When I began seriously watching Japanese dramas, the love of Kimura Takuya / Yamaguchi Tomoko drama LONG VACATION (which up until then a friend had been taping for me) prompted me to begin subscribing to NGN.
NGN! After years of watcing my dramas exclusively on KIKU, this was like having an actual connection to Japanese broadcasting (though I would later learn was far from it) and I just couldn’t get enough and watched just about everything they had to offer!
One of the more curious programs they broadcasted was a 15 minute drama they aired every weekday morning (and again a “lump” on weekends) called, naturally, Morning Dramas. How Cool!
The very first Asadora I watched on my newly acquired NGN subscription was a drama called HIMAWARI, a story that followed the life of a cute and spunky young girl named Nozomi Minamida as she made her way through her life, played by an equally cute and spunky actress by the name of Matsushima Nanako. Who WAS this girl? I didn’t know, but I liked her right off the bat! While unquestionably attractive, she had a determined tomboyishness that really seemed to set her apart from being just another pretty face!
Now, one of the coolest things about Himawari was that no matter what the storyline was, the show would always begin with a short little snippet of Nozomi engaged in any assortment of things, from walking to work, writing a letter or even falling asleep at her desk! In the background there would be a harmony singing the opening refrain to the credits, Dream… Dream…, and then Yamashita Tatsuro’s theme song DREAMING GIRL would start!
It got to the point where waiting to see what Nanako would be doing at the beginning of each episode became the thing I looked forward to the most, and there was one clip in particular that just MADE MY DAY:
One of the threads throughout Himawari was Nozomi’s relationship with her colleague/romantic interest Yuji Hoshino (played by Kamikawa Takaya), and in this one intro, they’d isolated various times throughout the series when she’d called his name. It was so funny and cute- You wouldn’t have thought someone could call somebody’s name in so many different ways with so much different feelings! And best of all, they ended the montage with Nozomi calling out Hoshino with the happiest, bubbly laugh ever!
From there the clip went directly into the theme song opening, and since the show was called “Himawari”, we got to hear Tatsuro Yamashita singing Dreaming Girl against a field of sunflowers set against a beautiful blue sky!
Seeing the daily intro clip of Nozomi and having it segue right into the song, you really felt like Tatsuro Yamashita was singing about her when he referred to his “Dreaming Girl”, and soon enough that song was forever endeared to me as a TRUE Nanako Matsushima theme song! Dream, Dream, Dreeeeeaaammmmmmm.....
