Middle-aged Takamiya Riichi drives the midnight bus between Tokyo and snow-swept Niigata, where he lives. Just as the relationship with his younger girlfriend is about to bloom, his emotionally desperate ex-wife suddenly reappears. At the same time, their son inexplicably quits his job in Tokyo and returns home, and their soon-to-be-engaged daughter espouses defiant resentment at her mother for leaving them in the first place. Based on an award-winning novel, this deceptively quiet tale eloquently details a broken family coming to terms with the quotidian yet often suffocating travails of blood relations, love, and life itself.