Pic opens with a black-clad gunman, wounded in a botched hit, staggering into an austere apartment and collapsing. Tenants are then introduced at leisure, chief among them the Shibuyas, a young couple in the throes of seemingly terminal ennui exacerbated when the husband loses his job writing the TV show "Liquidman." Group's reaction to all marital friction is to grab baseball gloves and have a game of catch, although their pursuit of a place to play eventually gets them in trouble when they dent an expensive sports car.

The landlady, Miss Nezu, is an efficient type who regularly visits odd octogenarian Mrs. Okubo (who screams each day at noon "so people will know I am still alive") and reveals to Mr. Shibuya the empty flat papered with sketched self-portraits where she spends most of her free time. Another tenant, Ochiai, is a young American-Japanese student neglected by her party-girl mom and obsessedwith getting perfect grades, while a more mysterious female neighbor is stalked by a stranger who turns out to have a unique financial relationship with the woman.