Asian Drama

Ryo (played by Japanese music celebrity UA) has always had an affinity with water. Ever since she was young, important events in her life have been accompanied by rain. She runs a bath-house with her fiancé, until one day, during a rain-storm, he is killed in a car crash. Ryo becomes solitary and isolated, and the bath-house is closed. One day, however, she returns home to find a strange man, Yusaku (Asano Tadanobu - previously seen in Ichi the Killer), in her house. A pyromaniac by nature, his love of fire proves to be very useful to Ryo as he enlists him to keep the bath-house's furnace running. The pair soon enter into a love relationship, and the bath-house flourishes once more. However, Yusaku has a dark past, which threatens to resurface and destroy everything.

This drama is adapted from a Japanese television mini-series. In the story, an industrialist learns of a medical condition which will greatly shorten his life. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. Gradually he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series of challenges which profoundly test the lessons he has learned.