WaiWai Me?
I’m a fan of Mainichi Shimbun, the English-language version of Tokyo’s most popular daily newspaper, which can be found online. I was full of sorrow today when I clicked on the link only to discover that the infamous WaiWai section has been discontinued!
WaiWai was a weekly roundup of stories from Japan’s weekly magazines (similar, I think to People in the U.S. or Hello in the U.K.). The ones posted on Mainichi Shimbun tended to be…on the less tasteful side, usually involving equal parts underage girls, prostitution, fetishes, love hotels, drugs, alcohol, criminals and dirty old men- plus some hilarious double-entendre headlines.
I can see the point of the readers who protested WaiWai- but I honestly think if you bother to read Mainichi Shimbun you probably already have a decent grasp of Japanese culture and society and would have to know that the people represented in WaiWai aren’t exactly representative of the Japanese!
Farewell, WaiWai. I’ll miss the revealing interviews with S&M goddesses and percerted salraymen.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Ack! The sadness continues! That’s truly a bummer. I LOVED WaiWai - it was sort of like an all Japanese Fortean Times. Bye-bye, Wai Wai. You’ll be missed…