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 to show the couple the sights of Tokyo. The older children arrange for their parents to visit Atami Hot Springs.