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Itami Profile (and translation issues)
Awhile back, I bought a photo book featuring the character Itami Kenichi from my favorite Japanese detective drama, Aibou. Among the various photos, interviews, and episode summaries was a character profile that was fairly brief, so I finally decided to sit down and try to translate it.
And well, I just realized how much my Japanese reading comprehension sucks, which is a bit depressing. Most of the page was taken up by a photo of Itami, so there were only several brief paragraphs of text, but it was still a struggle to translate with my self-taught Japanese and my kanji dictionary. At times, I could make out most of the words, but wasn't sure how to string them together properly. Fortunately, having a good knowledge of the show and character helped me to make educated guesses, but now I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready to tackle the lengthy interviews in the book. My old fan translations of Petshop of Horrors manga were a struggle too, but at least there I was aided by the furigana pronunciation guides. Ah well, I should keep practicing and try not to get too downhearted. It goes easier when I do it a paragraph or two at a time, and when I need to cheer myself up, sometimes I go and read the Japanese children's picture books at the library, which are written in hiragana and are a little more my speed! My favorite series features the "Otetsudai Neko" ("Helpful Cat") who tries to be helpful to the human family he lives with, but his efforts usually go awry, like the time that Mom sends him out to buy fish for dinner, and instead he comes home with taiyaki (fish-shaped waffles filled with sweet bean paste).
Anyway, on to the profile, plus a bit of rambling about Itami (my comments/observations are written in parentheses):
ITAMIN FILE
("Itamin," I assume is a cutesy nickname for Itami, which is kind of funny in itself, since the gruff, grumpy Itami isn't exactly the kind of guy you'd usually think of as cute. There is a photo of him here in my Scrapbook. See also the icon on my IJ cross-post.)
Eyes:
His eyes aren't very welcoming. He's the type whose sincere personality comes across better over the phone.
(Not 100% sure about the last sentence, but it does contain "sincere personality" and "phone," so I think that's what it means.)
Fashion:
Basic blue (system? group? The literal translation is a bit awkward, but I'm not sure how to paraphrase it). He has many dark suits.
Personality:
He has a bad mouth, gets angry, and is a strong, hot-blooded detective with a sense of justice. He is ignorant of popular culture, and it's not a subject he knows much about.
("Bad mouth" maybe means swearing? Although canonically, he doesn't really utter obscenities, but more like insulting remarks.)
He'll go against the strict regulations of the MPD when his superiors give unjust orders.
(This is one of the sentences I was unsure of. Another possibility is: "He is unjustly reprimanded by his superiors for going against the strict regulations of the MPD." Both versions are equally in character for Itami; he does get reprimanded a lot, and he does disobey or at least skirt around orders he feels are unfair, although he's less blatant about it than the Special Mission unit.)
Feet:
Investigation "starts with the feet" is his motto. It's an important basic standard.
Hair:
It rustles, and flutters beautifully in the wind when he runs.
(This one cracks me up; it's obviously meant to be humorous since Itami is not the type to spend a lot of time primping his hair to make sure it flutters beautiful. Though I might believe it of Kanbe! ^_^)
Strong face:
He gets called "wicked face" and "a man with a scary face" a lot.
Physical constitution:
(Couldn't quite make out everything in the first sentence, but I'm guessing from the context that it goes something like this:)
Rumor has it that his back is the rare weakness in his physical constitution. He susceptible to hypnosis, as when Ukyo hypnotized him into performing a weird dance. His lower back pain is due to the time Kameyama stepped on his back when they were working together in Division One.
(There was an episode in Season 1 where Ukyo determined that the culprit was using hypnosis, and when Itami was skeptical, he hypnotized Itami to prove his point. At the end of the episode he reveals that he hypnotized Itami to dance on command...and well, let's just say that Itami isn't going to win any dance contests. In Season 6, there's a flashback to a time when Kameyama and Itami were pursuing a suspect, and when Itami fell, Kameyama stepped on Itami while continuing to chase the suspect. Not sure if he's exaggerating or not, but Itami claims he still has back pain from that incident several years later.)
