Propose Kyoudai / プロポーズ兄弟

Brother Proposal

2011 JDorama that is short, sweet, and to-the-point for four, brief episodes (approx half-hour each) that tells us about the way in which four sons end up getting married.

Personally, I enjoyed the last story best.

I also wish they made more dramas like this in Japan AND Korea.

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Bambino! / バンビーノ!

2007, 11-episode drama from Japan that is based on a Manga by the same name about a young, brash college student named Ban (Matsumoto Jun) who lives in Fukuoka Prefecture and works at an Italian restaurant.

This means he thinks he's the greatest chef alive, so when his boss gives him a chance to spend spring break working at a high-class Italian restaurant in Tokyo, he jumps at the chance to show off his mad skills.

Turns out he's not so great after all, and our cute but clueless, high-energy Ban is suddenly pitted against some of the finest, most skilled professionals in the business, making poor Ban look bad and ridiculous at the same time.

Sato Ryuta as Katori Nozomi kicks Ban's ass rather early on,

I really like Sato Ryuta!

and then Karina as Hibino Asuka steps in to dump on him further still.

It's for his own good, though!

Poor Ban ...











Matsu Jun looks great in pink!


For me, though, the highlight of this drama was the head waiter and a familiar actor from the Galileo series ...


Kitamura Kazuki as Yonamine Tsukasa


This is a prime example of why I'll always prefer a man with long hair.




Anyway, some of the 'complaints' at aznv.tv included the fact that Ban was so gung-ho about his career when ... excuse me, it wasn't simply PASTA he wanted to make, but ... yea, you guessed it ... a CAREER.

If this had been about a guy working his way up the corporate ladder and he had the same gusto, would they have said the same thing, I wonder?

The cooking portions actually made me hungry until I ended up trying to make Asuka's broccoli & Italian sausage pasta, and I must admit it came out rather well and tasted as good as anticipated, too.

Ok, after spring break ends and Ban is out of the chaotic kitchen now, the young, impetuous fool decides he wants to be a famous chef, so he drops out of college and returns to the high-class restaurant in the big city.

However, reality smacks him in the face (with Nozomi's help), and instead of getting the head-chef position as he hopes, he is first relegated to the dining hall, where he has to wait tables and greet customers.

Ban is as crushed as he was after finding out to his utter dismay that he isn't quite so great as he first assumed, and now he has to struggle with the task of learning how to be someone he doesn't want to be.

Naturally, this is all done by the owner of the restaurant and the best friend of the guy Ban worked for in the tiny prefecture outside Tokyo so that Ban can learn, grow, and mature into the person he wants to become.

It takes him a really long time to figure that out, and even longer for him to perfect the waiter job, but once he realizes the importance and connection between the front of house and the kitchen, things begin to go his way.

At last, he is assigned to the kitchen after a year, and again, Ban is crushed to find out that it isn't to cook his favorite dishes, but to assist the 'dolce' pasticcere.

Again, it takes him some time and effort, but Ban figures out after making batch after batch of nasty-looking and heartless-in-effort meringue that is always dumped in the garbage until he stumbles upon the mute pasticcere's recipe book and Ban learns what it means to be a serious dolce maker.

Like his love for pasta, Ban waits every morning for the shy, mute pasticcere to leave his apartment so they can go shopping together for fresh ingredients, and they become friends.

Eventually, Ban ends up in the kitchen again, and still not as head chef, but with a new understanding of his role in life and the necessary steps he needs to take in order to realize his dream.

I liked Bambino! and I enjoyed watching Matsumoto do his thing, too.

Give this one a chance as I'm sure it'll impress you.

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Pride / プライド

2004 Fuji TV drama that stars Kimura Takuya as Satonaka Halu, a brash, overly confident but lonely and desperate young man who plays minor-league hockey for a living.





Y'know, I never gravitate toward sports-themed dramas or movies because aside from watching tennis on TV, sports has no appeal whatsoever -
yet, every time I watch one of these types of dramas or movies, I can't help but get sucked in both emotionally and figuratively until the very, last episode.

