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Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Soine-Ya

Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Soine-Ya

By October 17, 2012 Miscellaneous 0 Comment

im sooooo tired.jpg

From Kotaku:

The latest business to make a splash in Japan’s nerdom is always patrons to sleep with ladies. That’s it, apparently. Just sleep. Um.

Located in Akihabara, it’s called Soine-ya; “soine” (???) means “sleeping together”, and “ya” (?) means “shop”. The business’s concept, however, isn’t originally Japanese as website IT Media claims the idea was based on a similar business in New York. It’s apparently the first of its kind in Japan.

Soine-ya is not cheap. After shelling out ?3,000 (US$39) in membership charges, 20 minutes of “together” sleep costs another ?3,000, while six hours can reach ?30,000 (US$386). That’s not even a full night’s rest!

The nickel-and-diming, though, is mind-boggling. For example, customers must pay ?1,000 ($13) to have the lady resting her hand on their arm for three minutes, while gazing at each other for one minute costs another ?1,000. If you want to put your head on the lady’s lap, it’s three minutes for, well, ?1,000.

You know, my initial reaction was one of bewilderment, of course, but the more I think about the more I think this is excrutiatingly sad. These people aren’t perverts — there are plenty of people they could pay to have sex with in a variety of sleep-related scenarios, if they so chose. These are people who are so lonely and starved for affection that they’re willing to hire someone to sleep next to them — and there are people sociopathic that there willing to turn that service into a commodity. It’s all just really, really sad on pretty much every level.
Kind of wish I’d posted a terrifying sex toy instead, don’t you?

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About The Author

Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.