Appearing on KBS's "Happy Together" on November 8 as a guest for SM special, BoA shared her ordeals that she went through as a rookie artist and what makes her jealous of artists today. She appeared on the variety show along with SHINee's Key, EXO's Baekhyun and Sehun, and NCT's Taeyong and Jaehyun.
Considered to be a pioneer of the K-pop wave in Japan following her blockbuster debut in 2001, BoA attained tremendous success and paved the way for a generation of K-pop artists and cult. However, BoA explains that it was not a simple journey and shared her experiences as a novice in the industry with little assistance.
Boa stated that "The factor that makes me actually envious once I see junior artists these days is that once they go to Japan, they have rented vehicles and a supervisor". She explained to host Yoo Jae Suk that she did not have such luxury and added that, "There was additionally an absence of workers so I went on my very own to Tokyo from the airport" mentioning that she took the airport train service called Skyliner on her own as she could not afford to take a cab and used the bus and subway frequently.
BoA further added that artists nowadays go to Japan with interpreters while she had to manage interviews without an interpreter. "My manager next to me would help me a bit, but the interesting thing is that since I was young and the questions and answers were quite similar, I ended up memorizing them", quipped BoA. Although she managed to learn Japanese in the process, artists who followed her were given interpreters which BoA said made her envious.
BoA also expressed her struggle to withdraw money from an ATM which was written in Kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese writing). Nowadays, all ATMs feature Korean language making the lives of Koreans easier while travelling to Japan.
