Shoji Morimoto, a former publishing company worker, hires himself out just to be there for lonely people – he was once even paid just to say goodbye to a needy traveler. Morimoto, 38, said he charges customers about $71 just to be there, with about 4,000 bookings in the past four years — making enough money to support his wife and child. “Basically, I’m renting myself out,” he said. “My job is to be where my clients want me to be and not do anything specific.” His gigs included a job just riding a seesaw with a client in a local park and sitting in a restaurant with a woman who was afraid her Indian sari would embarrass her friends if she wore it in public – so he got in. “With my friends, I feel like I have to entertain them,” customer Aruna Chida, a 27-year-old data analyst, said of Morimoto’s service. “But with the tenant, I don’t feel the need to be chatty.” Morimoto’s fee—the equivalent of ¥10,000—is his only source of income. Before COVID-19, he was making almost $300 a day. He said he first got the idea after being repeatedly accused of doing nothing while holding down his more traditional publishing job. Shoji Morimoto said he charges customers about $71 just for being there. Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS Morimoto has had about 4,000 bookings over the past four years. Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS Morimoto once sat in a restaurant with a woman who feared her Indian sari would embarrass her friends if she wore it in public. Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS “People tend to think that ‘doing nothing’ is valuable because it is useful (to other people),” Morimoto explained. Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS “I started to wonder what would happen if I provided my ability to do nothing as a service to customers,” he said. “People tend to think that ‘doing nothing’ is valuable because it is useful [to other people].” “But it’s good to do nothing,” he added. “People don’t have to be useful in any particular way.” However, Morimoto has limits – he does not accept requests for anything sexual and has turned down jobs to move a fridge and travel to Cambodia. But he’s not the only one with a strange job in Japan. Earlier this week, The Post reported that the Japanese want to pay someone to run a campaign to get young people to drink more. The initiative, prepared by the country’s tax service, is seeking proposals for programs to help young people get more drunk to “revive” the alcohol industry. Japan has seen its alcohol industry dry up in recent years and is hoping to help pay down the country’s massive $8.3 trillion debt by increasing tax revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages. According to the BBC, the average Japanese citizen drank about 22 gallons of booze each year in 1995, but that number has dropped to about 16 gallons by 2020. With Post cables
