Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

Taeko and Mokichi Satake are a childless married couple living in Tokyo. The husband, whom the wife thinks dull, is an executive at an engineering company. Taeko's friend Aya persuades Taeko to falsely claim to her husband that Taeko's brother's daughter, Setsuko, is ill, so that she can go to a spa with a couple of friends. The plan goes wrong when Setsuko visits her house unexpectedly, but Taeko substitutes the invalid with another friend, Takako, and obtains consent from her husband to go for a break. At the spa, the four women drink sake and look at the koi in the pond, comparing a slow moving black one to Taeko's husband.