Yamagata

The temple built into the cliff east of the city is reached by roughly a thousand stone steps through cedar, past small halls set into the rock, with the view opening out only near the top. It is not a site you look at from a car park; the ascent is the experience and it takes most people an hour up, with the descent taking longer than they expect.

Plan it accordingly. Wear shoes with grip rather than fashion, because the stone is worn smooth and is slick in rain and treacherous with ice. Go early in the day, both for the light and because the steps become a queue in the afternoons of peak months. Avoid it in the middle of a basin summer — this is one of the hottest valleys in the country and there is no breeze on the stairs. Autumn and the shoulder of winter, with snow on the rails, are the versions worth travelling for.

Three days is enough for the eastern half and it is the half most people want: Yamagata City as a base, Yamadera twenty minutes up the line, Ginzan Onsen for a night, and the cherry or fruit country of the Sagae basin in between. Yamadera is a station, a thousand steps and two hours, which makes it one of the best-value half-days in Tohoku.

Five days lets you cross to the Shonan side and the Dewa Sanzan, which is the reason to come back rather than the reason to come first. The crossing is the problem: the line over the mountains to Tsuruoka is slow, and flying into Shonai Airport from Tokyo is genuinely the easier approach to that half of the prefecture.

Two days is Yamagata City and Yamadera plus one hot spring. That works, and trying to add the Dewa Sanzan to it does not.

Rails handle the east adequately. The Yamagata Shinkansen shares conventional track north of Fukushima so it is not fast, but it goes where you need; Yamadera has its own station on the Senzan line, and Ginzan is a bus from Oishida. That covers a first trip.

West of the mountains is different. Buses from Tsuruoka to the Dewa Sanzan run on a seasonal timetable, Gassan holds snow into July and runs a summer ski season because of it, and the orchards and the coast in between are car country. If your trip includes the Shonai side, either hire a car there or plan around a small number of daily buses — the middle option, trying to do it on the train, is the one that wastes days.

When people in this prefecture talk about the cherry season they mean the crop. The basin north of the city grows most of the country's sweet cherries, the best known variety was bred there, and the picking window falls in early summer rather than spring — a few weeks in which orchards sell entry by the half hour and you eat as many as you can standing between the rows.

This is the least forgiving thing to plan in the whole prefecture. Miss it by a fortnight in either direction and there is nothing to do about it, because the fruit does not wait and the orchards close their gates. If it is the reason for the trip, fix the dates around it and treat everything else as flexible. If it is not, be aware that the same weeks are when the roadside stands are at their best and the region is at its busiest with domestic visitors doing exactly this.

The Yamagata Shinkansen takes about two and three quarter hours from Tokyo and continues to Shinjo, but it shares conventional track north of Fukushima, so it is not a fast train. Shonai Airport serves the Tsuruoka and Sakata side of the mountains, roughly an hour from Haneda — that western half is otherwise awkward, since the Rikuu West line crosses the range slowly. Yamadera has its own station on the Senzan line, 20 minutes out of Yamagata. Ginzan Onsen is a bus from Oishida, and the Dewa Sanzan need buses from Tsuruoka on a seasonal timetable. A car helps everywhere except Yamadera itself.

Late July and August in the basin, unless heat is not a problem for you. Yamagata City held the national temperature record for over seventy years, the valley traps humidity, and the walk up Yamadera's thousand steps in that is genuinely unpleasant.

The other constraint is the cherry season, which here means fruit rather than blossom: the Sato Nishiki crop ripens in June and picking lasts a few weeks, so a trip built around it has almost no tolerance for being a fortnight out. And avoid arriving in the first half of April expecting spring — the basin is still cold, the Dewa Sanzan trails are shut, and Gassan will be under snow for months yet.

Yonezawa beef is raised in the southern basin and is one of the three names people argue about alongside Kobe and Matsusaka. Sagae's cherries are picked in June, and the Sato Nishiki variety was bred there. Imoni, a taro and beef stew cooked outdoors in enormous pots, is an autumn ritual rather than a restaurant dish — the September gathering on the Mamigasaki riverbank in Yamagata City uses a construction crane to stir it. Cold ramen, served with ice floating in the broth, was invented in the city as an answer to those summers.

Cherries are the tightest window in the prefecture — the Sato Nishiki crop ripens in June and picking lasts only a few weeks. Summer in the basin is genuinely hot and humid, often above 33°C in August, and the Hanagasa festival fills Yamagata City in early August. Snow starts in December and holds until March; Ginzan Onsen is at its best under it, and the frost-covered trees on Zao form in February. Autumn colour reaches the Mogami gorge and Yamadera in late October. The Dewa Sanzan trails open from late spring, though Gassan keeps snow into July and runs a summer ski season because of it.

First time: Yamadera, and time it for October. The temple is built into a cliff at the top of a long stone staircase through cedar, the climb is the visit, and the view from the top over the valley is the image of inland Tohoku. Base yourself in Yamagata City, add Ginzan Onsen for a night — a street of wooden inns along a river, at its best under snow or lamplight — and you have three days that ask nothing complicated of you.

Come back for the Dewa Sanzan. Three peaks, a Shugendo pilgrimage circuit over a thousand years old, a five-storey pagoda standing in forest with no town attached to it, and practitioners who still take lay visitors through the discipline. It is on the far side of the mountains, it takes planning around seasonal buses, and it is a completely different prefecture from the one on the shinkansen line.