Shoji Morimoto has what some people would see as a dream job: he gets paid to do almost nothing!
The Tokyo resident charges 10,000 yen (HK$550) to accompany his clients and simply be a companion.
"Basically, I rent myself out. My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and to do nothing in particular," he says.
Morimoto now has nearly a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, where he finds most of his clients.
Roughly a quarter of them hire him again. One person has hired him 270 times!
His job has taken him to a park with a person who wanted to play on a see-saw. He has also smiled and waved through a train window at a complete stranger who wanted a send-off.
Doing nothing does not mean Morimoto will do anything. He has said no to offers to move a fridge and go to Cambodia.
Last week, Morimoto sat opposite Aruna Chida, a woman wearing a sari, having a conversation over tea and cakes.
Aruna wanted to wear the Indian garment out in public but was worried it might embarrass her friends. So she turned to Morimoto for companionship.
"With my friends I feel I have to entertain them, but with Morimoto I don't feel the need to be chatty," she says.
Before Morimoto found his true calling, he worked at a publishing company and was often told off for "doing nothing". "I started wondering what would happen if I provided my ability to 'do nothing' as a service to people," he says.
He sees about one or two clients a day. Before the pandemic, it was three or four a day.
Morimoto sometimes thinks about the bizarre nature of his job.
"People think that my 'doing nothing' is valuable because it is useful for other people … But it's fine to really not do anything. People do not have to be useful in any particular way."
