Ikoma, Nara

The Kintetsu line climbs out of Osaka and within minutes the urban grid softens, giving way to the ridgelines of the Ikoma mountains. The city of Ikoma sits against this slope, its streets folding up and down along the valleys of the Tatsuta and Tomio rivers, the terrain constantly interrupting any sense of flat, commuter sameness.

Hōzanji temple established the town's original rhythm in the Edo period, drawing pilgrims and the commerce that follows them, and that layering of faith and daily life has not entirely dissolved. The fire festival at Ikoma-za Ikomatsuhiko Shrine — young men carrying torches down stone steps in October — is an intangible folk cultural property, a ceremony old enough to predate the city by centuries. Chōkyūji's main hall, a Kamakura-period esoteric Buddhist structure, stands as a counterpoint to the newer residential neighborhoods that spread across the hillsides above the station.

What gives the place its particular grain, though, is the craft of chasen — bamboo tea whisks — produced in the Takayama district since the Muromachi period. At Takayama Chikurinen, the resource center dedicated to tea whisks and bamboo goods, a tea room called Chikushōan sits beside a living bamboo garden. The production method is quiet and precise work, splitting and shaping a single piece of bamboo into dozens of fine tines. Ikoma holds a dominant share of national chasen output, a fact that sits oddly alongside the shopping complex at Kintetsu Ikoma Station — yet both are simply part of what the city is now.