Tohoku

Tohoku is the six prefectures north of Tokyo and the part of Japan foreign visitors still largely miss, which is most of its appeal. Winter brings some of the heaviest snow on earth to Zao and the Bandai highlands; autumn turns the Oirase gorge and Lake Towada; the summer festivals at Aomori and Akita are among the country's biggest. The ryokan are traditional and often remote. The bullet train reaches Sendai in ninety minutes from Tokyo and Aomori in three hours, which makes the distances manageable.