Yui Kobayashi: Who better to begin a month off with?!!!!!!!

 

 Guess I should patent that 'Who better to....' intro before someone else does, wonder how much $$ I've lost by not doing it sooner?! But while this is the first post to be published for September actually wrote the second one up two days earlier, am writing this up in August and that feature of being able to set the times of when posts will be published has really helped me out the past year. That next post will be for the woman who was in the third position on my second "Top Twenty Faves of All Time" list which was done exactly three years ago. That's Miyuki with that next post she's still in that position which is quite impressive to me. On that list Yui finished in the sixth position though could have been two spots higher, right below her on the list was Yui's rival for who will be #1 on that next All Time list which I will do in a year. Bring those other two names up for I've never done three posts in a row for my all time top women no matter who they were at the time. September will begin off with two of them so a mini goal is for the third post to be for Akari who is about tied with Yui 😍 for being my number one woman, need to get in gear as I haven't even begun to work on her post and hope it can happen.

 August ended up being such a terrific month as I was finally able to do posts on a consistent basis, the second half of July was also very good for posts. What pleases me the most is that in these last seven weeks I've been able to do four posts for Yui and that hadn't happened since September/October 2022. As I've said numerous times there's no woman who I enjoy doing posts for more than Yui 😍 and been saying that for almost five years! Overall this is her tenth post for 2025 as she's made such a nice comeback after the long hiatus she took after graduating from Keya in February 2024 so sadly last year wasn't a banner one for me. However the tables have turned as I know there will be another post for her in about three weeks, then will have one for her October 23rd birthday and if one can be done in November that would make it a Baker's Dozen for the year! However that wouldn't be enough to propel Yui to being my #1 Queen of the year but should land her a spot in the top five. In 2022 she was my number one woman of the year, in 2023 she was third and even though 2024 was a down year she still ended up in the sixth position! So that's an impressive run and my early prediction is that she'll finish third or fourth on this year's faves list.

 Shame we'll probably never see photos such as the above again, only two Keya or Hina graduates have done any gravure modeling after their graduations. Not saying it's something an ex-Idol has to do but it's helped the careers out so much for a pair of Nogi alumni along with a few members of HKT and SKE. For now Yui is concentrating more on her musical career and she's had a solid start to that but it is tougher these days for a solo artist to make it big but I kind of prefer solo singers versus groups that have dozens of members. So while Yui has made a nice comeback with me this year and has helped to increase my enthusiasm again for blogging she still can't connect with those who visit here. She hasn't had a post get even 600 views since February 2024 which was her final one as a Keya member. Realize there hasn't been any new gravure photos but the posts are always superb and also quite large, Yui has never been hugely popular here but her posts at one time did garner so many more views and why hasn't she got any new fans?

 That's it for the gravure photos but if you're a Yui fan you will love this post as there's close to sixty new photos and about forty older ones that many reading this may have never seen before. So you can do the addition on those figures and though her fan base isn't too large here think she does have a solid core of them. I never care about things such as popularity when I do posts and hope that ignites a spark in her heart if she's reading this! First off are some of her final batch of Keya cards that came out in January 2024 but didn't post them for a few months. By that time the views for Yui's posts were rapidly dwindling so bet many have never laid eyes on these before, they're not regular Keya cards as they were released by her Seed and Flower agency.

 Yui's last post was done eleven days ago yet do have those sixty new photos and she's been quite busy promoting her first ever mini album. This next set are pics she's added to her IG page since August 21st and what a huge amount, you can see she's visited a few stores to promote the album. There's also two pics with an ex-Keya mate who is Fuyuka, second month in a row they're had some pics and she's been busy as a choreographer after her departure from Keya. The bottom pic is my fave though all are superb and four are from a mini concert yesterday for the new album. The first one is from Yui's fan club page, all of the items listed are at the site or will be very soon.

 What I wish Yui would do is open her own YT channel, she has said often in the past how she's a semi-loner who prefers spending nights by herself at home watching dramas or films. Bet a channel may help her shyness and make her become a bit more outgoing, a few other older Keya members are very similar to her. Yousti is the stage name she's using for her musical career, it's a combo of her name and Ostrich! August 27th was the release date for her first mini album which contains seven songs, there's two editions that have videos with them. I've heard a few of the songs which have such a dance vibe to them, by far the best song is "Fake-Perfect" and that video is on YT. Below are some covers and promo pics for the album which I hope does well so Yui can continue on as a singer for many more years. The advantage to being a solo musician is that you don't have to be as popular as a group is so even selling 20,000 copies of an album or single could be considered a success. A group such as Keya may sell 500,000 copies of a single but they have 25-30 members and the costs to run a group must be extremely high. After the pics is a short promo video for the single and it shows Yui filming videos for two songs. While she doesn't have her own personal YT channel there is one set up as Yousti for her music videos.

 

 Yui has done a few interviews to promote the album and to date don't know what the sales numbers are as far as copies sold goes. But do know on day one(August 27th) it sold the third most albums that day, then it dropped to 14th and 17th the next two days. Have the link to one of those interviews which is with the Rakuten site, the fabulous photos below are from the interview. I do like her new hair style quite a bit and how many remember way back in the Spring of 2020 when she had reddish hair for a drama role? If you're a Yui fan check out this interview as I thought it was the best of them, she wrote the lyrics to a few songs: Rakuten interview

 Yui has been a model for the andGirl site/magazine since March 2023 though when she took that hiatus after graduating from Keya she also didn't do any modeling for seven months. She had plenty of terrific new pics at their site in June and July but this is it from the last two or so weeks. andGirl does have many other models and one I've done a fair amount of posts for, will admit most of their models look more than oki-doki to me though it doesn't seem as though it'd be easy to do posts for most of them.

 Because of a lack of new modeling pics let's go back a few years and have an encore viewing of a pair of magazine spreads. Which are from With magazine, Yui was a model for them from late 2018 until June 2023 and I thought her classy photos for them rated an A++++!!!! Have two older spreads for the magazine which no longer prints regular issues and this first set is from their March 2020 edition.

 Second spread from With is from the next month or April 2020, don't know what others think but to me these kinds of photos are so tremendous. Yui hasn't had a regular mag spread since March 2024, at one time she appeared in more magazines than any other Keya member.

 We've hit the end and while Yui's posts take the longest to do because they're often so large I enjoy every second it takes to write them up! Could have made this even larger but want to have another post in about three weeks. On September 6th Yui will be at the first major Autumn 'Tokyo Girls Collection' show so hope to have some sizzling photos from that though her last few times attending one her attire was just so-so. Will end off with some truly stupendous photos and to promote her first ever solo album Yui held an event for it on August 27th and that was the day the album was released. I'm kind of bummed there was no video of the event but there is one after the photos where she discusses the album in a video. Of course these photos are simply amazing and think she's now moved back into being my number one woman of all time! 😍 Have another link and it's an even better one than the above interview as in this article Yui discusses many more things about her career, musical tastes and being with Keya for almost a decade. At the event fans could ask a question and those are what she pulled out of the box, the article discusses what the questions were and her answers: Real Sound interview