Iwanai, Hokkaido

The name itself is Ainu — something close to "river of sulfur" — and that etymology sits quietly beneath a town that has rebuilt itself more than once. Iwanai faces the Japan Sea on Hokkaido's western coast, its southern shoreline broken by cliffs and stacked rock formations that fall within the Niseko-Shakotan-Otaru Kaigan Quasi-National Park. Inland, Raiden-zan rises behind the fields.

Asparagus — both green and white — was first cultivated in Japan here, and the canned white variety still moves through shops alongside tatsu kamaboko, the local fish paste, and Raiden melons heavy enough to require two hands. Kurajima Farm produces milk and a rare cheesecake that people stop for on the drive through. At the Iwanai Shrine, the annual festival includes a procession of Iwanai Akasaka Yakko — a formal attendant performance that has continued through the town's several catastrophes, including a major fire in 1954 that reshaped the urban fabric entirely.

The painter Kida Kinjiro was born here, and the Kida Kinjiro Museum holds his canvases — sea and weather rendered in thick pigment. Across town, the Arai Memorial Art Museum keeps a collection of Picasso prints, an unexpected presence in a fishing port. From the Maruyama Observatory, on a clear night, the lights of the coast spread below without the clutter of a large city. The town is not performing anything. It continues at its own pace, shaped by the sea, the soil, and a history it has not entirely set aside.