Fukushima

The row of thatched houses on the old highway south of the castle town survives because the road it served stopped mattering, not because anyone froze it. The buildings are still lived in and worked in — they are homes, shops and restaurants belonging to the families there — and the difference between that and a preserved site is felt immediately.

Behave accordingly. Stay on the street and the marked paths, do not photograph into doorways or gardens, and buy something while you are there, because the visitors are a large part of what keeps the roofs on. The best time is winter, when snow sits deep on the thatch and there is an evening in February when the street is lit by snow lanterns, and the worst is a summer weekend afternoon, when a single narrow lane holds far more people than it was ever built for.

Fukushima is three prefectures wearing one name and the honest answer depends on which you mean. Aizu alone is three days: Aizu-Wakamatsu for the castle and the Boshin War story, Ouchi-juku for the thatched post town, and Lake Inawashiro or the Bandai plateau for the scenery. Nakadori — Koriyama, Fukushima City, the fruit country — is a day or two and mostly a corridor rather than a destination. The Pacific coast is its own two days.

Crossing between them is the expense. Koriyama to Aizu-Wakamatsu is over an hour on the Ban-etsu West line, and reaching Ouchi-juku from there needs the Aizu Railway plus a bus or taxi from Yunokami-Onsen. Trying to combine Aizu and the coast inside four days means spending most of a day on trains.

For a first trip, take Aizu and treat the rest as another visit.

The Tohoku Shinkansen crosses the prefecture with stops at Shin-Shirakawa, Koriyama and Fukushima; Tokyo to Koriyama is about an hour and twenty minutes. Aizu is the awkward part. The Ban-etsu West line from Koriyama takes over an hour to Aizu-Wakamatsu, and Ouchi-juku from there needs the Aizu Railway plus a bus or taxi from Yunokami-Onsen. The Joban line runs the Pacific coast from Tokyo through to Sendai. Lake Inawashiro, the Bandai plateau and the Goshiki-numa ponds rely on seasonal buses that thin out in winter, so a car makes the western half far easier — with winter tyres, which are not optional in Aizu.

A small town in the western basin has one of the highest concentrations of ramen shops anywhere in the country, and the local style — flat, wavy noodles in a light soy broth, deliberately restrained next to the heavier bowls elsewhere — is traditionally eaten in the morning rather than at lunch or late at night.

It is worth reorganising a day around. Several shops open early and sell out by the early afternoon, and the ones with queues at eight in the morning are the ones to join. Eat lightly the night before, arrive without a reservation because there is no such thing, and try more than one — the point of the place is the comparison. The same basin also holds most of the prefecture's sake breweries, several of which take visitors, which makes for a reasonable if unbalanced day either side of the noodles.

The shinkansen crosses the prefecture and is not the useful part. What matters is the last leg, and in Aizu the last leg is where trains stop being enough: the Aizu Railway plus a bus to reach a village, seasonal services around Lake Inawashiro and the Goshiki-numa ponds that thin dramatically in winter.

If your trip is Aizu, hire a car — with winter tyres between December and March, which is not optional in that basin. If your trip is the coast, the Joban line runs the length of it from Tokyo through to Sendai and is entirely adequate. If it is Nakadori, the shinkansen and local lines are fine. This is a prefecture where the right answer changes by region, and applying one answer to the whole of it is how people end up stranded at Yunokami-Onsen.

Aizu between December and March if you are not equipped for snow — which is not a warning against going, since Ouchi-juku under snow lanterns in February is the best thing in the prefecture, but a warning against arriving with a summer hire car and a plan built on buses. Services thin, roads demand tyres, and the plateau routes close.

Late spring is the flat spot. The blossom has gone, the Bandai roads have only just reopened, the peaches are two months away and the foliage three. Mid-April, by contrast, is worth aiming at for the thousand-year-old weeping cherry at Miharu. On the coast, note that the Joban corridor has reopened but a small restricted area remains, so plan that stretch from current information rather than an old map.

The three regions need three answers. Aizu is deep snow country from December to March, with Ouchi-juku's snow-lantern night in February and the Bandai ski areas running the season. Nakadori's peaches and pears ripen from July into September, and the basin is hot in August, in the low 30s°C. The coast stays mild all year and barely sees snow. Autumn is the safe universal answer — Goshiki-numa and the Bandai plateau colour from mid to late October, while the Aizu roads are still clear. Cherry blossoms reach Miharu's thousand-year-old weeping cherry around mid-April.

Kitakata, a small town in the Aizu basin, has one of the highest densities of ramen shops in Japan and serves flat wavy noodles in a light shoyu broth, traditionally at breakfast. The prefecture's sake has taken more national gold medals than any other in recent years, with most of the breweries in Aizu. Nakadori grows peaches through July and August and sells them at roadside stands along the fruit line. Ika-ninjin, dried squid and carrot steeped in soy and mirin, is a home dish from the north of the prefecture rather than a restaurant one.

A first visit is Aizu in October. The castle town gives you a coherent story — this is where the losing side of 1868 made its stand, and the town has kept that rather than smoothed it over — Ouchi-juku an hour south is a street of thatched roofs still lived and worked in, and the Bandai plateau and the Goshiki-numa ponds colour in the second half of the month while the roads are still clear.

Come back in February for the same places under snow, which is a genuinely different trip, or come back for the coast. Hamadori is the part of the prefecture almost no visitor sees: mild, nearly snow-free, with towns that have spent more than a decade deciding what to be after the evacuation. It is not a scenic itinerary and it is the most interesting thing in Fukushima.