Actor Ichikawa Mikako will star in the drama series "The Hot Spot" (NTV, Sundays at 10:30pm) which will begin airing on January 12th. The drama is a new work by Bakarhythm, who wrote the script for "Brush Up Life" (NTV), and the production staff of that drama, and is a "local alien human comedy" that begins when the main character encounters an alien. Ichikawa will play the main character, Endo Kiyomi, a single mother who works at a business hotel.
Kakuta Akihiro will play Kiyomi's colleague Takahashi Kosuke, Suzuki Anne will play Kiyomi's local friend and elementary school teacher Nakamura Hazuki, and Hiraiwa Kami will play Kiyomi's local friend Hibino Minami, a urology nurse.
Also appearing in the film are Kaho as Kiyomi's co-worker Isomura Yumi, Naoki Tanaka from the comedy duo "Cocorico" as Okuda Takahiro, the manager of the business hotel where Kiyomi works, and Maki Sakai as Kiyomi's co-worker Sawada Eri. Fumiyo Kohinata as Murakami, a long-term guest at the business hotel where Kiyomi works, Noro Kayo as Kiyomi's co-worker Nakamoto Kozue, Shiraishi Shunya as Kiyomi's co-worker Onodera Mitsuru, and Sumita Moeno as Kiyomi's daughter Endo Wakaba.
The first episode is about 41-year-old Kiyomi, who lives in a peaceful town at the foot of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture. She is a single mother who works at a local business hotel and raises her daughter Wakaba on her own. Every morning, she makes lunch for her daughter before going to work, and calmly works at the front desk with her co-workers Yumi and Eri.
Although he has a hard time dealing with the selfish guests, the manager Okuda is friendly and his senior colleague Takahashi is a quiet man, so he has little stress in the workplace. He enjoys secretly following the SNS of the cleaning staff member Nakamoto and fantasizing about the identity of the mysterious long-term guest Murakami (Kohinata).
Outside of work, once every few months, Kiyomi meets up with her childhood friends, Hazuki and Minami, from her hometown, to catch up on their lives. One day, while riding her bike home from work, she almost gets into a traffic accident and is saved in the nick of time by an "extraterrestrial lifeform." Unable to contain herself, she tells Hazuki and Minami the "secret" that she absolutely cannot tell anyone about, and Kiyomi's ordinary daily life begins to change...
