One of the popular drama series last summer was ¡°Rich Man Poor Woman,¡± which was broadcast in the coveted Monday 9 p.m. time slot on Fuji TV. Shun Oguri played Toru, a young IT billionaire, and Satomi Ishihara was Makoto, who despite graduating from the University of Tokyo was not from a well-to-do family. Their different outlooks on life made for romantic tension.

On Monday at 9 p.m. their saga continues in a two-and-a-half-hour special, ¡°Rich Man Poor Woman in New York.¡± Makoto is now working as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company in Brazil, but manages to maintain a long-distance relationship with Toru. She returns to Japan for a one-week break but has no place to stay until Toru¡¯s assistant makes a novel suggestion.

Speaking of the University of Tokyo, Nippon TV is airing a special 90-minute documentary entitled ¡°Todai Juken Monogatari¡± (¡°University of Tokyo Entrance Exam Stories¡°; Wed., 10 p.m.), which closely follows three high school students trying to enter Japan¡¯s most esteemed school.

One is a young man from Sendai who wants to get into Todai so that he can become a civil servant and return to his hometown to work on reconstruction. A young woman from the Kansai area challenges the theory that only applicants from certain schools can get into Todai. And a boy from Kagoshima sets his sights on Todai¡¯s difficult premed program. The camera stays close, right up to the day the school announces who gets in and who doesn¡¯t.

CM of the week

JCB: The funniest TV commercials are those that don¡¯t take seriously the appeal or usefulness of the thing being advertised. The new spots for credit-card company JCB featuring Arashi¡¯s Kazunari Ninomiya and a sarcastic frog have it easier in this regard since credit cards, by definition, can be used for anything.

In one, Ninomiya wakes up with bed head and, wondering if he¡¯s somehow related to Beethoven, consults a geneticist, who informs him he¡¯s actually related to Bach, so he uses his JCB card to pay for a Bach hairstyle, which his froggy friend ridicules, thus bringing on a crying jag that floods his apartment and gets Ninomiya evicted. Rejected and disappointed, he uses his card to book a flight to London, where the new ¡®do gets him a job as a judge, presumably because the British judiciary thinks it can save money on wigs.