'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
mainichi.jp
mainichi.jp
Everyone loves stories about how weird Japan is (especially the Japanese), so these stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Turns out a lot of "exotic" problems in this country are all too familiar.
The tidyness, amazingly punctual trains, mountains and general conservatism make both those countries stand out.
I wonder how much it's the fault of the ridiculous Japanese trash collection system. Sorting the trash in 20 different bags that you can only dispose of once a month... No wonder at some point people just get fed up and throw it away in a somewhat hidden place.
That being said I can see an illegal trash site from my window, so I guess my reference point may be pretty far away from both the Swiss and Japanese standard.
There are actually remarkable similarities in culture which are possibly influenced due to both being iland states.
https://bccjacumen.com/uk%E2%80%93japan-closer-than-you-thin...
These do not dive all that much into sexual media however. The Anglo-Saxon is infamously sexually traditional and repressed, and the Englishman second only to the Australiaman. Australia recently actually banned the import of Japanese pornography.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDmbo5dxgQg
He's wrong, however — Eromanga Sensei is far from the worst. I would love for him to take a stab at Night Shift Nurses or Aki-Sora — the latter so amazing that even Tokyo itself made laws to contain it's carnal sins against mankind.
https://twitter.com/morimotoshoji
Obviously the existence of the Twitter handle is just the first step in some kind of real verification. But it does confirm that, if it's a con, it's a long lived, dedicated one.
"I'm starting a service called 'rental person who does nothing'. [For example] for stores where entering alone is difficult[0], for matching the number of players in a game, to hold a hanami[1] spot. Please only use it for cases where one person is needed. I charge 10,000 yen, plus transportation fare from Kokubunji station, and food and drink (if applicable). I won't do anything other than very simple responses."
So it's not strictly a listening service per se.
[0] in Japan, there are food stores that are geared towards couples
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanami (the context here is holding a picnic spot)
> "People rent him for various reasons. At times he will participate in a gaming session to make up numbers, turn up to send off people who are moving away, accompany those filing for divorce, or listen to health care workers who have become mentally unwell due to their exhausting work."
Yeah, I agree, but it seems like people are drawing parallels to emotional support things like that rent-a-family thing. While they are both extremely unusual gigs, it seems like this guy's interactions would at best be just nodding along, rather than reciprocating (even if in a fake way).
I also should say that this work is very different from "rent a girl" work.
If anyone finds it, please share.
It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only, but in reality the vast majority of apps being written are using boring technologies to implement CRUD around a relational database.
The only place I ever see "weird Japan" content regularly is Reddit and western vloggers living in Japan posting the most sensationalist stuff possible.
It even made the news in Japan.
Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. They do not offer a prostitute; those batteries are not included
Secondly, I do not gain the impression from that that all do it, merely that they note that the very existence thereof is exceptional. In particular, of the used underwear vending machines, when the story broke many would not believe it and thought it was a hoax, but it actually exists.
No one thinks that every U.S.A.-man bought an assault rifle at a gas station or got one as a gift for opening up a bank account, but that the practice even exists, that the number of occurrence isn't zero — that is something remarkable in and of itself.
> The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks.
What I must ask is why the term “western” invariably always drops whenever Japan is discussed.
Experience taught me that more often than not “the west” in that context simply means “The U.S.A.”.
There is no “west” relevant to what you claim. All that matters is “Japan” vs. “everything else” or at least anyone not particularly experienced with Japan which applies as easily to, say, India, Russia, Uganda, or Indonesia.
> It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only, but in reality the vast majority of apps being written are using boring technologies to implement CRUD around a relational database.
I find that every time an article about a, shall we call it “exciting language” is posted most of the comments, though impressed with the theoretical innovations thereof, doubt it's real world applicability.
My observation from travel is that love hotels are a sign of multigenerational housing. Young adults need somewhere to go without their parents watching.
They're actually cheaper and nicer than hotels, so if you're not icky, it's a cheap way to stay in the country ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you speak Pashto enough to know that Afghanistan does not take the crown in this, for instance? Do you speak Danish enough to know that Denmark also participates?
For him to confirm his claim that it is a specifically “western” thing to treat Japan so in news sources, he has to speak a variety of both “western" and “non western" languages to truly ascertain that trend.
He must both confirm that it happens in “western” news sources of many different countries, as well as that it doesn't happen in ”non western” news sources.
