The advice column in the Aug. 1 Asahi Shimbun ran a letter from a 30-year-old woman who despaired over her obsession with male idols, wondering if it was the reason she didn't have a boyfriend. The guest adviser was University of Tokyo Professor Chizuko Ueno, who told her to relax. She'd survived 30 years without a boyfriend, she could survive another 30 without one. And having a thing for idols is normal, as long as you understand they're "illusions." If you ever met one you'd probably be disappointed. The nice thing about idols is that when you get tired of one you can exchange him for another. Boyfriends are more difficult to discard.

Ueno's advice was tongue-in-cheek, but her paradigm of the idol-fan relationship is worth keeping in mind when discussing the media circus surrounding singer-actress Noriko Sakai, who last week turned herself in to police after almost a week on the run for possession of illegal drugs. A number of celebrities have recently been busted for drugs, and while those arrests were covered by the tabloid press, they were nothing compared to Sakai's story, which even made the front pages of the national dailies.

Sakai is repeatedly referred to as the "last seijun idol," and thus her carefully maintained image as a "pure and innocent" girl has been shattered by her reported admission to smoking methamphetamine with her husband. The allegation, in fact, was almost impossible for people to believe at first. Sakai's husband, Yuichi Takaso, was stopped on the street in Tokyo on Aug. 3 and found to have speed on his person. Sakai was waiting in a car nearby and when she showed up the police asked her to stop by the police station and submit to a urine test. She disappeared for almost a week, during which the media placed all the blame on her spouse, a bogus "pro surfer" who they claimed wanted to pull his wife down with him.