Time for us to come into line:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/last-name-first-first-name-last-japan-minister-tells-foreign-media-to-get-it-right

Perhaps they need to edit all Wikipedia entries with Japanese names in for us so that we know!

This is awesome (and heartwarming ):

Fans parade portable shrine to pray for recovery of arson-hit Kyoto Animation

AI love you: Japanese man not alone in 'marriage' to virtual character

No wonder the birth rate is dropping...

I'd probably say that the causality is the other way around, that the same reasons that lead to a decline in birth rate also lead to this kind of phenomenon

Shamsiel-kun wrote:
No wonder the birth rate is dropping...

Japan always gets these kinds of articles and generally there's lots of talking about their birth rate, but Portugal has an even lower birth rate and, last I checked, it isn't because of Hikikomoris or virtual waifus. It's because many people just have only one kid, or no kids at all.
And, sure, many will say it's because of financial reasons, but we are the richest we've ever been. There was no magical before when raising kids was easier.

Sorry, I kind of used your post just to get this little rant out.

Magical before. I like that phrase.

Well I'd like to share some hypothesis, because reasons. There is such an old, bitter joke from the Midwar period, when two Ukrainians chat on a street of Lviv. "Y'know, but wheat roll is good." "How can you know?" "My uncle saw a Pole eating one."

And I think that's the whole magic: the quality of human life. Once ago life was short, life was sick, life was brutal, life was cheap and easy to lose. But there was one way you could have some fun in your lifetime. It was free for everyone, modulo the shady business of clergy. And voila, you had kids on the streets in large number.

But combine the myriads of ways we can have fun nowadays with the psychoyoke of responsibility you were sold to by some people in the position of authority - even in Japan... - and you'll get it. Once ago raising kids was fun and war was the horror, but in the computer age war is fun and kids are, well.

What do you do when you can't get your fans into the stadium? Use robots instead, obviously. Japanese baseball team Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have done just that.