
Renting a Friend in Tokyo - daegloe
http://www.afar.com/magazine/the-incredibly-true-story-of-renting-a-friend-in-tokyo
======
hitekker
Being a Couchsurfing host (Free) in NYC and an AirBnB traveler (paid), I
believe a long-term meaningful friendship cannot form while money is changing
hands.

In my experience, money calls into question the sincerity and authenticity of
both the person paying, and the person being paid. Authenticity being "are
they being themselves?", and sincerity being "do they want you to know
themselves?" and vica versa.

Is a person being friendly because they like me or because they are counting
the dollar signs in their head? Do they really want to get to know me or are
they simply being polite, i.e. applying social lubricant?

I don’t have a single host from my AirBnB stays that I remember fondly, if at
all. I have several Couch-surfers who I miss dearly and who message me from
time to time on Facebook.

I feel that it’s possible to make real friends with people you start with on a
“business level”, but until that “business” gets removed, the relationship is
just a thin veneer over what is essentially a transaction.

~~~
bmm6o
I think it has more to do with expectations than the money per se. AirBnB is
first and foremost a business relationship, and it's probably common that
neither person wants any more out of it. If I hit it off with the host I might
recommend them to friends, but actually pursuing a friendship... probably not.
Whereas getting to know the hosts is part of the appeal of couch surfing.

As another example, clubs and classes are a great place to make friends
because you already have a common interest. You can become friends with the
instructor/leader no matter what the monetary arrangements are. Whether there
are dues or class fees, if the instructor gets paid a token or reasonable
amount. Of course, the more of a profession it is for the instructor, the more
likely they are to be spread thin across classes and students. But again,
that's not the money per se.

~~~
knughit
AirBnB pretends to be a social matching service with money just for covering
expenses.

~~~
golergka
What? How? Airbnb is just a hotel alternative, most of the time I get keys
from some kind of locker and don't even see my host

------
kough
> It’s not that people lack friends, she says. Facebook, Instagram— scroll
> around and you find a country bursting with mugging, partying companionship.
> It just isn’t real, that’s all. “There’s a real me and a masked me. We have
> a word for the lonely gap in between that: kodoku.”

I find this to be incredibly true in the US as well. I'm a university student,
and there is a marked difference between how I know my friends are feelings
vs. how they post on social media. I went through a long period of depression
a few years ago because (for a variety of reasons) I was isolated from most of
my good friends. Spending tons of time with them on social media didn't make
me happy. It was confusing, feeling like I was still in touch with all my
friends but at the same time not getting any of the usual positive emotions.

There's really nothing like human companionship.

EDIT: I say "how my friends post on social media" because I stopped using it.
I'll log in and skim every once in a while but I stopped posting about myself
entirely a few years ago. Instead, I try to call or email my friends. For some
reason, email feels much, much more personal than Facebook. I've really gotten
to know some of my friends better by writing back and forth with them.
Different media inspire different conversations, I guess.

------
pjlegato
Most of the population of Japan were sad, angry, and humiliated in 1945. They
blamed traditional society (in general) for having failed them.

The result was that most people discarded traditional social value systems and
customs on a wholesale basis. The traditional ways of interacting with others
began to be seen as horribly old-fashioned, conservative, imperialist, stodgy,
and above all profoundly unfashionable.

However, they failed to create a coherent new system of customs and values to
replace the ones they discarded. The result was the atomization of society,
the lack of the shared mores, norms, and contexts that traditionally produced
the conditions necessary to find friendship.

Something very similar happened in California with the mass adoption of
countercultural criticisms of traditional society in the 1960s and 1970s,
which now manifests as a sort of pervasive social awkwardness and atomization.

The trend lags a few years behind Tokyo, but I imagine before too long, San
Francisco too will have "rent-a-friend" services to fill the void created by
the lack of shared social mores and customs that traditionally allowed people
to make friends.

