The 17-year-old Yatabe Mineko grew up in a family of seven in a mountain village in northeastern Ibaraki Prefecture. Her father Minoru has gone to Tokyo to work in order to earn extra money. However, her life completely changes when her father does not come back for the New Year. Mineko asks her family to let her go to Tokyo to find him and promises to send money home. In the autumn of 1964, she and two childhood friends Tokiko and Mitsuo are hired to start working at a small factory in Tokyo’s working class neighborhood. After work each day, Mineko searches for her father and gets disheartened at times. Mineko overcomes challenges and starts to lay down roots in Tokyo as she experiences many meetings and farewells amid the laughter and tears with regulars, people of the shopping street, friends, and colleagues. But will she be able to find her father?
Japanese study overview
Hiyokko is a Japanese drama of 347,109 characters, with 8,366 unique words and 1,618 different kanji. Its difficulty rating on Jiten is average, 2.8 out of 5. The full vocabulary list ranks all 8,366 words by how often they appear, and you can study them on Jiten or download them as an Anki deck.
Similar Media
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Vocabulary highlights
Here are some of the words that appear most often in this media, as well as a sample of its rarer vocabulary.
- 私I×1,243
- みね子Mineko×1,040
- 思うto think×843
- 言うto say×821
- 人person×417
- 俺I×410
- 今now×397
- お父さんfather×391
- 分part×384
- 時子Tokiko×371
- 東京Tokyo×358
- 頑張るto persevere×302
- 茨城Ibaraki (prefecture)×219
- 愛子Aiko×183
- 肩寄せるto be (standing) together, an arm across the other's shoulder×156
- 恋の歌love song×156
- 澄子Junja×126
- 谷田部Tanitabe×122
- 世津子Setsuko×109
- 早苗rice seedling×59