A little article I wrote for Senses of Cinema on Kurosawa Kyoshi's
film:

http://tinyurl.com/hvt2e

Excerpt

Looking at Kurosawa Kiyoshi's "Kairo" (Pulse, 2001) again on DVD, it
is all the more apparent that the ironic subtext is that with all
the means of connecting with others--email, webcams, the cellphone--
people are still alienated. Kawashima (Haruhiko Katô), the computer-
illiterate economics major, doesn't seem to have anyone, neither
friend nor family (that said, he's the most resilient, and most
persistently optimistic of anyone in the picture); pretty Harue
(Koyuki), to whom Kawashima is attracted, has acquaintances--the
students she helps out in the computer lab, the graduate student
Yoshizaki (Shinji Takeda)--plus she's more aware of what's going on,
but if anything this makes her more susceptible (it's the computer
geeks that fall victim first).

The one group that shows any cohesiveness are the employees of Sunny
Plant Sales, a tiny business that grows orchids and other exotic
plants on a rooftop greenhouse. Michi (Kumiko Aso), one of the
employees, is worried for Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi) and visits him
at his apartment (where he promptly hangs himself); she and fellow
colleagues Junko (Kuruma Arisaka) and Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo) meet
at a café afterwards to talk about the suicide, and it's clear from
their interaction that they (and the absent Taguchi) were friends.