~~~
kough
I can't comment on the societal changes of post-WWII Japan, but I see what
you've described playing out right now in the US. There is a lot to dislike
about American "traditional values" (like, I don't know, racism? sexism? tons
of things) but as more and more people lose these traditional values and the
social networks that came with them (e.g., church), I think we'll see this
play out the same way in the US. It's already starting -- there was a great
article in the Atlantic a few months ago that's well worth reading
([http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-
wo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-working-
class-poverty/424341/)).

~~~
pjlegato
Any human-made system is bound to have both good and bad in it -- including
all new propositions for replacing traditional systems. Humans aren't perfect
and never will be.

The problem is that the baby is too often thrown out with the bathwater.
Specific criticisms of specific areas, however valid they may be, are almost
imperceptably broadened, bit by bit, year by year, until they become
categorical condemnations of "traditional society" ("the Man") in general, no
longer in regard to any specific thing but as a generic reified abstraction to
be combatted.

~~~
kough
Huh, it's almost isomorphic to the problem of old code: total rewrite, or
careful maintenance and update? One's a lot sexier and more interesting for
the people doing the work.

------
twoquestions
Is it common and expected to give literally all of your time to the boss, with
no time left for friends or family? If so, what are they working for? Is
working as a cashier or janitor literally worse than dying over there? I mean
sure you won't have the money that comes from working for a big corp, but at
least you'll have some time that isn't 'on the clock'.

I mean I'm a 9-5 programmer who likes to learn off-hours and sometimes I'm
envious of the Silicon Valley salaries, but then I see the 90+ hour weeks that
are expected along with the rent you unfortunate souls have to pay, and all I
can think is NOPE! I'd rather make somewhat less money so I can have at least
some choice in my life rather than be completely owned by my boss like some
kind of indentured servant!

This whole scenario seems really terrifying! After reading that article I
seriously physically felt like I just read a really good existential horror
story. My skin is still crawling!

~~~
patio11
_Is working as a cashier or janitor literally worse than dying over there?_

If you're a Japanese man raised by middle class parents, the prospect of
working as a cashier or janitor implies:

You will never have economic security. Substantially all cashiers are hourly
contract workers; virtually all janitors are. (The janitorial exceptions are
government employees.) Contract workers can have their employment terminated
in a fashion similar to in the United States. This contrasts markedly with the
traditional expectation of the Japanese middle class, which is lifetime
employment.

Your parents will consider you a failure, principally because you have failed
in the one thing men are expected to do.

You will find your dating and marriage prospects markedly curtailed. You will
be considered a loser by the vast majority of young women who you wish to
date. Some will tell you that, in as many words. Many will prefer euphemisms
like "My ideal boyfriend is someone who has debuted in society." Honest labor
as a cashier is not considered honest labor in the Japanese middle class, at
least not for a member of the middle class.

Japan is a very status-conscious society. Cashiers and janitors occupy some of
the very lowest rungs of it. You will spend most of your day being obseqiously
polite to people; you will watch other people spend their fragments of your
day snubbing you, repeatedly, in the ordinary course.

You have recently read of other blue-collar employees who worked service jobs
dying cold and alone, because the government safety net doesn't really
consider them a priority, they had no savings, and they never had a family for
the above reasons.

So, tell me: given that this is your mental model of reality, and the mental
model shared by substantially everyone you consider a peer or mentor, how
attractive does working at 7-11 sound to you?

Oh, salient fact: if you work so much as one day at 7-11 past college you'll
probably never work as a salaryman. You're damaged goods for the rest of your
life. If you thought of maybe doing it for 6 months while spending your time
playing in a band and then getting on with your adult life, go ask one of the
45 year olds working at 7-11 and living on ~$1,400 a month how that decision
worked out for them.

The above math, or something close to it, is why most salarymen consider
themselves blessed to be proper employees at a stable corporation, even if
that job is actively killing them. (n.b. I'm not Japanese but I am a
recovering Japanese salaryman. "Salaryman" is a local coinage which identifies
full-time white collar employees of a certain strata of Japanese companies
which are desirable to work at. The traditional expectation is that you sign a
deal with the devil ^H^H^H^H^H your company where the company insulates you
from all risks and in return you commit to the company mind, body, and soul.)

