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The story
A video posted by NHK’s ‘Close-Up Gendai’ (Closeup Gendai), following the frugal life of a man in his 20s, became a hot topic on 5channel. The segment showed him cooking for himself on a weekly food budget of just 6,000 yen (roughly $40), but viewers fixated less on the substance of his frugality than on details like his “nearly empty fridge” and his “awkward hand movements while shaping rice balls (onigiri).” The same episode also featured a dual-income couple with a combined take-home pay of 4.1 million yen (about $27,000) who said they’d given up on having kids — that story drew skepticism too, with commenters calling it “baffling” that a full-time employee in Tokyo would earn under 2 million yen ($13,000) a year. Discussion online centered on whether the show’s staging and reporting reflected real life.
NHK’s ‘Close-Up Gendai’ Video on a “20-Something Man’s Frugal Life” Stirs Controversy… “Empty Fridge,” “Awkward Onigiri-Making”—A Different Kind of “Something’s Off” Goes Viral | Nikkan SPA!
Posted: September 9, 2026, 08:53
Takao Kawase
Source: nikkan-spa.jp / Original article here
What people said
If it's 25,000 yen a month, it doesn't seem that generous
Yeah
You can live normally on that
It's not about good or bad — the point is he's clearly never done this before
That's where I stopped reading
Way too extravagant
He's just cooking rice and buying pre-made side dishes (souzai) from the store
Would be a lifesaver for poor people
Not that they're nutritious anyway
Pick one: cook them, soak them in sesame oil, soak them in sweetened vinegar (kantan-zu), or buy a vacuum sealer.
Once you open a bag of bean sprouts, just leaving them in the fridge only buys you about 3 days.
The basic move is to squeeze the air out of the bag and freeze them lol
Don't be using expensive plastic wrap!
At least practice making onigiri before filming
What is with these hands
Exactly this
Shaping the onigiri bare-handed is one thing, but
"??? A broke guy cooking for himself has the 20m Saran Wrap (the pricier roll)…?"
was the moment it clicked for me that something was off.
If you're actually poor you'd be using the supermarket's cheapo house brand
I bet the video was outsourced to a bunch of single guys who've genuinely never cooked in their lives
https://media.yourmystar.jp/files/topics/4205_ext_8_0.jpeg
or is that not true?
Pasta or udon are generally cheaper, basically
Tried that trick before and it backfired — I only checked for the discount sticker and never checked the actual price
Please don't film me lol
An actor huh (…damn, so even actors pull in 200k take-home…)
The ones who supposedly gave up on having kids because their combined take-home was only 4.1 million yen
The husband with the mysterious setup of being a full-time employee in Tokyo yet earning under 2 million yen a year
They should've just found real cases by searching 5channel
The point is, this isn't a reality rich people can just imagine their way into
The reporting is thin and shallow
And the bias is way too much
Feels like I recall Close-Up Gendai getting into trouble over something a few years back too…
Doesn't seem like there's enough real material out there to justify a documentary every single day
200 yen breakfast, 150 yen lunch, 500 yen dinner comes to 5,950 yen a week
Not something I'd want to keep up forever, but it's honestly within reach
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
‘Close-Up Gendai’ is one of NHK’s flagship current-affairs programs, airing on weekday evenings, and it frequently tackles topics like inequality and poverty. What caught fire this time was a related video posted for social media, and what stands out is that thread commenters focused less on the segment’s main theme — tips for frugal living — and more on incidental details in the footage, like what was in the fridge or how awkwardly the subject shaped his rice balls. Opinions in the thread are split: some see a 6,000-yen weekly food budget as “way too extravagant,” while others argue that a breakdown of 200 yen for breakfast, 150 yen for lunch, and 500 yen for dinner is a perfectly achievable level. Commenters also raised doubts about the income and take-home-pay figures for a separate household featured in the same episode, but it’s worth noting all of this is speculation from thread participants — NHK itself has not officially addressed whether any of it was staged.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Geinō/Supōtsu Sokuhō+) thread “[NHK] The Video “A 20-Something Man’s Frugal Life” Posted by Close-Up Gendai Stirs Controversy… “Empty Fridge,” “Awkward Onigiri-Making…”“
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