Everyone who reads my blogs knows all, too well that I only watch what I like, and if I recognize the name of someone I'm crazy about or madly HORNY for, I'll watch them in anything!

He wasn't the star, but Sakaguchi Kenji is in this one, so how could I possibly resist?


NOT a spoiler, so re-LAX


Halu (funny how his co-stars called him Ha-Ru) is super-popular, blindly followed by his peers, and the ace goal-scorer for the Blue Scorpions.
He's also cynical about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness, so he makes a 'game' of dating girls via 'contract' - assuring him of a no-strings relationship until he gets bored and wants to move on.

A girl who works at the head office of the local franchise, Takeuchi Yuko as Murase Aki, gets talked into joining her co-workers at the Face-Off bar near the office, and Halu easily spots another victim in her.
He moves in on her almost immediately, and since she is overly bored waiting for her boyfriend of two-years to return from overseas as he promised, she decides what the hell, I'll play along and accepts Halu 'contract' to pretend-date until the anticipated first-love eventually decides to return to Japan.

Aki hasn't heard from this guy in over two years, yet every, single Sunday she goes to a bridge and waits for him since that's where he asked her to meet him on the day he left her.

She's not into sports (like me) and at the first game she attends, instead of cheering for the team, Aki cringes every time a guy slams against the wall, flips over backwards onto the ice, or gets body-checked by an aggressive opponent (same way I'd do if I tried to watch a game that violent).

Halu scores a pretty impressive goal, though, and he skates up to the wall, staring at her until she uncovers her eyes, then pointing to his eyes, he gives her the signal to keep them open next time.
After the game, he hands her a molar that was knocked out during the game, totally creeping her out, but she takes the unexpected present, making Halu smile.

Aki has a friend who is determined to marry money, and by innocent mistake, Sakaguchi's (I totally love this name) Hotta Yamato borrows his rich buddy's sports car to take the girl home.
This gives her the wrong but exciting impression that HOT-ta is not only gorgeous but loaded as well, so naturally she wants him and decides to marry him right then and there.

HOT-ta just wants sex, though, but deep-down, he's a good boy with character, and it isn't until he falls in love with her that he takes her to a 'love' hotel.



The rich hockey player and flashy dude on the team is Ichikawa Somegoro as Ikegawa Tomonori, a playa with long hair and a sense of style who loves the ladies and drops c-notes like they are monopoly money.

As with a majority of Asian dramas, especially Japanese, EVERYone has a secret to hide and a sob story to tell.
Pride is no exception to this unwritten rule, and for 11 episodes we find out the secrets and stories of the key team players and the gals who adore them.

Sato Ryuta is Shimamura Makoto, the team clown and chicken-shit more interested in being close to Halu than participating in or even learning how to play hockey.
I love Sato, and in every drama or movie I've seen him in, he's always managed to tug at my heartstrings and make me say 'aw!' at least three times.

The guy from Kougen e Irrasshai, Sato Koichi, turns out to be the Blue Scorpion's replacement coach after their first coach ends up in the hospital.
Halu doesn't like him one bit, having grown up with and hero-worshipped the old coach, so the two clash almost every time they meet.

Yes, Halu starts to have deeper feelings for Aki and vice versa, and of course the latent boyfriend decides to return from overseas at the most inopportune of times!

Snobby girl finds out eventually that HOT-ta isn't the rich guy she dreamed of marrying, too.

Richy Rich Tomonori gets in trouble by being accused of knocking up a high-school girl, and when sad-ass Makoto ends up getting dropped from the team, his hero Halu doesn't come to his defense or even argue about it with the coach he loathes.

Snobby girl ends up falling for a 'real' rich guy who also happens to play on an opposing team the Blue Scorpions are doubtful they'll be able to beat in the championship games, and HOT-ta goes out of his way to beg the rich guy not to use her as a 'mistress' instead of marrying her.

Yea, that's how he ends up in a pool of blood, but I sure as heck ain't telling you how or what happens afterward!

