I am a Japanese dude having been a shut-in(aka Hikikomori) for 10 years, currently developing a Hikikomori-themed video game alone for 2.5 years. I think keeping hope has helped me stay on track during a difficult time. AMA! (´▽｀)

Just wanted to congratulate you on your English, it's really good now! Anyways, what did your parents think about you when you first fell into the Hikikomori lifestyle?

Thank you!

wow.. your question hit my head so hard.. (´・ω・｀)

I remember I called my aunt from my apartment in Tokyo and asked "Can I live with you?"

And she said, sure you can come back whenever you want. I think that's all.

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Sorry.. I can't face with my age honestly..

It's so painful when you look at the miserably wasted your youth days.. (;ㅁ;)

How does the financial side work out? Who pays the bills, and what does your money go on?

Also, what about female Hikikomoris, are they common? Every mention of the phenomenon seems to only mention men.

I relied on my family until last summer. Now I'm living on my savings. But it won't last so long.

I just started EN-JP translation gig for indie games. I need to find a way to earn money so that I can complete my game (´・ω・｀)

Female hikikomori... I heard that they are hard to find because they are considered as 家事手伝い(kajitetudai), which means a young girl who is practicing household skills and getting ready for marriage

I may have some translation work for you. Around 70,000 words for a story based RPG

Here's the trailer; https://youtu.be/IlHeTFKqa3s

Wow, thank you!

I will DM you later!

How extreme is your level of isolation/confinement? Is it simply avoiding people where possible and still continuing with things like grocery shopping etc or complete isolation?

I have been living in the same apartment alone for 10 years.

I've been using the delivery service from the grocery store, so I rarely leave my apartment. Basically once 2 months for going haircut, just like that.

who pays for the apartment?

This is my aunt's apartment

Do you ever long for personal social contact, or are you just a heavily introverted guy who prefers to be alone?

I feel my hikikomori life has suppressed my urge for social connection. Just lately I became active on Reddit and Twitter, I got a bunch of kind words and encouragement. And now I find I feel like social connections than ever. It's like rain falls in the desert and you see little greens here and there.

That is a wonderfully poetic image. In any language!

Could I bother you to describe your creative writing? I feel like you must have a very unique/personal type of vision and style. I'd love to hear about your novels.

Thank you for the compliment!

I really love Japanese "sub-stream" literature in the early 20th century; detective novels, anti-naturalism novels, novels for boys and girls, something like that. They have beautiful/striking visions and poetry that you can't find in the current literature. And there is a subtle but clear sense of sorrow below the colorful imagination. Escapism in the finest form in my opinion. If I name a few, 江戸川乱歩、夢野久作、吉屋信子、宮沢賢治、小川未明, and many others.

I wanted and tried to expand their styles and senses.

Do you hope for a nice field of grass to grow or do you like the little bits you can jump in and then jump off from?

I feel like sitting there and see how these strange desert plants will grow :)

Hey, I was also a hikikomori for 8 years. I barely managed to escape it only several months ago. My isolation was during my formative years so I feel permanently damaged and its hard to keep hope. Nevertheless, I am still trying my best to live the life I now know that I want.

This may be a bit of a stretch but are you willing to talk? I know when I was really deep in isolation any human contact would petrify me, so if you feel uncomfortable I completely understand.

It's so rare to find another hikikomori especially one that has been isolated for so long.

I feel lonely, as no one understands the life Ive lived.

I'm so glad to hear you have been recovering from hikikomori now. Congrats man! ヽ( ´ ∇ ｀ )ノ

I'm occupied with replying in this thread now, but DM me whenever you want! I will definitely reply when I can.

What is the worst advice someone has given you when you tell them about your lifestyle?

Wow this is a fascinating question.

Fortunately(?) I really didn't have deep conversations with others for almost 10 years, so didn't get any advice as well.

Even when chatting online? With others who live the same way?

I made a Canadian friend 2 years ago, who is an indie game developer like me. Game development has brought me some online friends too. Before that, I had literally zero friends during my hikikomori life.

Do you ever get bored? What do you like to do when you have free time? Do you use any substances?

For me, being hikikomori feels like you are always half drowning. Nowhere in the ocean, you have to keep treading water. You are trying to reach that island in the distance, but it's really hard to tell how far you have been reaching. And you can't tell whether that island is just a mirage or not.

