Miwako Kawai

Hatano is living as an insomniac freelance typesetter alone in his bayside apartment. One day, Aikawa, a high school classmate he hasn’t seen in over ten years, shows up on his doorstep bearing a bag of clams. Though he claims to be the director of a fast-growing trading company, Aikawa crashes on Hatano’s couch for days on end. When the sleeping pills he was offered produce a strange side effect, Hatano is slowly dragged into Aikawa’s con-artist lifestyle. Soon afterward, they cross paths with the representative of a big-name publishing company and Aikawa’s ultimate scam begins to unfold.

This coming-of-age story revolves around two young long distance runners, Kenji Hirose and Ryuji Nakazawa. Kenji, haunted by memories of his dead friend Aihara with whom he had a brief homosexual affair, is now dating Aihara's former girlfriend Kyoko, but Kyoko is more interested in Kenji than he is in her. Ryuji, Kenji's friend and track rival, is pursuing hurdler Shoko but she in turn is after Kenji. Ryuji does have his own admirer, Nao, Kenji's younger sister, but when they do get together, Nao resembles her brother too much for Ryuji to go through with the lovemaking.

Japanese drama set in a southern Kyushu island where dance-troupe leader Shinji (Shinji Arano) stays on as his touring troupe departs. After Shinji moves in with an old man (Nobuyoshi Tanigawa) cared for by his granddaughter (Reiko Matsuo), he becomes an apprentice to the old man's construction of a wooden boat