Virgin Road (1997)

To pursue her dreams, Sakurai Kazumi (Wakui Emi) quits her job and goes to New York to study jewelry design, against the objections of her naggy and stubborn but well-meaning father (Takeda Tetsuya). As part of remaking herself, she changes from spectacles to contact lenses, even though she has problems adapting to them. When she accidentally drops her contact lenses, a mysterious man helps prevent them from being stepped on, but he walks away before she can talk to him. Some years pass, and Kazumi is on a plane home after receiving a letter from her brother Taku saying their father is critically ill. She has morning sickness and has some run-ins on the plane with a sloppily-dressed man, and it is only when she drops her contacts and the man helps her in a similar way that she recognises him (Sorimachi Takashi). She chases after him and asks, "would you like to do some work (arubaito)?" It turns out that Kazumi in her last letter from New York had written that she was in a relationship with someone and that they might soon marry, but since then she has broken up with him, and she didn't want to make her father upset by coming home alone. The man, a freelance journalist named Yoshimi Kaoru, agrees to pretend to be her fiancé.

Michio MitsunoDirector