This was the burning question on my mind when I read the Welcome to the NHK! novel and saw what Tatsuhiko Takimoto had written in the second afterword. The Tokyopop edition translated his words as follows:

Several years have passed since I wrote, “I still will do my best after this.” I have not done my best. Proof of that is in the fact that I haven’t written a single new story. I’ve been reduced to a NEET, living as a parasite on the royalties from this book.

This afterword was written in 2005, three years after the novel’s original publication. Since then, Takimoto hasn’t penned any major works. He has published a smattering of short stories and serials in literary magazines and journals (among them Faust, which had two volumes published in English), but even Japanese readers refer to him as a one-hit wonder. So what is the author of Welcome to the NHK! doing these days?

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