19.1% – JAPANESE AMERICANS ~ Ep05
17.7% – Freeter
15.5% – JAPANESE AMERICANS ~ Ep02
15.3% – Ryomaden
14.7% – JAPANESE AMERICANS ~ Ep03
…and many more ratings in the full post!

Oricon once again ordered a survey to find out about the most anticipated drama of the upcoming season. This fall we will see the return of the highly popular “Aibou” series as well as the third season of the suspense medical drama “Iryu”, but there will be tough competition with several new and original stories lead by big names. Shinohara Ryoko will make her return as a drama starring actress in “Ogon no Buta”. Kanno Miho and Tamaki Hiroshi will team up for “Guilty” and Oguri Shun will turn into a veterinarian for “Jyuui Dolittle” co-starring Inoue Mao.

There is still more to look forward to. Fuji TV’s Monday dramas always aimed for the drama crown, but recently their stories failed to deliver that certain unique element. This season they will put their hope on Takenouchi Yutaka and Ueto Aya. The drama “Freeter” starring Ninomiya Kazunari, Karina and veteran actress Asano Atsuko seems to have all the ingredients to become a hit as well. Other interesting dramas such as “SPEC” (Kase Ryo, Toda Erika), “Himitsu” (Shida Mirai, Sasaki Kuranosuke) and “Reinoryokusha” (Ishihara Satomi, Tanihara Shosuke) might have it more difficult with the average drama viewers in Japan, but they all still have the potential of becoming a hit. The young cast of “Q10″ (Sato Takeru, Maeda Atsuko) will probably get a lot of fans as well and a lot of women are going to be interested in the story of “Second Virgin” starring Suzuki Kyoka and Fukada Kyoko. [...]

You might have already noticed a few rankings here that were taken from NTT DoCoMo's mobile voting service "NTT DoCoMo Mina no Polling & Ranking". That service already started a long time ago, but I didn't become aware of it until recently. There are obviously several rankings that I've missed  [ Read More ]

Miho Kanno (32) is set to star in a new drama series this fall on Fuji TV. The currently untitled show will have Kanno playing her first "wicked woman" role since "Koi no Kiseki" in 1999. It is being described as a mystery with some element of romance, and Hiroshi  [ Read More ]

Oricon/Oricon Style's latest survey among 1000 women asked them who is THE "good woman" of all female celebrities. They basically describe a good woman as a woman who not only attracts men with her beauty, but also a woman who gets admired by other women for her look and character.  [ Read More ]

As every year, the weekly magazine "FRIDAY" published the results of the "Talents clients want to/don't want to use in their commercials" ranking. They always ask over 200 advertising companies responsible for dozens of clients and their ads on TV, newspapers, radio, magazines and more.   Let's start with the  [ Read More ]

Best Drama 01: Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge 02: Tokujo Kabachi!! 03: Fumo Chitai 04: Code Blue Season 2 05: Aibou Season 8   Best Actor 01: Kamenashi Kazuya (in Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge) 02: Sakurai Sho (in Tokujo Kabachi!!) 03: Yamashita Tomohisa (in Code Blue 2) 04: Mizutani Yutaka (in  [ Read More ]

Oricon Style has a certain column called "Hataraki Bito" that is all about working adults, from common sense to their actual love life. They often do researches to find out the current situation of the working adults and this time it's about spring and the right make-up for working women.  [ Read More ]