My fondest adolescent memory of anything Japanese came delightfully bow-wrapped in the form of Beach Boys and Meiji chocolate. Gingerly savoring the first taste of heady euphoria, a product of watching Takashi Sorimachi and Yutaka Takenouchi emit waves and waves of their boyish charms while munching on equally delectable chocolate sticks, has since become a tough benchmark to beat.

So here I was, nine years down the road, and a little tired and suspicious of anything kawaii, from Hello Kitty to the Korean dramas that stole my heart.

Nada Sou Sou (loosely translated as Tears For You) is essentially a soap opera squeezed into an impossible (but they did it!) time frame of two hours. Orphaned when he was eight, Yota (Satoshi Tsumabuki of Water Boys fame) makes a pinky promise to his mother on her deathbed to take care of his step sister Kaoru (Masami Nagasawa). And so he does, even at the expense of sacrificing his four year relationship with his beautiful and wealthy medical student girlfriend.

Through various flashbacks, the story develops to reveal a subdued but very much alive undercurrent of love between the siblings that exceeds conventional boundaries. The family tree is complex. In gist, the step siblings are not biologically related. In order to maintain status quo, Kaoru decides to move out when she enrolls into college.

While Tokyo is the undisputed pulse of cosmopolitan living, Okinawa, where the film is set, is an enclave of hospitality and small town allure. What the movie lacked in originality of script, it made up for with both rugged seashore scenery and bustling market scenes that possessed the magic to revive a longing for the simple, a memory that childhood took with it.

Director Nobuhiro Doi recycled the themes of unrequited love and dreams dashed to produce a production that stayed two weeks at the top of the box office when it was released in Japan last year. The cornerstone of this film, given how ordinary the plot was, lies in being able to peel off layers of human superficiality to let slip unspoken sentiments that are far more persuasive than dialogue and which, you will undoubtedly take to heart.

With Nada Sou Sou, one gets the best of both worlds - drama without the sobs delays. It is as easy to rip the movie apart as it is easy to enjoy its feel-good simplicity. To paraphrase one of my favorite editorials by Francis Pharcellus Church, watch the film if you believe, even with the accidental veil of cynicism and jadedness, that "only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond."