My Yuletide was incredible--I had not just one, but three awesome fics! Two were for the movie Burnt, and one was a crossover between two of my tiny J-drama fandoms, Aibou and Team Batista. I've included two other Burnt fics that was not written for me but that I enjoyed so much that they kind of felt like extra gifts!


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Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you so much for volunteering to write a fic for me! Please feel free to take a look around my journal if you want to see what kinds of stories I like. You can find my Fanfic Masterlist here, and the fics are also tagged by fandom and/or title in the sidebar. As you can see, I mostly read and write m/m slash, but if you don't ship the male couples, I would be perfectly happy with a gen or (where applicable) f/f or het story too!

My name on A03 is geri_chan, the same as here on DW/LJ/IJ.
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My entry for the Be The First challenge is now up on A03! I am, as far as I can tell, the very first one to write an English language fic for the Japanese detective drama Aibou (also known as "Partners"). I suspect there may be some fanfic written in Japanese, but my Japanese skills aren't really good enough to search for it, let alone read it.

White Day Mission (6618 words) by geri_chan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 相棒 | Aibou | Partners (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Kai Tooru, Sugishita Ukyo
Additional Tags: Humor
Summary: Kai decides to investigate the reason behind Sugishita's popularity on Valentine's Day.
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Whoops, I nearly forgot to make today's post! (It was a rough day at work.) But fortunately I remembered before the day--or rather night--was over.

So today I'll just post a quick link to a website I found that lists Aibou summary episodes. I actually stumbled across it while I was searching online for Aibou videos. I haven't been able to find any subtitled episodes online, either official or fannish, so the summaries are coming in handy to refresh my memory when watching my import dvds, or just to do some canon review for a few plot bunnies that have been percolating in my head. Unfortunately, the blogger doing the summaries had to stop partway through Season 8, so it isn't complete, but that still covers quite a few episodes, so I'm grateful to have them, especially since there is so little info/fannish talk available about the show in English.

The site also has a vocabulary list for each episode. I do understand a little Japanese--just enough to know what I'm missing, which can be kind of frustrating, so the vocab lists are really helpful for expanding my vocabulary or refreshing my memory when "I know I've heard that word before, I just can't remember what it means!"

(My knowledge of Japanese is heavily skewed towards police investigation/crime terminology due to the large number of detective dramas that I watch. Which probably isn't very helpful if I ever go to Japan on vacation, unless I happen to stumble across a murder victim! I also watch some romances, so I know how to say, "I love you" if some handsome Japanese guy sweeps me off my feet! But asking for directions...maybe not so much. Well, I kind of know how to ask for directions, but I would probably have trouble understanding the answer.)

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):


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I'm taking a break since I'm too busy right now, but I've been rewatching the Aibou series from the beginning, starting with the three pre-season tv movies and Season 1. I thought I'd record my observations here on the off chance that anyone's interested, plus it will be good reference if I ever get around to writing the Aibou Itami/Kanbe plotbunny I had in mind. (Btw, I've taken care not to mention anything spoilery below; it's mostly just my general impressions about the characters and the mood of the show.)

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There's only time for a quick entry today, so I'd thought I'd share some of the goodies I just ordered from CD Japan: The Aibou X-Day movie, the Aibou III movie, and an Aibou photo book featuring my favorite character Itami Kenichi. (Are you sensing a pattern here? ^_^) I was also delighted to see that they had volume 1 of the Haru wo Daiteita Alive manga (the new ongoing series), so I bought that, too! I think this should be the volume that has the story about a grown-up Yukihito working in the film industry, and Katou and Iwaki going on a Hawaiian vacation together--I'm really looking forward to reading it!

I'm not trying to favor one Yuletide request over the others, but just in case someone is interested in writing Aibou fic or is simply interested in learning more about the series, I thought I'd share some episode recs that highlight the nominated characters. Heck, even if you don't want to write fic but are interested in the show, I would love to have someone to chat about Aibou with! (This will also serve as a good reference for myself in case I want to look up the episodes later, either for fic research or just for my own enjoyment.)

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I'm so excited that I just had to squee a bit! As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of the Japanese detective drama Aibou (Partners), and recently a Japanese friend sent me some very cool Aibou swag: three folders for Season 10, Season 11, and my favorite supporting character, Detective Itami Kenichi, whom I love for his sarcastic sense of humor and the way his outward gruff rudeness makes it difficult to see at first that he really is a very honest and decent cop with a strong sense of justice.

She also sent me recordings of a few episodes from Seasons 10 and 11 that I haven't seen yet (I've only watched up through Season 8 so far), so I'm really excited about getting to watch something new! And since the current Season 11 introduces a new partner (played by Narimiya Hiroki) for the main character Inspector Sugishita, I'm curious to see what he's like and how they work together. The episodes aren't subtitled, of course, but it will be a good chance for me to work on my Japanese. ^_^

I do wish that English-subtitled dvds of this show were available, because it is my all-time favorite detective show (American or Japanese), and I wish that I could share the Aibou love with the rest of you on my F-list!