A peek at the "real" Japan through the lens of its raucous weekly magazines. From "Strip Diplomacy Breaks North Korean Ice" to "Moms Mistake Kids for Pets" and "Panty-Gazing Research Revealed," Tabloid Tokyo offers a rare glimpse at the seamier side of Japanese culture lurking beneath the calm and dignified surface. For the last four years, the authors have mined the pages of a wide variety of Japan's weekly magazines, selecting the quirkiest, most off-beat, outrageous and intriguing stories to discuss in columns appearing in the Japan Times and the online edition of the Mainichi Daily News. Tabloid Tokyo is a collection of the best of these stories. Organized around such topics as sex, popular taste and style, crime, love, marriage and family, animal issues, and the salaried life, Tabloid Tokyo shows us a picture of Japan that may be surprising and shocking-but is also relentlessly entertaining.