Weekly summary: Apr. 16 - Apr. 22, 2023

[alchemicink]

A generally uneventful week for me. Which was nice for a change, actually!

Here are a few things to share:

I haven't watched a j-drama is a few years. (I think the last one was when Takaki was in Final Cut. Which was really terrible plotwise, tho Takaki looked nice.) But back in college, I used to watch so many j-dramas! They were only 10-ish episodes usually, so pretty easy to enjoy quickly. And they were great listening practice since I was taking Japanese classes at the time.

So I've been seeing promos and such pop up for Yamada Ryosuke's new drama: 王様に捧ぐ薬指 (this translates to "the third finger offered to a king" which is hilariously unwieldy to say, so I'm gonna go with the abbreviated Japanese titled which is just "ousasa"). The basic plot is essentially a good old "fake dating" trope but leveled up to a whole sham marriage 😂 I couldn't resist. I had to watch the first episode!

The leads are Ayaka (portrayed by Hashimoto Kanna) and Tougou (portrayed by Yamada Ryosuke). Ayaka comes from a poor, large family, and, as the oldest sibling, she's working to help make ends meet. The problem is that men keep falling in love with her at every job, cause a bunch of trouble, and get her fired. Her current job is at some sort of bridal company, run by the young rich and famous CEO, Nitta Tougou. He's pretty notorious for having competed on a season of a Japanese knock-off of The Bachelor, and ended the season by not picking either of the last two ladies.

When Ayaka gets into the usual trouble at work again, she thinks she's gonna get fired. But Tougou instead proposes that they get married. It would help her out financially, and..... I didn't quite catch why he was suggesting this. I think it probably had something to do with improving his reputation?

Anyway, that's the gist of it, and most of episode one is telling their parents and then the wedding/reception itself. Of course, things aren't gonna be easy for them going forward. Tougou is clearly secretly pining for his old high school friend. And an old friend of Ayaka is coming back to town too. The situation is ripe for lots of rom-com shenanigans!

I hope I'll be able to keep being able to find each episode as it airs, because it was a lot of fun to watch. Plus, I've realized my Japanese is getting really rusty, and watching this is good practice too. Just like old times!

I just have a little bit of music to share this time:

Garnidelia released a new PV for a song that's being used as an ending theme for a currently airing anime. It sounds... very much like a pretty typical ending theme. Maria looks very pretty in the PV tho, and toku... is there too 😅

Also this week, YouTube said to me "hey do you remember MUCC??" and recommended me one of their recent videos. I listened to a few of their songs in high school, but never kept up with them closely. So this was a nice bit of nostalgia to check in on them again. They're apparently celebrating their 25th anniversary?!

Anyway, the song isn't too bad, though a bit too slow for my tastes. The addition of the cello and violin really helped! But the whole time I was watching the video, I kept worrying that they were probably getting exposed to mold everywhere they filmed 😬 also, balloon releases are bad for the environment..... please do not do that

In writing news, I finally got impatient enough with myself that I posted two little fics this week. Both are really short shiritori snippets I wrote forever ago and decided I might as well just post them.

☆ Stretch it out (bnha, genfic)

☆ A rock (or more) in the path (Killjoys, genfic)


By the way, Killjoys seems like a pretty obscure show these days I think. But if you love really cheesy scifi, it ran for five seasons and had a nice satisfying ending! I recommend it! Bonus: Hannah John-Kamen plays the lead character ♡

Lastly, this week, I had the chance to visit the local state park. It was for work, so I didn't get a chance to do a lot of exploring, but it seems like a really nice place to spend a day and enjoy nature. The weather is warming up here, which makes me want to spend more time outside 🥰 hopefully I have a chance to go back again soon!

That's it for another weekly summary! Wishing everyone a super fantastic week ahead!

Comments

[bluedreaming]

Uneventful weeks are the best! My weekend was so busy that’s it’s a break to come back to work ༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

The drama sounds hilarious, though a bit like the kind of story I enjoy more via second hand accounts. I love how thin the marriage excuse is (because we don’t care, really lol right?)

MUCC!!! I haven’t kept up with them in ages but ahh the sweet nostalgia ♡

Short snippets are always good!

I hope you can go back to the park sometime; that sounds really nice. Here it’s maybe finally perhaps starting to warm up (there there are still small piles of snow in shady corners).

Have a good week!