On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
A single woman runs an unconventional service that rents housecats to lonely people.
An overworked career woman leaves her life in the city for an island vacation only to encounter eccentric local inhabitants.
Blessed with several large rivers, interconnected streams and springs, Japan's ancient capital, Kyoto, anoints the land with a bountiful source of water. In this tranquil setting, three women join the flow of a small community with the subtle presence of a spring breeze. Setsuko , the proprietor of a whiskey-only bar; Takako, the owner of a coffee shop along the waterway; Hatsumi, a maker of tofu so delicious it seems to spring forth from the clear water. Under their subtle influence, other townspeople gradually begin their own streams too: Yamanoha, a local worker for a furniture workshop; Otome, the owner of a neighborhood public bath; Jin, a young man who assists him at the bath; Makoto, a wayfarer about the town. Among their daily lives, there is Poplar, a small child with a perpetually friendly smile.
A story of 6 days with 5 people gathered around a small sparkling pool at Chiang Mai in Thailand. 4 years ago, Kyoko started to live in Thailand and has been working in a Guest house outside in Chiang Mai, leaving her mother and her daughter Sayo, in Japan. Just before the graduation of University, Sayo sets foot on Thailand to visit her mother with mixed feelings. However, emotional experiences with the people living there changes such feelings toward her mother.
A 30-something Gundam fan and engineer is forced to live with his recluse brother Maury and younger sister Lisa to take care of their Japanese grandmother after their mother's funeral.
Minako (TANAKA Yuko), begins her day running up and down the hills of her hometown delivering milk door to door. When that's done, she heads to her day job as a supermarket cashier. Minako is 50 and single. In one of the houses to which she delivers milk is a man with whom she has secretly been in love since high school. The man, Keita (KISHIBE Ittoku), lives with his wife Yoko, who is terminally ill. Caring for her at home, he works in the children's affairs section of the local municipal office. Though he insists that he wants nothing more than an "ordinary" existence, his life is in turmoil below the surface. The director uses a variety of narrative devises to portray the loneliness, isolation, and hope of these people who have seemingly allowed their goals and dreams to slip away, whilst keeping them agonizingly close to hand.
In Tokyo, actress Touko leaves the filming set of her latest project and comes across three people by random chance: she gives a ride to a man named Nagano, whom she has never met before; at a small theater, runs into Kikuchi, a former screenwriter; lastly, meets Yasuko at the zoo.
