A Japanese woman became a part-time girlfriend…and quickly regretted it.
An unnamed 23-year old from Japan landed a job at a real estate firm when she was fresh out of college. Though it was a prestigious position, she found the starting salary too low.
This put her in a difficult position as she needed pocket money to purchase the things she wanted. With her hours becoming even more limited with this new job, she decided to venture into the flexible but lucrative world of “part time girlfriends.”
This is a popular job in Japan where attractive young women go on dates with clients, the vast majority of which are men. Unlike escorts, they do not provide anything sexual. In a YouTube vlog by Harry Jaggard, a list of benign activities the women were willing to do were listed upfront prior to the meeting—none were more intimate than holding hands.
The price range for renting a girlfriend was from 12,000 yen (around $77 USD) for three hours to 72,000 yen (around $466 USD) for 12 hours, with an option for out of town trips as well.
This limitation as well as the lucrative pay and prospect of free meals enticed the unnamed woman to start her new job as a rental girlfriend. Though the first few clients were just as she expected, one of them shocked her greatly.
Vlogger Jimmy Kim’s rental girlfriend experience | Jimmy Kim/YouTube
This client was a skinny and charming 50-year old man who was “the kind of guys you would see in men’s fashion magazines.” Though this would be a plus in most cases, she soon found out as the date wore on that he was a newly appointed external director in a famous company. There were enough hints to tell her that this was the same real estate firm that she was working at full time.
She confirmed this suspicion after the date when she checked her company’s website. Her client’s face stared back at her from her computer, featured in a news article about the “appointment of the new director.” It worried her greatly that she could face him any day at work with him knowing what she does part-time.
From that day on, I feared running into him at work. It would be really awkward.
— Unnamed Woman
The woman immediately ceased her part-time job as a rental girlfriend due to this incident. She moved to a cheaper apartment to stretch her small salary as far as possible without the help of her side job.
She also cut her hair short and kept a low profile at work to avoid her old client as much as possible.
