Apparently The Trend Started,

in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami,

the trend of hiring a car and not using it, to drive that is, after the tsunami people started renting cars just to charge their mobile phones, and here is the thing, even though most clients still use rental cars for driving, the number of those using them for other purposes is slowly rising, renting a car is a very efficient and convenient way of getting from point A to point B, and operators prefer the distance traveled to be as long as possible, as they make more money, so when a number of leading car rental and car sharing companies in Japan noticed that a significant number of their clients were renting cars, but not driving them at all, they started getting worried. They couldn’t figure out why it was happening, though, so they did some surveys and got some pretty interesting results. It turns out that people are increasingly using car rental services for a variety of reasons, except driving, above photograph MikesPhotos/Pixabay

  

photograph standard.co.uk, NTT Docomo Inc., a popular vehicle-sharing service operator in Japan, told the Asahi Shimbun that a 2018 survey revealed that one out of its every eight users rented a car for services other than transportation. The largest number of respondents said that they rented cars to sleep or rest in, followed by those who claimed that they used them as quiet, comfortable places to talk on the phone with friends, family or business partners, “Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe,” one Tokyo man said, some people reported renting cars to have lunch in, watch TV, put on their Halloween costumes and even do facial stretches said to reduce the size of their face, the main advantages of renting cars for purposes other than driving are affordability and accessibility. It only costs 400 yen to rent one for 30 minutes, and it can be picked up from one of the tens of thousands of parking lots across Japan. So instead of looking for a place to eat or take a nap, people prefer to rent a car in advance, using their smartphones, “Cars can be used for private space, one NTT Docomo official said. “People used our vehicles in more ways than we expected.” well I guess it is cheaper than using a hotel, but how strange, especially as the non driving use of hire cars is on the rise.