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.
Thanks for the heads up a Netflix season 3 showed up for Midnight Diner.
Having seen the non Netflix first 3 seasons and the proceeding Netflix “season 1 and season 2” (which are technically season 4 and 5), halfway through season 5, I felt a sense of material burnout, same with Kudoku No Gurume.
Finished watching a series (12 episodes or so) called Grand Maison Tokyo a few months ago at the recommendation of friends, this one is English subtitled.
Japanese executive chef in France (Michelin French restaurant), goes back to Tokyo and restarts his career. Quite enjoyed it.
Hmmm…I just took a sneak quick look at “Season 3” Midnight Diner Netflix… unfortunately from just a few snippets of looking at a couple episodes, they are way too familiar. These were either from season 2 or 3 previously not released on Netflix. So to me they are not new, but new to those who have never seen them before. I guess Netflix acquired the rights to stream the older seasons from the parent media company in Japan. Now they just need to get up their arses and stream the full length 2+ hour feature films 1 and 2 which I thought were very nicely done.
On Netflix, the new Midnight Diner added June 1 is seasons 1-3. The old Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories is seasons 4 and 5.
I’ve watched the new-to-Netflix episodes through S3E4 and while they’re good, I’m not sure I’ll watch any of them again. I’ve watched all the S4 and S5 episodes at least twice.
Ahhh ok, I wasn’t paying attention. Thanks for clarifying.
So there are 5 seasons total then. Perfect for those who missed seasons 1-3 but saw Tokyo Stories first.
On a side note, the lead female character in Grand Maison Tokyo, that actress is apparently in a new TV drama…I think it is about ramen and is still somewhat fairly new. Name escapes me though.