Omi, Nagano

The express *Shinano* passes through without stopping, but at Hijiri-Kogen Station the platform empties slowly, passengers adjusting to the altitude and the quiet. From here, the road climbs toward the highland that gives the station its name, and the air shifts — cooler, thinner, carrying the smell of cedar and open field. Omi village sits within this mountain terrain, ringed by peaks above a thousand meters, the Miyagawa river cutting a steep valley below.

The village carries two distinct layers of time. Along what was once the Hokkoku Waki-Okan — a secondary post road connecting the Japan Sea coast to the Zenkoji pilgrimage route — the old station town of Omi-juku still shapes the lower settlement's proportions. Omi Shinmeigu shrine, a branch of the Ise Grand Shrine and designated an important cultural property, stands as the tutelary deity of the former Omi Mikuriya estate. Nearby, Fukumanji temple holds important-cultural-property Buddhist statues, and Hosen-ji serves as the first stop on the Shinano Thirty-Three Kannon pilgrimage circuit.

Higher up, Hijiri-kogen opens into a resort plateau where summer vegetables grow in highland fields, and the Seiko Hakubutsukan museum displays objects as unlikely as a battleship gun barrel and a fighter jet. Hijiri-ko lake, formed by volcanic damming, offers a trailhead and a fishing spot, with a stone monument to the poet Yumeji Takehisa standing quietly at its edge. In late summer, the Hijiri-kogen Noryo Hanabi Taikai fireworks gather the valley's residents under a sky unobstructed by city light.