sonatahikari86

[sonatahikari86]

Tsubaki no Niwa (2020)

Synopsis / Official Site / Official Twitter

hardsub:

tsubaki no niwa

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[sonatahikari86]

Ore no Hanashi wa Nagai ~2025 Haru~ Special Drama (Spring 2025)

Synopsis / Official Site / Official Twitter / Theme Song

**please read this announcement post first**

softsub + raw video (1 / 2 episode released) please login / signup first before joining buymeacoffee OR trakteer

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hardsub (1 / 2 episode released) ep1-1 / ep1-2

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notes per episode is divided into two parts

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[sonatahikari86]

Slow Train (2025) special drama eng sub

I am excited to share this wonderfully kind and poignant story about three adult siblings who lost their parents in a car accident over twenty years ago and continue to live in their childhood home in Kamakura.

Youko the eldest sibling (played by the incredible Matsu Takako) is an outspoken literary editor and still unmarried in her forties, which seems to bother the people around her - particularly one of her authors, Momeki Ken (Hoshino Gen). Miyako the middle child (Tabe Mikako) is a restless soul and about to move to Busan, South Korea, with her Korean boyfriend (Joo Jong Hyuk) on what seems like a whim. Ushio the little brother (Matsuzaka Toori) works as a tracklayer for a local railway company and hides his gay relationship from Youko for a very particular reason.

I cannot recommend this drama enough! It's such a gentle study on loss, loneliness, time and the transience of living as well as on the importance of being honest with yourself.

Set in both Kamakura and Busan, the scenery is soothing to the eye. All the actors are fantastic (including appearances from Lily Franky, Iiura Arata and Uno Shouhei), the dry humour in Nogi Akiko's script is delightful.

I am very fond of this project and hope you will give it a chance!

The length of this drama is 1 hour and 51 minutes.

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Notes:

Kamakura is a seaside town and a popular tourist destination in Kanagawa Prefecture about an hour from Tokyo.

Hako-nee: Youko's nickname. The first kanji in her name (葉) can be read as ha, a leaf. Nee is older sister.

Shibuya and Meguro are special wards in Tokyo.

In Japanese, the word for enrichment is uruoi, moisture. This is why Youko touches her face when Momeki asks whether there's any enrichment in her enclosure.

Enoden that Ushio works for is short for Enoshima Electric Railway. It's a local railway line connecting Kamakura with Fujisawa.

Tatamu: The reason Nikaidou-sensei talks about folding stuff is because in Japanese this verb also means to bring something to an end.

Bonseki: Ancient Japanese art of creating miniature landscapes on trays using sand and pebbles. The artwork is temporary and will be swept clean once finished.

Wabi-sabi: aesthetic concepts that center on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.

Sabishii: This story is a study on loneliness. However, in Japanese sabishii contains more meanings than just lonely; it's both lonely and sad. I've translated it both ways depending on the situation but please know that they are all related in the original text. Sabishii is the feeling of not having or lacking something. Youko also connects it to the aesthetic of sabi.

Hoshino Gen who plays Momeki Ken is one of my favourite artists (he's also a really great actor and an overall funny person), so I'll just plug a couple of his songs here haha.

[sonatahikari86]

Drama my one night rule *-*

Sinopse: Aya is a 33-year-old office worker who's dealing with sexual frustration. She wants to feel the touch and love of a man but hasn't had a boyfriend in 8 years. And societally speaking, if women show their desire, they are looked down upon. One day, Aya's flirty supervisor Dojima invites her out for drinks. Dojima is divorced and down to have a one-night stand instead of a partner. Hearing this, Aya makes up her own rules to not get carried away or have any regrets for having a one-night stand and sets out to make her one-stand a reality.

raws and subtitles dramaclub or nyaa thanks !

Japanese to English subtitles by Yume Subs

EPISODE (01/10)

DAILY: EPISODE 01 MEGA: EPISODE 01

DO NOT STEAL OR POST MY SUBS ANYWHERE!

for re-translation, please dm or ask me for permission first.

