Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi
(初めて恋をした日に読む話 / A Story to Read When You First Fall in Love)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hi there! I’m back with another review before the end of the month. I’m not sure if I will be able to finish another one within October, but anyways, here we are. Sometimes it’s just so nice to watch a shorter, lighter drama after watching so many heavy lengthy ones, you know. That’s what I like about Japanese dramas, they’re always so uncomplicated and light and entertaining. I don’t remember exactly what made me put this one on my list, but my interest is usually piqued by these kinds of romance stories, especially the ones with long titles that just immediately make you curious to the story. It feels like a long time since I watched a series like this, and I thought it was… interesting. I don’t think it will be a very long review as it’s not a long or heavy show, but I still wanted to convey my thoughts on it like with any other review. Let’s get right into it!

Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi (HajiKoi for short), is a 10-episode J-Drama with episodes of about an hour each (which is quite long for a J-Drama I think). It’s based on a manga series of the same name by Mochida Aki. The story stretches over two years, from 2017 to 2019, and centers on Harumi Junko (played by Fukada Kyoko), a woman in her early thirties who is a cram school teacher in Tokyo. A cram school that, in this case, prepares high school students for admission to a university of their choice, from smaller colleges to big ones like Tokyo University (for convenience I’ll refer to it as Todai for the rest of the review). When she was in high school, Junko used to be a huge study geek. The only thing she focussed on was studying, she never even dated or showed interest in anything else. Under the encouragement of her mother she strived to get into Todai, but despite studying so hard she failed the entrance exam. After that, she kind of lost her way. She couldn’t bring herself to try again, and as she grew older she also remained unsure of what to do with her life. She has no luck in finding romance, and even in her job she doesn’t feel any kind of validation. The students under her supervision keep asking to be transferred to other teachers within the cram school, and her boss tells her that at this rate, her contract will not be extended. In short, Junko is down in the dumps, she’s lost her spark and she has no idea how to fix her situation.
That is until she meets a group of high schoolers, and one of them jumps out to her immediately because of his pink-dyed hair. This boy, Yuri Kyohei (played by Yokohama Ryusei) later suddenly shows up at Junko’s cram school with his dad, who is some kind of politician (it later turns out he’s the Minister of Education). His father wants Kyohei to get into Todai, no matter how impossible that will seem as he is currently enrolled in a high school with a fairly bad reputation. When Junko overhears the father talk about his son like that, she is immediately reminded of how hard her own mother was on her, and she stands up for Kyohei, telling him not to listen to what his parents want, but to choose for himself. As much as this aggravates her boss and Kyohei’s father and brings her employment in even further jeopardy, Kyohei himself is immediately intrigued by her and, sure enough, the next day he appears at the cram school again, asking Junko if she can get him into Todai. She refuses at first, because how can she get a boy from a debatable high school into the biggest college of Japan when she couldn’t even get in after studying her butt off? However, something happens which makes her determined enough to give it a try and she decides to still use her remaining contract period to help Kyohei study. As the two embark on this challenge together, they develop a very tight bond and Kyohei even falls in love with her. Junko regains her passion for studying and teaching while Kyohei sets a different goal for himself: when he turns 18 and gets into Todai, he will confess his love to her.

Junko ends up getting wooed by three different men in the series. Besides Kyohei, there’s her cousin Yakumo Masashi (played by Nagayama Kento), who’s been in love with her for 20 years ever since high school but whose attempts to show his affection have always gone unacknowledged by Junko. And then there’s her former delinquent classmate now turned Kyohei’s homeroom teacher Yamashita Kazuma (played by Nakamura Tomoya). He’s the only person who ever asked Junko out back in high school, but since she was so occupied with studying back then, she never even considered the option of dating at the time. Now that he appears again, and freshly divorced at that, there could be a chance for a do-over.

First of all, can I just mention that I have never seen such a questionable lineup of love interests in a drama series before? Junko’s options literally come down to her former classmate, her cousin and a minor. And the thing is, everyone in the series seems to urge that these are the only three options she has. It’s like, she has to choose one of these three, there are no other options beyond this, it’s too late to go in search of someone else at this point. That was really weird to me. What was also weird was that no one seemed to make a big deal about the idea of her marrying her own cousin (literally her direct cousin, the son of her mother’s sister), or that everyone just accepted her being romantic with her 17-year old student. Legally, I believe Yamashita was the only feasible option, but as it was so clear from the start that they wouldn’t result to anything, I was kind of anxious to see what she’d do in the end. I’m still not completely comfortable with it, to be honest. Of course you could say it’s open-minded of the writers (or the mangaka, actually) to normalize these options and give it a ‘love is love, it has no age or boundaries’ message, but still… Anyways.

