Shoji Morimoto who charges 10,000 yen ($71.30) per booking to accompany clients and simply exist as a companion. Source:Reuters

The 38-year-old Tokyo resident charges 10,000 yen ($71) per booking to accompany clients and simply exist as a companion.

"My job is to be wherever my clients want me to be and to do nothing in particular," Morimoto said, adding that he had handled some 4,000 sessions in the past four years.

With a lanky build and average looks, Morimoto now boasts nearly a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, where he finds most of his clients. Roughly a quarter of them are repeat customers, including one who has hired him 270 times.

Doing nothing doesn't mean Morimoto will do anything. He has turned down offers to move a fridge and go to Cambodia, and doesn't take any requests of a sexual nature.

Before Morimoto found his true calling, he worked at a publishing company and was often chided for "doing nothing."

"I started wondering what would happen if I provided my ability to 'do nothing' as a service to clients," he said.

The companionship business is now Morimoto's sole source of income, with which he supports his wife and child. 

Although he declined to disclose how much he makes, he said he sees about one or two clients a day. Before the pandemic, it was three or four a day.