Of Swords and Parasols

I'm 5 episodes into the jdorama Teru Teru Ashita.  TTA is about 2 women.  One, Saya, is a widow looking to make a new life for herself after her husband's death with her son, Yuusuke.  She's hndered, though, by the fact that her husband's family wants to take Yuusuke from her to raise him to be heir to their corporation.  Since Saya doesn't want Yuusuke to grow up to be an angsty and repressed dorama hero in 20 years, she heads to the small town of Sasara to start a new life, only to learn than something about the town allows her dead husband to occasionally possess Youta, a young man who likes her and sympathizes with her who lives in the same boardinghouse.

The other, Teruyo, is a 16 year old girl whose parent's managed to get themselves in debt to the Yakuza to the tune of 100,000,000 yen and they take off for parts unknown. Teruyo fares better than the title character of Hayate the Combat Butler, though...instead of taking her on the lam with them or selling her to the Yakuza(poor Hayate...) they send her to live with a relative of her mother's Hisayo, a former school teacher, who might be a nice person but her mother isn't sure.  Hen she arrives, she learns that not only is Hisayo the former teacher of about 75% of the town(and therefore able to control them all) but she also runs a boardinghouse(the same one Saya lives in, naturally.)  Hisayo allows Teruyo to stay in the only available room...her storage room, and agrees to feed and house her as long as she pays her rent in labor, but if she wants money, she has to get a job(which really makes sense, what with some cheeky city kid she's never heard of being dumped on her with no warning or even request)

Teruyo soon learns, though, though the storage room is haunted by the ghost of a former student of Hisayo's, who she once allowed to live there(presumably, the girl had family problems in the past) and after a rocky start, the two begin to peacefully cohabitate the room, despite the random bursts of cold wind. 

And her friends and neighbors?  There's the 50-something year old woman who always dresses in frilly pink clothes best suited for a 16 year old multiple decades ago, a man with a new wardrobe and new language every day, the woman who keeps trying to get her dead husband to possess her neighbor, and the former rebel beauty queen who owns a hostess bar.  And, of course, the only friend she's made so far is a crazy girl who claims to be clairvoyant.  The only normal people she's met are the commanding and micromanaging relative and the nice guy who tends to get possessed by a ghost, but has no idea it happens to him.  Then there's the others ghosts, the clock that can turn back time, and the singing bicycle.  So far.

The series is fun and quirky, and so far, very good.  I've seen it compared a lot to Ame to Yume(which would be why I checked it out, actually) and it's easy to see why.  Not only to both feature a teenaged girl who suddenly finds herself involved in ghosts and other supernatural phenomena, but it also has the same two female leads(and I understand other members of the ATY guest star later, too)  It also seems(and this is my understanding from things I've read)that it was made primarily because of the success of ATY, and there are a number of subtle references to ATY, which the subtitler always makes sure to point out(which is actually a bit annoying, as they're very subtle things-a poster of the main male star of the show-actor, not character-a CD be the singer of the series, etc-that, having seen ATY, I get easily, but if I HADN'T seen it, I would notice anything more than a poster of a TV star and a CD and wouldn't miss anything, but the subs pointing it out all the time might make someone who hasn't seen ATY feel like they're missing out)

It's not quite as good as ATY(which would be in my top 10 doramas list if I made one) so far, but it is quite good.