Okada Masaki Monogatari

So, as you may know from my recent posts, I’ve been crazy about Okada Masaki, the cutie 23 years old Japanese actor who has such a beautiful voice and curly-bordering-to-messy perm hair. He’s a good actor and a lovely boy at the same time. After watching him in Raiou , I watched his other movies/series, up until I landed in 2009 Halfway , a movie by Kitagawa Eriko, starring Masaki (as Shinozaki Shu) and the cute Kitano Kie (as Konno Hiro). And once again, I was hooked. Halfway is a very simple movie, such that it reaffirms my belief of the excellence that the Japanese own in making simple yet beautiful movies. Halfway has a total indie feeling all over it, it is refreshing and bringing contemplation at the same time. The premise was simple. You are a girl in the 3 rd class of high school in a small town. You are going to enter university next year. What will happen if you have just dated a cute boy (one of the cutest in school, in fact), and he wants to go to a university i...

I’ve been watching the first five English-subbed episodes of NHK’s Taira no Kiyomori , until I realised that the 6 th episode had not yet been subbed. In fact, no one has subbed the 6 th episode onwards since a few months back. The sole translator had been sick (God bless him, may he recover soon), thus we – non Japanese speaker Taiga fans – are left without knowing the details of what happened to Kiyomori (Matsuyama Kenichi), the leader of the Heike clan (Heike literally means ‘the House of Taira’) and the rest of the characters. Taira no Kiyomori seems to be having low viewing rate. My Japanese friend suggested that its Heian setting seems to be the problem for Japanese viewers, for Heian Era was about 900 – 1,000 years ago and not many understood what really happened then. But then again, wouldn’t it be the good reason to watch it? Other than watching a series of hot guys playing samurai and emperor in ancient garb? Some netizens said that the Heian Era depicted here wa...

I am currently watching the first episode of Taira no Kiyomori , NHK's 2012 Taiga drama. I am so excited! The cast is superb, many of whom I've seen in Japanese dramas, delivering great performances. I am a bit bias here: the first drive for me to watch it is to hear Okada Masaki's lovely voice narrating the drama as Minamoto no Yoritomo. But when I saw the trailers etc, I realise the drama's potentials. I just hope that I can discipline myself and watch it just one episode per day. That is, hopefully my online links are not broken. This drama is still airing in Japan anyway, so fan-based attempts to sub it might be seen as breaching the copyright. Which is SO not the intention of those hard working fans who have been subbing this drama! Click here for the first episode of Taira no Kiyomori (English sub, of course). The first scene already gave me the goosebumps. For the narrator is Minamoto no Yoritomo (Okada Masaki) himself, reminiscing about his fallen ene...