Special abilities:
Kendo.
A knack for noticing when Special Mission is up to something.
Hands:
For smoking cigarettes. And for mixing vinegar into the rice.
(When a case is solved, it is sometimes celebrated by the detectives with a special feast--something I picked up from the Iryu Sōsa series. We only see this once in Aibou that I can recall, but in that scene, Itami is indeed mixing the sushi rice for the victory feast. As for smoking, he smokes in the pre-season movies, but I don't recall ever seeing him smoke in the TV series. Smoking is something that the show gradually moved away from, perhaps out of changing attitudes towards smoking? Everyone smokes, including Ukyo, during the pre-season movies, but only Kameyama, and sometimes Chief Kakuta, smoke regularly in the early TV seasons. After Kameyama leaves, I don't recall seeing any of the regular characters smoking. A genius like Ukyo should certainly know that smoking is bad for one's health!)
Habits:
When Serizawa says something he doesn't like, Itami smacks him on the head. During interrogations, he often strikes the desk in a menacing manner. He has a habit of saying "Special Mission's Kameyamaa~", or other variations on that.
(For NCIS fans, just imagine the way that Gibbs always slaps Tony upside the head--it's pretty much the same thing.)
Itami Kenichi:
Assigned to the MPD's Investigations Division One. Rank: Sergeant-Detective.
In Division One, he is the leader of the trio that includes Miura and Serizawa during their many investigations. He has a rivalry with Kameyama Kaoru, and has shunned the Special Mission department since Kameyama was assigned there. He appeared in the pre-season and continues to play the character solo.
(I think the "solo" is a reference to his starring role in the X-Day movie, in which is the main character, although most of the other Aibou characters appear in the movie as well.)
***
My own ramblings...
For reference, Investigations Division One (also sometimes translated as Investigative Division One, but I'm going with official caption used in the X-Day movie) is more or less the equivalent of the Homicide and/or Major Crimes department in the US. They mostly investigate murders in the tv show, but also investigate other major crimes like robbery and kidnapping. "Junsabuchou" (Sergeant) seems to be the standard rank for an ordinary detective in the MPD, and given Itami's habit of talking back to his superiors, he's unlikely to rise any higher in rank in spite of the fact that he's a dedicated detective and a good investigator, if not quite as sharp as Ukyo. Kameyama held the same rank as Itami until he left the MPD, and I assume that Miura and Serizawa are also Sergeant-Detectives. They are mostly just referred to as "Keiji" (Detective), with the Sergeant title only being used in formal situations--and in the show, that's usually a bad thing, involving a reprimand by the higher-ups.
In comparison, Ukyo is a "Keibu" (Inspector, roughly equivalent to Captain rank) and Kanbe is a Keibuho (Assistant Inspector or Lieutenant, though he was a Superintendent in the National Police Agency before he was demoted to the Special Mission unit). So technically, they outrank Itami, but since they belong to Special Mission, the dumping ground for misfits and troublemakers, he feels free to treat them scornfully. He often uses excessive formality to be sarcastically rude to them, addressing Ukyo as "Keibu-dono" (Sir Inspector) and Kanbe as "Keibuho-dono".
And oh, almost forgot to mention that there was also a section in the profile that I'm pretty sure describes the type of women that Itami likes. However, since my headcanon (now fanon, I guess) was that Itami is gay, I decided not to bother with translating it. In the show he is canonically single--when Itami complains about having to work on a holiday (I think it was New Years?) Serizawa comments that it's not like he has any date plans anyway, and as the profile suggests, gets smacked on the head for his insolence. I figured with the lack of a wife or girlfriend, it was easy to imagine him as gay, although I had forgotten that in Season 1, he does have a crush on a Japanese-American English teacher who becomes the suspect in a robbery--he's very protective of her once Ukyo and Kameyama start suspecting her, and he had lied that he was an Inspector instead of just a Detective in order to impress her. (She is a very beautiful, educated, and elegant woman, so perhaps that is the canonical Itami's type.) However, if I ever get around to writing my Itami/Kanbe plot bunny, it's easy enough to ignore that episode, or to handwave it as being platonic admiration/affection but let Kameyama and the other detectives assume it was romantic in order to hide the fact that he's gay. (My headcanon is that he's not ashamed of being gay, but knows it would probably ruin his career if he was outed.)
