Japan

In the wake of her grandmother's death, Tsugumi Dozono, who used to work at a large electronics company in Tokyo, decides to move from to the home her grandmother left behind, in the countryside, and work from home. One day, a mysterious middle-aged man named Jun Kaieda arrives at the home wanting to stay the night. He tells Tsugumi that he is her grandmother's ex-student and her grandmother gave him a key to the annex house. Tsugumi doesn't quite understand the nature of the relationship Kaieda had with her grandmother, but the two begin living together in an awkward arrangement.

Over one day at this love hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo - where guests have the choice of staying for a short time or overnight - the dreams and desires of these characters intersect while aspiring for something greater.

Kitamichi is a 19-year-old labor worker. He develops feelings for Yasuko who works in a used used bookstore, but he has never had a girlfriend. He also befriends Kusakabe, but jealousy soon threatens their friendship.

After failing to get into university, a soft city boy randomly picks a job in forestry.

A woman looks back on her family's life in Tokyo before and during WWII. A maid arrives from the countryside to work for an upper middle class family. She fits in well, but everyone's emotions are stirred up with the arrival of a student.

Ginko's brother Tetsuro, a failed comic, embarrasses her with his loud, inappropriate behavior until she cuts ties. They reconnect after his terminal diagnosis, leading to acceptance and love.

In 1930s Japan, a mother endures hardship to raise her children when her academic husband is marked as an enemy of the state and imprisoned.

A midwife in Nagasaki is stunned when she is suddenly visited by her son, whom she thought had died when an atomic bomb fell on the city.

A feminine android delivers packages to the scattered humans in the galaxy. With years to spare the android and us have time to contemplate what it is to be human.

While searching for his fiancee Ritsuko, Sakutarou rediscovers through flashbacks the void deep within him caused by the events from his high school days.

Incompetent film set gopher Tomoya finds out that the girl he loved has died in a plane crash, after he e-mails a picture of a rainbow to her. While her family sets off to retrieve a body, he recalls the love affair they never really had.

Japan's oldest major movie studio asks a batch of venerable filmmakers to revive its high-brow soft-core Roman Porno series.

When a successful, but tired Tokyo-based playwright who has sworn off easy women and casual encounters takes refuge in the countryside, his plans are disrupted by a horny woman who pedals fast into his life and is unrelenting.

A recently divorced and traumatized man moves to Hakodate, Hokkaido and attends a vocational college to learn carpentry along with several other students who are in the same boat as he. When a couple of the guys go to a hostess club the man meets an unconventional girl who likes him and a relationship is born.

He is rejected by his sister when the brother floats the idea that their father move from his house to her apartment. The father has other ideas however and shows up unannounced at her doorstep with his belongings. She has little space, a boyfriend she lives with it and does not need a cranky father.

With a party underway at the company director's house a young man is bedazzled by a woman who, alongside her husband, are in attendance. This not only prompts the object of the man's passion to want to leave; it also provokes the jealousy of the hostess. Things get worse when guests express themselves and let loose as they imbibe more alcohol.

On the anniversary of the death of the mother of a hip and happening Tokyo-based photographer, the son returns to his hometown for the funeral. What follows is a return to the past that is more than just a trek home. Old relationships, love, conflicts and memories resurface and collide. Apparently, old perspectives don't wither.

A young medical intern student is dismayed when he is assigned to work in a remote countryside village.

After losing their restaurant in a fire, a husband and wife come up with a strange plan to rebuild their shattered finances: marrying the husband off to a series of lonely women and defrauding them.

A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.

Sugihara, born in Japan but with North Korean parents, falls in love with a Japanese girl after changing from a North Korean school to a Japanese school. His boxer dad teaches him boxing - skills used a lot.

What do part-time philosophy professors do other than loaf about, philosophize part-time, be dolts, stay in a spare room in the home of the brother and an annoyed sister-in-law? How fortuitous then that nephew Yukio has a school report to write on a particular family member. In the meanwhile, in order to get the man out of the house the mission is to find him a woman and coincidentally a Japanese-American woman is around.

A portrait of an ordinary family that turns unstable when their frivolous son Shuji returns home after a long absence.

In the city of Kaitan, during the winter, the local shipyard is downsized and workers are laid off. Futa (Pistol Takehara) lives with his younger sister Honami (Mitsuki Tanimura). He loses his job at the shipyard and, feeling uneasy about their situation, goes with Honami to see the sunrise on a nearby mountainside for New Year's Day. Makoto (Takashi Yamanaka), a new city hall employee, visits the only remaining house in a redevelopment area. The home belongs to a 70-year-old woman,Toki (Aki Nakazato) who lives with her cat and a few animals in her backyard. Toki refuses to vacate the land and Makoto tries to persuade her that she will be forcibly evicted. 49-year-old Ryuzo (Kaoru Kobayashi) works in a small planetarium, while his relationship with his wife Haruyo (Haruyo Hika) and teenage son is deteriorating. Haruyo finds release by working as a hostess in a cabaret. Haruo (Ryo Kase) has taken over the operation of his father's gas company, but he worries about the state of his business. He also has a strained relationship with his wife, who takes out her anger on their son Akira. Taichiro, a street car driver, spots his son, Hiroshi (Masaki Miura) walking in downtown Kaitan. Although Hiroshi lives & works in Tokyo, he has come back to Kaitan for business. But he doesn't contact his father, even though it is the holiday season.