Even the new coach ends up with a few secrets and stories to tell, though he remains an aloof hard-ass throughout the drama, he's still got a lot to say and even more to bring to the table in this excellent, 11-episode jaw dropper.

This is how it ends ...

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婚カツ！ / Konkatsu!

Marriage Hunting!


I just finished watching this 11-episode 2009 drama from Japan, and while it received mixed reviews at aznv.tv, I thought it was fabulous and I recommend it!

In all fairness to the show, a lot of the lukewarm reviews had to do with the fact that Ueda Tatsuya as Amamiya Kuniyasu had a bit-part and wasn't the lead actor.
Another thing some people did was to assume this was a food drama when its title clearly represents itself as Marriage Hunter material, nothing more.
I blame this confusion on the dramas billboard that has all of the actors holding chopsticks with tonkatsu on them.

Nakai Masahiro as Amamiya Kuniyuki is the son of a tonkatsu owner, and he hates the fried pork meal almost as much as he hates his life.
He's a bad-luck kid in the sense that everything he hopes will go his way doesn't until he ends up not even trying anymore.
At 30, he's become a drone who ends up making one, last seemingly bad decision to quit his job when the economy crashes the very, next day - leaving him unemployed for awhile.
His baby brother is Kuniyasu, a hair dresser who pops in and out of the show from time to time, and granted, the boy has a very, pretty face and awesome hair but - I think it was a wise decision to give him a bit part, because he needs more experience before he tackles a lead role.

Sato Ryuta as Fukazawa Shigeru nearly stole the show, but not quite.
He's one of Kuniyuki's buddies and works as the proprietor of a liquor shop directly across the narrow alley from the tonkatsu joint.
He's big, loud, and upbeat, always insisting that to smile is the answers to a majority of the worlds problems.

The konkatsu topic arises when Kuniyuki applies for a part-time job with the city planning commission in their 'low birth rate' department - with one of the conditions for being hired that he be married.
Needing the job, Kuniyuki tells a fib and makes everyone think he's currently engaged but in need of a job & money before taking that inevitable, final step in his life.

This is where we meet a few, more key players in the show: namely, Tanihara Shosuke as Nihei Takumi and Kohinata Fumiyo as Amamiya Kuni0.
Takumi grew up in the same neighborhood Kuniyuki ends up trying to save and he's been relegated to the 'shameful' position of head of the low birth rate department.
Kuniyuki and 60-something Amamiya Kunio work for and with Takumi to find ways for their prefecture to increase the number of marriages in that area in order to increase the birth rate.
It's a tiny area on the Tokyo border, and its also a dated place with a majority of the businesses already shuttered due to lagging foot traffic in the area.
Kuniyuki and Amamiya bump into each other at a konkatsu, where they both hope to find a woman to marry before their boss (the city president) discovers their lie.
After attending several of these arranged get-togethers for single men & women, the two begin to learn the strategies involved in that, particular business while also becoming closer in work and friendship matters.

As it turns out, the President hired another man, Kitamura Yukiya as Ito Masaru to find a way to revitalize the section of her prefecture in most need of a face-lift, and that happens to be the neighborhood where Kuniyuki grew up.
Masaru is a cold-hearted man with $$ for eyes, and he uses people to get what he wants as well as to move up the corporate ladder of success.
He cares less about the three, hapless men in the storage room low birth rate department and turns down every request they make of him to halt, slow down, or at least hear their side of the story about why its important not to go ahead with his proposed plans to level the area and replace it with a bunch of new, improved shops.

There are some interesting and unusual love stories, there is a lot of food, though most-often tonkatsu, and there is also just as much comedy in this drama.
And though I wasn't, too excited about the leading man, he still managed to capture my interest enough to want to see his plight through to the very end.
His hair style reminded me of the top of a soft-swirl ice cream cone.

Does she get the man of her dreams?
Does he manage to win her heart?
Will the bad guy see the error of his ways in time?
And, will the town be saved or demolished for renewal?

These questions can be asked of more than just, one character in Konkatsu, and without giving anything away, there are enough twists & turns involved to keep the story from going stale.

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