I Am Waiting

She believes she may have just killed someone. He is a restaurateur who will soon be leaving Japan to join his brother in Brazil, the brother who is in the process of buying a farm there. He is leaving Japan since there is no longer anything holding him there. These few pieces of information are about all each will tell the other during their first evening together after Saeko and Joji have a chance meeting one rain soaked late night outside Joji's port-side restaurant. Both are broken souls, Joji who reaches out in an effort to help someone who was contemplating suicide. When she learns that he going to Brazil, the only dream he has left, is in an effort to escape his troubles, she reaches out in return. In spending more time together, they will learn more about what troubles the other. Saeko is a classically trained opera singer who lost the ability to sing opera due to damaged vocal cords, she running away from that past which has some difficult emotional connotations beyond the singing. She now is reduced to singing under the stage name Reiko in a sleazy cabaret owned by a lowlife named Shibata, who believes he owns her as well. The man she thinks she may have killed is Shibata's brother, one of his strong arms, who tried to have his way with her. Joji is a former boxer who killed a man in a bar fight, which resulted in his boxing license being revoked. Regardless, he vowed never to fight again out of emotional guilt. Despite the other man starting the fight, he wants to go to Brazil to run away from that guilt. As Saeko and Joji get more entwined in helping the other, they will find that their troubles are more connected than they could have ever imagined, especially as Joji waits to hear from his brother about the farm purchase, his brother who he has not heard from in a year.