Completion press conference of new movie "Honnouji Hotel"

The completion press conference of new movie "Honnouji Hotel" was held at APA Hotel & Resort Tokyo Bay Makuhari on 12 December which was attended by the director Suzuki Masayuki and cast members Ayase Haruka, Tsutsumi Shinichi, Hamada Gaku and Kazama Morio. The movie which will be shown in cinemas from 14 January 2017, features Ayase as the heroine Kuramoto Mayuko who goes to stay at Honnouji Hotel but accidentally goes back into time to meet various historical figures such as Oda Nobunaga (Tsutsumi) and only realises after a while that the day she had wandered back to was in 1582 and the day before "Honnouji no Hen" (the forced suicide of Oda by his samurai general Akechi Mitsuhide).

Ayase who is known for her unique sense of speaking in an innocent manner which makes people laugh, tried to explain what kind of movie this was but ended up confusing herself thus making her co-stars burst out laughing and tease her for her messy introduction. Tsutsumi related that when he was talking about the Tiananmen incident with Ayase and Hamada during a filming break in a serious manner, she suddenly asked them if they were talking about Tenyamon (mispronunciation of the name). Tsutsumi said that Ayase is an innocent person who doesn't have any thoughts while Hamada revealed that he had been very eager to meet Ayase today because he was wondering what she might say during the event and commented that there is nobody who dislikes her. Kazama also joined in to compliment Ayase for being a person who is not pretentious at all and even said things which were not typically heard from an actress e.g. telling people that she was having a stomach upset and felt wobbly like water. After hearing these remarks, Ayase laughed to say that although all these comments were supposed to praise her, she somehow felt that she was actually a strange person.

When asked who she would like to meet if she could travel back in time, Ayase chose Oda Nobunaga so that she could cheer him on as he fought to unite the country. As for Tsutsumi, he revealed that it had been 30 years since he last rode on a horse and he only had 1 hour to practise. Although it was very frightening to be riding a horse, he was glad to get a good horse so he was actually grinning while on horseback. However, the filming was done in Kyoto during summer where the highest temperature reached 37.9 degrees Celsius which made Ayase comment that they all had "droplets" on their foreheads. This led Tsutsumi to correct her that she should say that they were sweating so Ayase corrected her statement by saying that it should be "droplets of sweat" rather than just "droplets".

Sources: Nikkansports / Eiga.com / Sponichi / Oricon