One key feature of a three-part series is that it has... three parts. This is why you're about to get double-hit from the bong that is my journey through the Mainichi Daily News. Yes, once again, the news from the land of Raw Fish, Bear, Porn, Wasabi, A Joke That Was Tired Two Articles Ago, the Rodan who isn't a French sculptor, Power Levels, a way to show appreciation to Mr. Roboto, and Mr. Friendly.

It seems that Japan has a problem -- less silly than the hide-and-seek thing, more subtle than yet another giant radioactive monster, and, of course, amenable to me making unsubtle dirty jokes:

"Japan's infamous Sex Volunteer Corps is being swamped with frantic calls for its dispatch from growing numbers of desperate 30-something virgins." No, really. From the first line of the article, we can deduce two amazing things:

1. Japan's got a lot of desperate 30-something virgins.
2. Japan has Sex Volunteer Corps.

Damn it. I had to lick envelopes for the community association to get in my mandatory high school Service Learning requirement. If only I had known. (Bet you thought I was going to make a joke about "licking." So did I, but nothing I could come up with seemed quite funny enough.)

But here's the amazing part: They're not talking about men who live in their mothers' basements (ie. you). They're talking about women. More than that, they're talking about 30something women who have never known the firm embrace of a man, and who are so desperate to change this that they've called in professionals (Professional Virginity Removal Service: We won't go down in history. We will go down on your sister).

Truly, the land of Japan is a strange and mysterious world. Now, I'm not one of the considerable number of Ugly Americans with a particular fetish for asian women, but this seems kind of extreme. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Or maybe I'm just deluded, but I've always been of the opinion that adult women are only ever virgins by choice, while adult men are only ever virgins by happenstance. But seriously, folks, I call on everyone who happens to be in the far east to do our friends from the land of the Iron Chef a favor: swing by and deflower someone, because these Volunteer Sex Corps folks are amassing "Considerable experience" in introducing women to the joys of the generative act.

And that's just not fair.

Fortunately for the yang of the universe, this may be a passing problem. There's a good chance that the next generation of Japanese virgins will not make it to their thirties (Wow. Is there anything I can't make sound like a horror movie premise?) A recent study (The most spurious of all sources, but I don't need to check my facts. I'm commenting on the news. The news happened even if the thing it covers didn't) suggests that 34% of Japanese High School Students have been paid for sex (The headline doesn't mean anything to me either. For a funny headline, see here.) . Truly, capitalism has triumphed. Yay capitalism.

So, here ends my trip through the magical land of Japan. For those of you who are getting suspicious that the articles I've referenced here are made up, I'll say only this: I didn't make it up. I also didn't check too hard to find out if this is some kind of Japanese equivalent of The Onion, because if it is, I wouldn't be justified in having the fun of writing this three-part series.

If you're concerned that the past few columns have been a little sex-obsessed, bordering on lecherous... Well, get over it. I decided to do a three-part series on wacky news from Japan after being handed a URL, and so I scanned down the list of articles until I found some that I thought were funny enough to comment on. And they happened to almost all be about sex. Sex sells. I promise, my next article will be deeper, more insightful, and shy away from topics of a mature nature.

After all, I haven't made any poop jokes yet.

If there's one thing I've learned from my brief study of Japan, it's this: Gamera is a friend to all children.

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