Ena, Gifu

The chestnuts arrive before anything else — stacked in crates at roadside stalls, pressed into the dense, sweet paste of *kurikinton* at the windows of 恵那川上屋, where the shop works directly with local growers under long-standing cultivation contracts. Ena sits on the Mino-Mikawa plateau, ringed by mountains that hold the cold long enough to suit both the chestnut orchards and the agar workshops that have quietly produced *kanten* here for generations. The two industries feel like the town's twin spines: one sweet, one austere.

Down in the old quarter of Iwamura, the preserved streetscape of 岩村町本通り runs past wooden merchant facades that still carry the proportions of an Edo-period castle town. The castle itself is a ruin on the hill above — stone walls and open sky — but during the *hinamatsuri* season the town fills with doll displays in shopfronts, and the atmosphere shifts from quiet to something more deliberate. The 明知鉄道 line threads through the valley, and on certain runs the train itself becomes a dining car, serving *kanten* dishes to passengers as the forested hillsides pass the window.

Elsewhere in the municipality, the gorge of 恵那峡 — formed by the 大井ダム, one of the area's civil engineering landmarks — cuts through the landscape with the abruptness of something made rather than merely found. Alongside the chestnuts and agar, the local table extends to *gohei mochi*, *hebo matsuri* (a festival centered on wasp larvae), and *chrysanthemum burdock* — foods that speak of a highland economy that has always worked with what the mountains offer rather than what the lowland markets prefer.