Welcome to my humble site....

Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Risa Watanabe... Kyoko Saito... Yui Kobayashi....Nana Owada.... Nene Shida.... if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the right place(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!

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Monday, May 23, 2011

Erika Toda May going ons

 As I'm sure most of you have noticed Erika as Kimoto has not been appearing in the latest Boss 2 episodes, nothing since episode 2 as she's recovering in the hospital from a gunshot wound. Would think she'll be back but probably unlikely until the last episode of 2, not great news for us Erika fans, notice the ratings have dropped off too since she's stopped appearing.
 More news from Erika though, her latest movie Hankyu was released about a month ago, hasn't been a huge success but okay so far, first 4 weeks out it has ranked #'s 7,6,7,6 on the weekly box office rankings, here's some shots of Erika from one of the premieres along with her co-star Miki Nakatani.

And some shots from the movie.


And a few behind the scenes shots.


And finally some shots from her new Tokyo Bank promo with Hiroshi Abe.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Erika Toda screenshots from Chasing My Girl



Chasing My Girl, also known as Oarai ni mo hoshi wa furu nari was a movie Erika appeared in, was released in 2009. Quick synopsis from DW:
 Six guys wacky guys, who worked together at a summer beach bar job, come across a letter from dream girl Eriko. The letter isn't addressed to anyone in particular, but asks if the recipient would meet her at the beach bar on Christmas Eve. Each of the men believe they are the one Eriko wants to meet and a heated battle between the lovelorn men begins. A seventh man, attorney Sekiguichi, then appears and also enters the competition!
 But as it turned out the girl to appear wasn't Erika but someone else, actually 2 girls showed up, not nearly as dreamy as Erika but the guys still surrounded them. Was not a huge part for Erika, she didn't appear until the 35 minute mark in the movie but the film did revolve around her. Watched it without subs, don't think there's any available for it so tough to really give a review but it was easy enough to follow, really this post is for the screenshots I took from it, as usual Erika looks second to none in the film! Some of the pics may appear to be hazy but that's how they were in the film, she was in their daydreams so it has the 'dreamy' look about them.



Saturday, May 14, 2011

Taisetsu na Koto wa Subete Kimi ga Oshiete Kureta synopsis


 Erika's last drama which finished at the end of March was called Taisetsu na Koto wa Subete Kimi ga Oshiete Kureta, yeah what a long title, in English it means You Taught Me All the Precious Things. Quickie synopsis below...
 Erika and Haruma Miura play two teachers, Natsumi Uemura and Shuji Kashiwagi, at the same high school who are set to get married in half a year. However, the night before the school year's opening ceremony, Shuji becomes involved with the young Hikari Saeki (EmiTakei), without realizing that she will be a student in his class starting the next day. As Shuji struggles to help Hikari deal with the mental complex she is suffering from, he is also torn inside by his betrayal of Natsumi. Meanwhile, Hikari attempts to get closer to Natsumi, driven by feelings of jealousy and a desire to destroy the couple's relationship.


 Hikari succeeds in driving Natsumi and Shuji apart, their wedding gets canceled, plus the night in question between Hikari and Shuji gets found out by all, first leading to Shuji getting suspended and eventually fired when it comes out that Natsumi is pregnant with his child, all think that he wants to abandon her but actually it's the opposite. However slowly the couple eventually get back together when Natsumi realizes that all along Shuji has been innocent of any wrong doing and the wedding is back on but the school won't give him his position back even though he's really innocent of doing anything amiss.
 Being a drama, our two main characters do end up getting married and having a child and it looks like they'll live happily ever after. Guess how this ending turned out is what kind of spoiled the drama, for 2/3 of the series had some really good storylines going on but it just wrapped up too nicely, everyone in the show ended up all happy, makes you wonder what was the point of the storylines if everyone returned to their same position as when the show started only better off in some cases.


 Of course being an Erika drama would recommend it but just could have been so much better, after such a solid beginning it sort of petered out at the end. Besides everything wrapping up so nicely a thing that dragged the show down was Shuji's screentime, his scenes with Hikari or in front of his class would go on sometimes up to 10 minutes straight, really got a bit tiring and really hurt the pace of the show. Still worth a watch, perhaps a second viewing will change some thoughts but Erika has been in better dramas, check below for the whole cast plus many posts after this one with screenshots of Erika from every episode and a quickie recap on each one.

Cast:
Erika Toda as Natsumi Uemura
Haruma Miura as Shuji Kashiwagi
Emi Takei as Hikari Saeki
Yuki Uchida as Aya Mizutani
Mariko Shinoda as Sayaka Soda
Morio Kazama as Satoshi Tsuruoka
Masahiko Nishimura as Yosifumi Nakanishi
Ayame Gouriki as Nozomi Sonoda


Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Erika Toda Taisetsu na Koto wa Subete Kimi ga Oshiete Kureta images episodes 1-2

 Episodes 1 & 2- Quick recap here of the first 2 episodes... Natsumi and Shuji are a happy couple who are engaged to be married, both also work as teachers at the same high school. One morning Shuji wakes up quite hungover and finds Hikari, one of his students, sleeping in his bed and he has no idea what happened. Before he woke up though Hikari had taken a picture with her phone of Shuji sleeping in his bed, this picture quickly becomes the main theme for the first couple episodes as she uses it against Shuji but in what way? Keeping this a secret from Natsumi, they still are going ahead with their wedding plans but the secret picture eventually surfaces, what will happen to the couple? Next few posts explains the ongoing story a little more, plus it's a primer for those who want to watch it, here's some screenshots of Erika in the first 2 episodes.