A film based on two short stories by Shiina Makoto. Tadon is the story of a cab-driver who spends his days listening to his passengers' conversations. Chikuwa is about a writer who faces a creativity bottleneck.
Filmed in a documentary style six patients in six wards of different ages and circumstances await death at a hospital in Japan. The sterile and dismal environment is contrasted against the emotional being of the patients, their visitors and relatives and the outside world, which they will never again survey.
A hard-working section chief, fast approaching retirement and beset by stress from all directions, joins a jazz band and reignites his youthful passion for the music, giving him a chance to set things right in his life.