Osaka is to host the World Athletics Championships later this month, but the lead-up to the event has seen the city's cops sprinting faster than anybody else as they dash to crackdown on sex services that may present an inappropriate face to the outside world, Shukan Shincho (8/2) says.

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I'm gonna eat worms," goes the old children's song most would know.

Click the link below to check out the weeklies, from the week July 23 to July 27.

"One evening, I was made to do it with at least five customers," the girl, named Aiko (a pseudonym) sobs to Shukan Jitsuwa (8/2).

Some of Japan's most treasured characters, like Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Domo-kun and even the imported Kewpie are proving a boon for souvenir sellers across the country after being given a facelift to reflect local specialties, according to Sunday Mainichi (8/5).

Yokohama is home to an obscure festival where older women hand out bills to worshippers, but the twist in the story is that the biddies aren't quite what they seem, according to Cyzo (August).

Japan's karaoke crooners are choosing to go it alone in unprecedented numbers, according to Shukan Post (8/3).

From the successor of the government ministry that gave the world Pearl Harbor and the Rape of Nanking now comes a cutesy little girl cartoon character dressed as a maid with a hawkish stuffed teddy bear to give a simple explanation of Japan's defense policies, according to Cyzo (August).

Officially, Japan's economy is on the way back, but that's according to regular, respectable businesses.

Have a look at the covers of this week's scandalous weeklies, from July 16-20.

The NOVA chain of conversation schools -- whose slogan is "ekimae ryugaku" (study abroad in front of the train station) -- operates roughly half the English conversation schools in Japan.

A suburban Tokyo politician -- and former Mainichi reporter -- has become the center of a huge brouhaha with some colleagues waging a campaign for his dismissal because he used to publish guides to the sex industry, according to Weekly Playboy (7/30).

Canned ramen has got consumers doing their noodle, buying it like crazy since it hit the market in April, according to Sunday Mainichi (7/29).

Three years ago, a 36-year-old man employed by a Tokyo-based film producer registered his marriage.

Japan is now getting its share of Beautiful People, according to Sunday Mainichi (7/22).

Fully 72 percent of OLs -- female office workers -- registered as readers of Weekly Playboy are undergoing some sort of training to make them more proficient at sex, according to the men's magazine.

Things are looking soggy across the nation, so turn to the weeklies to brighten up your day.

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

Millions of Japanese mobile phone users are getting hooked on a service that allows them to not only literally save face, but also see how they look compared to some of the country's biggest celebrities, according to AREA (7/16).

Japanese can cure their awful reputation for sexual clumsiness by trying Rubik's Cube sex, sexologist Adam Tokunaga tells Flash 7/24).