A new year means a whole new set of drama series, though the themes remain the same. Fans of terminal illness stories will find a lot to cry over in "87 percent -- My Five-Year Chance of Survival," which premieres Wednesday on Nihon TV at 10 p.m. Yui Natsukawa plays Akiko, a 35-year-old insurance saleslady who is also a single mother.

Akiko is not up to much on the sales front, and she struggles to keep her household solvent, but this turns out to be the least of her problems after she goes to the neighbourhood clinic for her annual health checkup. The young Dr. Kuroki (Masahira Motoki) sends her a notice to return for additional tests. Kuroki is afraid Akiko may have breast cancer, which his own wife died from five years earlier. The patient-physician dynamic thus takes on a deeper significance for both parties.

So Kuramoto is one of Japan's most popular TV scriptwriters, famous mainly for his long-running "Kita no Kuni Kara (From the North Country)" series about a family living in a remote area of Hokkaido. Kuramoto's first TV series in 15 years starts Thursday at 10 p.m. on the Fuji network. "Yasashii Jikan (The Gentle Hours)" also takes place on Hokkaido, in the popular Furano resort area, and centers on Yukichi (Akira Terao), a former employee of a Tokyo trading company who has started a new life in the countryside. Yukichi now runs a small coffee shop, but while his life seems quiet and carefree on the outside, inside he is wracked by torment.