On Jan. 14, 36-year-old comedian Sayaka Aoki made her last TV appearance before taking some time off to have a baby. The appearance was on Fuji TV's noontime variety show "Waratte Ii to mo" ("It's OK to laugh"), where she was a semiregular. The show's host, Tamori, placed his hands on Aoki's belly as a way of "praying for an auspicious birth," but it wasn't the first time contact had been made with her bulge. For more than a month prior to her "maternity leave," Aoki was letting everybody cop a feel. On another Fuji TV variety show, "Uchi Kuru," where she herself was the cohost, she even got young kabuki star Kantaro to lay his hands on her after she had pulled her pants down so that the baby bump would be more accessible. Kantaro didn't seem to know what to do so he simply did as he was told.

A pin (solo) comedian, Aoki made it on TV with an extroverted personality and looks that are considered not conventionally pretty. As such she is given license for crude exhibitions that include baring her butt when the occasion calls for it. And since such female stars are deemed unmarriagable in the peculiar world of television, her union with a notably unfamous dancer was topical for a time, but not as topical as her subsequent pregnancy, which she made the most of for as long as she could.

Her baby is due in February, which means as an on-air personality she worked longer in her condition than Fuji TV announcer Kyoko Sasaki, who also opted to continue working through her own pregnancy last spring. Sasaki, whose baby arrived in early May, took maternity leave on March 27. She wasn't subjected to all the groping that Aoki encouraged, but her circumstances nevertheless occasioned comments, and she tended to appear in front of a desk or podium instead of behind it so that we could see she was with child.