A movie to make my day perfect

Movie title: Perfect Days

Realese year: 2023

It was some award news that brought the Perfect Days movie to my attention. Set in Japan, on the daily life of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, the simplicity of the setting could not attract me more! Japanese anime are very popular among many of my peers, but I wanted to see something from real life to know Japan first. So I explored the city, the parks, the crisscrossing flyovers that Hirayama drives on his way to work and Hirayama—the embodiment of a calm and quiet life in this busy time.

Hirayama works at The Tokyo Toilet. He has this amazing repertoire of cleaning tools and he gives his heart to his work. He wakes up before dawn, waters his plants, drives to work, works, takes his break inside a park and grabs his lunch. After work, he visits a bathhouse to take a bath. He cycles to his regular cafe, orders his regular choice. While he is living his day, he is living it fully. He is not listening to music on earphones, scrolling on his phone and grabbing his lunch. Hirayama doesn’t have an earphone. He listens to old cassettes from the 80's or so. Hy buys them from the old cassette shop. He prints his pictures shot in an out-of-market camera that he keeps in his breast pocket. Hirayama loves reading, his bookshelves say that. In his free time, he cycles to the bookstore, picks up a book from the shelf, starts reading it, and walks to the cash counter, his eyes reading the lines from the book. And the woman in the cash counter fixes her gaze from the book that she was reading to the book Hirayama brought and remarks the specialty of the book he chose. This was probably the most favorite moment in the film for me!

Hirayama is someone who notices the color of the sky, the daylight, the shadow of trees, the reflection of a busy street on a piece of object, who carefully brings a tiny plant home. His home’s lighting system is from the 80’s, and it looks perfectly in place. Not much dialogue going on, and that’s the beauty, isn’t it? Just slow down for two hours, see a day of Hirayama, cherish the present and feel the urge for a quieter life, a simple life, doesn’t need to be like everyone else.

After a good, tiring day, the way Hirayama falls asleep reading—makes me crave for a life like him!

A peek of Japan, and a flashback of a quieter take of life, so refreshing to see.