"I've been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember," Kentaro Kobayashi said when I asked him how he came to be such a versatile and popular entertainer.

Sporting a smart white shirt, the good-looking Yokohama native went on to explain that he wasn't very good at school, but he "always worked hard in art lessons and loved writing stories."

"And now," the 41-year-old continued with a beaming smile, "I'm doing as my job exactly what I was doing to make my family and friends happy when I was 4 — creating stories and performing them with my art works."