This coming-of-age film is set in Kyoto around 1990. The heroine — brighteyed, hot-tempered Mizuho — hates her emotional, sloppy, drunk mother and loves her phlegmatic, wise-man father who is living with a new woman and starting a family. She also has a crush on the handsome star of the school swimming team. Then a brooding, friendly American, who limps from a Vietnam War wound, becomes a family friend and grows closer to her mother and little sister than Mizuho can tolerate, since she still dreams of patching her broken family back together. Her father, however, dashes her hopes of a reconciliation, while the swimmer spurns her clumsy, needy attempt at seduction.