and travel writing. Kozuka is rarely to be found without a book or two within arm’s reach, though there's no telling if they will be serious literature or frivolous guilty pleasures, and she runs a monthly book club for other bibliophiles in the Tokyo area. She's also an enthusiastic if mediocre cook and daily laments the smallness of Japanese kitchens.

All Stories by Jessica

Japanese Strip Clubs Face Existential Crisis in the Era of Digital Porn

Jan 9, 2013 by Jessica
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In post-WWII Japan, American-style striptease clubs became a thriving part of the sex entertainment industry, but now they are facing a crisis. During the years of rapid economic growth mid-century, more than 200 of this particular type of strip revue club could be found in the metropolises and hot spring resorts of Japan, but with the end of the bubble era, the number began to fall and has kept on falling. Today, only about 20 remain. The decline is partly due to the easy availability of idol videos and internet porn, but there are also causes within the industry itself, as one reporter found out. Are Japan’s strip clubs doomed? Read More

Nine Phrases That Make Japanese Men Fall Head Over Heels

Jan 9, 2013 by Jessica
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Though some have questioned the advisability of pairing up with a Japanese guy, there are definitely those of us who would love nothing more. For girls looking to nab a Japanese fellow,website Yahoo! has recently investigated what sweet nothings make nihonjin weak in the knees, and have come up with nine lines that supposedly do the job.

Get out your notebooks, ladies (and gaydies), and let’s go hunting. Read More

More Japanese Choosing Fertilizer as Burial Option

Dec 20, 2012 by Jessica
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Have you thought about what you would like done with your body after you die?

Of course, it’s uncomfortable to contemplate your own death or the death of a loved one, but we’ve all got to go sometime. In Japan, the vast majority of people are cremated and their ashes interred at a family grave. While this is certainly more space-efficient than the Western practice of burying the casket, room in the plot does eventually run out. Then the family is faced with the expensive choice of either expanding the existing plot if possible or finding and purchasing a new one. Then there are all kinds of hidden costs, like construction and maintenance fees. It’s a lot to think about.

With these concerns in mind, a new style of internment has been gaining popularity even in traditional Japan. It’s called a forest cemetery. Read More

An Interview With the Makers of Fake Pubic Hair

Dec 17, 2012 by Jessica
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It’s not often that a product hits the web and immediately gets thousands of retweets, but with a name like “Pubic Hair Stickers“, you really can’t help but be intrigued. The makers of this hot new item are Mekomeko Club, a mysterious duo consisting of an art school student (Mashiimi) and a businesswoman (Oshiri Genki/Healthy Butt), and website Excite was lucky enough to score an interview to ask what inspired them to create sticky little short and curlies. Read More

Feisty 94-Year-Old Runs for Office Using Money Saved for Funeral

Dec 12, 2012 by Jessica
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Usually when you hear about a fresh-faced new voice in politics, it’s usually, well, a fresh face. Not so much with Ryukichi Kawashima, who is running for office for the first time at the ripe old age of 94.

Kawashima is running to represent Saitama Prefecture’s 12th District and is the oldest candidate out of the 1,504 people running in the current election. He had been putting aside money from his pension to use for his own funeral expenses, but decided the 3 million yen (about US$36,000) would be better spent as an election fund. Deep concern over the future of the country motivated him to run, he says. “I thought it was time I did something.”

Dec 11, 2012 by Jessica
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As part of the end of year windup, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has created a Facebook page where readers can discuss solutions to various issues facing Japan. The current topic of debate is the declining birthrate.

Takuro Morinaga, an economic analyst, weighed in with this controversial proposal: “If we levied a ‘handsome tax‘ on good-looking guys, that would serve to correct a little bit of the unfairness in dating, making it easier for homely guys to find a partner and the number of marriages would increase.”

I bet the ladies at the local tax office are all for it… Read More

China Holds Outdoor Masturbation Festival (NSFW)

Dec 4, 2012 by Jessica
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December 1st was World AIDS Day, and events were held all across the world to raise awareness about the disease and to stop its spread. China took part as well, organizing various events, including this rather unique one: the first annual Chinese Masturbation Reception.

While the organizers certainly had their hearts in the right place, the sight of men going at it like chimps in isolation had some members of the public wondering whether they were going too far. Read More

Transformers Are Real and You Will Want One

Dec 4, 2012 by Jessica
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Maker Faire is an event that gives people a chance to showcase their DIY projects and emphasizes the importance of being creators and innovators rather than just consumers.

As you might imagine, when the event came to tech-savvy Japan on Dec 1st and 2nd, there was some serious gadgetry on display, including a fully functional Transformer robot from Brave Robotics. Read More

Attention, Hipster Bibliophiles: Brooklyn Parlor Is Tokyo’s Newest “It” Cafe

Dec 3, 2012 by Jessica
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Generally speaking, cafes are good places to grab a cup of coffee and relax a bit, but a truly great cafe will have such delicious food and such a chill atmosphere that you can while away hours in complete contentment. If you are looking for a place like that in Tokyo, let us introduce you to Shinjuku’s Brooklyn Parlor. Read More

High School Class Commits Robbery En Mass, Causes International Incident

Nov 19, 2012 by Jessica
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Back in high school, the best my friends and I could come up with to cause a ruckus was a little underage drinking, but kids these days can manage to bring countries to the brink of war with their shenanigans. Lawless whippersnappers!

