 Daigo Kobayashi ( Masahiro Motoki ) loses his job as a cellist when his orchestra is disbanded . He and his wife Mika ( Ryōko 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 Daigo 's 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 " letter @-@ stone " — a stone which is said to convey meaning through its texture — which his father had given him many years before . 
