Pop Life is a massive six-floor department store located in the heart of Tokyo's Akihabara "Electric Town" that sells every imaginable sexual souvenir

Pop Life is a massive six-floor department store located in the heart of Tokyo's Akihabara "Electric Town" that sells every imaginable sexual souvenir. Seriously, there is an entire shelf solely devoted to Hello Kitty vibrators. Along with sex shop standards such as porn DVDs, lube, dildos, and bondage gear, Pop Life stocks a huge selection of sex dolls. The Japanese have made some incredible advances in the fields of simulated sex and realistic, rubberized skin. On the upper floors, they sell costumes for love dolls and living, breathing cosplay and Loligoth enthusiasts. The stairs are lined with autographed Polaroids showing happy female customers enjoying their schoolgirl uniforms, Little Bo Peep dresses, and cheerleader outfits. By far the most amazing items at Pop Life are their wide variety of masturbation robots. Check out a short video of these incredible Japanese pleasure bots in action after the jump (be forewarned this clip contains plastic nudity, so it's sort of NSFW). The staff was pretty intent on preventing me from photographing their wares, but I did manage to sneak some footage of the sex robots working their magic. I could only figure out how to turn one of them on, but if you look carefully, you can see all the dirty devices in operation on the TV screen in the center of the display:

erotic stories by some of South Africa’s best women writers sprung from my desire to present women’s intimate relationships with sexuality,

A new anthology of erotic stories is in the book shops this week, but what sets it apart from similar anthologies is that it was written by award-winning -- mostly literary -- South African women writers. Sex is a somewhat taboo literary topic. Not for reasons of modesty, mostly, but because writing about sex is a singularly difficult task. Slips into cliché, pulp and porn are very easy. So what happens when respected -- and respectable--South African women writers dip their pens into saucy ink? The sexual revolution supposedly lightened us up about sex, but it remains -- publicly at least -- a mostly grim matter. Magazines -- usually quoting from serious studies -- focus on the bits we’re 'doing wrong', while pornography perpetuates the idea that sex is a dour, serious, drawn-out, athletic business undertaken by balloon-breasted Barbie dolls and unsympathetic men with large penises, hammering away at some distant, screeching, insincere conclusion.
But while a sort of general standard of “the right kind of sex” informs our public perception, sex in its capacity for joy, fun and intimate vulnerability remains a sort of universal no-go area. Between the ancient sexual extremes of Virgin and Slut is the vast unmade bed of real, ever-changing sex. The idea for a collection of erotic stories by some of South Africa’s best women writers sprung from my desire to present women’s intimate relationships with sexuality, as they really are, not as they are supposed to be, by some outside -- often patriarchally driven -- model.
Susan Maushart, in What Women Want Next, wrote that in the early days of feminism sex was not just a thing women did for babies or fun or to make a point.
“Sleeping around for the sisterhood was nice work if you could get it,” she says, “but it was hardly standard practice for any but the most politicised female. For most women, even I daresay for most feminists, sex remained a defiantly personal act.”In the humdrum of everyday sex resists a single meaning for individual women. At different times of their lives it can be bawdy, subtle, comic, delicious, repulsive, missionary, lesbian, boring, powerful, dutiful, weak or solitary.
Johannesburg sexologist Dr Elna McIntosh says in Fabulously 40 and Beyond that women often only truly grasp their sexuality in their forties and later: “It’s at this point in a woman’s life when she discovers her tongue and uses it to ask for what she wants from life. No longer will [women] allow other people or dogmas to ride roughshod over what they hold as their own identities.”Whether the stories can be labelled erotica or pornography lies in the realm of individual perception. The boundaries between one person’s gentle­ titillation and another’s smut are so vague as to be almost non-existent.Should erotica -- the vague notion of the kind of sex you find in literature and art -- arouse? And if it does, why does the word have a happier connotation than pornography, the very raison d’ être of which is to arouse.
Perhaps it is about intention, about the producer of erotica or pornography’s tacit aim in the creative process, the chasm between hoping to turn readers or viewers on and not caring a dot about the their physical reaction to the sex presented.
Generally porn is seen as lewd, gross, indecent and exploitative, while erotica is seen as voluptuous, amorous and sensual. It is seen to arouse gently without the built-in guarantee of pornography’s usually tedious progression towards a predictable conclusion.Towards the end of this project I realised that “erotica” and “pornography” were labels too limiting for what the writers had rendered and I prefer now to think of them simply as stories about women and sex. In Open the received notions of the kind of sex women have or think about have been prised at.
The writers have created characters and narrators that are -- in sometimes even the most oblique way -- some aspect of any receptive reader’s personality at some point in her life. This anthology opens not only the debate about the representation of sex in literature, but also a vista on the subtleties of arousal, the frank spectacle of the different forms of sex in women’s lives and the presentation of intimacy as both deeply mundane and vividly transformative.

