Hidenori is a Japanese-Korean man with no sense of belonging, destination or education. He drifts around and meanders through life until a death reminds him of his heritage and so begins a journey to South Korea.

Tsuneo is a university student working part-time in a mah-jong parlour. Lately the customers have been talking about an old lady who pushes a baby carriage through the streets. They say she is carrying something for a crime syndicate, and they wonder what it is she has in the carriage. Money? Drugs? One day, the owner of the mah-jong parlour sends Tsuneo out to walk his dog. A baby carriage comes rolling down a hill and crashes into a guard rail. The old lady asks him to look into the carriage, where he finds a young woman clutching a knife. This is how Tsuneo first meets the girl who calls herself Josée.

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 love story between a famous 25-year-old songwriter, who keeps his identity hidden from the public, and a 16-year-old high school student who possesses a gifted voice.

Japanese movies