Iwate Hidden Gems

Iwate is the second-largest prefecture and one of the emptiest, which means the drive between two things you want to see is often longer than either visit. The interior is a broad basin between two mountain ranges, with Morioka at the junction of three rivers. The Pacific side is a ria coastline of drowned valleys and cliffs, which is why the 2011 tsunami ran so high here and why the rebuilt towns now sit further up the slope than the ones they replaced. The history that justifies the journey is Hiraizumi, where the Oshu Fujiwara ran a northern capital in the twelfth century wealthy enough to rival Kyoto and to gild an entire hall; what survives is quiet in a way Kyoto is not. Morioka has kept an ironware trade going since roughly the same period, and the Sanriku Railway, rebuilt after the tsunami, runs the coast as a working local line rather than a sightseeing service.