Where in the countryside do you live? When I lived there we had, what I termed as a garden, but the Japanese called hatake — something vastly different. When I first arrived in Shizuoka and got a job, I made the mistake of talking with other sensei as we were traveling to our class site, when we passed by some hatake, I made the mistake of saying that they looked like nice little gardens. They were a tad irritated about that. Now I realize the differences between here and there. They measure land by the tsubo ( roughly 2 meters square) while we measure land by the acre or hectare ( again a vast difference in size). I must say though, I never got lonely, even when I lived alone in an apartment with the old style toilet and a kyodo-ofuro. Funny thing though, they preferred me to go in last, which I liked because I could take as much time in the bath as I liked. (They were very careful to teach me how to use the bath, first. Soap, rinse, and then bathtub.