The long-running variety show "Shinkonsan Irasshai!" (ABC TV/TV Asahi, Sunday 12:55pm) hosted by Takashi Fujii and Sakura Inoue will celebrate its 55th anniversary on February 1st, with a couple who appeared on the show 26 years ago and are now "silver-weds," and their daughter and son-in-law, a newlywed couple, making up two generations of the family.
The couple appeared in "Ginkon-san" in April 2000 as newlyweds. They met when the husband visited an izakaya and fell in love at first sight with the wife, who was working there part-time. The husband gave her his phone number, and that night she called him saying, "Let's hang out." They went on two drive dates, but the timid husband couldn't do anything. On their third date, he mustered up the courage to park the car and suddenly make a move on her, but the wife burst into tears. The date turned out to be the parking lot of a fish shop near the wife's house.
They later got married and are now celebrating their silver wedding anniversary. They have been good friends for 26 years, traveling together once a month and playing tennis two or three times a week, and still spend most of their time together.
The road was not smooth. The most difficult part was giving birth. His wife had a chronic illness that caused her immune system to attack the baby in her womb. What's more, she was prone to blood clots, so a Caesarean section would be life-threatening for the mother. What happened then? This video introduces the story based on the memories of the couple.
The year was 1999. The couple was excited about their pregnancy, but the wife asked her husband, "If anything happens, I want you to help this baby rather than me." Although it would be a premature birth, they had planned for a natural birth at eight months pregnant, but the situation was dire, and the husband and wife's mother were called into a separate room.
The doctor said that if they performed a C-section immediately, the baby would be saved, but the wife didn't know this. If they waited for a natural birth, the baby's life would be at risk. The husband was asked which life to prioritize, but he couldn't choose. The wife's mother pleaded with him to "save our daughter," so he prioritized the mother and waited for her to go into labor, and miraculously, labor began. After 15 hours of labor, both mother and baby were safe.
Now, the newlyweds have grown up and are now their daughter.
The daughter had heard that the video of her parents' appearance was "a memory to cherish forever," and she had hoped to appear on the show when she got married. She was also touched by the story of her birth, saying, "They had been thinking about me even before I was born." Meanwhile, her husband had also heard this story from a relative, and it made him "want to cherish his wife even more."
The daughter first became conscious of marriage when she developed a mental illness due to stress at work and was unable to leave the house. Her husband would come and visit her on the weekends, buying her lots of her favorite sweets. "I love seeing you smile and laugh when you're eating something delicious, and I hope you get better soon," he said, and the daughter's mother was grateful for his wishes. Even when the daughter said "I think we should break up" after a minor argument, the mother vehemently stopped her, saying, "There's no one better than you, so you can't break up!"
With the support of their parents, the two married in February 2025. The daughter says that just like her parents, "we're together every day and we're very much in love," but that she can be a bit standoffish in front of her parents. So, when they filmed their daily life together, they burst into baby talk, and their parents were shocked to see their "extremely amateur newlywed life."
