I normally don’t watch Japanese shows, not because they are boring, but because they don’t serve my language-learning purposes — as a native speaker of Japanese, I understand almost every word and phrase in the dialogues, making me feel as if I were merely being entertained without learning anything useful, and therefore wasting my time. For this reason, I normally gravitate toward English shows.
However, this time, I decided to watch Extremely Inappropriate! as it has garnered critical acclaim and won multiple prestigious television awards. “Futehodo”, an abbreviation of the show’s Japanese title, was even chosen as the Buzzword of the Year in Japan, attesting to its enormous impact on Japanese television and pop culture.
Extremely Inappropriate! revolves around the life of Ichiro Ogawa, a teacher in a public junior high school in Tokyo, set to be 51 years old in 1986. One day, by sheer chance, he takes a mysterious bus from the school, which travels through time and brings him to Tokyo in 2024.
As the cultural landscape in Japan has shifted tremendously during the intervening 38 years, Ichiro encounters one surprise after another, shocked not only by futuristic gadgets like smartphones and wireless earbuds, but also by the whole concept of propriety in the 21st century.
In 2024, people are conditioned to be extremely careful about not offending anyone with inappropriate remarks and actions. With numerous restrictions, a stifling atmosphere envelops the entire nation, where everybody feels pressured to conform with the mainstream, and creativity and artistic freedom are severely curtailed.
This contrasts sharply with 1986, where all manner of inappropriate behaviors were prevalent and even tolerated, such as smoking on public transportation, inflicting corporal punishments on children, and addressing minority groups with slurs. Yet, the overall economy was much more vibrant, and pop culture was full of spicy, tantalizing, and entertaining content.
Luckily for Ichiro, a neighborhood bistro where he was a regular in 1986 is still being run by the same owner, albeit much older, in 2024. He discovers a hole in the wall inside the bathroom which can transport him back to 1986, enabling him to travel back and forth between the two eras.
Aside from experiencing generational gaps, he also accidentally finds out what would happen to himself and his beloved daughter in the future. Ichiro is tormented about whether or not to tell her about this.
This show is somewhat reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movie, Back to the Future, but with a unique focus on the evolution of Japanese society and culture, which I find fascinating. I was 12 years old back in 1986, and I still have some very vivid memories of that era. While I look back over that period with a certain amount of fondness, overall I’m still glad that Japan has transformed itself the way it did, so I definitely do not wish to move back to 1986.
Out of the 10 episodes of Extremely Inappropriate!, I have so far watched six. Each episode is so gripping that time really flies when I’m watching it. The rate I’m going, I should be able to finish the entire series by this week. I can’t wait to find out what will happen to Ichiro and those around him in the final episode!
