Asian Drama

Yamazaki Risako lives with her husband Yoichiro and 3-year-old daughter Fumika. One day, she receives a notification from the court that she has been selected as an alternate member of the jury for a shocking criminal case. The defendant in the case is Ando Mizuho, a full-time housewife who is the same age as Risako. She is on trial for causing the death of her 8-month-old daughter by dropping her into the bathtub. As a mother herself, Risako feels repulsed that Mizuho killed her own child. However, after the trial opens, Mizuho’s circumstances remind Risako of her own past and she soon becomes confused with the chaotic feelings that have lain dormant in her.

When she was 17, Minase Akari visited Uki Island on a family vacation and fell in love with Morita Ikumi, the son of the guesthouse owner. The two of them affirmed their feelings for each other as they watched a meteor shower which happens once every four years. They promised to meet there again four years later. However, on that day, Ikumi is not there even though Akari traveled to the same spot. Instead, Hoshino Aritoshi shows up with a camera. Aritoshi is the playboy type who has a way with women but is impossible to hate. Akari has loved drawing pictures since she was a child and continues to keep a sketchbook. Although she has been accepted by a design firm through her job search, she struggles with the specific kind of work she wants to do. Akari’s childhood friend Inui Yamato encourages her to take her time and find something that she truly wishes to do. Which guy will she choose?

17-year-old Aoi came to Yui Obstetrics and Gynecology clinic as a part-time nurse apprentice in Summer 1997. Right after her entry, she is shocked after witnessing an abortion surgery. However, she also met staff members like Yui, the head of the clinic who is careful about everything, Sayako, a reliable and experienced nurse, and Sakaki, the gentle head nurse, who face each pregnant patient and support them after surgeries. Fumika, Aoi's mother, is worried about her clumsy nature and poor communication skills, but Aoi's unique compassion and kindness draws patients' hearts. "I wonder what's life..." Aoi matures while looking at the newborn babies' overwhelming life and asking herself that question.

Aoyama Sara, a broke and desperate single mother who wishes to live with her daughter Moe in peace,　witnesses the shocking suicide of a woman who looks just like her.

When she decides to steal the woman’s identity to run away from her problems, she unlocks a world of secrets and a whole heap of trouble. Sara discovers she doesn’t just look like this woman, she’s genetically identical: a clone – and she’s not the only one. As she finds more clones just like her, she comes to see them as a family. Sara must protect them, and herself – because someone is trying to kill them, one by one.

"Give me back my son." Kurihara Satoko was satisfied with daily life with her husband and son. In fact, the son wasn't their own child, but it wasn't matter for them. After they had tried some treatment for sterility for a long term, they once gave up to have a child. However, they came to know about "adoption", and they took Asato as their son. She couldn't imagine the life without Asato, and believed her happiness continued forever. One day, Satoko got an unexpected call from Katakura Hikari, who insisted that she was Asato's biological mother. Satoko was getting lost into the past because of this call.

"Give me back my son." Kurihara Satoko was satisfied with daily life with her husband and son. In fact, the son wasn't their own child, but it wasn't matter for them. After they had tried some treatment for sterility for a long term, they once gave up to have a child. However, they came to know about "adoption", and they took Asato as their son. She couldn't imagine the life without Asato, and believed her happiness continued forever. One day, Satoko got an unexpected call from Katakura Hikari, who insisted that she was Asato's biological mother. Satoko was getting lost into the past because of this call.

Sugisaki Momoko used to be a nursery school teacher. Her difficulty smiling leads to communication problems with parents and her contract is terminated in one year. Momoko is picked up by ‘Little Snow’, a home care service for sick children, and makes a fresh start there as a caregiver. When a child has a fever, the caregiver would visit the home and care for the child in place of the parents who simply cannot take time off from work. Momoko encounters all sorts of families at the places she is sent to. With the support of her colleagues and the occasional help of her best friend, Yumika, she starts to face work, romance, family and friendship.

Episodes: 10

Dogami Tamaki, the director of Dogami General Hospital, entrusts her nephew and successor, the surgeon Moriyama Suguru, with the role of acting director and sets off to travel around the world on a luxury liner. Unaccustomed to the work of a hospital director, Moriyama flounders. And yet he gets increasingly carried away and behaves outrageously within the hospital. Meanwhile, a hospital patient, Hirabayashi Fumie, has been complaining about a sluggishness of her whole body and pain in the right shoulder. The results of a thorough examination indicate that she has developed angiosarcoma of the liver, a type of malignant tumour. If nothing is done, she will live for an average of six months. The surgeon Sagara Kosuke decides that immediate surgery is necessary, but determines that it will be difficult to pull off the surgery on his own. He asks Moriyama to authorise the surgery and for support from all surgeons. However, Moriyama dismisses his request because the risk is high. Sagara gives encouragement to an anxious Fumie. At the same time, he gets Shibuya Shoko, a medical representative of drug company SI, to obtain the contact of Tanabe, a former House of Representative member of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. What is Sagara’s scheme?

