A self-confident woman, an old, wise man, plenty of sake, some whale blubber, and repeatedly lotus root - the ingredients of this quiet, intriguingly foreign love story from Japan. Tsukiko is thirty-eight and lives alone. She believes she is not gifted for love. Then she encounters her old Japanese teacher in a pub, whom she only calls Sensei. He also lives alone, in a somewhat dilapidated apartment where he collects strange objects. One seeks the closeness of the other while simultaneously seeming to flee from it. Rarely has the approach of two people been described so subtly and yet so intensely.