The long-running variety show "Shinkonsan Irasshai!" (ABC TV/TV Asahi, Sunday 12:55pm) hosted by Takashi Fujii and Sakura Inoue will feature Shota Ushirogami from the music unit Junretsu and Yui Yokoyama, former general manager of AKB48. They will talk about a "secret love" that even the Junretsu members didn't know about.
They met in 2023 at a Junretsu performance at Meijiza. Although they had previously appeared together on major music shows, they had only passed each other by. Yokoyama, who had the image of Junretsu as a "group of nice older guys," was surprised by Ushirogami's youth! He was 36 at the time, only six years younger than Yokoyama, and above all, his casual clothes made him look by far the youngest. Looking at the photo, it's easy to see why fans wouldn't recognize him on the street.
They had no particular contact during the show, but as the final performance approached, a series of coincidences brought the two closer. First, they attended a dinner party hosted by fellow performer Natsumi Ogawa. Then, an actress from the same agency as Junretsu approached former Junretsu member Hiroaki Iwanaga and Ushirogami, saying, "Let's go to another bar," and Ushirogami agreed, saying, "If Iwanaga wants to go," and the four of them went to karaoke, which brought them closer together.
While everyone was having fun drinking at the karaoke bar, Yokoyama frequently got up from his seat, and every time he returned he brought water in both hands, but never touched it. He said that he thought "if you drink the same amount of water as alcohol you won't get drunk," but he didn't remember carrying it, and in the end he just drank alcohol, leaving a lot of glasses on the table. Yokoyama later found out that Utogami was the one who drank them and cleared them away, and he said he had a "really good impression" of him. Meanwhile, Utogami also thought the contrast between his serious appearance and the fact that he was having fun and getting drunk was "cute."
The two exchanged contact information and began communicating frequently on LINE. "If you're replying at this rate, maybe we could call," Utogami suggested, and before they knew it, they had been talking on the phone for the first time, from midnight until around 4am. That day, Utogami was on location starting at 5am. In response to Utogami's old-fashioned joke, "I'll shave my head if I oversleep," Yokoyama, who was worried, received a beautiful photo on LINE with the caption, "I didn't have to shave my head. The rainbow is beautiful." Seeing it, Utogami was even more attracted to Utogami, who he thought was "someone who can find happiness in small things," and confessed his feelings. Their love continued to grow, and after a year of dating, the two got married.
When asked about the couple, Junretsu members commented, "It's quite moving that Utoue, who joined Junretsu in his early 20s, is marrying Yokoyama more than 10 years later." Leader Sakai Kazuki revealed that when he was single, he thought Utoue was "the type who couldn't love people," because "any girlfriend who would talk to me while watching a Giants game was no good." On the day of the wedding, he told Utoue's mother, "I'm glad for you," to which she replied, "She also has a heart for loving people," and they shook hands, saying, "I thought the same thing."
Furthermore, lead vocalist Yujiro Shirakawa expressed concern about Yui's marriage to Ushirogami, who snores, grinds his teeth, and sleeps badly. The leader says that Ushirogami sleeps like a "free-spirited baby," but apparently none of these things are a problem in their newlywed life, leading to the conclusion that sleeping side-by-side with the Junretsu members is stressful.
Now the two are living happily together every day. Ushirogami filmed Yokoyama cooking at home, showing a dinner table of rice cooked in a clay pot and homemade hamburger steaks. He also captured Yokoyama's unexpected carelessness as he dismissed the fact that he had forgotten to buy the bacon that was called for in the recipe by saying, "Oh well, it's okay."
At the end, Ushirogami, who said he had never properly proposed to Yokoyama, surprises her by revealing his first letter to her.
