Freelance Announcer Aika Kanda Discusses Unusual Stimulus Brought by Junior High School Entrance Exams

The whereabouts of comrades.

The day after being stimulated at cram school like that, I was fed up with conversations at elementary school like, “Did you watch that anime yesterday?” or “This stationery is cute, isn’t it?” It was boring. Before I knew it, I hardly talked to my elementary school friends anymore. Because I graduated in that state, I never contacted anyone later or was invited to a class reunion.

And now it’s finally time for junior high school entrance exams. Including me, all the kids from cram school passed their desired schools. Unlike elementary school, there are no graduation albums or contact lists. We probably won’t meet again in the future, but we were comrades who studied hard together while causing trouble. After achieving our goals, we disbanded, wearing different uniforms and attending schools in unfamiliar places. And then, six years later, thinking that we could compete as rivals in university entrance exams and continue to study hard, they seemed cool. Even without knowing each other’s contact information, I couldn’t help but feel connected in my heart.

Thus, I’ve lived a life with zero connections after elementary school friends and cram school friends. Even now, I often wonder how they’re doing, especially my cram school friends. Rumor has it that the class clown ended up with bad behavior after entering a prestigious junior high school. I heard he got expelled from the school he worked so hard to get into because he got involved with drugs, maybe marijuana or methamphetamine.

If there was a kid with such disruptive potential nearby, it’s no wonder they’d find regular elementary school stuff boring.

Kanda Aika / Born in 1980 in Kanagawa Prefecture. After graduating from the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Gakushuin University, she joined NHK as an announcer in 2003. She retired from NHK in 2012 and became a freelance announcer. Since then, she has been active mainly in variety shows and currently appears as the main MC on the daytime program “Pokapoka” (Fuji TV).

From the March 29, 2024 issue of FRIDAY