The train glides out of Tokyo Station like a silver arrow through the morning light. I settle into the wide leather seat of the Shinkansen Grand Class, the first-class cabin of Japan’s celebrated bullet trains: the safest in the world, and among the fastest too. Time feels elastic in this immaculate cabin, stretched between speed and stillness. A stewardess in white gloves sets down a black lacquered bento box, my first experience with these jewellery trays filled with delicious beauty and enigma. Simmered tofu, pickled yuzu, grilled bonito… Japanese food is nothing but poetry made edible.
The city dissolves into rippling green. As we follow the coast north toward Toyama, the horizon opens up: water, forest, light. It’s a subtle unspooling, as if Japan itself is taking a long, deliberate breath. Somewhere between Tokyo and Toyama, I begin to sense the rhythm that binds everything in this land. It isn’t a metaphor here; it’s the rhythm of life. The trains run on time just as the rice fields flood on time, as the mountains release their meltwater on time. Already, the theme of my journey starts to whisper itself: the invisible connections.
Toyama's train station greets visitors with artworks of glass and steel, symbols of the city's history and tradition. Outside, the Tateyama mountains rise to the east. Their slopes feed the rivers that braid through the city before surrendering to Toyama Bay. This mountain water is the region’s lifeblood: it polishes rice, cools sake vats, and soaks the mulberry fibres that will become paper. From the bay come snow crab and other delicacies that thrive in these pristine waters, making the local seafood among Japan’s finest.
It's 3 pm, and the city breathes with a quiet that feels surreal. In the old Iwase District, once a bustling Kitamaebune port, narrow streets still carry the memories of salt and trade. Today, its warehouses are reborn as studios and cafés, transforming the neighbourhood into a haven for Japan’s emerging artists, and even a stage for international exhibitions such as GO FOR Kogei, celebrating kogei — the spirit of Japanese craftsmanship.
That evening, at Rakudo-An (a 200-year-old farmhouse reborn as an intimate 3-room retreat), Ms. Eiko-san welcomes us with a matcha tea ceremony, a ritual once practised by Zen monks to stay awake in meditation.
“This ceremony,” she says, “is not about making tea; it's an act of collaboration with Nature.” Tariki, it’s called: the energy we draw from all things surrounding us. Water, earth, hands, and all the life inside this room - all whisked with reverence with a bamboo chasen.
At the restaurant, dinner unfolds as a procession of local textures and flavours: mountain mushrooms, river fish, wisps of katsuobushi melting like snow. No excess, no ornament. Towards the end, the chef approaches our table holding a pot of steaming shinmai, the first rice of the season. He serves it with devotion, as if it were pure gold, a small spoonful to each of us. Just rice, nothing added. “All the flavour,” he says, “is already there.”
My eyes awaken to the starch-yellow of rice fields, as we travel to Kanazawa. Once the seat of the wealthy Kaga domain, Kanazawa’s refinement is not ostentatious but rooted, shaped by centuries of samurai skill and tradition.
At Maida Dyeing Crafts, artisans move brushes across taut silk in silence. This is Kaga Yuzen, a kimono dyeing technique carried by three generations of the Maida family. Each kimono, nearly fifteen metres of silk, takes several months, often over a year, to complete. Flowers and patterns bloom in subtle gradations, shaped by bokashi, the art of imperceptible tone shifts. New designs keep the tradition alive, while the signature Maida Blue reflects the refined restraint of the Kaga’s culture: simple, understated, elegant.
It is also thanks to Kanazawa’s geishas that these kimonos continue to live. In Higashi Chaya district, at Kaikaro Teahouse , I meet Lady Baba, a revered geisha whose presence fills the room. Her dark blue kimono glows on the golden tatami, her laughter bridges poise and playfulness.
It must be in that contrast, the still surface and the burning core, where the timeless allure of these women lies, I think, as I feel her enchantment taking hold. She parts from me with glances and gestures as delicate as they are intense, speaking of a sisterhood and complicity that know no boundaries of time and space.
The mountains rise behind the teahouse. My guide, Tatiana-san, reminds me how everything here connects: the gods live in the peaks, so temples rise nearby, and teahouses (thus geishas) always bloom beside the temples: devotion, rest, and art intertwined in the slow rhythm of daily life.
The road to Echizen twists through green forests. We are nearing the mountains, the realm of the gods. At their feet stands Okamoto-Otaki, the only shrine in Japan dedicated to Kawakami Gozen, the goddess of papermaking.
The air beats under the song of cicadas. Stone steps rise through the moss toward the modest yet regal sanctuary, decorated with incredibly intricate wooden patterns. Legend tells that over 1,500 years ago, the goddess of paper appeared here to teach the local people how to make crafts using the local water and trees, when rice could not sustain them. Up to this day, villagers and artisans from around the country still come here to pray for her blessing and inspiration.
