"Imadoki no Wakai Mon wa" drama, episode two 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: Writing 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.

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 a bit 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 was Ishizawa's best friend for many years.

Ayame Misaki as Sanako Inukai.... Female worker at the office.

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.

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?

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.

 

 We met two other characters in this show, one of them is Ebisu who got quite a bit of screen time. In that top screenshot Ayumi was pulling an all-nighter though these days overtime seems to be frowned upon at companies. Ayumi was working on her first solo project and while she did her homework on the subject she couldn't get the proposal do look more appealing. So she ended up falling asleep at her laptop and barely made it to work on time that morning. Ayumi didn't have time to change or clean, she was hoping not to be noticed but was and to her dismay it was the man in the second screenshot. He's Ebisu, like Ishizawa is a chief at Mitsuhashi Trading heading up the other sales department. When Ayumi was hired a little over a month ago Ebisu led the orientation session, about a dozen in all were hired. Most of these newbies had gone to elite schools and were bragging about it, not Ayumi who went to a 'normal school' and wouldn't say which one.

 Ebisu was mighty tough on these new recruits and it was only their first day! Ebisu too went to an elite school but found out that didn't help him when he joined Mitsuhashi twenty years ago. So he ripped into these rookies a bit which actually may have been needed, that bottom screenshot above has some info I wasn't aware of. To this day that group still says many mean things about Ebisu who does care about his team but he's so far away from being a 'people person'. So while be was berating Ayumi for her appearance luckily arriving on the scene was her chief Ishizawa, Ebisu even berated him for being so lax with his department! Ishizawa has been at the company for almost 25 years and he too started out like Ayumi which was as a regular office worker and trader. He too didn't attend an elite college and explained a few things to Ayumi about how things were years ago and about Ebisu's history.

 Twenty years ago things were so much different at Mitsuhashi and most other Japanese companies. Ishizawa and his best mate Kazama used to chain smoke at their desks plus much OT was required from every worker along with mandatory office drinking parties! Ishizawa and Kazama were assigned to train Ebisu twenty years ago and things didn't work out so well for a long time. Ishizawa was such a talented trader, at the end of Ebisu's first year Ishizawa was he #1 trader while Ebisu hadn't made one deal! What it boiled down to was that attending a prestigious college is no advantage in the working world and Ebisu had to get rid of his 'elite attitude' which he eventually did over the years, he too then became a chief of a department. But he still has communication problems and even Ayumi has noticed that, once when others were talking behind Ebisu's back and the other when he felt so down after berating one of his employees.

 Kazama still works at the Mitsuhashi company but no clue what his position is, perhaps he'll be the focus of the next episode. Ishizawa also had a mini chat with Ebisu about the current generation, both are semi old timers so perhaps Ebisu too needs to become a bit more lenient. Silently Ishizawa has been watching Ayumi at work, she still needs much more training but he's very impressed with her work ethic. So much Ishizawa has given her first solo project much to Ayumi's dismay, even more distressed was Funaki who had to be her supervisor for the project. Ayumi has a degree in Humanities and still shocked she's working as a trader as she doesn't have much knowledge of the field. But to her credit Ayumi worked so hard on this project which was for a company selling coil components. Ayumi's proposal drafts kept getting rejected by Funaki but he saw how well she had done her homework on the subject, she just needs more training on how to make an appealing sales proposal.

 That hard work did pay off as by the day of the meeting with the president of Kimura Industries Ayumi's proposal got the A-OK from Funaki, if he says it was solid then it must be. This company makes coil products, the director Tanuki is the older man in a few screenshots right above. He was a bit shocked that a young woman such as Ayumi was chosen for this sales proposal, she can write well but has her selling methods improved since the last episode? That they have and perhaps the key was that Funaki was there this time for guidance, he has a lot riding on this deal too. Tanuki mentioned he knew their boss Ishizawa and had worked with him in the past with the results always being beneficial to Kimura Industries. Tanuki scanned over Ayumi's proposal a few times and it was hard for her or us to know whether he approved of it or not, the silence was killing her.

 But eventually Tanuki gave his thoughts on this hard worked proposal and said it looked solid, he's prepared to sign a contract and Ayumi has made her first ever trader's deal! Needless to say she was elated and so wasn't everyone back at the Mitsuhashi office, especially her chief Ishizawa who had assigned Ayumi the project. This episode was 26 minutes in length and we've hit the end of it but not the end of the story with this man Tanuki. In the final ten seconds Ayumi has received a call from him, as you can see in the above screenshot it appears this man may be backing out of the deal! The answer to whether he did or not is in the recap for episode three which is the next post.