Sakura, who was 23 at the time, recalled that whilst the other staff members were passing through immigration one after another, she alone was suddenly stopped. She was then subjected to a barrage of abuse from the immigration officer; the only thing she could make out was the phrase, ‘You’re 15, aren’t you?’. She desperately denied it, but her protests fell on deaf ears. “I was taken straight to a room crammed full of girls,” Sakura recalled, prompting a chorus of surprised “Eh?” from the studio audience and causing a commotion amongst everyone present.
Sakura went on to speculate, “It’s possible that the sort of overseas labour schemes that are now a hot topic were already a problem in the US back then.” However, she said she had been detained at the time without knowing why, and kept pleading repeatedly, ‘I’m really twenty-three!’ Eventually, she was released after showing the filming schedule still on her smartphone, though she had been held for about five hours. Finally, a photo taken immediately after her release was shown; seeing her smiling and jumping for joy, the studio erupted with laughter, exclaiming, ‘She looks so relieved!’
