Five people, all twenty-somethings, are active in the workplace as well as members of the digital world. Somehow, via Twitter, or some other social network which they’ve used to communicate, they ultimately agree to meet. This is how the 11 week Japanese TV series called Sunao ni Narenakute begins. I’m not sure what the title actually means – but the tag-line of the series is - It’s hard to say I love you, and that is a pretty good description about what will follow.
Basically, over the life of the series, which ran this year from mid-April through June 24th, we will learn some in depth info about the five lead characters. We watch as they struggle with their problems like: their aversion to commitments, their lack of confidence, their unwillingness to either express the truth or to face it.
If that sounds kind of grim and disturbing to you, you can rest assured that the series is not completely or only about bumps in the road, it only seems that way. The cast is youthful, attractive, and their problems/issues are not too remote for most of us to identify with or relate to. As they’ve agreed to meet for the first time in the opening Episode, I’ll give you a little thumbnail sketch about each of them to help you decide if you’d like to watch this series.
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Shinzanmono is a Japanese TV Series that just ended its run last Sunday night, June 20th. Broadcast on Japan’s TBS Network, this show was definitely prime time as it aired on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM. The 10 episodes of the series can most simply be described as a detective story. The crime was a murder, and it took place in the Ningyo-cho neighborhood of Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Of course the series was shot in the very neighborhood being portrayed.
I think shinzanmono means something along the lines of ‘new neighborhood people or person’, which is what Detective Kaga Kyoichiro is in Ningyo-cho. Kaga was just tranferred to the Nihonbashi precinct, is placed in charge of the case. With virtually all of the residents of the neighborhood’s main shopping street, harboring one secret or another, they will all emerge as suspects, Detective Kaga must use his keen sense of deductive reasoning to uncover the truth about these people as well as solve the case..
Much of that is from the synopsis provided on the d-addicts.com website. But it really doesn’t do the series justice. Calling it a detective show is truly an over-simplification. Unlike American detective shows where the detective solves a new crime each week, this series focuses on just the one case. We, much like Detective Kaga, are in the dark. Though we witnessed the murder in the opening episode, and have seen snippets of it, in flashbacks, in every episode that followed, we still have no idea. This is a literal, “Who done it?”
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Source: Kotaku via News On Japan
If it means that I could now watch someone like Mika Kayama (formerly known as Arisa Oda) or Yuma Asami in 3-D, then I would have to seriously consider a new television purchase. But S1 has two new 3-D releases of Mika and Yuma to coincide with the release of Sony’s 3-D Bravia television in Japan on June 19th.
I can easily see 3-D pornography fueling the sales of new 3-D televisions. Porn has fueled sales and spurred development in other technological areas, and I still don’t see movies and games that are in 3-D as being enough of a driving force to get someone to go out and drop a load on a new electronic purchase. But if more JAV releases start to come out in 3-D, it could really get people to buy a new TV and help drive down costs so that they become mainstream. And if you want to continue this discussion within the forum, there’s also a thread you can visit by clicking here.
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Source: ABC.com
I usually don’t watch shows such as Dancing with the Stars, but I would check it out from time to time if I am flipping through television channels and it happens to be on. And if I would have known early on that Nicole was competing on the show, I would have watched the show from the beginning of this season. Good thing that the episodes are available online to watch.
But the times that I was able to catch Nicole on the show live, she was simply amazing. She may have had a slight advantage over her competition with her background as a professional dancer, but congratulations goes out to her and to her partner Derek Hough for winning this season’s competition on May 25th.
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Currently airing on Japan’s Fuji TV Network is the lively and entertaining Tsuki no Koibito or Moon Lovers. It just started a few Monday’s back on May 10th, so it’s 3rd episode has already aired today, the night of the 24th in Japan.
The lead role of Rensuke Hazuki is played by the Japanese superstar, Takuya Kimura. He’s the CEO of the Regolith Corporation. Under his guidance, Regolith is about to pass the Mastpole Company, and become the number one brand name in interior design.
Simply described, he is in the furniture business and he’s very smart about it. So he’s successful, rich, and ambitious for more, much more.
Takuya Kimura and Chi Ling Lin
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Source: Curve
I don’t get the opportunity to watch much television these days, but I might have to start watching Stargate Universe after finding out a couple of days ago that Ming-Na is a part of the cast.
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Real Clothes was a Japanese TV Drama series that played last fall. Starting on October 13th, its last episode aired on December 22nd, a few days before Christmas, and just a little more than two months ago. The DVD will be released in the middle of next week on March 3rd. Simply described, the story has everything you ever wanted to know about high fashion, or to be more exact – it is about selling high fashion which is really the selling of dreams. If they had a tag-line, it might have been, To be your best, you have to look your best.
Karina has the lead role and is just one of many Japanese beauties lighting up the screen in this 11 episode series. She does a superb job as Kinue Amano, a girl who was doing quite well selling bedding in the fictional top of the market Echizenya Department Store in Tokyo. Then one day she finds she’s been transferred to the Women’s Clothing Department.
Karina as Kinue Amano, looking like a plain Jane in Episode 1. This scene is in Paris where the series begins.
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Water Boys began as a Japanese movie back in 2001. It was the story of some geeky male students who joined a synchro team. That’s a short way of saying synchronized swimming. It proved so popular in Japan that it was packaged and delivered as a TV series which ran for two seasons in 2003 and 2004. Finally, a TV Summer Special was aired in 2005. It was broadcast over two nights each with each segment running about 90 minutes.
Admittedly, synchronized swimming is still in the Summer Olympics but aside from that you don’t hear much about it these days. It is sort of like ballet and swimming combined. Meaning that I could have a look at it with girls doing the swimming, but watching guys do this – I think not.
At least not for me. But I can see how Japanese girls might like watching a wholesome story that showed off a lot of guys in brief racing swimsuits.
So why I am doing an article about this? Well, I learned that buxom gravure idol Nonami Takizawa had a speaking role in this TV Special with appearances on both nights.
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Ai No Uta (aka Love Song) begins with a despondent woman telling us how she was an unwanted child. We are told that her mother did as much as she could to prove that theory again and again – including making her 7 year old daughter hide in a closet while she entertained male guests.
She is shunned by other children at school, is given stale bread to take to school for lunch, and her birthday or Christmas were ignored by her Mom. At one point, while still as a child, she had attempted to run away. She tried to live in a cardboard box nearby. When she was driven back home by severe rainstorms, and hunger, her mother greeted her with an indifferent, “Oh you’re back? Didn’t you run away?”
We learn just about all of this in voice-overs and flashbacks in the first 7 minutes or so of this TV series. This child, named Yoko Matsuda, and played as an adult by TV actress Miho Kanno, grew up to be a woman who lacked both friends and family. She was totally lacking in any kind of happiness at all. So we are not surprised when she, after giving up all hope, decides to take her life by jumping off a bridge in Tokyo. She climbs up on the railing and jumps off. All that remains are her shoes. Roll intro.
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Ordinary Miracle is a story about two people who meet by chance on a train platform. They’re total strangers and unrelated to each other in any way other than both are coming or going either from or to their work while passing through this one station.
The event that caused them to meet was anything but romantic. On their own, they each consider or think that a third person, a man standing by himself at the far end of the train platform, may be going to take his own life by leaping in front of an oncoming train.
Independently they watch him, and as the train approaches, this man edges toward the side of the platform of the oncoming train. They spring into action and barely pull this man back to safety from a sure death by punching him and wrestling him down to the platform’s surface.. Read more…