So yeah, you really don't have time to feel bored. There is a great danger of burnout instead.

I haven't used any substances.

I just wanted to chime in here with my life story... if you're not interested, then please feel free to skip this post and move on, but I wanted to tell you it just as a sort of cautionary tale. I apologize for my rambling in advance, I hope you're able to understand most of it even though I jump around a bit describing things that were going on over the years. At the end I'd like to offer a little bit of advice, but I'm writing my life story in an attempt to show that I'm not someone on a high horse who thinks they need to butt in and tell you something simple because I've never had it hard, I'm someone who's been through the shut-in lifestyle as well (but in a different country where there's not even a term for it outside of 'shut-in'.) This is going to be a multiple-part post and a mini-novel, and I hope it's not a waste of time for you to read it... if it is, then I sincerely apologize right now.

I'm 36 years old, born in 1984, and I've been severely depressed ever since I was about 15 or 16 when my first girlfriend cheated on me with my (at the time) best friend. That was around the time of Episode 1 and 2 of the Star Wars movies being released (for an idea of a timeline.) Those two decided to make my life a living hell for the next year, until my father got a job in another state and remarried (he'd been divorced since I was about 10). I followed him a little while after, and dropped out of high school shortly after that. I lurked around the house for a few years, before I got a job at an auto parts store (for just above minimum wage, but it was enough to let me move out of the house and in with a roommate). I wound up really fucking my back up when shoveling some heavy snow a few years after that (I had a bad back and didn't even realize it, so I wound up rupturing two discs in my back which immobilized me for the better part of 3 months before my dad finally dragged me to the hospital to get checked out, and it was determined that I needed back surgery to fix it.)

After the surgery, which I got when I was... about 23 or 24, I fell into a super deep depression. Just before I got crippled with the back pain, I wanted to switch jobs to another/different auto parts store (long irrelevant story there), but I hurt my back the day before my final day at the first one, and 2 days before I was set to start work at the other store. I wound up getting laid off from that other job due to not being able to work (I was literally confined to bed due to the pain) so that was a huge blow to my self-esteem. Couple that with the shitty best friend I had as a teenager, my new stepmother being an evil bitch who wanted nothing to do with my dad's kids and did everything she could to drive them out of the house (which was why I moved out as soon as I got that job), and then being injured seriously for the first time in my life, contemplating suicide from the large amount of pain I was in because of that injury, losing my job due to the pain (a job that a great friend pulled some strings to get, so me being laid off I saw as me being a huge letdown to my friend. He put himself on the line for me and I failed)... all that led to the really bad depression. I've technically been depressed ever since the girlfriend thing when I was ~16, but it kicked into high gear with the back injury and being laid off. So for the better part of 2 decades I've been fighting it.

After my surgery, I moved in with my dad (because I didn't have a job, I couldn't pay rent, so I went to mooch off of him) and I basically became a Hikikomori/shut-in. Never left the house, stopped caring about myself, let my hair grow to an absurd length and rarely shaving my beard (I got quite the hermit beard going for a while there)... I lived with him for a couple years, before I moved to the far east side of the US (I was born and raised in the western part of the US, so 3000 miles away was a huge move for me) to live with my sister, who needed some help around her house taking care of stuff, so it was decided that I would be the one to go out there (since I wasn't doing anything in life). Lived out there for about 5 years, and just recently came back to where I was born (where I'm currently living). That whole time, I was mooching off of family and steadily gaining weight due to just not caring and finding some comfort in unhealthy (but delicious) food. I don't know if I'll ever get married to anyone, because that first girlfriend utterly shattered me and made me completely unable to trust any girls outside my family ever again. My sex life is non-existent, due to not being able to feel anything in an extremely important body part. All my life I've heard jokes and stories about "two-pump chumps" or guys who instantly nut due to being too sensitive to the feeling (like that scene in American Pie with Shannon Elizabeth), but my own 3 (yes, 3...) experiences with sex all led me to not being able to feel anything at all. Just a very vague 'pressure' on my junk. After about 10 minutes of intercourse with the women, I came up with an excuse like "ohhhh we'd better stop soon" because I didn't want it to be obvious that I wasn't even remotely close to being able to 'complete'. So to this day, at 36 years old, I still really don't know what sex should feel like, so my sex drive is nonexistent. I've not been able to bring up the courage to mention that to my doctor (being overweight, the odds of me being able to actually get someone to have sex with me if my junk was working would be slim to none, so I don't see the point in wasting time on that when there's other shit I need to fix first), so for now I just deal with porn and a few devices that actually can make me feel a little something. But being in my mid 30's, the sex drive is starting to die down anyways... so I'm double fucked there.

