Read on to see what the story behind this is all about.

Obviously the pictures following the cut tell a thousand words as to why that photographer was on the ground doing low angle photography. The above photo from Akibablog humorously points out the crotch shots in several viewfinders (notice most go for the closeup and completely chop out her face). The subject in question is Asuka Sawamoto who was virtually an unknown in the idol world but is known well enough in Akihabara and now the media for having built up an impressive noteriety with her provactive appearances since the summer of 2007. The following shot is from an earlier Akiba hokousha tengoku (hokoten for short aka heaven of pedestrian or walkers paradise when the streets are closed off to vehicular traffic on the weekend; usually Sunday) "appearance" where she doesn't do any flashing but still lets photographers take upskirt type of shots.

After being warned numerous times by the police (initially because of their concern for the huge crowd she attracts), she was finally arrested (prevention of public nuisance law) on April 20th after flashing her g-string pantied butt to a huge crowd (the cops stated she acted indecently). Sawamoto claims that several tabloid TV shows paid her to do it (and to her credit, there were several reporters with cameramen who liberally reported on it the next morning). She also mentioned that she isn't the only one who does it and again to her credit, she isn't lying about that. The streets of Akihabara not to mention the areas right outside the station exits (Chii-chan's video shoot is an example of that; photo below) is just one of the few areas throughout Tokyo that have long been used to film public exhibition videos that exposed far more skin (including complete nudity) than Sawamoto did.

The following is an under-a-minute exerpt from one of Sawamoto's image videos where she shows off her bare butt. Aside from some scenes which have implied sex, this was about as racy as it got and pales in comparison to the amount of skin that has been exposed by others (albeit, most of those weren't actual public performances like Sawamoto's).

Personally, I don't find her attractive which is probably why she resorted to utilizing Akiba since her DVD videos likely aren't selling well. Not too surprising, she ended up gaining a loyal following as a street performer due to her antics (short ear piercing performance below).

Her arrest also brought her actual age (which tends to be a sticky matter when it comes to idols in the geinokai even if they are ero/sexy ones) into dispute which didn't surprise me since she does look older than her stated age (the area around the eyes are usually telling). The police says she is actually 30 while she claims she is 22. That actually sounds about correct since a large majority of the image video (IV) industry is built upon ages that are always far from the reality. The same could be said of anything remotely connected to the mizu shobai business since these are built upon the premise of selling a fantasy.

Going off on a tangent for a bit, look at some JAV genres for example. A large majority of the "amateur nampa", "sharking" and "voyeur" type fetish videos are for the most part staged (not saying all as some are real or contain a mixture of both). Another area is the U-18 sexy idol video market where some of the content seems to be pushing the boundaries and limits. The models in those racy sort of vids are usually 18 and over which is how they get around what they do legally (again, there are a few titles and genres where this doesn't apply). The link is a separate posting about this and contains even more NSFW material.

Digressing back to Sawamoto though, this whole affair and the media attention that has taken place over the past few weeks seems to have surprised her. She didn't expect this much attention since she felt she wasn't famous. Well if you draw attention to yourself in this manner, getting more than 15 minutes of fame is possible. Plus she is contradicting herself since this is what she wanted, publicity since part of what she was doing was to promote her activities such as her sexy idol DVD's. For some though, this just took the cake since there has been rising discontent with business people and law enforcement officials with the way the Akiba hokoten has been evolving over the years. It wouldn't be too far off the mark that some don't mind seeing the Sunday road closure shut down permanently; there are ulterior motives at play to blow what is going on in Akiba out of proportion. The reality however is far from the sensationalist reporting that has occurred recently which has brought out the media and law enforcement in greater numbers to the hokoten for several weeks. Fact of the matter is that morals have been going down the sewer for quite awhile now (this section of this site proves it) that something like this would be inevitable and it took a female to do it (since male performers seem to be able to get away with completely dropping their drawers and getting plenty of laughs). I doubt the majority of the shutterbugs in attendance would pay to see her doing that either (I wouldn't) as there is far more appealing eye candy out there. But put on a free show and it will be no different than flies being attracted to a pile of shit (and this is a reflection of society today when you look at what is popular on YouTube).