A 39 year old Japanese man, Morimoto, gets paid for doing nothing. He holds a postgraduate degree in physics. He is married and earns a living by doing nothing. His job is called ‘rent a person who does nothing’. It means a person can rent him and he offers himself for hiring even though he does not do anything, except eating and drinking. Whenever he is asked something, he gives a very simple reply. Other than that, he does not offer any services in particular.
His clients are those people who need companionship. He gets requests from clients who just want someone to listen to them. According to him, people do not like being in a situation where their weaknesses are on a display, so they want to talk to someone who is completely outside of their usual relationships. He charges 10,000 Yen and travel costs every time he does nothing for a client. He sees three to four clients a day. He has been hired by more than 3,000 people since 2018.
People usually rent him out of loneliness. He has been hired for a variety of other reasons as well. He has been hired to catch butterflies in the park or have lunch or accompany while filing for divorce or to visit a friend in a hospital or visit a graveyard. Strange incidents also happen. Once someone hired him to describe a murder he had committed. Another time a person hired him and along with him revisited the spot where he tried to kill himself.
Morimoto has lakhs of followers on twitter and has also published books. He eases the feeling of loneliness of people. He has thousands of clients and his client list is increasing ever since he started to rent himself out. He never gets tired of it because his work develops in so many interesting ways. He gets to do many interesting things which he never thought he would do in his life.