02 Northern Japan Japan
Snow Country, Slowly
Eleven days through Yamagata and Aomori in the deepest part of winter, by local train, with four onsen towns and not a single bullet train after the first morning.
- Duration
- 11 days
- Party
- 4 to 8
- Season
- Two departures, mid January and early February
- From, per person
- £14,900
The route
- Sendai
- Yamadera
- Ginzan Onsen
- Tsuruoka
- Mount Haguro
- Hirosaki
- Sukayu Onsen
Miru spent eleven years scouting locations for NHK, and her standing complaint about winter Japan is that everyone sees it through a Shinkansen window at 300 kilometres an hour. This journey is the correction. After the first morning out of Tokyo, nothing moves faster than a local train — and on the Gonō line up the coast to Hirosaki, that means a two-carriage diesel with a stove-warm heater and the Sea of Japan breaking twenty metres from the rails.
Why January and February
Because the snow is real then and it is not later. Ginzan is photogenic in autumn and crowded; in the third week of January it is a street of eleven wooden inns under a metre of snow, and the day-trip buses have given up. Sukayu, at the foot of the Hakkōda range, is routinely one of the snowiest inhabited places in Japan. We have had parties arrive to a car park dug out as a trench.
The temple night
On Mount Haguro you sleep at a shukubō — a pilgrims’ lodging run by a family of yamabushi, the mountain ascetics. Dinner is shōjin ryōri: vegetables, mountain plants, sesame tofu, no meat, no fish, no garlic. The rooms are tatami, the walls are paper, and the fire rite is at five in the morning. People worry about this night in advance. It is the one they write to us about afterwards.
Why it runs twice
Snow Country is one of the two journeys in the catalogue that departs twice a season. The ryokan at Ginzan takes one party of eight a winter from us and no more, so the second departure uses a different inn in the same street. Miru has slept in both. She has a view on which is better. She will not tell you which one you are in until you have paid.
Day by day
The shape of it
Days 1–2
Sendai
One Shinkansen from Tokyo, then nothing faster than a local line for nine days. A night to sleep off the flight.
Day 3
Yamadera
The 1,015 steps to the temple in snow, with crampons Kenji carries. Early, before the day-trippers from Sendai.
Days 4–5
Ginzan Onsen
Two nights in a ryokan of eleven rooms. The street lamps come on at 4.30pm; the village empties at five.
Days 6–7
Tsuruoka
Shōjin ryōri — mountain-priest cooking — at a shukubō on Mount Haguro, where you sleep on the floor and wake at five for the fire rite.
Days 8–9
Hirosaki
The long Gonō line up the Sea of Japan coast, seven hours with two changes. It is the best day of the journey.
Days 10–11
Sukayu Onsen
The mixed-bathing cypress hall at the foot of the Hakkōda range, under three metres of snow. Out via Aomori.
What the price covers
Included
What £14,900 buys
- Ten nights: two city hotels, two ryokan, one temple lodging, one mountain onsen
- Every rail ticket, reserved seats where the line has them
- Kenji Abe for all eleven days; Miru for the first four
- Breakfast and dinner daily, lunch on the rail days
- Luggage forwarded by takkyūbin, so you carry one small bag
- Crampons, and a proper winter coat on loan if yours is wrong
Not included
And, pointedly, what it doesn't
- Flights to Japan and the first night in Tokyo
- Ski days — this is not a ski journey and Hakkōda is not for beginners
- Private cars between towns. The trains are the point.
- Western beds at Ginzan or on Mount Haguro. There are none, and that is fine.
- Sake beyond dinner, which is where most people's budget goes