Hayato Sano:"Omusubi" - playing his first father role was "very difficult" - Realizing how amazing the heroine Kanna Kanna Hashimoto is, "I want to be a leader like her"

Hayato Sano plays Yoneda Shoya, the husband of the heroine Yui (Hashimoto) in the NHK Asadora drama "Omusubi " (General TV, Monday to Saturday 8:00 a.m. and others), starring actress Kanna Hashimoto . He talked about his thoughts on playing Shoya for about a year and his feelings about playing a father role for the first time.

◇ Confused about playing a father for the first time, "Shoya, this is going too far"

Shoya, played by Sano, once devoted himself to baseball with the goal of becoming a major leaguer, but gave up on the path to becoming a professional due to a shoulder injury. After that, he worked as an office worker at the company he was affiliated with, and eventually, inspired by the way Yui's father, Masato (Kitamura Yukiya), worked, he began studying to become a barber. He has now obtained a barber's license and works at Yui's family's Hair Salon Yoneda.

Regarding Shoya, whom he played for about a year, Sano said, "I started playing the character from his high school days, got married, had a child, and started a family...It was the first time I had the opportunity to play a character with such a wide age range, and it may sound like a cliché, but I felt like I was able to grow along with Shoya, and I was able to experience a wide range of emotions, so I was really grateful. I think that this was a meaningful work in my life as well."

This is his first time playing the role of a father. He said he enjoyed communicating with the child actor, but confessed, "Playing the role of a father was very difficult."

"When (Shoya's daughter) Hana was a baby and in elementary school, I think Shoya himself was feeling his way around as a father, so I thought it would be more realistic to have him not know anything about her, but as she became a middle schooler, I think it gradually became more difficult to interact with her. It was difficult to act while understanding those feelings. I imagined him conspiring with his mother and saying things like, 'Dad pisses me off!' (laughs)"

Shoya wholeheartedly supports Hana's dream of becoming a soccer player, but there is also a scene where he gets too enthusiastic about his training instructions and ends up apologizing to Hana.

"If I had a child, I would want to let him do what he likes, and I entered this world with the support of my parents, so I understand Shoya's feelings. I want to support my child with all my might so that he can live a life he is satisfied with, and I would like to gain various experiences so that I can teach my child. However, there were times when I thought, 'Shoya, you're going a bit too far, aren't you?' (laughs)."

◇ Highly praised Kanna Hashimoto for her leadership skills: "I learned a lot from her"

He has previously co-starred with the heroine, Hashimoto, who played his married wife, before "Omusubi," and they are also friends in private life.

Sano recalls, "I have friends who have appeared as heroines in Asadora , so when I asked them, 'How was it?' they said, ' Asadora are the toughest.' We were filming in Osaka, and I thought it would be quite tough for Kanna, so before filming started I was determined to do my best to support her. But she was such an amazing leader that I forgot about my worries."

"She brings lots of gifts to the set and has a really strong spirit of service. Even at Christmas events and wrap-up parties where the cameras aren't rolling, Kanna is the one who keeps things running. She gets the crowd going so well that she loses her voice the next day, and I was really overwhelmed by how amazing she is. It's not something that can be done very often."

Sano said he was reminded of how amazing Hashimoto is, and revealed, "I learned a lot from her. I'd like to be a leader in the future, and she has made it my goal to become a leader like her. Kanna is one year younger than me, but I learned a lot from her."

◇"Communicating through food" at the dinner table

When asked about the most memorable scene during the year-long filming, she smiled and said, "It's not exactly one scene, but it was the scene around the dinner table at the Yoneda house."

"The food supervisor prepared the food from scratch using ingredients and seasonings from Itoshima, so I was really looking forward to the dinner scenes. The food was so delicious that even after filming for the meal scenes was over, everyone kept eating. Sometimes they even skipped meals because of the scene. The family cast also got along really well, so I remember them chatting about trivial things over dinner. ' Omusubi' is a work that has food as its theme, but I feel like we also communicated through food."

Finally, she sent a message to the viewers, saying, "Yui will continue to connect people, just as her name suggests, until the very end. Everyone is moved by seeing Yui working hard, so even though the story has now ended, I hope that everyone watching will continue to live each day without regrets, with the feeling that 'you only live your life once'."

There is only one week left until the broadcast of "Omusubi". How will Yui and Shoya's story end? I want to watch until the end.