*Tokimeki Memorial* Comes to Life? 62-Year-Old Tokyo Man Moves Out with His Companion Doll

Give it a 6. Because this story is bizarre enough, yet beneath the absurdity there’s also a kind of weary modern urban fatigue—like a veteran player clearing Silent Hill 2 and then looking back at the menu, only to realize that the scariest thing was never the monsters, but people themselves. In a report from April 14, a 62-year-old Tokyo man, Nakajima Chiji, drew plenty of attention for pushing a wheelchair-bound silicone doll named “Saori” through the streets.

What happened isn’t complicated; to put it bluntly, it’s even pretty straightforward. The “girlfriend” in the wheelchair isn’t a person, but a life-sized silicone doll. Six years ago, while living alone in Tokyo, he came across this kind of product in Akihabara. At first, it was just a way to ease his loneliness, but over time he got more and more deeply involved. Now he custom-orders outfits for Saori, helps her get dressed and groomed every day, and takes her to restaurants, riversides, and shopping malls—the whole routine is more complete than in some dating sim games.

More importantly, he didn’t start this on a single-player setup. Nakajima has been married for many years and has a son and a daughter. But this relationship completely threw his family into turmoil: his wife refuses to let Saori into the house, his daughter is openly against it, and his son only reluctantly accepts it. In the end, he chose the doll, moved out, and rented a place to live with Saori. This plot is more twisted than the hidden ending of many Japanese games.

The report also mentions that Saori isn’t the only one he owns. Besides her, Nakajima has five other silicone doll “family members,” and over the years he has already poured several million yen into them. On top of that, he still spends tens of thousands of yen every month on cleaning, clothes, and replacement parts. Put plainly, this isn’t like casually buying a collectible and putting it in a display case—it means pouring in emotion, time, and money. The upkeep is harsher than what many retro console collectors spend maintaining a full set.

The reason he gives is also very direct: “She is always gentle, never grows old, and obeys me in everything. That’s a sense of security a real person could never provide.” It sounds harsh, but it’s also frighteningly precise. A lot of people’s first reaction is that it’s ridiculous, but then think about it the other way around: why would someone rather cling to unresponsive silicone than go back to working through a real relationship? That question is probably uglier than the news itself.

That said, I’m not buying this idea of “absolute security.” No conflict, no feedback, no growth—just one-way projection. It feels more like turning life down to the easiest difficulty and then fooling yourself into thinking you’ve beaten the game. You can treat it as a companionship tool, but once you upgrade it into a substitute for intimate relationships, the cost is usually not money—it’s that your connection to the real world starts dropping offline bit by bit.

If I had to make a trend judgment, there will only be more news like this in the future, not less. Aging populations, people living alone, emotional alienation, and increasingly human-like consumer products—this combo has already been laid out. Today it’s silicone dolls; tomorrow it may be AI companions or caregiving robots. The names differ, but the core is the same. Gaming communities have joked for years about “2D wives,” but jokes are jokes. Once virtuality and substitution enter real life and start outweighing family relationships, it stops being an amusing subculture anecdote and becomes a rather chilling social symptom.

My conclusion remains the same: understandable does not mean acceptable; you can watch, but don’t rush to romanticize it. This is not a real-life version of Tokimeki Memorial—just a 62-year-old man who, on the old map of reality, dodged every high-difficulty stage and in the end chose a save file that would never argue back.