I was hoping for an oden specialist like in the “Anniversary Oden” episode of Samurai Gourmet.
Seems entirely plausible to me that there might not be a market to support such a place, but on the other hand, there are some very specialized Japanese restaurants in LA.
There’s a second season of Midnight Diner, I don’t know if Netflix is going to pick it up. It’s based on the manga series “Shinya Shokudō,” some of which is available online in English translation:
If you like Samaurai Gourmet, check out the original of that genre, Kodoku no Gourume. The only places I found to stream it were kind of a challenge. It’s also based on a manga series, “Kodoku no Gourmet.”
There are actually a total of four seasons of Shinya Shokudo (Midnight Diner), with the fourth season being exclusive to Netflix (which made it internationally, or at least available and accessible from the USA) and is titled “Tokyo Stories” or something like that. There are also two full length Shinya Shokudo big screen movies available, movie #2 was aired on the big screen in Japan last November and the Bluray came out (Asia/Japan) last May.
More Gourmet J Drama trivia: The writer and creator of Samurai Gourmet is Masayuki Kusumi, who is the manga artist for Kodoku No Gurume 孤独のグルメ (The Lonely Gourmet). This has also been ported over to a well established (and fun to watch) TV series with 6 available seasons. The lead character of the TV series is played by veteran actor Yutaka Matsuhige, who coincidentally also plays the role of “Ryu-chan”, the sunglasses wearing Yakuza character in Shinya Shokudo. Kusumi is also the leader of his band called The Screentones, who provide the entire soundtrack to the TV series of Kodoku No Gurume.
Just watched the first episode on Netflix. Thanks for the tip. Wow, never knew about Midnight Diners in Japan. I did search “shinya” and Tokyo Stories came up.
My favorite show was おにぎりあたためますか (Would you like your rice ball(s) warmed up?) translated as Hungry Hoppers. It was on in LA for years with English Subtitles. Produced by HTB since 2003, it’s seen in most regions in Japan and apparently on Netflix there. The main part of the show was an A list actor, an A- list actor and a woman who was in charge as “director” going all over Japan eating all types of things and saying 美味し (OISHI!) a lot. The third half of the show was devoted to their sponsor, Lawsons. They hired 2 comedians to hitchhike all over Hokkaido to put a promo poster in each towns Lawsons. it was hilarious.
Unfortunately UTB Hollywood on Channel 18-2 lost their channel and dropped this, among many other things, in order to condense their schedule to 2 hours a week on 18-1. Also, the subtitled versions produced no longer exist. The other bad news is Asami Sato the “director” was recently replaced by someone much younger and I’m not sure the camaraderie between the three main characters would remain any more because Asami, Yo Oizumi and Shigeyuki Sato were all more or less the same age.
Netflix US recently added the first three seasons of Midnight Diner. The fourth and fifth are still available but are listed as seasons 1 and 2 of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. Sheesh.
Netflix has done a shit job of promoting this. It showed up as a recommendation but when I looked at the blurb for the last episode of season 3 it sounded like the last episode of season 5, so I thought I’d seen them all already.