Asian Drama

To pursue her dreams, Sakurai Kazumi (Wakui Emi) quits her job and goes to New York to study jewelry design, against the objections of her naggy and stubborn but well-meaning father (Takeda Tetsuya). As part of remaking herself, she changes from spectacles to contact lenses, even though she has problems adapting to them. When she accidentally drops her contact lenses, a mysterious man helps prevent them from being stepped on, but he walks away before she can talk to him. Some years pass, and Kazumi is on a plane home after receiving a letter from her brother Taku saying their father is critically ill. She has morning sickness and has some run-ins on the plane with a sloppily-dressed man, and it is only when she drops her contacts and the man helps her in a similar way that she recognises him (Sorimachi Takashi). She chases after him and asks, "would you like to do some work (arubaito)?" It turns out that Kazumi in her last letter from New York had written that she was in a relationship with someone and that they might soon marry, but since then she has broken up with him, and she didn't want to make her father upset by coming home alone. The man, a freelance journalist named Yoshimi Kaoru, agrees to pretend to be her fiancé. On reaching home, Kazumi discovers that her father is not actually on his deathbed (he just had minor surgery), and everyone discovers that Taku had written that letter back to Kazumi where their father says he's happy about the relationship. But the biggest shock comes when Kazumi admits that she's pregnant, and that she wants to have the baby...

Shomuni 2 is a sequel from Shomuni, a popular comedic drama serial. It continues where it left off when the female employees from GA-2, deemed "the graveyard of all female employees" for its inane daily job routines of changing light bulbs, used toilet rolls and organising flower appreciation nights, saved the company in the final episode of Shomuni. However, Manpan Corporation has changed. The multi-national company is now run in a totalitarian fashion. Closed circuit cameras are placed in every nook and cranny of the company to monitor the daily routines of employees. Even the basins in the toilets are not spared (though, obviously, the cubicles are) from scrutiny. This is a result of the Personnel Department, led by the evil Terasaki and Nonomura, who are (again) seeking to find a reason to save up on company budget.

Tsuboi Chinatsu, the most hated GA-2 by the Personnel Department, has resigned from Manpan Corporation. During the wedding reception, she asks four of the five female GA-2 employees (all of them except Tsukahara Sawako) whether they wished to have a little bet on whether Tsukahara Sawako would lose her virginity by the end of the month (30th of June). At the same time, Sawako is made the new "de facto" leader of GA-2, and she struggles to fill the boots left behind by Chinatsu.

When Kasumi's husband dies in a car wreck, Ryuichi vows to watch over her and her unborn son. Over the next ten years, he gradually falls in love with Kasumi. Now 35-year-old, Kasumi has resisted loving another man for fear of reliving the pain of losing a loved one. She happens to meet Ryuichi's bad boy younger brother and finds herself physically attracted to him; but Ryuichi finally acts on his bottled-up feelings for Kasumi and asks her to marry him. Kasumi must decide if she can bring herself to fall in love with a responsible man like Ryuichi, or if she can be content with the purely physical relationship that his brother can provide.