Nao's top ten Faves for 2024: Position #6, the unsurpassed and overly irresistible.... Yui Kobayashi!!!!

 

Previous Positions

#10, Iori .... #9, Miyuki .... #8, Mio M .... #7, Konoka

 Whew, even if I live to be a thousand no photo will ever beat out that top one for being my #1 of all time and have been saying that for close to five years, whewwww again!!!! Of the ten positions this will be by far the toughest to write up as so little has happened with her this year so a lot of what I need to write is why she made the list. The reasons may sound a bit scatterbrained and/or loopy but bet most will understand what I'm trying to say. Which is perhaps think of a sport team such as Baseball, you often don't know who your MVP is until they're out with an injury or have moved on to another team. So while the shortstop on the team may not be the most popular or best player they hold the team together, when they don't play the team doesn't so nearly as well. In a way that describes my feelings with Yui 😍 as she was kind of my (last?)link with Keya and also the current world of J-Pop.

 Her February graduation did hurt me more than any other one though it wasn't a case of me thinking of throwing myself of a bridge(!) and hope others haven't thought that way with their #1 Idol leaving. After the departure realized how much Yui meant to me as far as following Keya goes who were my top J-Pop group for six years and as most know I still followed them closely after the name change to Sakura. But Yui was the main bond which kept me as a fan and though I do like the current members it's just not the same and rarely do posts for the group these days. So as I was saying about not knowing who an MVP of a team may be until a player is no longer around that was the case with Yui, it just wasn't about Keya but seemingly it affected the way I feel about the current world of J-Pop. On a side note of course I am getting older, these days I really don't care about twenty year old Idols and sure most have noticed that these days most posts are for women well over 25 in age.

 Sometimes your thoughts don't always translate well into words, to an extent that may have happened with what I wrote above but sure most can understand where I am coming from. After Yui left Keya at the beginning of February she didn't do much of anything for over six months and she only had two posts in a 6 1/2 month stretch. However just because you may not see posts for someone may not mean a lot for I checked every day hoping for Yui's 😍 return and while I knew there would be no news I just enjoy viewing her photos plus perhaps finding some older articles and pics I had ever seen before. So that's the main reason she made the list over others who may have seemed more deserving.

 About six weeks ago I did break down and confess that Yui 😍 was easily my all time #1 woman and had been for a few years. But on my 'Top Twenty Faves of All Time' list done in the Summer of 2022 I just placed her in the sixth position which is still very impressive. For some reason was a bit hesitant to call her my #1 though deep down knew she had been for a while. Will do the next list in the Summer of 2026, that is if me and this blog are still kicking, if all goes well between now and then can't see any reason why she wouldn't take the top spot....

 Did say in the beginning how the first photo of the post has been my all time favorite for many years, those two above aren't far behind! This will be one of the larger posts yet will contain the fewest current pics as there's only been three since her last post! When Yui made her comeback in September and October attending two huge fashion shows plus with some new modeling pics thought we'd be seeing much more of her but the opposite has happened and where is she? I have no clue and perhaps is waiting until 2025 to make her comeback a complete one and that's what I'm praying for. So the post for today will mainly be of pics from many years ago which actually is often a good thing. For many may have never seen the photos or have forgotten all about them. Do have some older things that had never been posted here, I'm thinking at least 25 photos plus Yui's posts have always been only so-so popular and hopefully this can gain her a few more fans....

 Before I begin repeating myself let's get on with things and though most pics will be older they should be new to most viewers. Yui's last post was done on October 30th, since then she's uploaded zero photos to her IG page but did have some sort of fan club event via video. As far as brand new pics go this is it(!) and are new ones from the andGirl site, she's been an on and off model with them since March 2023.

 At least those new modeling pics are so superb, especially the first one and she proves you don't need to dress skimpy to be ultra alluring 😍. Yui was a model for the With magazine up until May 2023, the gig stopped then for her and a Nogi member. While her pics for them were always stupendous I prefer her modeling pics for andGirl, here's some older ones from exactly one year ago and have a feeling many more terrific ones will be on the horizon.... least I'm hoping so....

