“I am glad I didn’t tell him he reminds me of him.”
Episode 8 of Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You ended with Yamada smoking by herself on her balcony, thinking about the kind office worker who once rescued her from an unruly customer. I’m pretty sure that office worker was Sasaki, although when Yamada, as Tayama, tells him about the incident, it doesn’t seem to ring a bell. But then again, from the office worker’s POV, he was simply stepping in when a rude customer was creating a ruckus and offering a few kind words to a young woman. It probably wasn’t the kind of encounter he’d remember years later.
Anyway, whether it really was Sasaki or not, the fact that Yamada thinks the mysterious man reminds her of him only further cements how much her admiration for Sasaki has grown. And in episode 9 of the anime, she grows more obvious in her feelings for the older man she shares her smoke breaks with.
Episode 9 of ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’ opens with Yamada having a little year-end party at a pub with her supermarket colleagues, and since they’re all women, it turns into a fun girls’ night out. That’s where one of her colleagues casually mentions that she thinks Sasaki is married, sending Yamada straight into panic mode. So, much of the episode has her trying to subtly figure out whether her beloved smoking buddy does indeed have a missus waiting for him back home.
I mean, c’mon, as viewers, we already know it’s got to be some sort of misunderstanding. So this is largely a comical episode about Yamada confronting her increasingly complicated feelings for Sasaki, while also wondering how on earth she’s going to handle the situation.
One of the funniest bit in this edition however was Ono-san chugging her beer like a pro on a girls night out with Yamada and her other supermarket colleagues. While everybody is busy gossiping, she is already ordering another big mug of draft beer for herself. She’s the short old polite lady. The one in the green shirt below.
Anyway… as far as the Sasaki and Yamada/Tayama dynamic is concerned, the misunderstanding is quickly resolved thanks to Sasaki’s straightforward attitude. The conversation gets slightly dramatic at first, and rightfully so, since Yamada goes through a whole range of emotions as she grapples with the possibility of Sasaki actually being married. She even comically rattles off a whole bunch of reasons why Sasaki hasn’t done anything to mislead her, and how there’s technically no rule stopping a married man from having conversations with someone else over a smoke.
The last few minutes of this edition of ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’ are wholly focused on smoking, with Sasaki revealing that he has started smoking at 6 a.m. Which is sort of funny, because just a few episodes ago, he was trying to cut down on the number of cigarettes he smoked per day for his health. Yamada, too, expresses her concern, but he tells her that the experience of an early-morning smoke is simply unmatched.
Overall, this episode of ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’ was a great mixture of comic moments and some slow but steady progress between Sasaki and Yamada/Tayama. Even in their quieter moments, the two find themselves thinking about each other, although neither has quite clocked it as romantic yet. And at the pace these two are going, it might take them a while.
Watch ‘Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You’ on Netflix/ Crunchyroll.
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