A Sculpture Mystery Solved

 Got the identification of yet another classic J-drama Deja-Vu hot spot solved, and through the most intersting of ways! Redditor spellbunny was in Japan, walking around Shinjuku when they came upon a sculpture that they INSTANTLY recognized- It was the sculpture where hapless otaku Tsuyoshi (Atsushi Ito) meets up with his dream date Saori (Misaki Ito) in the TV adaptation of the classic Densha Otoko story!

Posting “Any Densha Otoko fans recognize this spot? I was wandering around Shinjuku and randomly found this spot and was AMAZED!!!” Spellbunny’s thread was filled with other excited Densha Otoko fans who also immediately recognized the sculpture as that pivotal place in the drama!

Below: Atsushi Ito and Misaki Ito in Densha Otoko at the sculpture

Well, as for me, I ALSO immediately recognized the statue...but not because of Densha Otoko (which at the time  I admit that I had not seen!), but through two OTHER dramas that it appeared in: the popular NHK asadora Churasan with Ryoko Kuninaka...

...and the wacky Yume Wo Kanaeru Zo with Asami Mizukawa!

Some of you may even remember me posting about it waaaaay back in 2010, where I wondered if it was some "famous statue or something", LOL!  I had no idea, but I wouldn’t find out what the sculpture was until some 15 years later!!

It was in spellbunny’s reddit thread that redditor RedditEduUndergrad2  finally identified the piece and place for us, linking the googlemaps coordinates to the Shinjuku Monolith Building and leading us to that corner with that sculpture! WOW! 

Continuing on, RedditEduUndergrad2 continued:

“The area around Tocho/Tokyo Metroplitan Govt Building is a very popular area to film. Probably because of it's proximity to the Shinjuku train station making it easy for staff to get to and the number of hotels for stars and guests. The area directly around Tocho also has a very wide path with long streets and not a lot of foot traffic most of the time.”

And that’s how a random reddit comment uncovered another J-drama Deja-Vu mystery location for me!! The things you can learn via the jdrama community continues!

A Catchy Song About…Tandoori? No, It's Rie's "Tender Love"!

Back when I was madly crushing on beauty Misaki Ito (after falling in love with her in the hilarious  2007 comedy “Yama Onna Kabe Onna”), I happened upon a terrific earlier drama of hers called ‘Kiken na Aneki”, which I also really dug! 

It told the tale of a pretty girl from the countryside named Hiroko Minagawa who comes to the big city to support her younger brother Yutaro (Mirei Moriyama) as she looks for her fiance who had run back home.

Half the fun of this drama was watching the wide-eyed and naive country girl taking in the sights of the city lights and learning its fast paced lifestyle,  and whenever they had a montage of Hiroko “glowing up” i.e. trying on clothes, etc, they would always play this cute bubbly insert song which I really liked! It always sounded to me like the girl was saying "tandoori" in the verses, making me call it the "Tandoori Chicken Song", but I had to laugh when I realized that she wasn’t singing “Tandoori” at ALL, but the word “Tenderly”, albeit in full “Engrish” mode! LOLOL

After a few episodes of listening to this catchy tune, I just HAD to get a copy of it, or at least in MP3 form, but had no IDEA what it was called or who sang it! The Dramawiki and Asianwiki stats were no help, as insert songs were rarely credited, and only the main theme song was ever posted. But doing some digging, I found the tracklisting for original SOUNDTRACK for Kiken Na Aneki, and WHADDAYA know, that insert song was the FIRST song on the album! The song was called “Tender Love”, sung by an artist known mononymously as “Rie”! And though I didn't realize it, she was an artist I'd heard before!

Though this girl went by "Rie" on the CD, upon further digging, I found out her full name was Rie Yatsuka and GET THIS- she was part of the awesome trio Letit Go back in the mid 90's! WHAAA!!!  Letit Go was a trio from back in my "Golden Age of J-pop" that I REALLY loved, an act that sang one of my all-time favorite J-pop songs, the beautiful "200 Bai No Yume", a song which I've gushed about here and have loved all my life!

Reading up, seems both Rie and sister Junko Yatsuka left after making that first landmark album and replaced by singer Taemy, which explained why whenever I saw Letit Go later, it was a duo instead of a trio! Who KNEW!! In any case, It's great to find that the sisters, or Rie at least, continued to make great catchy tunes, ones that really spoke to my bubblegummy sensibilities! Here's TENDER LOVE!

Posted by zdorama @zdoramaaagain.blogspot.com

Catching Up On MORE Dramas!

With so many of you pointing out older dramas that I have either forgotten about or haven’t finished watching, I thought it was HIGH time for another huge cram session month to try and complete some titles!

Deka Wanko

 After such glowing comments on this drama, I thought I’d better dig this one up and finish it up!  Deka Wanko- The story of an eccentric woman police detective with an unusual gift to help in her sleuthing- a dog-like sense of smell!

 A very bizarre Mikako here, the director probably told her "act like a spazzy puppy" and MY does she indeed! In her Goth-Lolita outfits she looks JUST like a Pampered pup, and with her haircut in bangs and pigtails, her antics reminded me not just a little of Icelandic Singer Bjork! LOLOL

 Strangely found myself thoroughly entertained throughout the show, lots of fun!

