Unemployed Japanese woman wants office romance so bad, she cosplays it

Office romances can be great — but can also get messy.

In days past, office ladies (OL) were almost expected, alongside their other duties, to hook up with their future hubbies among the desks of their company, marry, and then quit to start a family. Thankfully, those stereotypical expectations are, if not quite dead, on the decline.

That said, the office romance (shanai renai) still holds a special appeal for men and women seeking distraction from those mind-numbing hours of spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

While the fantasy has fueled a thousand adult videos and gravure shoots for male enjoyment (not to mention, tons of great sex toys), women are also not averse to the fantasy.

In fact, one woman wants an office romance so bad, she resorted to elaborate cosplay to do it.

You see, Linen Kuramochi is actually unemployed (she’s an aspiring oil painter rather than an aspiring OL), though she does have a boyfriend.

What to do? If you have time and imagination, the solution’s merely a matter of effort in the right direction.

Kuramochi took an ID photo, which she then used to mock up a fake company ID badge. (The company name, SDS, is a reference to her boyfriend, S — S Dai Suki, or “I Love S.”)

Searching for the closest thing she had to business attire in her wardrobe, Kuramochi dressed up in her suit she wore for her college entrance ceremony (which are very formal affairs in Japan).

She then cooked up two delicious lunchboxes and, dressed in her suit, traveled all the way to her boyfriend’s workplace. At lunch time, the two of them contently tucked into the lunchboxes and pretended to be co-workers who are a couple.

Proud of the results, she shared the story and photos on Twitter in mid-April and got 30,000+ likes for her troubles. But did she get an actual office romance?