Japan is widely known for being exceptionally unique when it comes to culture and stuff. Yet, what if you find some services in Japan are beyond unique which never crossed your mind? Trust me, the list over here will knit your eyebrows.
10 Most Bizarre Services from Japan
10. Cuddle Cafe
Soine-ya, which literally means ‘sleep together shop’, offers service to cuddle with young women you do not know without any strings attached. It charges you for about 6,000 yen ($77) per hour to sleep comfortably with a stranger. Of course, there will be additional fee for extra time if you haven’t feel satisfied yet with only holding the woman for an hour. Soine-ya also gives option to pick the girl you want to sleep with. Just add another 1,500 yen ($19.50) and you can take the girl to the room.
You may also like; 10 Interesting Japanese Folklore Creatures.
If you are a woman who wants a fake boyfriend to accompany you, though, Soine-ya Prime is ready to serve with its stock of young men. Soine-ya Prime offers two main packages to pick: Standard Plan which costs 30,000 yen ($364) for 7 hours; and Date Plan which includes a trip to Tokyo Disney Resort for 70,000 yen ($850).
If you want to arrange your own plan with the fake boyfriend, Soine-ya Prime also offers you ‘Premium Date Course’ with fee starting from 50,000 yen ($600). There is also an extra fee about 2,000 yen ($24) to pick the favorite man to spend your time with.
Of course, you are not allowed to do more than what are mentioned in the menu with your favorite woman or man. There are no kissing, no intimate contact, and no privately contacting the boy or girl; unless you are ready to date them for real and report it to the service provider.
9. Rent-A-Friend Service
Some of us may feel lonely and can not make friends easily. This service comes in handy to resolve your problem. Now, you can hire a friend to accompany you anytime.
See also; 10 most beautiful women of Japan.
Client Partners KK, a Japanese company that offers services to rent a fake friend, provides you with a female friend for a rate of about 3,000 yen (US $ 30). If you want to be accompanied longer than the standard duration, though, you must pay an additional fee of $ 30 per hour.
On the contrary, if you are a woman who needed a male friend, then Ossan Rental is the answer to your problems. However, Ossan Rental does not rent out ordinary men, it specializes in renting out middle-aged men whom you can take anywhere as friends.
The cost is not so expensive, only about 1,000 yen ($ 10) per hour. Unfortunately, Ossan Rental only provide two options: Takanobu Nishimoto, a professor of fashion and styling from Osaka; and Mikio Sendou, a former baseball player and sports commentator from Gifu. Do not underestimate these middle aged men, as they are quite fashionable to hang out with.
8. Ear-Cleaning Parlor
To have someone clean your ear while relaxing is now possible with these ear-cleaning parlors in Japan. Yamamoto Mimikaki-ten, a company that has been in this business since 2006, offers to take care of your ear and spoil you with its healing environment in the parlor. It charges 2,700 yen (US$32) per basic service in every 30 minutes.
The customer will be greeted by a young woman with kimono who serves him tea and makes small talk. After that, he woman put his head on her lap and covers his face with a handkerchief, ready to scrape his ear wax gently.
Meanwhile, another ear cleaning parlor called Beatific, offers 70 minutes service which costs 8,400 yen (US$100). The latter’s services are more complicated than the former, which begins from washing your ear until gives massages to your ears, neck and shoulders. There are even ear-cleaning saloons that provide ear fortune telling and other additional features.
7. Summer Homework Service
A lot of children in Japanese struggle with piling up summer assignments which bring utter chaos right before the fall semester begins. To cope with the problem and avoid parents’ scoldings, summer homework service comes into surface as a very promising business. You don’t need to do your homework by yourself anymore. Just call the company, and get any assignment done by professionals.
Companies charge vary for every single task. Some of them charges 500 yen (US $4.75) per page for drills, 3,000 yen ($28.47) for a 400-character book report, and 5,000 yen ($47.75) for a research project. You probably doubt if these professionals can imitate children’s handwriting.
Don’t worry, they are professionals, of course they can copy your children’s handwriting. If you are in a hurry and wishing to have the work fast, though, you need to pay for some extra bucks.
Surprisingly, the service grows popularity fast among students. Parents even deliberately take advantage of the service to save the trouble of helping their children. Even so, a lot of good society members complain about the bad impact of using the service.
6. Wedding Guest Service
Wedding is seen as a sacred event attended by as many family member and colleagues as possible. If you don’t have that many people to attend your wedding, though, this service offers fake guests to comply with your guests list.
Office Agents, a company that rents out fake guests at your wedding, charges 20,000 yen ($200) for a staff member disguising as a guest. If you want this fake guest to do additional work, though, you must pay more. The guest will perform a song or a dance for another 5,000 yen. If you add up another 10,000 yen, the fake guest will make you proud by giving a speech in front of the other guests.
