All Around Us (2008)

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.

In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.

Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.

When it rains it pours. Kenji divorced his wife, lost his job and his old squeeze Naoko is getting married back home in the north of Japan, specifically in Akita. He returns there in order to attend her wedding. Naoko surprises him by proposing that they have sex again. The one night stand is the new beginning.

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.

While combing through the belongings of his recently deceased aunt, Matsuko, nephew Sho pieces together the crucial events that sank Matsuko's life into a despairing tragedy.

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.