Toru Tachibana is a police officer who works as a guard at a detention center. He and his colleague Nakano, who lives in a shared room in a bachelor dormitory, are a good pair, joking around with each other. One day, Toru gets his dream job as a detective. He becomes involved in the investigation of a serial theft case, and in the process meets Emiko, who seems to be one of the victims of the theft. Toru develops a personal interest in Emiko, and begins to stalk her.

When her husband is hospitalized with tuberculosis, Chika has a series of three relationships: with a teacher in her hometown, with a student in Tokyo, and with an aging gangster.

An ordinary salary man, Junosuke, goes in search of his lover, Miharu, who disappeared one night when she handed him the key to her room, and promised to be back in five minutes. She had only gone out to buy apples at the nearby convenience store, because Junosuke has one for breakfast every morning. Slightly drunk from the cocktail he had had earlier, Junosuke falls asleep, and wakes up the next morning to find that Miharu had never returned.

A woman has a fine life with rewarding work, a nice house, and a serious boyfriend in the lowlands of Japan. In walks her long lost husband who years ago disappeared and abandoned her. The wife allows her lost husband to secretly live in her house. More specifically, he lives in the wife's closet. The closet has a peep hole, so he does nothing day and night but watch his wife live her life.

Asako in Ruby Shoes succeeds in providing yet another challenge to views of a homogeneous South Korea by presenting to us the Asian side of modern globalization. The film jumps back and forth from Korea and Japan, with each main character feeling out of place in their respective homes.

Infected with Tomie's blood, a surgeon disappears, leaving his daughter, Yumi, to try to discover Tomie's identity and to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance.

Kuki is a veteran newspaper reporter who has been shuffled off to a book-development branch and finds escape in an illicit relationship with Rinko. Together they find the passion no longer present in their marriages.

A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.