Professor Yamanobe is a teacher at Hanadera. His passion is dinosaurs, and he loves going to the zoo to watch elephants (as he imagines dinosaurs would walk like elephants do). He is a widower with one daughter. His wife died about a year before the events of Itoshiki Toshitsuki. Eriko Torii proposes to him, which he declines. However she refuses to give up and promises him that she will make him fall in love with her.

Source: Wikipedia