Former TV TOKYO Announcer Miyu Iketani’s True Thoughts on “The Realities of Being an Announcer

I returned to Japan during the winter break of my graduate school and met with people from my old workplace for the first time in a long time. It warms my heart to see how grateful I am that there are people who remain friends with me even after I left the company for my own selfish reasons.

Seeing my old colleagues allows me to look back on the past and objectify myself. When I was working as an announcer, I had a lot of fun, but in fact, I spent my days with worries that I couldn’t tell anyone. I would like to take a break from my “Study Abroad Diary” during the winter break and write honestly about my announcer days in this column.

You are not sexy enough.”

What do you think announcers are like?　The way we perceive the profession of station announcer varies widely, even among those who are in the profession. Looking back, when I first joined the company, I was often told that the right thing to do was to be a “royal road announcer” with good technical skills, integrity, and good conduct.

However, the world is not that simple.

When I was a newcomer, a male announcer from another station told me, “You are not sexy enough. I was often evaluated in areas other than technique. When I first joined the company and covered a news program, footage of me eating a fried chicken stick was cut out by viewers and put on social media with an obscene catchphrase. The footage had more of a reaction on social networking sites than any of my tweets. Bouncing, running, eating sticks. These behaviors were often clipped and posted on social networking sites and summary sites.

It was very hard, but I couldn’t say, “I can’t eat sticks because it’s obscene,” and above all, I was always taught in various places that I shouldn’t mistake myself for a celebrity. I didn’t want to be thought of as a celebrity, even though I was a company employee.

Regardless of how you feel about yourself, the reality is that you are treated in a way that is clearly different from a company employee. I was teased by a weekly magazine that I was “surprisingly flamboyant in my private life” when it reported that I was going to karaoke with my classmates on Christmas Day. When I was caught on a normal date, as ordinary company employees do on their days off, I had to apologize for the inconvenience.

I am a company employee, but I am not a company employee. I always felt that kind of frustration.

I must admit that the reason I continued to work as an announcer was that, as a person who likes to show off, I had the advantage of “being able to appear on TV as a company employee, receive a steady salary without being influenced by popularity, and if I was lucky, gain name recognition. If I was lucky, I could get publicity. I had that kind of greed.

I tried to find the best position for myself and played it well so that I would fit within the ideal image that the public somehow demanded of a female announcer, and so that I would not be called a “you’re a female announcer,” while successfully hiding my desire for self-expression and being a person worthy of that role.

At the time, I thought that being well-liked was the most important thing for an announcer. Drinking with the great people of my company was more pressure than work. I would not say anything strange. When pouring beer, make sure the label is on top. If the glass is empty, ask for it right away. I tried my best to do what was expected of me as an announcer, thinking, “I have to be liked here,” and “If they don’t like me, I won’t get the job,” but I was so desperate that I couldn’t get into the conversation at all, and on the cab ride home I was depressed, thinking, “I didn’t do well today either, I was depressed and blamed myself for not doing well in the taxi on the way home. I thought I was not suited to be an announcer.

A Near-Death Experience That Changed Me

Then one day, I stopped trying to be an announcer.

I had an experience similar to a near-death experience when I was given laughing anesthesia at the dentist’s office because it didn’t fit my body. Maybe it wasn’t really a big deal, but I really thought, “Oh, I’m going to die. What I saw like a running light at that time was not my popularity as an announcer or the number of followers on social networking sites, which should have occupied most of my mind at that time, but my family, friends, and “what I want to do more”.

Since that day, I vowed to stop obsessing about being an announcer, and to stop acting like myself in order to be liked by others. Of course, there are many wonderful people who fit the ideal image of an announcer without any pretense. I envy them very much, but I am not one of them. After my “near-death experience,” I was able to give it up once and for all.

After I lost my strength, I could think “I don’t need to pretend to be someone I’m not to be liked,” even though it may be wrong to do so as a member of society, and “I don’t need to be liked by everyone” on social networking sites, not out of strength but from the bottom of my heart.

It may have been a negative for the company, but …… eventually the “royal announcer” hurdle for me was lowered, and my boss was grateful to accept me “as I am” and “as I have to be”. I met more and more bosses who accepted me as I was, and I met kind co-hosts who said, “Just be yourself, Ikeya. It was 50 times more comfortable to be called a monster than to be expected to do something as a royal announcer. I sometimes feel sorry that such a person entered TV Tokyo by mistake.

So, I don’t really know how to summarize it, but I tried to write about my troubles as an announcer without being able to summarize them.

I sincerely respect all the announcers, including my former colleagues, who are working day after day without showing it, even though they are in a difficult position with their problems, and I really don’t know from where I stand, but I wish them the best.

The paid version of “FRIDAY GOLD” carries the first six installments of “Female Graduate Student Miyu Iketani’s ‘Unusual Study Abroad'”. We will deliver her unusual real voice, including her reasons for studying abroad in China and the culture shock she experienced.