Some Love for Gakky

Recently someone on reddit  was asking for recommendations for dramas and mentioned that they really liked  "We Got Married As A Job" and actress Yui Aragaki. I couldn't help but jump on the bandwagon suggesting some of MY fave dramas from her!

My Post:

Yui Aragaki is a wonderful actress to be a fan of, she has SO many really great dramas to choose from! Some of my personal favorites:

Okitegami Kyoko No Biboroku

One of her most recent dramas. It’s a detective drama. Yui plays Kyoko Okitegami, a girl detective who is awesome at detecting…but her memory re-sets each night. Some really creative use of this strange malady, plus nice love interest with Masaki Okada as the guy who is in love with her, but he has to re-introduce himself to her every day. Not sure if you will dig her white wig, though.

Legal High

This series is about Yui as Mayuzumi, a go-getter legal aide witha heart of gold who is partnered with an arrogant but super intelligent hotshot lawyer named Komikado (Masato Sakai).

Interesting cases and their personality clashes make for some fun and exciting situations! This spawned a bunch of sequels.

Zenkai Girl

Yui plays a young professional who gets saddled with taking care of her boss’s precocious daughter. Along the way she meets a gentle man named Yamada (Ryo Nishikido) who has a kid of his own and through the school, they become friends. A Sweet drama.

My Boss My Hero

Really more of a Nagase Tomoya (TOKIO) drama than a Yui Aragaki one, this is about a Yakuza thug who is set to inherit his father’s mob, but he’s so dumb his father tells him he has to graduate from school before he can take over.

He has to pretend to be a “regular” kid and makes friends with the misfits in the school, as well as cute Hikari (Aragaki). One of my top-ten fave dramas, to be honest!

Papa To Musume no Nanokan

This is an early drama of Yui’s, but still one of my faves! Yui plays teenage daughter Kome who switches bodies with her Ad executive Father. Since they don’t know how long it will last, she goes to work as the father, and the father goes to school with her friends, LOL. This is a short drama, only 7 episodes long, but so fun.

And i should mention that Yui is also part of an ensemble medical drama “Code Blue” about doctors working on a Helicopter emergency outfit along with Erika Toda and Yamashita Tomohisa (you might find this fun since he played the monk in “from 5 to 9”), not only did this spawn a few sequels, but they just announced they are making a new season!!!

So, those were the five Yui Aragaki dramas i decided to recommend.
Which ones would YOU have all suggested? LOL!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Latest Haruki Murakami!

Finally found time to go down to my local Barnes & Nobles to pick up Haruki Murakami's latest book (well, latest translated book, anyway, his actual newest book  “Kishidancho Goroshi,” has yet to be released in English) and so far, "Men Without Women" is a great read!
 This book is a collection of seven short stories, and as the title alludes, they are all tales of men without women, whether they be separated by space, time, life and death, all told in the quirky Haruki Murakami way. And as usual for his short stories, they always end too fast and leave you wanting more!
PS: To balance the surreal and sometimes depressing tales of Haruki Murakami, I also picked up the Autobiography of cutie-pie Anna Kendrick, what can I say, I dig the chick and the book is funny as hell! LOLOLOL

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Trip To The Jazzy Side with Renaja

I have a friend who is a session guitarist who works with a lot of musicians working overseas, and it was through this connection he was introduced to Japanese Jazz Singer Renaja. Though Japanese, Renaja sang a bit of her songs in English, so he took to her music right away!
 He'd send me videos of songs he liked from her occasionally, and I liked them fine (though of course they were nothing like the J-pop stuff I listened to!) and when he picked up a few of her albums "Made Of Love" and "Sugar and Spice", after ripping them to MP3's for his Ipod, he told me I could have the CD's, which I gratefully accepted!
 Going on youtube, i can see that a lot of Renaja's earlier work was mostly in Japanese, but these two albums are almost completely in English, reminding me a lot of early 70's light Jazz music so popular here in Hawaii!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Hakabundo Making New Ground

Ever since Shirokiya's closed its doors on so many years ago at its' "Uptown" Phase, Pearlridge Shopping Center has been severely lacking in any stores selling Japanese goods, so it was great to see during my last visit, that a Hakabundo will be opening up there!
With Goma Tei Ramen Restaurant downstairs and Genki Sushi across the way, it looks like this end of Pearlridge will be a real "Nihongo" avenue!
Once upon a time, there was but one Hakabundo (located in the Chinese Cultural Plaza) and it's pretty exciting to know that there will be at least THREE outlets in the coming months! (Well, three until the one in Ward Warehouse closes, anyway!)

