Kago Ai is back! Friday interview

- Kago's been working in the UFA offices since January 23rd.
- The photos of her on the street were taken while she was on her way to the office.
- She's working in the office because UFA wants her to get back some self-confidence, and to help her to start from scratch by learning about how the company works.
- The reporter was surprised that UFA let him meet Kago without any prior arrangement. Kago was quite nervous hearing that he comes from Friday (as they broke the news about her smoking incident in the first place. Interestingly enough, smoking, tobacco, etc., isn't mentioned in the interview part).

Interview tidbits:
"For that entire year, I haven't met my friends at all. I was scared to leave the house."
"At the beginning, I also had problems eating anything, and before I knew it, I had gone down from 47kg to 39kg"
"I didn't watch TV much. I saw Musume a few times, thinking "Ah, MoMusu. This is a new song"
"I didn't know much about household chores before, but being at home, I learned some cooking, cleaning and laundry. I started to like doing these."
"I'm cooking myself a lunchbox every day. When I come to the office, first I start with cleaning. My job is to serve tea to customers, and pick up the calls. I still have problems saying "Wait a minute, please" properly. (:D) Also, I'm studying kanji, reading newspapers and helping with searching information on the PC".
"When I was helping out backstage during the Yokohama Arena concert, I met with the members again. But as I lost weight, they had problems recognizing me. Even Nono passed by me without noticing. But everyone said, "Welcome back!" to me, so I was happy."
"Nono brought me a birthday cake, and we did the "Double U desu!" pose again after more than one year"
"I feel bad about how I betrayed the fans, especially the youngest ones. It still feels rough, even after one year. I lived by the motto, "Let things flow" until now, but I realized that doesn't work in the real world. My aim is to be positive and work hard from now on. I don't know when it will be possible, but I really want to sing again."

UFA's stand

"The last year's incident was very serious, so we had Kago stay in 'house arrest' in Nara for almost one year. We checked up on her to see if she had learned from it, and talked to her parents, and now we've allowed her to return to Tokyo. Fans and ordinary people might think we are underestimating this, but by observing her behavior and taking into account that she's already 19 years old, we decided to start preparing for her comeback. But as for exact dates or details, these are unsettled yet."

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