Yumi, a 23-year-old office worker, is fired from her job out of the blue. A few days later, coming from a friend's wedding and having no time to change out of her kimono, she is rushing to an interview for a job at a publishing company. Yumi stumbles into the room, looking for somewhere to change out of her kimono, and finds popular comic book writer Reijiro Sakurai is having an editorial meeting with some staff. He is planning to lock himself away at a hot spring for the next three months to concentrate on his next project. Sakurai comments that if Yumi were to join him he wouldn't mind being away for so long..., and so their adventure begins.

A visiting substitute teacher for a woman on maternity leave, Sentaro, shakes things up with his passionate and direct teaching style and meets resistance from the entire school. Motoko, the daughter of his landlord is one of his colleagues and strongest critics. Another colleague asks Sentaro to fix him up with Motoko, and Sentaro is more than happy to oblige since he has fallen for her sister. But Motoko’s father senses that Sentaro and Motoko would actually be good together and tries to fix them up! Facing pressure in work and in love, Sentaro must figure out if his current path is the best one.

Even though he failed his entrance examination, Shumpei scouts out the entrance ceremony of Waseda University and determines in his mind that he will devote the next year studying to get into the university. As he is leaving the campus, Momoko, an energetic freshman, suddenly drafts Shumpei against his will to help her sell school maps to fellow freshmen. Although annoyed by her overbearing persistence, Shumpei eventually befriends Momoko; but her doctor-boyfriend and his hang-ups about his former high school sweetheart keep them from getting any closer.

This is a bittersweet tale of Kohei and Mika, who have been friends since childhood and now discover themselves in a deep yet fragile romance. Five years of their lives are presented in an almost lyrical succession of images, as they enter their twenties and tentatively explore their emerging love, striving to protect each other while not jeopardizing the mutual support and encouragement of their longtime friendship.