Actress Airi Taira appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which aired on February 27th. Though she has been in the entertainment industry for 27 years, this was her first appearance on the show. Upon entering the show, she burst into tears, telling Kuroyanagi, "I'm so thrilled to meet you." She then spoke about her memories of her parents, what inspired her to enter the entertainment industry, and the secret to her happy marriage with her husband, Japan national soccer team player Yuto Nagatomo.
Having grown up in a large family with six siblings in Hyogo Prefecture, when he moved to Tokyo at the age of 14, he was homesick and cried every day for about three months. His mother gave him two notebooks, saying, "If there's anything you want to talk to someone about, don't tell anyone, write it in this notebook." They exchanged notebooks every time his mother came to Tokyo, and he says, "I wrote down my thoughts in the notebook as if I was talking to someone."
Her mother did her best to raise her six siblings. "I was the only girl growing up with two older brothers and two younger brothers, so my mother would tell me, 'When Airi gets married one day, her name will change, so you (her older brothers and younger brothers) have to take good care of her.' My father always told me, 'Don't worry, I've got you.' She felt the same way about her husband, knowing that with him she would have nothing to worry about. When she got married, her mother told her, 'Marry only when you feel that he is the one, even if it means giving up your own life.' She revealed that she was attracted to Nagatomo because he resembled her father.
She liked sweepstakes, and as a result, she decided to try auditioning to enter the entertainment industry, so she asked her mother to "submit it for me." "I received a notice that I was accepted," she says. Her mother had wanted to be an entertainer, and auditioned for shows like "Star Tanjo!" Her mother told her, "I spent money on lessons and other things but I couldn't become an entertainer, but you did it with just the postage you paid for the application."
She says the secret to a happy marriage is "talking about everything." Her husband is always concerned about her every day, even when he's away on a business trip. "I tell him everything in real life, like, 'This is the situation right now,' or 'The kids are having a hard time,'" she said with a smile.
