Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled Departures thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life.
An American slacker (Brittany Murphy, 8 Mile; Girl, Interrupted) abandoned by her boyfriend in Tokyo finds her calling in an unlikely place: a local ramen house run by a tyrannical chef who doesn't speak of a word of English. Undaunted by the chef's raging crankiness, Abby convinces him to teach her the art of ramen preparation...and despite hilarious clashes of culture and personality, she learns how to put passion and spirit into her life as well as her cooking.
The 1970s were difficult years for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Following the box-office failure of his 1970 film Dodes'ka-den and an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Kurosawa was unable to find financial backing in Japan, and he made his acclaimed 1975 film Dersu Uzala in Siberia with Russian financing.