Around the end of 2013 I started getting real heavy into this one major Japanese MMO, to the point where I started spending most of my time contributing to a fan site for it. Thousands of hours I've spent cataloguing stuff for that site because it was basically my life. Every time a major patch comes out, I have to be awake during the night to help datamine it and get the info up as soon as possible because that was what I latched onto to keep myself from focusing on life. Most games weren't fun for me anymore (a sure sign of depression...) I wasted over a decade (a little bit before I hurt my back up until I moved back here) being hardcore addicted to WoW, and after I quit that game I realized how much time in life I had lost due to all this shit, particularly WoW. Nobody outside of that game was going to give a fuck about any Server First achievements or rare mounts I had. Nobody gave a fuck about the hundreds of hours spend wiping on hard raid bosses only to finally triumph over them and get gear which would be replaced in a few months with the next set of bosses... Since then, this fan site has slowly started to pay off (literally.) They started paying me for the sheer amount of work I've done for the site, and I managed to get super lucky with a connection someone at the site had and was able to get a job as a manga editor (basically quality control checking Japanese->English translations), and I've been able to get health insurance to finally go to the doctor and get myself checked out, and have been slowly losing weight and working on improving myself.

I say all that to give you an idea of how shitty I was feeling about myself, and the things that led to me being a shut-in. I dealt with problems by ignoring them and not thinking about them. It was far easier to just brush them aside and focus on something else (mainly video games) instead of dealing with the stress that was building up over being a leech on my family and not able to make and money. Health problems and personal appearance also got ignored in favor of games, because their in-game world was so much better than my reality. As bad as I thought I had it, I've been slowly digging myself out of the miles-deep hole I dug for myself because of my lack of confidence and self-esteem.

So, with all that being said, I'd like to offer you some advice. It's advice that is going to sound terrible at first, but you'll find later on that it really is as simple as this. It's a bit like telling someone who has a weight problem that they "simply need to eat less"... while technically the truth, it's almost impossible for them to eat less because the food tastes oh so good.

(continued in next post in 5 minutes, because this is a brand new throwaway account I made so my main account wouldn't have this story on it, as I routinely get people checking my post history and I don't want most people to know my life story, so it's limited because it's new.)

My advice being this: There's absolutely no shame in being yourself. You do not have to accept the pressure that you feel from those people who were giving you the feeling that you have to become financially independent as soon as possible. There is no shame in being yourself. Other people do not know how you feel or how you think, they instead judge everybody based off of their own experiences, and since a lot of them have had it easier than you or don't have the same problems that you've had then they feel like they can talk about you behind your back or to your face and make you feel like dirt. You do not have to be ashamed of what you are or how you earn a living. While it would be nice to be financially independent, it's something that's not possible for everybody. Everybody has dreams of being a millionaire (or a billionaire in the case of the Japanese currency), but very very few people actually achieve that. The majority of people just do the best they can with what they can do. While you should always strive to make things better and easier for yourself, if you're not able to do that then you can't let it get to you. Society in general is an uncaring bitch. Society chews people up and spits them out and eagerly awaits more people to chew up, all without caring about who gets spit out. Take a look at the Manga industry and see how many Mangeka work themselves literally to death because they feel the pressure that their bosses/companies and society places on them.

Everything in life is a learning experience, no matter what you do. Even things that feel like a waste of time, are actually learning experiences that help you grow. Me wasting a decade on WoW helped lead me to being better at this other MMO (which I'm not naming since some people here on Reddit could probably track me down and I'd like to avoid that), which in turn led me to being able to have the knowhow to contribute to this fansite, which led to me getting this unique job in the Manga industry. Some day I hope to be able to make enough to be financially independent myself, but everything in life is a stepping stone to something else. Only time will tell where those stones lead. That sounds a bit corny, but as an old man approaching 40, I feel that it's true.

