Mitsuko Kusabue

Meet Me at Angie’s Bar

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Azusa and Kanami have been best friends since high school. After Kanami dies in an unexpected accident, Azusa despairs yet finds comfort in sending text messages to Kanami’s cellphone. Kanami’s parents wonder about Azusa’s identity, and upon visiting the orphanage that their dead daughter cared about, are moved by her good deeds.

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Aiko Satō, who has won many literary awards, retired from her life as a writer and had no guests. She spent a gloomy time, but then a middle-aged editor named Tachibana came with a commission for a story. The story begins with a series of essays that are initially unpleasant, writing out her anger towards society. Aiko's life will undergo significant changes by the time she is 90 years old.

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Feeling unhappy with his gun, Jigen is looking for the world’s best gunsmith. He finally finds out that Chiharu, who runs a watch shop, is the person he’s been seeking. Then, Jigen meets Oto, who comes to Chiharu’s shop looking for a gun. Jigen finds out about Oto's secrets and the mysterious organization that’s after her. After Oto is kidnapped, Jigen gets into a desperate battle to save her.

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Set in the present era of intensified hotel competition and depicts the decline and crisis of Hotel Platon.

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Atsuko and Akira are a husband and wife duo with a daughter and a son. Atsuko is in charge of the retirement finances. She saves from money given to her by her husband and also earns money herself by working part-time. She stretches every yen by leading a frugal life. yet, expenses come up. These include their daughter's upcoming wedding and the funeral expenses of the husband's father. Then, and at exactly the worst time, the couple finds itself unemployed.

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40-year-old Usui Arata had worked as a salesperson for her dream company but right before her marriage, she is betrayed by her fiancée. Not only is her engagement broken off, she is demoted to work at the logistics warehouse in the name of restructuring. Arata’s future is bleak. She has no dream, savings or boyfriend and wonders whether her life will end just like this? This day is her 40th birthday but no one celebrates it with her. The only thing she receives are e-mails from online shopping sites. On her way to the workplace from the company dormitory on a typical dull morning, Arata notices an elderly woman crouching by the side of the road. There is no one in this corner of the city to help her. It feels as if she is seeing herself 40 years later and she instinctively extends a hand to the woman.

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Toichi is a boatman who ferries the villagers to a town on the other side of the river. Besides rowing a boat for the villagers all day long, he barely communicates with anyone except Genzo, a young neighbour. Upstream, a large bridge is being constructed. Everyone is excited, but Toichi has mixed feelings about it. One day, Toichi meets a mysterious girl. Having no family and no place to go, Toichi lets her stay with him, but this encounter starts to bring about changes to Toichi's life.

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Natsumi is proposed to by Yamato, a man who aims to become a fisherman to succeed his father. Her grandmother Kiyo, who raised her since a young age, broke her legs and uses a wheelchair now. Kiyo lives in a facility where Natsumi visits to tell her about the wedding. Natsumi suggests the idea of Kiyo walking along the wedding aisle with her, which encourages the week Kiyo. With that mindset, Kiyo regains hope and try to get better with the help of Natsumi

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Toko Amano worked as a detective, but to take care of her sick husband she quit her job. After her husband passed away, Toko Amano now works as a crisis management expert. 3 days ago, Toko Amano's former mother-in-law rode on an express train with beds. She witnessed a man strangling a woman and told the train conductor, but he thought she imagined it. The police later searched for the woman's body, but could not find her. Toko Amano boards the same express train that her former mother-in-law rode. She looks for the dead body.

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In Tokyo, 1974, a young African American is found dead in a lift. A knife is stuck deep into his chest and a streak of tear is running down his cheek. A policeman, Munesue starts to investigate the case. On the same day, there is a grand reception party held on the top floor by Kyoko, a popular beautician adored by everyone as an ideal wife and mother. The investigation reveals the victim was raised in a ghetto in NY, was able to speak a little Japanese, and his dying words was “su to u ha.” Startling connection between him and Kyoko is to be revealed…

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Shinichi Tominaga is a prosecutor, newly appointed to the special investigation division for the Tokyo district prosecutors' office. He is currently busy with a case involving suspicious donations to powerful politician Yohei Tachibana. Shinichi then receives a mysterious message from his friend Samon Kondo. His friend is in charge of space development at The The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The message talks about a scandal related to space development. Samon soon goes missing after sending the message. Shinichi begins to see a connection between the two cases.

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During their childhood, a little girl and a boy made a pledge to meet again. Now at the age of 45, the girl, Kasumi, is now a divorced mother of a son of high school age. She works as hard as she can at a laundry delivery shop for the wealthy, in order to make a living. Then one day, Kasumi encounters a young male designer, Yuri, who has attracted international attention. He is somehow far too familiar with her and pokes his nose into her affairs. Kasumi is initially wary, but she soon learns that he has a pure heart and starts to get drawn to him. These two people with different backgrounds fall in love. Why did Yuri appear before her? Could he be the boy from that time?

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Residents in a town have a hard time due to the land tax and forced labor. 9 people, including Juzaburo Kokutaya (Sadao Abe), worry about the future of their town. They then set up a plan to save the town. The plan is to lend large amounts of money to han (historical term for the estate of a warrior) and distribute the interest annually to the residents, but if they're caught they will lose their lives.

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A 3-part series of biographical dramas to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the establishment of NHK.

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Mare is an elementary school student. She lives with her family in the city, but, right before her father goes bankrupt, they run away and settle down at a fishing village in Noto. The family rents a couple's home who run a salt pond. Mare's father starts a new business, but it also fails. Her mother supports the family by working at the salt pond. 8 years later, Mare, about to graduate from high school, decides to work for the Wajima local government. She wants to have a steady job, unlike her father. Her job is to support people who move to Noto.

