"Imadoki no Wakai Mon wa" drama, episode five recap

 

 Air Dates: April 9th to May 28, 2022 on WOWOW, Saturdays at 10:30 pm

Subs were done by Deedlitmurata at DA, episodes are 25+ minutes in length

Also can be known by the title Young People Nowadays....

Main Cast: Wrote much of this up after only viewing the first show, some characters we didn't get to meet or know too well so will be updating this as time goes on.

Takashi Sorimachi as Hajime Ishizawa.... Chief of the Sales Department A at Mitsuhashi Shouji Trading company. He's a man close to fifty who is a bit quiet at the office yet the employees there dread Ishizawa and go out of their way to avoid him..... save for the rookie worker Ayumi! Ishizawa doesn't understand the younger generation so well which is a reason he's too quiet even though he's the chief of sales. Ishizawa has been with the company for almost 25 years and he also started out as a regular office worker. Ishizawa is also divorced and the rumor was it happened because he had an affair with a temp worker.

Haruka Fukuhara  as Ayumi Mugita.... Has only been at the company for a month and wonder why she's there? Ayumi went to college for Humanities and said she's very bad at numbers which she's proved over and over which in the beginning infuriated her senpai Funaki. But Ayumi never stops trying and the chief Ishizawa for some reason has grown quite fond of her.

Kaito Nakamura as Shun Funaki.... Works a bit closely with Ayumi at the office and at first was always upset with her performance until Ishizawa set him straight. Funaki's problem is that he's a perfectionist and expects others to be too, will his ways come back to haunt him?

Takashi Fujii as Ryoji Ebisu.... Chief of Sales Department B who had been trained by Ishizawa twenty years ago. He's a very strict man to work for and most employees dislike him though Ebisu does try to help everyone hut has a hard time communicating.

Masato Hagiwara as Hiroshi Kazama.... Is still at the company but unsure what his current position is, he's been Ishizawa's best friend for many years.

Ayame Misaki as Sanako Inukai.... Female worker at the office who oversees the work of Ayumi and Funaki.

Atsushi Shinohara as Hideki Kora..... Older male worker at the trading company who refuses to ever work overtime.

Ami Tomite as Hitomi Mugita.... Ayumi's older sister who also lives in Tokyo but the pair seem to have grown up far from the city.

Karen Otomo as The Mysterious Woman.... That's what she's called as she may never have a name? This woman is in her early twenties and Ayumi was wondering is she having an affair with her boss? The answer to that is no as we learned in the fourth episode her name is Mii-chan and is the daughter of Ishizawa.

On the right is Funaki but the more important person is Ishizawa on the left, that saying "Jeez, young people these days...." is one he utters quite often in an episode. In this episode alone took four screenshots of him uttering that soon to be famous line!

 Links to the previous recaps:

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three .... Episode four

 Really zipping through this series, granted it helps when an episode is just 25+ minutes in length but what that mainly means is there's no filler and the action moves right along. A key reason I'm enjoying this drama so much is that the story is believable, no sci-fi or fantasy, etc. save for one scene in the next show. If you work in an office and I have for some years now then it's easy to relate to what's going on. Hope to have these final four recaps viewed and written up by Tuesday.... and for a change did!!!!

 For the most part the characters of Ayumi and Ishizawa have dominated the screen time to date which makes sense as they're the two leads. But in this and the next episode we finally see more of two characters and it does help a series when the rest of the cast play important roles. Knew nothing about the character of Sanako until the final eight minutes of this show, she also is a ley figure in the sixth episode but haven't viewed any show past that yet. We're going to be starting off with the story of Kora who is a regular trader and close to forty in age, after you read his tale the question is will we be seeing him again?

 Always have to include some screenshots of Ishizawa saying his famous line(!) though he's not that much older than Kora who is on the left. In that top screenshot Funaki is berating Kora for messing up some documents plus not getting them done in time, if there's one thing Kora won't do is work any overtime. But he just may be the most efficient worker in the Mitsuhashi sales department and Kora can do more in one day than most can in a week! However his work has slipped drastically over the last few weeks and a client even cancelled their contract as you can see above. That man is Kazama who we still haven't seen much of yet but he has a story that ends off the next recap. Very little escapes the eye of the office chief Ishizawa and he's been noticing how tired Kora has been lately, even Ayumi made a comment about that above. Kora insisted everything was oki doki and everyone has bad days or stretches but that had never happened before with him.

