Yurie Omi

Yurie Omi (近江 友里恵)

is a Japanese former announcer and news anchor for NHK.

She left NHK in March 2021.

She was famous for being the co-host of NHK's morning talk show Asaichi as well as its geological television series Bura Tamori.

Omi was born in Kochi Prefecture, Japan and raised in Tokyo, Japan.

Her father is a police officer.

Her younger brother is a doctor.

The beginning of Omi's media experience was early.

At age 10, she joined Yomiuri Shimbun as a child journalist.

When she was a high school student, she won with teammates of the broadcasting club an award of the 52nd NHK Cup National High School Broadcasting Contest in 2005.

She was involved in researching school-related topics and writing short columns on the newspaper until she was an 11th grader.

Although her team members consisted of only those ranging from elementary school children to high school students, they did most of the tasks by themselves.

They faxed presentation papers to parties, made appointments with the people they needed to interview to get necessary information, and wrote whole stories about what they investigated.

During her membership, she interviewed Japanese tennis pro Kimiko Date and members of Shiki Theatre Company, one of Japan's most prominent musical troupes.

When she attended junior high school, she joined the school broadcasting club to try to improve her speech skills since she felt not being a good public speaker at that time.

Her experience in this club gave her the confidence to make a speech in public.

In March 2012, Omi received the bachelor's degree from Waseda University in Tokyo.

Her major was political science, and her researches included sport and city planning.

She studied at Public Policy Research Seminar, or PPRS, the laboratory run by Koichiro Agata.

Her university friends said that she was, far from a shallow wannabe anchorwoman, at the top of PPRS consisting of such students that were hoping to be big-name company employees or top-notch consultants.

Although she was a cheerleader of the university for the first year of her college life, she gave up the cheerleading activities because of her wish to focus on studying.

She traveled alone around Beijing, China for a month as she said she loved China and Chinese culture.

During college, Omi experienced an internship at TV-Asahi Ask Co. Ltd. She was an assistant presenter starring some TV news programs of Asahi Newstar news channel.

In April 2012, Omi was hired by NHK as Announcer.

After few months' training, she started her broadcasting career as an occasional reporter at NHK Kumamoto Broadcasting Station in Kumamoto, Japan.

In 2014, Omi moved to NHK Fukuoka Broadcasting Station in Fukuoka, Japan.

From the spring of 2015, she was an anchor of NHK Fukuoka's afternoon news show Rokuichi Fukuoka.

She also appeared as an occasional newscaster on NHK News airing at noon within the Kyushu area as well as the nationwide morning news show NHK News Ohayō Nippon and the evening news show News Watch 9.

On January 17, 2015, Omi made a trip to Tokyo to be an occasional anchor for that day's NHK News Ohayō Nippon.

She appeared in place of its main anchor Mayuko Wakuda, who was in Kobe for reporting the 20th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

In March 2016, Omi was appointed as the 4th assistant for NHK's geological program Bura Tamori hosted by Tamori.

The producer of this program called her to Arashiyama, Kyoto for the filming of her first episode of it, which aired on April 30, 2016.

Omi moved to Tokyo since she was officially relocated to NHK Tokyo Announcement Room in April 2016.

She served 65 episodes of Bura Tamori for two years from April 2016 to March 2018.

Her girlish looks and goofy, empty-minded behavior attracted some of its viewers and contributed to this program's higher viewership.

The highest viewership rate of all episodes is 16.0%, which was marked by the "Kyoto·Fushimi" episode aired on May 7, 2016.

In the "Yokosuka" episode of Bura Tamori (aired on June 18, 2016), Omi visited the Command Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture together with the co-host Tamori.

They went on board USS Ronald Reagan anchoring there to interview this aircraft carrier's crew members.

The weekly Shūkan Bunshun magazine nominated Omi the 15th most favorite female announcer in 2017 and the 9th most favorite one in 2018 based on reader's polls.

It introduced its reader's voices, saying, "Her goofiness is cute. Tamori and she look like a grandfather and a granddaughter," "She looks sincere," and "She looks pure."