Sex

The strong yen and sluggish sales have, understandably, caused massive damage to Japan’s main car manufacturers, with a new round of temporary closures and large job losses hinting at further hardships on the horizon.

But that’s not say that the current crisis is confined to car makers of course, and rather surprisingly the nation’s usually far from flaccid sex industry seems to be suffering too, resulting in that veritable mainstay of many merchants, the vibrator, being sold at apparently preposterously low prices.

Which, as stimulus packages go, is novel to say the least.

Despite already boasting a considerable number of traditional customs, Japan still has no problem at all in importing foreign festivities — especially financially profitable ones — and giving them an imaginative twist to make them more money meaningful.

So, Valentine’s Day now boasts obligatory gifts as well as White Day a month later, and Christmas too has been converted to make it more palatable, although the nation’s fondness for feasting on ‘festive’ fried chicken is frankly unfathomable.

As, it has to be said, is the blending of traditional Japanese bondage (link contains bare bodies) with the bearded and big-bellied bearer of Christmas gifts. An art-form that, while strangely becoming on a suitably attired siren,

somehow isn’t so sensuous on a suited,

and sadomasochistic Santa.

Japanese love hotels offer a vast array of designs and devious delights, but for those after a bit of nature to add to their naughtiness, then the euphemistically monikered meeting place below could be right up their alley. A, ahem, healing space that magically conjures its customers from the concrete of the capital to the cold of northern Canada.

In fact, so fantastic is the effect, that it’s practically impossible to tell them apart, leaving many people baffled as to which is aurora borealis,

and which is a bath.