"Forest Homestay" is a prose-style easy healing Japanese drama with only 6 episodes, and Takumi Kobayashi plays the hostess of the homestay, Noriko, who runs a homestay alone in the beautiful forest.
In each episode, a visitor comes to the homestay, where Noriko meets the guests, eats, chats, talks about their respective confusions and reflections on the past and the future.
Toshimi Kobayashi is really very suitable for starring in this type of film and television drama, she has a face that is both indisputable and arbitrary, quietly observing, listening, not evaluating, not giving advice, and not regretting. She keeps a certain distance from other people's interactions, refreshing and appropriate, just simple existence, it is reassuring, just like her characters in "Seagull Canteen" and "Bread and Soup and Cat Good Weather", quiet, warm and down-to-earth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >01 mountain gentleman</h1>
The plot begins one morning, when Noriko is picking up branches when she meets Mr. Toki, a gentleman in a suit with a leaf on top, who says that he is lost and taken back to the homestay by Noriko.
Mr. Toki is idle, he helps Noriko pull grass and do housework, drinks, chats, and eats with Noriko, saying that he feels extremely happy.
People are very strange and complex, because Noriko wants to stay away from the hustle and bustle, so she opened a homestay in the sparsely populated forest, thinking that she could do whatever she wanted to do, and make exquisite dishes with complicated processes, but after a long time, she could not taste the taste of the dish.
People may still have to do something for others in order to find the meaning of their own existence.
Animals are also very strange, obviously have the freedom to travel freely in the dark forest, but they also yearn for the lights of thousands of homes that look past from the forest.
On the second day, Mr. Toki did not quit, leaving only the matsutake on the bed.
Noriko roasted matsutake mushrooms, thinking of Mr. Toki's many strange behaviors, and seemed to understand something, the Japanese pronunciation of "Toki", and vice versa, "fox".
As soon as the camera pans, a fox walks into the forest.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >02 Want to live alone</h1>
She is a kindergarten teacher, a gentle and kind person, but occasionally tired of the noisy life of the city and wants to live alone.
She came to the mountain camping alone, but when she met a noisy old man at the camp, she had to look for the camp again, and happened to run into Noriko and came to her homestay.
The two people ate Western food, drank red wine, breathed in the fresh air, listened to the light wind, and felt the life at this moment.
Then set up a tent in the homestay, drink whiskey, talk about the confusion of life, and the words that have never been said to others, easily spoken to strangers.
Sometimes, we need to distance ourselves from life in order to feel its original beauty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >03 burn</h1>
The third visitor was An old friend of Noriko's.
She was a photographer who loved photography and gave all her passion for her passion, and now she suddenly felt a little tired and felt that she was not suitable for the profession of photographer.
Two people were at the campfire in the midsummer forest, looking through and commenting on old photos from the past, waiting for them to burn, chatting about their hearts.
Photographer: I wanted to show others what I thought was interesting and beautiful, so I started a career in photography, but now I feel that I have encountered a blockage.
Noriko: In the process of growing and thinking, people will deny their previous thoughts, but this is also the meaning of being human.
Photographer: Have you ever done a job that suits you?
Noriko: I've never done a job that suits me.
Photographer: What about homestays?
Noriko: I never thought I would open a homestay.
It's also fun to choose what's not right for you, as long as that's your own decision.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >04 Yamahiko's rest day</h1>
The weather was very good, and Noriko traveled a long way to fetch mountain spring water and met Yamahiko, who was on vacation.
Noriko invites Yamahiko to the homestay for tea.
Yamahiko is responsible for delivering food to the homestay, and every time the two meet, they just talk about the weather and the gossip of the neighbors.
This time he entered the homestay as a guest and talked about the columns, wood and stucco of the room, because he had done the construction of the house before delivering vegetables, and then because of his injury, he left the construction industry and returned to the place where he had stayed to work as a vegetable transporter, which he had been doing for fifteen years.
Yamahiko loves her current job, but sometimes wonders if she is serious about her life.
In the chat, Yamahiko found the answer by himself, although he did the same thing every day, but the seasons are different, the vegetable types will change, the same road, the scenery will be different. Which family has a new grandchild, which family's grandmother has not been seen recently. In such an alternating transformation of sorrow and joy, I am also one of them. It's a good feeling.
