From our other sites
The story
A thread on 5ch’s News Speed VIP board features a poster living in a trash house who has promised a 27-year-old woman he met on a dating app that she’ll come over and cook for him. Facing a pile of garbage that would cost 1 million yen to have professionally hauled away, commenters were split on how he should explain the situation to a woman he wants to marry — and whether he should go further into debt just to clean the place up.
What people said
She's someone I want to marry, so there's no way I can let her see the trash house.
Then you'd better turn her down soon.
What should I say to turn her down?
Isn't that up to what you want to do?
If you can get it cleaned up in a month and still want her to come, just tell her, "Come over during the September holidays!"
If you're not actually going to clean it up, maybe it's better to just cut ties now.
It takes a full month, so doing it around a job, it'll take a year.
I don't want to cut ties — I want to marry her.
It's the kind of mess that costs a million yen if you hire a cleaning company.
Why not have her do it until you've spent every last cent?
Stop with the excuses — why not just cough up the million yen?
I don't even have money to borrow!
Then borrow it.
If you take on more debt, you won't be able to get married at all…
What's the debt even from in the first place?
Do you have any plan to pay it back??
Which would you rather break up over — the trash house or the debt?
Great at housework and super cute.
We've only been out to eat once, but I want to marry her!
So basically, "I don't like her enough to clean like my life depends on it or go earn the money"?
If she's willing to come to your place after meeting just once, she must really like you.
Then consolidate your loans or go through debt restructuring or something.
I'm not good at that kind of thing.
So "not good at it" is reason enough not to even try?
Give me a hand here…
If she's going to be my wife, my situation becomes her situation too — so there is something in it for her.
From her side, that leaves "don't marry him" as the only real option.
If he lived nearby I might've considered helping.
A guy like this was never planning to pay from the start.
I'll at least treat you to a meal~
Background and Key Points
News Speed VIP is 5ch’s fastest, most freewheeling board, built for exactly this kind of first-person confession thread that mixes real anxiety with black comedy. “Gomi yashiki” (trash house) is not a throwaway insult in Japan — it’s a recognized social problem serious enough that ward offices and NHK have documented it, tied to isolation, hoarding, and neighbor complaints over smell and fire risk; the million-yen quote he cites is roughly in line with what licensed cleanout companies actually charge for a severe, multi-room case, not an exaggeration. Dating apps like Pairs or Tapple, which this thread implicitly assumes, are marketed in Japan as “konkatsu” (marriage-hunting) tools rather than casual-hookup platforms, which is part of why a woman agreeing to visit and cook after only one outing reads to some posters as a strong signal of serious interest rather than recklessness.
The thread doesn’t split on whether the trash house is a problem — everyone agrees it is — but on whether he should confess and delay the visit, or scramble to hide/finance a fix before she arrives, with a harder edge emerging over whether taking on debt for a woman he’s known briefly is romantic commitment or financial self-sabotage.
What’s missing is any mention of Japan’s actual safety net for this exact situation: municipal governments in many wards run subsidized or city-contracted gomi yashiki cleanup programs for hoarding cases, and free public debt-consolidation consultations (via legal aid or ward welfare offices) exist specifically so people don’t have to “borrow more” from predatory lenders — options no poster raised.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed VIP) thread “I live in a trash house, but the girl I met on a dating app is coming to cook for me.”
Leave a Reply