Now I don't now about where you live, but in my town you are lucky to find a public toilet at all, let alone one with designer fittings and miracle blinds! Luckily, Tokyo has a dedicated and meticulous cleaner in "Hirayama" (Koji Yakusho) whose routine gets him from bed, via the coffee machine, to his rounds, the bath house, then his book and again to bed. Helped, occasionally but not too reliably, by the younger "Takashi" (Tokio Emoto) his joy when travelling from site to site is to listen to old cassettes from the likes of the Doors and Van Morrison. He is an outwardly rather humourless man, and he likes his daily pattern, so imagine his surprise when he returns home one evening to discover his niece. "Niko" (Arisa Nakano) has absconded from home and decided to come stay with him for a few days. With his pal at work having a new girlfriend to impress and now him a teenage niece to accommodate, his life faces a turmoil and we have to watch (and hope) as he tries to get through it. Who knows? Maybe it will help bring him out of his self-imposed shell? Might we find out what caused that introspection in the first place? There's quite a lot of repetition here, but as each day goes by Wim Wenders introduces us to a little more. More about the city, more about the characters and maybe just a little too much about multi-purpose bleach. Yakusho is perfect for his part and he engagingly delivers a characterful performance as a man who prefers not to speak and the whole drama evolves, gently, to not so much a conclusion as another day that may or may not be different from the previous ones.

**Life through his eyes** This is the story of a man who is caught between the past and the present. A man who has found contentment and happiness from being true to himself and his embracement of a time when things moved at a slower pace. A time when ones purpose was established in taking pride in what you do, no matter how insignificant it is perceived within society. **A movie about life.** What I enjoyed about this movie is how it brings the viewer into a first person perspective of the life journey of an ordinary person. This movie is as close to a first person encounter with Japanese day to day life, as you can obtain without actually living there. It does an excellent job of introducing a few unusual and odd personalities someone living in Japan will encounter. The majority of this movie could be watched without subtitles or audio, because it masterfully achieves the filmmaker goal of "show the story, instead of telling the story". Having lived in Japan as a teacher, this movie was like watching my own experience seen from the lense of a camera. It really represents life in Japan in true form. **Things I Didn't Enjoy** This is a very slow moving movie at three hours long. it could of been shorter and still achieved its goal. I'm not a fan of the transitional collages used to represent dreaming or the transition from night to day. These became redundant and felt like a waste of time. One of the things that makes a great story for a movie is its rising conflict and ultimately the resolution. This movie has a very slow rise in conflict, and the resolution felt almost to subtle. **Final Thoughts** The story is tight, the cinematography is well done, the editing is well done, the acting is authentic. I really enjoyed it, it is a really interesting story. I enjoyed the characters.