During Christmas vacation, I found a Japanese drama called One Day—Wonderful Christmas Ado. It’s listed as a thriller-comedy-mystery. Of course I had to try it! Do you think it turned out to be a fun Christmas show? Three Christmas Eve Stories The drama starts out at a park with a man in a Santa suit handing out balloons. He reappears from time to time, but the drama is not really Christmassy except that it all takes place on Christmas Eve day. We begin in the very early morning near a wharf in Yokohama, where a couple of men lie on the pavement. One of them comes to groggily, and by the ti ..read more

After an extended diet of fluffy contract marriage Jdramas, I decided I was in need of something different, and 99.9 Criminal Lawyer hit the spot. Our lawyers have cases to solve, but they are the focus of the show, have personalities, and sometimes clash. If you’re looking for something partly serious but lightened up with humor, try this out! The law firm In Japan, we are told, the prosecutors have a 99.9% conviction rate. Miyama Hiroto is a lawyer who looks for that other pesky 0.1% of cases and is zoned in on finding the truth. There is a reason for that, which we don’t find out until th ..read more

A few Japanese dramas have popped up with the theme of government trying to cope with a falling birth rate. A new one on the light and fluffy side is called Marry Me! I checked it out because I quite liked the older one, Choosing Spouse by Lottery, which was more serious. How would you react to the government pushing its nose into your business like that? Marry Me! Both of these dramas are about new (fictitious) laws that aim to get more people to marry and have babies. In the case of Marry Me! the law targets people who are classified as NEET, that is, anyone Not in Employment, Education, o ..read more

Hold My Hand At Twilight is a show that is gently humorous without being slapsticky. It’s about two people trying to succeed in challenging careers, and how they encourage and inspire each other. There’s no candy girl with a rich guy here. Do you think there will be any childhood flashbacks, water fountains, piggyback rides, bandaging of scrapes, or running into someone several times in one day instead? Come find out! Lively main characters We begin with a preview scene from a year before the main story. Soramame (Hirose Suzu) is a spunky girl who was raised by her grandmother in a small tow ..read more

Last fall I watched a Japanese drama called Fight Song, which had a story line about a girl who was afraid she would lose her hearing. Shortly afterwards, Silent came out, with a synopsis about a character with hearing loss. I was curious about it, because here were two shows with that theme. Then this spring I was surprised when a third one aired, On a Starry Night. Come see if these dramas made sense all together! Fight Song Fight Song is the most cheerful and easy-to-watch show of the three. Hanae is a karate star and is generally energetic and optimistic. She listens to her favorite song ..read more

How to Get a Divorce for the Whole Family is a tale of people marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, but it’s more than that. They are two very different people, coming from different lifestyles, without any real problem-solving skills. How do you think that works out? Different but Similar Koichi is a member of an air rescue squad in the military. He’s tough and practical and means well, but overdoes the military strictness. He keeps his feelings to himself and barks his words out like he is giving orders, to the extent that you expect him to get a sore throat! His family is the same ..read more

How would you behave if you were so cute that everyone clamored to please you? How would you react if you were told it was all coming to an end? That is the precise situation we have in the Japanese drama My Cuteness is About to Expire! Read on to see if you think Kosuke Maruya’s cuteness is about expire too. The Situation Even when Kosuke Maruya tries to do his best at something, the results are only average. However, he has found that turning on his megawatt smile smooths out any difficulty. Now he depends on his good looks for success at his job, with his girlfriend, and just about everyt ..read more

Sleepeeer Hit, also known as Juhan Shuttai in Japanese, is a fun look at the world of Japanese mangas (comics) as seen through the eyes of a newbie editor who has loved reading mangas for a long time, but doesn’t know anything about the business. And yes, it really has all those “e’s” in the title. Listen for the characters to say it in the show. If you’re looking for an enjoyable, lighthearted story, you’ve come to the right place! The Editors Within five minutes, we learn that Kokoro Kurosawa was a judo star who had been aiming for the Olympics but got injured at a meet and had to drop out ..read more

Why I Dress Up for Love is a cute slice-of-life drama about a woman who is compulsively on social media all the time, and a man who doesn’t even carry a cell phone with him. How well would they get along? Funny you should ask… The Main Characters Kurumi does promotions and social media for an interior design company. She is enthusiastic and very conscious of making posts look good and uploading something several times a day. She often does selfies, and has a huge wardrobe so she can coordinate with whatever the company is featuring that day. Shun is a chef who is trying his hand at running ..read more

This new Japanese drama on Viki is a body swap story, but if you’ve seen “body swap” before and think you know what to expect – surprise! Heaven and Hell Soul Exchange has only a few hijinks, and the rest is a recipe for immediate disaster and is very unexpected. The premise… The synopsis tells us that a policewoman chases down a serial killer, and just as she is about to arrest him, they switch bodies. That is pretty bad timing! It happens in the first episode, along with a rather gross crime scene. All the extra shots of the full moon give us an idea that the moon has something to do with ..read more