Fumiya Takahashi , who is appearing in the NHK morning drama " Anpan " (General Asadora , Monday to Saturday 8:00 a.m. and others) starring Mio Imada . Takahashi, who plays Kentaro Karashima , a classmate of Takashi ( Takumi Kitamura ) from Tokyo Higher School of the Arts, talked about his feelings about appearing in a Asadora for the first time and how he prepared for the role.
"Anpan" is based on the married couple Takashi Yanase(1919-2013) and Noriyuki Yanase (1918-1993). It is a "story of love and courage" that will make you feel the joy of living, depicting how the two met, overcame all sorts of rough seas, and arrived at "Anpanman", the embodiment of "unreversible justice."
This is Takahashi's first appearance in a Asadora. Regarding the reaction since it started airing, he said, "A Asadora has always been one of my goals, so I'm very happy to be able to appear in it. I've received a lot of positive feedback. It seems that the seniors who I work with on variety shows are also watching it, and every time we meet they ask me, 'Are you baking Anpan?' and I reply, 'I don't bake them,' and we do that bit every week."
Kentaro, played by Takahashi, is a classmate of Takashi at Tokyo Higher School of the Arts and hails from Fukuoka. He is a true friend to Takashi, who had no friends when he was younger.
"When you imagine a straightforward and honest boy, I think Kentaro is right in the middle of that. Thanks to his dialect, he's a character that is very cute, so I'm trying to be conscious of not coming off as too cunning when I play him."
He said that the Hakata dialect was difficult to use when playing the role of Kentaro, revealing, "At first, even when I read the script, I didn't understand what was being said, and my brain and tongue couldn't keep up."
"Now, I feel like I'm finally getting to the point where when I read the words, the sounds come to my head. However, when I get really into the mood of a performance, I sometimes forget the dialect. In Hakata dialect, the end of a sentence often goes up, but when I want to say something sad and lower the tone, it can be difficult when I have to raise the tone... At times like that, my dialect instructor suggests a different way of saying it, so I feel at ease and she always helps me out."