 You wouldn't think so but Yui is a very quiet and shy woman, she has admitted to being that way a few times. On Keya's variety show she rarely would speak up but when asked a question or for an opinion would always have something funny and interesting to say, she just needs a bit of encouragement to speak up. There's nothing wrong with that and can relate to her as I'm that way also but use this Blog for my talking. It's not officially Winter yet but try telling that to the temperature(!) which gets below freezing every day and is there a woman in the world who can heat you up more than Yui?! 😍 Well, sure some will say YES but to me the answer is NO and below are some seasonal Keya cards, except for the ones she's wearing a tie these are ones that I said had never been posted before and sadly may not have any of them left.... hmmmm, upon checking there are some for Summer but that's a ways off....

 Of course pics for Christmas are needed too and have a huge batch of them below, most have been posted but five are brand new for here. Sigh, only had one request on my list(!) and guess what that was(?) though bet for the umpteenth year Santa did not think I was a good boy....

 

 After her February 1st graduation Yui wasn't seen again until September 7th and the huge 'Tokyo Girls Collection' show, then a month later she appeared at the Autumn 'Girls Award' show and at those looked utterly magnificent. 😍 There are none of those fashion shows the last two months of a year but from January to March there's usually four TGC shows. Then in May the Spring 'Girls Award' show is held so I hope we see Yui appear at two or hopefully more of those shows, don't want to see her vacation from activities last much longer for the public does have a short memory. Have some terrific photos below from the Spring 2018 GA show that was held on May 19th of that year, did do a post of the show but eight of the pics below weren't in that post.

 For those above pics Yui was 18 1/2 in age, didn't do her first solo post for another year and as they say the rest is history! One thing I have never checked on were if she had more than this for 'Saku Koi' pics, that's a simulated app dating game which began in the Summer of 2022 that's similar to the ones that Hina and Nogi already had. I hadn't thought of checking the site for new promo pics for this past year so will do that for her next post, I think the promo pics for all the Keya members were fabulous.

 There are a few other older things I could post which you've never seen here before but do have to hold a few things back for future posts. She's not far from having post #100 and that milestone is a rarity these days, what's impressive is that almost all of her posts have been solo ones such as this. Here's an ancient spread that I had only posted once before and that was way back in December 2017! So sure almost all reading this have never seen this spread or have forgotten about it, this super duper set is from the November 2017 edition of BLT Graph.

 The more I look at the above spread the more I realize how underrated it is, these days there aren't enough mag spreads for Keya, Hina or Nogi that look so good. A few months back made a comment about who would have thought five years ago who my top two women of all time would be or at least my top two since about 2016. Of course Yui is one and as most know before I anointed her as my#1 Queen 😍 that honor had been bestowed upon Risa, in a way you could call her my #1B Queen. Another enigma is what has happened to her, she hasn't appeared at an event since May plus the only modeling work this year has been for Non-no and what has she been up to???? That I will work on finding out but have a feeling the answer will be nothing, will talk about her by the end of the year. So what an ultimate pairing the duo make and they have had 3-4 spreads together, here's one from the April 2018 issue of Bubka and they've also been the cover girls together one other time.

 There's been about 95 pics up until now so will end things here, hope I proved why she deserved such a solid position on the fave's list even though 2024 was not a busy year for her. Of course will end off with some truly dazzling pics of Yui 😍, I can never get tired of viewing these and we truly need new adjectives for her level of perfection!!!! Of course there's no new videos so after the pics is one from 2020 and though I have posted it before it deserves to be seen again. I think Yui is a decent actress and would like to see her in some shows, back in 2020 she was in four episodes of the "Joshi Kousei no Mudazuka" series, she played a snobbish transfer student named Lily. That was such a fun show and don't know why I didn't recap the entire series, the video below has some of her highlights from the show and will confess I really liked her hair color which she did keep for a while.