 Later on that day after Kora had left Ishizawa found a flyer next to the copy machine and that's the second screenshot above. Seems Kora has been spending all of his free time writing up a screenplay for a contest and the prizes are some very good ones for an aspiring writer. So that's why Kora has been so beaten down as of late and Ishizawa finally brought him to his special meeting room... which is the roof of the building! Kora did admit that screenplay has been the cause of his work suffering and he had been getting very little sleep in order to finish the script which is now done. Ishizawa didn't order his very efficient employee to do this or that but did say sooner or later he has to decide which is more important. Well, that decision was an easy one for a few days later Kora received a call at the office, the screenplay for his story "Someday With You" won the grand prize! So that decision was kind of a shocking one to me and the rest of the office as Kora handed in his resignation, he's going to be a full time writer and on the day he left Kora was brought out to a drinking session by Ishizawa.

 As we saw in the second episode Kora cannot handle his alcohol, for this occasion he just had two drinks and bid farewell to his now ex-comrades. Kora did mention perhaps a good idea for a story would be of his adventures working under Ishizawa, will we ever see this man again? Unlike Kora Ayumi can handle her alcohol, seems like she can drink anyone under the table! So for a while she, Ishizawa and Kazama sat around talking about whatever, mainly about what their dreams are or were. Kazama also can't handle drinking that well as he was sloshed early but that didn't stop him from guzzling down more beer, that seems to be Ayumi's fave choice of the spirits. Kazama's dream for so many years was to open his own office in downtown Tokyo, he'd be the owner/president while he would appoint his oldest fiend Ishizawa to be the main director. Kazama is getting up there in age so it doesn't appear his dream will ever come true. Ayumi also chipped in her dream which growing up was to be a manga artist or a mangaka, have no clue if she's good or not at drawing. The chief told a story of growing up poor and Ayumi thought his dream was to escape that kind of life, but as you can see above Ishizawa was joking and was referring to the wrestler Gouda.

 Ayumi didn't say it but think she has the impression that rags to riches story was Ishizawa's true bio, I think that way too. The night ended as the trio still had to work the next day and Kamaza was sent home in a drunken stupor in a cab. So we learned a bit about Kora but he's gone now, what about the other character who finally got some decent screen time? That's Sanako and until now had no idea what her role was at the Mitushashi sales office. She is a trader like everyone else but also supervises Ayumi and Funaki. Sanako has always been such an efficient worker but for the past month she's really been in hyper drive and as you can see below that hard work has paid off! For the first time ever Sanako was the monthly MVP at the company and while many would bask in the glory for a few days Sanako actually was working harder. Like some others in the office she has more work as she took over many of Kora's accounts.

 

 Everyone has their limits on what they can do, Sanako hit that stage and hoped the rest of the office wouldn't notice that her work began to slip. Sanako is often a very stern person though has a pleasant demeanor about her but she began to smile even more as of late and to act nicer to everyone. That was so they may not notice her recent mistakes but there's not much Ishizawa misses at the office though at first he didn't say anything about Sanako's performance. However she was brought into the VP's office where he slightly berated her for the sloppy work she did on a project and that other company may pull their account! That's when Ishizawa decided it was time for him to jump into action and Sanako was brought to his special.... rooftop office!

 Ishizawa is such a fair boss and wonder why so many at the company are frightened of him. He didn't put down Sanako at all and really just wondered what's been up with her as of late? She confessed that morning one of her parents was admitted to a hospital and had been very sick for a while. Sanako wasn't close to her parents but still worried about them and that has played a part in her work performance dipping. Ishizawa understood completely and ordered Sanako to take some time off to visit her parent, don't worry as he'll make sure the work is done. That is a bit of a problem with Sanako as she doesn't trust others to help her on a project, she reluctantly agreed to take some time off which brings us to the end of this recap. Sanako will also have some decent screen time in the next recap which is the next post.