AKB48 “super carnivore” Rino Sashihara’s fans are as ardent as ever, with a strawberry farmer’s confession that he has to employ an assistant to separate all his thousands of votes from their accompanying CDs still managing to provoke awe online.
A 42-year-old AKB48 fan and strawberry farmer was apparently responsible for over 3% of the 150,570 votes which saw Sashihara elected in 2013 and is vowing to see her to victory in 2014 as well.
He cagey about his election budget for 2014 (perhaps fearing to provoke competing fans), but says he plans to buy at least 4600 votes, and will be employing a drudge to undertake the grueling work of separating the vote coupons from the worthless CDs.
The actual work of casting the votes for Sashihara is too important to be left to any underlings it would seem, judging from his comments to journalists:
“This here is a bundle of voting tickets. Whenever I go out, I always have them with me. There are about 500 here.
Any spare moment I get I cast a vote with my phone.
It takes quite a bit of time to enter the serial number for each vote into the site, in total I am spending about ¥9,000,000 a year on Sashihara!”
He is unperturbed by the scandal surrounding “super carnivore” Sashihara, though his investment seems not to have borne the same returns either.
Even more amazingly, he is in fact married and has two children – and his wife apparently puts up with his antics, as he is only squandering the personal savings he accumulated prior to his marriage.
She does however restrict him to a ¥30,000 allowance when it comes to the money he earns now.
Aside from voting he also reports enjoying handshaking events, having used 869 tickets at one time – with each ticket granting a total of 3 seconds of time with his favourite idol.
The 40 minutes he was able to spend chatting with her were spent “talking about nothing much at all,” he says.
Online there is increasing wonderment at how Japan’s national idols can carry on with such a surreal and increasingly controversial spectacle:
“Creepy.”
“Give the money to her!”
“What will he do when she weds…”
“Spend it on your own wife you fool.”
“What trash… blowing all your savings on this and not your kids?”
“Unbelievable his family puts up with this. Is he beating them or what?”
“People who invest this much in their weird hobbies are what keep the economy turning over!”
“He could have built a house with the money he spent on her he says, and all he did was buy a bunch of worthless CDs and have a meaningless chat with her when he met her. How can you respond to this?”
“CDs are kind of immaterial now, aren’t they?”
“Strawberry farmers make that much!?”
“Farmers are total fatcats aren’t they? Hit them with the TPP!”
“To think this guy is being subsidised with our taxes…”
“What a waste of time, money and resources.”
“Idols have been around a long time, but this new business model is really terrifying…”
“How about you make it one man one vote!”
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Only in Japan can someone be proud of spending $87770(9 million yen) on CDs, just to vote for an idol. AKB48 are disgusting, they're exploiting people with clear issues, granted I would imagine most of these people spending ridiculous amounts of money are single salary men but these people need to acknowledge they have a problem. The man is 42 and is spending all his cash on voting. Sad doesn't begin to describe it, I feel sorry for him if anything and people like him.
The sooner AKB48 are gone from Japan the better, though I fear another idol group set up to exploit people like him will be set up and the whole process will repeat.
well, you don't know if he's spending "All" his morney or not. he could be super rich somehow and have spare money after all this...
"All" his money or not*
Money* not morney. dumb typo.
Super carnivore or super D ass ?!!
Remember it's not the girls themselves. They're just trying to be performers like all young people dream of at one point. Some may be aware of their complicity, but think of what you knew of the world around you at that age to know any better.
The girls are compliant in it. Compliancy implies they're no better. Nothing stopping people from shunning the practice or walking away from the position, they don't. They're happy to accept the situation they're in and the fact people are spending ridiculous amounts of money.
I'm sure So many others in this world would be happy to be famous, or at least popular, and have people spend money on you or for you.
"The girls are compliant in it"
and so is the man who spend ¥9,000,000
@ Anon 10:59
How much of the money that you sanctimoniously pretend goes to the actual performers do you think they get? They actually work pretty damn hard and are pretty talented performers. I don't and won't listen to their music, but there is a ton of sacrifice to being a performer and perpetually being judged. It's why many of them seem so crazy to us.
Yes the girls are compliant, because what's the alternative for them? They don't know about the back end crazy shit going on. And in the end, it really isn't their fault that stupid people do this stuff. It's just capitalism. They put forward a voting system and people spend unbelievable amounts on it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the girls, it's the people who think this is somehow worth it. Blame stupidity.
Point being, you think the girls are innocent, they're not.
With that money I would rather buy a motorcycle and drive around the country, go on vacation to a beach resort...or go to high-end brothel and fulfill my desires...
I'd rather use the money to deflower all the AKB48 members hahaahaha while smoking a cigar and hell breaking loose.
You're assuming they're still virgins? Heh.
With that kind of money I can buy some more property.
With that money I could retire at 65 instead of 70.
As long as there are such fools, there will always be people to exploit them. This will never stop, even without AKB. It's not AKBs fault that some people are born without any common sense.
