Available on VIKI
Based on manga series “5 Ji Kara 9 Ji Made” by Miki Aihara (first published March, 2010 in monthly Japanese shojo manga magazine Cheese!).
Junko Sakuraba (Satomi Ishihara) is a woman who’s facing her 29th birthday and working as an English teacher in Japan. She’s always dreamed of living in New York, but it seems like that dream is getting further and further away. She’s diligent in her work, but her love life is non-existent. At a funeral she attends, she accidentally throws ashes onto a monk who’s chanting a sutra. She feels awful about what happens and tries to apologize. Later, her family sets her up on a blind date with Takane Hoshikaw (Tomohisa Yamashita).a. It turns out that he’s the same monk she threw ashes on earlier.
This Japanese drama had so many points that made me laugh, which made it quite funny!
This drama is a romantic comedy. Junko, the teacher , is a typical career focus woman , never once her goals involved in getting married, which is a lot like nowadays people around the world. This type of people is one of the reasons natality rates decrease. However, the biggest reason why natality rate decreases in Japan so drastically is the previous known support system that made the workers blindly obedient to the CEO of their company.
The System involved in the matchmaking interviews , marriage support and housing support, whatever was the society goal and worker dream , the company provided. This is not the case anymore!
Another thing I found contrasting in the drama is the English teaching being given by Japanese natives, of course this is a big contrast. In real life at least 90% of English teachers are foreigners with most companies preferring English natives, which means citizens from US, UK , Ireland , Canada and so on … However, with English being implemented across the world as an international language and being declared the official language in the aviation world, I find this preference and in some cases total limitation to English natives, also removes hopes and chances from all other countries’ citizens.
If you really want my opinion, it should accept more non english natives with the requirement of having a IELTS or Cambridge certificate declaring they have high C1, or a C2 level by the CEFR standard ( Common European Framework of Reference), which in the case of IELTS corresponds to the Band 7.5 and above. Wouldn’t a Foreign non native to the English speaker be able to identify and anticipate what the issues or doubts a new student may have? Should a new language learning skill be taken into more consideration than the typical person that was born with one language and grows up with the same language all his life, who may not even be interested in learning the Japanese language ?
And Yes this touches a bit of my nerve, because achieving the Ielts band 8 or above, doing a CELTA certification ( that’s the english teaching certification) and having the Basic Japanese language level is my goal for 2023. That’s why I plan to attend a 1 month Course in Japan with EF – Education First . April 2023 … Sakura season Babyyyyyy, oh yeah!
You can Check out my post about it at ALT in Japan for Portugal’s Citizens
Back to the Drama, Junko and Takane married by Civil law decide to commit and help both achieve their goals and dreams in life, even if it means live in New york city for one full year.
