Film Roster: East Asian Films

Centred around a love hotel in the Kabukicho district of Tokyo, Japan, the lives, dreams and times of a myriad of characters who are guests comes to the fore. There is the sex and the lust, there is the libido and the cheating and then there is the backstories and circumstances of the young and old who book a room or who work at the hotel.

A high school student named Yu has a crush on one of her classmates, Yosuke. The boy spends most of his time sitting outside and playing his guitar, and Yu sits nearby and listens. One day, however, a terrible tragedy occurs, and the two do not see each other again for many years.

An ordinary guy falls in love with her dream girl Maya. Maya feels doubt and betray when they begin a long term relationship. Her feeling completely reverses some day.

At a firm specializing in creating audio descriptions for films to serve the visually impaired, a descriptive video transcriber comes to know one of the panel members who is a formerly successful photographer who has lost much of his eyesight. As the man loses his main mode of connecting with the world he also yields his other means away. The new acquaintanceship leads to man and woman coming to terms with their lives and professions and seeing the world in new ways.

Upon entering high school, two best friends named Hana and Alice notice a boy a year older them while waiting for the train, and they both develop a pretty strong crush on him. One day while secretly following him home, Hana witnesses the boy walk right into a wall and pass out. When he wakes up, she lies and convinces him that he must have amnesia, because he doesn't remember the fact that she was his girlfriend. After this, hilarity ensues as the two girls attempt to run with the lie. Of course, complications soon arise.

A schoolgirl is not doing well and her English marks are sub-par. A teacher asks her to attend after-hours tutoring in order to improve her grades. Jealous of the attention she finds herself bullied and resented, but she develops feelings for the teacher when he rescues her. At the same time, a female teacher is trying to gain the attention of the male teacher the schoolgirl has fallen for. Will they end up together or does fate separate the student and the teacher?

Upon hearing the song "Norwegian Wood," Toru (Matsuyama) remembers back to his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend. As the two try, in very different ways, to contend with their grief, Toru forms a bond with another woman, Midori.

19th century. Oshin is a prostitute in a brothel of a red-light district. A disgraced samurai, Fusanosuke, rushes in the brothel seeking for a refuge, because he had wounded a powerful samurai. Oshin hides him from the authorities and falls in love with him, against an older prostitute's, Kikuno's, misgiving. Fusanosuke advises Oshin to cleanse herself by giving up her line of work. Believing falsely that this is a promise for marriage, she turns her customers over to the other prostitutes, who are happy to help her. Funasukoke leaves to be reconciled to his family, but, when he returns, he reveals that he is engaged and is going to marry his fiancé. Some time later a desperate itinerant, Ryosuke, appears and Oshin falls in love again. Meanwhile, an older man asks Kikuno to buy her contract and marry her, but she is entangled with an old abusive customer of hers. One night, while the madam of the brothel is away to thermal baths, a storm hits the area and everybody tries to flee. Ryosuke kills Kikuno's customer who tries to steal madam's money and runs away. Oshin and Kikuno stay at the roof hoping for a rescue from the flood. Ryosuke returns by a boat.

Asako is a 21-year-old woman, living in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku who has a free spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and she meets Ryohei. He looks just like her ex-boyfriend Baku, but he has a completely different personality. Ryohei is a salaryman, with a sincere personality. Asako falls in love with Ryohei.

After a failed romance, a temperamental young biker meets a carefree rural girl while riding through her island hometown and gets her obsessed about riding a motorcycle.

The manager of a pancake stall finds himself confronted with an odd but sympathetic elderly woman looking for work. A taste of her homemade red bean paste convinces him to hire her, which starts a relationship that is about much more than just street food.

The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.

Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.

Tomoya, a production assistant for a television company in Japan, hears the news with the rest of the crew that Aoi has been killed in an air crash in Death Valley, California. He reflects upon his friendship with this feisty young woman who left the country to broaden her horizons as an aspiring director. He took the job she left, and ironically they first met when he attempted to bribe her away from her job at a record store so that he could be near her co-worker, a girl he wished to date. Although considered a nuisance at first, Aoi finds him a bit of a kindred spirit and casts him in a leading role in her college student film, "The End of the World" which she has written and will direct. Aoi takes the leading role opposite Tomoya when her leading actress Kyoko refuses to do a kissing scene. The two continue to console each other about their lack of romantic relationships and job opportunities in an outwardly platonic manner, but underneath deeper currents are running. Aoi's younger sister Kana may be physically blind, but she sees some emotional aspects of life more clearly than the normally sighted people in her life.

A woman is torn between two men and two ways of life in this drama from writer and director Naomi Kawase. Kayoko (Hako Oshima) lives a serene existence in Asuka, a village where nature and civilization live in harmony, and she spends her days making scarves and dying them crimson using natural materials. Kayoko shares her home with her long-time boyfriend Tetsuya (Tetsuya Akikawa), who makes his living in the publishing industry and tends his garden in his spare time. While Tutsuya is away on business, Kayoko discovers she's pregnant, which presents her with a serious dilemma -- she's been having an affair with Takumi (Tohta Komizu), a wood sculptor who lives nearby and possesses an earthy sensuality Tatsuya does not. Koyoko is uncertain which man is the father of her child, and when she tells Takumi her secret, he suggests that as much as he cares for her, he's not certain theirs is a love that will last, with the troubled relationship between his grandfather and her grandmother serving as an example.

A care-giver at a small retirement home takes one of her patients for a drive to the country, but the two wind up stranded in a forest where they embark on an exhausting and enlightening two-day journey.

Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.

Ryota and Koharu are high school students. Ryota is indifferent to people and says very little. Koharu is not afraid of to speak her mind and she has a bright personality. Since a game of rice bag jump, they begin to date. They date at a fast-food restaurant, realize they love each other at a family restaurant and finally swear their love on a dining table with white rice.