Around 40 (2008)
Just rewatched this drama with Linda and was reminded how good it was. I originally watched it last summer (it had just finished airing in Japan, popularizing the term “Arafo”) during my parasite single phase - I was watching my parents’ house for a month while they were in Europe, working long hours on a software engineering internship and really selfishly digging my lifestyle. It may be embarrassing to admit but I was fucking stoked on staying late at work coding all the time, vegging out with dinner for one in front of Japanese dramas when I got home, and going out for expensive meals with my girlfriends. Actually I still am.
But that’s why I was particularly drawn to the main character Satoko (pictured on the left), a “39-year-old, highly capable psychiatrist who is single” and quite happy to be on her own. Her hobbies are going to hot springs by herself, eating delicious food and staying up all night watching stand-up comedy videos. Hmm. Sounds familiar…
Anyway it’s easy to draw a comparison to Sex and the City since this is a drama about career women in their late thirties, and contains a fair amount of lifestyle porn (from Satoko’s gorgeous apartment - she has a massage chair! - to the restaurant owned by childhood friend Ma-kun where the group hangs out eating fancy Western meals and drinking wine… Not to mention the super-enviable outfits worn by 35-year-old magazine editor Nao - pictured on the right in this screenshot.) There’s also a lot of bitching and a wicked sense of humour.
But Around 40 is much less about sex and materialism than it is about family, career (these women actually spend a lot of time at their *gasp* JOBS - working!) and the social pressures that are unique to women both married and unmarried. As a result, I really preferred this drama to its American counterpart - oh, and I still wanna be Satoko when I grow up.
