Japanese Man Makes $71 an Hour to 'Do Nothing': Meet the 'Nothing-for-Hire-Man'
A Japanese man — known as a "rental-do-nothing-man" — is paid JPY 10,000 ($71) an hour to go with a client with a huge following via virtual entertainment and basically exist as a buddy.
Shoji Morimoto, a 38-year-elderly person, publicizes himself as "ready to eat and drink and have basic responses, yet nothing else."
"Essentially, I rent myself out. My responsibility is to let my clients have and do anything in particular.
Morimoto told Reuters he had taken care of more than 4,000 meetings in recent years.
Morimoto, who has nearly a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, told the publication that he finds most of his clients on the micro-blogging platform.
About a quarter of those, he said, are repeat clients, who have hired him almost as many times.
Before discovering his true potential, Morimoto worked in a distribution organization and was frequently punished for "sitting idle".
"I began contemplating what might occur on the off chance that I gave clients the capacity to 'do nothing' as a help," he said.
"People think my 'doing nothing' is valuable because it's useful (to others) ... but really doing nothing is better. Individuals needn't bother with to be valuable in a specific manner," he added.