Tohoku in Winter

Ginzan Onsen (銀山温泉) is best seen on a winter evening when the gas lamps come on along the single pedestrian street through the town, a small hot spring resort in Obanazawa City, Yamagata, with multistorey Taisho era wooden inns lining both sides of the Ginzan River and the heavy mountain snowfall through January and February covering the wooden roofs and reflecting the lamp light into the dark river water below. The town developed as a hot spring resort during the Taisho period (1912 to 1926) after the decline of the Nobesawa Ginzan silver mine that gave the town its name, with around 13 surviving wooden inns, and the street was used as a location for the 1983 NHK drama Oshin. The town is often compared to the bathhouse in Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, but Studio Ghibli has never confirmed a model for it. The free Warashiyu communal footbath at the entrance to the town and the day use Shirogane-yu public bath at 9:00 to 16:00 closed Wednesdays let day visitors experience the hot spring water without an overnight stay, with the short walk to the Shirogane-no-taki Falls (白銀の滝) at the far end of the street ending at the vermillion Sekotoi bridge over the falls mouth. Winter day visitors must now park at the Taisho Romankan park and ride and take a shuttle into the town with a 100 visitor per hour limit. From Tokyo Station the Yamagata Shinkansen runs to Oishida Station in around 3 hours 15 minutes, with a 35 to 40 minute bus from there to the onsen.

伊豆沼 (Izunuma) and its smaller neighbour 内沼 (Uchinuma) lie on the border of Kurihara and Tome in northern Miyagi. They are shallow lakes, on average less than a metre deep, and together with the nearby Kabukurinuma they hold the largest wintering flocks of geese in Japan. The lakes were made a national natural monument in 1967 and in 1985 became one of Japan's first Ramsar wetlands. From autumn into March the water is crowded with マガン (greater white fronted geese) and オオハクチョウ (whooper swans). The geese sleep on the lake and leave at first light in great noisy skeins, filling the sky against the sunrise, then spend the day feeding on spilt rice in the snow covered paddies around the lakes before flying back at dusk. January is the coldest month and the busiest on the water. Dress for the cold and arrive before sunrise to see the morning departure. The 伊豆沼・内沼サンクチュアリセンター (Izunuma-Uchinuma Sanctuary Center) on the shore has displays on the birds and windows over the water. In summer the same lakes are covered in pink lotus.

Sandfish is the fish that Akita ties to the turn of the year. It lives in deep water off the Sea of Japan coast for most of the year and comes inshore in large shoals to spawn for a short spell from late autumn into December, when the sea is at its roughest, and that run is what households salt, grill, pickle and press into ハタハタ寿司 (hatahata zushi). It is also the fish behind しょっつる (shottsuru), a fermented fish sauce that Akita worked out as a stand in for soy sauce when soy sauce was still a luxury, and which gives its name to しょっつる鍋 (shottsuru nabe), a hot pot of hatahata with tofu, leek, cabbage, butterbur and mushrooms that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries describes as the familiar winter pot of the prefecture. Akita Prefecture's own food pages record the local line that you cannot see in the New Year without hatahata, which gives a fair sense of where it sits on the winter table.

Snow crab peaks through the winter months as the crabs are fully developed and the cold water brings them to their best condition. The sweet, delicate meat inside the long legs is best appreciated simply, boiled and eaten straight from the shell at the table, and winter is when the quality justifies that simplicity most clearly. Snow crab appears across seafood restaurants and markets in Tohoku's coastal cities through the season and is one of the simpler arguments for visiting the region in winter.

Cracker soup is a soup from Hachinohe and the wider Nanbu area of southern Aomori in which rounds of wheat cracker are broken into a simmering pot and cooked until they soften without falling apart. The crackers are a purpose made soup version of the local 南部せんべい (Nanbu senbei), firmer than the ones eaten dry as a snack, and they go into a broth that is usually chicken and soy sauce, though cod, mackerel and miso versions are all made. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries records it as a dish of the cold months at home, grown out of years when rice was short and the senbei had to stretch the pot, and notes that restaurants now serve it all year round. Hachinohe promotes it as a city speciality and it turns up at the winter events there, including the paid Oniwa Enburi sittings in February.

Smoked daikon pickle is the pickle that an Akita winter produced out of necessity. Daikon is normally dried in the sun before it goes into a rice bran bed, but inland southern Akita gets heavy rain and snow, short daylight and temperatures low enough to freeze the roots before they dry, so households took to hanging them in a smoking shed over a hardwood fire instead. Four or five days of smoke turn the daikon amber and give the pickle its name, いぶり (iburi) meaning smoked and がっこ (gakko) being the Akita word for pickles, after which the roots go into barrels with rice bran, salt and sugar and are left for 50 to 60 days or more. The work starts with the harvest before the snow arrives, so the barrels come good through the winter, and it is eaten sliced thin with rice, with sake or with tea, where the smoke and the crunch are the point.

Oysters come into season along the Miyagi coast as the cold sets in and stay good well into spring. Miyagi Prefecture's own seasonal produce notes put it second in the country for oyster production behind Hiroshima, with the beds concentrated in Matsushima Bay, Ishinomaki Bay and Kesennuma Bay and more than eight tenths of the harvest leaving the prefecture shucked rather than in the shell. Through the winter the coast fills with かき小屋 (kaki goya), plain huts where you sit at a communal grill and cook oysters in the shell until they open, and the Matsushima waterfront runs them across the season. They are also eaten raw, deep fried as かきフライ (kaki furai) and cooked into rice as かき飯 (kaki meshi).

Semi dried persimmon is the soft, half dried persimmon made in the Date area of northern Fukushima. Hachiya or Hiratanenashi persimmons are peeled, treated with sulphur smoke to hold their colour and then dried only part of the way, so the flesh stays deep orange and jelly like instead of hardening into the usual 干し柿 (hoshigaki). The drying runs outdoors from the middle of November into December on cool air and the dry wind off the nearby hills, and Date City puts processing from late October and shipping from early December through a mid January peak to the end of February. 伊達のあんぽ柿 (Date no Anpogaki) has been a registered geographical indication since January 2023, covering the Date area and neighbouring towns in Fukushima along with Shiroishi over the border in Miyagi. It is sold chilled, eaten as it comes, and turns up as a winter gift box as often as an everyday sweet.