Iwate

In the twelfth century a northern dynasty ran a seat of power in the south of this prefecture wealthy enough to be spoken of alongside the capital, and confident enough to gild the interior of an entire hall. It was destroyed within a century and the site was never built over, so what survives is a small number of halls and garden ponds in woodland rather than a city.

The effect is quite unlike the equivalent sites further south. You can walk or cycle the whole thing from the station in a morning, there are rarely queues, and the ponds are laid out to a scheme that was meant to represent a Buddhist paradise and still reads as one. Go early, walk rather than take the shuttle, and allow time to sit — the place is designed around a slow circuit, and rushing it turns it into a small collection of buildings.

Two days does Hiraizumi and Morioka, which are both on the shinkansen and about forty minutes apart, and that is a genuinely good short trip requiring no car at all. Four days gets you the coast as well. Six is what the prefecture actually wants if you intend to see both the mountains and the Sanriku shore, because crossing between them is slow in a way the map does not convey.

The clean routes run north-south along the shinkansen spine and then branch. Ichinoseki for Hiraizumi and the Geibikei gorge, one day, entirely walkable and by boat. Morioka as a base for the city and Hachimantai, two days, the second needing a car or a seasonal bus. The Sanriku coast as its own trip, two to three days, following the rebuilt railway north from Kamaishi with overnight stops in the ports.

What does not work is treating the coast as a day trip from Morioka. It is two to three hours each way over the mountains, which leaves you an hour at the sea.

Split the answer. The shinkansen corridor — Ichinoseki, Kitakami, Morioka — is fast, frequent and enough on its own for a first visit; Hiraizumi's temples are a short local hop and then a walk or a rented bicycle, so that whole day needs nothing.

Everything east and west of that line is different. The Sanriku coast is reachable by the local railway, which is a fine slow journey and a poor way to get anywhere on a schedule, and Hachimantai has seasonal buses only. If your trip includes both the coast and the mountains, hire a car; if it includes one or the other, you can probably manage without. Winter reframes this again — the Kitakami basin takes serious snow, and the Hachimantai road closes for months rather than days.

The line that runs along the ria shore was rebuilt after the 2011 tsunami and carries people to school and to work. It is slow and infrequent because that is what the timetable of a rural community needs, not because it is being staged for visitors, and riding it is one of the more affecting things you can do in the region.

Travel it with that in mind. The rebuilt towns sit noticeably higher up the slopes than the ones they replaced, the seawalls are new and enormous, and memorials stand in places that are otherwise ordinary. Ask at a station or a small museum rather than photographing at length; local guides in several of the ports will take visitors round and are the right way to see it. Plan the day around the sparse departures, and give yourself an overnight in a port rather than trying to loop back inland the same evening.

The Tohoku Shinkansen runs the length of the prefecture — Tokyo to Morioka takes about two and a quarter hours, and Ichinoseki is the stop for Hiraizumi and Geibikei. That spine is fast; everything east of it is not. Hanamaki Airport handles a handful of domestic routes. Reaching the Sanriku coast means either the Kamaishi line over the mountains or the Sanriku Railway along the shore, both slow and infrequent, and Hachimantai has seasonal buses only. Any itinerary combining the coast and the mountains effectively needs a car. Hiraizumi itself is walkable or cyclable from its station, so that section needs nothing at all.

Late November through March if you want the mountains: the Hachimantai plateau road shuts, the highland trails are gone, and much of the interior is snow and short daylight. The coast stays open and is at its bleakest and most beautiful, so this is a season to reverse the itinerary rather than avoid the prefecture.

The other window to swerve is the first week of August in Morioka, when Sansa Odori fills the city and rooms go early — fine if you are coming for it, expensive if you are not. And on the Sanriku side, be aware that summer fog can sit on the coast for days at a stretch and take ten degrees off the temperature, which catches out anyone who packed for a Japanese August.

Morioka has three noodle dishes and locals will argue about all of them: wanko soba served in endless small bowls, the chewy cold reimen brought by Korean residents after the war, and jaja-men under miso paste. Maesawa beef is raised in the southern basin around Oshu. The Sanriku coast supplies oysters and wakame through the winter and sea urchin in early summer. Nambu ironware is not food, but the kettles are cast in Morioka and Oshu and they do change the water you brew with.

Iwate is cold and its season is short. Snow lies deep in the Kitakami basin from December to March, and the Hachimantai plateau road closes over winter, reopening in April. Summers are cool by Japanese standards with coastal highs around 25°C, and the Pacific fog known as yamase can pull that down sharply on the Sanriku side even in August. Sansa Odori fills Morioka in the first week of August. Autumn colour reaches Hachimantai and Geibikei in October, ahead of most of Honshu. Late April into early May is when the north's cherry blossoms finally open.

A first visit is Hiraizumi and Morioka, and it should be in October. Chuson-ji's golden hall is the single most surprising thing in Tohoku for anyone who assumed the north was a cultural backwater, the Geibikei boat is twenty minutes down the line, and Morioka gives you three arguable noodle dishes and an ironware trade to spend an evening on. No car, two nights, entirely legible.

Come back for the coast. The Sanriku shore is the harder, more rewarding trip: cliffs, rebuilt fishing towns, a railway that exists because the communities insisted on it, and an unmistakable sense of a place still deciding what it is after 2011. It needs more time, more patience with timetables and more willingness to eat where you find yourself, and it is the reason people who return to Iwate return again.