The best Toshiyuki Nishida’s romance movies

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Set in a five star Tokyo hotel on New Year's Eve, the film follows the misadventures of various hotel staff and guests in the run-up to midnight. The plot involves numerous characters, the different problems or situations they face in the run-up to midnight, and the ways that these different storylines interact and are resolved. The film is reminiscent of the Hollywood screwball comedies of 1930s and 1940s, and explicitly references the 1932 film Grand Hotel, whose plot also followed the interlinked lives of various characters in a fictional hotel over a short period.

Shinya is in debt as a result of his gambling habit. He attempts to defraud an old woman with a bank transfer scam, but the woman reminds him of his late mother and they start to relate to each other. Meanwhile, Shinya meets a girl called Hisako in town, and ends up helping her to find out the whereabouts of an unsuccessful comedian, Raita, whom her mother was in love with in her youth. Shinya's father, Ryutaro, is disowned by his son after his wife's death. When Ryutaro meets a homeless man called Moses, he starts living on the street as well. One day when the old woman dies, Moses comes to the deceased and confesses his past. Subsequently Shinya resumes communicating with his father Ryutaro.

Director Yukihiko Tsutsumi wrings laughs out of an unlikely topic -- domestic violence -- in this dark comedy about noodle-shop waitress Yukie Morita (Miki Nakatani), who puts up with the fiery temper, gambling and cruelty of her shiftless, ex-gangster boyfriend (Hiroshi Abe). But as flashbacks reveal, there's a reason behind Yukie's unconditional love for her man. Yûko Natori and Mayumi Sada also star.

A martial arts master/detective investigates a series of murders and helps a deaf bathhouse attendant, Hisako.