The main story is about Junko and Kyohei, or ‘Yuri-yuri’ as Junko nicknames him, and their journey together as she helps him study to get into Todai. I’ve never seen a series in which studying was glorified this much, it really took a subject that’s normally considered to be boring/tedious and turned it into something fun and rewarding, so that was pretty cool. I liked how at several points, a comparison was made to an amusement park, in which students would get excited about the new things they’d learn. It just put studying into a new perspective for me, one I’d never really considered before (even though I’ve done my own fair share of studying at college). I thought it was cool how they used the gradual passing of time to show Kyohei’s progress, and that he really started getting better and better at studying, with all the ups and downs that came with it. I thought they balanced this process out very well throughout the series. Even though they keep encountering obstacles during their cramming, they always end up in the same space together again, and Junko’s determination to get Kyohei into Todai becomes truly unyielding at some point. Her determination also starts rubbing off on Kyohei more and more, until he really starts taking his studies seriously and starts wanting to get into Todai for himself, not just to rebel against his father.

Let me talk a bit more about the main characters in detail before I go on to describe several of the events that go down in the story that attempt to shake either Junko or Kyohei’s determination or confidence.

Junko is a very interesting person. Despite not achieving anything as an adult and feeling really insecure about that, she used to be an incredible student. She was really smart and also had a natural beauty which made her very popular, even though she turned down every kind of confession she got. Even though she struggled under the pressure to study for Todai, she went all the way but when she failed, she really believed her one and only chance at a future and career had been taken away from her. Or let’s say, the people in her direct surroundings made her believe so. And I’m talking mostly about her mother.
Seriously, in the first couple of episodes I really hate Junko’s mom (played by Dan Fumi). She was so harsh after Junko, she literally slapped her in the face when she didn’t make it into Todai and as we meet Junko for the first time as an adult, from the first episode on, she’s constantly making mean remarks about how she raised a failure. Later on, she turns around and we get to understand what made her like that, but in the beginning she was really unpleasant. Junko’s father (played by Ishimaru Kenjiro) is much more easy-going about it, but Junko and her mother really don’t get along well in the beginning. Junko is in her early twenties, she still lives at home with her parents as she has no stable employment and the option of her marrying and moving out is still not close in sight.
I liked that despite her ditziness, Junko had a very clear backstory. At the beginning I was thinking, what the heck is she doing at this cram school when she can’t even teach? But then it was revealed that she used to be the biggest study geek ever and once she regained her spark for teaching, she gradually started feeling so much better, also about herself. It just goes to show that finding your passion can really do miracles for your self-esteem. I liked that Junko at some point mentioned that she was starting to like herself again more and more, and that this was already such a big achievement for her after all those years of feeling like a failure. She was a very likeable character, with her heart in the right place, but she just lacked a specific type of social awareness towards the people that showed (romantic) interest in her. Looking at how she was raised and pressured from high school on, it’s not hard to understand her perspective – she never had the luxury of time to even think about dating, and even as an adult she finds it hard to recognize signs. However, I still thought there was a limit to that, and in some instances she really was incredibly dense. When a man was standing in front of her and literally told her, ‘I like you’ to her face, she still would interpret it as something else. I’m glad that at least in the end she finally acknowledged all three men’s feelings for her, but it did take some time for her to become aware of the love square she was in, and this can sometimes be a little bit annoying. It didn’t bother me that much in this case because I actually didn’t want her to end up with any of the guys, but I do think that it would’ve bugged me more if I had a specific preference in mind, because there just didn’t seem to be any process in the guys’ approaches right up until the end.

As much as I was sceptical of Masashi as a love interest for Junko, I did really like his character. He was the typical example of someone who did make it into Todai and now had a successful job and was still popular among his colleagues and the ladies. He fell in love with his cousin Junko in high school when she, even after being harrassed and bullied by some girls because Masashi had rejected one of them, didn’t even blink an eye and just asked them to at least leave her study supplies alone. Even though he was the popular guy with the reputation of making a girl fall in love with him after 7 seconds of eye contact, he now fell in love with Junko after 7 seconds of eye contact with her.
Even though I didn’t want them to end up together, I did feel sorry for Masashi for being so blatantly overlooked by Junko. He would organize whole plans to ask her out and confess to her, but in the end she always obliviously took rain checks because Kyohei’s studying got in the way. Being stood up because something else came up always sucks because it basically means something else came up which they consider to be more important than the appointment they already had with you. And Masashi really had to put up with a lot of that. I did find it quite presumptious of him to just plan out all these things and even already plan out a proposal while he already knew Junko didn’t even consider him that way. He just kept going for it, which can be considered to be brave, but in this case you just knew nothing was going to come out of it. When he suddenly came out and just kissed her on the mouth – seriously, how was he expecting Junko to react to that?! Even if he couldn’t hold back his feelings anymore, he still should have considered the fact that this would be a very shocking, out-of-the-blue happening to Junko. I’m glad that Junko was able to properly consider him and then honestly told him that the way she liked him wasn’t the romantic kind of ‘like’ and they were able to talk it out. He just needed her to be clear about her feelings towards him, and that was enough for him to move on. Even though he could’ve already accepted that, I get that he needed her to say it out loud. And he also didn’t become bitter towards her and Kyohei after that. I actually liked that, when Junko lied to Kyohei that she was getting married to Masashi even though she’d actually rejected him, he got properly pissed at her for using him in that lie, which was fair. Luckily at least he kept being aware of his own worth as well, no matter how much he loved Junko. He didn’t just let her get away with everything.