One would have to speak a considerable number of languages to claim sufficient expertise in world news reporting to make this claim.
I'm not sure as to how I'm supposed to challenge the challenge to my challenge without being “confrontational” as you call it and point out the faults with the argument.
Only if one makes a claim about what is generally written in such books.
This is a hard problem, and a difficult lesson to learn. I know it took me a while, and I'm still bad at it.
I find it helps to make your points, while trying to maintain a pleasant tone (Easier said than done, and I'm not a good person to teach this). I also find it helps to add questions asking for either other peoples opinions or clarifications on their position, as that helps show that you're not just talking, but also listening.
Edit: Also, the largest part for me at least is to remember that an attack on your argument is not a personal attack against you. I've had issues with doing this my whole life, and am still working on it.
I did not.
Look up "delivery health". The batteries may not be included at the love hotel itself (although I've heard of places that do come with a menu), but it's also a common use of love hotels.
Pff. Everyone knows Haskell, Idris and Elixir are acceptable, too.
source: there are several people in my weekly support group for exactly this reason, it gets out of control
It's like when a Kpop/Kdrama fan approaches me expecting me to know all of the pop culture when in my experience most Koreans simply consider BTS to be like Justin Bieber.
Imagine if people from Japan starts asking you if you watch Justin Bieber sing and then getting offended when you speak the truth. This is exactly what people in Korea and Japan are going through but you will almost never see them express it but its getting extreme in some situations like below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/gxa6qr/this_girl_mak...
Here you can see her physically harassing Korean men by hugging them or trying to kiss them. It's getting to the point where Western women are fetishizing Korean men similar to how Asian women are often fetishized by foreigners (not through popular culture but mainly through pornography).
“ Something I've also noticed in Western media is that when covering issues about other cultures (ie India, Middle East, etc), the bar for evidence is pitifully low, especially if the story matches existing confirmation bias.”
The other article spoke in vague words of quantity, which is quite common in news articles, that a certain quantity is suggested, but actual numbers are never shown.
They are then not technically wrong but know full well most readers would infer a more spectacular claim than what they know the truth is.
I'd argue that when numbers actually be spectacular, news articles invariably cite them, and when they not be, cover them up in vague words — in this case however the number is 1, as it's about a single man only.
When you see these articles about folks in the U.S., it's framed at "this guy is weird." When you see these articles about folks in Japan, it's frequently framed as "Japan is weird, and anti-social, and they don't have enough sex, and if we're not careful this could be us one day!"
The Japanese stereotype is that they are lonely, and it is true that in Japan various things that cater to that, such as Host Clubs, are more common place.
There was also an article about how the Netherlands supposedly pays for prostitutes for the disabled, diving into the stereotype how the Netherlands tends to sit at the vanguard of encouraging sexual nontraditionality — the reality was less interesting and could be summed up as: A) disabled persons obtain financial support from the state; B) prostitution is legal.
I also read articles about the Norwegian military having unisex showers and dorms, which also ties into stereotypical expectations, notwithstanding their existence in other places, I'm sure.
That's really not what that article is claiming. It's claiming that a particular individual has lied about the industry and made it seem stranger than it actually is and the western media has sensationalized that even further.
There absolutely are rental services for boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers, fathers, etc. in Japan, they're just not as bizarre as some of these articles would lead you to believe.
Bars where one buys a good conversation along with the meal, cafés where the waiters roleplay as one's doting sibling, renting a parent, used underwear from vending machines, maid cafés, maid cafés where the maids are all cross-dressing males, cafés where the attractive male waiters make out with each other for the viewing pleasure of the customer base, cafés where the attractive female waiters wear no underwear, short skirts, and the floors are mirrored — well, that's the joie de vivre that has a big “only in Japan” sticker on it.
The second place with distance is the U.S.A. that at least has cafés where the attractive female waiters wear skimpy outfits, cheerleaders, and bikini car wash — but the rest of the world that has nothing that comes close to this well-inspired madness.
Just one example: All the different "café con piernas" cafes in Chile, which are very similar to Japanese maid cafes.
You seem to have reduced my rather wild and spectacular examples to something so mundane as: “Cafes that cater to lonely straight men or misogynistic businessmen exist”, especially when most of my examples have nothing to do with “straight men” or “misogynistic businessmen”.
