Tokiko’s mother died 20 years ago and her father Tetsuya is now in his 70's. Her father has a free spirit and is cute. Tokiko is in her mid 40's and still single. She has a strong personality. In their past, Tokiko and Tetsuya did not have a good relationship. It got so bad that they almost ended their relationship, but now they occasionally meet. They go out to eat together and have conversations. Tokiko decides to publish an essay about her father Tetsuya. To collect information for her essay, she meets Tetsuya and listens to various stories, but it's not just pleasant memories.
Misaki Yamada, 30 and single, has no clear ambitions. After drifting between jobs and places, she works as a care worker until trouble in love and work upends her life. Shiba, 38, avoids close relationships, but takes in his nephew and slowly bonds with him through Yamada. Shimizu, 46, faces caring for her father after years of putting work first. All three search for where they belong.
Itchan and her older sister Satchan go to the house of their grandmother, who is currently in a nursing home. They start cleaning the house in preparation for its renovation, but gradually the two discover the subtle gulf that lies between them.
Accompanied by his friend Miyata, Sano returns to Izu, a seaside resort in Japan where five years before he fell in love with his wife Nagi.
The incinerator of a waste treatment facility, where a fire blazes fiercely behind a circular window. The sound of a government official’s voice over the radio announces that the name of the era is changing. A nameless protagonist whose coworker delves into mountains of garbage. A boss abusive towards his subordinates. A bus driver asking where he should go. A woman who has lost her mother. Unable to ask for help and or to help themselves, everyone is going through their own madness.
Haru is living a disintegrated married life with her then high school teacher, Yuichiro. After Yuichiro's sudden death, Haru meets his mistress, Shiori, who was also one of his students. Fueled by jealousy, unexpected events begin...
Aki and Naoko are childhood friends who are drifting apart as adults. Immersed in her family life, Naoko now has a husband and daughter; Aki, on the other hand, remains single and is on leave from work due to a personal crisis. The plot might sound familiar but it has never been told like this. The director Kusano Natsuka stages the interactions through an actors’ table-read and, as the lines are repeated, the scenes gradually develop into on-location conversations. Moreover, she repositions the dramatic peak of the story to the beginning: Aki has murdered Naoko’s daughter.
It depicts the lives of a man and a woman who love flowers and grasses blooming on the roadside while suffering from life, and who live in small ways with tenderness and intensity.
Shiori, Yukiko, Kyoko and Sachiko continue to live each day with untold feelings inside. Unable to forget a colleague on a trip, a father who is ill, a friend who works at a store that is about to close, and a long-lost husband, each woman takes a step forward. There is a light that sometimes embraces them, calmly and gently.