Honestly, even though I knew he also wouldn’t be an option, I was Team Yamashita all the way. Not just because he was my type the most out of everyone (I don’t know why but he gave me Choi Daniel vibes for some reason), but just because he was so chill about everything and the most forward about his feelings for Junko. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he’d already confessed to her before, but he was the only one who succeeded in taking Junko out on a date and he got her to at least consider him as an option. He ended up becoming a teacher inspired by Junko as she helped him study in high school while no one else deemed him able of graduating, and he ended up becoming Kyohei’s teacher in high school. At first, he also seems to be knocked down by adulthood, especially after his wife issues their divorce and he can’t really get his students to really focus on studying. But after meeting Junko again, his spark is also re-ignited and he manages to get his class to graduate at the end as well.
I do still feel bad about how he ended up, because his (ex-)wife was acting so weird. Like, when we meet Yamashita, we see him constantly get messages from his wife that he needs to issue the divorce papers asap. After doing that, everything seems to be straightened out, but then she suddenly appears at his doostep again, all giggly and bashful and ‘can’t we give it another chance’. Like, what the actual fuck? She was the one who kept pushing for a divorce and now she’s just like, teehee, can we try again? And then Yamashita is basically forced into remarrying her because of a scandal including her father, a big politician. Now it’s a bit complicated to explain, but basically his ex-wife’s father (so his ex-father-in-law) is also a big political figure who gets caught up in a scandal but instead of owning up to his mistakes, he drags Kyohei’s father, his colleague, through the mud and blames him for it. Because of this, Kyohei’s family is about to go down and this will be a very bad influence on his chances to get into Todai as well. In order to solve the scandal, Yamashita is coerced by his ex-father-in-law to get back with his ex-wife, and then the father-in-law will clear Kyohei’s father’s name. Honestly, I still don’t understand why this was all necessary, but Yamashita chose to give up on Junko and get back with his ex-wife and quit teaching so he could start working for his in-law’s family. In the final episode, however, Yamashita tells Junko that his ex-wife still hasn’t accepted his proposal and that he’s in the process of wooing her again. Like, what the heck is up with this woman?! First she divorces him, then basically goes along with her dad’s plan to persuade him to marry her again, then she doesn’t even agree to it immediately. I don’t know what she was playing at. I was sad for Yamashita that he found himself in this situation. He didn’t seem to mind so much in the end, but I still found it unfair. He deserved better.

Kyohei has had a bad relationship with his father ever since his mother passed away. He started rebelling against him by neglecting his studies and painting his hair pink, but when his father seemingly gives up on him getting into Todai, it prompts him to rebel against him the other way around and actually get into Todai, just to prove a point to him. As much as he doesn’t take it seriously in the beginning, he really starts becoming more and more serious about his studies when Junko starts teaching him, and ultimately achieves the one thing no one deemed possible from the start: he actually manages to get into Todai. Not without setbacks, he faces several disappointments in his mock exams and loses confidence several times, also during the scandal thing his dad is involved with. He’s also simultaneously struggling with his feelings for Junko, as he keeps getting confronted with the fact that to her, he’s just her student, and she’ll never see him as a man and all that because of their age difference. But he keeps trying as well, because to him, it doesn’t matter that she’s older and has a bad back and that she’ll be 40 by the time he graduates Todai. To be honest, even though I already felt like they might end up together, one reason I felt like they shouldn’t was also that, even though his feelings might be so passionate at that moment, it’s another thing to actually think about the future. Maybe it’s easier for me to relate to Junko as I’m also around the same age as her. The thought of getting together with a 17-year old is just unthinkable to me for many reasons, besides just the age gap. Even if it might feel okay in the beginning, once you get older, it will become more and more awkward. I felt like Kyohei was only focussing on himself and how he felt then and there, and it was almost as if he was looking forward to becoming 18 so he wouldn’t be a minor anymore, without realizing that Junko by that time also had aged another year or two. At the end of the show, she was already 34 and he was 18. I mean, props to ignoring the age norm and just following your heart, truly, but I couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable about it. Despite relating more to Junko’s reasons for not giving in to her feelings for Kyohei, I didn’t think she handled it well. She kept him at bay by explicitly referring to him as ‘a kid’ and emphasizing ‘of course I wouldn’t be able to date a 17-year old’ in front of him. I also didn’t understand why she had to lie to him about accepting Masashi’s proposal, because it literally took a day for him to find out that wasn’t true and she had to confess the truth anyway. I think it was good that she was honest with him during that confrontation in the teacher’s room, but I just wished she’d been clear about it sooner. She just kept beating around the bush and avoiding the subject with him, and then just be completely zoned out when she was with her friend out drinking later, like, woman! Get yourself together! At least be clear about your feelings to everyone who’s pulling at you! She owed them that and it took her way too long to come clean about what was truly going on in her heart and mind. I also found it difficult to figure out what exactly she was feeling because she just wouldn’t put it into words, but when she eventually did, it seemed like it had been really clear to her from the start how she felt. So why didn’t she speak out about it sooner? This bothered me a little.
I think she was already aware of Kyohei’s feelings for her for a while and she initially kept making up excuses to keep him at bay, as I mentioned before.

