We lived on the “other side of the river” from the main part of the city in Shizuoka. The people there called it “the country”. We had a hatake in the back of our apartment. So I guess you could call that “country” if you lived in Japan, however, it had all the shops and grocery stores and etc as a suburban area in America. We lived in a place that was considered country even in the US. The population of the town was about 2500 and the middle school and high school were in the same building. So, there was not a whole lot of things going on. For most of the time we lived there, there wasn’t even a McDonalds! So living in Shizuoka’s “country” was a lot more like living in a city than in our small town here. In both places you could pretty much walk to where ever you wanted to go. The big difference is that there was a lot more of “nature” in the US small town. In our yard we had some big pine trees, a couple of plum trees and an apple tree. In the trees we had martins, squirrels and lots of different birds. We also had a really enjoyable birdfeeder outside our main window. We had fun going out to the countryside to visit our farmer friends and sometimes work for them. It was a lot different from living in Shizuoka.