For the second edition of Bluelist, I wrote a profile of Japan’s Tohoku region.

‘Profile: Tohoku’ by Simon Sellars from Bluelist 2, Lonely Planet Publications, November 2006.

TOHOKU

Grim Up North?
They call Tohoku the Japanese ‘deep south’ (even though it’s up north), a place where Japanese city slickers simply won’t go. Not only is Tohoku reckoned to be full of ghosts but it’s also considered a backwater, a less developed, agricultural region habitually treated with suspicion by urban types. So why are we recommending it? Because no one ever said city wankers had to have the last word in anything. But mainly because Tohoku is a deeply compelling region, with an absorbing feudal history, abundant natural beauty, and a palpable sense of mystery and adventure seeping through its very strata – like thick, white Japanese mist in winter. English isn’t widely spoken in Tohoku’s northernmost tip – the dialect can be impenetrable to even southern Japanese – but it’s really not that difficult to get around. You’ll find no shortage of friendly locals, keen to debunk the myths about their land – or to mischievously enhance them with a spook story or two.

If you like samurai tradition, then towns like Aizu-Wakamatsu, Tono, Hiraizumi and Kakunodate will yield potent feudal rituals and reconstructed warrior fortresses. And if you’re into the whole outdoors thing, then you’ll love the many hiking opportunities and the volcanic regions peppered with sublime rotemburo (open-air, hot springs). Blissfully, Tohoku has also birthed some of Japan’s most exquisite regional cuisine and is home to a wonderful program of festivals celebrating Old Japan.

You’ll be following in fine footsteps. Although Matsuo Basho, feudal Japan’s Zen-enlightened haiku master, moaned before a trip north in 1689, ‘I may as well be travelling to the ends of the Earth’, by the end of his adventure he was a bona fide convert – today, his lovingly detailed The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the most well-known Tohoku travel book.

VITAL STATISTICS
• Population: 9.8 million
• Language: Japanese
• Major industry: Fishing, rice production, petroleum refining, electrical manufacturing
• Unit of currency: Japanese yen
• Cost index:
– midrange meal: 2500 yen (US$21)
– local bus ride 220 yen (US$2)
– newspaper 130 yen (US$1.50)
– hotel double from 9000 yen (US$78)

Defining Experience
Boil your butt off in a mountainside rotemburo as a light drizzle descends: communal bathing with a group of naked strangers may take some getting used to but it’s proven addictive to a nation of many millions, so who are you to resist? Failing that, trek along Tohoku’s spectacular coastlines and around its spectral mountain ranges – when the mist descends like a preternatural revenge scene from a Kurosawa film, Tokyo and big-city lights will seem a world away.

Festivals & Events
All of the following are extraordinarily popular. Book accommodation well in advance.

• Aomori’s Nebuta Matsuri (Aug 2–7; www.nebuta.or.jp/english/index_e.htm) features parades of colossal illuminated floats accompanied by thousands of rowdy, chanting dancers.
• Hirosaki’s Neputa Matsuri (1–7 August) also boasts illuminated floats parading every evening to the accompaniment of flutes and drums. Like Aomori’s main draw, it attracts thousands of visitors.
• Akita’s visually stunning Kanto\= Matsuri (Pole Lantern Festival; 4–7 Aug; www.kantou.gr.jp) is given over to hundreds of men skilfully balancing – on their heads, chins, hips and shoulders – giant poles that weigh 60kg and are hung with illuminated lanterns, all to the beat of traditional drumming.
• Sendai’s Tanabata Matsuri (Star Festival; Aug 6–8) celebrates a Chinese legend about the stars Vega and Altair, who once took human form and were, quite literally, star-crossed lovers. The festival is among Japan’s biggest, with a couple of million people enjoying parades along the main streets, which are decorated with bamboo poles festooned with multicoloured streamers.
• Sado Island, the Earth Celebration (3rd week of Aug; www.kodo.or.jp) is a three-day music, dance and arts festival, featuring performances by the world-famous Kodo Drummers. International guest performers and Japanese artists offer workshops throughout.

Regional Flavours
Real thrillseekers will want to try wanko-soba, Morioka’s famous dish that’s more competition than meal. It’s just buckwheat soba noodles served with side dishes like raw tuna, fish flakes and shredded chicken, but it’s the way it’s presented that’s off the planet. Basically, the deal is this: you eat bowl after bowl of wanko-soba, with the waitress refilling your bowl as soon as you’ve finished. The only way you can get out of it is to slam your lid over the bowl, but you need to be super alert: these ladies are super quick, and will fill your bowl before you can draw breath. If they do, you have to eat it – that’s the rule. The record, by the way, is 500 bowls – Moriokan hospitality, at its finest.