I have knowledge of the existence of multiple in almost all of what I listed.
https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-ikebukuro...
This article reviews three different boy's love cafés, in close proximity to one another.
I'm not sure how derive the conclusion that there is only one used underwear vending machine; a simple image search reveals many different models:
https://www.techinasia.com/japan-used-panty-vending-machines...
This article concludes that the most extreme stories about one at every corner are an exaggeration, but one can definitely find them.
As for the cafés without underwear: there is definitely more than one, though they've been on a decline.
Of the 3, only the first one is overtly Yaoi. I don't know the second one, but it doesn't seem like one, and the Butler cafe is definitely not Yaoi.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-pan_kissa
After the boom in the 80s (30+ years ago), are there really any left, with the glass floor and everything?
And akiba is short for akihabara.
The underwear vending machine are out, and hidden now, mostly Akiba from what I hear on whispers, not in public. Maybe even one in Nakano broaddway...
And Kissa's in general are in decline, not just no pantsu kissas.
I raise you the slightly hidden world of "tits on toast" from Australia. In regional cities/towns, you can go to certain local pubs early in the day (10AM - 12PM) and get a cheap breakfast served by topless waitresses.
If the waitresses get enough tips, they allegedly remove everything.
The breakfast is usually terrible (cold canned beans on toast with an egg).
[1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/11/27/Topless-doughnut-sho...
Spends considerable time in a topless pancake restaurant if I remember correctly.
In certain areas yeah, but painting all the regions with that brush is strange. Most of the country couldn't handle anything of the sort and the place would be raided by the police in a day. Despite how many pretend play it up to be, Australia is an incredibly conservative country.
The stuff you'll find in mining towns is far worse and basically the wild west. Barstaff will pour you out a beer using their bare asscheeks for a tip. Always wondered what the health authorities think of that.
It was said that their mothers do everything for them and for a much longer time than other countries. Is this true?
The classic book on the subject is "The Anatomy of Dependence" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Dependence
The gist of this is that the parent-child relationship is the ideal one and that extends into the relationships in a collectivist society including that of a manager to an employee.
And so the doting mother to her child... extends a bit longer. The doting mother part isn't new - but rather that that relationship is seen as the ideal one... gets into cultural comparisons.
... but that's the word that can set you on the search for understanding of that phenomena.
Some of my female coworkers have confirmed this to be true. They say younger guys have problems finding a girlfriend, because they expect her to take care of him the same way his mother did, and younger Japanese women don't want to put up with that kind of attitude anymore.
Regarding social development, my feeling is that Japan is one or two generations behind Western countries.
This is rampantly common in (esp. Southern) Europe as well. The stereotype of the Italian or Greek "mama's boy" who can't do anything around the house and expects their SO to be their surrogate mother is very real.
I really don't think you should be using this as evidence to paint Japan as developmentally retarded as compared to "Western" countries. Respectfully, it comes off as parochial if I'm being charitable, or as working backwards from a desired conclusion if I'm not.
Moreover, this is a trend that crops up all around the world, not just in Japan or Europe. There are plenty of people like this in the US as well. I've met several grown men with well paying jobs who eat out for every meal and have their mothers do their laundry every weekend.
When I say Japan looks to me to be one or two generations behind, is because some of the things I see or hear here are the kind of situations my parents or grandparents got to experience when they were young. Not only what we already discussed, look also at the situation of women in the workplace, or LGBT rights.
There are a great many “western” countries where this is even worse than Japan including the one so often named the primordial “western” country.
I have no idea idea why so often when Japanese culture specifically is discussed the idea is sooner or later proffered that there is some homogeneous “western” culture with common elements that supposedly exists. It certainly doesn't seem to rise when, say, Russian, or Indian culture is discussed.
There are good side effects though. I have been to so many museums with Japanese art exhibitions showcasing varieties of works since it draws much interest in western population. The latest (pre pandemic) being the "inspiration from Japan" in Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which is eye-opening (I never realised the Japanese art that have connections with European art).
In conclusion, Japan portrayed in the west for me is more about obsession of elegance, extreme aesthetics, and bizarrity. These are merely my terrible personal generalisation / opinions.
Like countries where you can rent young girls to help launch your latest computer game? There are people in LA that can provide babies for TV/film appearances, preferably twins, with only a few hours notice. That's how the Olsen twins got started. The entire entertainment industry, from strip clubs to hollywood, is premised on renting people to pretend to be something they aren't, to provide personal appearances in places they would otherwise not. It only become weird when you describe it in non-industry terms.