[sonatahikari86]

Liu Xueyi wraps filming for 桃花映江山

[sonatahikari86]

Zhou Ye for Shang Cheng Shi Magazine cover story online November 2024

[sonatahikari86]

Legend of the Female General trailer has just dropped!

Power couple galore!

OMG! Bai Shu (the awesome Xiao Ruo Feng from Dashing Youth) as the main antagonist! EVIL HOTNESS OVERLOAD! I think I might suffer from a villain syndrome, because those 6 seconds he's been in the trailer overshined even Cheng Lei's appearance in my eyes.

The love interest, though, maybe a little too much of a sucker for the FL in the trailer, which takes away the tension from the potential of the relationship and build-up.

Zhou Ye really sells the inner strength and lofty self-confidence of her character, though, I always have to suspend all my disbelieve these tiny, malnourished women could kill hundreds of men and last in any battle longer than 5 minutes. But then, I consider these historical cdramas to be in the fantasy genre, because of the martial arts, leaping in the air and inner strength, so why not.

[sonatahikari86]

aoshima-kun wa ijiwaru eng sub masterlist

episode list :

episode 1

episode 2

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you can use my subs to translate into your own language but make sure to give proper credits.

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thank you 🐈‍⬛🎀

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[sonatahikari86]

A Table! Nostalgic na Kyujitsu (Summer 2024)

Synopsis / Official Site / Official Instagram / Theme Song & OST

I'm back with Season 2!

raws hikariraiders

subs E01

notes

special thanks to hikariraiders!

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support me: ko-fi / trakteer

subbing projects index (browser view only)

occasional updates: aoinousagi @ twitter

[sonatahikari86]

I love how this show portrayed how no act of kindness goes to waste. Im Sol had no real reason to show friendship to the random high-school dropout guy she had a crush on when she was 19. But she did. She convinced him to abandon his rackety lifestyle, dressed his wounds, urged him to consider a parent’s point of view which in turn acted as catalyst for the mending of his relationship with his father, encouraged him to graduate, and praised him wholeheartedly when he did so. All of which (the scolds and the compliments) added up to him finding his purpose and making a good life for himself.

Her sincere and unceasing kindness towards Kim Tae Song in all the timelines gained her not only a friend for life, but the said friend turned out to be the one who ultimately reversed her ill fortune. Saving not only her but the man she loves as well. Thereby securing them a happy future together.

[sonatahikari86]

i..just realised that the people closest to sol, her family her best friend — taesung — are all living in what we can assume is their best timeline.

her house is filled of family members — boisterous and joyful and full of love

hyunjoo is happily married to im geum — with kids and a job

which means it’s safe to assume that im geum is probably just as happy, having a family life that isn’t falling apart because he can’t financially support his family on his own

and taesung is following in his dad’s footsteps — choosing to chill behind bars because it’s a better ‘vibe’ than being behind bars because he kept messing up as a kid and not taking anything seriously. working as a cop, as a detective, but still being himself

and all this without even mentioning that she changed sunjae’s fate yet again by steering clear of him and making sure he never has anything to do with taxi man and his inevitable death

and i genuinely think all of this is thanks to sol- while trying hard to avoid sunjae from the very beginning, protecting him, she also guided her loved ones so they could be the best versions of themselves 🥹

she worked so hard and did so so so well even if she was probably drowning in grief for most of that time with no one to really talk to — people would just think her insane, or tell her to just go talk to that random tall neighbour of hers if she misses him

and uughhhhh

[sonatahikari86]

Lovely Runner 선재 업고 튀어 (2024) — ep. 11 | Become a Couple

[sonatahikari86]

Sun Jae is freaking smitten even though it's been 15 years!!! 🥰😆😍

[sonatahikari86]

Love and in yeon (인연)

I swung by the coffeeshop after work one night to give the owner, my friend Lee, some strawberries. As usual, I ended up shutting the place down with him. We talked for hours as our coffees cooled, and sampled some “prototypes” of his latest invention, the peppermint latte. (Lee’s a retired chemical engineer, and thinks he has the perfect technique for steaming the milk.) His wife Yoon brought us a late dinner of topokki and twigim (rice noodles with spicy sauce and fried vegetable fritters), and we all sat around together drinking sweet lemon tea.

