It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Oscars in 2009 and the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year at the 32nd Japan Academy Prize. Apart from that it has received good reviews.
"Even as it gently insists on the normalcy, the inevitability, the meaningfulness of mortality, it leaves you feeling so familiar with death you may want to wash your hands and change your clothes afterward." Philip Kennicott. Washington Post. (19/06/2009).
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtdENmR6jKw