It's kind of sad people have to hire people to do friendly things, but this is a pandemic. And you would "rent-a-person" to move probably in most places (unless you had great friends haha).
Also this makes sense "I'm not a friend or an acquaintance. I'm free of the bothersome things that accompany relationships, but can ease people's sense of loneliness"
So you want a throwaway friend. Or a casual therapist that does things with you. Rent them. Ok I guess not as weird as first glance. We have something similar in the US - life coaches which seemingly everyone on LinkedIn is nowadays.
Rent-a-friend/family in Japan seems like a real thing.
It is very real:
ファミリーロマンス社【家族レンタル】家族代行・代理ならファミリーレンタル専門 https://family-romance.com/family.html
「他人になりきる」代行サービスが人気博す「叱ってほしい」という依頼も https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/19410877/
How to Rent Friends in Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jag6iyrSjsI
Rental families to heal lonely souls in Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OURBpPLewoU
We Rented A Girlfriend In Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLBNO33bMX0
Behind Japan's Fake-Family Industry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhYMirs7fk
You can certainly trash 99% of the "weird Japan" stories you see in western medias.
Most of what you hear is from foreign people that did not even remotely try to learn the language or understand the culture. They make a fuss from minor cultural differences. It only gets worse when they experience Japan exclusively through the resonance chambers of the online expat communities.
“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
With isolation becoming a major issue during the pandemic, I'm not surprised people want to hire someone with these skills to just listen to their ideas and stories.
I think you make a great point, but at the same time it feels like you're also describing conventional talk therapy. And if you have good insurance, it's free. If you don't, it still doesn't break the bank.
I frequently joke with my friends that I'm only paying for a therapist to have someone to vent to. I pay them, and they listen my bullshit without judging me. (There's more to it than that of course, but it's a lighthearted way to suggest therapy to someone you feel could benefit.)
I've even found myself rambling about side project ideas with my therapist, which was surprisingly helpful when they pushed back against the inevitable "but it's a stupid idea of course, so I probably wont do anything with it."
"At times he will participate in a gaming session to make up numbers, turn up to send off people who are moving away, accompany those filing for divorce, or listen to health care workers who have become mentally unwell due to their exhausting work."
Also, "She asked him to stay beside her when meeting a man for the first time, and also had him listen to her talk about her views on love, which she could not divulge to her friends..."
I've seen a therapist off and on over the years and can't recommend it enough. I also found it pretty helpful as a startup founder/CEO for pushing back on my assumptions/biases.
I was reminded of our friend Liz’s insight after she lost her husband to melanoma. She told me she had plenty of people to do things with, but nobody to do nothing with.
From "The Day I Started Lying to Ruth" by Peter B. Bach, https://nymag.com/news/features/cancer-peter-bach-2014-5/
This is brilliant.
*having someone by your side makes a task easier.
*they get a relative boost because I'm so terrible.
Anyone see additional meanings?
(edited for formatting and to add question)
I keep thinking that just sharing a room with someone that ignores me and just does exactly what it is I'm trying to do would be ten times more helpful than being picked apart for all my flaws (which I understand exist, that's why I want accountability to fix them).
The less time it takes for me to go from a game over screen to my next life, the more likely I'm not going to just quit the game in frustration. Preferably that time is zero seconds.
This is the over-used Japanese expression "頑張れ" (gan-ba-re). Low-EQ people (younger me) say it when they don't know how to comfort someone who just told them some sadness, worry, or frustration.
Japanese commerce seems to have found a rather big market into treating loneliness. From the existence of Host Clubs, bars where the menu is not only food, but a good conversation with one's designated “host” as well, to cafés where the waiter plays a role of one's doting younger sister. Of course, it is probably also indicated by the infamously declining birth rate.
Rent-a-Girlfriend is a bizarre thing to read, if one not understand it's target audience. It's a new dimension to The 40 Year Old Virgin, with the exception that the protagonist is supposed to be relatable to the audience — he's unbelievably socially awkward and not in a way that derives humor from it, but is meant to invoke a sense of relatability and it essentially seems to exist as a way to vicariously cope with loneliness, as is surprisingly common in Japanese fiction.