It is sort of amusing that Itami's actor (Kawahara Kazuhisa) did play a gay character in one of the Asami Mitsuhiko TV mystery movies. The title character Asami is a magazine writer and amateur detective, and in the movie I saw, he was investigating the death of a fashion designer. Kawahara's character (I've forgotten his name) is someone in the fashion industry (I think in sales, not a designer) who knew the victim, and Asami interviews him to get background info on the designer. They're talking in a bar, and in the middle of the conversation, Kawahara's character places his hand on Asami's shoulder and says, "Asami-san, you're just my type." (I think we're already supposed to have suspected that he might be gay because he's wearing a maroon-colored suit?) Despite being a brilliant detective, Asami is utterly clueless that he's being hit on until he learns much later from someone else that the guy is gay. ("Oh, so that's what he meant!") To be fair, Asami is often clueless about women liking him as well; he doesn't seem particularly interested in romance, despite his mother's desire for him to settle down and get married. I really wish now that I'd recorded that episode, but I didn't know Kawahara was going to be on it until he appeared out of the blue, and by then it was too late to set up the VCR. (I think this was probably during his pre-Aibou days; it was one of the older movies starring Tatsumi Takuro, not the more recent ones starring Sawamura Ikki. And apparently Mizutani Yutaka, who plays main character Sugishita Ukyo in Aibou, also played Asami in a series of movies during his younger days.)
It was a very small role, but he was fun to watch, although I couldn't help thinking that Itami wouldn't be caught dead in maroon suit! ^_^
My other headcanon about Itami is that he is the older brother of Shiratori Keisuke (an investigator for the Ministry of Health) from the Team Batista series, which is a medical detective drama series--the main characters investigate suspicious deaths that take place at a hospital. The idea just popped into my head one day because both men have a passion for justice and a kind of rough, abrasive manner, although Shiratori can turn on the charm when he wants. (Like the time he arranges a group date to get information from the nurses.) I also think it would be fun to have the Team Batista duo team up with Special Mission duo to solve a case!
Since Shiratori and Itami have different surnames, I invented a complicated backstory to explain it that involves their father dying while they were children, and their mother remarrying a man named Itami. It's stated in the second Team Batista series that Shiratori originally planned to be a doctor and actually went to medical school, but for slightly spoilery reasons, changed his career path and went to work for the Ministry. So from there, I decided that the Shiratori family had a tradition of being doctors, and the brothers' grandparents wanted someone to carry on the family name and profession, and thus opposed the mother's remarriage. Kenichi, being the stubborn and loyal type, got angry at them for giving his mom a hard time, and their opposition only made him resist their plans all the more. So Keisuke said he'd carry on the family tradition and remain on the Shiratori family registry as long as they didn't stop him from visiting his mom and brother whenever he wanted. It wasn't entirely a self-sacrificing move: Keisuke, being younger, has fewer memories of their father than Kenichi, and wanted to keep the Shiratori name as a way of remaining close to his dad, although he gets along fine with his stepfather. Kenichi went to live with his mom and stepdad, and thus went on the Itami family registry. He's close to his Itami-stepdad, whom he considers to be his father as much as his late father was. Itami senior is pretty mellow and easygoing, as was Itami's biological father. His stubborn, grumpy nature probably comes from his grandmother, although he doesn't like to admit it.
And I came up with all that just so I could justify Shiratori and Itami being brothers for a potential plot bunny that I still haven't written! (Maybe someday...)
