Perfect Days is a "slice of life" light drama movie. It's relaxing to watch for the most part, though I can imagine some would find it boring to watch.

Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) just follows the motions, a strict daily routine of cleaning public toilets in Tokyo, which starts every morning with the sun and ends in the afternoon. We follow him as he wakes up from his dreams (flashes in black and white), brushes his teeth, gets in his van, and chooses what music to listen to every morning from his cassette (if you remember those, you'd also appreciate the music he listens too) collection.

It's like unwrapping a package carefully without damaging the paper, taking your time with it, finding a plain description-less box inside, then putting it on the kitchen table and staring at it, trying to think what's inside. What's next? What's going to happen today? Is it going to be bad? Good?

But nothing really happens, at least not the way you'd expect in most films. Everyone else besides Hirayama has a lot going on in their life, and they collide with him. And when they do, they get a piece of his peace, a chance to relax and play around a bit. I love this about this movie. This movie is about appreciating life, not celebrating it, just sitting down and smelling the flowers - or the tree leaves playing with the sunlight, in the case of Hirayama.

The toilets in the movie are actually "an urban renewal project through which 17 public toilets in the Japanese capital are being turned into veritable works of art by architects from around the world" (see more here
and here). Cool.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to create a list of this movie's songs.