18 months after the successful joint operation between Donoue General Hospital and Saito Teaching Hospital. Sagara Kosuke works as an instructor at Saito Teaching Hospital, at the request of Hospital Dean Matsuda Yoshio, as well as his regular job at Donoue General Hospital. His relationship with Yoshio is good, but some of the doctors at Saito Teaching Hospital are not happy that he is an instructor there.

Meanwhile, Moriyama Suguru becomes well known as a doctor for celebrities. He makes appearances on TV. Due to his rising popularity, Moriyama Suguru spends less time on treating patients. Sagara Kosuke then implements a trick to have Moriyama Suguru work as a temporary instructor at Saito Teaching Hospital.

Anna is everyone's dream; beautiful, intelligent, kind and elegant. But in this drama, she is not the heroine... it is her best friend Lily. Lily is a girl who is overly confident of her own beauty and fantasizes that the whole world is in love with her. She even feels sorry for Anna who is always chased by the boys... as she believes that they are using Anna to become acquainted with her own self. --

“A completely undetectable poison that kills 24 hours after consumed.” It is the rumour that has spread on the internet of a lethal drug that makes the perfect crime possible. It has even become a topic at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Crimes Unit which Sasamoto Naomi has been transferred to. The background of Professor Matsui Toichi who invented this poison at an East European university is obscure. What is known of him is a fuzzy picture on the internet and the digits inscribed on the back of his hand. Matsui has disappeared but starts to appear before people who are trapped by their problems and hands them the poison. “You are free to use it as you will,” he would tell them. Meanwhile, magazine journalist Akimoto Shunji who is engaged to Koide Reika, the daughter of the president of his company, learns of this poison too. He has a problem. It is the existence of Otsu Mayumi, a former high school classmate with whom he has been carrying on a relationship for half a year. She poses an obstacle to his marriage to Reika. And so, he attempts to broach a breakup with her, but is told that she is two months pregnant. On the way home, a troubled Akimoto is hailed by Matsui who passes him a small bottle with the poison. Later, Akimoto is invited to a meal at a posh restaurant by Reika’s father and forced to vow marriage to Reika. He puts a drop of the poison in Mayumi’s cup in order to protect his bright future even as he struggles with himself. Mayumi unsuspectingly brings that cup to her lips... On the morning two days after the incident, her dead body is found at an unexpected place.

Adapted from 1981 novel "Doku" by Akagawa Jirō.

Episodes: 13

Duration: 40 min.

Aired On: Thursday

Ratings: 7.0

Through the introduction of his friend Danma Ryuji, Onizuka Eikichi, the former legendary bike gang member, visits Meishu Academy to tend to the trees in the garden as a part-time gardener. Learning that Yoshikawa Noboru, a student in teacher Fuyutsuki Azusa’s class is being bullied by Uehara Kyoko and other classmates, Onizuka befriends and saves Yoshikawa. Seeing Onizuka’s unprecedented but visceral, powerful response to problem solving, the school’s president and principal, Sakurai Yoshiko, overrides resistance from her vice principal Uchiyamada Hiroshi and makes Onizuka a teacher. Onizuka goes on to tackle many issues as the teacher in charge of the most problematic class, Class 2-4.

30-year-old Miki Makoto (Fukuishi Kazue) is an ordinary housewife struggling with housework and childrearing, but she has always believed in the importance of managing the household over looking beautiful so that her husband, Atsushi (Hasegawa Tomoharu) can go out to work without any worries. However, his infidelity spurs her to make up her mind to search for her “self” and become beautiful. Choosing the path of an amateur model, she steps into a modelling world that is more rough than she had imagined. Her weapons are her height which has given her an inferiority complex since young, and her extraordinary determination. She keeps having internal conversations with herself as she regains her lost beauty … 

Todo Maki, a rookie lawyer, joins a law office run by seven female attorneys who work to help women who have become victims of crime. Todo eagerly goes to work, but when her boss Sugimura Misako assigns her to a case, she discovers there is still much to learn about practicing law. Under the guidance of her six more experienced colleagues, she discovers what it means to be a lawyer.

A comedy featuring three single women working hard in a big city and one love counselor who gives them glimpse of their true feelings toward love, marriage, relationship, and ultimate happiness. The game of "love" begins with a gong!!

(Source: TV Asahi)

Episodes: 11

Duration: 54 min.

Aired On: Thursday

Ratings: 6.7

Abe plays the single Takagi Mamoru, an employee at a stationery maker. He ends up becoming the guardian of his deceased friend's twin children, played by Ashida and actor Suzuki Fuku. The show is primarily a home drama about the three of them gradually becoming a family, but it also contains an element of fantasy, as the two kids find a dog that can speak (played by a male Miniature Schnauzer).