“Even in a period when outdoor shooting was a norm for Japanese directors, it must have seemed very audacious to make a film entirely on location, both inside and outside a bus chugging its way through the hills and villages of rural Japan. But Shimizu pulls it off, tracking away along the winding paths and introducing a prize collection of nice, nasty, funny and awkward passengers, accompanied by some favorite American tunes to help along the journey. The studio-recorded dialogue is a mistake, but you can't have everything.” John Gillett, British Film Institute