MaaDuu interviews Chii - Top Yell March 2013

Excerpts from Sato Masaki and Kudo Haruka's interview of Tokunaga Chinami  in the 10th instalment of their serialisation 'Maachan Kuduu no HaroPuro Senpai Tanboudan' in the magazine 'Top Yell'.

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Tokunaga: Maachan, you're good at English, aren't you? Chinami's been studying English, so I've really got an interest. How much can you speak?

Sato: Now, nothing at all. Even though I used to speak English normally ages ago.

--- Eh? The members of your family are Japanese, aren't they?

Sato: My family is all made up of Japanese people living in Japan. It seemed that it was just the education policy of the Sato household, where we'd just converse normally in English at home.

Tokunaga: So, you'd refer to your mother as 'mother' (in English)?

Sato: 'Mummy'. Like, 'I love you. Good night, mummy!' (in English)

Tokunaga: Eh, what!? Your pronunciation is really good! So you'd say things like 'Can I have more milk' or 'Buy that' in English too?

Sato: Of course I used it for everything. Even when we were talking during meals. We were living like normal Americans. But when I joined kindergarten, I entered giraffe [class], and this mixed-heritage person corrected my yellow as 'kiiro' (yellow in Japanese), when Masa said something like 'This tulip is yellow' (in English), they'd correct it one-by-one 'Kore ha, ki-i-ro' (That is ye-ll-ow).

[...]

Sato: I gradually stopped speaking English, and it seems that I said that I wanted to watch Japanese television. My father was saddened. 'If I knew this would happen, I wouldn't have put you in kindergarten.'

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Sato: Um... What is Tokunaga-san's favourite tree?

Tokunaga: Tree? If you're talking about strength, I guess I'd say the palm tree. The ones you find in Hawaii.

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Kudo: A question from me! Tokunaga-san, you recently cut your hair, what was the reason behind it? By the way, Tokunga-san's short cut was a topic of discussion at the Kudo household. Mama and Papa were speaking highly of it, 'Tokunaga-san's short cut, it's cute!' (laughs)

Tokunaga: Thank you (laughs). It was a recommendation by the staff-san at the time of our début. 'It's difficult to distinguish between you and Kumai (Yurina), so why don't you cut it?' Because it was important to make sure our faces would be memorable when we made our début. I always kept it short since then, but after our Saitama Super Arena concert had ended, I asked the staff-san if it was all right to grow it out, and then I grew it out. This time, I cut it short because, simply said, I got tired of long hair (laughs). Besides, Berryz Kobo has 5 people with long hair, and one person with a weird hairstyle...