JDramas: Japanese Romance, Mystery, and Slice-of-Life Stories for Kdrama Fans

S1 E16 / Loving Kdramas but ready to branch out? I took a break from Kdramas to shine a spotlight on some Japanese dramas I loved. 

I share some of my favorites: twisty mysteries, workplace dramas, and fast friendships. 

Did you know Jdramas are getting easier to stream? Netflix, Viki, and Amazon are adding fresh Japanese dramas—so it's a great time to put a few on your watchlist.

✅ Spoiler Free episode, except for one trope mention, which has a warning. Chaptermarkers are timestamped. 

🗞️ Off the Record 

👗 Why I Dress Up for Love *

🤵‍♂️ Turn to Me, Mukai-kun 

❤️‍🩹 First Love 

🦚Who Saw the Peacock Dance in the Jungle 

🎻 Quartet

* At the time of recording, I couldn’t confirm if Why I Dress Up For Love would actually be available on Netflix, but it is available there now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This is the How I Met My K Drama podcast, and it's all about K-drama origin stories and recommendations. I'm Sarah Rosette, and today is going to be a different type of episode. I'm going to talk to you about some J dramas that I've been watching and recommend. But first, I need to let you know we're nearing the end of season one, maybe one or two more episodes after this, and then I'll take a short break and I'll be back with season two. But I do need your help. I'd love to talk to you about how you found K dramas and what your recommendations are. So please get in touch with me if you're interested in sharing that on the podcast. Really, get in touch because I can't do this unless I have people to talk to. I do enjoy doing these solo episodes where I talk about some things I've been watching, but I really want to hear from you and what your recommendations are. So you can send me a text through the link in the show notes, but be sure to include your email because I don't have a way to respond to that. All the communication through that link is hidden. So I would get your text, but I wouldn't be able to reply to it. So if you reach out that way, be sure to include your email. Or you can always find me on Instagram and reach out that way. And I have received a couple of texts through the show notes, and I really appreciate that. Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate your comments. And thanks to everyone throughout this whole first season who has been a guest, who has shared their recommendations, who's commented online and shared the post. I really appreciate it. And this has just been so much fun. I've really enjoyed doing this podcast, talking to everyone and hearing everyone's recommendations. It really is one of my fun things that I get to do every week. Okay, switching gears. And in this episode, we are going to talk about J dramas. I'm doing this because I've been really enjoying J dramas and they are Asian content that they're similar to K-drama in some ways. They have their own little unique way of doing things. So it's you're seeing into another culture as well when you watch these. But I've also noticed that it seems like the streamers are really building up their J-drama offerings. And I just want to shout out some of my favorites. This will be a spoiler-free episode, except for one tiny little mention of a trope in one of the shows I'll mention, but I'll give you a warning on that so you can jump ahead if you don't want any spoilers. But I just want to talk about these and give you a sampling of what's out there. And maybe you'll find one or two that you want to try. And and part of the reason I think they haven't been as popular as K-dramas is because they've just been harder to find. So it seems like there's a turning point or a tipping point where more J dramas are going to be available now. It seems like Netflix, Amazon, Vicky are really looking for more J dramas to add, and they're adding some of the newer content that's being released on the streamers at the same time it's being released in Japan. All right, so I have a couple of recommendations for you. And I'm going to give you the title, where I watched it. So hopefully that will help you track it down wherever you are in the world. And just a little snippet about what the show's about and what

Off the Record

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I liked about it. First up is off the record. I watched this on Amazon. It's a workplace drama with a mystery in it. It is not a rom-com. Just know that going in. It's not a newspaper, it's a gossip magazine. So it's not hard news, it's salacious stories or interesting stories, kind of human interest stories. The woman that the show centers on is extremely competent in what she does. She's a very good reporter. Everyone wants to be like her, and she's very good at her job, which I always enjoy that. Where this show really excels is showing the interplay between the characters at this office. You really see their characters come out as they interact in the office, which I love. And so it was an interesting look at this type of work in Japan and the dynamics within the office. And then the mystery is another thing that I like in a show. I like it when it has a mystery. So I enjoyed that part too. But I would say where it really excels is in sort of this slice of life slash office drama. All right, keeping this short. So

Why I Dress Up for Love

SPEAKER_00 4:29

moving on to the second one. It's called Why I Dress Up for Love. It's on Vicky and it's coming to Netflix question mark. I've seen that reported when I'm recording this right now. It's not on Netflix, but I've heard that it may be coming to Netflix. This is a rom-comslash slice of life. It's about a social media manager who always has her phone with her. She's always on her phone. She meets a man who is a chef who doesn't carry his phone. And they end up in a house share. So you get their story, and then you've got this ensemble cast of the other people who are living in the house share. And that's where the slice of life comes in because you see all of these people and how they're moving through their life and the choices they're making as they've started their career and are trying to succeed and do well and get ahead. And then you've got the woman who owns the house, so you get her story as well. She's a little bit older, so you have different generations, and it has a lot of humor. It's really funny. I have to give a shout out to, I believe it was Becky of the Drama Trio on the T and Soju podcast for this recommendation. This is actually the J drama that led me down the rabbit hole of searching out other J dramas. So appreciate that. And I have to give that shout out. The third recommendation I have is

