It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows in the beginning, but it sure turned out that way in the end!
friendship
We visit the new Tomodachi ga Yatteru Cafe in Harajuku, where staff are paid to pose as your friends.
Who’s the most relatable character in a dating sim? Why, your male best friend, of course!
Find out whether your lady friend thinks you’re a hafure, kisufure, sofure, kamofure, sanfure or ofure.
SoraNews24’s Mr. Sato did something unthinkable in the past, but now he’s going to travel by air and sea to make it right again.
There are probably many of our male readers who have had the experience of sharing a room with a fellow male, maybe as a one-off on holiday or for a long time in dorm, or perhaps you’ve stayed over at a friend’s house after missing the last train after a night of drinking. However, most men probably don’t share a bed when this happens, right? And if your friend suddenly wormed his way into your bed in the middle of the night you’d probably be quite shocked, right?
One of our RocketNews24 Japanese writers recently wrote a column about the time he experienced such a shock himself. Below I’ll give you a translation of his original story, so read on to find out what the heck happened…
You may have seen plenty of cat pictures here on RocketNews24, and you may have seen a truckload of dog pictures as well, but we rarely see these two animals within the same frame. We’re pretty sure some of you have a preference for one over the other, but today, a pair of paw pals are granting us the best of both worlds!
Meet Kikuchiyo the Shiba Inu and her feline friend, Torajiro!
It can be difficult to get along without female friends.
In Japan, work ethic and subsequent exhaustion tends to tie many men to their work places beyond the call of duty, and gender roles can be highly restrictive. If you’re a single man who is not socially confident, how do you get enough positive human interaction? We all need to tell someone about our troubles, and yarn about the day-to-day minutiae that friends and family share.
Maybe you want to go out to a nice restaurant… but how can you go alone? Maybe you have relationship difficulties and want to confide in someone. Maybe you need help with your computer, or organizing your stuff, or careers counselling. Everyone needs a female friend… and in eastern Japan, Client Partners KK is one company which offers a rent-a-friend service. Billed as “women-only odd-jobbers” (josei dake no benriya), the services they offer do not include anything untoward. In the commodification of today’s world, “rental friend” should come as no surprise. What is surprising is just how much this kind of human contact benefits lonely people.
Ladies do you think you could possibly get along with a guy just as well as you do with your female friends? Not in exactly the same way, but on the same level without it changing into something romantic. And fellas, do you really think the “friend zone” exists with a woman or is that just her way of getting you off her back.
Japanese bridal information site Bridal Souken conducted a study last March asking 3096 single men and women between the ages of 20 and 50, “Is a friendship between a man and a woman real?” According to the results many more men and women think it is than isn’t, but the deeper we go we can see that gender is but a single piece of a bigger puzzle.
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