This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
There's a YouTube channel where a Japanese woman living in Osaka shows the world her everyday life in English. It's called Gumi – daily life in Japan, and its stars are Gumi and her cat, Clover.
The channel's titles and descriptions are all in English, so many people in her own country may not have heard of her, though you may well have. And the audience is there: as of October 31, 2026, it had 255,000 subscribers, about a year and a half after it began.
Here we follow the channel's story in order, through what she herself has written in her descriptions and on the Posts tab. The numbers are this site's measurements, taken on October 31, 2026.
Who Is Gumi?
Her YouTube channel description is a very short self-introduction.
“I'm Gumi, a Japanese woman living in Osaka.”
The next line reads “Here, I'll be sharing my daily life in Japan” and that's about all she tells us there.
The channel was created on April 26, 2025, and its country setting is Japan. It appears that Gumi herself runs it. No agency or production company is named in the channel description or in the video descriptions, and the way to support her is her own Buy Me a Coffee page.
As of October 31, 2026, the channel had about 20.36 million total views and 71 public videos. None of the 71 is a Short; all of them are regular-length videos.
Every title and video description is written in English, and the audio language is set to English on all 71 videos. It seems fair to say the channel is made for viewers outside Japan, like you.
The only name she gives is Gumi. Our Japanese edition writes it グミ, but that reading is ours, and we found no case of her writing it in katakana.
We checked the channel description, the descriptions of all 71 videos, the Posts tab and her support page, and no real name appeared in any of them, so we can't say whether Gumi is her real name. That may be a small letdown.
Her age, on the other hand, she states plainly. The description of her August 23, 2025, video reads: “I celebrated my 31st birthday this August.” The birthday video published on August 26, 2026, has “I turned 32” in its description. So as of October 31, 2026, she is 32.
She has also written about her hometown. The description of her April 18, 2026, video reads “I visited my hometown Okayama with my family” and the video covers that trip back to Okayama, her first in three years.
Her First Video and “The Night I Quit My Job”: Year One
Her first video, published May 3, 2025, shows a morning on her day off. The description reads: “This is my very first upload, so I'm a bit nervous.”
Six days later, her second video came out with “The Night I Quit My Job” in its title. It's an omurice video from the night she left her previous job. In the description she writes, “I'll take a little time to rest, then do my best at the next one.”
In the description of her June 27, 2025, video she brought it up herself: she was living on non-regular work.
“I work as a non-permanent (temporary) employee in Japan.”
She went on: “Many non-regular workers here work full-time, and it's become a social issue.” That may be hard to picture from outside Japan.
On July 11, 2025, she posted a video of her morning routine as a woman working an office job in Osaka.
As of October 31, 2026, this video had about 1.3 million views, the third-highest number on the channel.
But her August 13, 2025, video announced “I Quit My Job After 3 Months” and reported that she had left after working about 3 months as temporary staff, until her contract ended.
As we read it, her first few months went onto the channel just as they happened: quitting, working again, quitting again.
Her Most-Watched Video: The 31st Birthday Episode
The most-watched video on the channel is the birthday video of August 23, 2025.
“I Just Turned 31 — No Job, No Friends, No Boyfriend… But I Love My Life” is what the title says. That's three things she said she didn't have that August, then a single “But” turns it around.
This one video accounts for about 5.02 million views as of October 31, 2026, roughly a quarter of the combined views of the 71 public videos.
In second place is the payday video published one week later, with about 2.27 million views as of October 31, 2026. It's the one with “31-Year-Old Japanese Woman” in the title. As of October 31, 2026, these two and the morning routine video mentioned earlier are the only three above 1 million views.
She wrote at more length about not having friends in the description of a July 20, 2025, video: “I had friends when I was a student, but as I grew older, I realized they were no longer around.” She goes on: “But I don't feel lonely.” Enjoying things on your own, she explains, is widely accepted in Japan.
Then she adds, “And I have a cat I love and a caring family.” To us, that follow-up may be the touch that feels most like this channel.
On January 17, 2026, she also published a video sharing her thoughts on marriage while saying she had no plans to marry.
Longer Videos and a Saturday 7 p.m. Japan Time Slot Through September 2026
The channel doesn't have many videos, but each one is long.
The median length of her first 10 videos was 11.7 minutes. For the most recent 10, through September 26, 2026, it was 24.6 minutes, more than double. The longest, including the Okinawa video, run into the 33-minute range.
The upload time is firmly set, too. Of the 57 videos from October 2025 through the September 26, 2026, video, 52 went out on a Saturday at around 7 p.m. Japan time. Of the other five, the December 25, 2025, video came out on a Thursday. Its description notes “I usually upload on Saturdays” and calls the video a Christmas gift.
The videos center on cooking, shopping and time with her cat. Many of the descriptions give the ingredients and steps for her dishes in English.
Oyakodon, tonkatsu, chicken nanban, mapo tofu: it's all home cooking, which may feel fresh if you're watching from outside Japan.
Some videos explain Japan from a Japanese point of view, such as “Why Japanese People Stay Slim” and a video on money-saving habits.
There are travel videos as well. Starting with Nara in November 2025, she went around the country in 2026 to Ohara in Kyoto, Fukuoka, Okinawa, Kagoshima and Beppu. In June 2026 there were also videos from Hanoi and Da Nang in Vietnam.
The name that keeps turning up in her descriptions is Clover, her cat. According to the description of her June 20, 2026, video, Clover is a boy who turned 15 on June 18. It's the video in which she makes him a special birthday meal.
Lines like “Well, I'm a superstar, so it can't be helped, meow” appear now and then in her descriptions, written as if in Clover's own voice.
She showed her home, too, in a video of September 5, 2026. According to its description, she has lived for 12 years in an apartment nearly 45 years old, and the rent is 65,000 yen a month. She lives there with her mother and Clover.
Her vlogs are full of time on her own, but she actually lives with family. Being on her own, in these vlogs, probably means not having friends or a boyfriend rather than living by herself.
In her May 9, 2026, video she looks back on the things she's glad she did in her 20s. The chapters list Various Jobs, Reading, Programming, Travel, Cooking, Writing, Investing & Saving and Video Creation. We have not looked at the content of the videos themselves.
The Silver Play Button, the One-Year Mark and a Break From October
The description of her October 18, 2025, video says she had received the Silver Play Button a few weeks earlier. That's the award YouTube gives at 100,000 subscribers. She got there in under six months from her first video.
The line “Clover doesn't seem interested in the Silver Play Button at all” made it into her post about the award, so we know how the cat took it, too.
Her January 10, 2026, video introduces italki, an online language-lesson service. The description includes a discount code, and the video seems to include her taking English conversation lessons.
At the one-year mark, she wrote on the Posts tab: “I uploaded my first video on May 3 last year.”
On August 15, 2026, she published a video looking back on the year since she quit her job.
In the description she thanks her viewers: “your kind messages and support have helped me through so many moments.”
Her support page on Buy Me a Coffee says donations go toward video production costs and treats for Clover. As of October 31, 2026, it showed 323 supporters.
But the September 26, 2026, video, on the start of fall, is the latest so far. As of October 31, 2026, nothing new has appeared since.
She explains why on the Posts tab, in a post that was labeled “3 weeks ago” when we looked on October 31, 2026.
“I'll be taking a break from posting videos for a while starting in October.”
She wrote that she wants time to find her own pace and take care of her health. She did not say how long the break will last.
The post ends on thanks “for always supporting us so warmly” with an “us” in it. We imagine that means the two of them, Gumi and Clover.
