Next week is the last full week. NHK’s “Ama-chan.” Salarymen who leave before the morning broadcast and come home at night risk missing it. A secret just here: at Mainichi Building, from 12:45 to 12:59:59 in the lunch break, several uncles gather in a meeting-room corner and cling to a TV with the volume as low as it will go. It is a secret society called the Ama-chan Club, and a few look ready for “Ama-chan withdrawal.” (I can hear “that’s you,” but anyway.)
And I got the autograph of actress Kurashita Honami, who plays GMT5 (GMT6?) member “Kyan-chan,” Kyan Eren
(sorry — I just wanted to show off.)
How? A classmate’s father of my elementary-school child works in television and had her write quickly on a card between takes. I made no effort — 100 percent windfall — but the child danced Okinawa eisa at the spring sports day and researched the sinking of the school-evacuation ship Tsushima Maru from Okinawa for summer independent study, so the “Okinawa tie” made a big hit.
So I want to cheer Kurashita. Born 1993 in Okinawa; high-school club basketball; specialty Ryukyu dance; main films Hotel Hibiscus (2002, Nakae Yuji), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2009, same), Hydrangea and Buttercream (2012, Igawa Hiroo), and the NHK drama Tsurukame Maternity Clinic (2012). In third grade she won the lead Mieko from 3,100 at the Hotel Hibiscus audition and debuted on screen — quite something. More than ten years in the business. Not a sudden star.
In “Ama-chan,” Kyan-chan cheers everyone with “nankuru naisa~” (it’ll work out) and has a nice flavor. On the official site Kurashita herself writes:
“What I share with Kyan-chan is always zoning out (laugh). Even when the members chat between takes I drift off, miss the talk, and often get scolded by the leader (Matsuoka Mayu).”
Just as she looks.
And the autograph has flavor — the letters have her air too, don’t they look nice?