Some canonical facts about Itami:
As mentioned in the profile, he has little knowledge of pop culture. In Season 6, he and his partners investigated a couple of murders in which famous authors were the prime suspects, and another murder in which a famous rock singer was killed. Itami had never heard of them before, although Serizawa recognized them and I think Miura did as well. In one of the author cases, Serizawa commented, "He doesn't read"--this is the kind of remark that gets him smacked on the head a lot, although I don't remember if Itami actually hit him that time.
As noted in the profile, he practices kendo. He enlisted Special Mission's help in Season 5 to investigate his kendo instructor's death when he wasn't satisified with the official ruling.
Although he often acts gruff and rude, he does have a softer side that he occasionally shows when dealing with the murder victims' loved ones. In Season 6, he and Serizawa gently comfort the pregnant ex-girlfriend of a victim, and explain that he had been trying to turn his life around to become a responsible father (although unfortunately, that ended up getting him killed for spoilery reasons). And in Season 7, Itami scolds a local precinct detective who went overboard grilling the victim's grieving ex-boyfriend as a suspect instead of handling him with more sensitivity. You know you've gone too for when Itami, of all people, accuses you of being insensitive!
He also shows a more vulnerable side in Season 8, when he feels a deep sonse of guilt over a witness he had failed to protect. This is the incident I've blogged about in my previous Aibou posts, where he and Kanbe sort of bonded over a shared sense of guilt for causing harm to a civilian, however unintentionally. At that time, Kanbe said, "As a police officer, if you interrogate a criminal forcefully and they begrudge you for it...I don't consider that a failure. If there is anything you must regret, it is when you hurt an innocent person."
Also in Season 8 (Episode 18), Itami talks about his method of investigations, as opposed to Ukyo's Sherlock Holmes style deductive reasoning: "Investigations aren't about reasoning. Number one is legwork." (He taps his leg.) "Next is your hunch, which you obtain through years of experience." (Taps his head.) "And more than anything, it's this." (Thumps his chest.) Notice that the first point is similar to the entry under "feet" in his profile.
And well, I just realized how much my Japanese reading comprehension sucks, which is a bit depressing. Most of the page was taken up by a photo of Itami, so there were only several brief paragraphs of text, but it was still a struggle to translate with my self-taught Japanese and my kanji dictionary. At times, I could make out most of the words, but wasn't sure how to string them together properly. Fortunately, having a good knowledge of the show and character helped me to make educated guesses, but now I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready to tackle the lengthy interviews in the book. My old fan translations of Petshop of Horrors manga were a struggle too, but at least there I was aided by the furigana pronunciation guides. Ah well, I should keep practicing and try not to get too downhearted. It goes easier when I do it a paragraph or two at a time, and when I need to cheer myself up, sometimes I go and read the Japanese children's picture books at the library, which are written in hiragana and are a little more my speed! My favorite series features the "Otetsudai Neko" ("Helpful Cat") who tries to be helpful to the human family he lives with, but his efforts usually go awry, like the time that Mom sends him out to buy fish for dinner, and instead he comes home with taiyaki (fish-shaped waffles filled with sweet bean paste).
Anyway, on to the profile, plus a bit of rambling about Itami (my comments/observations are written in parentheses):
ITAMIN FILE
("Itamin," I assume is a cutesy nickname for Itami, which is kind of funny in itself, since the gruff, grumpy Itami isn't exactly the kind of guy you'd usually think of as cute. There is a photo of him here in my Scrapbook. See also the icon on my IJ cross-post.)
Eyes:
His eyes aren't very welcoming. He's the type whose sincere personality comes across better over the phone.
(Not 100% sure about the last sentence, but it does contain "sincere personality" and "phone," so I think that's what it means.)
Fashion:
Basic blue (system? group? The literal translation is a bit awkward, but I'm not sure how to paraphrase it). He has many dark suits.
