Heitaro, a father, has just retired from the company for which he has worked for 38 years. He proposes that the combined total amount of 30 million yen, made up of his retirement money and the savings his wife had left, should be divided equally by the 6 members of the family — That is, 5 million yen each. Will Heitaro’s sincere gift of 5 million yen be able to make each of his daughters happy?

Kayo Otahara, known affectionately as “Dr. Mom”, pours heart and soul into providing medical care to her local community. For roughly two months each summer, the rustic Gifu Prefecture village of Gujohachiman is transformed into a bustling center of activity, swelling to 30 times its normal population during its “Gujo Odori” festival, a folk dance where people clack wooden clogs on the ground in rhythmic cadence, also known as the “clog dance.” Against this bucolic backdrop, a story unfolds between Dr. Mom and a village clog maker’s family working to preserve the town’s tradition. She finds herself unraveling a family in-cident while serving as the only hope for rescuing their suddenly infirm daughter.

Life in the row houses of yesteryear is nostalgic today, but the “Common House,” a new type of apartment building, brings together the merits of a row house and the privacy of individual homes. Each family has its own privacy, but all the members of a “House” live as one big family. More women continue to work today, after marriage or giving birth, so more people are turning to Common Houses for the safety provided for child rearing. What sort of joys and problems await them in these Common Houses? This story focuses on the search for happiness by one family who moves in to one.

His mother having left him, nine year-old Yuudai is forced to live alone and steal from a local convenience store to survive. Pursuing the wily thief to get back the stolen merchandise is the first act on the job for newly-arrived Shintaro, manager of the convenience store. Shintaro soon learns of Yuudai’s predicament however, and decides to take him in. Becoming his new family, Shintaro and his assistant, Satomi, soon discover that caring for a young boy who has such a troubled past and who is accustomed to fending for himself may be more than they can handle.