Air Dates: September 27, 2010 to April 2, 2011 on NHK Monday through Saturday at 8:15 am
There was a total of 151 episodes and rating was 17.2%
Main Cast for the first 4 weeks:
Miori Takimoto as Akari Murakami, heroine of the drama
Junko Fuji as Hatsune Tanaka, Akari's grandmother
Kenichi Endo as Jyou Murakami, Akari's father and owner of a small metal shop
Narumi Yasuda as Machiko Murakami, Akari's mother
Kaname Endo as Kinya Murakami, Akari's older brother
Naoyuki Morita as Teppei Murakami, Akari's younger brother
Aki Asakura as Kana Shinomiya, Akari's best friend
Shingo Yanagisawa as Kyuta Shinomiya
Toshinori Omi as Ryuen Yokuyama
Rie Tomosaka as Fuyumi Nishio
Haruka Kinami as Chiharu Tanaka, Akari's deceased mother
Taking a while to get these 4 weeks done, finding having three blogs meaning it's hard to concentrate on just one but don't want to ignore two of them especially a newer blog like this one.
Week 2 ended with Akari(Miori) heading off to Osaka to work in an office as a clerk, it's the first time she's be living anywhere except Onomichi, it was a tearful farewell for Akari and her family. Akari's dream burst however shortly after her arrival in Osaka as the first thing she did was to call up her new employer to tell them she had just arrived when in the call she heard some ultra disturbing news.... the company went bankrupt! Seems as though the company wasn't all that stable and had some illegal activities which led to their demise but the main question now is what's going to happen to Akari?
We don't know what's going to happen yet but besides being in Osaka with no job Akari also has no place to live as she was going to live in a company dorm, and doesn't have enough money for a regular apartment. Mentioned in week one that Akari had taken a day trip to Osaka and when to return her grandmother's trumpet, when she was on that day trip she just happened to play with a street group for a mini concert when they needed a trumpet player. One of the members of the band was a co-owner of a katsuoboshi factory, that's a dried and fermented kind of tuna. Akari happens to run into the owner who was named Osada during her hunt for a job, thinking she may play with the band as a regular member he hired Akari to work in the factory.
One problem is now solved for Akari, the remaining one is where can she live? Osada told her of a boarding house that was close to the factory and brought her there to rent a room, unknown to him it was the boarding house which Akari's grandmother owned. The grandmother Tanaka at first refused to let Akari stay at the house saying there were no available rooms which was the truth, however through a little bit of trickery by Akari Tanaka relented and said she could stay for just a little while.
There being no available rooms at the boarding house meant that Akari had to share a room with her grandmother for the time being, having watched only 4 weeks don't know how long Akari will be staying there. Tanaka laid down one rule though for Akari and that she wasn't allowed to tell anyone that she was Tanaka's granddaughter, it's a secret that she has one, gets a bit tough at time but Akari has kept the secret through the episodes I've viewed. We're up to episode 16 now and things for Akari in Osaka are going somewhat well, she's met another older woman at the house named Fuyumi and the two quickly become good friends, also the job at the katsuoboshi factory are for the most part going smoothly. There's a development which happens at the end of episode 15 which is going to become the main storyline soon in the drama, can't give any spoilers because I have no clue how it's going to turn out. The major event is that Akari has found a 'forbidden room' at the boarding house, the room which was quite huge at one time was a okonomiyaki restaurant but has been closed for many years. In a okonomiyaki restaurant you make your own food and you make it on a teppan surface, hence the title of the drama.
Tanaka was furious when she found Akari in the 'forbideen room' and slapped Akari quite hard sending her sprawling, she was never, ever allowed to go back into that room threatened Tanaka. Besides that scene the two seem to get along fairly well considering Tanaka at first wanted nothing to do with her granddaughter, have a feeling the pair will be close to coming to blows again in the series but they'll probably end up very close.
Mentioned with 26 weeks of episodes there's going to be a few that have very little that happens, that occurred in episodes 16 and 17, mainly just concentrated on Akari at her job and becoming more accustomed to living in Osaka. The final episode of the week though something major did happen which is that Akari's parents came to visit her. They had no clue until the previous episode of the events that happened to Akari, they figured she was working at her new job in an office. Akari finally had to tell them the truth that there was no office job and she was working in a factory. Her parents weren't happy hearing that but the thing that sent her father over the edge was when he learned that Akari was living with Tanaka, he blew a top hearing that and with his wife rushed to Osaka to bring Akari back to Onomich.
In Osaka though things settled down to a normal level, Tanaka and Akari's parents had a long talk which seemed to satisfy the father, it was decided that Akari would be allowed to stay in Osaka with her grandmother.
With that final event we've reached the conclusion of the third week, lot happened in the beginning and end of the week but not so much in the middle episodes. Then again you can't have a major happening in every show, you need to let the characters grow a bit and to learn a bit more about them which is what happened. After this post is as usual a huge amount of Miori screenshots from this week and after that one is the final recap of this set, will be looking at 4 episodes at a time.
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