Asahikawa, Hokkaido

Snow sits deep on the Daisetsuzan range, and the meltwater that filters down through the Kamikawa Basin is what gives Asahikawa its sake and its soba. The city grew from Meiji-era settler camps — tondenhei soldiers breaking ground in the basin — and later housed a major imperial army division, a history the Hokuchin Memorial Museum still holds in its cases. That military past has since given way to something quieter: a city that takes furniture and design seriously enough to host the Kokusai Kagu Design Fair Asahikawa, where the woodworking tradition of the region is put into conversation with international craft.

Walking the Heiwa-dori shopping arcade on a weekday, you pass the gallery run by picture-book artist Abe Hiroshi, its window modest against the storefronts. The food here is specific and unpretentious — a bowl of Asahikawa ramen with its soy-and-lard broth cut by cold air when you step back outside, or shinkoyaki and geso-don at lunch counters that don't announce themselves. Asahikawa furniture appears in showrooms without fanfare, the grain of local timber visible in the joinery.

Beyond the city, the road toward Asahidake Onsen climbs into the Daisetsuzan, where the landscape shifts register entirely. The Kitahoku Powder Belt draws skiers to Kamui Ski Links when the snowpack is at its depth. Miura Ayako, the novelist who spent much of her life here, is remembered at the literary museum that bears her name — a reminder that this basin, cold and inland as it is, has long generated its own interior world.