At some point, talk turned to in yeon (인연). This untranslatable term relates to a uniquely Korean concept of destiny. I often feel that destiny brought me here to Korea, and specifically to Lee’s coffeeshop, as I had become such good friends with him and his wife despite our different cultures and languages. I had even done away with the American custom of referring to people by their first names; instead of calling them “Lee” and “Yoon”, I called them “ajashi” and “imo,” polite terms for elders that mean “uncle” and “aunt” respectively. I also sometimes called Lee “sunsangnim,” which means “teacher,” especially when we were engaged, as we were, in an informal lesson about language and culture. 

Like many Koreans, Lee was tickled to learn that I know about in yeon, the uniquely Korean concept of destiny,and wanted to know how I’d heard about it. (To him, it might have been a little like hearing a Martian ask about the meaning of Santa Clause or the idea behind the Tooth Fairy.)

Ironically, I told him, I first heard about it while I was still in the U.S., via my friend Jessica's blog, in which she beautifully illustrates the concept with a story. It began when she and her husband were stranded sans hotel in a small town in Korea during a festival. Exhausted by their futile search, she and her husband, Mayo, stopped to take a rest in a traditional tea shop. They struck up a conversation with the kind proprietor, who spoke a little English, as many Koreans do. Once she heard the couple’s predicament, Jess wrote, the woman invited them both to stay the night in her home “without hesitation.”

There, Jess and Mayo learned that the kind woman’s daughter was living overseas, where the daughter planned to marry a Canadian man. The woman and her husband hoped that the people in their daughter’s new hometown would show her the same care that they were showing my friends. In a bout of parental pride, they even showed Jess their daughter’s wedding dress, hanging up in the closet – and as they peered more closely at label inside, they realized with delight that it read Jessica.

That love should link these two unlikely parties together, the teashop owner said, was surely in yeon. It was meant to be. 

“Koreans believe that all relationships (even fleeting encounters) are a part of our destiny,” Jess wrote at the time, “and she felt this when she met us at the tea shop.”

Tied together with tea and string

Since I read Jess’ lovely story, I’ve been interested in the idea of in yeon, and I love asking Korean people like Lee what it means to them. I always hear a different and uniquely poetic answer. 

In one of my favorite stories about in yeon, it is said that destiny takes the form of a grandmother spirit (grandmothers occupying a special place in Korean culture, and in my own heart). This fairy grandmother comes and ties a red thread to the finger of each newborn, and winds and loops it through this person’s life, tying him or her to every person in his or her in yeon, until finally the thread ends at the finger of the person he or she will love forever.

The catch is, to actually find this person, you have to keep your eye on the thread, take each interaction seriously, because that is wonleh geuleonkeoya (원래 그런거야), the way it’s supposed to be. Each meeting is a clue. It’s kismet. It’s maktub. It’s a bread crumb on your way to your destiny. And if you ignore someone or mistreat someone along the way, you will be lost, in a profound metaphysical sense: you will never find your love or your destiny. It is said that “there is in yeon in even the mere brushing of sleeves (옷깃만 스쳐도 인연)”, seuchada (스차다) being the onomatopoeic Korean verb which means “to brush in passing.”

It appears likely that this story was adapted from an older East Asian myth about a red thread of destiny, used by the gods to tie two lovers together. In China, the grandfatherly god Yue Xia Lao is responsible for this cosmic matchmaking; in Japan, the concept of the thread is known as akai ito or unmei no akai ito, and has launched more than a few manga storylines. Apparently, the concept is so well-known in certain areas that “merely holding up the thumb is used as shorthand for girlfriend, and holding a pinky up would indicate a boyfriend.”