I admit that I am a single man who has some issues and I am just a few years below 30 but I will never spend a large sum of my savings on shit like this. I rather lose them in them stock market.
Well as the saying goes, a fool and his money is soon parted. If people are stupid enough to to pay about $90,000 on worthless CD's and just for 30 minutes of talking about nothing, He and people of his elk will soon go broke, not able to support AKB (or whatever their group name is). And they will go away, Sort of like Darwinism, only this time it deals with money and economics.
how exactly is it AKB48's fault that these morons are spending millions of yen on cds merely to vote for their favorite new girl?
It isn't AKB48 holding a gun to their head demanding they do such. It isn't some major popularity contest where the one who spends the most is the coolest.
I don't get why, instead of jumping on the bandwagon of hate against AKB48, Japanese men can't just say "no" to their idiotic urges.
If AKB48 falls because they don't get their money, so be it. Then they were never popular in the first place.
It's his hard-earned money (that he even earned before their marriage) and he can do with it what he wants.
Some buy cars costing 100.000s of $, yachts costing over 1million $ and he spends it on an idol he likes.
So what?
Btw. I bet his wife who most likely does not work at all spends plenty of his hard-earned money on garbage like super expensive hair stylists, jewelery, extravagant furniture, etc.
That and he must be so disappointed with his daily reality of being a married strawberry farmer that he is willing to spend that money to be with this "idol".
Burn the fucker, burn the idols, burn this disgusting system to the ground before it grows any more.
Can't say I like this system either but maybe you should start burning something or you are just a lazy hypocrit.
You don't get it, and I doubt you ever will. If you think it's normal to do what this man is doing, god help the world.
He's not saying whether he thinks it's Normal or not, he's saying the man has the right to use his own well earned money on whatever he likes.
He does, but he's also making assumptions about the mans wife to try and justify the mans abnormal behavior.
Well, I'm glad that at leas you're "normal". Enjoy your life hanging on Sankaku!
1st of all I never said I'm normal, nor did he say he was normal. He was saying the man has the freedom to buy what he wants and was giving examples of how people spend their money on other things like an expensive car or a yatch.
Maybe when YOU were reading it, YOU were thinking those examples were saying he's normal. No one's saying this is normal, it does seem pretty crazy, but it's his money. He can do what he wants with it, and it seems he has PLENTY of money since he even says he'd HIRE someone to open up the voting packs and get the tickets from it.
Damn Pirate King, Rage much. At least if the wife is doing all of that stuff your just imagining at least you can sale off about 90% the shit she's buying and make a semi decent profit. But your right about the fact that it is his money, and he can do whatever he wants with it, even spend it on worthless CD's and handshaking events, in which he has nothing to show for it.
Fuck the wealthy. Noblesse Oblige, and every minute they keep forgetting that is a minute closer to their corpses being dragged through the street.
hey.. sashihara's hot. o.o
YOU FUCKING BLINDIE
Why don't they just set up some sort of kickstarter for each girl, and the one who raises more money wins?
Same shit, but at least it wouldn't generate that much trash for the environment.
probably some of the most expensive tail out there that aint giving you any...
I am spending about ¥9,000,000 a year on Sashihara!
that's 1,439.883.00 USD (today's rate)
nm, it is "87813.44521 USD"... no wonder it sounded very off.
Google, when copy/pasting ¥9,000,000 , was converting it to Chinese currency rather than Japanese.
"I am spending about ¥9,000,000 a year on Sashihara!”
She probably let him fuck her if he gave her the money directly.
He could have an entire harem of enjou kosai girls for that price.
Are we absolutely sure she didn't?
So..."instead of giving me the money, use it to buy CDs and vote for me, that way I'll win the election, that will be more profitable".
Makes sense to me.
lol
Sad world is Sad.
They should just sale the tickets stand alone. That way less trash would be created.
But then they wouldn't be able to cheat their way through to number one CD sellers.
Because their other singles aren't number ones... oh, wait.
The US presidential election should be like this. That way no Democrat will ever get in office ever again.
Murricans don't even register for voting nowadays. Ask for money and you'll have an US president electect with less than 1000 votes.
Honestly, Japans Idols are the hardest working music artists in the industry of teh world, I can respect that, I can also respect love for an artist and their devotion, but buying so many votes is just plain unfair in my opinion, this is not voting anymore, it's just money making and no wonder USA claims they suffer from the unfair competition.
I don't care how much some people actually spend on their hobbies, but sometimes such amounts of money is better spent on helping those in real need than putting it on an idols account and literally pushing the popularity of such an idol.
This is no longer artistic expansion of ones talent.
It's money exploiters.
I just came here after watching a few episodes of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and I read this shitty farmer's comments with same manly tone.
OH GOD! THAT WAS SO FUCKING RIDICULOUSLY LAME!
YOU'RE FUCKING GAY FOR USING MANLY TONE
BECAUSE YOU SOUND LIKE A LITTLE GIRL, YOU FAG?
Wow that pic of rino is GORGEOUS
YOU'RE FUCKING BLIND