The first season was a pretty enjoyable series about food and its significance to people. The best way to describe Shina Shokudo is that it is the jdorama equivalent of a Kiroro song. It doesn't catch your ear so much as you find yourself enjoying it more than you thought you would and Kiroro songs never disappoint.Just realised its been less than a year since I first saw the first season.
Season 2 starts off right where season 1 left off and the first thing that struck me was that there were a lot of scenes set outside the eatery. If my memory serves me right, I think in season one everything was set in the eatery and anything outside would merely be recollections. HHmm, actually I think there was a stripper story and actress story that had scenes outside the eatery. Ep 1 just felt a bit weird with so many hospital and batting centre scenes.
Nevertheless, season 2 continues the excellence of season 1 of efficient story telling and ability to do heart warming stories without being contrived. I have no idea what the difference is between Shina Shokudo and a lot of jdoramas where happy/touching endings are forced out and feel inorganic. Perhaps it is the laid back attitude of the dorama which makes it seems like we the viewers are merely peeping into the lives of the people who frequent the establishment.
With Suzuki sensei and Shinya Shokudo, it is a great time to be a dorama fan. Do check out the first season if you haven't. It will not blow you away but the characters and stories will make you smile. Oh yes, Erecto Ohki is one of the best stories from season 1. Hope he makes a return in 2! Most importantly, do not watch on an empty stomach!
On an unrelated note, I have been playing the first AKB game on PSP like mad for the past 3 days because the endings for the sequel suck and I just find a lot of the conversation stupid (for a dating sim). A lot of the stupidity has a lot to do with setting the game in a foreign country (Guam). Its like watching Japanese pretending to converse in English in jdoramas . I've developed an obsession with getting all the Oshima Yuko cards in the first game but more importantly I needed to play the game often to retain all the kanji that I learned.
The proper way for learning is to write a word at least 20 times and test myself the next day but I'm too lazy. I've thought about doing a kanji a day thing on my blog to help reinforce my memory but I can't be stuffed. Kanji always does my head in. Take for example 覚え is oboe or memory. 不(fu) means not or negative and 不覚 (fukaku) means failure/defeat instead of no memory or something to do with memory. Gah, talk about square peg in round hole. Probably the biggest hurdle in my Japanese learning is that reading does nothing for my speaking.
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