As an early birthay present, Niko Kamawari begins his first month living in a boarding house in Shibuya, Japan. But as he is unable to speak the language, the teenager struggles with many day-to-day activites. Just as Niko is considering giving up and moving back to New York City to live with his father, he comes across a quiet, pale-looking girl called Hanako, who can seemingly understand him.

But after meeting her, Niko begins to notice strange things about the boarding house and even his fellow boarding house members, like how some of them always are constantly wearing hats, scarves and thick coats inside, others always cover their mouths whenver they speak and some of them don't leave their rooms until nightfall. Even some normal everyday objects in the boarding house are begining to move about by themselves...

Things begin to get even weirder when suspicous black cars and even more suspicous men in black suits start appearing outside of the boarding house for no apparent reason...

Niko's stay in Japan may just end up being a lot more...eventful...than he and anyone else could have ever expected it to be...