Testosterone therapy has restored a sex drive that virtually vanished

Bette, 72, who asked that her last name be withheld, testosterone therapy has restored a sex drive that virtually vanished after she underwent a hormonal treatment for breast cancer. She was terribly distressed, she says, when the "terrific sex life" she and her husband had enjoyed for 52 years crashed. So she traveled from her Kansas City home to see whether Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at San Diego's Alvarado Hospital, could help. He could, it turned out. He treated her with a low dose of a testosterone gel that has been approved for men with certain medical conditions. The medicine isn't FDA approved for use in women, but doctors like Goldstein can legally prescribe it "off label" if they think it might help
While Bette may be happy with her treatment, experts advise that breast cancer survivors must be especially cautious about taking hormone-based treatments for low libido. The body converts some testosterone into estrogen, which could raise a woman's risk of recurrence, says Eric Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Aromatase inhibitors, which Bette and many other breast cancer survivors take, can prevent this conversion from happening, Goldstein says.Some doctors don't recommend off-label treatments at all. "Whenever you're using a drug [to treat] an indication for which it has not been tested, you're playing russian roulette," says Steven Nissen, who oversees cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. "It's risky business."
His message won't sway everyone, though. Says Bette: "I'd rather have something worth living for right now, rather than living in the old folks' home. I'm not going to miss any fun."

Women Lacking Libido Aren't Sick

After 10 years of buzz about a Viagra-like drug for women, nothing has been approved to date. Two companies are racing to change that. Both have active, advanced research programs working on prospective female libido drugs, one of which is available now to women who qualify to join a clinical trial.
Illinois-based BioSante Pharmaceuticals has launched several late-stage studies of a testosterone gel intended to remedy libido loss after menopause. About 100 U.S. medical institutions are now on board to test the drug's safety and effectiveness among thousands of women; volunteers, some of whom will unknowingly receive a placebo, are still being recruited. Earlier trials found the gel useful in women bothered by low desire following medically needed surgery to remove their ovaries. (Those sex organs produce roughly half a woman's natural testosterone. Though often thought of as a "male hormone," testosterone is tied to libido in both sexes.) A dollop a day of the gel on their arm boosted the frequency of satisfying sexual events compared with a placebo.
An approved medication for low female libido may be in higher demand than Viagra ever was for men, says Stephen Simes, president and CEO of the company. His rationale: 1.4 million off-label testosterone prescriptions were written for women in 2006 alone. He forecasts the drug will be available by 2011, as long as no snags arise. (Women interested in enrolling in the trial can E-mail the company's investigators to see if they're eligible.)A nonhormonal treatment is also on the horizon, with late-stage testing well underway. Boehringer Ingelheim's once-daily pill acts on serotonin receptors in the brain, which, after all, is the organ most heavily involved with sexual desire. Studies involve pre-menopausal women bothered by a low sex drive.Too soon to tell. Still, excitement might be premature at this point, experts say. In 2004, a testosterone patch poised to be the first-ever treatment was denied approval by an FDA advisory committee. Long-term safety was a major worry. Procter & Gamble had demonstrated the patch's effectiveness with minimal side effects, but that couldn't shake concern that it might carry health risks down the line. After all, painkiller Vioxx had just been yanked off the market and the unforeseen ills of female hormone replacement therapy had recently surfaced.
"Before we approve a therapy that could be used by millions of women, I'd like to know that we're not going to hurt them, particularly when the benefit is modest," says Steven Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who was involved in deciding the patch's fate. "This is not a lack of sympathy for those who are unable to have a satisfying sexual relationship, but about balancing risks and benefits." The patch is approved in Europe.
One reason for the delay is that the FDA has set its approval standards high: A drug for women must not only elicit desire but also yield an increased number of sexually satisfying events. That's a requirement that Viagra never had to meet, says Anita Clayton, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and coauthor of Satisfaction: Women, Sex, and the Quest for Intimacy.
"I think the holdup is really our lack of understanding of female sexuality and applying this greater complexity to how we're studying potential treatments," says Clayton. "For women, a lot of our sexuality is above the neck, not below the waist," she says, which could explain why Viagra failed to produce results when tested in females. Viagra helps men with their most typical sexual problem—the inability to achieve and maintain an erection during sex—by causing blood to pool where it's needed. But female sex problems are more complicated and can be caused by a combination of hormonal, psychological, and interpersonal factors.

