Boil it, bend it, stitch it with bark. Ōdate's magewappa are made from thin boards of Akita cedar softened in hot water, bent around a form, and closed at the seam with a strip of mountain cherry bark that does the work a nail would do elsewhere. The workshops let you watch the sequence in order and then try it yourself, which is where the impression of the craft changes entirely. The moment the wood gives is far less dramatic than you expect — something rigid a minute earlier simply agrees to a new shape — and it is faintly comic to witness for the first time. The smell of the timber is strongest not while it is being cut but while it is sitting in the water, which is not what anyone predicts. Picked up, the finished vessels are considerably lighter than photographs suggest they will be, and the grain runs continuously around the curve.

Ōdate-Noshiro airport is close and the town has a hospital and the usual retail, so it is not a difficult place to reach or to stay in. The snow is heavy and clearing it is part of the year here rather than an interruption to it.

What the craft demonstrates is a tool that does not argue with its material at any point in its making. The cedar is quarter-sawn so the grain runs straight, which is what allows the board to bend without splintering along its length. Rice cooled in one of these keeps differently from rice in plastic, and that is the practical reason the shape survived rather than a sentimental one. The bark stitching is structural, not decorative, and it is the part that wears out first. This is one of very few places where you can put your hands on that argument and feel it settle under them.