Kitchen

Kitchens represent happiness for Mikage. When she is overwhelmed by death, kitchens represent the place in the home that symbolizes life. When Mikage’s grandmother dies, Mikage sleeps in the kitchen and feels better. When she moves in with the Tanabes, she sleeps on a couch near the kitchen and falls in love with their lived-in kitchen. When she has a breakdown on a bus one evening, she runs into an alley and is made happy again by the sounds coming from a kitchen. Kitchens symbolize a space with creative life force, a power that fights against all the death around her. 

Hitoshi’s bell was given to him by Satsuki and he kept it with him all the time. Satsuki says it got to the point where she could hear the bell even when he was not around. Bells symbolize awareness, and act as harbingers of such awareness. The bell Satsuki gave Hitoshi belonged to her cat, and would have indicated where the cat was at all times. In a sense, it was a way for the cat to be found, or for its presence to be known. When Hitoshi reappears, his appearance is preceded by the bell chiming, thus highlighting awareness for Satsuki: her dead lover has been found and she is in his presence once again.