Middle-aged men for rent in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Middle-aged men for rent in Japan

edition.cnn.com

94 pointsjohnny31353 comments

These kinds of "look how weird Japan is!" articles are an unintentional personal attack on an entire country. And the articles always come up more frequently in the software engineering / computer science social scene.

> Though it started slow, his website has roughly 45 ossan rentals a day now, or 10,000 encounters per year

Really? That's it? There are no statistics on the rate of occurrence of this per population, yet this researcher has taken it upon them to tell the whole world that middle-aged men are for rent in Japan.

Someone should research why Americans have an infatuation with a few cultural aspects of Japanese culture. And it's always things like "young people don't want to date!" or "you can buy hentai at vending machines". Anecdotally, some Americans fetishize these aspects of Japanese culture, and I think that skews everyone's perceptions of the country. I think some fraction of Americans want so bad for Japan to be as weird as the anime they watch.

Everyone I've met from Japan seems completely normal in relation to these articles.

Don't worry the rest of the world has a similar infatuation with American culture, with the same biases, and the same "everyone I've met from America has been normal" phenomenon.

Please, let me continue to fantasize about morbidly obese gun-toting Americans

There is undeniably a fetishization of other cultures in the media which creates the 'other' especially for those who are only casually interested and whose exposure is via the media - ie most people unless you are a researcher or professional paid to take an interest.

But this taking a small isolated thing and presenting it as some kind of general thing is typical of most media. They do these human interest or trend related stories and try to present the singular instance as something bigger than it is.

Most fashion media 'manufacture' and push trends in the same manner usually funded by product or service providers. For instance guys using manbags or guys grooming beyond basics, this usually applies to a small minority but its presented as something larger, and sometimes it even becomes one.

80% of the users are women, and according to the researcher:

..."All of this indicates to me that this is likely a casual dating site without saying so," she said, adding that "sex and romance" could be an "expectation on all sides involved."

Looks like the creator of the site wrote a dating column, so a sort of undercover hiding in plain sight dating website, that could be a simple explanation.

Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems reasonable to think that many people are using this service for purposes that don't include romance or sex.

I'm middle aged and in Japan. If you want to come and buy me beer, I'll happily chat with you for hours on end :-)

Friggen ageism. You know how hard it is for me as a young man in Japan to be a middle age man for rent?

For real though, given the use-case of the clients, foreigners would be perfect for this job. You can throw anything on them and not worry because they will skip the country soon. Only problem is the language barrier.

As someone that is very much here today, gone tomorrow, people have been exceptionally open with me. Maybe I should start renting myself out.

I have heard that in Japan a "foreigner" might live in Japan for forty years, be fluent in language, culture, and custom, and yet still called a foreigner and not Japanese; I have heard likewise that that is not the case in Taiwan, ie to be Chinese is to act Chinese. What do you think?

As far as I can tell, it’s not really true any more than in other countries.

It’s just really very hard to learn Japanese well, and also to get a good grasp on Japanese culture. The vast majority of foreigners coming to Japan never achieve fluency (from what I can tell, though if there are stats on this I’d be interested).

I've been living in Japan for 7 years. Some of my friends even longer (12+ years), fluent in Japanese, including keigo (formal/honorific speaking) and local dialects. Even if you develop some life-long friendships, you're still a gaijin. You'll always be a gaijin. ESPECIALLY when interacting with anyone outside your immediate social circle.

One friend has a half-Japanese wife and has been here about 15 years. He's finally gotten so fed up with what he feels is disrespect and alienation from a VERY large population of objectively dumber/less ambitious/less successful human beings that he's actually considering moving back to America.

One incident that set him off on a day-long tirade (he was under a LOT of stress at the time) was when he pulled up to a drive-thru to order, he made some jokes with the staff, and I'm sure the staff thought they were talking to a Japanese guy. Then he pulls up to the window....and the Japanese staff are staring at a big black Jamaican man......and they just stared, speechless...then began chatting amongst themselves about how surprised they were. They had totally forgotten their formal customs and courtesies that any service staff would say if they were interacting with a Japanese customer. He blew up, cursed them out in Japanese, demanded to see their manager, scolded the manager in Japanese, etc....

A japanese guy went in France for studies. After his studies, he said he would be considered as a foreigner his whole life if he went back to work in japan.

No idea about Taiwan but I know Asians in the US (a country where 99.1% of the population are descended from immigrants) who complain about getting the question "but where are you REALLY from" a couple times too often. I think this is a problem in any place with any kind of homogeneity, which Japan has a lot of.

As a white guy, I've occasionally run into the sort of person that quizzes you about ancestry. Usually they'll take a guess like "are you Italian" and when they don't get it right away they fall back on "well what are you?". I can't recall if I've gotten this with the exact words "but where are you REALLY from?". I think I may have. For some reason this is part of some people's conversational diet. It fills the void in the same way as "so what do you do?"

I too have heard my Asian friends complain about it. I legit don't know if Asian American's actually have this nuisance worse or if they are just more aware of it. I don't even know where to find data to prove it one way or the other.