The idea that your destiny dead-ends at the object of your everlasting love is very romantic, of course. But told Lee that I liked the emphasis in yeon places on the journey rather than the destination–on the compassion you are supposed to share with everyone, not just your one-and-only. Lee agreed with me. He added that as he understood it, an important aspect of Korean in yeon is how it relates to one’s family, and to the Asian Hindu-Buddhist belief in past lives. It is often said that people whom you meet and become close with through in yeon, and especially the people in your family, are likely people you’ve met many times before.

“I think me, you and Yoon have deep in yeon,” he said. Yoon and I both nodded in agreement. Lee said husbands and wives are said to have met each other one million times before. “Sometimes meeting with anger, sometimes with love,” Yoon interjected with a big smile. “Sometimes lots of anger, sometimes lots of love.”

Lee also said that some Koreans believe their children are people to whom they owe a great debt from a past life – which is why Korean parents often seem willing to sacrifice everything for their children. Korean children are not expected to work until they graduate from university (which will, of course, be paid for by their parents), and often live at home well into their late 20s, so this is a great commitment indeed. (Later, when his youngest daughter bounded into the coffee shop to ask for a bit of money for dinner with friends, Lee opened the shop’s cash register with a baleful smile and said to me, “See? I owed her a lot from a past life.”)

Family members are connected by deep in yeon and destined to keep meeting. This is because, Lee said, “When you see the suffering of another person and you do not know them, you can choose to look away. But when you see someone in your family suffering, you cannot look away. And regardless, you must keep meeting them. You will always see them again. even in the afterlife, it is said that i will see my ancestors, my father, and I will bow to them. Your family is your highest in yeon.”

Lee in his family home in Samcheongdong during Chuseok, a holiday on which people celebrate and pray to their ancestors.

The mirror in Lee’s old bedroom, where he lived until he met Yoon at age 32; her picture is still here.

Yoon today, standing in her mother-in-law’s kitchen

Lately, I have been meditating on the amazing family and friends I have in the States, my adopted family here in Korea, and the people I continue to meet as I follow my red thread to Seoul and back. I love the idea of being tied to all the many special individuals I’ve met in my lifetime, not just one soulmate. It feels like the opposite of the claustrophobic concept of love sold in Cosmo, where you exist to please only your partner. It’s the kind of love you feel for the person sitting next to you in the rocking chair or, inexplicably, for the stranger sitting next to you on the plane, or for the people around the dinner table with whom you’ve fought, it seems, a million times before, and yet you still aren’t walking away.

Family: your highest in yeon

I think the beauty of the concept of in yeon lies in the way it ties us to our loved ones, past and future, like so many lovely pearls on a string. To keep us from walking away. And when that thread is leading toward your destiny, toward love, toward the repayment of millienia of grace, why would you ever want to walk away?

[sonatahikari86]

And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you. (CoS)

[contains spoilers; tw: blood]

When they ask me about the purest love story out there, I'd show them these two.

It's not the sacrifice per se that makes it great for me, it's the way they feel about each other, about the love they give and receive. Even in their last/worst moments, they somehow find the courage because the other one is safe? Im Sol is scared out of her mind handling this traumatic ordeal on her own so she seeks help from the detectives. Her only peace of mind is that at least Seon Jae is safe. Then she learns about his phone call and doesn't spare a second to run. The same girl who was so scared a while back throws all caution out of the window the moment Seon Jae is in danger, because she'd risk her life than Seon Jae's. Can you imagine the trauma seeing him dying for the third time, and her actually witnessing it this time around? If I were Im Sol, I would do anything to not have to go through that too. Even if it meant losing the person so they were never my person to begin with.

And Seon Jae. Boy is dying. Dying. You can see it in his eyes that he's aware of it too and yet, he is so grateful? So at peace with himself and with life? Like he has no regrets about any unfinished business, unlived years, unattained dreams, unspoken words to his loved ones. He already told Im Sol he loved her, and she reciprocated. That was enough. For him, that was good enough.

I go back to this scene like a masochist because THE DETAILS. By the time Im Sol arrives, you know Seon Jae is beyond saving. He knows it too. He's not even trying to escape or save himself. It looks like he's been holding on on his own for a while. His face has turned ashen, breathing uneven, hands slightly shaking. He's barely holding it together. Barely there.

