Kogure Shashinkan

Title: 小暮写眞館
Genre: Mystery
Episodes: 4
Broadcast network: NHK BS Premium
Starts: 2013-March-31 (Sundays) 
Adaptation: Novel by Miyuki Miyabe
DramaWiki

Story 
Hanabishi Eiichi (Kamiki Ryunosuke) and his family moves to a new neighborhood and lives in an old photo studio. They've heard rumors that this place is haunted by the ghost of Kogure who was the owner of the studio. Many of the neighbors think that they moved in to reopen the studio, which is not true. That leads to Eiichi meeting a high school girl who finds an envelope which belongs to the photo studio. Inside of it, there's a photo of a family with a ghost face in the background. She give this photo to Eiichi because she believes that this photo is cursed and she doesn't want to keep it. Eiichi reluctantly accepts the photo and decides to do research to trace back the owner of this photo. He gets everyone involved in solving the mystery of different ghost photos including his friend Tenko (Horii Arata), his little brother, Pika, the real state agent and his co-worker, Junko (Narumi Riko).   

Thoughts: The summary above makes it sounds like a horror ghost story. But it really wasn't like that at all. Although, there were some moments where it gets suspenseful, but it's not scary. But I thought that four episodes was good enough to finish the story. I did find the mystery to be interesting and they weren't predictable. I also liked the main characters and they had an intriguing history and heart warming drama. In this drama, it's not just a mystery story, but it also has themes like importance of family, taking responsibilities and reconciling with one's past. Despite the slow paced story, it was a nice drama to watch. In addition, Kamiki seems to never fail to give a great performance in his dramas.