A film based on two short stories by Shiina Makoto. Tadon is the story of a cab-driver who spends his days listening to his passengers' conversations. Chikuwa is about a writer who faces a creativity bottleneck.

When Koichi Hamanaka returns after his mysterious disappearance years earlier, journalist Asakura who befriended Hamanaka's wife during his absence, tries to piece together the reasons for his departure.

Made in Japan, Last Room is both fiction and documentary. The occupants of the love-hotels and capsule-hotels tell their own intimate, dreamlike stories, interspersed with journeys through the archipelago's landscapes. Soon, these personal stories resonate with a collective history: that of Gunkanjima, the abandoned ghost island of Nagasaki, and then that of Japan as a whole.

14-year-old Takuya lives in a rural town near mountains and rivers. His 29-year-old uncle Koji works as a graphic designer in urban Tokyo. Koji's father dies and Takuya is arrested for attempted robbery-the two young men must now face a crucial crossing in their lives. The concluding chapter to director Higashi Yoichi's "boy and river" trilogy, the film highlights contemporary themes like family, adolescence, and the healing properties of nature. The wild but beautiful Kuma River stars as a threatening symbol for the boy's rite of passage. Supernatural beings reign in the mountains above the village.

A writer from Kamakura named Hiraoka Eisei is researching supernatural stories but finds himself revisiting memories from a previous visit to his wife’s home town. Ogura Kako,a shy local woman, is asked to help an actor from Tokyo practice speaking with Kyoto intonation and, after the lesson, he asks her to show him around Arashiyama.

The story, set in the heady post-war 50s into the early 60s , revolves around a love triangle between Tomoko, long playing the mistress to married older writer Shitto and the new stud who comes into her life, Ryota Kinoshita. Tomoko is sick and tired of her relationship with writer Shingo, who is married and has children. Shingo is a talented writer, but has yet to be recognized by the public. Tomoko then enters into a sexual relationship with younger man Ryota Kinoshita, but Tomoko is not satisfied.

The story of a ménage à trois between the editor of a magazine, his girlfriend, and his young sister.

Haruna is a lively tomboy in the 5th year at elementary school. One day, while playing with Hiroyuki, a boy whom she has known for a long time, they play a game of putting their private parts together. A sex education lesson given by a new teacher, Yagi, makes Haruna suspect that she might be pregnant.

Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.

Director Jun Ichikawa spins this affectionate portrait of the people who populate Shimokitazawa, a bohemian corner of Tokyo filled with small theater companies and smoky coffeehouses.