Sex

For the prankster in need of a slightly comedic artificial hand to wackily wave about or possibly even proffer when performing highly humorous handshakes, this silicone substitute may be just about up to the job.

However, as the carefully made copy is moulded from the hand of Japanese adult video star Kato Taka, it may be worth pointing out, so to speak, that it possibly has other, far more playful purposes.

The Japanese salary man’s commitment to the company and the demented levels of overtime this often demands are almost legendary, with even the term karoushi (death from overwork) having to be coined to cover such occurrences.

But not all employees are quite so industrious, as a sadly unnamed civil servant in Wakayama Prefecture was more likelier to have perished from an almost improbable profusion of porn than the pressures of his position, having been caught amassing more than 780,000 hits on pornographic web sites from June 2007 to February 2008 — the presumably far from busy fella having an especially steamy summer with a sensational 170,000 hits in July alone.

The man’s almost superhuman surfing only arousing suspicion after his computer was affected by a virus, with apparently nobody noticing his far from bureaucrat-based browsing as, “Each desk is set apart from each other.”

He has since been demoted and docked 20,000 yen a month, although how close his new desk is to those of his colleagues hasn’t been disclosed.

For the man in Japan who’s had enough of his own handy work but is unable to palm the job off on to somebody else, there are thankfully a few alternatives.

For starters, there’s the almost infamous robotic reliever, but at 34,500 yen (336 dollars), it doesn’t, so to speak, come cheap.

Thankfully though, for the fella who doesn’t want to give his budget, or indeed his old boy, a severe pounding, help is at hand in the more compact form of Tenga — still a fairly fancy form of relief, but with a far more affordable fee of around 1,000 yen (10 dollars) a pop. Not a bad price considering that technology wise the Tenga is probably more advanced than its more mechanical cousin, and with all the innovations on the inside, it’s simply a case of sitting back and making a simple insertion or two.

Also, like any Japanese products worth their salt, there are cute characters to represent the range, all the way from soft, to hard,

along with a couple of rather comical commercials, that, considering the content, are way too dodgy for the workplace.

There’s this one for the, erm, Deep Throat Cup,

and another that was designed for the debut of the Black and White.

Finally, for the person tempted to invite their mate round for a tipple and the try of a Tenga, there’s always the option of the Double Hole Cup,

which tenders a whole new interpretation to the term ‘two’s-up’.

While Japanese women may be a little more limited, the nation’s men have a dizzying array of dens to discover when it come to pandering to particular persuasions. In fact, whatever they want there would appear to be a way, whether it’s being manhandled (so to speak) by a maid, having some foamy but foreigner-free fun or even tentatively tickling their fancy on a train.

However, when it comes down to the simple pleasure of a bit of private time with a partner, Japan has once again come last in the latest ‘how much are you getting it?’ league table, with a meagre 34% managing some sort of sauciness every seven days, whereas 87% of the top-placed Greeks are gladly getting a regular rendezvous.

A sorry state of affairs which could mean that more Japanese men may be succumbing to a substitute such as this,

with the women possibly having to soldier on with something similarly silicone.