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  • "I want to be your friend, Hinazuki!"

  • "What's more important, me or surfing?"

  • "How nice... this street is packed with mom-pop shops!"

  • "Which would you pick?"

  • "It's good!"

  • "The potatoes are cut into huge bites!"

  • "OK, I'll see you soon!"

  • This show features nice houses and nice cars

  • but everything else is raw, and unscripted!

  • HEY GUYS!

  • I'm Loretta and welcome to my channel "KemushiChan"!

  • It's SPRING BREAK season in Japan!

  • For the last few weeks I got to work more

  • and earn a bit more money,

  • I also got to travel a bit

  • but I also did a LOT of relaxing,

  • which was pretty much just binge-watching Netflix...

  • ...a lot...

  • My university is going to start classes again in one week

  • so before that got started

  • I wanted to share some of my Spring Break vibes

  • and share what I've been watching in the past few weeks

  • to expand my Japanese and keep things up.

  • Which is why I wanted to share: The Top 3 NetFlix Shows I've been watching

  • to keep up or expand my Japanese.

  • Plus, I'm going to add in some bonus shows, because

  • not everything good is on Netflix. Ammirite.

  • Most of the shows that caught my eye were ones

  • that we're really well put together.

  • They had that aestheticcccc going

  • The first one is Terrace House!

  • The aesthetic of this show is very clean, very pretty and very beachy

  • "A reality show about nice people"

  • "Seemingly boring, but surprisingly addictive"

  • these are some of the common reviews about it

  • The slow itself can get slow at times

  • but it's a good example of people actually talking

  • in a day-to-day, from morning until night situation.

  • You hear an actual daily life situation of people

  • in Japanese.

  • It's a group of 6 people, usually 3 girls and 3 boys

  • So you get a chance to hear a lot of different styles.

  • Specifically I really liked the "Aloha" series

  • not for the story, but for the people in it.

  • Most of them were half-Japanese, but there was also Lauren Tsai

  • I believe she's Chinese American

  • but she's a self-taught speaker of Japanese.

  • All of these people who mix a little bit of English

  • with a lot of Japanese. And the pace is little bit more

  • easy to grasp, if Japanese isn't your native language.

  • So I recommend that season specifically for

  • the language element. PLUS as a bonus,

  • It has subtitles in Japanese and English, as well as in

  • Korean, Chinese and Portuguese.

  • Next show is "Kodoku no Gurume"!

  • It's the idea of one person, on their own, eating really good food.

  • But the twist is that the food is actually really cheap,

  • accesible, and from real restaurants in Japan.

  • It's really just about a crisp looking Japanese guy

  • who just wants to eat food. It's very simple.

  • He just. want. to eat.

  • He'll run out of a business meeting just to eat, and I get that!

  • If you've ever been to Japan or seen Japanese TV

  • you know that food is a huge part of the TV industry

  • people love to sit around and say "yum", "tasty"

  • "it's got a great, deep flavor!"

  • and all the different ways to describe a piece of food.

  • The main character, Goro, is ACTUALLY hilarious

  • He's a salaryman on the outside, but he's just a simple man who wants to eat

  • good food for cheap!

  • For me it was helpful to learn more food words,

  • to learn about different dishes, but specifically

  • it introduced different local restaurants in my area!

  • The show is a "fiction" but it takes place in real places

  • so there are many people who go on Kodoku-no-Gurume tours

  • and try to eat at the different places. I want to try that next!

  • This series unfortunately does NOT have any subtitles

  • and it's not available outside of Japan

  • at least not on Netflix! However,

  • it IS available on YouTube through the official

  • TV Tokyo channel.

  • I wanted to recommend that one because it's really hot in Japan

  • and it'll give you some current ideas

  • of where to get good cheap eats if you're into that.

  • So that's my number 2.

  • Number 3 !

  • "Erased" in English, or "Boku Dake ga Inai Machi"

  • Snowy, industrial, mysterious, spooky,

  • some kind of fantasy thriller is going on but

  • it also has a really good pace to it!

  • I first watched it because

  • I was just looking for something to watch while I folded laundry

  • and I didn't finish my laundry, I just watched the entire series in an afternoon!

  • the main character is played by two different people

  • One is the famous Yuki Furukawa

  • I think most people watched it to see him

  • but when you watch it you get really drawn into the performance

  • by the younger version of the same character,

  • Reo Uchikawa. So this young lad,

  • he BLEW me out of the water!

  • This was some of the best acting

  • and best quality acting I've seen in Japan.

  • In Japanese TV in a long time... and the cinematography!

  • When I saw the first episode literally thought

  • I was watching the Japanese version of Stranger Things

  • but only with cute Hokkaido accents.

  • That was the vibe it gave me, and I was immediately sucked in

  • It has this nostalgic, sweet but dark

  • mysterious... not sci-fi but

  • fantasy thriller vibe. It really sucks you in.

  • Those accents though!

  • Everything ended in "da be". "I know you did it (da be!!)"

  • ...Da be?! That sounds so cute!

  • I think "da be" is "deshou" in Hokkaido accent,

  • and "shitakke" is like... "mata ne" I think?

  • It's so cute when you hear these little kids

  • and their performances are truly amazing!

  • I really recommend this one. So those are my 3 Netflix recommendations

  • But those aren't the only things I've been watching!

  • "Yae no Sakura"

  • I've tweeted about this and mentioned it on my second channel.

  • I recently did a project in Fukushima.

  • When I was in Fukushima I saw posters for this drama

  • and thought that maybe it'd be good research.

  • I don't know too much about history or samurai

  • or anything historical like that

  • so I started watching and again I was blown away!

  • She's a woman, survives wars

  • and then goes on to help found the first University

  • I went to when I first moved to Japan!

  • Real historical accounts about the last samurai

  • NOT TOM CRUISE

  • what actually happened in Japan's civil war

  • right before they opened up to the West

  • I'm not really into history stuff but it really appealed to me

  • so I highly recommend that one.

  • If you're looking for something more academic I have 2 recommendations!

  • First is "Nihongo De Kurasou", originally an NHK show

  • it's 4 people who are all learning Japanese

  • they're learning situations like... how to argue with your wife

  • or how to spill the tea...

  • it's useful real life situations

  • and how to handle casual and more formal situations.

  • It also covers "Keigo" and cultural tips as well.

  • It's on YouTube and across the internet

  • but that show really helped me

  • start separating my casual and more formal styles.

  • If you're looking to do anything academic in Japan

  • I highly recommend Ikegami Akira's "Yasashii Keizaigaku"

  • it's a live school lecture that he did.

  • He taught students in the liberal arts who don't usually

  • study economics or topics like that.

  • But when you pay taxes every year,

  • and wonder who's taking a cut of your salary

  • all those things that actually effect your daily life

  • or your personal money that you earned

  • all of that is covered in a basic, easy to digest way

  • and it just gives you a better grasp on your lifestyle

  • and what you do as an adult.

  • So those are my top 4 dramas & 2 educational shows

  • and other picks across the internet recently.

  • One thing that always helped me is to watch shows multiple times.

  • Start with subtitles, then watch it again without them

  • that way you know the content and what you're listening for

  • and you can start picking up certain words

  • and start sounding like certain characters that you admire.

  • What do you guys do to study when you're not looking at a textbook?

  • Let me know in a comment below and I'll see you in another video!

  • Thank you so much for watching today!

"I want to be your friend, Hinazuki!"

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