You might be the next.

I am about to be 60 years old, and I notice myself getting forgetful day after day.

Particularly I felt appalled when Saeki (lead character acted by Watanabe Ken) is appalled by his rapid change with the progress of the symptoms, that started from just feeling hard to recall proper names to being unable to recognize his people in the office.

The performances of Watanabe Ken and Higuchi Kanako (as Saeki's wife Emiko) is very convincing. The husband and wife had to confront this big trial when they were going to live alone after raising up their daughter.

This movie asks you this question: If you had Alzheimer's disease and you would no longer be yourself what will you live by?

********* Spoiler from here ********

This is an excellent movie, but the last episode when Saeki visits the nursing home and old clay kiln is questionable.

He visits the new place only guided by a pamphlet. Furthermore, he looks so mature that the nursing home principal is surprised knowing he is the one to be nursed. Then he receives a call from Emiko in front of a station, and from there he walks into mountain with a bottle of sake he buys at a store nearby the station. Surprisingly, the dead end is the abandoned clay kiln where he and Emiko met 25 years ago. So, are the nursing home and the clay kiln near from the same station? Or, could he travel two places by train on a day, who must be in mid-stage of Alzheimer's disease? When he left home, he had the pamphlet and a clay cup. Therefore from the beginning he meant to visit two places. From when he is guided in the nursing home he does not have the cup in his hand.

I was very confused by the scene Saeki draws a picture on the cup left in the abandoned kiln. He looks lively listening to young Emiko in hallucination: When she was born her father saw chestnuts in the garden, and named the baby Emiko (meaning branches and fruits). Saeki no longer wears a hat and outer cloth. Then Emiko disappears and the old clay teacher appears. This is too good a timing that I was confused if the whole scene was hallucination or real.

While I was still confused, Saeki wakes up the next morning there. He remembers that he and the teacher burned the clay cup last night, which he digs out of charcoal. But when Emiko comes to him he can not recognize her. This gap of cognitives ability is out of reality. Emiko is shocked with it, and cries, but soon she regains herself and walks with him. This last scene is beautiful and the best to end the movie. Maybe, director Tsutsumi knowingly ignored the contradiction,because he wanted to show this last scene. Yes, to portray truth, a level of unreality can be accepted in movies. But Tsutsumi should have been more careful to keep audiences from confusion, so that the audiences can focus to receive the message. At least, how Saeki treats the cup, his hat and outer cloths should be shown at close-up.

If "Memories of Tomorrow" seems like "The Notebook," it's because the cinematic adaptation of a novel by Hiroshi Ogiwara deals with the dreaded Alzheimer's disease as it slowly eats away at Masayuki Saeki's (Ken Watanabe) memories and, therefore, life, a process foreshadowed by an image in its opening credits of buildings being constructed played in reverse such that they appear to be deconstructing. Yet the similarity with Nick Cassavetes' sudsy interpretation of Nicholas Sparks' novel end there, as director Yukihiko Tsutsumi, barring a manipulative second act, presents the film's first hour set in corporate Tokyo with such rhythmic precision and expert framing that the urgency of Masayuki's anger and panic over his gradual descent into senility is masterfully portrayed.

A go-getting manager at a top ad agency, Masayuki, just a few months shy of his 50th birthday, has landed a major deal with a client and along with a doting wife Emiko (Kanako Haguchi) and a soon-to-be-married daughter Rie (Kazue Fukiishi), his life isn't just stable; it's an enviable accomplishment. Yet because he keeps on forgetting his clients' names, the highway exit to his daughter's house, and pretty much every trivial details in his life, he sees a doctor as Emiko suggests, where he learns that he suffers the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease.

As typified by one sequence where Masayuki gets lost in Shibuya, Tsutsumi deftly captures his protagonist's mad dash effort to make sense of both his external and internal environment, be it finding his way to the office, or remembering where his marketing team sat during an Italian lunch, or contemplating whether to jump from a ledge upon his disease's confirmation. Tsustumi radically differs in pacing and tone during the latter half as -- after a cheery montage of Masayuki's newfound domestic life following his early retirement -- he deliberates on the emotional and psychological issues of Masayuki, who now removed from the daily stress of urban life, finds it hard to adjust. Insistently stating the fragility of the human mind and human relationships with recurring images of potteries, china wares and cups, Tsutsumi eventually leaves the film to simmer in a treacly syrup which, while admittedly touching, leaves a bitter aftertaste.

This is the first movie to feature Ken Watanabe in the lead role. This may come as a surprise to many of us who've seen Ken in movies like "The Last Samurai", and other Japanese movies. He was the star in these movies, but surprise to learn that he was never the lead actor until this movie.

In fact, Ken was the one who've suggested to make the novel of the same title by Hiroshi Ogiwara into a movie. He saw similarity between himself who had a bout with leukemia with the main character of the novel Masayuki Saeki. The movie that was the first film to feature him as its star won the Japanese Academy Award for 2006.

This is a good movie that portrays the life of 49 year old middle aged executive who contracts Alzheimer's disease at the peak of his career. The confusion, and desperation of the man who's career is about to be taken away from him, and the courage him and his wife shows to combat the life that's before them is more suspenseful than your average action movie. The kind of courage and dignity the main character Saeki has is probably what Ken Watanabe has as a person as well.

Ken Watanabe is brilliant in this movie, and its worth every minute of your time to see him in action.