Sakura, a fourth-generation Japanese American, has just finished college and is trying to decide what to do with her life. After considering going with her boyfriend, Robbie, to his job in New York, she decides to spend a year in Japan to try and rediscover her roots. Accepting a job as a teacher in a rural, all-boys middle school, she packs up and leaves America. She experiences a bit of a shock, however, when she discovers that the real Japan and the Japan of her imagination are not quite the same thing.