Benri-ya (Handyman)

I read this today and found it to be an interesting article regarding cleanliness but a possible business I should start...or maybe not.

Getting paid money just to listen without a license and get this NOT give advice. So basically I can just sit there and watch T.V. and get paid--YES! And here is the difference in Japanese culture, when they say listen, they mean exactly that. Maybe I finally found something I can do and actually get paid for it... or again, maybe not.

Handymen Who'll Do Just About Anything
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20070902t1.html

By MARK SCHREIBER
Sunday Mainichi (Sept. 9)

When people need the services of a strong back and plenty of elbow grease, they can avail themselves of a benri-ya, a professional handyman who performs miscellaneous chores on an ad-hoc basis.

Some apartments, for instance, become so cluttered and filthy that their residents realize the only way they'll ever get the place clean is to pay to have it done.

"We describe these places as gokiburi-kusai (reeking of cockroaches), because of their fetid, characteristic smell," winces Takashi Kawabata of the Tokyo Benri-ya Center in Tokyo's Minato Ward. "They're often crawling with roaches, flies and mites."

Once, Kawabata tells Sunday Mainichi, it took a team of three men 5 hours to clean out a tiny "1K" apartment (one room and a small kitchenette), where the refuse was piled halfway to the ceiling.

"We separated the waste, wrapped it up and transported it to the dump. The charge came to about ¥300,000.

"I don't think an ordinary person could live in a place like that, but this woman was supposed to have been a so-called 'elite,' " he continues. "Most of these jobs come from women around age 30. Some work for the national government, and others are college lecturers or nurses. Maybe it's some sort of twisted reaction to their high position in society.

"Call it a sickness of modern times," Kawabata says, shrugging.

In addition to cleaning out human pigpens, Sunday Mainichi notes that benri-ya services have begun to diversify into some interesting areas. Now, for instance, they can be hired as impersonators.

Upon request, Kawabata will attend a wedding in the guise of a friend or even parent of the bride or groom. Once, when a groom's family refused to give its blessing to an international marriage, he and a female assistant flew overseas to assume the role of the parents.

"We couldn't communicate at all with the bride's kin," Kawabata recalls. "The whole thing was nerve-wracking."

Another benri-ya service involves providing alibis or excuses.

"Once a female office-worker asked me to assume the role of her fiance," relates benri-ya Masaaki Ko-yama. "She notified her company she was leaving because she'd become engaged, and her co-workers demanded to meet him. But the fiance refused, so I got called as a substitute."

But Koyama drew the line about pretending to be a woman's father to impress a prospective spouse, and says he's inclined to refuse such jobs. "If I mess up, she'd be exposed as a phony, and it could wind up destroying their relationship. I don't want to get involved in that kind of stuff."

Sunday Mainichi lists several other tasks the benri-ya are called upon to perform, such as waiting in line to buy concert tickets, making purchases at auctions and advising those ignorant of the latest fashions on how to shop. A few also emulate private investigators. While benri-ya are not licensed to perform surveillance, some, like Kawabata, can be hired to tail someone's spouse and report on, or photograph, any acts of infidelity.

Finally there are benri-ya who, for a price, will listen sympathetically to your troubles.

"Well, we can listen, but in principle we don't give advice," explains Mariko Mizutani, who operates a service called Kiki-jozu (good listener) Benri-ya. "Apparently, there are people who don't have anyone to confide in, and need to get things off their chests, even if what they say gets spread around. Everybody's lonesome."

Katsuyoshi Ukon, a 30-year veteran benri-ya, also gets requests from desperate people with nowhere else to turn.

"About 5 years ago, people started calling me, asking me to talk to family members who had become social recluses, or truants from school, or who were threatening suicide," he says.

One form Ukon's therapy takes is to put his wards to work as . . . benri-ya. Ukon charges a family ¥130,000 a month to provide care, but will compensate them for assisting with his chores. So far, he says, he's helped about 60 individuals, ranging from middle-school students to people in their mid-60s, to turn their lives around.