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Serious Daughter and Stalker Mom

Just started watching the thriller/drama Okaasan, Musume wo Yamete Ii desu ka? and it's a pretty harrowing tale so far!

 Haru and Yuki Saito play Mizuki and Akiko Hayase, a mother and daughter pair that gets along so well and are so chummy together that everyone says that they look like a couple when they stroll down the street! But beneath the cheerful and optimistic veneer lay two people with troubling and distraught personalities.

The two seem to love exactly the same things, and whether it be the color of floorboards or wallpaper for their new house, they seem to be in total agreement. But looking closer you see that Mizuki always follows her mother’s lead, carefully studying Akiko’s face for approval or disapproval, and whatever sign she is given, whether a grimace or a wide smile, is the one she adheres to. 

Of course, living your life from day to day like this can only lead to stress, and though she would not ever tell her mother, Mizuki has been slowly developing a nervous habit: Every time she is stressed, she absentmindedly scratches the back of her head in frustration, and this has been going on long enough that a coin-sized bald spot has started to spread there...

Mizuki’s day job as an English teacher isn’t any less stressful- lately, she’s been dealing with the failings of one of her students who is absent all the time, a girl named Ayami Goto (Anna Ishii) and when she DOES come to class, she spends most of her time in the infirmary. No matter what she tries, Goto seems to only draw further away, and Mizuki has been looking to her mother for advice. But when her suggestion that Mizuki go over to the house and talk to the studnet’s mother backfires (Mizuki gets yelled at and berated by the student’s mother and chased out) for the first time she sees that mother may not always be right.

Besides her normal housewife duties, Yuki spends one day a week at a craft shoppe that creates vintage dolls. and as she talks on the phone to Haru while working, advising her on what she should do on a daily basis, the correlation is pretty clear: this is one woman who wants to live her life grandly through the life of her daughter, just like a child lives fantasies out through dolls.

One person who has seen just how Yuki controls Haru with her soft suggestions and gentle persuasions is Taichi Matsushima (Yuya Yagira, fresh off of "Frankenstein Noi Koi"), the general contractor assigned to work on the house they are building. He sees how Mizuki changes her mind about things when Akiko gives off a negative vibe and sees how Akiko strongly “suggests” her ideals onto Mizuki to get what she wants. 

When Akiko (who has taken a liking to Taichi) arranges for Mizuki and Taichi to go on a date,  he takes her to a photo exhibit where he hopes to find the time to try and talk honestly to her. Little do they know, but Mom is close by, using her binoculars to keep tabs on every little thing her daughter does!

Confronting her, He tells her he knows she had no desire to go out with him and it was her mother who pushed her to do it. He tells her he knows she wanted a different wallpaper design than the one Mother chose for her, and he knows she does whatever mother says.

Mizuki is properly offended by this accusation and walks off from him. Eventually Taichi comes back and apologizes for his rude accusations...but just then, Mizuki looks at a framed photograph…

...and in the reflection, she sees that her mother is lurking behind them…spying on them!

And thus for the first time she realizes that her steadfast and capable mother may have some issues all her own!

When I saw the Hayase’s house being built and it looked exactly like Yukie Nakama’s house in “Utsukushii Rinjin”, I was already set for another great psychological thriller, and so far it’s just what the doctor ordered, very intriguing scenes and gripping moments with a great cast (though honestly I never felt like Haru and Yuki were really that close, part of the problem might be that the very first time you see Yuki she is spying on her daughter so I already had a negative vibe from her?) with some old familiar faces from yesterday including Yumi Aso as Akiko’s Dollmaking Business Boss Fumie Makimura and Terawaki Yasufumi as Akiko’s beleaguered Husband Koji, who slaves all day to satisfy the whims of his intense wife.