~~~
shostack
Hey Patrick, thanks for the additional insight. I had considered moving to
Japan at one point in college and studied up on the culture quite a bit, but
obviously have no first hand experience like you do.

Two things I've wondered about that I'm hoping you can shed some light on...

First, do people that low on the totem pole socially have any tendencies to
emigrate to societies with more open cultures about this stuff like Europe or
America? I realize there can be a cost barrier, but even a cashier could save
up enough to make the move if they were dedicated enough to the idea.

Second, my experience with cashiers and other service staff there was the
expected flawless politeness. But beyond that, people genuinely seemed to want
to go above and beyond and take pride in their job, even if it was "just as a
cashier." Is my perception due to just not being well-attuned to the
social/body cues of the Japanese? In America, the cashier at a 711 typically
hates their job and many give off the impression of being a slacker. Some
practically exude this. I never once encountered this in a 711 in Japan. So do
most of the cashiers there really hate their jobs/status and just make a good
show of things? Or am I just blind to the cues?

~~~
patio11
Japan does not have a recent experience of high levels of emigration. (It did
back when Japan was still a poor nation. There is a large Japanese diaspora in
the United States and a few countries in South America, notably Peru and
Brazil. That's a long story.) Factors counseling not emigrating include
linguistic isolation (the overwhelming majority of not-comfortably-middle-
class Japanese people do not speak useful levels of, most relevantly to their
chances for successful emigration, English), cultural attitudes regarding the
importance of Japan to Japanese people [+], and similar issues.

Your second question: depends on the cashier.

Note that a good portion of the things I were referring to are a result of
falling out of the class you were born/raised/worked into. (Japan doesn't have
classes... but Japan totally has classes.) If you never expected anything in
life other than going to an agricultural high school and maybe working on the
farm, like many young'uns in Gifu, then moving to Tokyo and working at a
convenience store might not be catastrophic. If you expected to test into a
good college, and did, and _then_ end up working at a convenience store...
that's a violation of the proper order of things.

Also, I would give non-zero credence to an explanation that a hypothetical
observer who can't speak the language and has very little experience with the
culture perhaps not understanding subtle distinctions like the difference
between one's participation in a public social ritual and what one can tell
one's closest friends when all of you are drunk. What's a good US example...
hmm... OK, here's one: sincerity of religious belief. That's a spectrum,
right? And Americans exist along that spectrum, right? And we have to have
functioning radars for where someone is on that spectrum or it's socially
disastrous, right? Imagine a hypothetical politician who pings your radar as
"Absolutely zero sincere belief in any religion." Think backwards to the cues
they give off to give you that impression. OK, now imagine that guy says, in
response to a debate question, "Mr. $FOO, what is your favorite Bible verse?"
and answers "I really like all of them, because I'm a Christian." That
probably changes your radar value not at all, right? Because that's exactly
what you'd expect a politician to say? The modal Japanese person, who probably
does not have as good a radar on this issue as you do, _will probably be
confused_ as to why you think this politician is not religious when he just
said something religious and claimed belief in a religion. And you could
imagine writing a fairly long anthropological comment on a message board to
that person saying "No, no, that's just the way we do things here. That
question _always_ gets asked and not having an answer to it, or disputing the
basis for the question, would be political suicide. He's pretending to care
about it and we pretend, for form's sake, to believe him." whereupon the
Japanese person would say "Wow, you crazy Americans, so inscrutable."

[ + ] "What, like nationalism?" Not exactly the sense that I meant it in. Try
on your mental model of a nationalist American for a moment: suppose an
American spends several years abroad then comes back. Is this happy or sad?
Happy, of course, because America is clearly the best place to live in the
world and of course Americans would prefer to live in America, like everyone
else would if they had the opportunity. A Japanese nationalist, on the other
hand, would more typically say that the returning Japanese person is a sad
event because _the traitor will probably bring their foreign contagion with
them_. Is there even a word in English for what I'd be if I moved back to
America next year? "What, an American?" No, a word which describes "previously
lived a long while in another country." Japanese has a word for this (slight
oversimplification for brevity going on here but I'm thinking of 帰国子女) and if
it describes you you have challenges associated with that.

