# #34 「私、当時妊婦でした」 - Show: 朝井リョウ・加藤千恵 信頼できない語り手 - Published: 2026-09-25 - Canonical: https://podc.club/en/episode/1874531482_a2be2cabfa0f.html - Audio: https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/67122501-9b17-4d77-84bd-a93d00dc791e/119fad05-0faa-47c5-898b-b3e5005ceaac/1be86be8-bffa-450b-b876-b4d000644026/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=418670c9-0dad-4937-80c6-b3e5005cef49 - Source: Edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. Not an official summary. Asai Ryo (朝井リョウ), close to becoming a father at the time, took DJ Matsunaga (DJ松永, of Creepy Nuts) to see the Chiikawa movie — and the pair got stuck at the theater gate when Asai's QR code turned out to be three days old. The episode also covers Asai's confession that he hosted a magazine movie column, "Great Cinema," for nearly a year while barely watching films, and heaps praise on nonfiction writer Maekawa-san's Chiikawa movie review. A listener mailbag closes things out with a story about an architect who fell into a ditch in the dark, capped by a punchline from his mother the next morning. ## What this episode answers ### Why did Asai feel like "a lie was being broadcast on TV" while watching his NHK appearance live? The show framed a clip as coming from "someone claiming to be his true best friend," but in reality the show itself had asked DJ Matsunaga for an interview and he had declined, so Asai spent the live broadcast thinking the on-air framing didn't match what actually happened. ### What trouble happened at the theater gate when Asai went to see the Chiikawa movie while close to giving birth, and how was it resolved? His QR code wouldn't scan at the gate, so thinking it was a signal problem they moved to a quieter passage that turned out to be a busy crossing point between screenings; staff then found his ticket was from three days earlier, so they bought same-day tickets on the spot and watched from front-row seats. ### How did Asai end up hosting the magazine movie column "Great Cinema" despite barely watching movies? Asai, who considers himself to have seen fewer movies than the average person on the street, took over the column, and when his first piece honestly admitted he hadn't even seen "Jujutsu Kaisen," his editor's comment — "COVID, and also Jujutsu Kaisen" — led to major revisions. ### What was nonfiction writer Maekawa-san's Chiikawa movie review like, and why did Asai praise it so highly? It opens with a reference to Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex," contrasts food with eternal life, and closes by tracing a character's origins into a real-world issue; Maekawa, who had also supervised Asai's novels with a writer-first approach, impressed Asai enough that he called the ending "exactly what a column's close should be." ### In the listener mailbag about the 36-year-old architect who fell into a ditch, what did his mother do that got a laugh? On her morning walk the next day, the mother told him, "I went and saw the ditch you fell into," a line so perfectly timed that Asai and Kato joked she seemed to be going for the punchline herself. ## Article ## The NHK Appearance and the "Best Friend" Problem Asai recently appeared as a guest on an NHK program, where DJ Matsunaga (of Creepy Nuts) sent in comments as a friend. But the show framed the segment as "footage has arrived from someone claiming to be his true best friend," and Asai says he spent the entire live broadcast thinking, "That's a lie — a lie is airing on television." What actually happened was that the program had asked DJ Matsunaga directly for an interview, and he had turned the request down. The conversation drifted to a Creepy Nuts special on Studio A, where Asai appeared in the "friend" slot alongside a remote guest and a certain music artist, making it a three-way conversation. Asai admits that while sitting in the studio, a memory kept distracting him: someone had once told him he was the only person in the world who resembled that artist. ## Pregnant at a Chiikawa Movie — the QR Code Trap This leads into the title episode, "I Was Pregnant at the Time." Close to giving birth, Asai invited DJ Matsunaga to see the Chiikawa movie. Asai had booked in advance, and the two planned to share a single QR code — everything seemed set. The theater was packed that day, with even the largest screening room nearly full. When they scanned the QR code at the gate, nothing happened, while other moviegoers streamed past them. Assuming it was a signal problem, they moved to a quieter passage — which turned out to be exactly where crowds crossed between screenings, making the pair even more conspicuous. When staff checked, it turned out Asai had been trying to use a ticket from three days earlier. Caught off guard, Asai blurted out "Right, of course" ("desu yo ne"), which Kato immediately called "the strangest possible response." They bought same-day tickets on the spot, ended up in front-row seats, and watched the movie without further trouble. Afterward the two had yakiniku, and DJ Matsunaga came away completely hooked on Chiikawa. ## Hosting a Movie Column While Barely Watching Movies From there the talk turned to film criticism, and Asai confessed to having hosted a magazine column called "Great Cinema" for over half a year — despite considering himself someone who watches fewer movies than the average person on the street. When he took over, he hadn't even seen "Jujutsu Kaisen." His first column honestly admitted as much, prompting an editor's comment — "COVID, and also Jujutsu Kaisen" — that triggered heavy revisions. Even so, during the column's run he started receiving preview screening invitations and DVDs, and looking back, he said, "If I'd kept living that way, I could have become an actual movie person." ## Maekawa-san's Chiikawa Movie Review Was Overwhelmingly Good Mizuno-san introduced a Chiikawa movie review by nonfiction writer Maekawa-san, published in the August issue of Weekly Playboy. Maekawa dropped out of the University of Tokyo, joined a puppet theater troupe, and once cycled across both Spain and South Korea. Maekawa has also supervised Asai's novels, working not like an expert pointing out "this part is wrong" but in a writer-first style — "here's what you're trying to say, so with this phrasing barely anything needs to change." The review itself opened with the line that readers would understand it more deeply "having read all of Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex,'" then contrasted food with eternal life, worked through an original theory about one character's origins, and closed by connecting it to a real-world issue. Asai marveled, "This is what a column's ending should be," and laughingly compared it to his own past attempt at ending a column with a reference to Kubrick's monolith cube, calling himself "an idiot, truly an idiot." ## Mailbag: The Mother Who Went to See the Ditch the Next Morning After the title call comes the listener mailbag segment, which the show calls "the card." A 36-year-old architect wrote in that while carrying lighting fixtures to a job site at night, he fell left-side-first into a ditch in the dark. By the next day he had a bruise "as big as if he'd been hit in the backside with a metal bat." Then his mother, during her morning walk, told him, "I went and saw the ditch you fell into," and he couldn't help laughing. Asai and Kato agreed the mother seemed to be going for the punchline herself. ## Takeaways - Close to giving birth, Asai took DJ Matsunaga to the Chiikawa movie and got stuck at the theater gate over a QR code that turned out to be from a ticket three days old, blurting out an awkward "Right, of course" when staff pointed it out. - Asai admitted he hosted the magazine movie column "Great Cinema" despite barely watching films — he hadn't even seen "Jujutsu Kaisen" when he started, drawing an editor's rebuke, though the column's run became, he said, the period when he watched the most movies in his life. - Nonfiction writer Maekawa-san's Chiikawa movie review, opening with a nod to Simone de Beauvoir, struck Asai as existentialist and earned his highest praise, alongside admiration for Maekawa's writer-first approach to supervising Asai's own novels.