Kitchen (and Moonlight Shadow)

Most editions also include a novella entitled Moonlight Shadow, which is also a tragedy dealing with loss and love. 

In the novel, a young Japanese woman named Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother. She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transsexual mother.

The novel centers around food and its preparation. From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into life of a young Japanese woman and her discoveries about food and love.