A Japanese man makes $80,000 a year renting himself as a silent companion. He sits with clients, drinks tea, and answers questions briefly. In Japan, 38% of households are single-person, and loneliness has become so acute the government appointed a minister of loneliness.
There is a guy in Japan who is making $80,000 a year for doing nothing. This guy was at work. His boss called him a do-nothing man. You just do nothing. You don't provide any value. He says that he thought to himself, hmm, is there value in society for a man who does nothing? And he went online saying, I'm starting a new service. Rental people who do nothing. You rent him out and he'll go hang out with you and he says nothing. It's pretty much a silent companion, completely non-physical, non-sexual, basically an introvert for hire. And so what people is they will have a task they need to go do, like an errand they need to run, or they just feel really lonely and they just want somebody to have some tea with them. And he'll come and he'll sit. And if you ask him a question, he'll give you a simple answer. What were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him? In Japan, there's a loneliness epidemic. Single-person households— no wife, no, no family members, no friends, just living alone by yourself— is now 38% of the population, triple where it was 5 or 7 years ago. They appointed a minister of loneliness in Japan because this has become such a big problem.
