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（英会話リスニングスクリプト）
On a boiling hot day in August, outside
a theatre in the Ginza district of Tokyo, hundreds of women
and girls are waiting to see their hero.
A short-haired woman, wearing sunglasses
and a baseball hat walks through the crowd.
"Oh, she's so handsome," says
one elderly woman as Fubuki Takane, the newest Takarazuka
star, enters the theatre.
Founded in 1914, the revue is Japan's oldest
and only surviving female musical-theatre group.
The handsome "otoko-yaku" or women
playing men are a romantic female ideal of the perfect male.
Women start training when they are between
16 and 20 and, after a girl is selected to be an "otoko-yaku",
her hair is cut short and she starts learning how to speak,
walk and behave like men.
They often retire when they are in their
early thirties - if they get married before that, they have
to leave the revue.
Takarazuka stars don't earn much but they
can make big money from advertising and television when
they retire.
Some people think that Takarazuka is so
popular because the women think that the otoko-yaku are
better than real men; more romantic and considerate to women.
The average Takarazuka fan club member spends
about 250,000 yen a year on her hobby.
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