“Can bonds among strangers grow to be stronger than family?”
Inspiring human drama with a touch of comedy plays out among strangers working in a converted “home restaurant run by a retired husband and wife (Hiroshi Tachi and Atsuko Asano) in the second season of a popular television series about contemporary family life. In the first season, a homemaker (Asano) with 3 children all grown up, married and independent, convinces her husband Daigo (Tachi) to turn part of their home into a restaurant and dormitory for hired help, and the setting for sticky human relations.Yoko Uchida (Mirai Ishida), Noboru Otake (Shota Yasuda, Kanjani), Eri Chiba (Mahiru Konno) have all made fresh new starts to their lives, but now must face the arrival of new employees who all of troubled back stories of their own.

Kayo Otahara, known affectionately as “Dr. Mom”, pours heart and soul into providing medical care to her local community. For roughly two months each summer, the rustic Gifu Prefecture village of Gujohachiman is transformed into a bustling center of activity, swelling to 30 times its normal population during its “Gujo Odori” festival, a folk dance where people clack wooden clogs on the ground in rhythmic cadence, also known as the “clog dance.” Against this bucolic backdrop, a story unfolds between Dr. Mom and a village clog maker’s family working to preserve the town’s tradition. She finds herself unraveling a family in-cident while serving as the only hope for rescuing their suddenly infirm daughter.

Company man, Daigo Nagashima, is facing retirement with great anticipation. His children have all grown up, gotten married or live independently. But when his wife, Aya, confesses that it's been her long-cherished dream to run a cafe restaurant out of her home, Daigo's vision of a post-career life of ease and relaxation vanishes. But after all of Aya's years as a devoted homemaker raising the family. Daigo decides to lend support his wife's fulfillment of her dream. The ensuing life is far from quiet and uneventful. When the restaurant finally opens, Daigo finds that the young workers hired as restaurant staff all come with issues and concerns of their own forcing Daigo, who had left all the childrearing and disciplining of his own children to his wife, having to provide counsel and mentoring. Here for the first time, he discovers where real strength of family lies, and in the process of helping conflicted youth resolve a series of problems, genuine family ties are born.

It happened all so suddenly. Sugako Hashida had urged her husband to be examined after he complained of chest pains. She had never given any thought to a major illness from the way her husband deftly went about fulfilling his long-cherished dream of becoming a farmer. But the verdict from the doctor, given first to Hashida before the patient Iwasaki himself, was cruelly unexpected. He has terminal cancer that cannot be operated on, and only six months to live. Knowing that her husband cannot fight the disease and that the time remaining is all they've got, Hashida elects not to tell Iwasaki. How to prepare for that inevitable "day of parting" becomes the central theme of this autobiographical drama written in the first person by screenwriter Sugaoko Hashida the author of numerous masterpiece dramas who confessed, "Of all the things I've experienced in my life, nothing could compare with the pain of this."

The condemned Katakura house is so old it is a wonder it hasn't yet been torn down. Its tenant, a widow named Chiyo, has just completed a Buddhist service memorializing the 7th year of her husband's passing and is preparing to move out to make way for the home's destruction amid urban development. Meanwhile, her grown eldest son shows up suggesting they live together while her eldest daughter, Setsuko, brings talk of a suitor for her mother - now pushing 60 - to remarry. The suitor, Uichi Kurosaki, strikes Setsuko as an ideal companion for her mother as he is a friend of Chiyo's late husband, has no children and plenty in retirement savings. But the other daughter is adamantly against the proposition, sparking a fight among siblings whose varying interests clash in this revealing depiction of family, compassion, empathy, hard reality and richness of spirit.

99 years ago, a Japanese man emigrated to the vast expanse of America with hopes of survival and dreams of a brighter future. He and those like him were settlers, 1st generation Japanese-Americans. From them were issued a second generation which grew up bearing little knowledge of, nor devotion to, their parents’ homeland. And yet fate was to deliver them all a cruel blow... as war proceeded to tear them apart along national and generational lines. This is a story about Japanese immigrants who endured the horrors and tragedy of war, overcame deep prejudice and attained their dreams in a new land through love and courage.

The Takahiras have just purchased their dream home. As Kaname Takahira and wife, Tomoko, finish moving in, they are joined by Kaname’s mother, Shino, who lives with her eldest son for an overnight housewarming visit. Tomoko is told that Shino only plans to stay for a week at the longest, so imagine her surprise when a few days later, a truck full of possessions belonging to Shino arrives at the Takahiras front door. “The Grass is Always Greener” hits the airwaves as an entertaining contemporary remake of a hugely popular 1976 drama, “Problems between daughters and mothers-in-law.”

A sharpshooting rookie and a veteran with a brilliant track record are paired to solve a number of different cases. The two incompatible women clash about everything, and we see them developing a friendship, hating one another, working as team, laughing and crying as they follow the trail of clues set by a serial killer.

A woman cartoonist struggles to make her way in the face of social restrictions. Her home office is the setting for encounters with editors, assistants and even her mother-in-law, and it’s often hard to distinguish friend from foe. Yet her ability to deal with problems somehow makes our own difficulties more bearable.

This classic is one of Japan’s all-time favorite family series. Known for its overarching theme of family, this iconic drama never fails to move audiences , conveying in identifiable terms the warm bonds of family and the mysteries of the relationships between people through the
daily life of Daikichi Okakura and his five daughters. Depicting everything from troubles inside the home to social issues and romantic escapades, viewers get a glimpse of the disparate world views of parents, children and grandchildren; fears of parents verses their children’s wishes; and the everyday run-ins between husbands, wives and mothers-in-law―as well as the happiness they have together. Japan’s favorite family is at it again!

One of Japan’s longest - running television series, this special traces a year in the lives of a couple and their five daughters as they deal with the usual generational conflicts. The family has decided to renovate their Chinese restaurant, Koraku. Daughter Ai and her husband Makoto, who will take over the restaurant one day, want to convert part of the family home into more customer seating. Isamu agrees, but the move comes as a surprise to his wife, Satsuki, especially because everybody’s already planning for her and Isamu to move to a new apartment . Satsuki goes to see her son, also named Makoto, and finds his wife, Takako, is pregnant. Satsuki happily announces― without being asked!―that she will “help out every day!”.