One thing I was really afraid of was that, when Junko got into that accident on the day of the first Todai exam, Kyohei would choose to go to her and blow his whole chance of getting into Todai. I’ve seen it happen before in other dramas and I just really hoped that he would still go and take his exams, because it would defeat the entire purpose of the series and where it led up to if he decided to give it all up now, and it would definitely be the opposite of what Junko would’ve wanted. I was so relieved that he still went to take his exams, because he also realized that he couldn’t give up what they’d worked for for so long. They really had me concerned there for a moment, but I was happy that he used his common sense and not just mindlessly went over to her, even though that was his first instinct. I wasn’t sure what the whole purpose was of that accident, it seemed pretty dramatic, all the more because of the timing of course, but I guess it was just a plot tool to put Kyohei over that final step to really ace his exams. It was still very typical, though, and I also wasn’t completely on board with the fact that they informed him of it at that point. They literally gave him the option to go to Junko, instead of urging him to please still try to take his exams and make her proud so he could come visit her first things after he was done.

One of the more drastic choices she made resulted in one of the major events that occurs at some point. As she realizes she won’t be of much help to Kyohei’s studies when it comes to math, Junko manages to get him into a very respectable cram school with a very successful and popular math tutor, to give him the best chance at studying math under a worthy teacher. Of course, Kyohei just wants Junko, but eventually agrees when she clarifies that she lacks the confidence in her own math skills and really thinks he should be tutored by someone else for that.
The teacher he’s assigned to calls herself is a very popular and attractive woman who’s referred to as Momo-chan-sensei by her (mainly male) students. From the start, we see this look in her eye that announces trouble. We found out then that this teacher is actually one of the girls who bullied Junko in high school because she had a crush on Masashi but was rejected by him. Why they chose to vent their bullying on Junko is still kind of weird, but I guess it was to punish her for the fact that Masashi had more interest in Junko and it was just jealousy bullying. Bullying justifications will never make sense to me. Anyways, apparently this woman, Makise Tomona (played by Takanashi Rin), lied about her entire resume and even created a fake identity to get into this cram school as a teacher. It didn’t take away the fact that she was a good teacher, but the way she encouraged her (again, mostly male) students was just a bit… weird. She also got super clingy with Kyohei, grabbing his arm and trying to make him like her. Turns out, she again is just trying to get back at Junko because of her past resentment towards her and tries to steal Kyohei away from her, fortunately to no avail. In the end, she comes clear about her true self and becomes a more sympathetic person. I felt like she may have had some sort of identity crisis herself. I still don’t really know what to make of her character, but in the end it took her some time to be okay with herself the way she was, not the way she wanted to be seen by others. I think that was her deal.
One of the moments where I was most impressed by Junko (and also the actress herself) was how she confronted Makise and how, after Makise asked to still let her tutor Kyohei, she told her that he was her student and she wouldn’t let her use him to fill her own hole of emptiness. That was really awesome. We finally got to see this cool and protective side of Junko, which was unlike the sides I saw of her so far. That bit really made me go, Woah~ kakkoii. And of course it made Kyohei fall for her even harder. Poor guy really had no way to escape, haha.

