It seems that car hire in Japan may not always be related to transport.
Orix Auto Corp and Times24 Co, two of Japan’s largest rental car firms, realised in the summer of 2018 that as many as one in eight of their hire cars were not actually travelling anywhere after being reserved and paid for.
A survey of users showed that some were booking a car so they could have a nap during their lunch break, away from the disapproving scrutiny of their bosses.
One businessman admitted that he preferred to work from the car and would set up an “office” in the front seat.
Another user left bags in a car when he could not find a coin locker in a train station and needed to leave his luggage somewhere.
One harassed man said he hired a car so he could site and eat his packed lunch in peace and could not find anywhere else to sit.
. . .
More one-off reasons included to get changed to attend a Halloween party, to practice karaoke, for an English-language class and even to do facial stretches in private, NTT said.
There's more at the link.
Next step: offer minivans or small RV's for rent, already set up with tables and chairs in the rear compartment instead of car seats. Team meetings would be a snap - and given Tokyo's absurdly high office rentals, it'd probably be cheaper to hire the van than pay rent on office space. Alternatively, hire car companies can buy vehicles without engines (or take the engines out of older vehicles that have reached the end of their fleet life), and park them ready for non-mobile rentals. They could then offer them for a lower fee to customers looking for space rather than speed.
Peter
6 comments:
And here I thought, of course, illicit encounter of some kind. Nudge nudge, wink wink. But no....
Lee: you are not alone...
In college we went to the obligatory porn movie, just to say we did. One mostly forgettable flic revolved around the plot(?) line of an enterprising pimp who turned a box van into a rolling bordello to avoid being raided by the cops. Of course that recollection never entered my mind until Lee and Ed mentioned their idea, yeah sure. LOL
Once things reach absurd heights, people become inventive in how they deal with basic necessities. I worked with a woman who lived on a house boat anchored in the Potomac river. She used the YWCA for showers, etc. and went to her Washington DC office with the rest of her workers. Once she was offered an opportunity to transfer to Keesler AFB, she left, and that was where I met her. But using the house boat provided an affordable housing opportunity in Washington DC, where otherwise, she'd be unable to live.
This is very clever!
I once ran a surveillance on a witness to find out where he lived so he could be approached for an interview. He went to a 24 hour fitness and by the time I walked in he was walking out. Turned out he was showering there and sleeping in his truck behind a coffee shop. No wonder his address couldn't be identified.
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