Media does usually exaggerate the traits they're attempting to highlight, whether it's bravery or social anxiety. Most people, even if they are popular and charismatic, still feel awkward and anxious sometimes. As much as we talk about how different people are, in some ways we're all the same.
The protagonist of The 40 Year old Virgin is unique for it, and the series is not meant for 40 year old virgins.
There is a surprisingly high amount of fiction from Japan that follows a formula similar to this:
- The protagonist is socially awkward and nervous, but otherwise has no actual opinions or character traits
- The protagonist starts the story rather lonely
- The protagonist fairly quickly finds friends, lovers, family, who are very devoted to him
- Bonus points for the protagonist being transported to a parallel universe to escape the dreads of social pressure of Japanese office worker life completely — this specific plot device is oddly common.
It feels as if one play a first person corridor shooter with a silent protagonist, but it's a book or television series: the protagonist is dragged along with the plot but somehow does not influence it and barely speaks or has opinions: the point is for the reader to mentally replace the protagonist with himself, and experience the story from his own perspective, so he can feel less lonely, just as such video games have a big element of making the player feel like an action hero, but the power phantasy sold here is simply “no longer being lonely”.
It's really an oddly big market for such a seemingly quite specific thing. Rent-a-Girlfriend consistently ranks within the top 25 of strip volume sales in Japan, and it's plot is really little more than “Lonely, socially awkward young adult is now less lonely.”.
I quit the strip in what must be around the same events of the story as the sixth episode — I could not bare with how awkward the protagonist was, and how everyone either really liked him or outright fell in love with him despite being a nervous train wreck who constantly embarrasses himself.
I'm not sure it's “bad”; it's as said quite popular and it's probably very good at what it attempts to do and what I consider flaws are probably features.
It doesn't hurt that from this position almost anyone you would find to interact with is in some way predatory. Like anyone who didn't fail at socializing has their closed off peer group they spend their time with by now. The doors closed and all that is left is this perpetual limbo of fluctuating between distracting from the sadness and being overwhelmed by it. In the same way corporate social media, entertainment, and trying to bond with others over that or the total inability to form creative bonds with others to actually make stuff are all vacuous and unfulfilling. In the same vein paying someone to keep you company ultimately cannot fill that missing piece in a person that wants others to just want them to be there for themselves. You can't commodify that.
So uh, I can highly relate to what the Japanese are going through with how even more regimented and structured their society is pressed upon them as being. Its stifling enough in the US culture of hyper-consumerism. It seems like a stifling nightmare over there. Welcome to the NHK is a great anime on this subject if anyone is interested in getting into a, to be fair romanticized, version of these kinds of experiences. It touches well on the psychological hole you get yourself in though.
Its kind of absurdist to think about, how capitalism is trying to respond to the endemic loneliness that if you really get into it can kind of be attributed to the way modern life is commodified and made competitive and consumptive. People are lonely because nobody has the time, patience, or desire left to be communal. At least not comprehensively for those of us on the social fringes. But there is no community because it isn't economically efficient to capital for one to exist. It gets eaten away to be replaced with more consumption for more profit and its leaving growing segments of society hollow husks. So you end up with rent a girlfriends and companionship bars instead of actual friends.
Yes, a great deal of it is indeed nonromantic.
Welcome to the N.H.K. is what I would consider a different beast from Rent-a-Girlfriend what I've seen about it, though I haven't read it, and indeed more so describes your version of escapism from excessive capitalism and social and financial duties, whereas R.a.G. seems to mostly be escapism from loneliness by lack of social aptitude.
It sucks because sometimes I know that there’s a community out there that exists for them but even with the Facebook, Twitters, and Reddits of the world, somehow they’re all devoid of the ability to find and form intimate connections with others (Facebook is great for connecting with people in my existing social graph, not finding people outside of it)
Great way to meet a lot of friendly people and make friends.
This is a big problem in employment. To have successful workers the right person needs to get to the right job. Bureaucracy and politics pay are huge deterrents for this type of work. I've seen people who would love to be teachers and they'd be (somehow) okay with a low pay but not with the amount of paperwork and politics they had to deal with.
You can't literally do nothing.
It's en vogue now to talk about "doing nothing" or making it sound normal that you need to hire someone you don't know to accompany you to visit the hospital, etc.
