Freelance Announcer Aika Kanda Struggles with Making Friends as an Adult

How many people have you been able to call “friends” in the true sense of the word since you became a member of society?　By the way, I have only one in 21 years. The definition of a friend differs from person to person, but in my case, it is someone with whom I can talk about anything. I can tell my parents and my husband even the secrets I don’t want to tell them, trusting that they will take them to their graves. So I don’t consider them friends just because I keep in touch with them on a regular basis and have dinner with them a few times.

Sometimes I hate myself for how I became such a prudish and petty person, and I look at people who can call each other “friends” just by exchanging lines (light people ……) and feel disgusted, but at the same time I envy them because they seem to be having so much fun. I really wanted to be like that too. But I couldn’t because I didn’t want to get …… hurt anymore.

I was a student when I could say what I really felt regardless of interest. I still have a strong connection with my friends from those days, with whom I could understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. That is why, even after joining NHK, I still feel that I have a special colleague whom I would like to be friends with beyond work. ), I would tell all my complaints and work problems to my special colleagues. Then they began to talk to me about many things, and we even had tea together and bought matching clothes. When I didn’t doubt that they were friends, I found out that the colleague’s married partner was having an affair. 4 or 5 other colleagues heard about it from him, but I heard it as a “rumor. I was shocked because I thought we were friends who relied on each other in hard times, and I came to believe that people are capable of putting on a different face than what they really are.

And then it was time to leave NHK: no matter what the circumstances are, those who leave NHK tend to be thought of as “traitors who take the announcing skills they have cultivated with their subscription fees outside the station. In fact, I was told this by a senior colleague. And during the two months between when I publicly announced my resignation and when I left the station, very few people spoke to me as a traitor in front of my bosses. Surprisingly, the people who spoke to me until the end were seniors whom I rarely had a chance to talk to. They said things like, “Good luck!” or “I respected your way of working,” and some of them encouraged me by saying, “I feel ashamed of NHK for not being able to accept a talent like you.

On the contrary, colleagues with whom I had frequent contact did not even try to keep me in their sights. (The boss’s eyes were more important than my personal relationship with him. ……) When I was feeling unwilling, one of them sneaked up to talk to me. I was so happy that I followed his lead and went to an out-of-the-way place. Then he simply said, “Producer XX said you have no job even if you quit Kanda. I was so surprised that I could only reply, “Well, I’ll do my best at …….