I just realize I haven’t even mentioned Miwa yet! I need to talk about Miwa. Matsuoka Miwa (played by Adachi Yumi) was Junko’s childhood friend and former middle school classmate to her and Masashi (she didn’t go to the same high school as them, but they always remained close friends). She owns a hostess bar called Miwa, named after herself obviously, and she’s always there to help people out with romantic advice. She’s a very loyal friend to Junko, and even though she also tries to help Masashi out, she always keeps saying that she is on Junko’s side. She never judges her friend for anything, she even thinks Junko getting together with a 17-year old was pretty refreshing and interesting. She keeps saying that it’s a very flattering thing to be liked by a high schooler at her age, although I’m still not sure if this was very healthy feedback. Anyways, she was a really fun character. She even got her own love story, with Masashi’s assistant Nishioi (played by Hamanaka Bunichi), even though they both initially lied about their identities to each other because they didn’t want to be judged on their social statuses and just accepted for who they were inside. Fortunately for them, this played out well and they even got engaged at the end of the story. Anyways, while Miwa might not have the same educational background as Junko, she knows a lot about social situations and people, and is often the voice of reason when Junko doesn’t know what to do.
The only thing she did that I didn’t agree with was that she called Kyohei with the news of Junko’s accident minutes before his exam. Like, yes, Junko was supposed to see him off at the entrance and he was already worried why she wasn’t there and he couldn’t reach her, but to actually put him into this position while he should only be focussing on his exams… I understand where she was coming from when she informed him, but I just don’t think she should’ve given him the option of coming to the hospital instead of taking his exams. If it were me, I would’ve probably just informed him of the situation and then urged him to go take his exams, that that’s what Junko would want, and that he could just come to her as soon as he was ready. There were enough people by Junko’s side at the hospital and she wasn’t in critical condition, so please just focus on your exam. Anyways, luckily he did choose the right thing, but I was really anxious there for a moment. I just thought Miwa shouldn’t have brought the news like that.

And finally, there’s Etou Mika (played by Yoshikawa Ai), a high school student from an all girl’s school that Kyohei and his friends meet during a group date with some girls from her school. Miwa, who is chaperoning the date basically, immediately points out that she’s a ‘passive blamer’ and that she’s good at getting guys’ attention with her attitude so the boys should be careful around her. What it basically comes down to is that Mika has lost her sense of self-value. She admits to dating several older men and that she even has sexual relations with them. She has completely adjusted her character to what these guys find attractive, but doesn’t really have any self-esteem beyond that. Whenever she gets caught with one of these guys, they always point fingers to her, that she was the one who seduces them and acted all innocent and stuff. So yeah, that is really not a good position to be in. Mika gets interested in Kyohei at the group date and even ‘infiltrates’ his cram school to take lessons with him, even though he just wants to be alone with Junko. Anyways, Mika also becomes Junko’s student and also starts studying harder to get into a college, although she’s not as ambitious as Kyohei. In the end, while she fails the admission exam for Kyoto University, she manages to get into Waseda. As soon as Mika starts liking Junko, she becomes more lenient when she realizes Kyohei really doesn’t have eyes for anything else. I liked that she still went on to confess her feelings to him, just to let go of him. I think she even got together with one of Kyohei’s friends at the end, that was cute.