Dinner date, which could be pur­chased for $150, to a 24-hour date that cost customers $1,500. Oth­er services offered include bond­age

Two local women were ar­rested Tuesday night on misde­meanor sex charges after the pair reportedly offered to "put on a show" for a bachelor party that turned out to be a police sting operation.Prattville Police Chief Alfred Wadsworth confirmed Thurs­day that Dawn Renee Williams and Ashley Lynn Whitesell, both 33-year-old Prattville resi­dents, are each charged with one count of promotion of pros­titution in the third degree. The charge is a misdemeanor, and the women, both of whom are married, were each released on a $500 appearance bond.
Williams, known as "Dixie" on the pair's Web site, and Whitesell, who goes by the name "Darlin'," maintained a site that included racy pictures of them­selves, along with a list of serv­ices and prices.
The services ranged from a dinner date, which could be pur­chased for $150, to a 24-hour date that cost customers $1,500. Oth­er services offered include bond­age, couples action and "nude housekeeping." According to the Web site, Williams even of­fered to travel anywhere in the U.S. or overseas, for a fee of $5,500.
The price list included a chart for converting the U.S. dol­lar amounts to the Euro, British pounds, Canadian and Austral­ian dollars and Japanese yen.
Posted on the site were state­ments such as, "I love what I do and would like to show you that I do," and, "I am a lady and ex­pect to be treated that way."
The duo also advertised that they were available for bachelor parties, birthday parties or pri­vate parties. That's what ulti­mately led to their arrests.
According to Wadsworth, his department began an investiga­tion into the pair's activities aft­er several citizens notified the mayor's office of the online so­licitations. Police set up a fake bachelor party, then arrested the women when they showed up to fulfill the promises they made on their Web site.
"Some citizens called the mayor's office to complain about the Web site, and he noti­fied us," the police chief said. "Our officers selected the bache­lor party (which came with a cost of $300, plus tips) and booked a room in a local motel. The women were arrested after they arrived at the motel."
Police and local prosecutors then searched the Williams resi­dence and seized several pieces of evidence, including a home computer and a client list that included the names and phone numbers of several men in the River Region, including "a few" from Prattville, Wadsworth said.
"We're not releasing the names of the clients, because there isn't any crime we can charge them with," he said. "At this point, the only name I can tell you that is not on there, is former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer."
He said police are continuing their investigation into the on­line operation, and speculated that other charges could evolve from that investigation.
"Our Computer Forensics Unit will evaluate her computer and see if there were any other violations of the law," he said.
The police chief said realiza­tion that such an enterprise was being conducted in the Fountain City caught him a little un­aware. He added that police acted promptly to bust the oper­ation in order to show that such criminal activity would not be tolerated within the city limits of Prattville.
"In the past, we've had some women from Montgomery who rented motel rooms here and did this type of thing," he said. "But it was really surprising to be no­tified that this business was op­erating so much in the open, in our city. We hope these arrests will deter other people from doing this type of thing here, and will cause the people who utilize these services to go some­where else."

Don't believe the hype! We're misled that "good" sex is lots of penetration with g-spot stimulation and huge orgasms.

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Actions performed on one GenitalDrive would be transmitted to the other. Based on the detailed specifications and FAQ pages

This site is so funny, I go there just for a laugh on a dull day. They are supposedly flogging sex aids for online nookie. You can buy a machine (his and hers versions) which hooks up to your pc (allegedly) and which you then use to have sex with online, as long as your cyber partner has the counterpart machine. Yes it's got a willy one and a *ahem* girlie one that men can put their willy into. Does it work? Haven't a clue - if it didn't cost nearly $500 I might buy it and try it! The site has all the trappings of a proper online shop - "secure ordering", credit card info, online ordering, t & c etc etc,Is this the ultimate toy for cyber-lovers everywhere? Well could be... They certainly make it sound like it anyway. The fu-fme (f you - f me) device is a rather scary looking attachment which slots into your spare drive bay on your PC tower unit to enable you to have virtual sex with a partner with the complementary device and an internet connection. There are two types - a male and a female one to complement the male and female genitalia. The idea is that you insert yourself into it or it into youself depending upon your gender and do what comes (un?)naturally and your partner can feel you actions on their complimentary device...so basically a sex toy where ...While their website hasn't been updated since 1999, the people at FUFME, Inc. promised to deliver a product that was "the most complete remote sex solution for the Internet and corporate intranet". The idea was that you had GenitalDrive Model M (male) on one computer and a Model F (female) on another. Actions performed on one GenitalDrive would be transmitted to the other. Based on the detailed specifications and FAQ pages, they must have developed functioning prototypes before closing their operations. That, or it was all an elaborate hoax. If you were on the Internet in the 1990's, you most likely have heard of this product, so even as a hoax it deserves an honorable mention.

