From Five To Nine (JDrama) * * * *

First of all, I have to say that I mainly started to watch From Five to Nine for Ishihara Satomi, whom I just adore! She’s not only incredibly beautiful, and I sometimes find myself staring at, but she also brings such warmth to all her performances. I also started to watch it as I’ve worked as an English teacher myself. I tried once to get a job in Japan, but apparently it’s impossible if you didn’t grow up in an English speaking country.

This drama starts out a bit strangely, and frankly, throughout the story it was hard to understand Takane’s attraction to her. Sure, Junko is a lovely, vivacious, beautiful woman. Like I said, it’s very hard to not stare at Satomi sometimes, she’s that gorgeous, but one would think a monk would go deeper than that. Also, frankly, Takane’s very annoying, and I would probably have been more drastic in my refusal of him.

So this drama is about a monk falling in love with an English teacher inexplicably fast and deep. He relentlessly pursues her. However, her dream is to go and live in New York. Complications include families, other men, a surprise man – and that was a surprise, though I did have my suspicions -, among other things. The biggest complication though is that Junko is not at all interested in marriage, especially not to a monk.

One surprising aspect of this story was a monk getting married. I did do a bit of research on Japanese monks, and found a very interestingblog that is well worth reading. So the only really off thing about the story was Takane having his hair, but I guess Yamashita Tomohisa didn’t want to have his head shaved.

I also have to comment on the English. Junko’s is okay, though she has a very strong accent. Takane, on the other hand, has such a strong accent, it was often difficult to understand, and sometimes I couldn’t even tell that he was speaking in English. Actually, some of the supporting cast had a lot better pronunciation, than the two main characters.

The really interesting thing about this story is why I kept watching it. I didn’t like the start of it much, nor the insta-love, but it was very funny, and after a while the romance kind of grew on me. So I really recommend this, as by the end it’s a very warm, loving story. Also, you’ll really want to eat crabs.