Ôrei leaves the idol business. Maybe.

I know I'm a bit late on this, but sad news for Harada Ôrei fans if you hadn't already heard: it seems she has decided that enough is enough and announced her retirement on her blog at the end of March. By the time I got wind of this, her blog had already been taken down, the Internet Wayback Machine proved fruitless, and I am relying on Japanese Wikipedia, but, as we all know, Wikipedia does not exactly have a sterling reputation for accuracy, but let's face it... who the hell in their right mind is going to vandalize a page about a extremely minor model?

In any case, she apparently hasn't left the entertainment industry: she mentioned she would be interested in working as talent, but there are already enough of these brainless "celebrities" on Japanese TV, so she might have a hard time fitting into the already crowded TV scene. Personally, I think she had a good gig with her niche modelling, but bigger aspirations, I suppose.

On a personal note, I hope comes back to modelling (I've only seen her once on TV), but I wish her the best of luck in whatever she tries.