Akio Kanzaki’s job as head of human resources is wearing his nerves thinner and thinner. To make matters worse, he’s on the brink of divorce with his wife, and his relationship with his college-student daughter isn’t exactly smooth sailing. One day, he decides to drop in to Tokyo’s old-timey district to visit his mother Fukue. However, things seem a little off. His mother used to be always working with an apron on, but now she’s covered in stylish clothes, looking livelier than ever, and even in love! Akio becomes perplexed, feeling out of place in his own mother’s home, but after encountering kind, warm—and almost nosey—neighbors and a side of his mother he’d never seen before, Akio gradually starts to discover something he had lost sight of.
Set in Sapporo during the oil crisis of the early '70s, the film centers on the Hokkaitei soba stand run by a stoic patriarch and his perky wife. One New Year's day, a haggard-looking mother and her two adorable moppets poke their heads into the restaurant and ask for a single bowl of kakesoba. Noticing that the trio is looking a little low in the heels, she puts in an extra scoop of noodles. The youngest boy declares that the soba is delicious. The next year, the same threesome appears again asking for one bowl of kakesoba. This time the old man dumps in two helpings. He is struck by how much the youngest looks like their own son who was hit by a truck three years previous. The following year, the three return and this time the mother tells her story...