I really do hope your game is a success. It's got enough random hilarity in it (judging from the trailer) that it might catch a lot of people's eyes online, because we all know how much the internet loves things that are quirky. As long as it has elements that everybody can relate to (not something that only you find funny, for example...like a private joke between you and someone else) then it should be something that could reach a broad audience. Becoming a full-time writer/novelist is an incredibly difficult thing to do successfully... There are billions of books out there all competing for people's attention, so for somebody to become a breakout star and generate enough money for it to become their full-time job instead of a hobby is a monumental task. It will be challenging. But as long as you keep trying, then eventually you will succeed. There are far too many people in life who don't have the courage to try, and then lament later on in life "If only I'd had the courage to try and see what would've happened if I did this or that..." (I'm one of them. Nightly I have nightmares about stuff from my past, and I wish I'd done something different at some point or another just to be in a different place than where I am now).

Anyways, I do apologize for writing my own novel about my life. I'm not someone you'll ever know or meet in real life, and I'm not expecting you to actually read through my posts, or to even care about them afterwards, but I felt the need to chime in and tell you that you should never be ashamed from society's peer pressure. Everybody in life feels pressured by society, and some of them deal with it by turning around and putting pressure on other people for the wrong reason. Try to not let it all get to you :)

Here's an imgur album I threw up containing two old pictures of myself. https://imgur.com/a/MYScMQy One before I got hired on at that auto parts store (when I was still mostly happy with life, though dealing with that bitchy stepmother and suffering from the depression from ~5 years earlier due to my best friend/girlfriend). I hung out with friends and played the crap out of Dance Dance Revolution heavily at the time. I actually think that picture was taken at a diner after a DDR tournament, in fact... The other picture is me a few years after hurting my back. Not at the height of my homeless slob look (I couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror, so as bad as I look in the second picture, reality was worse a few years later...), but still enough to show that I was telling the truth about getting some scraggly hair and beard. If you look closely, my hair's naturally curly and I naturally grew some of those stupid little curly hair bits that Jewish men grow (google says they're called "Payos"?) Not something I'd recommend doing, lol

Thank you so much for taking the time to write up your true individual life story! I can relate to many parts of your feelings and am very happy to hear that your life is now rolling toward a pleasant direction! (◍´ꇴ`◍)

Yeah, I agree with your advice. We should not let social pressure devastate our mental health. And at the same time, we need to foster our self-esteem in good shape. That is the challenge for us.

Didn’t your parents bring it up ?

She didn't.

First, congrats on your achievement! :)

As I'm living in Europe and only heard of Hikikomori in the media, I always wondered: what are the major differences and similarities of this phenomena and a major depression? What do you think from your point of view? Thanks!

Thank you! hmm.. as far as I know, Hikikomori is not necessarily accompanied by mental problems. Personaly I don't think I'm in need of theraphy or something.

How do you spend a typical day? Also do you live with family or by yourself? If you live with family, are they supportive or understanding of your life and work?

I live in an apartment alone. Basically just making my game and doing housework.

How often do you go outside?

once every two months for haircut

But this pandemic is going to affect my routine..

What's it like leaving the house for the first time in months? What's the first thing you notice? Do you expect certain differences?

You don't know how exactly hot/cold outside is. You can't pick proper clothing and put on too much and you sweat like an arrested spy in front of your local people (´・ω・｀)

Are you a fan of "Welcome to the NHK"? Unless you haven't seen it, can you comment on how accurate you think the show is in showing what it's like to be hikikomori?

Please answer this question. Your post is almost the exact plot of the first half of the show. All you need is a cute girl to take you under her wing.

That's the interesting part of the light novel. You need to grab a cute girl out of the void and dump her into your story for the sake of the market demand. Yes, I've been waiting for Misaki for 10 years now (´・ω・｀)

I read the novel before I became a hikikomori, haven't watched the anime version.

I remember there are few descriptions of the family relationship. So it lacks the most important aspect of being hikikomori.

So, would you say that your isolation is caused more by a drive to work hard and create something or because of the feelings of stress, depression, etc...?

