ep.262 詰んでんじゃん！

Hakone Ekiden Drama: High Hopes and the "Running Scene Problem"

The episode opens on a Nippon TV drama built around the Hakone Ekiden relay race. Tanaka, who ran track and field, says he has always been distracted by actors whose "running" looks little faster than a jog — he singles out a marathon scene in the drama "Hitotsu Yane no Shita" (一つ屋根の下) where the speed in post-shoot scenes felt nowhere near race pace. Even so, he is genuinely excited about this project. Nippon TV holds a wealth of real Hakone Ekiden material — including stories about an injured captain being put in the race — and Tanaka expects it to deliver the same cathartic sports drama as the TBS series "No Side Game" (ノーサイドゲーム), in which Oizumi Yo (大泉洋) played a high-school rugby coach, with Yonezu Kenshi's (米津玄師) "Uma to Shika" (馬と鹿) as the theme song.

Full Spoiler Review: All Ten Episodes of "Until the T-Shirt Dries"

Tanaka gives Yamane a blow-by-blow spoiler account of the drama. The first half plays as mystery: the central puzzle is the husband's "disappearing habit" — when pushed to his limit he vanishes without a word, sometimes for months, sometimes for a year. His wife and his best friend's wife begin meeting frequently, which fuels adultery rumors, but the truth is simply that each woman finds it easier to confide in the other's husband than in her own. The second half becomes a mutual confession of long-hidden secrets, including the revelation that the wife, played by Aoi Yu, has been married and divorced four times before.

The couple ultimately decide to lay everything bare and start fresh. Then, in the final episode, the husband — played by Matsuyama Ken'ichi — begins announcing each household task before doing it: "I'm going to wash the dishes now." "I'm going to clean the bath now." Far from reading this as consideration, the wife experiences it as oppressive — "He's always walking on eggshells around me; being with him is exhausting" — and she asks for a divorce.

Tanaka erupted. That exact habit is what he practices every day while raising his child. "Isn't that exactly what I do? And that's the reason they divorce?" He demanded that Yamane call the scriptwriter and lodge a complaint on his behalf. When Yamane replied, "That's just arrogance on your part," Tanaka shot back, "I was made arrogant," and refused to concede.

The title comes from the final scene: the couple had agreed that the husband would leave once the laundry on the line had dried. Before that could happen, the wife is shown quietly spraying the T-shirt with a mist bottle to delay it. Tanaka read this as proof she did not truly want to part. Even so, the husband eventually leaves and the divorce goes through, leaving Tanaka baffled: "She's hesitating so much she's spraying the shirt with water — so why do they still split up?"

ep.260 Goes Viral on X with 110,000 Likes

A listener's message revealed that ep.260 had blown up on X. The moment: Tanaka admitted that both he and his wife had hit the wall from parenting fatigue, and Yamane responded without hesitation, "If you need, I can look after the baby." That single line racked up 110,000 likes, with comments like "exactly what you want to hear during childcare," "Yamane is a god," and "total heartthrob." Yamane's stock shot up instantly. Many comments also praised Tanaka for not showing his wife the viral clip.

Listeners Who Started Over from ep.0

Several listener messages described discovering the podcast partway through and going back to the very beginning. One listener, Nero Nero no Nene-san, was hooked by the "nanonnen" bit in ep.237, stopped there, and restarted from ep.0. She is now at ep.156 and has already secured a ticket to the joint event "Little Janga Meeting" (リトルジャンガミーティング) with Milkboy (ミルクボーイ), though she has no idea whether she will catch up before the event date. Another listener, Popo-san, is currently at ep.45 — a 2022 episode — and has declared she will not touch the latest episode until she has listened to every one in order. Tanaka likened their approach to a dramatic last-minute charge and said he loves that the podcast format lets people binge the entire back catalogue this way.

Sanada Maru and the Dog Problem

Tanaka mentioned that the NHK taiga drama "Sanada Maru" (真田丸) is now available on Amazon Prime. He tries to watch it each morning after seeing his daughter off to school, but the family dog erupts in barking at the dark opening scenes and any shots of animals — and because his wife is still asleep, he cannot raise the volume, so he barely makes progress. He added that "Until the T-Shirt Dries" posed no such problem, since no dogs appear in the drama.