Hoo-wee. Call me Kurosawa because I just wrote a veritable Japanese epic. This two-part series—a first-person narrative doubling as a travel guide—chronicles a journey through Tohoku, the rugged northern reaches of Honshu. I’ve broken it into two installments, partly because there’s too much ground to cover in a single story—and mainly because I intend to pull you into my The Manual byline as much as possible. Part One takes us through Fukushima and Yamagata; Part Two continues north through Miyagi, Aomori, and Akita.
Well, gentle reader, that’s enough for a preface. Don your reading glasses, settle in, and pour a dram of Nikka Whisky. We’ll visit the distillery soon enough.
My old boarding school pal, Ryuji, is a true man of the world. He’s lived in a dozen countries, speaks as many languages as a Renaissance diplomat, and works for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. On a recent trip to Japan, I caught up with him at Old Imperial Bar, a splendid cocktail den at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo. As we sipped pours of Hakushu 18, he said something that stuck with me: “Japan reveals its soul most fully in the satoyama.”
Literally “village mountain,” satoyama refers to the zone where villages and farms gradually yield to wilderness. It’s a landscape of rice paddies and solitary temples, cedar forests and mountain villages, crimson-crowned cranes and ochre-clad monks. For centuries, this idyllic borderland has inspired Japan’s greatest poets, painters, and mystics.
Nowhere is the satoyama more majestic than in Tohoku, the misty northern reaches of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Thinly populated and far removed from the tourist trail, Tohoku is a realm of craggy coasts, samurai castles, and rivers lined with cherry blossom trees. Matsuo Bashō, Japan’s answer to Wordsworth, immortalized its landscapes in verse. New Englander that I am, it reminds me of Maine—boreal, sylvan, and pleasantly remote.
While the scenery was the initial pull, I found Tohoku’s culture just as enthralling. Its unhurried, genial spirit is a welcome foil to Tokyo’s bustle and Kyoto’s hushed grandeur. Tohoku was long a bastion of samurai culture, and stately castles and old post towns still dot the terrain. The smoky, rustic cuisine includes regional specialties like negi soba and horse-meat sashimi, while its famous apples, pears, and cherries find their way into ice cream, confections, and liqueurs. For sake connoisseurs, Tohoku commands the same reverence Burgundy does for wine collectors.
As with most of Japan, rail travel in Tohoku is nearly effortless. With a week and change, you can see all six prefectures. Each season brings its own distinct beauty. Autumn with its crimson maples and crisp air. Winter with its long, cozy nights and snow-capped mountains. And summer with clear blue skies and riotously abundant orchards. I should probably keep this a secret, but Tohoku’s spring cherry blossoms are every bit as magnificent as those in Kyoto or Nara—without anything like the crowds.
Fukushima Prefecture
As my bullet train roared north from Ueno Station, the concrete and glass of Tokyo gradually gave way to rice paddies and misty mountains. I unwrapped an ekiben, one of my favorite treats aboard Japanese trains, and a refreshment cart soon began making the rounds through the aisles. Two hours and three Asahi lagers later, I reached my first destination in Tohoku: Fukushima.
I was in high school when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated Tohoku in 2011, triggering the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. I recall the heartbreaking images of evacuees and razed towns, but something else struck me just as powerfully: the unbreakable spirit of Fukushima’s people. Survivors mobilized, with strangers helping each other find medicine, shelter, and food. Within weeks of the destruction, Fukushima began the long work of rebuilding.
My first stop was the Hideyo Noguchi Memorial Museum. Dr. Noguchi was a giant of 20th-century medicine who conducted pioneering research into syphilis, yellow fever, and other infectious diseases. The obstacles he overcame are as impressive as his scientific achievements: born into rural poverty, he suffered severe burns as a toddler that left his left hand badly deformed. Japan honored his legacy by placing his likeness on the former ¥1,000 banknote.
I had lunch in Ouchijuku, a serene mountain village lined with traditional thatched-roof wooden houses. The regional specialty, negi soba, is buckwheat noodles in a light broth with a leek the size of a police baton protruding from the bowl. Diners scoop up the chewy noodles with the hefty allium instead of chopsticks. It’s as playful and delicious as it sounds.
I took a post-prandial stroll and found a small sake shop. Throughout my travels across Japan, I have noticed that almost every prefecture lays claim to the nation’s finest sake. Fukushima, however, makes a convincing case. Its cold winters allow for slow fermentation. Pristine mountain water nourishes a delicate rice varietal called Yume no Kaori, while the craft of brewing here stretches back centuries. After sampling the shop’s wares, I snagged two green, oblong bottles to take back to New York.