When I was having normal jobs, I was very depressed every morning. I was killing my emotion in my workplace. So I can't tell precisely what put me into hikikomori. But I can tell I didn't expect my hikikomori will continue such a long period. I really hoped I will become independent within 3 years or so.

So, did becoming isolated improve your mood?

Probably yes..

I mean, I couldn't keep in touch with my friends from uni. I needed to be alone and just work.

What are the Japanese ideas/stereotypes about hikikomori? As an American, we have our own assumptions about recluses or hermits, but I don't know if it's fair to compare them to hikikomori. It's usually a very negative label that is associated with mental illness.

It's crazy how everyone in this thread is so positive but it's the exact opposite reaction to Westerners.

I swear, if I post this on Japanese site, no one ain't give a shit.

Also I would never have the guts to tell my hikikomori life in Japanese.

Being a foreigner can be a charm sometimes I suppose.

I'm proud of you for overcoming such difficult circumstances! What's been the most fun part about developing your game?

Thank you for the kind words! (´▽｀)

I think the most fun part is the moment when your all works, assets and game logic, are working as what you imagined, and that is actually silly and funny!

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Thank you for the great advice! That's so inspiring! (´▽｀)

Honestly I had thought my English was not good enough to communicate with English speakers until just recently.

Two months ago, I posted on r/japanlife for seeking advice. Their warm reaction was incredible and I was told my English is pretty good, which blew my mind. I realized I was missing some of my possibilities.

I'm still not sure what and how I really can do, but I will contemplate this aspect for sure. Thanks man!

How is your health doing? Do you try to maintain a reasonably healthy lifestyle despite shutting yourself in?

Ah I really want to recommend fellow hikikomoris to exercise daily!

I hadn't exercised for a long time and it decayed my body. I feel need for making more time to exercise lately.

Psychologically speaking, do you feel the need to have contact with anyone? Do you imagine having a friend or a girlfriend whom you can trust your despairs and achievements? Dont you have the need for some output other than a creative one?

I feel my hikikomori life paralyzed my social instinct because you want to avoid connecting others.

You may or may not know this but the current indie game market is getting so crowded that you need to do marketing and build connections more and more. So since last year, I started to reach out with others. That has changed my mental condition. I remembered that happy time I had with my uni friends. Now I'm looking forward to making friends again (´▽｀)

Two questions:

1. How do you keep yourself occupied and healthy while shut-in? (I'm on day 16 of self-isolating due to Covid-19, after going to the ER the doctor's determined I have a viral respiratory illness (aka likely Covid19) and staring at screens and being immobile in my room is really getting me).
2. What do you think of the anime Welcome the NHK (or other cultural references that deal with Hikikomori lifestyle)?

Yeah, as u/Time_Magician is saying, I recommend keeping your sleep cycle as usual. I had experienced the chronic bad sleep cycle. My day/sleep cycle had kept shift back little by little. I heard that it is not good for our immune system.

Hope you will recover soon! (੭•̀ᴗ•̀)੭

Sorry I haven't seen that anime series.

What does Hanzo say when he uses his ultimate? Thanks.

Senpai notice me! in kansai dialect I suppose (´・ω・｀)

How has your view of the world changed in the ten years? And what’re some things in the game that are super exciting to develop or fun to make?

LINE is a big thing. When I was having a social life, there is not this kind of dominant message app. But now everyone seems to have to use LINE in Japan. I don't have confidence using this kind of app and live with it 24/7.

Making 3D models and letting them do silly things in your game is pretty fun, man (´・ω・｀)

Dude, you stayed indoors for 10 years and you learnt how to draw manually and digitally, learnt English, learnt programming and MADE A GAME due to launch? You also wrote a book as well!

That is 10x more achievement than a lot people in a LIFETIME!

Keep going! Looking forwarded to your game!

Edit: Fixed grammar.

Thank you for the kind words! That encourages me a lot (´▽｀)

what convenience store has the best egg sandwich?

Oh, I have never picked an egg sandwich. I always felt it's relatively expensive for some reason. Which convenience store do you prefer for your egg sandwich?

I don't mean to offend you or anyone with these questions.

