Miss Corona hit us like a brick wall last year and our lives have hardly resumed as normal. If quarantining taught a lot of us something, it’s valorizing our time spent at home. Discovering new hobbies, picking new interests, renovating the house, enjoying new artists…
This newfound time to spend at home has been an opportunity for a significant surge of entertainment consumption, such as Netflix subscriptions, record gaming sales, and for Japan, it coincided with Kimetsu no Yaiba box office record.

But my personal downfall into ‘quarantine self-indulgence’ wouldn’t be binge-watching TV shows or gaming… I actually unexpectedly fell into the Japanese housewives’ lavish lifestyle vlog rabbit hole…never really managed to get out of it.

Feel free to enter to the wonderful world of the Japanese housewives down below the jump !

Staying at home for a long period and the drop of social interactions has been a huge source of anxiety for many people for the last few months. Personally, I’ve never been a ‘people person’ and always valued my me-time over socializing. I’ve never been fond of social medias neither, and bonding over social medias to overcome loneliness isn’t my cup of tea.
If anything, quarantining compelled me to value my time spent at home alone more.

Before diving into the world of Japanese housewives, it would’ve never occurred in my mind that some aspect of the (quarantining) celibates’ lifestyle could relate to those of Japanese housewives, but it turns out it does : the amount of time spent alone → trying to find ways to fancy up our house so that it becomes more pleasant to live in, a kin for handy house display, a passion for spotting the best buying deals…

And when it comes to upgrading livelihood, Japanese housewives are on a higher level than I would’ve expected.

MEGURI – the “Bree Van De Kamp of Nagoya” / 36k followers

Meguri K. is 40-something, married, mom of 2, lifestyle blogger living in Nagoya who got her start on Instagram.
Her usual content are mostly vlog, cooking tutorials and GRWM.
If you take a dive in her videos you’ll be left mesmerized by her top-notch cooking & table laying skills, her impeccably well-kept house, and her constant flaunting of ridiculously expensive items under a totally inconsequential way. If you peep out, you’ll notice her expensive Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga bags, that she’s riding in Porsche, her branded / Made in France cooking gear, and let’s not forget her casually dropping in a Q&A that her monthly budget for food (alone) is 500$ (which sounds crazy to me – even for a family of 2 kids in elementary school). Watching her videos is like having a money fever dream that you don’t really want to wake up from.

Another significant feature of her content is the handy smart devices she routinely uses that I wasn’t aware of their existence until then : a jewel case eliminating bacteria from watches & rings via ‘electron magnetism’, an inflatable mannequin to dry and smoothen shirts, a closet to sanitize coats, etc… More often than not, these are paid partnerships, but I commend Meguri’s transparency for visibly disclosing these sponsored features (tagged as #PR) as the transparency issue surrounding undisclosed paid partnership between bloggers and brands have been a big topic of these last few years among influencers.

If there was an opposite to bougie, Meguri would be the actual allegory of it. As privileged as she is, she also provides relatable tutorials where she teaches how to fix damaged leather goods (on her own Chanel leather apparel, not less) or how to clean windows’ edge with mini-brushes(?!). It’s intriguing to notice how such a well-off housewife doesn’t remotely resort to hiring a housekeeper. I guess that’s a cultural thing since in Japan housewives are expected to take care of the house and that hiring someone help to help would be considered as ‘failure’.

TsuzuRisaKitchen – “a Japanese in Paris” / 7k followers

Risa is Japanese lifestyle mom blogger who took cooking class in Japan before moving to Paris last year with her husband.

By judging the typically Parisian chic Haussmanian architecture of her (spacious) apartment, and her place of residence – Paris 7th arrondissement, one of the most expensive of Paris -, Risa is most definitely extremely well-off. Witnessing a housewife immigrating to a country and immediately making it to the 1% is for sure something noteworthy.

It’s always fascinating to see one’s home country through the eyes of a foreigner – especially when their money can afford a fancier, dreamier experience. Right there, Risa delivers everything a foreign housewife dreaming of Paris might aspire to one day.
As a Parisian myself, I barely know any of these fancy boutiques because 99% of Parisians are broke and don’t even bother going out there, that’s why watching this type of content feels endearingly dystopian. A personal guilty pleasure.

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