So yeah, I think we can establish that one of the possible side themes of this story also had to do with the characters coming to terms with themselves and finding their way in life. Some people had tried to change themselves so much or went along too much with how other people perceived them that they lost sight of their own value and Junko helped them to regain that feeling, even if she wasn’t aware of that herself. She might have seemed like the wrong person to give life advice after failing to fulfill any of the goals she’d set for herself as a teenager in the future, but she still had the power to make people realize their own worth, as she was also trying to do that herself. It was like, her finally finding back her own spark made it easier for her to also ‘teach’ others to find back theirs, even though this kind of teaching went beyond the kind that’s taught in a classroom. She may have lost sight of her own worth at some point, but being surrounded by so many people who believed in her helped her to grow into the ‘mature adult’ she ends up as at the end of the story. In a way, it can be seen as a coming-of-age theme as well, although in this case it’s not as much coming of actual age, but moving on from a certain adolescent mindset. Junko never deemed herself a proper adult as she thought she didn’t pass all the landmarks that would make her one, but after sorting out her feelings and helping Kyohei get into Todai, she finally managed to get over it. It’s mentioned by several people including her mom and Kyohei himself, that getting Kyohei into Todai might feel to Junko as if she can make up for her own failure – if she can at least get another student into Todai, she may move on from her own insecurity. I guess it’s debatable whether this is a good reason or not, I do think it’s partially what it may have been like for Junko, but I couldn’t really resent her for it. That’s because it was so obviously not just for that reason, but also because she really wanted to help Kyohei. I can’t really blame her for that.
It was also good that she managed to make up with her mother. We find out that her mother has always been insecure herself as she married into an entire family of Todai-graduates while she didn’t have such an education herself. She felt like her in-laws always judged her for that, and that was the main reason why she wanted at least Junko to also get into Todai, because that way she could prove to her in-laws that at least she managed to raise Junko properly. In the process though, she was way too hard on Junko. Junko knew that her mother would be more upset than her about her failing, so she tried to keep positive and that way created this fake, uncomfortable smile even when she wasn’t feeling cheerful. Her mother just wouldn’t get off her case in the beginning, Junko couldn’t even enter the room and she’d make a snarky remark. She also told her off for trying to give a boy like Kyohei hope of getting into Todai and told her to give up on him. When Junko finally went against her mom to tell her to leave her student alone, the mom seemed to realize how hard she’d been on her daughter, purely out of her own sense of inferiority towards her in-laws. I’m glad that this backstory was included because it really made a lot of sense to me. Peope are exposed to social pressure in many different ways and I do relate to the mom for feeling inferior as her entire in-law family kept confronting her with the fact that she didn’t graduate from a big university. Like, as if that should matter, of course, but the fact that there’s still so many people who think in social ranks like that is sad.
Thinking about it like this, it also gave the relationship between Miwa and Nishioi another layer, as they wanted to be loved for something beyond their educational backgrounds and money, so they decided to keep it a secret from each other. Adding these kinds of messages and layers to an otherwise simple romance story was a pretty interesting choice and it definitely made the whole series less one-dimensional. I actually raised my rating of the series while I was writing this review because more things kept popping up that made me go, ‘hey, now that I think about it, this was actually pretty good about it’.
I guess the only thing that just made me go ‘hmmm…’ was the fact that I just wasn’t comfortable with Junko’s love interest choices. I actually didn’t want her to end up with any of them, haha.

Also, that final confession. When Junko finally realized that she was going to accept Kyohei’s feelings after all and she came to visit him just after his class ended. They had that whole intimate, proposal-like scene right there, in the middle of the classroom, with half of the class still sitting there being all like 👁👄👁 at what was happening. I couldn’t even watch their kiss properly because I was cringing so hard, like what was with this choice of time and place?! Wouldn’t you find normally somewhere more private to do this?! This was just so awkward!!

Lastly, I want to give a shoutout to a couple more side characters before I move on to my cast comments and conclusion.
First of all, Junko’s cram school boss, played by Namase Katsuhisa, who is literally in every school-related drama I’ve watched so far. He just has this principal-kind of vibe, I guess? Anyways, I liked that they didn’t just make him the evil boss, but they really made him a sensible person. Like, even when Junko initially hands in her resignation, he gave her really valid feedback on how he felt her motivation lacked for the job, and it wasn’t mean or devalidating in the slightest. I liked how they also just made him a real person with his own values and reasons for being a teacher, and not just added him for comical value.
Then, there was Gori-san (played by Minagawa Sarutoki), the eccentric owner of the pub that Junko and her friends would frequent to drink and hang out. He was really funny and always lightened up the mood without becoming annoying. Even though he was kept outside of the drama part, he was always there to make everyone feel better and his okonomiyaki looked seriously delicious.
Then, Mon-chan!! Mon-chan (played by Marin), was one of the hostesses from Miwa’s bar who also happened to be a history geek – she was always talking about samurai and shogun and she was just such an enjoyable character. She didn’t even appear that much, but she was always so happy and bubbly and I just really liked her, haha.
And finally, Kyohei’s group of friends. There was Endo, Nara, Kabu and Kisa (respectively played by Nagato Takato, Horike Kazuki, Sakurai Keisuke and Wakabayashi Takuya) and they all had their own established personalities. They mostly also added a comical element to the series, but I just really liked them as Kyohei’s group of loyal friends. They always had his back, even when he kind of went his own way in studying for Todai, they never told him to give up or that it was hopeless for him. I loved how they all had their own traits, for example for Kabu was so passionate about hamburger steaks and it was used as a running gag that people always got information out of him by treating him to one. And how Kisa was always the one that never spoke, but then suddenly started speaking after meeting Mika and everyone was like ‘HE SPOKE !!!👁👄👁’, haha. I think it was so important for Kyohei to have this group of guys to fall back on, they never let him down. Friendship goals!

I think I’ve now covered the parts of the story and the characters that I wanted to mention the most, so let’s move on to the cast comments!

