Ina Ehara is on the cover of Friday again. That’s her ninth time, which is now the record for the magazine.
The September 4 issue is being sold as the peak of her “mature Ehara” era. She’s 28, out of the pastel-bikini phase, and this shoot is supposed to show maximum sex appeal. It was done in a Tokyo studio, but she said the lighting and white walls made it feel like Santorini. Her favorite shot is a revealing one-piece with denim.
Ehara’s never been the quiet, polished gravure type. She’s from Kansai, posts herself destroying ramen and yakiniku, and has a whole side hustle of drunk karaoke videos that earned her the nickname Yoihara. She’ll upload them while still wasted and just hope nothing too embarrassing made it in. She started singing at three, standing on the counter of her grandmother’s snack bar doing enka.
She also just made her acting debut. In June she appeared in the Netflix live-action of Kenka Dokugaku (Viral Hit) as a classmate who bullies the main character. She was the only complete amateur on set and spent a lot of time thinking she didn’t belong there. Standard Japanese intonation was a problem; she even asked them to rewrite her as a Kansai transfer student. They said no.
Next target is music. She’s practicing on DJ gear and wants to debut as a singer. A fortune-teller friend told her that by 2028 she’ll be touring overseas, making double her current money, and living in a luxury apartment. Ehara seems to be taking that as a plan.
Ninth Friday cover, Netflix credit, drunk karaoke fame, and now she’s talking about going global as a singer. She’s not treating gravure like a holding pattern.