A boy growing up during Japan’s postwar economic ascendancy comes to grips with the sudden death of his mother and the eventual passing of his blind, aging father.

After a death in the family, a son travels with his father to his rural Mexican hometown to settle the estate. The town is littered with all the abandoned houses, roads, and people left behind that didn't migrate to big cities; a fate which his father fears will be his if he does not immigrate to California like his brother.