Outside the car windows the landscape was a textured patchwork: winter orchards, rice paddies and tile-roofed farmhouses all stitched together by the threads of narrow roads.
I kept one eye on the way ahead, but the other was caught by the repeating monochrome pattern of bare apple branches against the off-white of last week's snow. The hills in the near distance were white and gray with snow and leafless trees. A ragged horizon serrated the clear winter sky.
By train or on the expressway, Yudanaka is only an hour north of Nagano city, capital of its eponymous prefecture, but on the back roads it's a slower trip, and it was nearly evening when the three of us — my mother, sister and I — arrived in the quiet town.