Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Some people would say that Shoji Morimoto has a dream job because he gets paid to do almost nothing. The...
 |
| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Some people would say that Shoji Morimoto has a dream job because he gets paid to do almost nothing.
The 38-year-old Tokyo resident charges clients 10,000 yen ($71) an hour to hang out with them and just be there.
"I pretty much rent myself out. My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and do nothing in particular "Morimoto told Reuters that he had handled about 4,000 sessions in the past four years.
Morimoto has a skinny body and average looks, but he now has almost a quarter million followers on Twitter, which is where he finds most of his clients. About a quarter of them have hired him more than once. One person has hired him 270 times.
Because of his job, he went to a park with someone who wanted to play on a see-saw. He has also smiled and waved at a stranger through a train window who wanted a good-bye.
Even if Morimoto does nothing, that doesn't mean he won't do anything. He has turned down offers to move a refrigerator and go to Cambodia. He also doesn't do anything sexually related.
Morimoto sat next to Aruna Chida, a 27-year-old data analyst who was wearing a sari, and had a few words with her over tea and cakes last week.
Chida wanted to wear the Indian dress out in public, but she was afraid that it would make her friends feel silly. So she went to Morimoto to be with someone.
"When I'm with my friends, I feel like I have to keep them entertained, but when I'm with Morimoto, the rental guy, I don't feel like I have to talk a lot," she said.
Morimoto worked at a publishing company for a long time and was often criticised for "doing nothing."
He said, "I started to wonder what would happen if I sold my ability to "do nothing" to clients."
Now, Morimoto's only source of income is his companionship business, which he uses to support his wife and child. He wouldn't say how much he makes, but he did say that he sees one or two clients a day. Before the pandemic, three or four people died every day.
As he did nothing interesting in Tokyo on a Wednesday, Morimoto thought about how strange his job was and seemed to question a society that values productivity and looks down on uselessness.
"People tend to think that my "doing nothing" is valuable because it helps others. But you don't have to do anything. People don't have to help in a certain way to be useful "he said.
($1 = 140.25 yen)
