Dakigaeri Gorge

The Akita Kanto Festival, held every August, is one of the great summer festivals of Tohoku and a designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan. Performers balance towering bamboo poles hung with dozens of glowing paper lanterns — some poles reaching 12 metres and weighing 50 kilograms — on their foreheads, shoulders, lower backs, and even hips. The sight of thousands of lanterns swaying against the night sky is genuinely breathtaking. Each evening, the main boulevard fills with performers and spectators, and the collective skill on display has been refined over 270 years.

Inaniwa udon, produced in the small village of Inaniwa in southern Akita, is one of Japan's three great udon styles and has been made by hand using the same technique for over 350 years. Unlike the thick, chewy udon of Kagawa, Inaniwa noodles are thin, flat, and silky smooth, with a delicate bite that feels almost refined. The noodles are hand-stretched and dried over several days without machines. Eating them in their home region — hot in a light dashi broth or chilled in summer — is a markedly different experience from packaged versions sold elsewhere in Japan.

Japan's best-preserved samurai district outside Kyushu — a long avenue of black-walled samurai residences beneath weeping cherry trees, unchanged since the Edo period. Called the "Little Kyoto of Tohoku".