~~~
shostack
Thanks--this was a very clear explanation. I'm familiar with the concept of
kikokushijo from some Japanese friends in college--there really are some ways
of thinking that are completely foreign culturally and your example is a great
way of highlighting that.

I've read that Japan's younger generations are starting to break free from the
mold of "lifetime employment" and similar concepts as corporations have begun
to show less and less loyalty to their employees as they become more
competitive globally, and as Japan becomes more Westernized. Have you seen
signs of that? Are the days of the traditional salaryman numbered?

The whole concept of the salaryman has always been fascinating to me. On the
one hand, you have Japan, which is probably up there with Germany when one
looks up the definition of "efficiency" in the dictionary. On the other, you
have this concept of people working insane hours which have been proven to be
less productive than when people actually get solid rest, have good work/life
balance, etc. in terms of actual output, reduction in errors, and things that
generally align with the concept of kaizen.

I have this notion in my head that Japanese corporate culture is extremely
inefficient, with people essentially just creating endless bureaucracy and
shuffling paper back and forth. Can you comment on any of these things?

~~~
patio11
Yes, things are changing (slowly). My accountant left a salaryman gig (!) at
25 (!!) to open his own business (!!!) in accounting (!!!!) which successfully
convinced Japanese businesses to use a 25 year old washout as their accountant
(!!!!!). I happen to know a ~60ish year old Japanese software entrepreneur.
This entrepreneur recently raised a venture round (!) from a US VC (!!!).
She's a woman with approximately ~40 years of experience operating a software
company. (This is so outside the norm that exclamation points do not do it
justice. If instead of meeting her I had heard about her second-hand from the
Pope, I would have called him a liar.)

My view on Japanese corporate efficiency is essentially that Japan had a few
things going right for it, including a de-facto world monopoly on applied
mathematics ("which is useful"), which lasted for a few decades. Those were
very, very good decades, and no amount of other inefficiency in Japanese
companies/government/etc could make a monopoly on math lose. ("Monopoly" is a
slight exaggeration for effect.)

Japan no longer has a monopoly on math. It took ~30 years, but Ford and GM
spent enough time looking at Toyota such that they can make a car which is, if
not a Toyota, at least not a death trap. Korea and China skipped directly from
dirt-poor nations to industrial-powerhouses-who-can-math without taking the
US' 200 year detour through "Let's try running factories like they are public
schools and public schools like they are factories." Meanwhile, the US becomes
the global center for software (which works out swimmingly) and Japan becomes
the global center for robots (which works out swimmingly if one owns robots
but not so much if one competes with them) while cranking up industrial output
and industrial efficiency but concentrating the gains of it rather than
passing them around many folks as previously happened.

~~~
mailshanx
World monopoly on math? Could you elaborate on that?

~~~
barry-cotter
Statistical quality control. Edward W. Deming or a name very like that. The US
and Britain made vast strides in quality engineering during WW2 and then
ignored it. The Japanese got religious about it.

------
verst
I have personally used something similar when traveling a few places in Asia.

For example, in Seoul, South Korea I found this organization of university
students who want to promote their culture and improve their English in the
process.

I didn't want to do the typical tourist things with my colleagues, so I had
two students take me around the city for a day. They were willing to tailor
their tour and activities entirely to my interests. In fact, they didn't even
expect me to pay for their food or things like admission tickets to museums. I
certainly wasn't going to let some university students pay for me (especially
when those things were comparatively cheap to me as a foreigner). I decided to
rely entirely on their recommendations as locals. I had a great time!

I am inclined to organize something similar in San Francisco for tourists from
across the world - meet new people and show them around for free (showing off
your local pride).

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I am inclined to organize something similar in San Francisco for tourists
> from across the world - meet new people and show them around for free
> (showing off your local pride)."

I've not used the service yet, but I get the impression this is often what
happens with Couchsurfing, is this something you'd be interested in trying?

