"Shoujiki Fudousan" drama, episode four recap

 

 Air Dates: April 5th until June 7, 2022  Tuesdays at 10:00 pm on NHK

Subs are being done by Miamaw-subs, also goes by the title of Honest Real Estate

Main Cast: First real estate drama I can recall viewing and most of the action takes place at the Tosaka Real Estate Office. Their main seller had been Nagase or at least until an 'accident' in the first episode. At a lot where a new building was to be constructed there were a few older monuments which unknown to Nagase were religious and he was irate they hadn't been removed. So he took matters into his own hands and attempted to destroy them which infuriated their 'Gods'!!!! Since that moment Nagase went from being a chronic liar to a man who cannot tell a lie, whenever he's about to an unseen breeze comes out of nowhere transforming him for a few moments to the most honest man in the world!

Tomohisa Yamashita as Saichi Nagase.... You can see what's happened with Nagase above, before then he would tell any lie in the world to make a sale! He had been successful as he was the #1 agent at Tosaka realty but after becoming a semi honest man his ranking has dropped to fifth. What's also dropped is his lifestyle as he's gone from living in a ritzy penthouse to a small and rundown one room apartment. As time goes on think Nagase will learn how to use this 'honesty' to his benefit but can he become the company's #1 seller again?

Haruka Fukuhara as Sakura Tsukishita.... Rookie at Tosaka RE and quite a naive young woman. Nagase has been assigned to be her mentor and with his sudden personality change Sakura doesn't know what to think of him. Through two shows she's made zero sales as Sakura seems to care too much about the tenants and needs to change her ways.

Hayato Ichihara as Takahisa Kiriyama.... Nagase's rival at the real estate office and has actually passed him for sales by the end of the first show, he's a man not to be trusted.

Shinobu Hasegawa as Masumi Okawa.... Office manager at the company, at times Okawa seems to be a tough man but is kind of a push over.

Masao Kusakari as Toshiro Tosaka.... Owner of Tosaka Real Estate who doesn't do much as far as the day to day activities go, not much screen time the first few shows.

Rika Izumi as Minami Enomoto.... Didn't see enough of her in the few of shows but think this role will become a bit larger. Minami is a new employee at the Mitsutoma bank as a financial agent and has her sights set on Nagase becoming her next boyfriend!

Kana Kurashima as Ryoko Hanazawa....  Main agent at a new real estate company named Minerva and we only saw a little bit of her in the first two shows. Minerva has quickly become Tosaka's biggest rival and her aim is/was to steal Nagase away from them.

Guest stars: 

Jun Fubuki as Setsuko Matsui .... Elderly woman who wants to rent out an apartment where a person has recently died!

Tomoko Kurokawa as Misa Tanoue.... Daughter of the above and we didn't know that until the end, she's pregnant and in the market for an apartment with her husband.

Shinji Rokkaku as Sasaki.... Owner of a 'haunted' building.

 Recaps for the previous shows:

Episode one .... Episode two

 Ratings for this series and am wondering why are they so low?

Episode one, 4.8% .... Episode two, 5.9% .... Episode three, 5.3% .... Episode four, 5.3%

 

 Don't like breaking up the recaps to talk about real estate terms as I'm not too up on them and especially the terms from Japan so have screenshots at the top that should explain them to you.

 Overdue for a Haruka solo post as it's been well over a month since her last one. She was at an event in April and looked mighty fine at it but there's been virtually nothing else to post about. Hope that'll be changing for in June she'll be releasing her first regular album, she's had four singles in the last three years. Haruka is also in another drama that's been airing at the same time as this one, that's a series I'll be recapping too but not until it's run has finished.

 On to this recap and the reason I haven't been zipping through this drama as there's no ongoing storyline and every episode has had a different  theme. One story that could be ongoing is with Nagase's curse he got in the first show where he can tell only the truth around people. He's done some research for it such as in the first minute of this show but hasn't been serious enough on how to lift the curse. It's the Spring and according to the Tosaka Real Estate owner that's the worst time of the year for agents so he wants everyone to work that much harder and that's the main story to this episode, also why the agency has been been losing so many sales.

 That's Nagase in the top screenshot viewing his old penthouse, how he wants to move back there so badly. He lost that place in the first episode and it's hard to believe he took a drop so quickly just because his sales fell. At the Tosaka office it's a special two week drive to rent or sell as many places as possible. One place is the above building which has twelve empty apartments, it's an older building which most potential tenants don't care for though the rent is reasonable. The owner Tosaka above has told his force he'll double the commission for the agent that gets the most contracts, Kiriyama's eyes were gleaming at that. Will bring it up in the next recap but I had been wondering how much of a commission do agents get for renting out an apartment or shop? Another reason for that incentive is because the new rival of Tosaka real estate Minerva has been doing brisk business and has been stealing many of their clients away which has left the owner Tosaka irate.

 That woman above as you can see is named Setsuko and she's in the market for an apartment. Not just any kind of place but one that is Stigmatized, that means the previous tenant had died there from natural causes or perhaps an eerie death. Most apartments don't advertise their places as being stigmatized as it would drive clients away. Setsuko has her own reasons for wanting one of those places which we'll learn about later on but she can't find anywhere that would rent to her. She checks the obituaries and tries to rent an apartment where someone has died but she's been getting turned away mainly because of her age which is 72. Sakura is the agent handling the case, Nagase wanted nothing to do with the lady but of course got roped in by Sakura to help her. But the main goal for rentals is that apartment building mentioned above which is in the Nishikokubunji district of Tokyo, Nagase and Sakura paid the place a visit. At one time it may have been a nice apartment but the building is now seventeen years and so many things need an upgrade plus it's a fifteen minute walk to the nearest station. After doing that check the pair left and at the building's entrance they ran into a rival who we hadn't seen much of in the first three shows. 

