Mitsuyoshi Tada. Say that name with me. Tada. You know what that sounds like? It sounds like nothing. It sounds like a guy who has never experienced the dramatic, heart-stopping, knee-weakening phenomenon that the rest of us call love. And that is exactly who he is. This boy has gone through his entire life without so much as a flutter in his chest, without a single embarrassing crush, without ever understanding why people in movies make such a big deal about romance. He probably thought love was something that happened to other people, like winning the lottery or getting upgraded to first class.
And then one day, he is out taking pictures of cherry blossoms, because apparently he is the kind of thoughtful, observant person who notices when the trees are in full bloom and thinks, I should capture this moment. And in the middle of this peaceful, poetic scene, in walks Teresa Wagner, a transfer student from Luxembourg, which is already interesting because how many people from Luxembourg do you actually meet in your lifetime? She is lost, she is separated from her travel companion, and she is standing there in the middle of Japan looking like someone who just fell out of a very different story and landed in his.
Tada, being the decent human being he is, helps her out and brings her to his grandfather's coffee shop. And just like that, his entire carefully constructed love-free existence starts to crack. Because Teresa is not just lost geographically. There is something about her, something that makes you feel like she is also lost in a bigger, more existential sense, and that she might have stumbled into Tada's world for a reason neither of them can explain yet. What follows is the kind of gentle, beautiful, achingly sweet romance that sneaks up on you the way spring sneaks up on winter, slowly and inevitably, until suddenly everything is in bloom and you realize you have been smiling at your screen for the last twenty minutes without noticing.
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