THE SUNSET QUICKENS (OR, RATHER, DOESN'T QUICKEN):

Takashi Sakai is a healthy 41-year-old heterosexual man with a good job and a charming smile. But he's never had sex, one of a growing number of middle-aged Japanese men who are still virgins.

Sakai has never even had any kind of relationship with a woman, and says he has no idea how he might get to know one.

"I've never had a girlfriend. It's never happened," he said. "It's not like I'm not interested. I admire women. But I just cannot get on the right track."

It might sound like the subject for a Hollywood comedy, but far from being the social misfit portrayed by Steve Carell in 2005's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin", Sakai is one of a crowd.

A 2010 survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research found that around a quarter of unmarried Japanese men in their 30s were still virgins - even leading to the coining of a specific term, "yaramiso", to describe them.

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