Turn to Me Mukai-kun

SPEAKER_00 5:51

turn to me, my tycoon. I watch this on Netflix, and it is a gender flip of the, oh no, I'm 30 and I need to get married trope. So it's a guy this time who realizes he's like, oh, I'm 33 and I'm not married. And he's been focused on work and his career and he's had girlfriends in the past, but he realizes he's getting older and he really does want to be married. But it starts off very comedic as he kind of bumbles through some dating experiences, and then it turns more thoughtful as the show goes on. It takes a deep look at marriage and gender roles and expectations in marriage. The only drawback with this one was I felt it was a little, a little preachy in some of the aspects about marriage and expectations. And I really didn't need it to be quite so on the nose about that. I could pick it up just fine without it being spelled out for me. But overall, it was just so interesting. And I enjoyed seeing it from the point of view of the guy. And it was interesting because you would see his experiences and then you would get a snippet of what the women were thinking. So as he goes through life trying to find someone that he could spend the rest of his life with, you're seeing other perspectives besides his. So it really gives it more depth. And um, I'll give this as a spoiler. So if you don't want any spoilers about the tropes in this show,

(Trope spoiler for Mukai-kun)

SPEAKER_00 7:22

skip forward 10, 15 seconds. It has one of the best explorations of friends to lovers tropes I've ever seen. So that's all I'll say about that. But it really was just a delight. The more I got into it, the more I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the supporting cast. And you see his home life. He's very close to his family. He has an older sister. It takes a look at his parents' relationships, his sister's relationship with her husband. She's newly married, and then all his relationships as he's trying to find the one.

First Love

SPEAKER_00 7:54

And then another romance called First Love. This one I watched on Netflix. It's about a woman who drives a cab for a living and a man who is a security guard. The show deals with how their lives intersect and how they're dealing with things not turning out like they expected. Now, I would say that this is not, it does have some funny moments in it, but I would say this is more a romance love story. It's not really a rom-com. It's angsty. So if you really like the angst, you'll enjoy this. For me, it was a little too too angsty, but I did enjoy it because it was just so well made. It's a dual timeline. You get the adults in the present day, and then you get timing in, the end of high school. So you see the changes and how what they've gone through impacts them. And each storyline informs the other storyline as you're finding things out. There's just such attention to detail with this show, with the music, with the settings, the clothes, the dialogue. It was all just very well done. The symbolism in it is excellent. Do you just, I just felt for these characters, you know, as the story goes on and you're just reading for them. Definitely a Netflix production, just an FYI on that. It does have a couple of racy scenes that seem to be the exception rather than the rule when you're

Who Saw the Peacock Dance in the Jungle?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

dealing with Asian content. Next up is a crime drama. It is called Who Saw the Peacock Dance in the Jungle? I watched it on Netflix, and this is one, it's a very recent release. It was released one episode at a time, as it was also coming out, I believe, in Japan at the same time. So it's a Who Done It about a college student whose dad was a retired cop who dies. You find all this out in the first episode, and you get the trope of the letter from beyond the grave. He left her a letter in case anything happened to him. And he was looking into a cold case and he wants her to carry on. His letter is here's how you do this. The female lead is pretty young and innocent. And there was a point where I was like, you need to stand up for yourself and start doing this on your own. But if she did that, then she wouldn't have all these interactions with the different people that her dad sends her to to help her solve this case. So that's an element of it that I think works because she's younger. If she was in her late 20s, early 30s, that would seem odd to me that she would be so unsure of herself. But I still really enjoyed this, despite that little quibble. She does have an inner core of strength where she's like, I am going to finish this and find out what really happened. It has some flashback scenes with her and her dad, and her dad is one of the standout dads in Asian dramas. He's just such a great dad. And it has really funny moments too, and it's got a good mystery. It's got some interesting twists and good interplay between the characters. And that one was Who Saw the Peacock Dance in the Jungle?

Quartet

SPEAKER_00 10:39

All right, last is Quartet. And this, I've saved the best for last. This is the one that I just enjoyed so, so much. It's actually one of my top five dramas now. It's on Netflix right now. It's an ensemble drama about four people who form this string quartet and they become friends. So they didn't really know each other before, but they come together to form this quartet. And it's also a house share drama. They're sharing a house as they practice and play together. And it's really about their friendship. There's a mystery or a secret about each person. And as the story unwinds the mystery, it also reveals character backstory. The dialogue in this is excellent. These four, they'll have conversations around the dinner table or as they're preparing to practice or play, that it seems very random, but the dialogue isn't. And the story will circle back to that theme or idea that was mentioned earlier. I just admire this type of writing. It's also very funny. There's some scenes that are laugh out loud funny. There's some twist in it that I was like, ooh, that is interesting. I can't say much more because I don't want to give anything away, but just know that, like I said, this is one of my top five dramas. It was one of those that as I was watching it, I was so wrapped up in the story, I didn't even realize that the time had passed for the episode. And then the next episode, I was like, oh, of course, next episode, next episode, next episode. So I just consumed this one. So I would recommend that one if you want a good slice of life ensemble. And especially if you enjoy dramas that have something to do with music. If you enjoyed, do you like broms? You would probably enjoy this one because the music element is pretty front-center in this. I would say friendship is the main theme, and they're good at what they do, but they're not excellent. So they're never going to be able to make a living with their music. And it's about what do you do then? And I think I'm seeing this a lot in Asian dramas, this exploring this theme of not being excellent, but still enjoying, like, can you play music for the joy of it? Do you have to excel in everything? And if you don't excel, what do you do? And that one was quartet. So let me know. Are you watching Japanese dramas? Do you have any recommendations? I would love to hear them. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a few minutes to write or review it wherever you listen to podcasts. And I will see you next time. Thanks for listening.