The Reality TV Experiment: Nasubi

This is the third part of Tomoaki Hamatsu’s story, I strongly recommend you start at the beginning here to learn the full story.

Resume: In January 1998, Tomoaki Hamatsu, a 22-year-old aspiring comedian, was randomly selected to participate in the upcoming "Denpa Shōnen" first season: "Denpa Shōnen Teki Kenshō Seikatsu", which roughly translates to “The Crazy Youth Prize Life”. The premise of the show, “Can someone live only by rewards in Japan?”, brought Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nasubi, to a very dangerous living situation. He would achieve his goal of one million yen in prizes in 335 days. Here is the story of Nasubi.

In October 1998, Nasubi was blindfolded, covered with a blanket and transported to a third apartment. Entering a new, nearly identical, apartment, Nasubi had been promised by the producers renewed luck and Feng Shui. Nasubi will, in fact, slightly overachieve the goal of one million yen in December 1998 after 335 days isolated and surviving off prizes. However, the producers could not let Nasubi, their goldmine of content, escape the apartment. Not yet.

The Third Apartment

In this last apartment, Nasubi’s luck would be renewed and he would be reintroduced to modern technologies after 9 months in isolation. He first won a VHS deck so he played two previously won tapes: a bicycle race videotape and an educational videotape on armpit odour removal. This last tape mesmerized Nasubi as he happily discovered it was featuring a woman.

In November, Nasubi received a PlayStation which he combined with his previous prize: The game "Densha de Go!" and its special controller to play it. Nasubi spent the next four days playing without sleeping. At the end of those four days, he issued a prohibition ban for himself since he quickly realized that he had not sent a single postcard in those days, which was going against his goal.

Nasubi returned to his daily work and received multiple expensive items as if the producers wanted to conveniently close this first season. Ironically, he would receive rice seasoning and a rice bag as his very last prizes.

Nasubi had reached the goal, but he was not told right away. Instead, the producers waited until the middle of the night to enigmatically throw numerous party crackers at him. Confused and scared, Nasubi did not realize he had finally “escaped” the challenge with one million yen worth of prizes, but the producers did not explain.

“When do people use party crackers?” the producer asked. - “In happy events” Nasubi replied. - “You are right” the producers said firing another cracker at Nasubi’s face.

The producers gave back to Nasubi the clothes he last wore 335 days ago.

The Joy Ride

He wore his clothes but quickly deemed them uncomfortable and removed them before enjoying his first winning gift: ramen. They brought him new clothes, a black suit and glasses, blindfolded him and brought him to Korea where he would be able to enjoy Yakiniku and short ribs, a day at an amusement park and a day of shopping, where he bought for himself a Korean traditional pot filled with delicious kimchi.

At the end of this break, Nasubi was once again blindfolded and transported for five hours to a Korean apartment nearly identical to the three Japanese apartments he already experienced. With his brand new kimchi pot next to him, Nasubi was asked by the producers to take off his clothes.

Defeated, Nasubi remained silent while the producers explained:

“Can we make a living only by rewards in Korea?” The producer asked, “But this time, you do not need to earn as much as one million yen. You just need to earn a plane fee for Japan.”

During his first challenge, Nasubi had already written more than 60,000 postcards to enter prize contests.

"If you do not want to do this, you do not need to follow our orders", The producer said.

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Click here to continue Nasubi's story.