Misaki, Okayama

The station at Kikkō is shaped like a tortoise shell — a local joke made permanent in concrete, sitting quietly on the JR Tsuyama Line as though it has always been there. This is the entry point to Misaki-chō, a town born from the merger of three smaller municipalities in the early 2000s, spread across the ridgelines and river valleys of the Kibi Plateau. Two first-class rivers, the Asahi and the Yoshii, cut through the hills, and the terraced rice paddies that climb the slopes above them have earned a place among Japan's recognized *tanada*.

The town's most specific claim is its association with tamago kake gohan — raw egg over hot rice — a dish so plain it barely registers as cooking, yet Misaki has made it a point of identity, backed by an active poultry industry. Pears and grapes grow in the orchards between the paddies. The Sakahara area, once a mining district, now holds the Sakahara Fureai Kōzan Kōen, where a decommissioned rail line becomes a venue for occasional train-running events, the old infrastructure given a second life in a quieter register.

The Gohō-sai festival and the Tsuki no Wa Matsuri mark the calendar with older rhythms, while the Hoshino-sato Marathon moves through the landscape on foot. Honzanji, with its three-story pagoda and main hall designated as cultural assets, sits somewhere in the hills — not announced loudly, simply present. The plateau air, the poultry farms, the terraced fields: Misaki-chō runs on agriculture and memory, neither performing itself nor hiding.