I am sure this is a part of the human experience but is it really a part we need to normalize, versus reconnecting with the culture of yesteryear of toughness, resilience, independence and productivity?
The reason I say this is because I think the world is a tough competitive place whether we act like it or not. There's a premium to be someone (and a nation of someones) who can deal with harsh realities and crush through adversity. Every society that got to "the top" got there because of this, and I suspect every society that declined did so because of overindulgence in decadence and weakness. We don't want that.
(If the story is indeed true) "Doing nothing" is just click-bait - he's definitely not doing nothing, he's connecting with people who need it, and has built it into a business with a twitter following.
It doesn't have to be, though.
I guess the individuals featured in such stories are the change they want to see in the world.
If you aren't "strong" enough to do the hard work, someone else in your town will do it and reap the rewards while you become irrelevant. If your whole town opts out, some other part of the country will do it while your town drifts away into irrelevance and poverty.
If the whole country opts out, some other young and hungry country will take advantage of the opportunities your country passes up, until that country makes your country irrelevant.
Everything we have is because we or our ancestors (whether literal ancestors or the people that built the countries we live in) did the hard work. A few people can opt out and free-ride on others. But if the whole culture opts out, the whole culture will become irrelevant.
Perhaps not as an individual, but I wonder about as a society - I don't know how we would get to this point, but imagine the sheer potential we as a culture could unlock by moving to a more cooperative model; consider the billions upon billions of person-hours wasted on things like stock trading, internal politicking, and marketing/advertising: all the things that provide no value to the race, but "required" to facilitate interpersonal competition.
Of course, none of that is against your primary point, which is that hard work is still, on the whole, required. It just irritates me to see competition equated to a law of nature; we're not animals, we can choose whether and how competition applies.
My main point and I think you agree, is that you can never get there from a position of weakness and laze. No one is going to throw in their lot cooperating with you if your ethos is to "do nothing" or if you aren't functioning as an adult (whether an adult individual or an adult nation/country.)
1) You can work hard in a non-competitive society.
2) That being said, hard work isn't -- contrary to what you seem to think -- inherently good. An industrialized genocide took place because my ancestors were diligent and hard-working. And I'd wager that a significant portion of modern-day hard workers is complicit in committing ecocide.
3) Besides, the way that you fetishize your ancestors' way of life I surely hope you're not vaccinated against polio and tetanus. And heaven forbid, I hope you are not wearing contact lenses or glasses. Disregard the current levels of automation and manifold other advances, putting in the hard work in a competitive society and eventually dying of typhus is most definitely the way.
The fact that one could do useless or evil work isn't an argument against work. Just don't do dumb/evil shit.
My problem is more with the cultural ethos and the vibe of this story and what it and stories like it appear to celebrate or at least normalize.
This headline should have been "enterprising Japanese man builds a service and earns a good living satisfying the needs of others that they value and pay for" :)
Being at the bottom might be nice to avoid though.
I'll speculate that we're seeing more high-profile stories about "unremarkable person does a peaceful thing" because the internet allows it.
It used to be, that stories of exceptional drive or grit were likely to appeal to gritty, driven publishing executives, back when publishing (or syndication) involved offices full of people doing things to pieces of paper. These days, you can publish worldwide from your smartphone, and the people who _aren't_ filled with grit and drive can at least summon a "like" when they see someone doing something that resonates with them.
People can derive support from Morimoto, but he doesn't intend to provide them that support. That lack of intention makes his service simple and allows people to get what they want from him.
How genuine.
Not any specific Haruki Murakami story, but basically all Haruki Murakami stories ever.
I'm not sophisticated enough to know how much of this imagery is manufactured for export, but my gaijin self does enjoy it.
> Another reflected, "I had been slack about visiting the hospital, but I went because he came with me."
I have seen multiple people be much more eager and diligent in taking a pet to the vet, than taking care of theirselves (due to fear, shame, and an if you ignore it long enough mentality) this hits hard.
I agree, though, that doctors for non-humans are generally cheaper than those for humans.
But I think the guy himself has a point when he says he lowers the bar. Think how many different jobs (or "roles") there that can be ranked in a kind of hierarchy: not in the sense of a career ladder, but in services and expertise offered. Between the bottom of this hierarchy, and nothing, is a gap to fill.