Jul 20, 2012 by Jessica
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A new online service called Bemool has just been launched in Japan targeted at men who don’t know how to dress themselves. For a meager service fee of 5,000 yen (about $60 US), a stylish and pretty expert will go out and buy some outfits for you, something that is no doubt a god-send for shopping-averse–hell, going-out-in-public-averse–net denizens. Read More

Osaka Temple Offers Visitors Visions of Hell, Tasty Sweets

Jul 13, 2012 by Jessica
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At the moment there’s a picture book that’s very popular in Japan called “A Picture Book of Hell.” It’s intended to teach kids good manners, and it’s become something of a hot topic, if you’ll excuse the pun. Popular illustrator Akiko Higashimura even mentioned it in her manga series “Mama wa Tenparisto”, loosely translated as “Momma With a Short Fuse”. As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of interest among mothers and educational professionals.

I suppose terrorizing your kids with two-dimensional representations of hell is OK, but did you know there’s a place you can take them to experience it in real life? Read More

New App for College Students May Change the Way They Choose Classes

Jul 13, 2012 by Jessica
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Awesome Course Schedule, an app released last year by Japanese content provider Labit, has been rapidly gaining traction with students at Japanese universities, because it allows them to rate and review their courses. Read More

Is Your Face Pregnant? Ask Twitter

Jul 4, 2012 by Jessica
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Tracking Twitter trends can teach us a lot about language, for instance that Japanese women are more likely than men to tweet about boobs. It can also introduce us to hitherto unknown expressions coined and trending in the Twitterverse. We at Rocket News have been looking into some very strange examples, and we’d like to enlighten you today. Get ready, because your eyes are about to get pregnant! Read More

Japan’s Latest Culinary Trend: Canned Food Cantinas?

Jun 26, 2012 by Jessica
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Let me describe a scene for you: a crowd of Japanese are gathered around steel drums in a little shanty of a building open to the summer air. Some are drinking beers in plastic cups, others disposable one-cup sakes. Most are eating from unheated cans of food with plastic cutlery, chasing it with sips of their chosen brew. Around them are shelves of unfinished wood, stacked high with a stupendous assortment of cans, probably enough to last several months. Think this is a scene from a disaster shelter in Tohoku? Perhaps an end-of-the-world movie? Think again. It’s Saturday night at one of Osaka’s most unique “restaurants”, the long-standing and popular Kanso, where there’s no menu except the cans on the shelves. Try to contain your excitement, because this monument to apocalypse-chic may be coming to a city near you. Read More

Smokers Find New Haven in Japan, But for a Price

Jun 22, 2012 by Jessica
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It’s getting tougher to be a smoker in Japan. It was once a paradise for tobacco lovers, who were free to light up in workplaces, restaurants, bars, on the street, and pretty much any darn place they pleased. Add to that the low price of cigarettes and the ever-present vending machines, and you couldn’t swing a tanuki without hitting a smoker. In recent years, though, smoking has been banned on the streets and in offices, the taxes on tobacco have gone up, and more and more public spaces are going smoke free. The government even announced recently that they are launching a 10-year plan to cut the smoking rate nearly in half.

While this trend has tobacco companies shaking in their boots, one company has turned it into a golden business opportunity. For just 50 yen, Ippuku (roughly “a cig” in Japanese) offers smokers a comfortable, indoor place to take a 15-min smoke break. Read More

46 Things That Surprise Foreigners in Japan

Jun 22, 2012 by Jessica
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Japan is a weird, amazing, amusing and confusing place, and I’m not just talking about the maid cafes and pornographic manga. Even things that your average Japanese would consider completely commonplace and boring can be captivating for foreigners. After exhaustive research (well, some research anyway), Rocket News has compiled this list of 46 things visitors to Japan find surprising. Read More

How a Prius Can Make You Dinner

Jun 21, 2012 by Jessica
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Toyota announced this month that it will be a releasing a system for using your Prius plug-in hybrid as a big ol’ battery. The key feature is an inverter which will allow you to plug household electronics directly into the car through a water-proof cable. Read More

Using Gay Sex to Teach Japanese?

Jun 4, 2012 by Jessica
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Currently, there are people all over the world studying Japanese, and naturally, they would like to learn something more than the stiff conversations found in your average textbook. They want to learn the language that Japanese really use in their daily lives.

In response to this desire, lots of situational educational materials have sprung up, but we’ve discovered one from China that is targeted at a very specific demographic: females who like the homoerotic comics known as yaoi. Read More

Kyoto Bee Research Center Is the Bee’s Knees

Jun 4, 2012 by Jessica
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Kyoto Sangyo University opened a brand-new research facility this week, the Honeybee Industry Research Center, to study the ecology of the little bumblers and the benefits of their honey. This kind of specialized facility is extremely rare and is generating a lot of buzz among entomologists. Read More