Around sunset, I checked into Hotel Harataki, an unfussy, comfortable auberge. I had worked up an appetite after a full day of walking, and to my delight, dinner was shabu-shabu—Japanese hotpot. Seated in a koshitsu, or private dining room, I simmered strips of marbled beef, mushrooms, and mountain vegetables in a bubbling pot of dashi. In the interest of research, I made ample use of the dining room’s sake dispenser. After dinner, I soaked in the hotel’s onsen, returned to my quarters, and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
Japan is my favorite place in the world for breakfast, and I rose early for a proper morning repast at Hotel Harataki. First, a steaming bowl of fresh rice with a raw egg and local soy sauce. Next, a wooden tray stocked with fried fish, homemade natto, and pickled plums. Sencha during the meal, a double espresso as the grand finale. Nourished like a prizefighter, I was ready for my second day in Fukushima.
After binging Shōgun, I was eager to see Tsuruga Castle, a majestic samurai stronghold. With origins in the 14th century, Tsuruga Castle has been destroyed, rebuilt, and remodeled repeatedly over the centuries. It’s instantly recognizable for its gleaming red ceramic roof tiles—a rarity among Japanese castles.
During the 19th-century Boshin War, the samurai of the Aizu domain took to its ramparts in a doomed last stand against imperial forces. Although defeated, their valor remains a source of local pride—fearless warriors outgunned, outnumbered, and fiercely loyal to a lost cause. Having attended boarding school in Virginia, I was familiar with such romanticism.
Far less ancient but almost as famous as Tsuruga Castle is nearby Aizu Aoi, an old-fashioned confectionery. The house makes an array of wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets, but the specialty is castella, sponge cake filled with sweet bean paste. Like tempura, castella came to Japan with Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century. I paired it with a cup of sencha and yōkan, jewel-like jellies made from red bean paste and black Okinawan sugar.
With mind and belly well fed, I bid adieu to Fukushima for Yamagata—where the feasting reached a crescendo.
Yamagata Prefecture
Wagyu in New York City is as beyond my means as West Village rent. But in Japan, I can eat my weight in divine bovine marble. Many connoisseurs consider Yonezawa beef, raised in Yamagata Prefecture, superior even to Kobe and Matsusaka.
My first order of business in Yamagata was to gorge myself on sacred beef like Odysseus’s crew on the Island of the Sun. Salivating like a Kentucky stud horse, I made a beeline for Bekoya, a legendary yakiniku restaurant. The waiter presented a wooden board laden with cuts of Yonezawa beef, which we grilled tableside and dressed with a mess of sauces and fixin’s. It was possibly the finest steak of my life to date—and I’ve eaten my way through Buenos Aires, Dallas, and New York City.
I had worked up a maddening thirst after feasting like a Yamagata daimyo on roasted flesh. Like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, my heart cried out, “Sake! Saaaake!” The kami and Google Maps heard my prayer: one of Japan’s most storied sake breweries was a quick drive away.
Toko Sake Kura has been crafting sake since 1597, and its current master brewer represents the 24th generation of the same family. The brewery itself is as serene as a temple, an ancient wooden structure framed by magnificent gardens. It doubles as a museum, with exhibits chronicling the history of sake and displaying centuries-old brewing tools. The sake I tasted, made from rice polished down to just 18% of its original mass, was liquid poetry.
Zen masters speak of feeling dazed, enervated, and incapable of speech after an intense mystical experience. Imagine two episodes of satori in a single day—first Yonezawa beef, then Toko sake. My soul would never be the same. I repaired to Shohakutei Azumaso, my hotel in Yamagata, for self-reflection and repose. Who was I kidding? I devoured more Yonezawa beef for dinner and picked up a small bottle of Yamagata sake from the lobby shop for a nightcap.
Needing to burn some calories, I began my second day in Yamagata with a rigorous hike. Risshaku-ji is a sky-high Tendai Buddhist sanctuary dating back to 860. Tradition holds that as pilgrims ascend the 1,015 stone steps to the mountaintop—a trek past towering cedars, rock faces, and windblown shrines—worldly desires gradually melt away. Bashō made the same pilgrimage in 1689, inspiring one of his most celebrated haiku. When I reached Godaido Hall, the tiny mountaintop pavilion, I soaked in the mesmerizing views of Yamagata and the surrounding satoyama. I caught myself wondering how many likes the photos would get on Instagram. I’d never cut it as a monk.
Each prefecture in Japan has its celebrated fruit. Aomori is famed for apples, Fukushima for peaches, Ibaraki for melons. Yamagata is Japan’s northern Michigan: cherry country. At Ohsyo Fruit Farm, visitors book an hour-long time slot to plunder the orchards and scarf down cherries to their heart’s content. There’s no going back to apple picking in the Hudson Valley after tasting freshly picked Satō Nishiki, those little red orbs of joy. I saved room for a cherry ice cream sundae in the gift shop—a wise decision.
My dalliance with Yamagata had been brief but sweet. I had tasted her fruits and shaken her trees. But daddy’s a rolling stone, and the hour had come to love her and leave her. My next destination sent a chill down my whisky-writer spine: the Nikka Distillery in Miyagi Prefecture.