Personality:
He has a bad mouth, gets angry, and is a strong, hot-blooded detective with a sense of justice. He is ignorant of popular culture, and it's not a subject he knows much about.
("Bad mouth" maybe means swearing? Although canonically, he doesn't really utter obscenities, but more like insulting remarks.)
He'll go against the strict regulations of the MPD when his superiors give unjust orders.
(This is one of the sentences I was unsure of. Another possibility is: "He is unjustly reprimanded by his superiors for going against the strict regulations of the MPD." Both versions are equally in character for Itami; he does get reprimanded a lot, and he does disobey or at least skirt around orders he feels are unfair, although he's less blatant about it than the Special Mission unit.)
Feet:
Investigation "starts with the feet" is his motto. It's an important basic standard.
Hair:
It rustles, and flutters beautifully in the wind when he runs.
(This one cracks me up; it's obviously meant to be humorous since Itami is not the type to spend a lot of time primping his hair to make sure it flutters beautiful. Though I might believe it of Kanbe! ^_^)
Strong face:
He gets called "wicked face" and "a man with a scary face" a lot.
Physical constitution:
(Couldn't quite make out everything in the first sentence, but I'm guessing from the context that it goes something like this:)
Rumor has it that his back is the rare weakness in his physical constitution. He susceptible to hypnosis, as when Ukyo hypnotized him into performing a weird dance. His lower back pain is due to the time Kameyama stepped on his back when they were working together in Division One.
(There was an episode in Season 1 where Ukyo determined that the culprit was using hypnosis, and when Itami was skeptical, he hypnotized Itami to prove his point. At the end of the episode he reveals that he hypnotized Itami to dance on command...and well, let's just say that Itami isn't going to win any dance contests. In Season 6, there's a flashback to a time when Kameyama and Itami were pursuing a suspect, and when Itami fell, Kameyama stepped on Itami while continuing to chase the suspect. Not sure if he's exaggerating or not, but Itami claims he still has back pain from that incident several years later.)
Special abilities:
Kendo.
A knack for noticing when Special Mission is up to something.
Hands:
For smoking cigarettes. And for mixing vinegar into the rice.
(When a case is solved, it is sometimes celebrated by the detectives with a special feast--something I picked up from the Iryu Sōsa series. We only see this once in Aibou that I can recall, but in that scene, Itami is indeed mixing the sushi rice for the victory feast. As for smoking, he smokes in the pre-season movies, but I don't recall ever seeing him smoke in the TV series. Smoking is something that the show gradually moved away from, perhaps out of changing attitudes towards smoking? Everyone smokes, including Ukyo, during the pre-season movies, but only Kameyama, and sometimes Chief Kakuta, smoke regularly in the early TV seasons. After Kameyama leaves, I don't recall seeing any of the regular characters smoking. A genius like Ukyo should certainly know that smoking is bad for one's health!)
Habits:
When Serizawa says something he doesn't like, Itami smacks him on the head. During interrogations, he often strikes the desk in a menacing manner. He has a habit of saying "Special Mission's Kameyamaa~", or other variations on that.
(For NCIS fans, just imagine the way that Gibbs always slaps Tony upside the head--it's pretty much the same thing.)
Itami Kenichi:
Assigned to the MPD's Investigations Division One. Rank: Sergeant-Detective.
In Division One, he is the leader of the trio that includes Miura and Serizawa during their many investigations. He has a rivalry with Kameyama Kaoru, and has shunned the Special Mission department since Kameyama was assigned there. He appeared in the pre-season and continues to play the character solo.
(I think the "solo" is a reference to his starring role in the X-Day movie, in which is the main character, although most of the other Aibou characters appear in the movie as well.)
***
My own ramblings...