After Yamahiko left, Noriko carefully made dinner, carefully tasting the food, and one person had to cook well and eat well.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >05 ex-boyfriend</h1>
Noriko is sorting out old things when her ex-boyfriend, who has not been seen for many years, suddenly comes to visit her with a bouquet of purple flowers.
The two talked about drinking together and wasting their youth. The first time we met, the mountain hut café where we worked part-time, the "friends" karaoke hall where we sang together... Chatting and chatting, the two sang an old song together, sang to the happy place, and danced.
Ming ming left such beautiful memories
Looking at the same flower at that time
Marvel at its beautiful two
Heart to heart is no longer connected...
May that beautiful love come again
There is love, memories and a faint regret in the song.
Two people drink coffee together, walk a long way, rest on a bench in the middle, and have the following conversation:
"Why weren't we married then?"
"Because the time is not right, it has passed, and you still have so much sentimentality."
"You're still doing your own thing."
"Because of the past, we have the present."
At the best of the moment, Koma left, saying that he would see him again one day.
Then he disappeared under the gaze of Noriko.
When Noriko returned, she placed a picture of Koma's youth next to the vase where the bouquet of flowers was inserted.
When watching the fifth episode, I always had a strange feeling, and later I saw everyone's discussion in the Douban discussion group and understood the hidden plot of the play: Koma was already dying, or even no longer there. Just before leaving, he suddenly visits Noriko. The bouquet of purple flowers brought by the visit is called Aster, and the flower language is memory and sincere love. Legend has it that the dead, in order to comfort their loved ones, would bloom small purple flowers around the grave.
This can be a memory, but it was already confused at the time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >06 wandering</h1>
Carrying a large watermelon, the girl crossed the woods and the stream to Noriko's homestay.
The girl is a regular customer of the homestay, often with her mother in the summer, after the death of her mother, she did not dare to come again, and finally plucked up the courage to come to the homestay again after many years.
The two of them washed vegetables together, cut vegetables, prepared dinner, flipped through postcards sent by girls when they were children, talked about old funny things, and ate watermelon.
Suddenly Noriko said, you come here to live, I am ready to move away, I want to go to other places to see.
---You are so powerful, how do you know that I want to be a homestay?"
--- Of course, I grew up watching you.
When the girl left, Noriko gave her the key to the homestay, although the girl had not yet made a decision.
In a trance, I feel that the girl is the pawn of my youth, and this episode is only yesterday's recurrence.
Noriko also left the homestay one day to wander.
"Forest Homestay" is still continuing, the homestay and the mountain forest are the real protagonists, no matter how the owner changes, the homestay is still there, not happy or sad.
I like this faint "you and I are passing by" feeling, people come and go, stay and leave, all at will.
In the films starring Toshimi Kobayashi, Sasuke Saeko always stars in friendship, she is beyond the existence of the whole story, as if the eyes of God, watching everything on the earth without sorrow or joy.
She is no exception in "Forest Homestay", wearing a blue dress, appearing at the end of each episode, the silent mountain forest or the deserted stream, like a ghost in the mountain, guarding everyone and every animal here.
After Noriko left, she appeared in the homestay again, and the homestay should be well taken care of by her.
Although "Forest Homestay" is just some small stories, light conversations, and shallow friendships, there is a kind of beauty that runs through it, and the fox who longs for fireworks in the world and the blue-dressed grandmother like the patron saint make the whole drama full of realistic fantasy. The music of Myoko Daison is a perfect combination of a bland and watery plot and inexplicable fantasy, without the slightest sense of violation.
Douban Bean Friends said that the members of the "Komori Clan" led by Satomi Kobayashi seem to have created a world for themselves, a picture, and formed a microclimate of their own, and it is difficult for people without a "smart and beautiful physique" to integrate into it.
Indeed, people with a "smart and beautiful physique" will understand the connotation of the play: it seems that nothing is said, but it is said a lot, which is the "smart American" life, through the jungle, enjoying the sun, digesting the past, and going down the river.
Thanks for meeting this show in the spring of 2021.