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!
It's been a nice stretch over the last ten days or even two weeks as I've been able to do many posts for those who never have enough of them and even introduced a newbie for the first time in eons. Up until this year saying Nao has so few posts would have been sadly correct but this makes it six for 2026 and all have been sizzling to the Nth degree! In the post below this mused about some gals I adore to no end but are somewhat unknown due to lack of posts and perhaps being #1 on some sort of list for that unnamed group of women would have been Nao! I have been semi ga-ga over her since 2018 but it became so difficult to do posts for SKE and the members after that year, I still have no idea why that happened. Nao did have four solo posts while with SKE and now has had ten of these in the last three years so as far as that list of under the radar women goes Nao may have worked her way out of that group which pleases me to no end!
For the first time Nao has qualified for the yearly faves list, don't think she's done enough to be my Queen of the year but can see her being in the top five! Something such as that has happened a few other times since 2023 where a long lost favorite has made such a terrific comeback and finished high on the yearly list but then the question becomes can they continue those activities for a few more years? While Nao has been my most underrated/unknown favorite of all time I had always thought you readers were only lukewarm with her. But that may not be the case for Nao's previous five posts for 2026 have an average of 691 views per post which is a solid number and should rise to at least 750 by the end of the year.
On September 15th, which is only 22 days away, Nao will be celebrating her 30th birthday and as I've often said where has the time gone! Right around then will also mark her fourth anniversary of graduating from SKE and a few days after that birthday will have Nao's seventh post of the year. During May and June Nao wasn't too busy but had done a few gravure photo shoots and we're now seeing those pictures, who would have thought Nao 😍 would be doing so much gravure modeling but there's no way I'm complaining about that! Nao has also been doing some regular modeling and you'll see some of those pictures today, she also has a birthday party coming up for her fan club plus a few days ago wrapped up a stage play. She also hosts a radio show on FM Aichi which is where she hails from so Nao does do a little bit of many things. For a while she had continued on with her musical career but that's slowed way down since 2024, besides being a J-Pop singer Nao is also a master playing the Saxophone.
First up are these photos from Nao's IG page that go back until the first week of July. There's a poster for her 30th birthday party and the two pics after that are from her fan club site, the last pair are from the final night of her recent stage play. There's also two from a new photo shoot for an upcoming digital book and that'll be her sixth for the year.... as the post title says her books are Hotter than the Sun!
Nao has had six posts for this year and two each in 2024/25 but only one in 2023 which was towards the end of the year. So never had a chance to post these other IG photos of Nao from her page, all get a grade of a A++++ from me and the rumor is incorrect that she named herself after this blog!!!!
Mentioned that Nao has also been doing some regular modeling this Summer and it's been for the Kitson clothing line. Below are some photos from their site and there's many more of these which I may have in future posts.
Let's go way back in time for these next two set of photos with the first being some older SKE cards. When I do posts for ex J-Poppers often have their old group cards for the month we're in, below are some for August but by far that month had the fewest cards. Then again they really slowed down for SKE after 2015 so the bottom eight are special ones from a Nagoya 2018 concert that was held in September of that year and was for Nao's 22nd birthday.
Don't have any new magazine spreads for today but should have at least one for her next post. So let's go way back in time, close to nine years, for this spread from the November 21, 2017 issue of Manga Action. Even though I had been an SKE fan for four years had never noticed Nao that much until 2017 and this spread helped me to notice Nao or even more so....
For the finale have the Brody "Extreme Heaven" digital book and Nao 😍 certainly sends me a few levels above Seventh Heaven!!!! The Japanese title for the book is "Gokuten" and this book that came out ten days ago has 47 pictures with three being from the photo shoot. My only complaint is that Nao rarely has any videos from her photo shoots and there wasn't one for this book. After the pics is her first one from three years ago for the WPB magazine but if you want to view a video of her playing the Sax there's plenty of those on YT.
