「古畑任三郎でした。」
So am I the only one who’s totally champing at the bit for the three final episodes of 古畑任三郎? I can see why they’re ending it–Tamura Masakazu must be 102 by now, and Imaizumi-kun must be a total chrome-dome. (Actually, apparently no, on that latter point.)
This is so exciting.
Added at 21:36: Okay, actually, I’m going to record them so Atsushi and I can watch them together over the three-day weekend; the first DVD is being toasted now.
This is way cool.
Will Norito Yashima play a waiter this week? Or a taxi driver? Tomorrow’s guest star murderer is Ichiro. Maybe Yashima will be a batboy? In this economy, you never know. That’s how he ended up at the Japanese embassy in Spain, if I remember correctly.
And how will Ichiro kill his victim tomorrow? You know, when I say he’s totally not my type, I don’t really mean that in any sort of sententious way. What I really mean is that if, say, Fuji TV decides to show him in a steam room wearing only a towel and strangling someone with his bare hands, powerful forearms straining, I might possibly be persuaded to be a little less dismissive after all.
I’m just saying.
Added at 22:00: For anyone who’s not Japan-based and is thinking, Huh? the show I’m referring to is a Japanese show modeled on Columbo. I wrote a little about it a while back, too.
Added on 5 January: WTF? A glam twin who murders her dowdier but more talented twin and then muddies up the time of death by impersonating her? Well, that’s original. Never seen a mystery like that before.
Man, the hiding-in-plain-sight mistake she made that Furuhata catches her on had better be agonizingly good. PFFT!
Added later on 5 January: And the final double-cross didn’t make up for it. Enjoyable, though.
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I highly recommend Oosama no resutoran, also written by Mitani Kouki. It’s an old “dorama” of about 12 episodes, with many actors who are now famous but who were then just part of Mitani’s group. The writing is very funny and erudite, much much better than the slapstic humor that you find on most J TV. I think they have it in decent video stores.
Cool. I’ll have to check it out. But the Mitani mystery well must have been running pretty dry for this Nanako Matsujima episode to be plotted this way. Oy!
That’s what was going on with Furuhata-san.
Many years ago, my first Japanese teacher showed me an episode of that show.
The other day, on the train with my girlfriend (both of us are originally from the Pacific Northwest), I saw a poster with Furuhata… and Ichiro??
“Honey, is that the Ichiro from Seattle? Or is he just some amazing look alike that also has his name written in Katakana?”
“No, dear, that’s not Ichiro.”
Thus ended the conversation.
I don’t have a television here in Japan, so I am out of the television loop. Although, I have seen the same actor doing ham commercials, and that made my day.
Yes, I just randomly found your journal while looking for something related to Japanese politics.
Well, it was Ichiro. Furuhata Ninzaburo, like Columbo, often has celebrities guest star as murderers. (Well, a lot of the guest stars on Columbo were pretty washed up–George Hamilton, anyone?) I think SMAP was on twice–there was at least one where all five of them did this sort of tag-team Rube Goldberg murder machine before a big concert. It was great fun. The series is all available at the video store, if you ever get a TV and are interested. It’s cool if you’re a foreigner because, of course, a lot of times the key to the solution is something very Japanese. The first episode, you had to think about what sort of person would mix formal and informal verb forms in order to place the maru-ten aesthetically. In another, a woman was coshed by her sister while shaving katsuo on one of those big, vicious planes. Two years ago, they worked in the fact that it was about to become the Year of the Monkey.