Shikabe, Hokkaido

Steam erupts from the ground at 道の駅しかべ間歇泉公園 every ten minutes or so — boiling water thrown into the air above the parking lot, routine as a fishing boat returning to port. This is Shikabe, a small town on the northeastern edge of the Oshima Peninsula, pressed between the active volcano Komagatake and the waters of Uchiura Bay.

The harbor at Honbetsu handles タコ, 昆布, スケソウダラ, and a half-dozen other species through the seasons. The pollock caught here is the raw material for tarako, a fact most people eating it elsewhere in Japan never think about. Mornings at the water's edge have the particular quiet of working places — engines, ice, rubber boots — not the quiet of scenery.

Shikabe Onsen traces its origins to a legend of deer healing their wounds in the hot water, and the springs have been in continuous use since the seventeenth century. Multiple source wells feed a handful of ryokan and two communal bathhouses. From the foot bath at the geyser park, Komagatake fills the skyline — a volcano that still deposits ash on the town when conditions shift. The annual しかべ海と温泉のまつり ties the two industries together in the obvious way, but the connection is already there in daily life, in the steam rising from both the ground and the fishing nets drying along the shore.