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The story
Singer Ayaka Hirahara (42) revealed on her Instagram that whenever someone asks her age, she answers “28.” Her post explaining that she lost 7 kilograms by “convincing her brain” drew a mix of shock and cool skepticism on 5channel, while also sparking a wider debate: “Why does anyone ask your age in the first place?”
Mon 8/24, 11:40 AM
Singer Ayaka Hirahara updated her Instagram on the 24th, writing about why she answers “28” when asked her age. Fans responded with comments like “Amazing!” and “You look so beautiful!”
Sharing a recent photo of herself, Hirahara wrote, “Since the start of this year, whenever someone asks my age, I’ve made a point of answering ’28.’” She continued, “Most people who hear that scoff at me at first — she literally wrote ‘laughed at with my nose,’ oddly using the English word ‘nose’ instead of the normal Japanese phrase. But that’s fine, that’s fine, because it’s helped me lose 7 kilograms. It’s all about convincing your brain — making yourself become who you want to be.” She went on: “I’m grateful every day to this heart and body that keep working to keep me alive. There are days I get hurt or feel pathetic and hate myself, but life is far too short to spend it grieving. That’s exactly why I want to say I like what I like, and why I want to take whatever hurts me, hold it close, and burn away its rotten roots with my own flame. I want to live with kindness and love toward others.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
And Misia, who took over as the theme singer for 'Darwin' after Hirahara, is 48.
Classic Kaori Momoi.
I bet she'd say it in that drawn-out voice of hers — "onnnce you're pahhhst fooortyyy~" (mimicking Momoi's famously affected speaking style).
Yeah, they used the piece without any regard for the wishes of his surviving family.
Didn't know there were still people out there speaking "Lou-go" (comedian Lou Oshiba's trademark habit of randomly sprinkling English words into Japanese sentences).
mindset really does matter, though.
If you eat high-calorie food thinking "this'll make me fat," it will.
But if you eat it thinking "this'll make me thin," you actually do lose weight.
Apparently phrasing it in the negative, like "I won't get fat," doesn't work.
You have to actually believe "I'll get thin," or it means nothing.
Tricky, huh.
not~ 28~ (´・ω・`)
Guess she looks up to Lou Oshiba (the comedian famous for randomly mixing English into his Japanese).
personally, what I can't forgive is how the morning drama "Ohisama" suddenly had it sung with lyrics near the end.
Is there really anyone who enjoys talking about age?
Must be an unimaginative idiot, or someone trying to flex on you.
Either way, they're the enemy.
That's because Japanese people judge others by age and title.
It's either the "How many years have you lived? Amazing you can still do that at your age!" pattern,
or the "How many years have you lived? Pathetic you still can't do that at your age" pattern.
People who don't want to be asked feel that way because they're embarrassed they haven't accomplished anything.
There are old men out there who are weirdly obsessed with other people's ages.
If that's the reasoning, 18 would've worked just as well.
Picking 28 — an age that could still plausibly pass — is kind of a cheap move.
There's no way that would pass, period.
A 42-year-old passing as 28 is absolutely impossible.
Even the most youthful beauty can only shave off about 10 years, tops.
Background and Key Points
Ayaka Hirahara, now 42, debuted in the early 2000s and remains best known for “Jupiter,” a Japanese-lyric setting of the “Jupiter” movement from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets.” That association explains several of the tangential jabs in the thread — commenters riffing on NHK’s long-running children’s program “Okaasan to Issho” (where she once appeared as a segment host) and grumbling about royalties from the Holst adaptation. Also worth knowing: Holst died in 1934, so the piece has long been in the public domain in Japan (life plus 70 years); the “Holst’s family sees no money” complaint, while emotionally resonant, isn’t a legal grievance.
The thread’s real split isn’t really about her age claim itself — almost nobody argued 42 could plausibly pass for 28 — but about whether the “convince your brain” mindset behind it is inspirational or delusional. One camp treated it as legitimate psychology (the idea that believing you’ll get thin changes eating behavior), while others dismissed the whole post as retouched-photo self-promotion. A second, more substantive thread of debate broke out over why Japanese social interaction fixates on age at all — posters tied it to a culture where age often determines speech register, hierarchy, and how achievement gets judged, rather than being idle curiosity.
One likely point of confusion for non-Japanese readers: her odd-looking “laughed at with my nose” line isn’t invented Konglish — “hana de warau” (鼻で笑う) is a completely ordinary Japanese idiom for “to scoff” or “sneer at.” The English “nose” in the translation is a literalism, not a quirk of her own writing, though several posters played along and mocked it as if she’d coined broken English herself, comedian-style.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (Entertainment/Sports News+ board) thread「Singer Ayaka Hirahara (42) Says She Tells People She’s ’28’ When Asked Her Age — Her Reasoning Wins Admiration」.
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