Japan is a country full of amazing art. Some of it is housed within museums and galleries while others are right underneath our feet. I’m talking, of course, about Japan’s peculiar obsession with manhole covers. Just about anywhere in the country you can find stylized manhole covers, each more beautiful and intricate than the next. For the past several years photographer S. Morita has traveled around Japan photographing artistic manhole covers.

The tiny landmass of Okinoshima, where women are banned and male visitors must bathe naked in the sea before visiting its shrine, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site last week. Limited numbers are currently permitted to land on the island in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) -- this year it was 200 -- for a yearly festival that lasts just two hours, but they must adhere to strict rules.

Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research.  The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships. Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins. 

An elegant middle-aged man, in a spotless black jacket, came up to me, hand extended, to say hello, and I was startled. My neighbours in Japan tend to be formal and reticent; few of them are eager to take the initiative. And we were simply standing around an art gallery on Kitayama Street in northern Kyoto, 20 years ago, where a handful of us had gathered to see an exhibition of a friend’s pen-and-ink drawings. In the classical sumi-e style, they were deliberately sketchy and full of emptiness; the heart of the paintings was the negative space at their centre, which every viewer could fill in according to his whim or choice.

In Acquired Tastes, The A.V. Club explores the food and drinks we can’t live without.

From lonely pensioners to Japanese schoolgirls with shattered dreams, Takanobu Nishimoto and his crew of middle-aged men will lend an ear to clients who would never dream of spilling their guts to a therapist or worse, their families. Anyone in need of company can sign up to his online service to rent an "ossan" -- a man aged between 45 and 55 -- for 1,000 yen ($10) an hour. "For me, the service is a hobby more than anything," says Nishimoto, who first came up with the concept four years ago and who now has a growing network of some 60 men across Japan.

It looks like the bad behaviour of some Chinese tourists has crossed the seas over to Japan to wreak havoc on the country's cherry blossom trees — and the Japanese are not happy about it. On April 7, footage of Chinese tourists climbing trees and roughly grabbing the branches to pick the iconic sakura flower at Osaka Castle Park, made it onto Japanese national TV, reported Huanqiu.com.