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Kazuya Miyahara, haunted by a phobia of dirt and touch from childhood bullying, encounters an elderly woman, Sachiko, who mistakes him for her late husband.

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The Japanese adaption of Agatha Christie's famous whodunit "Murder on the Orient Express".

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Sawa Yamagishi worked as a nursing-care helper. The family for an old man asked Sawa to sleep with him, which led her to lose her job. Now, she has nowhere to go. Sawa finds elderly people in trouble and gets involved in their lives. Meeting them, Sawa's own wounds start to heal.

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Undercover cop Sakura Mizusawa assumes many faces as she teams up with a hot-blooded detective, Masato Takeuchi, to form a crime-solving tag team with an ear for the truth. With an uncanny ability to connect all the disparate voices she hears undercover, Sakura goes in complete pursuit of criminals, giving her undivided attention to incidents that could happen to anyone and alleviating the suffering of the weak and disadvantaged.

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Based upon the novel by Minato Kanae. The story is about three women who all live in the same countryside town but who never interact with one another even though they are all tied by the same tragedy. While newly-unemployed Rika tries to get her ailing grandmother to take a needed surgery, she also struggles to come up with the money to pay for it. A mysterious benefactor known to her only as "K" might be able to help, but her grandmother is steadfast in telling her to decline it. As Rika searches for clues as to who this "K" is, she increasingly finds that she and two other women are linked not only by a tragedy but a chain of flowers as well.

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To deal with the increasing violent crime rate in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, a special investigation team is formed at the Shinjuku Police Station. Detective Shunsuke Yamashita and Detective Keiichi Tashiro begin work at the special investigation team. Detective Shunsuke Yamashita doesn't care about details and says what he thinks. Meanwhile, Detective Keiichi Tashiro is diligent and enthusiastic with his investigative work. The two men frequently argue, but also cooperate to solve the cases.

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When Koichi Takahasi (Miutani) is transferred from Tokyo to a small village in Iwate Prefecture, they set up hoe in a two-hundred year-old farmhouse. The family is split between those who hate the move and those who are happy. Fumiko (Yasuda), the wife, is unhappy at the change and doesn’t get on with her elderly neighbours, Azumi (Hashimoto) is sad about having to transfer to a new school. Koichi’s mother, Sumiyo (Kusabue), rather likes the new community while young Tomoya Takahashi (Hamada) really enjoys the new move because he can play outdoors. Koichi takes note of the split in the family but finds himself struggling at his new job. Thankfully the house has Zashiki Warashi (yokai) living there who will unite them with their antics. Judging by the poster these antics won’t be terrifying.

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Journalist Kayama Seiji who is covering the war zone, gets shocking news that Shinozuka Yoshio, the criminal serving time for the murder of a young girl 12 years ago, is actually innocent. At that time, Kayama reported on that case. Convinced that Shinozuka was the criminal, Kayama had proceeded to write the news stories, but he is proved to be wrong after the passage of 12 years. Shinozuka's lawyer, Ishihara Yoko, holds a press conference where she criticises the sloppy investigation by the police and speaks of suing for the suffering during the 12 years that Shinozuka had lost. However, Shinozuka's daughter, Miho has mixed feelings for her father who is released from prison at this late stage.

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Fifty elderly women are abandoned to die on a snow covered mountain, but instead wor together to build their own village named "Dendera." Some of the women wants to live their remaining days in peace, but others seek revenge against the villagers and their own families who left them to die.

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A sudden encounter between a gracefully attractive but mysterious woman, Saki, and an ordinary housewife, Eriko, who has a happy family, causes Eriko's serene daily life to fall apart. Eriko's husband, Shinji becomes the target of Saki's advances and finds himself caught between her and his wife.

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Set during the Meiji Restoration period of Edo era Japan, Naoyuki belongs to the 8th generation of the Inoyama family, a wealthy family known for finance & accounting. He is also a gifted mathematician and uses the abacus with extreme skills. Naoyuki works under the declining Kaga domain. Because of this, Naoyuki and his wife Koma suffer hardships as their stature and wealth dissipates.

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Second Virgin is a Japanese television drama series that aired on NHK in 2010. Nakamura Rui is a divorced but highly successful producer in publishing. She meets Suzuki Kou, an ambitious buisiness man 17 years her junior, and finds herself getting aggressively persued by him. Eventually they begin a steaming affair. Meanwhile, a young couple moves into the house next to Nakamura's and the wife begins to confide in her about the frustrations of their conjugal life.

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Adapted from the book with the same title by Ryusho Kadota, a journalist who followed the "Hikari City Mother and Child Murder Case" that took place in Hikari City, Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1999, the drama is a fictionalized human story of a bereaved family that suffered repeated setbacks and was on the verge of despair, but continued to fight on with the support of others.

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Onchi was exiled to posts around Asia and Africa due to his work as head of a labor union for National Air Line. He is ordered to return to head office after ten years, and continues to struggle. When a National Air Line plane is involved in the worst air disaster in Japanese history, he is assigned to console and provide restitution to the families of the victims.

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The lead, Dr. Sadami Shiratori worked in the operating room at a famous Tokyo hospital was around death on a daily basis. His own father, Teizo Shiratori is also a doctor, called Grandfather as he raised the estranged children of his wayward son, he practiced medicine in a small town on Hokkaido, Japan’s most northern island. His practice was limited only to terminal patients…in their own homes. He cared for them and helped both them and their families prepare for the ‘final journey’.

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