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Are you looking for some sage advice or a warm meal and cookery guidance from someone rich in wisdom gained from life experience, but feel there’s no one around who is there for you?
If you live in Japan, help is at hand from a “rent-a grandma” service that lets you pay for a grandmother figure for practical help and heartfelt human connection. The “OK Obaachan” agency, which translates to grandma in Japanese, offers a service that will connect you with a vetted mature woman who is happy to share her skills and tips to benefit you, as MY MODERN MET details.
Need Help? Grandmas Can Deliver!
Visitors to OK Obaachan’s website may be impressed by the range of help the 100 grandmas aged 60 to 94 on its books can provide. These are all older women who’ve lived through real lives, raised kids, and coped through it all. Some lack specific skills, but are just warm, kind, and great listeners, which, Vice suggests, might be the rarest quality of all.
OK Obaachan company director, Ruri Kanazawa, says that their workers sometimes blur the lines between practical help and emotional support, but what really sets the company apart is the emotional connection it fosters. Many clients struggle to seek help from relatives, and some may never have enjoyed a mother’s nurturing presence.
Most clients want help with how to do chores, need a listening ear, help with getting along with relatives, and coping with a broken heart.
Less common tasks include mediation in family disputes, teaching a new mom about childrearing, and supporting clients in potentially awkward talks with families and partners. These include coming out as gay to parents, and being with the client when they break up with their partner.
Others want to hire a supportive figure during personal milestones. One parent hired a grandma to cheer on and video their kid at a sports event, for instance.
ABC Australia highlights that many older clients are hiring older peers due to the "loneliness epidemic” in Japan.
Life Experience: A Precious Commodity That Can Be Monitized
Not everyone can be an OK Obaachan rent-a-grandma and earn the fixed hourly fee of US$22.48 plus expenses. The unique recruitment agency’s ideal grandma is kind, committed, hardworking, friendly and full of empathy. They must also be open minded enough, for example, to be comfortable with atypical family setups that may be frowned upon in traditional Japanese society.
Client Partners, the parent company of OK Obaachan, has tried to pinpoint just what life experience equips older people with: “The merit of age is the ability to remain unfazed by small things,” the company explains to MY MODERN MET.
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The company also points out that while lacking in the physical strength and agility of younger workers, its older employees bring with them irreplaceable strengths that are grounded in their rich life experience. This takes in communication skills honed through dealings with neighbors and relatives, as well as proven experience in homemaking and child-rearing,
Client Partners is focused on finding opportunities for women of all ages and skill sets and calls itself a “women-only handyman company.” It established OK Obaachan in 2011, as Knowledge Junction details.
According to a report from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, one in four Japanese seniors aged 65 plus were employed in 2023. Many are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living, and feel obliged to supplement their pension payments, which may be smaller for women.
Kaori Okano, a professor of Asian Studies and Japanese at Melbourne’s La Trobe University focused on gender relations in Japan, tells ABC Australia why. Until two decades ago, Japanese women would quit working to raise kids, later only entering contract work. This left them vulnerable with no guaranteed income as they aged. It also remains particularly hard for mature women, many lacking in higher education or even work experience, to find extra income, which is one of the reasons that OK Obaachan was established.
A Meaningful Service for Grandmas That is Tapping Into ‘Ikigai’
It has not gone unnoticed that the agency’s work is tapping into the Japanese concept of ikigai or the idea of purpose. This is something that combines what people love, what they are good at, what the world needs, and what people can be paid for, as SAN (Unbiased, Straight Facts) covers.
Significantly, many grandmas on the roster find real meaning in their missions to assist younger people. As Client Partners explains: “There are many people who want to contribute to society even as they get older… and in fact, the experience and abilities of older people are of great use to society.”
SAN notes that next-gen clients are also embracing the idea. The video below from influencer PaolofromTokyo, documents a day he spent with a rented grandma that was a memorable experience for both. They made bento boxes and shared a picnic. He also sought advice on raising his son. She enjoyed the interaction and the feeling of helping others.
