" I had only had a few days in Tokyo this time. But that was long enough to get used to its ways again — stations where you never have to wait, trains that are never late, telephones that never break down, shop girls who bow to you and smile. It all went together with the high tech facade of the place, the insistent newness of it, the looming skyscrapers and streets crowded with people in chic black or sewer-rat grey, all inexplicably in a hurry. In the countryside, on the other hand, no-one was in a hurry. ‘Countryside’, actually, is rather a mistranslation. Inaka really means anywhere that is not Tokyo — the provinces, in other words, the boondocks, the sticks. "

― Lesley Downer , On the Narrow Road: Journey Into a Lost Japan