Yasutake Shingo is a newspaper reporter whose only redeeming feature is his earnestness. He meets Matsunaga Chie, who attends a music college, and they start dating. Each day becomes all the more bright and enjoyable for Shingo because of the lively Chie. She loves to laugh, sing and eat. After one and a half years, Chie is employed as a music teacher. One day, Shingo is informed that Chie has breast cancer. After thinking about it, he decides to share a lifetime with her and proposes. His proposal gives her the courage to undergo surgery which she had been mulling over. One day, Chie starts to teach 5-year-old Hana the “important things in life” such as laundry, cleaning and cooking. She thinks that even if she is no longer around, her daughter and husband will be able to live.
"The Soup, One Morning" depicts the gradual dissolution of a relationship caused by mental illness. Kitagawa and Shizu are lovers and roommates. Suffering from a panic disorder, Kitawgawa estranges himself from the world and entraps himself in the claustrophobic confines of the apartment. He leaves only to attend his new seminar. Initially heartened by his interest in this new venture, Shizu senses something fishy when he shows up with a strange amulet and begins to fill their place with unfamiliar furniture. When he commences rambling about the karmic life, she realizes that the man she cares for has become a complete stranger.
An officer struggles to solve a murder case despite being at odds with his lieutenant. Officer Tetsubei discovers the body of a man whose face has been crushed and his fingerprints erased. Tetsubei describes the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body, including his own theory, and is angered by Lieutenant Yukari. That night, Tetsubei visits the shop of Kanako, whom he has a secret crush on. There, Mizutani, Kanako's husband, who has been missing for seven years, appears.
Nakata, an author, resides utilizing the painful memory regarding the death of his partner, whoever life had been cut short a few many years earlier. Ended up being it a crash or ended up being it suicide? Doubt persists. In order to escape his guilty Nakata, conscience gives up on marriage and fatherhood. Hence freed, he embarks on an obsessive intimate records and jeorney his activities in a book, "The Dark Room". A philisophical essay on sexuality, reproduction and the fate of mankind.
