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The story
Talent Nozomi Tsuji (39) revealed on her YouTube channel that she has never told her kids “rivers are totally fine.” With summer vacation underway, she says she’s also struggling with how much money is appropriate to give her high-school-age eldest son when he goes out with friends.
The thread kicked off with doubts like “Is there even anywhere to play in a river in Tokyo?” followed by a stream of comments about the limits of life jackets and the dangers of river currents.
8/25 (Tue) 12:30
Talent Nozomi Tsuji (39) updated her YouTube channel “Tsuji-channel” on the 23rd, revealing something she doesn’t allow her kids to do.
The video was filmed just before the kids’ summer vacation began. Tsuji confessed she’s unsure of “the going rate” for how much to give her high-school-age eldest son for lunch money with friends, adding, “It doesn’t stop at just lunch. Things like ‘I want to go to the pool’ or ‘everyone wants to go here’ start piling up.” She lamented the start of summer break.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Is there even anywhere to play in a river within Tokyo?
You don't know about Okutama…? (a rural, mountainous part of western Tokyo)
Even if you live in Tokyo, if you've got friends, you still get invited to river BBQs sometimes.
That's literally it.
Life jackets aren't exactly flattering (ruins the photos).
Sudden downward currents in rivers can make life jackets useless sometimes
Be careful — it can drag you straight to the riverbed, jacket and all.
Tama-chan~ (nod to the wild seal that famously showed up in the Tama River)
My grandpa, born before the war, used to say he swam the Tama River wearing a fundoshi loincloth.
Cold water stiffens your muscles so you drown fast, and the riverbed is slippery so you fall easily.
Once you fall, you're suddenly submerged head to toe in cold water and can't move — and that's it.
But growing up without ever learning that firsthand is its own kind of risk, so it's a tough call either way — it ties into emotional growth too.
and all I've got are fond memories of having fun at BBQs,
so I can't really say either way.
Feels a bit overblown to me, honestly.
People die at the beach too sometimes, right? Isn't it kind of the same thing?
That kind of thing is usually done with adults around — family trips, or going along with other families.
It's not like kids grow up with zero experience of the sea or rivers.
Sounds like they go to Okinawa and abroad too.
She's probably just worried about them going without adults.
No need to risk your life just to play in a river or the sea.
Not sure, but don't they go with their parents? Though it's probably not as fun with parents tagging along.
The sea seems fine on its own, I'd think —
though with the danger of rip currents, maybe that's best avoided too.
Re: #1
Sounds like the sea's off-limits too.
No matter how many times you warn them, boys will always end up goofing around and going in once they're at a river.
So the best move is just banning the river trip in the first place.
Just have him get a part-time job.
A friend of mine said his dad told him a student's whole job is to study — if you're going to half-ass it with a part-time job, drop out of college and go work full-time right now.
Extreme take, sure, but as someone who worked part-time jobs nonstop, that one stung lol
Being too overbearing just leaves kids unable to do anything for themselves later on.
Wasn't she 18?
I'd guess it's fine as long as she's with a parent —
seems like reasonable teaching, to be that careful at least.
You don't know what 'within Tokyo' even means…?
Reminds me of a welcome party back in April — after a kid from Okutama introduced themselves,
someone heckled, 'Okutama isn't Tokyo! It's basically its own prefecture!'
and it killed the whole mood.
Re: #1
Apparently the sea's a no-go too.
Like, 'Huh? Are you dumb lol, we let our kids run wild in rivers all the time lol, being overprotective is gross' — that kind of thing?
Can just picture that being said super fast in one breath.
Background and Key Points
Nozomi Tsuji rose to fame as a member of the idol group Morning Musume before marrying actor Shunsuke Kazama; the couple has five children born in close succession, and Tsuji’s YouTube channel “Tsuji-channel” has become a long-running documentary of raising them, which is why an offhand parenting rule from her draws a 5ch thread rather than staying private. The geography question that opens the thread is worth clarifying for non-Japanese readers: Okutama, the area posters cite as “somewhere to swim in Tokyo,” is a mountainous district in the far west of Tokyo Metropolis, some 60km from central Tokyo, so it’s administratively “Tokyo” while feeling nothing like it — hence the confusion in the thread and the joke about a welcome-party heckler denying it counts.
The actual split isn’t over whether rivers are dangerous — nobody disputes that — it’s over whether banning kids from them is prudent caution or overprotection that stunts self-reliance, with posters pointing to their own supervised childhood river play as a counterexample.
What the thread never quite establishes is why Tsuji singles out rivers rather than the sea, and several posters (26, 31, 77, 104) end up assuming she’d ban the sea too, purely by their own extrapolation — that’s an inference, not something she said. It’s also worth knowing that Japanese river drownings are disproportionately linked to sudden depth changes and cold, spring-fed undercurrents even in shallow-looking water, which is the real hazard behind the “life jackets aren’t foolproof” comments rather than mere overcaution.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “Nozomi Tsuji Reveals What She Doesn’t Allow Her Kids to Do: ‘I Never Said Rivers Are Totally Fine. No Matter How Old They Get’.”
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