Feel free to print this out and bring it to bed with you

Of course you want a steamier sex life -- but there is more to it then candlelight and lingerie. There are actual tried-and-true methods for getting better stimulated and having the Big O. So, get ready for hotter sex with suggestions that will surprise and thrill your partner, from Deborah Sundahl, author of Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot. Feel free to print this out and bring it to bed with you. We doubt your partner will complain!Modified MissionaryYou've probably tried the standard missionary position before. But many women complain that they cannot achieve an orgasm with the man lying on top. This modified version should take things up a notch:Lie on your back and put your legs over your partner's shoulders. This is a good position if you need clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm, and it is a nice way to begin to experience building a G-spot orgasm. He'll have a lot of control over stimulating your G-spot, and you can play with your clitoris to have an orgasm.Mouth and Finger, Yum!Many women have an easier time achieving an orgasm through oral sex than with intercourse. And since we can only assume that your partner would love nothing more than to try new ways to please you -- walk him through the following exercise:
Ask your partner not to use the tongue as a vibrator on your clit, but to caress your clitoris, urethra and vaginal opening with lips and tongue. Slower is better, so you have time to absorb all the sensations and to remember to relax.When you feel aroused, ask him to insert a finger, ever so slowly, and rub your G-spot very slowly but firmly. Over time, your G-spot will become more easily aroused, and swollen, and less stimulation will be necessary to feel ready for orgasm.
The point of this exercise is to relax and allow the sensitivity and pleasure to grow and evolve by shifting your focus bit by bit from clitoris to G-spot, over many lovemaking sessions.

high heels improve a woman’s sex life

“This is wonderful news,” he said. “I’ve been hounded for years about how bad it is for posture, but I always thought it was contradictory. new study has found that wearing a pair of moderately high heels can tone the body, condition muscles and even improve a woman’s sex life without the need for onerous exercise sessions. Maria Cerruto, a urologist at the University of Verona who led the study, said she conducted her tests because she wished to tackle “bizarre” nonscientific theories blaming high heels for a range of ills, including schizophrenia. “As a woman who loves heeled shoes, I tried to find something healthy in them. In the end I achieved my goal. Heels affect pelvic floor activity, reducing pain and improving your health. We now hope to prove that wearing heels during daily activity may reduce the need for pelvic exercises.” High heels have been a fashion item since the 1600s but over the past 50 years they have been blamed for a variety of health problems ranging from bunions, stress fractures and knee pain to an increased risk of arthritis. Manolo Blahnik, whose high-heeled shoes were fetishised by Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the American television series Sex and the City, welcomed the research.
“Until my mummy was 87 she was wearing 5in heels and she looked wonderful. She is my living example that heels are good for you.
“When you put on a high heel it makes life more exciting. In the 1980s it was all about power, but today it’s shifted; it’s about elegance. If you’re a woman, it’s a way to appeal to the male species, it’s a way to attract. And it works. I have men who tell me that heels have saved their marriage.
“I think there’s a limit, though. Anything over 11.5cm [4½in] is just too much. You can’t walk properly; it’s no longer elegant.” The research, to be reported in the journal European Urology, involved measuring electrical activity in the pelvic muscles of women when they held their feet at different angles. Cerruto studied 66 volunteers aged under 50. She discovered that women who held their feet at a 15-degree angle to the ground, the equivalent of a 7cm [2Çin] heel, showed up to 15% less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles. The results suggest the muscles are more relaxed when women wear higher heels, increasing their strength and ability to contract

Sperm-blocking contraceptive hope

Researchers are studying a chemical that blocks the production of sperm, but only temporarily, so you can be fertile again the next day, according to the BBC.
All my snarky inner monologue aside, I'm delighted to find that yet another possibility for male birth control is in the works. And it's one that does not rely on hormones, which appeals to me because despite having been on the pill for 17 years, I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone taking additional hormones for years and years. In my case it's a lesser evil; but how cool if we can find another reliable option.

sex toys in select stores around the country

Wal-Mart Corporation today announced that they are preparing to sell sex toys in select stores around the country. The mammoth retailer spent a full year on customer research and reached the conclusion that in select rural markets, where it’s stores are most popular, there is definitely a pent-up demand for sex toys among women
Starting with a rural Iowa location, Wal-Mart plans a pilot operation for this new sales effort over the summer. The new store-within-the-store, referred to as the “Home Pleasure” department, will feature vibrators and dildoes at reduced prices. The store reportedly will offer the wildly popular Martha Stewart “Prison” line of vibrators in addition to its regular offerings.
According to Wal-Mart spokesman Edward Kennedy, “While we expect some risk in this venture, our research indicates that women in rural parts of the country have largely unfulfilled desires and needs for these items”. Kennedy additionally pointed to recent studies in urban markets where internet access is affordable and common. There a wide variety of sex toys are commonly purchased by married women..
In rural parts of the country where Wal-Mart stores are sometimes the only retail business around, internet access can also be very limited, so the selling of sex toys appears to be a natural extension of Wal-Mart’s personal products offerings. Spokesman Kennedy told Red Tractor USA that the female customers that they surveyed had privately indicated that they “most desired sex toys in the summer time, when their husbands worked the farms from dusk to dawn, seven days a week.”