I’ve only seen Fukada Kyoko before in Dame na Watashi ni Koishite Kudasai, in which she played kind of a similar character, also a woman who was also hopeless. I guess she just has that natural ditzy vibe about her, and same as with that previous series, I had to get used to her acting in the beginning. When she didn’t have a clear goal to work towards, she sometimes became a bit passive, also in her expressions. However, in contrast, I was really impressed by the scenes in which she showed incredible determination, like the one I mentioned before in which she told Makise off. Also when she went against her mother, and the scenes in which she finally conveyed her true honest feelings to Masashi and Kyohei, those really changed my previous bias about her, because I thought that extra spark of energy in her acting made a really big difference. Overall, I liked Junko, although her denseness sometimes made me a bit impatient. I mean, she just kept making up far-fetched reasons for why someone would suddenly hug her and tell her they liked her. She just didn’t see the possibility of love while it was standing right in front of her, in the shape of three different people.

I’ve only seen Nagayama Kento in Koizora, a very long time ago, so I don’t really remember him from there. All in all, I really liked how he portrayed Masashi, with the vigor and hopeless determination to make Junko aware of his feelings for her. The fact that he was her cousin never sat 100% well with me, and I kept wondering how everyone just accepted the idea of him and Junko getting together. Where I come from, that would have been seriously frowned upon. I also didn’t think it would be so easily accepted in Japanese society, but maybe I’m thinking about it too seriously. Anyways, even though I really didn’t want him and Junko together, I still really liked his character and felt for him. In hindsight, I now think he didn’t have a choice, love hits you however it does and he just had the bad luck to fall in love with his cousin. Unable to move on from his feelings, he just tried to make the best out of it.
I really liked his scenes with Nishioi, too, they had a really fun dynamic together. I loved how Nishioi would just roll his eyes at him but still always helped him out whenever he could.

I don’t know Yokohama Ryusei from anything either, but I see at least one other drama he’s in that’s also on my watch list so I know I’ll be seeing him again. I can imagine it might have challenging for him to star in a romantic comedy opposite an actress 14 years his age (he was 22 at the time this drama aired and Fukada Kyoko 36). But I think the awkwardness was very fitting and he still didn’t hold back in acting out his character’s feelings for his teacher. He was just such a typical teenager, just going ahead with what he was feeling, even though that also made him seem quite naive, as he was not thinking too much about the future yet. At least he stopped to think about Junko’s side more than once and he did mature in his own way, even though he was just focussed on getting to 18 and not being a minor anymore. Even though the most apparent chemistry existed between Junko and Kyohei, I still hadn’t expected a 100% if they would actually let them end up together. But I guess they just followed the manga? I haven’t read it, but I can only assume that’s how it ends. Anyways, even though I did cringe about him sometimes, I can only imagine that he also cringed a lot himself while filming this, haha, and it in turn also made him more believable as a character since he had to go against two adult guys for a woman. But hey, he did win in the end, so good for him.

As I mentioned before, out of the three love choices, even though I knew he didn’t have a chance, I was Team Yamashita. I really liked his actor, he just acted really naturally and was super chill. The episode that started with Junko tying him up in her bed sheets and he was like ‘…the fuck is she doing’ really cracked me up, haha. He was so dry sometimes. I still find it a bummer that he was forced to abandon the love square because of that weird situation with his ex-wife’s father. It just seemed to me like his ex-wife couldn’t make up her mind about him, but that shouldn’t have been his concern.
Looking at this actor’s list of performances, I see that he was in Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, but I also don’t remember him from there, it’s been too long ago since I watched that. Anyways, of all the three guys, he was my favorite, and I liked that despite his flirty and straightforward attitude towards Junko, he also knew when to step back.

I kept thinking what I recognized Miwa from, but then I realized she was in Repeat! She apparently also appeared in Kuragehime, but I don’t remember her from there. Adachi Yumi was casted really well as Miwa, I really liked her performance. You know how they say that academic education isn’t all there is to know, and that social knowledge and streetsmarts are also useful to have? Miwa was a great example of someone who came out pretty successful with her own business despite her lack of a college education. She was one of my favorite characters simply because she was so straight to the point and she really had a good sense of people’s personalities. She was a really good person for Junko to have on her side.

I like that, even though Namase Katsuhisa was probably a pretty predictable casting choice for this role, he did add something extra to the role. Like, as I’ve seen him in several dramas I thought I’d seen everything there was about his acting by now, but he still managed to surprised me. Even though he was a side character, he contributed greatly to Junko’s growth as a teacher, and he did come to acknowledge her worth after seeing her take on this particular challenge. He was the one who gave her the chance to make it happen, he encouraged her to try. He also may not have believed her to succeed, but it seemed to me that he really cared about her finding back her spark, and it wasn’t just his school’s reputation that he cared about.
To sum up what I’ve seen him in so far: all the seasons of Gokusen (I think this is the first thing I ever saw of him, and he just made a big impression as that typical school principal), Gakkou no Kaidan (again, a teacher role), Ishitachi no Renai Jijou, Kizoku Tantei and, most recently, Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu. I do like him as an actor, he’s always a nice familiar face.

