Otsuchi, Iwate

The Sanriku Rias Line slows as it approaches Otsuchi, and through the window the coastline opens suddenly — narrow inlets, forested ridges dropping hard into the Pacific. The town sits where the Otsuchi and Kotsuchi rivers reach the sea, their alluvial plain barely wide enough to hold a market, a fish cooperative, a row of rooftops. Nine-tenths of the surrounding land is forest.

At the Shin-Otsuchi Fisheries Cooperative market, the morning's catch moves quickly. This stretch of coast has been a working port since the Morioka Domain used it to trade Nanbu salmon southward, and the weight of that history is still present in the act of unloading fish. Offshore, Hourai-jima sits small and round in the bay — the island said to have inspired the television puppet drama *Hyokkori Hyotan-jima* — and from the harbor it looks exactly like something out of a children's story, though the fishermen passing it each morning likely think of it as simply part of the view.

Inland and upward, Shinyama Kogen opens into a highland meadow where Shinyama azaleas bloom in early summer, and a hill-climb race has been held on its slopes. Down at Kirikiiri Coast, a fisherina serves both working boats and visitors. The town's tiger dance — *toramai* — is the festival that gathers the community, its rhythm distinct from anything on the more traveled circuits of the Tohoku coast.