I remember seeing in one of those "The Things That Will Really Surprise Visitors About $COUNTRY" type articles for the US that in most of the world, "where are you from?", either in the sense of location or what family you come from, is one of the standard conversations openers or early topics, whereas the US is actually unusual in that you'll very often here "what do you do?" (i.e., what is your job) in that conversational position.

If you look sufficiently Asian (in American sense), then in China you're Chinese until proven otherwise. Inability to speak Mandarin/Cantonese/whatever is no proof you're not Chinese :) If you speak English, they'll look you up and down with contempt(presumably to see if you have any signifiers you're from Europea or something) :D Well, this is just my anecdotal experience as someone from a -stan country visiting China.

Probably, partly why they (along with Koreans) prefer white Europeans with barely sufficient English over Asian (or even black) English majors born and raised in America.

I think the only country where you can truly become not-a-foreigner are the young countries (US, Canada etc) because we simply haven't been around long enough to define our national identity on ancestry. Every other country does define itself on ancestry (some more nationalistic than others).

Don't get me wrong, your presence can become very much accepted and even appreciated, but you're always wai guo ren / gai jin. I'm struggling to think of a solid example right now.

I haven't lived in Taiwan. Do they call us laowai in Taiwan or is that just a mainland thing?

Canada is the same as the US, maybe more so. I'm guessing Australia and New Zealand are similar.

You can become a not-a-foreigner in many European countries if you are white and speak without an accent.

On the flipside, you can be classified as a foreigner even if you'd live your whole life in the country but aren't white.

It depends, many European countries are ethnically diverse enough that appropriately dressed people of many ethnicities can look like natives; on the other hand many immigrants, including very ethnically aligned ones, look like immigrants even after one or two generations.

Most Taiwanese don't consider themselves to be Chinese but I get your point. Yes it's true is most Asian countries but that's because they tend to be very racially homogenous and anyone who is not part of said group is a foreigner.

In Hong Kong, for example, every Caucasian is a gweilo (lit. ghost guy).

well since race is mostly a western construct, I suppose you mean most Asians are racially Asian. But I'm really not so sure that you can say Asia is very homogenous, culturally, ethnically, or genetically. Indeed, the issue wrt being Chinese is that the history of China is one of a enculturation into Chinese culture of a diverse set of groups throughout the mainland... where being Chinese is about acting Chinese more than it is about genetic and geographical roots.

I meant that individual Asian countries (especially in East Asia) are usually homogenous e.g. most people in Japan are Japanese, Korea Korean, China Chinese etc. So much so that often race and nationality are conflated.

Actually, I just realised that "foreigner for rent" (especially young foreigner) is a very real thing: English lessons. I can't tell you the number of people I know that make a living of showing up at a coffee shop and chatting to people in English for $20 an hour. Most clients are just lonely people who happen to speak a little English.

I find it funny how they basically value the marginally informed opinion of a researcher in the USA over the word of someone actually involved in the story へ‿(ツ)‿ㄏ

Yes, that jumped out at me too :)

Sabine Fruhstuck, the professor interviewed, appears to be more than marginally informed:

http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/sabine-fruhstuc...

Her specialty area is listed as Modern Japanese Cultural Studies. She's researched and written on sexuality in Japan, Japanese military culture, Japanese leisure culture, men's issues, and more. I think a foreign researcher who had spent a career immersed in my culture (I live in the United States) could well have more insight into how pieces of it fit together than I would.

I imagine GP may have meant "marginally informed" about the company specifically - the article makes it sound like her judgment of it is based its website.

it's also funny how that researchers name is the german word for breakfast. I couldn't help imagining the journalist interviewing a bowl of cereals

My friend said he used this service to buy daily necessities when he was in hospital. He also said it was pretty useful. (I and he are both Japanese.)

Shades of the "NEEDED: Generic Father Figure for Backyard BBQ" Craigslist ad.

Makes me think I should start a website called Rent-A-Dad featuring experienced looking model types in the home page. Aimed at lonely single mothers.

> Urban citizens may be desperate to get advice from an older, wiser person, but they don't want to turn to the guy they've worked with for years or the uncle who remembers the tears shed over a broken toy truck. Someone familiar might judge them.

Maybe it's a cultural difference, but excepting dysfunctional relationships the idea that your close friends and family are the wrong people to give you advice is almost dystopian.

I don't know about that. Lots of people go to therapists and just talk about mundane stuff too just because they feel more comfortable having a "clinical" conversation about whatever's on their mind (as in someone who isn't emotionally invested in any way). I guess this is something like therapy but probably more like what you would get from friends if they didnt have any emotional attachment to you and could offer objective advice.

I'm not sure that's actually true. In particular, close friends and family may be reluctant to be critical where it's warranted.

On the other hand they probably know you rather well.

That can be an issue too when they use that knowledge to brush off the trouble as not a big deal.