Mikako Tabe is going to have the most eclectic drama catalog, LOL!

Taiho Shichauzo

 As a fan of both Misaki ito and Sachie Hara you would have thought I would have watched this ages ago, but somehow never got around to it!

 The show was based on the animated sries of the same name, and true to its' source, watching the show was like seeing a manga come to life! Wacky hijinks, slapstick comedy and goofy villains, this was pure entertainment! 

 You know what this show reminded me of, the Tamao Sato drama “Hashire Komuin” a Policewoman drama I really loved!

BTW, Seems like whenever the show features zany cops, Shiro Ito is ALWAYS called in to play the chief of Police, appearing as the chief in not only this but Deka Wanko as well!!!

PS As some may recall, I was a huge fan of the animated series, not the show itself, but the theme song from one of their seasons, a catchy little tune called “Hare Nochi Parade” by “Tokyo Policewoman Duo”!

Attention, Please!

 Then we have Attention Please, the very succesful drama about a delinquent rocker chick who decides on a whim to become a Cabin Attendant, thinking she can ace through it and win the affection of the guy she likes!

 Of course, things are harder than they appear to be, and she will soon find that the department has little patience for her antics and attitude!

 Of course, once she decides to get serious, they find out taht she just might have that something special to get her to the top of her class!

Ah Aya Ueto! After  watching the excellent Nagareboshi the other month, I made plans to watch all the backlog of Aya Dramas I had, and this is the first of many!!

Change

 Takuya Kimura stars as an introverted Teacher named Keita Asakura who wants to be kept out of his Politic-driven family. But when his Father passes away just before a huge election, his party needs someone to take his place, and they decide that, come hell or high water, that it's GOT to be him!!!

 Tasked with turning this stuttering bumpkin of a guy into a suave candidate that people will vote for falls into the hands of aide Rika Mayama (Eri Fukatsu) and election-manipulator Katsutoshi Nirasawa (Hiroshi Abe). The team certainly has their work cut out for them, but where honesty and integrity makes up for office inexperience,  their candidate might just make it!

 Ah, so far been a great drama, after seeing Fukatsu and Abe as the troublemaking co-workers in Tsuyoshi Kusanag’s “Narita Rikon” , they are back to do their meddling magic with yet another SMAP member!

 Also a pretty cute appearance by Rosa Kato as a young aide with eyes of puppy love for the humble Asakura! 

 So cute, strangely enough, back in the day, I thought Rosa was kind of weird-looking, funny that now she looks perfectly adorable to me! Ah, just another reason to watch this show!

SP

 Speaking of Kimura Takuya, this drama starring Shinichi Tsutsumi and Junichi Okada seems so much like Kimutaku’s BG series, complete with the double Initial title, Kimura’s stood for Body Guard, and Okada’s stands for “Security Police”…
In many ways it’s exactly the same story, team of guards watching over the Japan Elites, but in this one they give agent Inoue (Okada) an almost supernatural ability to “read’ the room and pinpoint any discrepancies such as nervous tics, secretive behavior, etc, which leads to some great takedowns!

Also, BIG plus for Yoko Maki as one of Okada's kakkoi partners! We don't get to see enough of her!!

Voice

 Medical drama involving 5 students entering Forensics, starring Eita, Ikuta Toma and Satomi Ishihara. After seeing Satomi in not only Unnatural and her current Unsung Cinderella but also Indirectly in Bull Doctor, it is becoming pretty unexciting to see her in yet another Forensics show, though it seems like Eita is the star of this drama, with him being to one with the drive to investigate cases and the one who solves them as well. the others are pretty much just there for support. 

Yawn, A fairly generic show with extremely excessive melodrama. Plus, some of them act so INCOMPETENT during the series that I just CAN'T sympathize.

Subete ga F Ni Naru

  You’d have thought that after Emi Takei went on hiatus and there were no new dramas of hers to see, that i would have watched this one right away! But at the time, it looked like a generic romance flick which I didn’t feel like watching, and so put it away for later. In time, I promptly forgot all about it!

But as part of  my purging of unwatched dramas, I came across it while looking thru my old hard drive and FINALLY decided to check it out! 

 Well, I don't know WHAT kind of romance drama I was expecting (it looked so much like Emi’s earlier romance drama "Seisei Suru Hodo, Aishiteiru" that I just assumed it was a romance drama?), but turns out this is yet another of those “Locked Room” Murder Mysteries, where student Moe Nishinosono (Emi) and her sensei Sohei Saikawa (Go Ayano) use their skills to crack cases where murders take place behind locked doors which no one can have gotten in nor out of.

 You see, that already work and i'm interested...I don't know WHY they try so hard to push a romance between Moe and Saikawa, it doesn’t work at ALL, and in fact, clutters the storyline. I see that this is based on a succesful book, maybe it was a heated romance there, but it fails here.

Not really a fan of these locked room mysteries pre se because the solutions are always so preposterous. I remember REALLY rolling my eyes with some of the solutions for both Satoshi Ohno’s "Kagi no Kakkata Heya" and even some episodes of the Keiko Kitagawa/Sho Sakurai drama Nazotoki Dinner no Ate De…
But If Emi's in it, then of course I'll watch it....

OKAY, back to those dramas!!!!! Still got a LOT on my plate and will be posting updates soon!