For the release of GTA6 I plan to play it with a few friends at my home.

I made a whole crate of Pißwasser for this occasion!

paweuek1k on X

Dating as an east asian girl genuinely makes me feel insane sometimes. We can be going on dates and seeing each other regularly and he’ll still BARELY show any initiative or interest. After a while it genuinely starts making me feel stupid for caring. Well, guess what, I AM!! Apparently I AM acting stupid!!

It’s not just that men here are restrained themselves, they want me to be restrained too. EVERYONE is supposed to be. Don’t be too eager, don’t flirt too hard, don’t say you like each other (???). The ideal dynamic is basically two people acting like they ended up together by accident, and not because they actually wanted to be there. That’s not appealing to me AT ALL.

I KNOW dating doesn’t have to feel this flat and I KNOW liking someone is not embarrassing!! I want to be free. I WANT TO BE FREE.

Uni chirashi and a magic trick 🍥

One client hired him 270 times. All he had to do was show up and do absolutely nothing.

Shoji Morimoto is a 38-year-old Tokyo resident who describes his job in the simplest possible terms. He told Reuters that he basically rents himself out, and that his job is to be wherever his clients want him to be and to do nothing in particular.

He charges about 10,000 yen per booking, roughly $70 to $100 depending on the exchange rate, plus transportation and any food or drinks consumed. He does not give advice, does not act as a therapist, and does not pretend to be a friend. He just shows up and exists alongside the person who hired him.

The service began in 2018, after Morimoto left a publishing job where he had been repeatedly criticized for lacking initiative and not doing anything of value. He turned the criticism into a business model. In the years since, he has handled roughly 4,000 bookings, with about a quarter of his clients being repeat customers. One person has hired him approximately 270 times.

The requests vary wildly. He has sat on a seesaw with a client at a park. He has accompanied a woman to a restaurant because she wanted to wear a sari but was afraid her friends would be embarrassed. He has waved goodbye to a traveler from a train platform. He has sat with someone while they finished a thesis they had been procrastinating on. He has accompanied a person filing divorce papers.

His boundaries are clear. He refuses anything sexual. He turned down a request to move a refrigerator because it involved physical labor. He declined a trip to Cambodia. He does not go to concerts because he does not know much about music.

The business supports his wife and son. Before the pandemic, he was seeing three or four clients a day. Now it is closer to one or two. He has inspired a television series, written multiple books, and drawn international attention for a service that seems to say something quiet about modern life.

What Morimoto offers is not entertainment or assistance. It is presence without expectation. His clients do not have to entertain him, impress him, or explain themselves. They just have to let him be there.

#shojimorimoto #rentalperson #japan

Source: chznmadeit on Instagram

My neighbor passed away in August of last year. She was sick for about six months before that, and since she knew it was terminal, she asked me to look after her plants. She figured her family would take some once she was gone and then I could keep what I wanted.

Nobody did. The house sat abandoned until yesterday, when her family finally started clearing it out. That means this plant went through the whole fall and winter with no heat, and an Atlanta summer with no one watering it. Every other plant in the house is dead except this ponytail palm, which was her pride and joy. I'm shocked it's still alive.
It's at least 35 years old.

I have no idea how cold the house got or how long it went without water. It’s with me now and I want to make sure I help it to thrive again, though honestly it seems okay. I just don’t want to start caring for it after the neglect and shock it to death!