We leave the shrine to visit Echizen’s celebrated Iwano Heizaburo PaperMill workshop, where I meet Akiko Tamamura, Aki-chan. 80 years young, her hands still strong, her eyes alight with a childish cheerfulness. She has worked here for nearly 60 years: she knows every vat, every rack, every secret held in the water and the fibres that make washi. Among the finest of handmade papers, washi is the backbone of several other Japanese art forms, from origami to calligraphy and shoji screens.
We walk through open rooms where large vats of milky water catch the soft light. The pulp of mulberry bark is beaten into a soft paste, then mixed with water and neri, a mucilaginous liquid derived from the root of the tororo-aoi plant, and finally scooped into wooden frames. It's a two-person dance. The rhythm is steady, almost hypnotic: scoop, shake, drain, lift — each motion synced and polished by repetition.
I touch a finished sheet of washi, firm and soft like an autumn leaf. It carries the forest, the river, and Aki-chan’s decades in one translucent layer.
We sit for an intimate lunch beside the workshop. Then, Aki-chan wants to sing for us. She seems smaller and more fragile without her working boots and apron, but watching her sing is like seeing the paper itself awaken: strong and delicate, full of quiet life.
So much about her reminds me of my grandma. I can almost feel her presence here, and she seems to know: she smiles at me and gives me that look again, the same one that struck me as I left Lady Baba in Kanazawa. She, too, seems to say “I know you, Sister”. When it is time to leave, she bids farewell with a simple “Mata-aou”, until I see you again.
A few twists and turns through the lush mountains, we move from Water to Fire, as if following some hidden current. As I step out of the van, I'm welcomed by the smell of mountain rain and the clang of metal: blacksmiths at their forges, keeping alive a craft that has endured in this valley for more than seven hundred years.
I step inside a local workshop, where sparks leap in the air like dancing fireflies around the blacksmith's body. To witness this choreography of molten steel and human intent feels strangely between adrenaline and contemplation.
We meet Mr. Tayuka Yamamoto of Yamaken, a woodworking studio run by the same family for four generations. He speaks with a calm precision that mirrors the sharpness of the blades surrounding us at his gallery-shop etoe.
The Yamamotos blend Echizen blades with another local mastery, the art of wooden lacquerware. Each knife joins forged steel with lacquered rosewood and magnolia, polished by hand beneath layers of translucent urushi.
As Mr Yamamoto explains, “Our dark handles weren’t popular in Japan for the first fifteen years, as people here were used to lighter tones. Only when Westerners came and began to appreciate their depth and beauty did they gain the value they hold today."
He speaks quietly of these connections, between wood and steel, past and present. Once again, these crafts seem to breathe in unison, each asserting its essence in harmony with the other.
The beat of taiko drums in the distance fills the morning air with reverence as we reach Komatsu. I’ve learned that in Japan, the most extraordinary craftsmanship waits behind the simplest doors, and Kutani Kinzangama is no exception. Through the workshop’s humble doorway, a world of porcelain shimmers with deep greens, cobalt blues, and gold. I stand still, as still as I can, afraid to break what feels almost alive.
Husband and wife, fourth-generation keepers of this legacy, lead us through their realm of clay and glaze. Together, they embody the balance between past and present: he, measured and reserved; she, bright and spirited, infusing their craft with a contemporary vision.
A legend among Kutani artisans, Mr Yoshida stands surrounded by shelves of bowls and vases, each a small universe of symbolism: carps swimming upstream, bamboo standing tall, plum blossoms unfurling after winter.
The Yoshidas’ mastery, recognised as National Treasure, lies in a rare technique of applying gold leaves to the porcelain. Yet this legacy now stands at a crossroads: few artisans continue the local gold-leaf craft, and demand for Kutani ware has grown uncertain.
But here, too, the past does not fade: it transforms. To sustain their work, Mr Yoshida has reimagined tradition itself, designing new patterns through software developed with Sony. Century-old methods meet digital innovation.
By now, I feel suspended in a state of gentle intoxication and meditation. All the notes, impressions, and encounters of the past few days melt and arrange themselves like layers of washi. The fibres binding them are too closely interwoven to make sense of it all, but perhaps a sake tasting will help, I think.
And indeed, it does. At the Noguchi Naohiko Sake Institute, the legendary brewmaster’s spirit lingers in every detail: the temperature of the air, the sound of fermentation, the patience of those who watch and wait. Sake feels like the meeting point of all I’ve witnessed in this region: the purity of Echizen’s water, the fire of its forges, the touch of lacquered wood. Every drop holds the landscape, distilled and returned with grace.
Looking down from above, as I fly back to the real world, the view comes into focus. The crafts of Hokuriku are not separate disciplines but chapters of a single story that begins and ends in Nature. They are Nature itself, guided and revealed into new form.
In a world that moves too fast, Hokuriku feels like a pause, a reminder that beauty lies not in what we see, but in how we connect. By the time I reach Tokyo, the city lights begin to flicker awake. And somehow I do too, carrying the stillness and the clarity that Hokuriku offered.
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