This season's Netflix dating reality show has a judge who's a little different from the usual lineup. She's not sitting at a safe distance critiquing contestants' romantic choices — because her own life has already been far more harrowing than anything happening on set, including a time she had to crawl on the floor with her infant daughter in her arms to dodge gunfire outside her home.
This new addition to the MC panel is Japan's hip-hop queen, Awich. Show producer and host MEGUMI praised her for "really understanding troubled kids," able to read the psychology behind contestants' behavior and words. Awich herself describes her role on the show as being "the voice for society's outsiders." It sounds like a line straight out of a press kit, but stack it up against her actual life story and it's not an exaggeration at all.
From Okinawa to America — a Journey at 19 That Led Her to Her Husband
Awich was born in Okinawa and attended English classes at a U.S. military base as a kid. She discovered 2Pac at 14 and fell in love with hip-hop, writing lyrics through her teens before moving to the U.S. alone at 19 to study. What started as chasing a music dream turned into meeting her future husband — the two married and had a daughter, Toyomi. Life afterward was anything but peaceful: her husband was incarcerated multiple times, once for eight years straight. Their home was even shot at while their daughter was still an infant, forcing Awich to crawl across the floor to pull the baby off the bed and out of the line of fire.
In 2011, she returned to Japan temporarily — and her husband was shot and killed at close range in the U.S. It took her roughly two years to climb out of a place where she genuinely felt "it wouldn't matter if I died too," until she went back and reread the lyrics she'd written years earlier. During arguments before his death, her husband would always tell her to "keep singing" — that phrase eventually became her reason to pick up the mic again. Something her father said also stuck with her: "Everyone in Okinawa has lost someone important. You're not the only one."
From Budokan to "777," Music Is How She Makes Sense of Her Life
After returning to the stage, Awich dropped her album "Queendom" in 2022, appeared on "THE FIRST TAKE," and in recent years has headlined her own solo show at Nippon Budokan, all while staying vocal on social issues like women's rights. This past July, she teamed up with ONE OK ROCK, CHICO CARLITO, and Paledusk to form the project "YAO," releasing the single "777," which blends hip-hop, rock, and metal into one sound — described by fans as "unexpectedly hard as hell."
These experiences are exactly what set her apart from MEGUMI and Naganoin on Terrace House Aloha State 2. She's not someone watching from the sidelines, commenting on other people's mistakes — she's someone who genuinely lost herself once, and genuinely found her own way back out.