However, he is not trying to push that guy away or take that knife out.

Instead, he's holding that guy's hand.

Let that sink in for a moment.

He is holding on to that hand. JUST SO HE CAN HOLD ON TO THE GUY.

Since the taxi driver is at an advantage here, and Seon Jae knows he cannot fight back anymore, so he is using whatever he can as a last resort to keep the guy occupied with him, and keep him from going after Im Sol. Seon Jae could perhaps guess Im Sol would arrive any time since the cliff was where he'd found her earlier, sitting in shock. But even if she didn't make it, you can bet he'd have spent his last breaths trying to fall off the cliff taking the guy down with him. THIS SCENE. The resolution is so clearly etched on his face.

And then he sees her. And the detectives. She is safe. She is saved. He did it. He saved her. And it's the Im Sol who knows him, who recognizes him, who loves him. She is safe, and that's all that matters. He saved the person he loves more than his life, literally.

His job is done. The choice he made gave him the outcome he wanted and desperately fought for.

And he is exhausted. All that resolve took a lot out of him. So we see his body finally giving up, him finally letting go. He resigns to his fate, but also not in a resentful way. He knew this was his fate all along (because no matter what choice Im Sol made, he'd choose to run toward her any day), it just happened earlier than expected. But he knew it, and he still made that choice. He doesn't regret it because he'd be making the same choice in every timeline (as he has been). He is able to see his Im Sol for one last time before his eyes close, with memories of their time together and Im Sol's voice echoing in his ears, his soul.

Sometimes you know the consequences, but make the same choice anyway. Because you like it.

The faint smile on his face in his final moments before he falls off the cliff? You'd think the boy won a gold medal for swimming or something. It's like he's achieved the biggest purpose there was in his life besides loving Im Sol. True to his words, he is grateful Im Sol exists in the world. That he got the chance to love her because she exists in this world. And he is thankful he gets to leave the world knowing Im Sol still exists in the world, his gift from the heavens.

One is jumping through space and time, living the same nightmare, constantly, over and over again, and yet going out of her way to save her love. Even if it means carrying the trauma and heartbreak and pain and loneliness and longing of three, four, multiple timelines, for the same guy. The other is making the choice to love her through all the storm, all the warnings, all the odds of time and space and fate stacked against him. How could you be so brave when fate is both so very kind and yet so extremely cruel to you no matter what you do? How do you choose to persevere? How do you get to have a love so pure?

Should I be ready to die if I want to be with you? - Ryu Seon Jae

[sonatahikari86]

And with one swish of the pen the writer changes one of the most iconic scenes of first love in a kdrama and turns it into an iconic scene of selfless love while firmly placing the narrative on the female lead. Now that is a plot twist I like!

[sonatahikari86]

Regarding the guest room confession scene from episode 12, how do you think their night ended? The way the camera panned out from the window while they were kissing left the rest of their night open to interpretation. I've been reading a lot of interpretations online and would like to know yours!

hi, anon!

i think what was so beautiful about the camera widening out towards the window as they kissed was how it left room for so many possible subtle implications.

i'm a poet; it's in my nature to inhabit a thousand possible universes — and so i imagined a million different things.

the "blue estuaries" of imagination create infinite space — you can fill them with so many scenarios. maybe they simply stayed up all night talking to each other, lost in each other's gaze; rapt by the speech of each other's skin.

maybe they held each other till morning, committing touch to precise memory — measuring each eyelash, each glistening strand of hair.

maybe sunjae told sol everything he would do till he met her in the future, the dreams he would keep safe in his pocket until her hand would rediscover them, fifteen years later.

maybe sol, knowing this to be her last night with sunjae before she has to let him go, asked him to sing for her — the roses of his voice kept fresh in her memory.

maybe they did sleep together in the full sense of the word — learnt each other's bodies by heart: mapped the errant mole, the fading scar, kissed the tan lines and knuckles.

love's rooms are silent until you enter them for yourself — who can say for sure what they heard inside?

there are a hundred different intimacies to be had. maybe they shared them all. :)