For reference, Investigations Division One (also sometimes translated as Investigative Division One, but I'm going with official caption used in the X-Day movie) is more or less the equivalent of the Homicide and/or Major Crimes department in the US. They mostly investigate murders in the tv show, but also investigate other major crimes like robbery and kidnapping. "Junsabuchou" (Sergeant) seems to be the standard rank for an ordinary detective in the MPD, and given Itami's habit of talking back to his superiors, he's unlikely to rise any higher in rank in spite of the fact that he's a dedicated detective and a good investigator, if not quite as sharp as Ukyo. Kameyama held the same rank as Itami until he left the MPD, and I assume that Miura and Serizawa are also Sergeant-Detectives. They are mostly just referred to as "Keiji" (Detective), with the Sergeant title only being used in formal situations--and in the show, that's usually a bad thing, involving a reprimand by the higher-ups.
In comparison, Ukyo is a "Keibu" (Inspector, roughly equivalent to Captain rank) and Kanbe is a Keibuho (Assistant Inspector or Lieutenant, though he was a Superintendent in the National Police Agency before he was demoted to the Special Mission unit). So technically, they outrank Itami, but since they belong to Special Mission, the dumping ground for misfits and troublemakers, he feels free to treat them scornfully. He often uses excessive formality to be sarcastically rude to them, addressing Ukyo as "Keibu-dono" (Sir Inspector) and Kanbe as "Keibuho-dono".
And oh, almost forgot to mention that there was also a section in the profile that I'm pretty sure describes the type of women that Itami likes. However, since my headcanon (now fanon, I guess) was that Itami is gay, I decided not to bother with translating it. In the show he is canonically single--when Itami complains about having to work on a holiday (I think it was New Years?) Serizawa comments that it's not like he has any date plans anyway, and as the profile suggests, gets smacked on the head for his insolence. I figured with the lack of a wife or girlfriend, it was easy to imagine him as gay, although I had forgotten that in Season 1, he does have a crush on a Japanese-American English teacher who becomes the suspect in a robbery--he's very protective of her once Ukyo and Kameyama start suspecting her, and he had lied that he was an Inspector instead of just a Detective in order to impress her. (She is a very beautiful, educated, and elegant woman, so perhaps that is the canonical Itami's type.) However, if I ever get around to writing my Itami/Kanbe plot bunny, it's easy enough to ignore that episode, or to handwave it as being platonic admiration/affection but let Kameyama and the other detectives assume it was romantic in order to hide the fact that he's gay. (My headcanon is that he's not ashamed of being gay, but knows it would probably ruin his career if he was outed.)
It is sort of amusing that Itami's actor (Kawahara Kazuhisa) did play a gay character in one of the Asami Mitsuhiko TV mystery movies. The title character Asami is a magazine writer and amateur detective, and in the movie I saw, he was investigating the death of a fashion designer. Kawahara's character (I've forgotten his name) is someone in the fashion industry (I think in sales, not a designer) who knew the victim, and Asami interviews him to get background info on the designer. They're talking in a bar, and in the middle of the conversation, Kawahara's character places his hand on Asami's shoulder and says, "Asami-san, you're just my type." (I think we're already supposed to have suspected that he might be gay because he's wearing a maroon-colored suit?) Despite being a brilliant detective, Asami is utterly clueless that he's being hit on until he learns much later from someone else that the guy is gay. ("Oh, so that's what he meant!") To be fair, Asami is often clueless about women liking him as well; he doesn't seem particularly interested in romance, despite his mother's desire for him to settle down and get married. I really wish now that I'd recorded that episode, but I didn't know Kawahara was going to be on it until he appeared out of the blue, and by then it was too late to set up the VCR. (I think this was probably during his pre-Aibou days; it was one of the older movies starring Tatsumi Takuro, not the more recent ones starring Sawamura Ikki. And apparently Mizutani Yutaka, who plays main character Sugishita Ukyo in Aibou, also played Asami in a series of movies during his younger days.)
