Welcome to this Baka's blog on his fave Japanese Pop Culture interests.
Welcome to my humble site....
Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Yui Kobayashi... Miku Tanaka... Nagi Inoue....Maria Makino.... Nene Shida....if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the rightplace(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!
October may end up with the most posts for any month this year, it may not seem so but it has been slow going for these first ten days. Yet have already done a dozen fabulous posts and this could be the best of the bunch, that's often true when Miru is the featured woman! But taking a day off wouldn't have been too bad as I've been working on the first "My Current Watches" post for the month and the going has been somewhat slow but hope to have it done by Monday. For the year 2024 there were ZERO(!) posts done for Miru and that was after only having a pair of 2023, for the prior six years she'd usually have five to seven posts a year. But there has been a slight resurgence as at the end of last year did two posts for her and this makes it four for 2026, her last one was done just three weeks ago. Miru is about to hit the age of 29 so bet she's like a few others I post about who are around that age and she could be realizing time is running short for her to make a comeback in show biz and from what I've seen over the past five or so months things have been working out much better for her.
If you're a long time visitor or have read most of Miru's older posts you know how much I adore her and as far as Hottest J-Pop Idols of all time goes she'd be around the fourth position on that list! Sure when you look up the term Scorching Woman in the dictionary there's a photo of Miru there and so many of you viewers agree as she's one of the most popular idols I've ever done posts for. So sure you were like me and kind of bummed out when Miru was so quiet in 2024 and the first half of 2025, had she retired? was sadly a question that entered my mind and perhaps some of yours. But as we know the answer to that is a firm NO and today's post should be such a super duper one for Miru's large fan base and maybe she can garner a few new ones once you've read this post though suggest getting your cold shower warmed up first....
As I've said before Miru will be such a difficult woman to find a position for on the third 'Top Twenty Faves of All Time' list when it's done next Spring. She has made the yearly list three times and did deserve to be on it one more time plus as mentioned she's one of my all time hottest women! But Miru hasn't done a lot of activities outside of modeling and J-Poppin' while other Idols have so when it comes to listing that top twenty she'd be in that 18th-22nd position range and duking it out with a few others. So the next five months could be important and as I've been writing this up have been thinking how can I not have Miru on the list so as of now she would be but don't bet the mortgage on that quite yet....
By unbelated in the title mean that this post is being done 3 1/2 days early as Miru's 29th birthday doesn't take place until the 14th. But birthday posts usually aren't overly special, try to make them a bit larger than other kinds of posts but besides that they are regular posts though these days it of course means they're so terrific. October has more birthdays than any other month for my favorites, it may have to stretch into November but there could be six more of these birthday posts coming up. On the other hand November could be the slowest month of the year for those celebrating being a year older.
Let's finally get to things and made that intro longer than planned. First off are these new photos from Miru's IG page and there could be close to eighty pictures for today that have never been posted. The first few are from a birthday event held a week ago in her hometown of Osaka, you will notice that Miru has cut her hair and I think she looks much better with shorter tresses.
The bottom five above are from a Young Champion Retsu photo shoot and that magazine spread will be further down the post. This next batch are from older birthdays and Miru was the youngest of NMB's first generation members, most are now 32+ in age and did do a birthday post last month for my top member.
Speaking of NMB have some ancient Miru cards for October below, they never had any sets for Halloween but there are some mixed in and soon you'll be seeing those cards/photos in most posts.
Will have a trio of ultra blazing magazine spreads, two are recent ones while one is semi-prehistoric yet so terrific. This dazzling first set is from exactly six years and Miru was the cover girl for the October 2020 issue of EX-Taishu, ten months later is when she graduated from NMB.
Have Miru's two newish magazine spreads, she's been in five since April and that's a good sign for the future. Plus she's been the cover girl for three of those spreads such as this one from the July 7th edition of Manga Action.
The other new mag spread also features Miru as their cover girl and is from the September issue of Young Champion Retsu. In the section for Miru's newish IG pics there were five from this mag's photo shoot and it doesn't appear as though this is promoting an upcoming digital book.
Will end off here and eleven months ago is when Miru released her fourth regular photobook "Merci" and there were a few pics that left zero to the imagination!!!! In Miru's last post had her first ever digital book that came out four months ago for the SPA! magazine, the first five pics below are from it. Included with the book was a video of the photo shoot that was a little over eight minutes long, in that prior post had screenshots from the video's first half and this sizzling batch of Miru is from the video's second half, I highly recommend checking out her gravure videos on YT. Miru has her own YT channel but hasn't uploaded a video for a long time but did post three for her amazing "Merci" book and the best of the trio is after these pictures.