id:y_arim describes [ja] meeting Japanese author Tatsuhiko Takimoto, known for his fictional work about hikikomori entitled Welcome to the N.H.K, at a bar in Akihabara. When they met, Takimoto declared that he had just recently discovered his “true self” — the person he was when he was in elementary school, at a time when he looked down on everybody, a tendency he eventually managed to suppress. “But then,” Takimoto explained, “what happened was that I projected the me looking down on everybody onto the people around me. […] That's what's so weird. I was really looking down on everybody, but I thought that everybody was looking down on me.”