Haboro, Hokkaido

The ferry to Teuri Island departs from Maehama port, and on the dock the air carries salt and something else — the particular quiet of a town that once ran on coal. Haboro's inland hills rise eastward toward Pisshiri-yama, while the town itself faces the Sea of Japan, where the evening light stretches long and flat across the water before it goes.

The former railway line is gone — the Haboro Line closed in the late 1980s — and the coast road, National Route 232, now carries what traffic there is. Along it, the Hokkaido Seabird Center keeps records of the auklets and murres that breed on Teuri, their nesting grounds protected as a natural monument. On Yagishiri Island, a short crossing from the mainland, Suffolk sheep graze the hills and are celebrated each summer at the Yagishiri Menyo Matsuri. The wooden net-owner's house at the Yagishiri Folklore Museum, built in the Meiji period, still stands with its unusual Western-influenced frame.

Back in town, the confectionery Baigetsu has been making kinтoki yokan since the Taisho era, the paste pressed into its rectangular molds as it has always been. Haboro's fishing grounds yield sweet shrimp — amaebi — honored each June at the Amaebi Festival. The local table also draws from inland farms: neba-ri nagaimo, green asparagus, Ororen rice. These are not things arranged for display. They move through the town's ordinary days, from the docks and fields into kitchens, which is where they belong.