A bit more.

Almost smiling with the relief that entering the highway wicket gave from the sweltering heat and oppressive Nagoya traffic, the car accelerated hard and merged smoothly into the northbound lane. It was unseasonably hot for November, another sign that for all its' technology, Japan was not immune to climate change. The boom of the Hokkaido ski areas hadn't lasted long, the world famous powder snow vanished less than ten years after the Australian entrepreneurs revived the ailing domestic resorts. That, combined with the worst financial crisis on record had cost a job and meant that the stay in the ski village was less than a year. You didn't mind, though, as your heart belonged here in Central Japan, except for the damn summer heat, and now here it was back again. It was a small price to pay for all the things you loved.

Within minutes the impossibly high density urban areas were left behind, and the trees and mountains began to dominate the views on either side of the highway. It was almost a ritual now to muse about your misconceptions of Japan upon passing this point. No matter how many times you drove into the country and admired the order of the rice paddies, the pleasing layouts of old country houses and gardens, the steepness of the wonderfully crinkled hills that had that unique way of catching and holding low clouds, you never stopped appreciating the beauty of rural Japan, and chuckling for believing Japan to be one huge city-state like something out of a robot-catching Sci-Fi movie. But it goes much further than that, there were so many things, and it took so long to learn. You're still learning every day, as is she.