Whatever your dream job is, but nothing can be better than getting paid for doing nothing. Shoji Morimoto, a 38-year-old resident of Tokyo, gets paid to do nothing. He charges 10,000 yen (5,670 INR) per booking to accompany clients and simply exist as a companion.
Morimoto said, “Basically, I rent myself out. My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and to do nothing in particular. ” He added that he had handled some 4,000 sessions in the past four years.
Morimoto now has a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, and most of his clients come from there. Roughly a quarter of them are repeat customers, including one who has hired him 270 times.
Some of the tasks he has done include, going to a park with a person who wanted to play on a see-saw. He has also beamed and waved through a train window at a complete stranger who wanted a send-off.
But for him, doing nothing doesn’t mean doing anything. He has also turned down many offers, like moving a fridge, going to Colombia, and many others. Also, he doesn’t accept any requests of a sexual nature.
Once, he sat with Aruna Chida, a 27-year-old data analyst in a saree, having a sparse conversation over tea and cakes.
Chida likes to wear Indian clothes but couldn’t wear them out in public with friends because she thought it could embarrass them. So she turned to Morimoto for companionship.
Earlier, before Morimoto found his true calling, he worked at a publishing company and was often chided for “doing nothing”.
He said, “I started wondering what would happen if I provided my ability to ‘do nothing’ as a service to clients.”
The companionship business is now Morimoto’s single source of income, with which he supports his wife and child. Although he declined to disclose how much he makes, he said he sees about one or two clients a day. Before the pandemic, it was three or four a day.