A ZINE for Helping Others from the Family Home: Ultra Living With Your Parents

A 27-year-old former elite, brought down by bipolar disorder and withdrawn from the world, gradually begins to recover through creative work such as writing and illustration.

ebina lay in bed. He did not know why he had collapsed, or even why he was there. He had been hiding who he was and concealing his illness as he tried to keep going, but it seemed he had finally reached his limit. That much, at least, he understood. But what was he supposed to do now?

Then, one day, his father said to him, “When your mother and I are gone, you can live off the rental income from our property.”

Little by little, the gears began to turn. Maybe, then, he could simply do what he wanted to do.

He cleared a corner of the bookshelf at home and turned it into a standing desk. There, he began to write. Two thousand characters a day, writing for no one in particular, yet somehow for someone.

He did not know who would read it, but he wanted someone to. He did not know what would become of his life. But it felt like this was one of the few things he could still do.

That was how his first ZINE, Ultra Living With Your Parents, came to be.

Do what can be done from home. Help with the housework. Talk with family. Work part-time. Keep one foot firmly planted at home, and do what is possible from there. Built on ambitious hopes for the future and the steady practice of creating every day, his work began to expand. His condition gradually improved, and people willing to support him began to appear.

The gears, at last, were turning in the right direction.

Please introduce yourself.

My name is ebina. I write every day. I also draw every day and write tanka poetry. I work as a cram school instructor, teaching students from second grade through their final year of high school.

I graduated from the Department of Political Science at Waseda University’s School of Political Science and Economics.

I live with bipolar II disorder and also have a disability certificate.

Six months after I started writing, I created a ZINE called Ultra Living With Your Parents. It is a collection of diary entries and essays selected from my daily writing by the person who helps me with editing, centered on the themes of creating while living at my family home and facing my relationship with my family.

How did Ultra Living With Your Parents begin?

I developed bipolar disorder while I was at university. I somehow managed to graduate, but I continued to struggle with the condition. Because I couldn’t get up in the mornings, I worked at a greengrocer’s, and during the middle of summer I worked as an Uber Eats delivery driver. My rating was terrible.

Then, in November 2025, while I had withdrawn from the world and was wondering whether there was anything left that I could do, my father said to me, “When your mother and I are gone, you can live off the rental income from our property.”

That was the turning point. I was surprised that this was how he had been thinking about my future.

So I thought, if that’s the case, I might as well do what I like. And that was when I started writing.

Did you always enjoy writing or reading?

I think my first real experience with writing came from the soccer journals I kept in middle and high school. A soccer journal is basically a way to reflect on each day’s practice and matches, and I never missed writing in mine.

It’s not like writing them suddenly made me a much better soccer player, and looking back, maybe part of it was just me trying to show my coach how much thought I was putting into the game. Still, writing one full page by hand in a university-ruled notebook every day was clearly an important starting point for me. Even now, I think my ability to step back and look at myself objectively comes from that habit of reflecting on things.

The title “Ultra Living With Your Parents” really stood out to us. Where did the name come from?

When I made my first ZINE, a friend who was helping me edit it connected with this particular “attitude,” and that became the title.

There are two reasons I came up with the phrase.

The first is bravado. I have bipolar disorder, and perhaps because of that—although I don’t think that’s the only reason—I don’t have a steady job. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I haven’t been able to hold one down. I clearly have a complex about that, and when I’m depressed, it’s something I struggle with a lot.

But normally, especially when I’m feeling good, I sometimes think: isn’t this actually the best situation? In such an unpredictable world, forget this bullshit idea that getting a job somehow guarantees stability. Why not rely instead on my “solid” family home—a house near a station in central Tokyo that might even be less likely to disappear than some huge corporation?

So if I’m going to rely on that, what am I going to do with it?

That’s where writing comes in. For me, writing is also tied to a desire to contribute to others. Being born into this secure family environment is not something I can take for granted. I have my parents, who worked hard, and my grandparents and many other people have also played a part in creating the position I’m in today.

How could I not be grateful for that? First, I should be grateful. But no matter how much I express that gratitude, even if it makes things better within the family, I think what is ultimately expected of me is to use what I’ve been given in a way that benefits society. I exist because of so many other people. Realizing that was really the beginning of my creative work.

So then I started thinking: what should I do next? I want to gradually become someone who helps others too. How can I do that? I already do that to some extent through my work as a cram school teacher, but I want to do more.

