Fact1: stone is said to convey meaning through texture, Fact2: Daigo goes to interview Assuming it to be job in travel agency, Fact3: first assignment is to assist with encoffinment of woman, Fact4: Mika leaves him to return to parents home in training DVD Tokyo, Fact5: childhood memory of father 's face returns to him and after he finishes ceremony presses stone-letter to Mika 's pregnant belly
Output: Daigo Kobayashi Masahiro Motoki loses his job as a cellist when his orchestra is disbanded. He and his wife Mika Ryoko Hirosue move from Tokyo to his hometown in Yamagata, where they live in his childhood home that was left to him when his mother died two years earlier. It is fronted by a coffee shop that Daigos father had operated before he ran off with a waitress when Daigo was six; since then the two have had no contact. Daigo feels hatred towards his father and guilt for not taking better care of his mother. He still keeps a stoneletter—a stone which is said to convey meaning through its texture—which his father had given him many years before. Daigo finds an advertisement for a job assisting departures. Assuming it to be a job in a travel agency, he goes to the interview at the NK Agent office and learns from the secretary, Yuriko Kamimura Kimiko Yo, that he will be preparing bodies for cremation in a ceremony known as encoffinment. Though reluctant, Daigo is hired on the spot and receives a cash advance from his new boss, Sasaki Tsutomu Yamazaki. Daigo is furtive about his duties and hides the true nature of the job from Mika. His first assignment is to assist with the encoffinment of a woman who died at home and remained undiscovered for two weeks. He is beset with nausea and later humiliated when strangers on a bus detect an unsavoury scent on him. To clean himself, he visits a public bath which he had frequented as a child. It is owned by Tsuyako Yamashita Kazuko Yoshiyuki, the mother of one of Daigos former classmates. Over time, Daigo becomes comfortable with his profession as he completes a number of assignments and experiences the gratitude of the families of the deceased. Though he faces social ostracism, Daigo refuses to quit, even after Mika discovers a training DVD in which he plays a corpse and leaves him to return to her parents home in Tokyo. Daigos former classmate Yamashita Tetta Sugimoto insists that the mortician find a more respectable line of work and, until then, avoids him and his family. After a few months, Mika returns and announces that she is pregnant. She expresses hope that Daigo will find a job of which their child can be proud. During the ensuing argument, Daigo receives a call for an encoffinment for Mrs Yamashita. Daigo prepares her body in front of both the Yamashita family and Mika, who had known the public bath owner. The ritual earns him the respect of all present, and Mika stops insisting that Daigo change jobs. Sometime later, they learn of the death of Daigos father. A reluctant Daigo goes with Mika to another village to see the body. Daigo is at first unable to recognize him, but takes offence when local funeral workers are careless with the body. He insists on dressing it himself, and while doing so finds a stoneletter which he had given to his father, held tight in the dead mans hands. The childhood memory of his fathers face returns to him, and after he finishes the ceremony, Daigo gently presses the stoneletter to Mikas pregnant belly.