So you are away on business, stuck in a hotel room and longing for some female company.

An old-fashioned call girl would be enough to satisfy the carnal desires of most men. But not in Japan, where it seems that these days many businessmen prefer to spend their nights away from home unwinding with a sex doll.

And that's where the Doll No Mori (forest of dolls) escort agency in Tokyo comes in. It is home to girls such as the delightful brunettes Alice and Tina - 100 per cent real silicone and available to hire for your pleasure at 13,000 yen (£63) an hour.

Sex dolls are big business in Japan but, as each one costs about 600,000 yen (£2,900), most businessmen can't quite stretch to their own latex lovers. They can afford to rent one, though: Doll No Mori rents its “love doll” escorts to more than 200 members a month.

The agency's owner, Hajime Kimura, expected that most of his clients would be otaku (geeky) types but, as it turned out, most are in fact ordinary salarymen in their thirties and forties.

A soulless sexual encounter with a lump of speechless silicone in a soulless corporate hotel room? Who says romance is dead...

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