How a Japanese Reality Show gave me life.

Terrace House has reminded me of how to interact with people.

— Update 07/06/2020 —

It has been revealed that a member of Terrace House has committed suicide. Hana Kimura, who entered the house in the current season took her life after suffering abuse online. Shortly after I published this story I lost time to watch the show any further. After Kenny and Risako left I moved on to other shows I’d been meaning to watch. Hana’s death left a bitter taste in my mouth considering how amazing I thought the show was and all its characters were. Their personalities are all admirable. They should all be proud of who they are. My story talks about Kenny ‘being the worst’ and I’ve decided to leave this story unedited to highlight even well intentioned commentary of reality television has a level of judgement behind it that can be damaging to peoples self esteem.

One of the main things I wanted this story to highlight was how important it is to have conversations with the people around you. To talk openly about your feelings and challenges and goals. Human beings are social creatures and we rely on each other to survive. If you need help, please reach out to your local crisis centre or speak to your friends and family.

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About two weeks ago, my girlfriend for the last year moved to another city to study her PhD.

Suddenly I found myself with hours of free time with nothing to entertain me. My girlfriend and I bonded over a mutual morbid fascination with the Australian version of The Bachelorette.

We both hated the show, although I’d describe it as detested, and the initial episodes of a season are actually kind of harmless enough. I found it fun to laugh at the ludicrous entrances and absurdity of grown men and women all vying for the ‘Love’ of one of the other sex.

I had even begun to ponder if the bad guy of this season, a sexist obnoxious pig who was a politician from the Gold Coast, was some sort of next level social commentary on Australia’s now openly corrupt government on behalf of the writers.

The worst human being on Earth is an Australian politician.

But it devolved quickly. His exit was just tears and drama and bullying and escalation… always, always escalation. Things never resolve. Characters just exit, stage left, leaving a trail of destruction and name calling and usually never having learned any thing. Any credit I gave to the writers exited along with the slime-ball from Noosa.

So I had major trepidation about investing any time into Terrace House, a reality show about six 20–30 something year olds living in a share house in Tokyo, now in its eighth year. Essentially it’s Big Brother without the walls and vapid interviews directly into the camera. It’s six young people, living life and trying to make it. That’s all.

It didn’t help that I lived in Japan for 3 years in the past decade. Since I left I developed a kind of haze? Ambivalence maybe? to re-engaging with that part of myself. Truth be told, it seemed to be that being truly inquisitive about Japan wasn’t worth it anymore. Its surging popularity as a mecca of culture, intelligent design and personality meant that it wasn’t edgy to like it. Muji and Uniqlo were cool in 2011 cause no one knew it outside of Japan. Now they’re just as ubiquitous as Target, in almost every shopping center. Stupid, I know, but hey, that’s how I felt.

Deep down I miss living in Tokyo and feel very nostalgic about it. Daily life was always interesting and different. I was motivated to try something new every day. I felt engaged with the world around me. I was exposed to the meaning of friendship and living a meaningful life. Returning to Australia you can see we don’t embrace that. Australia lacks social cohesion. Often lacks true community engagement. A shared identity. It’s a spread out land with spread out people with individualistic notions of how society should behave, all different and complex and at odds with millions of others.

To me at least, anyway.

Recently, I wondered if I developed autism as an adult. Is that even possible? Life seemed empty. Grey. Friendships hollow and distrusting. Conversations would float by without me really listening. Problems didn’t seem all that bad in the grand scheme of things. What did my friend say about their boyfriend? What’s going on with your dad? You told me last time? I’m sorry could you tell me again?

A departure of someone you spend all your time with leaves you with a lot of time to look at the walls of your apartment.

So I turned on a reality TV show.