An elderly couple, Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama, leaves their small coastal village in southern Japan to visit their married children in Tokyo. Their eldest son, Koichi, a doctor running a clinic in a working-class part of town, is too busy to show them around town, and their eldest daughter is occupied with her beauty salon. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, played memorably by Setsuko Hara, is willing to take time off work