~~~
verst
I prefer having my own private space at the end of the day, so Couchsurfing
isn't quite for me.

But during the day or evenings I'd be happy to show people some cool spots I
like (which they will probably like).

------
JoeAltmaier
In the USA we have everything but this - you can rent an assistant, a
concierge, a translator, a wedding planner, a prostitute. But not a friend.
Why have we not thought of this?

~~~
EC1
Because it's really sad and pathetic.

~~~
partisan
I really wish this for you: May you never be lonely enough in your life to
consider something like this, but if you ever find yourself at such a point in
your life, then at that point, the weird feeling you would feel when pondering
the dilemma of someone who would pay for friendship, that feeling is called
empathy.

~~~
EC1
Then I guess I don't have any because I'm perfectly content being alone. Being
around others isn't very stimulating.

~~~
realbarack
Alone != lonely

------
kirykl
I wonder if repeat business is a problem. The article mentions a fake
engagement, which isn't really a friend just a way to appease his parents.
Paying to rent a friend could be useful for things like that. But for real
friendship I think it would get depressing real fast

~~~
diskcat
>I think it would get depressing real fast

Well people do pay for cuddles and companionship. It's like when you aren't
really that hungry you won't eat that slightly off 1 week old chicken but if
you are hungry and nothing else is available it doesn't seem like such a bad
idea.

~~~
kirykl
Cuddles and I assume you mean the stronger version of companionship seem to be
physically comforting.

Paying someone solely to behave like we have a trusting bond, that they care
that I exist, is paying someone to lie to me. That's more invasive mentally
than an hour of physical contact

~~~
logfromblammo
I might pay someone to play tabletop board and card games with me one night a
week. That's pretty much what I would do with actual friends anyway.

And if I were paid to do the same, I'd think that's a pretty good gig--unless
the friendship contract stipulated a certain frequency of letting the boss
win, of course.

I don't need much of a trusting bond. Just eat my snacks, drink my drinks,
laugh at the 10% of my jokes that actually deserve it, and take your weekly
card-table curbstomping without much more than a token amount of complaints.

If I were single, I might also hire a wingman or blocker to back me up at the
local meet market venues.

------
kazinator
If you find this interesting, I recommend the thriller _Noriko 's Dinner
Table_ [2005]. The film's plot revolves an agency "IC Services" that rents out
people to play roles---they play roles as family members in family life.

------
brokencup
I saw a documentary a few years ago about this called Rent a Family Inc.

Trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dROyjWHleUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dROyjWHleUs)

------
SirFern
Vice has a good segment on the "love industry" in Japan. Details why the
culture has lost interest in marriage and has begun partaking in more forms of
recreational affection.

[http://www.vice.com/video/the-japanese-love-
industry](http://www.vice.com/video/the-japanese-love-industry)

------
nickbauman
There's a movie about this called, literally _Rent-a-Friend_ by Eddy Terstall,
It's dutch, and it's actually worth watching.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201888/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201888/)

------
Legogris
VICE did a take on LGBT culture in Japan and one of these services is part of
an incredibly moving episode at the end:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrAISE6x08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrAISE6x08)

------
huac
Apparently Tinder is a good way to (platonically?) meet locals in Asia.

~~~
morgante
For a foreigner, yes absolutely. In most of Asia it's still easy to find
people who would be interested to meet you.

I can imagine it being difficult for locals to meet other locals though (if
they're shy and socially awkward).

------
emodendroket
Kodoku 孤独 is just the Japanese word for "solitude" or "loneliness," not
necessarily "the lonely gap between the real me and the masked me."

------
Slippery_John
What an amazingly awful website. A solid 60% of the page is taken up with
crap. Then you have a massive leading image, and tons of unnecessary images.
Then a horizontal bar displaying an ad across the whole screen. "That's the
end of the article" you might think. This would be supported by the paragraph
above said being deceptively conclusive. But no, it goes on even farther.

------
known
Interesting

