The second episode of the NHK Saturday drama "Mushoran Mitsuboshi" (NHK General, Saturdays at 10 PM), starring actress Eiko Koike, will air on May 30th. The subtitle of the episode is "My Homemade Curry." Yoko (Koike), who has become a registered dietitian at a prison, begins preparing for the lunch meeting where they decide on the menu for the month.
"Mushoran Mitsuboshi" is based on a masterpiece non-fiction book by Keiko Kuroyanagi, a currently working prison nutritionist, which depicts the little-known state of food inside prisons. The story follows a protagonist who made a name for himself as a skilled Italian chef, but by chance ends up working as a prison nutritionist, and depicts his struggles to overcome troubles and commotions with prison guards and inmates behind bars. It is a "prison social comedy drama."
In episode 2, Yoko begins preparing for the school lunch meeting to decide on a month's worth of menus for the prison. The budget is 543 yen per person for three meals. There are also rules and restrictions on ingredients that cannot be used, such as bananas and mirin. On the day of the meeting, the strict General Affairs Director Irie (Katsuhisa Namase) expresses reluctance to approve the menu item of fried squid with lemon, but with the help of Warden Natori (Jun Kunimura), she manages to get him to approve it.
Around that time, inmate Bito (played by Sekiguchi Mandy) began complaining that the amount of barley rice served at Hamasaki Prison was less than that at other prisons.
