Shoji Morimoto, a 41-year-old from Japan, has a rather unique job: he gets paid to accompany people and do nothing else.
“Basically, I rent myself out. My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and not do anything in particular,” Morimoto explained. “There are many favorite moments in this job, like when I receive a booking message, when I meet a client, when I accompany a client to an unfamiliar place, when I simply listen to a story, and I feel happy in every moment,” he told CNBC.
How to make money doing nothing
Morimoto charges between $70 and $210 per session, having completed around 4,000 sessions over the past four years, each lasting between two and three hours.
Last year, he earned approximately $82,000. Most of his clients contact him through the social media platform X, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers, although a quarter of them are regular clients. In fact, one client has hired him about 270 times.
Thanks to this job, Morimoto, his wife, and their child can live comfortably.
But what tasks does Shoji Morimoto really do?
His ‘tasks’ include activities as varied as accompanying someone who wanted to play in the park or waving goodbye to a stranger through a train window. However, Morimoto has his limits and has turned down requests such as moving a refrigerator, traveling to Cambodia, or engaging in sexual activities.
Aruna Chida, a 27-year-old data analyst, is one of his clients. A few years ago, she hired Morimoto to chat over tea and cakes while she wore a sari (a traditional Indian dress). Chida wanted to wear the sari in public but was worried her friends might feel embarrassed, so she turned to Morimoto for company.
“There’s nothing wrong with doing nothing”
According to Reuters, Morimoto previously worked at a publishing house where he was often reprimanded for not fulfilling his duties and spending long hours doing nothing. This led him to offer his ability to remain idle to others, turning it into a profitable venture.
Morimoto sees one or two clients a day but refuses to disclose his exact earnings. “People tend to think that my ‘doing nothing’ is valuable because it’s useful to others… but in reality, there’s nothing wrong with doing nothing. People don’t have to be useful in any specific way,” he claimed.
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