Takashi Shinohara

Love and the Grand Tug-of-war

Following the 2009 financial crash, Waseda University graduate Takeshi lost his job in Tokyo and retreated to his family home in Sendai. While he resumed his role as heir to the family construction company with a diligent attitude, his hidebound father resents that his son left and that at the age of 35 Takeshi is still single. However, wider events will force father and son to overcome their differences as the Otsunahiki, a great tug-of-war featuring thousands of participants, will pull them together in a family tradition just as Takeshi meets Jiheyun, a beautiful Korean doctor on an exchange programme... The ties of family bind people tightly as characters struggle with the push of their own ambitious urges and the pull of family commitments but the Otsunahiki ropes things together in a family drama rich with events and the culture of Sendai, that will tug and the heartstrings of viewers whilst providing to the desire to visit the beautiful and storied region.

My Departure

Drama depicting two men and a woman, each with their own issues, who head for Fukui, and their maturity and rejuvenation through travel. Recently retired Nishina Kosuke goes to meet his first love, who he got to know as a pen pal 42 years ago. For Kagawa Yuika, raised by a single mother, Fukui is a place seeped with memories of her father. And, violinist Kuga Hikari is trying to break through a slump.

Departing Osaka Station at 0:00

This film is about a train departing Osaka Station at midnight to an unknown destination. The people on this train all have some difficulties in their lives, and they end up on this train. Hanoko is suicidal, Yuka has caught her boyfriend with another woman, Michiru is aimless, Mr. Wakabayashi has just been fired, and one other man just lost his wife. They take the train to Kazumachi, a small village. They decide to stay and enter a small world of discovery about themselves, courtesy of the inhabitants of the village, all of whom are engaging.