Three stops on the Yamagata line, where the bullet train slows to local speed

North of Fukushima, the Tsubasa (つばさ) stops behaving like a bullet train. The track narrows to the gauge of the old Ōu Main Line, the speed settles to something an ordinary express could hold, and level crossings start appearing beside the window — a rice field, a shuttered barber, someone waiting on a bicycle with the engine idling. Most people read this stretch as dead time between Tokyo and Shinjō. Read it instead as the itinerary: three stops inside forty minutes of each other, each one small enough to walk out of the station and into.

Kaminoyama Onsen, on foot from the platform

Kaminoyama is a spa town that never rebuilt itself into a resort, which is its whole appeal. Free ashiyu (足湯, foot baths) sit at intervals through the streets — shed your socks, sit ten minutes, watch the Zaō range change colour, put your socks back on. Behind the main shopping street the Tsukinoke quarter keeps a short row of thatched samurai residences, still lived in on the same lane as a laundromat. The castle on the hill is a twentieth-century reconstruction and does not pretend otherwise; the view across the Yamagata basin is the honest reason to climb it.

Ōishida, and the road made of soba

Ōishida faces the Mogami River, and was once the port where rice went downstream toward Sakata. Inland from the station runs the soba kaidō (そば街道), a scatter of farmhouse shops serving buckwheat cold on woven trays, dark and coarse, usually with a pot of duck broth and no menu worth translating. Buses leave the same forecourt for Ginzan Onsen, which the internet has thoroughly found. Going the other direction, uphill, past the sheds, is the point.

Tendō, where the pieces are cut

Almost all of Japan's shōgi (将棋) pieces are made in Tendō, and the town does not let you forget it: pieces on the manhole covers, pieces on the bridge railings, a workshop where a carver finishes a character in lacquer while you stand in the doorway. In mid-April, Maizuru Park stages Human Shōgi, a full game played on a hillside board by costumed people who move when told. The rest of the year the park is quiet and the onsen ryokan take walk-in bathers in the afternoon.

つばさは福島から先で、在来線の線路にそっと降りてくる。

Two nights covers all three comfortably. Sleep in Kaminoyama, ride out mornings, and let the timetable — not the train's top speed — set the pace.