Akibahara@Deep

Located somewhere in Japan is Akibahara district, a special place for otaku. It is my husband's dream to be able to visit that place one day, not to mention mine too. Cosplays, cool gadgets, toys, figurines, games, and manga...

Akibahara@Deep is a japanese drama that revolves around a group of six otaku that forms a team to "troubleshoot" problems occurring in Akibahara. Needless to day, the name of the group is Akibahara@Deep, or @Deep for short. They also refers themselves as Akiba (short for Akibahara) Troubleshooter.

This drama consists of only 11 episodes and one special (the making and interviews with casts and members). The first episode shows how the group is formed with 4 members, and then additional 2 more members in the second episode. All the members are funny in their own way, and this is slowly revealed in each episode. Even the villians and other supporting characters are very quirky as well. The last episode is especially funny with lots of Draganball and Gundam elements ;).

Here's a sample clip available in YouTube. Enjoy...

Liar Game

Hmmm.... what can i say about this show, except that it is very interesting and engaging, a must see in short especially you likes Death Note. Everything is all about mind games.

Based on the manga series of the same name, the story is about an honest college student, Kanzaki Nao, who receives a hundred million yen one day, along with a card saying she has been chosen to take part in the "Liar Game". The aim of the game is to trick the other players out of their hundred million dollars. At the end, the winner gets the hundred million and the loser is a hundred million yen in debt. Furthermore, organizer of the game is worse than a loan shark when attempting to retrieve money from those in debt.

The next day, she receives notification that her opponent is her former teacher, Fujisawa Kazuo. She goes to him, seeking help, but ends up getting tricked into handing her money over and will have to bear the hundred million yen in debt when the game ended. Desperate, she approaches the police for help, but they are unable to do anything. However, she is told of a mastermind swindler, Akiyama Shinichi, who is to be released from jail the next day. Desperate, she goes to him for help. Akiyama helps Nao to win back all the money, and just as they thought that everything had ended, second round of Liar Game starts.

The character of Kanzaki Nao is extremely innocent and naive. Now if everyone in the world has the same thinking as her, then we would have lived in paradise instead. But then in reality it is not, and this story just makes us wonder how can such a person survived. She had been tricked and laughed at, again again since small and yet she is still firm in her believes. Everyone just takes advantage of her due to her thinking. It may sound cruel, but sometimes i just wished the character would just grow up, or die so that everyone can goes on with their lives.

As for Akiyama, his character is extremely cool and cunning. Nobody knows about his plan till the last minute. Now it will be very dangerous to deal with this kind of person as we do not know what they are really thinking. At times, just when we thought it was too late, another hidden plan lies within to turnaround the tide. Ofcourse, if i reveals further it will spoil the whole show. Btw, don't be fooled by the picture of Akiyama above, his actual looks is more presentable in the whole show :P

Spaghetti, spaghetti and spaghetti

Most restaurants only served few types of spaghetti, the famous ones being creamy carbonara and balognese. Not to mention that we can only find limited variaties of pasta sauce in the supermarkets. So it was no wonder that all these while, i only makes balognese spaghetti, since it was the easiest to make using ready-made pasta sauce. It was not until i watched Bambino series that i realised we can always create our own pasta sauce to suit our own tastebuds, everything from scratch. I even manage to create my own recepies for my hubby to try out, which he likes very much. Too bad that i always forgot to take a snapshot of my creations to be posted here. Here's a few tips:

1. olive oil makes the best spaghetti sauce with its fragrant aroma, though it is slightly more expensive compared to normal cooking oil.

2. after draining the spaghetti, crack some eggs into the spaghetti and quickly stir it. The hot spaghetti will cook the eggs. This gives more "umph" to the taste.

3. bacon is the best ingredients for creating your own spaghetti sauce. Simplest way was to fry it with 1 tblsp of olive oil until it is crispy.

4. throw in lots of parmesan cheese for the taste. If you don't like cheese, you may replace with some salt instead.

5. go veggie with broccoli, mushroom and asparagus.

Notice that the same guy acts in Gokusen season I, but i think he is more

good looking in Gokusen with nicer hairstyle

Tearjerker

Some people would stay away from these type of shows. But then everyone need a good cry once awhile, at least this is what I believe in order to appreciate what we have in life. However, i only have 2 drama in collection that basically had me crying through the whole show: God, Give me more time and One litre of Tears. Most people had watched these dramas before. I only manage to watch it a year back though it had been released for many years already. I watched these 2 dramas back-to-back for 2 weeks, and everyone at the office was wondering why my eye was so red the next morning. Just so happen i was in the mode of watching tearjerker after so many months of not watching any show of such genre. The most that i had was few drops (barely noticeable) from watching animes cause you will most probably laugh the next few moments.

One litre of Tears actually makes me cry more than God, Give me more time. The former drama was based on actual life story. You can even see her real-life photo and extract of her diary at the end of each episode. There's book of the same title available in bookstores as well. The story is so engaging that i spent the whole day of my medical leave watching the whole series (i really did get sick!!)

Gokusen - 1 & 2

For those who liked GTO, would have like this series as well. It is a comedy that tells a story about a young lady named Yamaguchi Kumiko from Yakuza (japanese mob) family who strives to be a successful teacher. As her parents died when she was young, she's the next person in line to become the head of the Yakuza group in Tokyo. Equip with gangsterism manner and combat skill, she is different from other teachers in school. However, she struggles to keep her identity a secret as to prevent her from being fired.

After graduation, she is assigned to a private school and become a class teacher to a class full of bad students. The students in her class always try to bully her to make her resign but without success due to her life experience. Furthermore, instead of wearning normal office wear to work, she is instructed by the school to wear tracksuit as to allow her easily run away from her class should anything happen. Throughout the series, we'll see how she manage her relationships between the students and teachers in the school, as well as turning her students towards better understanding of life itself.

There's also an anime of the same title, but the storyline differs abit though the main plot is the same. The anime gives the feeling of better fighting sequence due to expressions of characters drawn when they hit each other. Furthermore, it is more funny compared to live action series due to the ability to exaggerate certain funny situations where this cannot be done in live action. In all, both are recommended show.

The anime version

Trick - 1,2,3

Just completed the whole 3 seasons of japanese series called Trick plus 2 movies of the said show. It's a very funny series full of magical tricks and mysteries You can also learn some of the common magic tricks used by magician to impress your friends :P. It's really a recommended show. Here's the extract of the show's story at the back of the cover of season 1:

"Although 23-year-old Naoko Yamada (Yukie Namaka) considers herself a beautiful and talented magician, she is continously fired and constantly hounded by her landlady for the rent being late.

One day as she is searching though the newspaper for the new job, she comes across an ad os a physics professor, Jiro Ueda (Hiroshi Abe), a non-believer of all things magical, offering money to anyone who can prove to him that magic is real.

Desperately needing the money, Naoko accepts the challenge, which is how she comes to meet Professor Ueda. Falling prey to her simple magic tricks, Ueda is impressed, and enlists the reluctant Naoko to help him uncover the tricks behind a local cult. Soon, they are debunking spiritualists. Eventually Ueda develops a reputation for solving supernatural cases, but his secret weapon is Yamada, who hates the work but needs the money."

Yukie Namada's acting was abit stiff during the first few episodes for first season, and was improving as the shows move on. It is always funny where all the characters throughout the whole 3 series always giving her character a nickname "flat-chest". In fact, she also got the same nickname for her character that she acted in another Japanese series called Gokusen. But let's save Gokusen for another time...