‘Mei fa zi’ means: ‘I can’t do anything about it’. It is a statement that Zhou, a thirty-year-old Chinese, has said countless times in the five years he has spent in Tokyo. He has the feeling that everything he does goes wrong. Zhou has an advice bureau for foreigners. With two other Chinese men he uses his company to fence stolen goods, to defraud, to launder money, forge passports and organise sham marriages. He is aware that all these activities are illegal, but he and his colleagues have to take anything to make ends meet. Zhou is however not satisfied with these petty criminal activities, he is planning something big, something good or something bad he can put all his efforts into. Kazuo and Ali are also interested in making the big time. Kazuo is a failed painter and drug addict who went to New York ten years ago and is now back in Tokyo, and Ali is a rich man’s son from Pakistan who has a quarrel in Tokyo with another Pakistani and then looks for adventure. Using these characters, director Hanawa sketches a picture of Tokyo and portrays a group of people in their thirties who have not yet found out who they are.
