Interest
Ai Shinozaki Holds Press Conference with Cat
posted on by Eric Stimson
Ai Shinozaki, a popular gravure idol, and Naomi Watanabe, an actress and comedian, held a press conference on August 4 with Futenyan, the mascot of Y! Mobile, a Japanese telecommunications firm. Unlike Shinozaki and Watanabe, Futenyan is a cat, and he has starred in a series of popular commercials that play off of his gruff, blunt and lazy personality.
The press conference promoted Futenyan's new book, Futesugite, Natsu (roughly "Overly Blunt Summer"), a photo collection of the cat in various comical or cute poses. Futenyan is somewhat perverted, so the women both appeared in sexy cat outfits and practiced gravure poses with watermelons in imitation of one of his photos. He apparently prefers Shinozaki, considering how much he stared at her during the conference ("her breasts... are close," he explained). Futenyan claimed to be "ashamed" of the book, given that he is stark naked in all of the photos, although he admitted that its "casualness fits with the times."
The book and conference mark Futenyan's one-year anniversary, so at the end a birthday cake was rolled out to honor the occasion. A Futenyan LINE stamp was also unveiled, although the cat muttered that it didn't look like him.
Futenyan also declared that his rival was "the white dog," referring to a mascot of SoftBank, the telecommunications corporation that owns Y! Mobile.
One of Futenyan's commercials, playing off the similarity between momi ("rubbing") and komi ("including," in this case phone charges)
Shinozaki has appeared in several guises lately, including Great Mazinger at the International Tokyo Toy Show and a nurse in a campaign for male-pattern hair loss clinics.
[Via Ovo]
