Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir

Okay, going into this, you have to realize that this is very much a Japanese book about a guy who does nothing. That literally means that not a whole lot happens in this book, but it's still quite charming. Our Rental Person is an unassuming guy who found himself unsuited for Japanese corporate life, and wondered if 'doing nothing' could have some sort of social significance. Thus, he rents himself out to people who need someone along who does.....nothing. All he asks is for his travel and expenses to be covered, and you have yourself someone who will listen to your problems without comment, who will attend events and do nothing in the audience, who will eat with you at a restaurant without comment, any number of things.

Whether or not you agree with him and his thinking here aside, I actually enjoyed this book. Rental Person seems to be quite conscientious about having as little impact as possible in other people's lives, and yet still manages to be of service. It's kind of a meandering book, where requests quoted from Twitter are posted alongside his social media commentary tweet about the job, and then the author comments on his particular thoughts about the job. There's not a lot of deep insight here, and especially his thoughts on doing literally nothing are reiterated a ton, but as a surface level story about the myriad strange requests someone gets to do nothing, I thought it succeeded well.

Just a short, sweet book about doing nothing.