 In the top screenshot is Ryoko from Minerva Real Estate, the man is her assistant Nishioka who we met for the first time. Minerva has been doing some very underhanded tricks to steal Tosaka's clients away but what are they? Ryoko is also trying to sell apartments in that building and as dishonest as Kiriyama is the agents from Minerva make him look like an Angel! That's him above in the bottom two screenshots and the pic above them was Nagase explaining to Sakura what Kiriyama was doing with a potential tenant. He's already sold one unit and looks like his second could happen any minute. In that meeting Kiriyama had someone who is referred to as an Anko, not positive of everything one of them does but it seems they are middleman between a client and agent. While it's legal not many agents use that tactic and an Anko will say or do anything for an agent to sell/rent a unit. Thanks to that Anko Kiriyama has made his second sale and was rubbing it in to Nagase above but it comes out at the end the Tosaka management weren't too happy with Kiriyama's methods, neither was he.

 Below we see the married couple of the Tanoues and they're interested in that building which has been so hard to rent save if you're Kiriyama. They want to know more about it and for the first time in this show Nagase's 'honesty curse' sprang into action. He began to list all of the negatives about the unit such as that it needs many renovations, is close to a daycare center, is actually a twenty minute walk to the station along with some other tidbits. But Nagase is becoming a bit wiser with how he's forced to tell the truth and at times it could work to his advantage. He then told the wife Misa that though the children are loud it's a perfect location for her as Misa is pregnant! Plus if they do renovations they can set up the apartment anyway they would like it to be so there are some key advantages to the place. The couple were impressed enough and wanted Nagase to give them a tour of the building and unit. Which he did and it appears Nagase will be renting out his first unit in the building which is apartment #505. But as they were leaving without Nagase trouble was on the horizon as you can see below.

 The Minerva agent Nishioka was aware unit 505 was being shown and he set up a very sneaky sham for when Misa and her husband left the building. He told them the apartment was a stigmatized place and even showed them a website that said the same thing which has now led the Tanoue couple rethinking their decision to live there. They met up again with Nagase who assured them that Nishioka told them nothing but lies, with Sakura he headed to the Minerva office to find out what was going on. There Ryoko told the pair a huge lie where she said Nishioka was acting on his own but none of us believed her. Nagase had done a little bit of research and had found out this wasn't the first time something like this has happened, Minerva has been pulling these shams for months with potential Tosaka clients! So that's the biggest reason for the drastic decrease in sales for Nagase and his mates, Minerva has pulled this 'Stigmatized' sham on so many clients. Ryoko kind of agreed to stop that possibly illegal scheme but hard to trust her though it appears Misa and her husband will move in!

 Back to Sakura's client Setsuko who is right above, as mentioned she wanted a stigmatized place and Nagase accused her of working with Minerva on the scheme! It was easy to see why Nagase would think that way as other things also added up to make Setsuko look guilty. But she finally admitted why she wanted a place where a person had died and that too made sense. Her husband passed away three years ago, one reason for wanting to move is that her current place was then too expensive. But Setsuko also claimed the spirit of her dead husband has visited her on a few occasions at night but those visits have ceased. So Setsuko felt if she moved into a place that was haunted or stigmatized the spirit of her dead husband would return again! There could be a place just for her thought Sakura as she grabbed Nagase to bring him to an apartment building he had once mentioned.

 Nagase had known of a building also in Nishikokubunji not far from the other building he's been trying to rent apartments. He had told Sakura of an urban legend where the elevator in this 'haunted building' will always stop at the fourth floor no matter what button you push. When they visited the place that's what happened to them as it stopped on the fourth floor, Sakura and Nagase ran out of the building in a panic! There they met the owner who was furious with these rumors of his building being haunted, the only problem was that the elevator needed some work on it. Nagase came up with a brainstorm and told the owner that many elderly people were in the market for stigmatized apartments, if he could fix the place up a bit better to accommodate seniors he could rent out every apartment! The owner Sasaki was  a bit leery at first but Nagase and Sakura told the man they would do everything they could to rent out the apartments for Sasaki so he agreed to the plan and looks like many commissions will be coming their way soon.

 It's the end of that two week intense selling competition for the Tosaka agency. They managed to rent out five apartments with Kiriyama getting three of them so he got that nice double bonus. Nagase had two rentals, the married Tanoue couple and also Setsuko as Misa happened to be her daughter. However Minerva had rented out seven units which didn't please the owner Tosaka, did they use more underhand shams to rent those places? As the episode ended we could overhear Tosaka talking with the office manager Okawa about Kiriyama. They knew he used an Anko to help him rent out those units and the pair were quite disappointed with him. Kiriyama also was mad at himself as he had angrily crushed that bonus envelope in his hand and will using an Anko come back to haunt him? Oooops, forgot to talk about Rika but she's in some screenshots below. So that concludes this recap and the next pair will be done much sooner as another drama I'm recapping just ended. As usual many screenshots to help you follow the action a bit better.