In my experience, they think they know you rather well, but in reality, they know only the image of you they constructed for themselves. Also, regardless of how accurate that image is, it's sometimes better to talk with someone who doesn't have preconceptions about you.

There are some online services like 7cups in which people talk with strangers about their problems just to vent, allowing them to talk freely without being judged. For example, many teenagers don't want to talk to their parents because they feel they won't be taken seriously or they will be dismissed with a simple "that's because you are young". Another example could be when people don't want to worry their close ones (a thing that many depressed people do, to avoid being a burden).

Many people don't have close friends they're comfortable talking with and even people that have close friends, those friends are often the same age as them give or take a few years and thus don't have the 'wisdom' of age that this article is talking about.

In the US, we have the understanding bartender or wise taxi driver stereotype. This seems like largely the same thing: somebody with some perspective on your situation because they aren't too bogged down with the minutiae of actually knowing you very well who can "buck you up" or dash off an insight that your spouse or friends can't.

They make you comfortable as they attempt to give insight to something they don't understand, but it's not too personal and since they know little about you, there's not much room for judgement.

Kind of like a one night stand, same principle (though much like a real relationship is much more rewarding, it's also a lot more work, the parallels here are fairly apparent)

Yeah. It's amazing how much good you can do for someone just listening to them. It's "rubber duck debugging" in our industry, but the principle can be applied to your general life too.

It's also amazing how much good you can do for someone by just listening to them for a bit, and then deploying the correct platitude. No originality, no great wisdom, just the right thing said at the right time, from someone whom the listener doesn't have years of emotional callouses, defenses, and preconceptions built up to prevent them from hearing the simplest of words without hearing the echos of years past.

With a bit more effort you can do even better, of course; I'm not trying to oversell the goodness. I'm saying the bang for the buck can be surprisingly good for people.

hmm, I'm from a western country and never had any advice from my family. maybe I didn't ask it, or when I asked it, it was just to make conversation, the input was really bad. but we are very close otherwise.

My close friends and family are largely dysfunctional people.

This is a human universal. The stranger on a train phenomenon is one way we describe the same thing in the west. If you've ever been a traveller, you'll know that people on the road open up to you in a way that few people at home will.

I do not see it this way. I have great parents: smart, non overbearing but always ready to help. But I still listened to the strangers (and friends and family, and probably ignored 80% of all that advice). Some thoughts on why this could make sense:

First, I probably know what a family member would suggest (by being close, observation, partial answers of related questions). That "indirect advice" is already baked in. Second, more data points can helps. Last but not least, with family and friends you lack anonymity and it could be nontrivial to ignore advice of a family member on a serious matter. I do not see any of this as dystopian.

As an anecdote, where I grew up train travel was common, generally safe and tickets cheap (and at 16 you were a full adult and can go alone wherever you want / can afford). On long train rides folks would often discuss things and open up in a way they would not do with a close friend. "Train conversations" was a phrase in common use suggesting it was not rare.

Perhaps.

Have you heard of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives)? They provide business mentoring, mostly to small businesses and people considering starting such businesses.

Some flavors of class dysfunction as well as culture make this the preferred way to get advice in the US. The so-called middle class in the US likes to be self identified by what seems like 70% of the nation. Anyone from the working poor to the actual middle & even upper middle class over the past 50 years has the cultural message of "strike out on your own - make your mark in the world". But, how? Who knows how to do that?

The assumption here becomes that what worked for your parents (even if your relationship is good with them) won't work for you. Worse than that - they don't know how to do better because if they did, they would have by now! For dysfunctional relationships it's worse - the cultural message of "strike out on your own" becomes inferred as "you think you're better than us" and "you're just a social climber". The analogy of a pot of crabs that keep clawing each other back into the pot so that none escape is not a metaphor in the lower socioeconomic strata. It's an observable phenomenon that can make a foot note in your own family history.

In short, unless you want to end up exactly where your friends and family are - they're not the ones you want to be getting advice and ideas from.

The truth is that many people don’t have either, and the more we reposition ourselves around the country, the bigger the problem gets. If you don’t get along with someone in the office who is willing to bring you into their circle, you’re kinda S.O.L.

I’ve been trying to crack the nut of a mechanism for friend finding that would actually be socially acceptable and cool, but any real solution would never be considered a great business idea, because the goal is for people to not need it anymore.

Having real friends who are with you through thick and thin is so critical. Most people just have a bunch of acquaintances that they drink with.

For me- it's finding a real physical hobby that I'm passionate about and finding like-minded people. I'm not sure what it is about the physicality of it that makes a difference- but I have found that I've formed the most lasting friendships over things that you are actually doing. Shooting, martial arts, motorcycles

100% agree. Taking an interest in something someone else is already super passionate about and sharing it with them has been my surest path to friendship, which is why the idea I like the most is based around the concept of climbing partners, and finding people with shared interests that are better done together. I like the name onbelay.

Oh you like mountain biking? Here are 15 other 28-34 year old mountain bikers in your area.

they have cuddle rooms as well, so this doesn't really surprise me either

Reply on news.ycombinator.com