If you listen to the 8-4 podcast this week they had a brief talk about Persona 3 and 4 and
what they said really rings true: the games' walking-around-the-world segments are really designed 100% to reflect what living in Japan is just like. Persona 4 in particular absolutely captures the sensation of living in a sleepy old inaka town. Hell, I actually think my place might have been a little bigger than Inaba because we had:
a) A castle
b) TWO shopping districts
c) multiple train stations within the town.
I'll link a few pictures in text because it's a bit off-topic but I do want to show what the place where I lived kind of was like.
View from one of the schools where I worked
One of my classrooms
The Fog Descends
My other school
View from my apartment