Surprisingly enough, Office Agents receive 100 wedding requests every year. It provides a total amount of ready-to-send 1,000 workers to crowd your wedding. Hiroshi Mizutani, the head of Office Agents in Tokyo, reported that people put pride on having a lot of friends in front of their partner.
This seems like a good idea to give a nice impression about your wedding. See Also; 10 Bizarre Wedding Rituals in Various Cultures.
5. ‘Solo Wedding’ Service
For career women, it is sometimes hard to stop for a while and think about having married to significant other. Another case, they feel like they have no time to dress up as a bride and it leaves regret to them. Don’t worry. Cerca Travel will set up your glamour wedding without any commitment to marriage in what they call a ‘Solo Wedding’.
A Solo Wedding is where the client spends two days and a night in a hotel to experience the customer’s own wedding. It consists of dress fittings, bouquet design, hair and make-up. A full photo shot is also included in the service.
There are a lot of packages offered by the company, but they are quite expensive. The cheapest package costs about 300,000 yen (US$2,800). Cerca Travel also provides other get ups to wear like Geisha make-up and clothes. It even gives you option to have a decorative man. Although, none of the customers picks the option. They choose to have fun by themselves and engrave this once of a lifetime occasion in their memory.
See Also; 10 Ways Humans are Getting Closer to Immortality.
4. Rent a Foreigner
It seems that we already have enough amount of people rental in this list. Brace yourself, we have another rental that is not as weird as it sounds. Gaikokujin Rental – which means Foreigner Rental – exists to provide foreigner for rent in Japan only for 2000 to 4500 yen. Being entirely different from other people rentals, this rent-a-foreigner service has educational purposes.
Through Gaikokujin Rental, international workers are given a space to offer hanging out with Japanese citizen. It is actually meant as a bridge to connect both Japanese and foreigners. That being the case, Gaikokujin Rental offers a lot of services, for example disk jockeying class and home renovation.
Although, most of the foreigners who promote themselves there state that they will help improving the customer’s English conversation skills in their profile. The company claims to contribute to society by helping both foreigners and patrons to communicate with each other.
3. Bare Thigh Advertising Space
Looking for a brand new technique in advertising your company’s product or service that will attract more customers? This service might help you with its quite bizzare method. Now, you may stick your advertising stickers on young ladies’ bare legs – which lies between their mini-skirt and high socks – and these girls will walk to advertise your service or product to people they pass with.
A Japanese PR company, Absolute Territory PR, has paid plenty of young woman to promote clients’ advertisement through their thighs. Interestingly, there are a lot of girls apply for having their legs stamped with stickers. These applicants should be at least 18 years old, and they are required to have a social media account with at least 20 people in contacts.
They will choose the sticker ad and wear it for a set period of time (usually 8 hours a day) to get paid. They will not only walk down the street with the stickers, but also capture and upload them in social media.
See Also; 10 Bizarre Ad Campaigns That Translated Badly.
2. Keeping Ex-Lover’s Moments Service
You just got a new lover and forgot to put your ex-lover’s things away? Don’t worry, just give Terrada Warehouse a call. It is willing to save your ex-lover’s stuff – gifts, photos, or love letters – for you, of course if you are agree to pay for the storage service.
Miniku Love, a new service launched by Terrada, is ready to store the memories of your ex lover. You only need to pay 250 yen ($2.45) for a cardboard box with 30 items capacity and add another 250 yen monthly for the storage fee. What is more, you can have a professional voice actor to record your love letters for another 4,200 yen ($41.25) per letter.
This service will give you a CD with the recording included. Just like an idol album CD, an original cover jacket is even provided for the CD. The thing is, the CD will be kept in the storage, so you cannot listen to them. If you wished to listen to it, though, you will have to pay for another 800 yen ($7.85). Unfortunately, there is an exception to Miniku Love service, the company will not store precious things like gold ring, plants or animals.
1. Apologizing Service
If you feel reluctant to apologize to people because you cannot stand the torture of guilt, this service from Japan will help you. You don’t have to say sorry by yourself anymore, because the agency will speak on your behalf! Just sit leisurely at home and wait for the result!
These are some of the agencies which offer apologizing services. Shazaiya Aiga Pro charges 25,000 yen (US$240) for face-to-face apology and 10,000 yen ($96) for email or phone apology. It’s quite expensive, but who cares if you can save the trouble of asking for an apology? Good news, this agency opens 24/7. Meanwhile, Yokohama Benriya Natchan offers a special service to apologize while crying to calm angry and scary people down.
On the other hand, Nihon Shazai Daikokao gives another way of payment, which it charges 3,500 yen ($33) per hour. There is a case when apologizing takes up such a long duration, so it is probably why the per hour payment exists.
You may use this service to send people to disguise to be your parents or your wife — or whatever you ask them to be — in order to solve your problem. You might think that this is similar to a fraud, but there has not been any problem reported about the companies’ activities. Moreover, the vast majority of the customers are revealed to be women between 20 and 40 years old with problem with money or spouses.
Written By; Nabila Nailatus Sakina