Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou Episode 1 • Direct Link

Soichiro sits in the dark. He googles “is my apartment haunted” – no signal. He googles “how to restart life at 40” – a single result: “Buy a motorcycle. Die in the mountains.”

(Long pause) I... I stopped calling my mother three years before she died. Because she didn’t approve of my marriage. And now my wife is gone, my job is gone, and I live in a building with a ghost and a man who irons in his underwear. Dokushin Apartment Dokudami-sou Episode 1

He looks out. Haruko is doing tai chi on the roof in her tracksuit. Kenji is waving from his window – still no pants. Yoichi is stealing a newspaper from the neighbor’s porch. Toshiko is watering plastic flowers that will never bloom. Soichiro sits in the dark

The apartment complex is a brutalist concrete slab from the 1970s. Vines climb over rusted railings. A faded sign reads: “Dokudami-sou – No Key Money, No Guarantor, No Hope.” Die in the mountains

(Already drunk) I stole my boss’s golf clubs. Regret: not stealing his car. Hope: that my ex-wife’s new boyfriend steps on a Lego every day for eternity.

The real estate agent, MR. TANAKA (60s, dead-eyed), holds a flashlight.

Soichiro eats it. It’s the first food he’s had in 14 hours.