Take for example personal protection. Sure, if I need a high tier of that service, I could get myself a bodyguard, maybe one of those with ex-military experience and all the combat training etc. Between that and "nothing" is a random joe who tags along to the Tinder date, like this guy.
Or sure I could meet a licensed therapist. Don't want to? Can meet a friend. Don't have one? This random dude to the rescue.
I also think that there's probably a lot lost in translation, and would be very interested in a JP resident / speaker providing commentary and context.
So he what he is doing is therapy.
The main benefit is having someone trained to listen for specific symptoms based on what you talk about and to develop treatment strategies based on what you discuss and symptoms you experience.
I wouldn't reduce it to "having someone who cares about your problems for 45 minutes." It's more like "talking about your problems for 45 minutes to someone who can recognize which ones are rational, which ones aren't, and can discuss with you how to mitigate the negative effects of your own irrational thoughts."
The cognitive behavioral therapist has to assume the human mind works a certain way, suffering is caused by "irrational" thoughts, and therapist is somehow more "rational" than their clients, so can help their clients be more "rational" like the therapist. These are some big assumptions.
We don't have deep conversations about theory of function, but the peripheral mentions that creep into our conversations seem to point in this same direction.
For more info on therapeutic factors, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592639/ obligatory clickbait: you will be surprised!
This man takes the position of a peer.
It's somewhere between rubber duck and pair programming. They might be learning a bit, and explaining things really keeps me on task.
Karoshi or death by overwork. https://www.insider.com/karoshi-how-overwork-in-japan-killed...
It seems like Morimoto opted out of that suicidal culture. Good for him.
This resonates with me a lot. Every time someone cheers me on, I try to meet their expectations but after wards I feel extremely burnt out.
Humans, more than any other animals live in an imagined reality. Once food & shelter are taken care of, one’s dependence on nature (physical reality) has been disintermediated. This, our direct experience is primarily imagined abstract reality (friends/family, employment, society, the act of purchasing/consuming, etc).
Especially if one gets socially isolated in this world, it’s very easy to decouple one’s notion of reality from others in subtle ways. To be seen, have one’s perspective acknowledged and to be sincerely “touched” by another person (in a deeper metaphorical sense) is therefore one of the strongest human needs.
On the path to so thoroughly servicing humankind’s physical needs, we’ve created a quandary that’s increasingly endemic with waves of economic development.
It's really not far from suits, especially white ones, white gloves, or high heels. Such apparel demonstrates that you don't work, in fact that you can't work. Ancient Romans liked to have feasts while laying on their sides - it's very inconvenient to reach for things and you must use servants. Another status symbol is a wristwatch with dials but no numbers. Female shirts are unbuttoned from the opposite side - so they're comfortable to unbutton for the servants.
Whether real or not, I think the fact that it _sounds_ plausible [at least enough to be a good satire] suggests that there's probably something to the idea that having a fairly neutral companion is pretty valuable.
Behavioural change doesn't happen by just talking. Maybe that's for session 1, but for session 2, you'll have to do work to understand your feelings, what triggers them and how to set up your life and daily schedule to manage them. To do this you will likely be asked to keep a mood diary, and review the results during the sessions.
Lots of people quit therapy because it's expensive and their employer may only cover the cost of say 10 sessions. But a lot of people quit well before that because they go into it thinking that they'll "let it all out" and get instant results.
I think this is true. Not a "yes man", but an "is that so? man".
Conversely, the friends I can argue with vehemently and yet have neither of us take it personally -- they are rare and dear to me.
He doesn't boast his credentials or nor indeed his work, such as it is. He is totally Zen about it.
Aspirational!
酸素を吸って、二酸化炭素を吐いて、給料を稼げる。
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
In this case it's snarking at the consulting company, but is that alright because they're not actually involved in the story or thread?
"If Japan’s family rental phenomenon is “well documented,” as The New Yorker claims, it is not well documented in the article itself. Despite describing a “wave” of rental families beginning in the 1980s, and noting their prevalence in literature and movies, there is no concrete sense of how many people have actually used these services. Other recent articles about the phenomenon almost invariably cite Family Romance, which appears to have been thoroughly discredited. As Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York Times noted, “[W]hile it’s unclear it provides ‘family rental’ services on any significant scale, it did run a wildly effective media campaign, feeding false anecdotes to outlets looking for a wacky story.”"
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently there exists an actual, real company named "Family Romance", that's what parent poster's quote is referring to.