Kuroishi, Aomori

The Konan Line from Hirosaki runs south through apple orchards before it reaches Kuroishi, the rows of trees dense and low against the wide Tsugaru plain. Behind the town, the ridgeline of Hakkōda rises, and between flatland and mountain the hillside soils have been given over almost entirely to apple cultivation — the source of Kuroishi ringo and, less obviously, of the faintly sweet ringo cider that appears on shelves in ordinary grocery stores here.

Along Nakamachi Komise-dōri, the covered wooden arcades that line the street date to the Edo period, when Kuroishi operated as a sub-domain of the Hirosaki clan. The komise — shallow canopied walkways built flush against the storefronts — are not a reconstruction but the thing itself, and people still walk under them to do their shopping. Kuroishi yakisoba, a local variation of the dish, is sold from small shops in this quarter, the noodles thicker than average and the sauce darker. The Kuroishi Neputa Matsuri fills Miyuki Park, where the painted fan-shaped floats gather in numbers that press close together in the available space.

The hot spring villages grouped as Kuroishi Onsen-kyō — among them Itadome and Nuruyu — sit at the edge of the mountains, accessible from town but distinctly apart from it. Nuruyu, as the name suggests, runs at a lower temperature than most. The Asaishi River, dammed to form the lake called Niji-no-ko, collects snowmelt from the Hakkōda slopes; this is heavy-snow country, the winters long and the landscape shaped by them.