Shion Sasaki

Eiko has repeated flashbacks from childhood. In that place where she is enveloped by a huge noise, a boy starts running and Eiko falls off a swing. Are they memories or dreams, or are they the present day, or do they belong to someone else? The sound expands. That’s really something huge.

Scene one: March 11th, 2011. An earthquake and a tsunami strike the East coast of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. A man and five other brave power plant workers are sent to fasten a bolt to prevent radiation leaks. Scene two: 2013. The man is now cleaning the empty houses surrounding the nuclear plant. But the strange atmosphere starts giving him hallucination... Scene three: Christmas, 2014. A woman in a red car crashes by the garage where the man is working. The woman looks just like his wife, who died in the tsunami.

The young couple has been together for a year. The young woman is so beautiful in pictures of Utamaro. And even though she goes out with other men, she remains loyal to him on her term while he tries to deal with his jealousy. But more and more questions arise. What about sex As the woman, must she submit to the man? How does it feel to him? What kind of relationship is that anyway? Is it Friendship Plus or Real Love? Both try to communicate with the other, to understand him while remaining true to themselves.

Naomi, a student dropout, only believes in things he can touch. However, when he really wants to touch someone, he recoils. As is the case when he befriends Maki, a happy-go-lucky young man who lives with Midori, a blind woman who dreamily expounds about places she has never been. When Midori becomes seriously ill, Maki and Naomi send her tapes from an imaginary trip around the world. Their relationship becomes more intimate whilst recording, but they only dare engage in rough, painful horseplay. Hesitations, feints, social pressure and awkwardness colours this sensitively told tale of two young men as they become intimate with one another – a rare story of a gay relationship in Japanese indie film.

Inagaki Goro plays a freelance writer married to his editor wife (Nakamura Yuri), who he discovers is having an affair with the popular novelist she is responsible for at work. Although troubled, he can’t bring himself to confront his wife. He later meets a high school novelist at a literary award ceremony, and–drawn to the award-winning book–he inquires about the model it’s based on, thinking he’d like to meet that person…

Aya adapts Hyakken Uchida’s eponymous short story in which characters wonder whether they are alive or dead, as the reality of their existence is swept from under their feet.