OOOH, and it was VERY nice to see sultry Dan Mitsu again, here playing  Matsushima’s co-worker (and possible future rival for affection?) Maki Tachihara. Mmm, she’s looking as stunning as ever!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

The Cuter Side of Fumi Nikaido in “Frankenstein No Koi”

Fumi Nikaido as Tsugumi

The last time I saw pretty actress Fumi Nikaido was when she was covered in blood and slicing and dicing in the ultra-violent over the top thriller “Why Don’t You Play In Hell” and at the time I though she was a Scream Queen in the making…little did I know she had it in her to play one of the most adorable characters i’d seen in recent months!!!

in "Why Don't You Play In Hell?"

Seriously. in her role as Tsugumi, the girl who discovers the titular Frankenstein monster, she was so cute and innocent, I was instantly reminded of Aoi Miyazaki’s turn as cutie-pie NANA in the movie of the same name!

Tsugumi is an entirely too-naive girl, and when we first meet her, she has been tricked into drinking by a bunch of jerk students. When she is too inebriated to fight back, they drag her to a van, and take her into the woods to assault her. 

But as they drive up the the mountains, they accidentally strike a huge figure in the road. Using this distraction, Tsugumi manages to escape out of the van, but just as the guys are about to catch up to her, the figure from the street comes back and lays out all of the punks.

As Tsugumi loses consciousness, she is vaguely aware of the figure carrying her out.

The next morning she awakes at a bus stop at the bottom of the hill where she meets her sister who has frantically been looking for her. She doesn’t remember much of what happened the night before, but before they can get anything more out of her, she excitedly finds at her feet a rare mushroom. A mushroom?

This intrigues Tsugumi because she is a science student who is obsessed with mushrooms of all kinds. She is even nicknamed “fungi-girl” by her sempai, Inaniwa (Yuya Yagira).

Showing it to her professor (Akira Emoto)who is unable to figure out what kind it is, she decides to make a trek back to the mountains and see if she can find the source of this unusual mushroom.

She goes bicycling back, where she sees a commotion at the foot of the hill. It seems the three guys who assaulted her are now in comas in the hospital and no one knows why.  She ignores the scene and goes into the forest. Upon getting there, she sees a great many flourishing mushrooms and is about to take a sample…when she is confronted by a shabbily dressed man who has emerged from behind a tree.

Telling her not to be frightened, the mysterious man (Ayano Go) tells her that he isn’t human, and she should forget she saw him. But the scientist in Tsugumi can’t leave it at that and becomes obsessed with finding out what this guy’s deal is. Why does he think he isn’t human?

In one of the cutest scenes ever, she keeps following him back to his hideout even though he tells her to leave, and every time he thinks he’s lost her, he hears her yelp as she slips and falls down! LOLOL!

 

She makes his way to his abode where she finds he’s been living alone for a quite some time (he claims 130 years but Tsugumi is skeptical). 

Wanting to know more about him, she invites him to accompany her back to the city, and persuades him to come to her place.

Once in town, it's the classic "Fish Out Of Water" as she introduces him to the wonders of the modern world. And wacky hijinx ensues as she tries (in vain) to keep her discovery a secret from her sister at home, and then later),when she brings his to the university), from her colleagues and professor! But happily, they all view this man more as a curiosity than a threat.

While the professor does tests on him to see what he’s about, Tsugumi works on getting the strange man a proper home and a proper job, she even gives him the most important thing he’s ever been given: A Name. And with that in his possession, the newly christened “Ken” looks forward to his new life among people. But will the monster within him keep him from truly becoming close with them?

A fairly basic drama with some uber-zany segments, but MAN Fumi Nikaido is KILLING IT in this show, she is so doggone ADORable, I just GOTTA see more!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com