Semboku, Akita

The lanes of Kakunodate run quiet between high earthen walls, the branches of weeping cherry trees trained low over the rooflines of samurai houses that have stood since the Satake clan governed this corner of Tohoku. The district is a designated preservation area, and the weight of that designation shows in the careful maintenance of the Ishiguro family residence and others along the buke-yashiki street. Yet the town is not a museum frozen behind glass — the Akita Shinkansen stops here, and on weekday mornings the platform fills with commuters as much as visitors.

Kakunodate is also where kaba-zaiku, the craft of working cherry bark into boxes, tea caddies, and small vessels, has been practiced for roughly two centuries. The bark is burnished to a deep reddish-brown, and workshops along the old streets still produce it. A few minutes' walk brings you to Ando Jozo, where miso and soy sauce have been made in the same building for generations. Nishimeyaji kuri — chestnuts from the Nishimeya district — and Shiraiwayaki ceramics round out a region whose crafts are bound tightly to its soils and forests.

To the south and west, the land opens into a different register entirely. Tazawako, Japan's deepest lake, sits at the foot of Akita Komagatake, its water a color that shifts with the light and the season. Above it, the hot spring clusters of Nyuto Onsen-kyo — Tsuru-no-yu, Kani-ba, Myoken-yu among them — occupy narrow valleys where the steam from multiple baths drifts into cedar forest.玉川 Tamagawa Onsen, further out, produces radium-bearing waters and the rare Hokutolite mineral, designated a special natural monument. The Towada-Hachimantai national park holds this entire volcanic upland together, and the geography makes its own argument for how long you stay.