Austerity. It's a word steeped in meaning. No one is more aware of a stagnant economy than the Japanese people, who are spending less and learning to relish cheap, imported goods.

"Maybe Japanese people will start moving back to the countryside," says an American friend of mine, referring to the more affordable lifestyle it offers. I look into her wild excited eyes and see galloping horses headed westward across Japan, closely followed by four-wheel drive Toyota trucks full of futons, rice cookers and toilet slippers — a Manifest Destiny of Japan — snaking along the Tokaido to Osaka like Golden Week traffic, and continuing all the way to Kyushu through the verdant rice fields of Japan's countryside — a mass movement of people returning to their roots.

Doting grandmothers in aprons, with pots full of miso soup bubbling away in their kitchens, stand outside waiting for the oncoming furusato stampede of grandsons and granddaughters finally coming home to the good life.