Apparently, Yoshikawa Ai was the female lead’s younger sister in Minami-kun no Koibito, where she was acting under her previous stage name Yoshida Riko. Anyways, again, I liked that the character of EtoMika didn’t end up being another stereotype. It was really nice to see how her character matured, and that Junko was there to take care of her as she wasn’t able to get out of her complicated situation by herself. Mika just really seemed to be that shallow girl that always took advantage of her female charms as that was all she knew to use that worked on guys, but at some point she realized that she was drifting away from her true self. That scene where this guy was about to take her into a love hotel and she just stood there, mumbling ‘I was there someone to stop me from going inside, to tell me not to go’, was really sad. It was just generally sad to see her confidence crumble like that, but I’m glad she managed to turn around for the better. It made her character that much more relatable and sympathetic to me.

All in all, I did like this series, I think it brought more depth than a typical J-Drama and I even though I’m still not 100% okay with the love interest options, I am now able to attach more value to the underlying messages than to what they went for in terms of romantic closure. While I was writing this review, I raised my initial rating by a full point because more and more good things about it kept coming to mind.
I would say the thing I liked most about it was the depth of all the characters, and especially how everyone ultimately managed to find a piece of self-validation that reinstated their confidence in themselves. I didn’t agree with all the solutions, like forcing Yamashita in that particular position and really going all the way with pushing Junko and Kyohei together romantically instead of just creating a very tight teacher-student bond between them. I wished Junko would just find her power and happiness in her job rather than continuing to be focussed on getting married, because she seemed happy enough as it was without having the whole marriage thing pressuring her. In the end, she didn’t allow herself to even enjoy a romantic relationship with Kyohei without the prospect of getting married, simply because she felt like she didn’t have another choice at this point and she didn’t have the luxury of enjoying dating someone casually at her age. It’s kind of crazy to me how much pressure is put on some people in some societies, as if marriage truly is the final box you’re supposed to check in life in order to become happy.
Anyways, apart from that, I liked how every single character had depth, everyone managed to regain a part of themselves that they’d lost, which they now were able to embrace again. Looking at it like that, Junko really might have been a great teacher all along, and she really did miss out on something after she gave up on all of her options after failing Todai once.
One part that I liked in the series, even though it was a bittersweet moment for Junko, was when they received letters that they had written to themselves in high school. This seemed like such an interesting concept to me. So as 15-year olds, they wrote a letter to their future selves, and these letters were delivered to them at some point. In these letters, they asked their future selves how they were doing, if they’d managed to achieve the goals they’d set for themselves back then, etc. And even though Junko wasn’t able to fulfill a single goal that she’d set for herself at 15, I do think that letter served as another trigger for her in the end. She may have felt down after receiving it initially, but at some point she did come to terms with the fact that, even though it took her a bit longer than others, she was still able to make something of her life. I don’t know, I just really wanted to root for her, and I was mostly happy that she managed to ‘fall in love with herself’ again. I would’ve been fine if that was what the show ended with, to be honest, with her just becoming happy with herself, rather than forcing her to choose between her cousin and her student.

I believe it still became a pretty elaborate review, but I was in a flow while writing it, so that’s a good thing I guess. I like it when I start out writing a review and along the way I become aware of things I hadn’t even thought of. For example, I never really understood how the title corresponded to the series. “Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi” was the title of a book that Junko was reading in the first episode, when Kyohei first came to the cram school with his dad. As that was the only reference to the title in the series, I still didn’t understand why they would choose this particular quote, because in my opinion it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the events in the series. And then the obvious thing hit me: that book was the story that Junko was reading on the day that her story with Kyohei began. More so, it was even probably the day that Kyohei first fell for her. So, from Kyohei’s perspective, that book was literally ‘the story that was read when he first fell in love’, and now it also makes sense to me why he was smiling so fondly at that book in the end. It just suddenly made sense to me while I was going over it in my head, no matter how obvious it may have been for other viewers.
Despite the simple romantic comedy format, this series brought a story about more than that, about regaining your identity and spark, and about how to make your mark when society deems you not worthy enough. I think especially in such a strict society as Japan’s, this story may definitely have expressed some important messages and still managed to be subtle about it. It took me some time to really mull it over and analyze it before realizing these messages, but I’m glad I did it, because now it feels more like a hidden gem. I definitely feel different about it now than how I felt when I was in the middle of watching it.

With this drama I have managed to finish 9 dramas(+reviews) in 5 months! I’m now going to try and decide how I want to proceed with my watch list, as there are also a bunch of more recent drama releases that I can’t wait to get to. It’s going to be a surprise what my next review will be about for a while, so bear with me! ^^

Bye-bee~!