1. Do you think being a hikikimori is a mental illness? Do you think it can or should be treated or cured? (I'm basically a shut on. myself other than going to work)

2. I live in Japan 15 years btw. Hikikimoro kinda always made me angry becuase I felt they are a drain on society. My taxes take care of them. But they aren't deserving of wealthfare like many other groups of people. For example I live next to one. He is gross, I've seen him 3x in 6 years. He blasts his music when he wakes up from 11am to about 3pm everyday. So Sunday naps? Nope. No job. No nothing. He is a drain on society. BUT you don't seem like that. You worked. You tried to work. You pay your bills. Right? To me a truehikimori is someone living off their family or off wealthfare and also never goes. And I missing something in the translation.

My neighbor is a NEET and hikikimori. You are just hikikimori.

1) I think one can become hikikomori without mental problems. But I feel keeping hikikomori life too long can cause mental problems. It never makes you happy in my opinion.

2) I can understand your annoyance.

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I kind of think the real talent is driving you and teach/imply/seduce you how to create the real art.

My drawing is just mimicking and I have no power to embody the true creation.

More simply put, my anatomy sucked and one of my customers complained one of my drawing. That was so true and I couldn't help that.. (´・ω・｀)

Thank you for the compliment!

So whst's the deal with hikikomoris in terms of dating. Is that a thing, or y'all just stick with tenga eggs and delivery health service?

Another fascinating question (´・ω・｀)

Probably many hikikomoris don't have partners. I don't have too. We have some reason to avoid interacting with others.

I just watched the short trailer you have. My only question is what's with the guy getting whipped by the machine and the love hearts coming from him?

Japanese dude loves robots so much (´・ω・｀)

Hi mate! Sorry to ask, maybe a too much of a personal question, but in this long time alone did u take any drugs/antidepressants or something to relieve that sense of extreme Loliness? I can’t imagine my mental health be good in so much isolation. Have a good day and luck for your project

Thank you for the kind words (´▽｀) No, I haven't used drugs. Honestly I didn't feel loneliness during my hikikomori life. You know, you want to be alone for your sake. So the sense of loneliness would kind of disappear.

Just watched the trailer, the game looks pretty cool and definitely an accomplishment to be proud of.

It sounds like you do want to stop being a hikikomori -- do you think you're waiting to achieve some kind of success (whether through the game, writing novels, or drawing) before trying to get back out into the world?

Thank you for the compliment!

I think I can feel confidence in myself when I complete this game. This game is a weird kind of autobiography/ self-expression. I feel this game is a ticket to the outside of my house.

So which is your favorite version of Welcome to the NHK; Light Novel, Manga or Anime?

I have only read the light novel. Which do you like?

As you probably heard many people in Europe and elsewhere are forced to stay indoors due to Corona. What tips would you have for people who don't know how to pass the time at home, not go completely crazy and feel isolated right now?

Having hope and making a little progress every day. That worked for me.

This Washington Post article is very interesting and somehow encouraging.

What will you do after your game is launched? What will you do if it's very successful? What will you do if it's not very successful?

My original plan was moving to a foreign country where the living cost is cheap, then making my second game based on the income from Pull Stay. This is the best case scenario. But the pandemic is disrupting my plan just same as everyone's life..

Yeah, the current indie game market is very severe. I'm not much optimistic about my plan. Maybe I will seek a job using Pull Stay as my portfolio if the game will flop.

what games do you play? i assume you are both a console and PC player?

I haven't played much lately because I don't have time and money.

Papo & Yo is one of my favorite indie games.

Since you have this novel background, what made you choose to make a game with a focus on comedy instead of a richer story?

Thank you for this question!

Yes, I want to make story-driven games as well. But I didn't, and still don't, have the confidence to write the scenario in English. Comedic action game doesn't need a lot of written scenario, so I chose this genre.

Also humor is a very important element for my identity, which has given me the stability of mind in my hikikomori life.

How much does success as a Doujin creator depends on using big franchises like Touhou or Kancolle or just making 18+ work. Did you attend Comiket?

I heard that if you are making a physical book and distributing it via doujin events and shops, the choice of franchise matters greatly. While on digital shops like DL-site, it's more likely the subject(fetish) goes a long way.

Yeah, I attended Comiket during my uni days. That was an amazing experience. So many otakus and so many love and passion there.