Aizuwakamatsu

Aizuwakamatsu is a castle town in the mountains of western Fukushima Prefecture, in Japan's northern Tohoku region. This was the stronghold of the Aizu samurai clan, who held out for the shogun in the civil war of the 1860s, and the town still carries that loyalist history with visible pride.

Tsuruga Castle, rebuilt with its rare red roof tiles, tells the clan's story from its keep, and on Mt. Iimori you can visit the graves of the Byakkotai, the teenage soldiers whose end made them legends. At the Aizu Bukeyashiki samurai residence, restored rooms show how the clan's officers actually lived.

Sauce katsudon and local sake are the tastes to seek out, and Higashiyama Onsen sits on the town's wooded edge for the night. Winter buries the region deep, which suits pairing Aizuwakamatsu with Ouchi-juku, the thatched post town south of the city. Trains arrive via Koriyama on the shinkansen line.