That’s when I came back to writing. I want to make a book that can give even a little strength to people living with bipolar disorder.

How many people are living with their parents while thinking about it this way? It’s probably completely different from the usual image of “living with your parents.” That’s why, to me, it isn’t just living with your parents. It’s Ultra Living With Your Parents.

(Note on the origin of Ultra Living With Your Parents: https://note.com/evinindabuilding/n/nf82bebbc487f)

Was there a particular moment during the creative process or your activities that stayed with you?

I cried while I was writing. I actually cried. It surprised me. I was alone in my room, just writing honestly, and suddenly I was crying.

There’s an essay called “My Parents Waited for Me.” I cried while writing it. I remember being really surprised that something like that could happen.

Could you tell us a little more about what you were remembering and what you were feeling at that moment?

“My Parents Waited for Me” is about how, even while I was struggling with mental illness, my parents simply waited for me. The simplest explanation for why I cried is that writing it made me realize the fact that my parents had been waiting for me all along.

When I write, I don’t decide beforehand what I’m going to say. I just write whatever comes into my head, in the order it appears. And while I was writing, I realized that one of the reasons I was able to recover was that my parents, who are, in a sense, other people separate from me, had waited for me. Once I realized that, I couldn’t help but cry.

It also made me think about the people close to me, my parents first and foremost, but also my doctor and my friends, and how they had all been willing to wait.

I work as a cram school teacher myself, so it made me wonder whether I’m able to wait when a student is struggling or when their grades aren’t improving. I found myself thinking about the almost frightening power of simply waiting for someone as they recover or become independent, and at the same time, how difficult it is to actually do that. That realization made me cry.

What message do you hope to convey through your work?

I’ve continued writing for people who struggle with bipolar disorder.

When my sleep schedule was completely reversed and I was struggling with depression, I often felt that there were very few books I could turn to for support. I would go to the essay section of the bookstore near my station and pick up anything that looked like it might mention depression, but I rarely found what I was looking for.

I think there is value in someone like me, someone who is not particularly well-known or accomplished, speaking openly about depression.

As for what I want to say... I think everyone should have at least one place where they can speak without pretending.

These days, whenever we use words, we are almost always conscious of other people. I do the same. When I’m around others, I say things I don’t necessarily mean all the time. But I think that can be stressful.

When I write, I think it’s important to ask myself, “What do you actually want to say?”

I want to hear your words, the words that only you can say.

What are your plans and hopes for the future?

For the rest of this year, I plan to take part in direct-sales events such as ZINE festivals and the Literature Flea Market. More than anything, I enjoy talking face-to-face with people who buy my books.

Looking ahead, I want to write a book that can support people living with bipolar disorder. I want to create something that a person who feels hopeless about their future might read late at night and, even just a little, feel like getting up the next morning.

To do that, I think I simply need to keep writing every day. And I need to live honestly. To avoid being consumed by desire, to do what I believe is right, and to treat the people who are involved in my life with sincerity. I think it comes down to continuing to do those ordinary things, day after day.

What kinds of conversations do you usually have with people who buy your work?

Aside from what you might typically think of as a ZINE, something professionally printed and bound, I also make handmade ZINEs. I buy notebooks, paste in printed versions of my note articles, number the pages by hand, draw the covers myself, and write the table of contents and foreword.

I started making them this way because I’m not very good at creating print-ready data, so I took the process as far into the analog world as I possibly could. (Ultra Living With Your Parents was edited with the help of a friend.) Every copy is different, so each one is one of a kind.

One man who saw one of these handmade ZINEs said to me, “This is the origin of the ZINE.”

To be honest, I had thought, “This is basically elementary-school arts and crafts.” It’s handmade only because this is the way I know how to make it. I wasn’t particularly interested in whether it had value or not, I just made it because I enjoyed making it.

But when he called it “the origin of the ZINE,” I realized how differently people can interpret the same thing.

What I think is good and what someone else thinks is good are naturally different. More than that, people can find meanings and value in a work that I never intended to put there in the first place. That made me realize that once you create something, your own intentions are not the only thing that determines what the work becomes.

A writer I deeply respect, Kyohei Sakaguchi, has said that any work can be a masterpiece to someone. Whether I personally think my work is bad or not doesn’t really matter. That’s why I want to go out and meet the people who are looking for the kind of work I make.