#our dinner table

[heretherebedork]

Oh not they're so cute. The overwhelming joy of confession and that feeling of freedom, that knowledge of being open and sharing your true feelings and discovering that family has so many meanings and how much love there is to be shared and it's just pure joy and a family found and a family made and a family rediscovered. @absolutebl Japan is a blessing.

They are everything to each other and the best part is that they understand how much it means to each other them.

[bengiyo]

Our Dining Table Ep 1 Stray Thoughts

Very excited to have a show Gaga references What Did You Eat Yesterday? in the promotional materials as a new comfort show. With The Eighth Sense airing, I was hoping for something easy. Glad Inukai Atsuhiro continues to be here for the gays.

We just started and I'm already thinking about how there's a park near this guy's office, so even if he's feeling a bit dull he has a few trees to sit near during lunch. America's built environment is such an uncomfortable hellscape for most of us.

Children are really just unstoppable when they're being precocious and want something. If I was enjoying my lunch at a park, and a cute kid who appears to be cared for just sat next to me and asked for my sandwich I'd just have to give it up, too.

Is Hozumi's father the reason he doesn't want to bond with his colleagues?

I do like the sense of propriety that made them come back to the park to apologize.

Hozumi is so valid. It's difficult to say no to a reasonable request for the caregiver of a nice kid.

These gross questions are in line with things heard in one of my pre-k classes.

"Mr. Rice Ball" LOL

Okay, but he needs to clean that rice cooker. That rice looks nursty.

I'm sorry, Yutaka, but you messed up when you fed both of them with the rice stirrer. They're yours now.

I'm so relieved to be in BL, because I know this rice ball isn't the only thing Minoru will be shoving in Yutaka's face.

Well this little cooking date was absolutely adorable.

Look at Yutaka coming back to life. Even his coworkers notice the immediate change.

Oh my god we're making curry next week!

Very excited for more of this. We have needed someone else like Shiro from Kinou Nani Tabeta. This show feels like a warm hug.

[heretherebedork]

Minoru and the fears of expressing love when you aren't sure how the other person feels but also can't bear to lose them but can't bear to not love them either.

It's about giving space even when it leaves you feeling empty and knowing that your love was worth sharing even if the person you shared it with isn't ready or can't accept it.

Yutaka cares so much about Minoru but he's still hurt and he's struggling with his own self-acceptance and his own love and what he feels he can give and what he can accept and what he deserves.

(The insecurities he carries are so heavy and he does his best but he still looks at himself and sees the small, scared child that his brother rejected and the food he ate alone.)

Minoru is in deep, he's tucked into the seat and far from the world and Yutaka is on the edge, stepping in but keeping the escape more easy. There's no escape for Minoru, he has to climb out of where he sat, he's already accepted that he loves Yutaka and that he isn't going to stop. Yutaka is still trying to figure out how he feels and how he's healing.

(Yutaka'as inhale when Minoru said he hadn't planned to tell him, my entire heart.)

And this, when Minoru just keeps on giving what he thinks other people want and what he thinks other people need and pulling away from anything that might be his own need or desire because he has always put other people first, always places their comfort above his own because that's how he's always loved.

Just like the smiling mask Yutaka wears so often to hide his own inner pain, Minoru wears his own mask of other's people needs and wants, of the people he loves put above his own desires, to mask the wants and desires he's certain he can't have.

(Despite their separation, Yutaka's home is still lighter than it was at the start of the show, never as dark as it started, because he isn't as dark as he started, light and love and comfort and joy have come to him and they won't go anywhere.))

[heretherebedork]

Oh, Yutaka, baby boy, the way his eyes darted so frantically when his brother answered the door and the near flight response and the absolute panic he overcame and the bravery it took to admit how he's felt for so many years and the pain he's held in his heart to the man who started it so many years ago. Only to find out that his rejection might have happened first but he was still part of it, that in the end the hurt that sank so deep inside him was something that was fleeting to everyone around him.

This pain that he's clung to for so long, the pain that his brother rejected him and never wanted him around, was one that sunk deep inside him, too deep to let him see when it changed.

(But this is exactly what people mean when they say 'the tree remembers but the axe forgets' because, yes, his brother remembers being annoyed with him but he will never understand how deeply that hurt Yutaka because for him it was just a fleeting moment, just an irritation and a frustration that he moved past without ever realizing how deeply he'd hurt his brother.)

But also let's start with this. With Yutaka alone on the big couch but his brother is sitting lower than him, is just as isolated in this shot as he is. They each match the furniture but not each other, all the space in the world between them. Because neither of them understands the other, not even a little. Yutaka is still aching with the first rejection, still unsure of his place and prepared to entirely give up the family that took him in and here's his brother who never knew how much and how long he carried that first reaction in his heart, who let go of his own anger and has spent more time frustrated by what seemed like Yutaka rejecting them... oh, it's perfect. It's two men, isolated but together, with completely different views on the same events.

This is the most perfect moment. Because you watch as his brother leans forward, towards him, bringing himself more into the space because he is realizing, probably for the first time, how much pain and isolation Yutaka has been carrying in his heart and how much hurt has kept him away no matter how much they wanted him there, wanted him present, wanted him to be part of the family.

(Every accusing word was really a question, every harsh moment from his brother came from the lens of that first interaction but his brother never thought of him that way but by the time he was ready, Yutaka was too hurt and too scared to accept him reaching out. They never spoke each other's language and only now, when Yutaka is giving up, does either of them realize that this has been happening for so long.)

And this is the moment where it comes together. This is the moment when it comes together how different perspectives shape who you are and how you see the world. Because his brother saw Yutaka as rejecting the family where Yutaka saw himself as preemptively rejected and thus pulling away for his own safety, for his own sake, because he couldn't bear any more hurt.

(I want more scenes from their childhood from his brother's perspective, I want to know more now, I want to see how those painful scenes of picnics that shaped Yutaka's life looked from the brother who had come to love him but couldn't get past the wall that he built but still doesn't seem to understand how high and how strong he built it.)

But the best part is knowing that Yutaka still knows he has a place. Even when he's prepared to give up the family that helped raise him because he thought his brother still hated him, he knew he was loved and that was why he was able to speak up at all... and speaking up let him learn that different perspectives really do matter, that life is not just what you see but also what people see in you.

[heretherebedork]

We got a double run! Both boys ran, double run alert, absolute blessing that this show is.

I mean, yes, one ran a lot farther than the other... but they both still ran. And that's so perfect for this show because so much of this show is about how much they mean to each other, how they balance each other out, how they are the perfectly fitted pieces that they never thought they could find, how they make a home in each other.

It's never just one of them, it's never just one reaching out or just one needing something more. It's both of them. And so they run to each other. They both run. They move to each other because they need each other.

[heretherebedork]

This is only a problem if either of you actually wants things to go back to being the same, my loves. Luckily... neither of you do.

I love how perfectly sensible the issues are and how much sense it makes for both of them to be struggling with coming to terms with the idea of changing their relationship and what it might mean or look like and also the inherent risk or loss in changing something that has changed both of them so much.

@absolutebl This show's absolute glory is more proof that when Japan knows what it's doing, it's basically perfect.

[heretherebedork]

Sometimes you build a wall to protect yourself without realizing that the threat is long gone because the thought of being caught off guard by your hurt is more than you can bear.

(Yutaka just kept building his wall to keep his brother out no realizing that his brother might have laid the first brick but had stopped after that. And his brother never realized that the wall he'd started and stopped just kept going, that Yutaka had so deeply internalized the start of their family that he could never accept that he had moved past their origins.)