Umi Komatsuzaki, a high school first-year in late-1960s Yokohama, takes on running her family's boarding house after her sailor father is lost at sea, while her mother works abroad as a photographer. Between the household and her studies she grows close to Shun Kazama, a second-year who runs the school newspaper, and comes to know student council president Shirou Mizunuma and Sachiko Hirokouji, one of the lodgers. This manga is the original story behind Studio Ghibli's 2011 film From Up on Poppy Hill, which shortens the heroine's surname to Matsuzaki and moves the setting to 1963.