The first episode of the drama series "The Hot Spot" (NTV, Sunday 10:30 pm), starring actress Mikako Ichikawa, was broadcast on January 12th. In the opening scene of the episode, an actor made a surprise appearance, which caused a stir on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers.
The first episode is about 41-year-old Kiyomi (Ichikawa), 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 is raising her daughter on her own. Her daily routine is to work at the front desk with her co-workers Yumi (Kaho) and Eri (Sakai Maki), and she doesn't feel any stress from her relationships at work.
One day, while rushing home on her bicycle after work, Kiyomi almost gets into a traffic accident, but is saved in the nick of time by her senior colleague Takahashi (Akihiro Kakuta), who has superhuman strength. Kiyomi is warned by Takahashi never to tell anyone about it, and later, Takahashi confesses to her, "Actually, I'm an alien..." and so on.
In this episode, Toru Nomaguchi makes a surprise appearance in the opening scene. Nomaguchi plays the role of a man who is bathing in an open-air bath with a view of Mt. Fuji together with a boy who is sniffling. There is a scene where he asks the boy, "Are you better yet?"
Also, at the end of the film, Takahashi, who has developed rhinitis as a side effect of using his superhuman "powers" as an alien, is shown soaking alone in a hot spring, and on social media, many comments linked this to the opening scene. "Rhinitis...hot spring...Nomaguchi is also an alien...?", "So the opening scene is of Takahashi as a child and Nomaguchi is his father!", "Are the Nomaguchi family also aliens?", and so on were some of the comments.