It was a very small role, but he was fun to watch, although I couldn't help thinking that Itami wouldn't be caught dead in maroon suit! ^_^
My other headcanon about Itami is that he is the older brother of Shiratori Keisuke (an investigator for the Ministry of Health) from the Team Batista series, which is a medical detective drama series--the main characters investigate suspicious deaths that take place at a hospital. The idea just popped into my head one day because both men have a passion for justice and a kind of rough, abrasive manner, although Shiratori can turn on the charm when he wants. (Like the time he arranges a group date to get information from the nurses.) I also think it would be fun to have the Team Batista duo team up with Special Mission duo to solve a case!
Since Shiratori and Itami have different surnames, I invented a complicated backstory to explain it that involves their father dying while they were children, and their mother remarrying a man named Itami. It's stated in the second Team Batista series that Shiratori originally planned to be a doctor and actually went to medical school, but for slightly spoilery reasons, changed his career path and went to work for the Ministry. So from there, I decided that the Shiratori family had a tradition of being doctors, and the brothers' grandparents wanted someone to carry on the family name and profession, and thus opposed the mother's remarriage. Kenichi, being the stubborn and loyal type, got angry at them for giving his mom a hard time, and their opposition only made him resist their plans all the more. So Keisuke said he'd carry on the family tradition and remain on the Shiratori family registry as long as they didn't stop him from visiting his mom and brother whenever he wanted. It wasn't entirely a self-sacrificing move: Keisuke, being younger, has fewer memories of their father than Kenichi, and wanted to keep the Shiratori name as a way of remaining close to his dad, although he gets along fine with his stepfather. Kenichi went to live with his mom and stepdad, and thus went on the Itami family registry. He's close to his Itami-stepdad, whom he considers to be his father as much as his late father was. Itami senior is pretty mellow and easygoing, as was Itami's biological father. His stubborn, grumpy nature probably comes from his grandmother, although he doesn't like to admit it.
And I came up with all that just so I could justify Shiratori and Itami being brothers for a potential plot bunny that I still haven't written! (Maybe someday...)
Some canonical facts about Itami:
As mentioned in the profile, he has little knowledge of pop culture. In Season 6, he and his partners investigated a couple of murders in which famous authors were the prime suspects, and another murder in which a famous rock singer was killed. Itami had never heard of them before, although Serizawa recognized them and I think Miura did as well. In one of the author cases, Serizawa commented, "He doesn't read"--this is the kind of remark that gets him smacked on the head a lot, although I don't remember if Itami actually hit him that time.
As noted in the profile, he practices kendo. He enlisted Special Mission's help in Season 5 to investigate his kendo instructor's death when he wasn't satisified with the official ruling.
Although he often acts gruff and rude, he does have a softer side that he occasionally shows when dealing with the murder victims' loved ones. In Season 6, he and Serizawa gently comfort the pregnant ex-girlfriend of a victim, and explain that he had been trying to turn his life around to become a responsible father (although unfortunately, that ended up getting him killed for spoilery reasons). And in Season 7, Itami scolds a local precinct detective who went overboard grilling the victim's grieving ex-boyfriend as a suspect instead of handling him with more sensitivity. You know you've gone too for when Itami, of all people, accuses you of being insensitive!
He also shows a more vulnerable side in Season 8, when he feels a deep sonse of guilt over a witness he had failed to protect. This is the incident I've blogged about in my previous Aibou posts, where he and Kanbe sort of bonded over a shared sense of guilt for causing harm to a civilian, however unintentionally. At that time, Kanbe said, "As a police officer, if you interrogate a criminal forcefully and they begrudge you for it...I don't consider that a failure. If there is anything you must regret, it is when you hurt an innocent person."
Also in Season 8 (Episode 18), Itami talks about his method of investigations, as opposed to Ukyo's Sherlock Holmes style deductive reasoning: "Investigations aren't about reasoning. Number one is legwork." (He taps his leg.) "Next is your hunch, which you obtain through years of experience." (Taps his head.) "And more than anything, it's this." (Thumps his chest.) Notice that the first point is similar to the entry under "feet" in his profile.