A middle-aged Japanese man who cleans public toilets for a living.
He lives alone. No smartphone. Listens to cassette tapes he's owned for decades.
Every day is almost exactly the same as the day before.
There is no villain. No love story. No twist. Almost no plot at all.
You might be wondering what, exactly, you've done to deserve this.
That's fair. Stay with me for five minutes.
Plot is a delivery mechanism. It's not the only one.
Think about a song you've listened to a hundred times.
You already know every word. Every chord change.
You are not there for new information.
You are there for the feeling.
Perfect Days works the same way. It isn't asking "what happens next?" —
it's asking: "what does this feel like?"
That's a different kind of attention. It takes a minute to find. But it's there.
Instead of plot, you get this.
A partial inventory of what two hours with Hirayama actually contains:
Sound
A cassette tape going into a player at 5 a.m. Van Morrison. Patti Smith. Lou Reed. The Kinks. Through the window of a cleaning van, at full volume, alone.
Light
The Japanese word komorebi — light filtering through leaves. Hirayama photographs it. Every day, the same tree. Every day, slightly different light.
Ritual
Coffee from a vending machine. Tending small plants. Reading until sleep comes. Each gesture chosen, repeated — and somehow not dulled by the repetition.
The music matters. More than you might expect.
These are not streaming playlists. They are cassette tapes — physical objects Hirayama has chosen to keep, and to keep playing, for decades.
Lou Reed"Perfect Day"
Patti Smith"Redondo Beach"
Van MorrisonAstral Weeks
The Kinks"Sunny Afternoon"
Otis Redding"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"
Nina Simone"Feeling Good"
This man chose to spend his days cleaning public toilets in Tokyo.
He chose these songs to do it to. What does that tell you?
Here's why this is actually about you.
Every system around you has a message.
Your grades are being tracked. Your rank is visible. Your future is being planned.
Your social feed is showing you a version of life you haven't achieved yet.
Somewhere, someone already has a picture of who you're supposed to become.
All of it says the same thing: what you have right now is not enough.
Hirayama has somehow stopped hearing that message.
Not by giving up. Not by failing. By finding something else entirely.
You don't need to analyse. Just let these in.
Not tasks. Not essay prompts. Just things worth noticing.
Notice what makes him smile. He smiles more than you might expect for someone doing a job most people would look down on.
Notice the music. What does each song feel like in its moment? Why that song, then?
Notice how other people respond to him. Genuine contentment, it turns out, can make people uncomfortable. Watch for why.
If you feel impatient — notice that too. The film knows you might. That feeling is part of what it's asking.
The first time I watched this, I didn't want it to end.
Not because something dramatic was happening —
because I wanted to stay inside that life a little longer.
I'm showing it to you because I think you'll understand why.