J-drama Koukokugaisha danshi-ryou no Okazu-kun - SUBS DL
alternatively, Okazu-kun in the Ad Agency's Mens' Dorm.
Run: Jan 2019~march 2019
Cast: Kuroba Mario, Sakiyama Tsubasa, Kobayashi Kazuya, Oyama Masashi
Theme: slice of life, work life, cooking and food
Total episodes: 10 + feature film
Okazu-kun follows the day to day life of Nishio Kazu as he struggles with work in the sales department. But every week, on Friday night, him and three coworkers gather for a dinner party of home-made goodness. Each member is in charge of one part of the meal and let's just say that good food in good company is very healing.
A relaxed, laid-back easy to watch show. But beware, you may get hungry.
Ishikawadesu is sharing her raws on tumblr but please please follow her rules when downloading these!
Subtitles~
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
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Additional info/explanations on situations from the series
I noticed some things overlapping from Okazu-kun and my own experiences in Japan, which made me realize that Okazu-kun is far more realistic than some other shows (particularly shoujo shows with hot young CEOs that never seem to do any actual work etc). This is a pretty good representation of work life. And food. So yeah, feel free to check out my notes under the cut.
Episode 1
I’d like to share + write some notes on the food mentioned in the show that couldn’t be solved with TNs.
Pickled veggies are a thing in Japan, and two types are mentioned. One is ‘asazuke’, which is your generic lightly pickled vegetable, like cabbage etc. The other is ‘nukazuke’, more specifically pickled in brine and fermented rice bran. Is what the internet told me, at least.
Kinpira - thank you wikipedia for your help : Kinpira is a Japanese cooking style that can be summarized as a technique of “sauté and simmer”. It is commonly used to cook root vegetables such as carrot, burdock and lotus root, seaweeds such as arame and hijiki and other foods including tofu and wheat gluten, and even meat. It's often eaten as an extra or snack to go with booze.
Recruitment, moving, living conditions @work
All 4 main characters in Okazu-kun are from different prefectures, or distinctly different parts of Japan. Japan isn’t huge, but it’s not small either, and for some reason, the Japanese don’t seem to favour work close to where they live. They move for work, and quite far away to the point where they might see their family only once a year. Companies also don’t only recruit from nearby.
I taught English at a company in Nagano-prefecture, which is very countryside-in-the-middle-of-Japan and doesn’t offer much when you compare it to large urban cities, and my 4 students also came from 4 different prefectures, of which only one was a local, and one came from Tokyo.
Dorms. Some (maybe a lot) of companies have dorms available for their employees. Living in one isn’t a must, and might be either free, or very cheap. My current dorm is nearly free, but we get a small room and shared facilities. Okazu-kun’s dorm seems to be a 1K, possibly with shared bathrooms, but at least they have SPACE and a kitchen. Also, compared to a LOT of other living areas you seen in j-drama, this one is much more realistic. The fridge-microwave-toaster tower is a common sight.
Episode 2
Ep two talks about how Nishio and Higashira met as new employees at the Minato firm. So here’s my two cents again on ‘working in Japan’. First off, a lot of people already know about the importance of seniority (senpai-kouhai) relationships that you’ll see in school and in the workplace, but in Okazu-kun they bring out another word that doesn’t really translate; 同期 (douki).
It means ‘people who started something at the same time’, ‘contemperary’, in this case Nishio and Higashira were hired at the same time, together with a bunch of others, and very likely in april, as large companies tend to do most of their hiring right when students graduate. Hence when they talk about each other as ‘douki’, it’s because there is no seniority difference,, they are on the same level, and thus in the same situation.
Another note that I found out goes for many large companies is that Nisho talks about having a ‘preference’ for a certain department, in his case sales, but not yet being appointed to one. This seems to be common practice, to hire a bunch of people, make them go round the place for one to three months, and then assign them to a certain department/job.
Episode 3
In episode 3 it’s the week after New Years, in which the sales guys do company visits/greetings and it’s supposedly cold. Now Tokyo winters aren’t really that cold, they’re pretty mild, Japanese winter is also fairly dry and sunny and because the country is such a long vertical thing, the difference beween north and south is just quite huge.
But what the Japanese are very good at is seasonal stuff. As they say in the show, the seasons are very distinct, have their own characteristics and, their own celebrations and foods. At the moment, we’re gearing up for March, which is the slow start of spring. March is still cold, but Starbucks has already begun having ‘sakura’ flavoured items. Hello sakura craze everywhere! (gotta wait until April for the real thing though~)
Every season has typical ingredients and foods that are promoted in supermarkets, there are seasonal treats everywhere and seasonal menus. In the show, they also mention ‘osecchi’, which is kind of hard to explain, I’ve never had it, and you probably need to order it, or make it yourself. So here’s a picture (credit to Justonecookbook.com).
Other than that, when I worked at 7 Eleven, in Ueda, where it’s generally 10 degrees colder than in Tokyo and every night it was freezing in winter, I noticed that ice cream actually sold pretty well. So I asked, why?? It’s freaking cold. Japanese houses are also cold, at least mine was. But, if you’ve been watching anime or drama for a while you must know about kotatsu. These heaters under a (low) table with a blanket over your legs when you sit… Apparently it’s nice and cozy and warm, and makes people want to eat ice cream. It appears to be a pretty common thing.