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The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#101

Post by geofft »

moonka wrote: post #12
hkmurakami wrote: post #2

Went into reading this article expecting it to be a one-off, rental boyfriend type deal (that kind of trope is used very frequently in movies/tv shows/manga there), but this way way deeper than I expected. I'm pretty mind blown at how far they are taking this fake/real replacements. Pretty close to some dystopian scifi actually. >If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the dau…

Same here. I can't help but wonder about the ethical implications of lying to a child about something so fundamental for her entire lifetime.

We generally think it's ethically acceptable not to tell a child that they were adopted for a long while (possibly into adulthood), or not to tell a child that their biological father wasn't their mother's husband. We also find it ethically acceptable for a couple not to ask who fathered their own child.

We also generally find it ethically acceptable to form and especially continue relationships based on factors other than true love, including stability of a family environment and economic stability.

What, really, is different about this? Just the fact that we're not lying to ourselves about what the relationship is?

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#102

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

wrinkl3 wrote: post #69

In Japanese business culture, there is a situation where you have to visit a company and say I’m deeply sorry for what I did and just bow and bow. Usually, I accompany a salaryman who made a mistake. I take the identity of the salaryman myself, then I apologize profusely for his mistake. Have you seen the way we say sorry? You go have to down on your hands and knees on the floor. Your hands have to tremble. So, my cl…

A 21st century revival of the whipping boy.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_boy

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#103

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wrinkl3 wrote: post #69

In Japanese business culture, there is a situation where you have to visit a company and say I’m deeply sorry for what I did and just bow and bow. Usually, I accompany a salaryman who made a mistake. I take the identity of the salaryman myself, then I apologize profusely for his mistake. Have you seen the way we say sorry? You go have to down on your hands and knees on the floor. Your hands have to tremble. So, my cl…

On a trans pacific flight many years ago, I remember watching a Japanese movie with exactly this premise. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#104

Post by woodrowbarlow »

megous wrote: post #96
microcolonel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things could get really awkward and confusing when you end up having partial memories. All memories are partial.

Memories are modified on retrieval and colored by current emotional state and ideas (and vice versa :)). So they're not even partial. They're messy re-imaginations of past re-imaginations.

read-modify-write

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#105

Post by greggman »

stickfigure wrote: post #14

Can someone confirm that this is real? It reads like (dismal) satire.

It's fake IMO. The story is probably real but the implication that this is a crazy Japanese thing or that it is common is fake, just like most stereotypes about Japan. Want to see cosplayers? There's way more in the west than Japan. Want to see people dying their hair colors like anime characters? That's a western thing, not a Japanese thing.

The article is about a single company not nationwide trend.

Let me also add that coming from the USA I wasn't familiar with paying for companionship except for the idea of escorts which I've never hired and had mostly been led to believe were just fronts for prostitution.

After leaving the USA I found may countries, including Japan, have host/hostess clubs where you pay to have someone to talk (and flirt) with you. They exist in many countries, not just Japan, nor just Asia. I talked to Ukrainian hostesses in Turkey. My point is paying for companionship is common in much of the world.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#106

Post by Naushad »

Familia 1996

'Santiago wakes up like any other morning. He goes down to the kitchen and his whole family is waiting for him: it's his birthday. They all sing "Happy Birthday to You" and give him presents. But when he opens the present of his youngest son, he gets angry and says he doesn't like it. The boy starts crying and saying that he loves him, but Santiago answers that he doesn't believe him and he tells the boy that he is fired and that he wants another son, who is thinner, who doesn't need glasses and who resembles him more.'

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#109

Post by yodsanklai »

vog wrote: post #51
yodsanklai wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan Certainly not unique to Japan. I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance. Surprisingly, I find it much easier to find a girlfriend than a friend. You just go to a dating website, find someone "similar" and spend time together and you can get close very quickly. It's not the way regular friendship works where it takes much longer to get intimate…

> I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance Not true for Berlin, though. If you regularily visit some hackerspaces (or other meetups with like-minded people, such as various user groups such as Emacs user group, political groups such as FSFE, whatever), or go to university and study there, you have very good chances finding friends, some of whom may turn out to be very good friends. Sometimes it see…

Meeting groups of people is certainly a good starting point (and probably what I'd do if I was trying to meet knew people), but it can take time before making actual friends and it's not guaranteed.

I can give my experience. I've always been in some kind of sport club or another (not a gym but group activities such as swimming, boxing...), I go there a few times a week, sometimes for years at the same club. I eventually get to know the people there (but it can take months), sometimes we hang out but rarely have I made friends there.

I also went to events designed to actually meet new people (for instance, europeans living in NYC, that kind of things). Not much success there. I tend to dislike these events as I'm not really comfortable in social events where I don't know anyone.

Then I made very good friends in total random circumstances. For instance, talking to a guy sitting in a coffeeshop next to me, or with a fellow hiker at the top of a mountain.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#110

Post by cableshaft »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #39
sdrothrock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries. For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people." But that's assuming that you do have a golf g…

It's pretty hard to just up and make new friends in America past a certain age. Sometime after 30 a lot of people seem to decide that family and career are the only important things in life, and friends get relegated to occasional weekend meetups. They're certainly looking to make any new friends. So if you're in that age bracket and you're looking to meet people your own age, you're largely out of luck.

You start losing energy around your 30s due to a lower metabolism, increased responsibilities, and the beginnings of health issues (for a lot of people), so going out during the week when you're already coming home worn out from work can seem like too much work. Or if you're going to the gym to maintain your health, and coming home and cooking dinner, take the dog out, do dishes, etc, well suddenly it's 9pm already and maybe you've got an hour or two at most before you need to sleep, and hey, the tv's or internet is right there...

I do some things during the week with friends, but it's usually for a specific productive reason (playtest our game designs, or go to starbucks and write), and usually only once a week. But some weeks I'm too tired to do that.

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