Tohoku through the train window, four seasons

Six people got on the two-car train at Kitakami on Saturday 20 December, and I counted them because there was nothing else to do while the heater warmed up. By the end of the line, at Yokote, two were left. The windows had fogged on the inside, and the first hour of the ride was a matter of wiping a circle with my sleeve and watching a white valley come into focus.

That was the first of four rides. I took the others in April, July and September, and this is what the window showed on each. The photographs are the ones I kept, and the captions say where and when.

I write regional guides for Waymark, and our rule for those guides is at least two visits in different seasons. Tohoku makes the rule easy to defend. In October 2025 I drove from Aomori to Sendai over eight nights for the regional guide, and the car showed me roads, passes and parking lots. It did not show me the backs of towns, the rivers that run beside the rail lines or what the land looks like when nobody has a reason to stop. For that you need a window seat and a timetable.

So I went back on local trains, and kept to a corner of the region I had come to know: the Kitakami line, Hiraizumi, the Sea of Japan coast near the Aomori border, Yamadera and Matsushima, and the Yamagata side of the mountains. Three of the four rides were solo. The April one was a week I spent with my colleague Mei, and it fed our guide to a week on Tohoku's local trains. Here I use only the window parts of it.

The Kitakami line crosses the mountains between Kitakami and Yokote, and in December there is more snow on the ridge than anywhere I have been in the region. The train was warm and the tickets were paper. I sat on the right side going west, which gave me the river for most of the ride, and I watched the water go from open to half frozen as the line climbed. A reservoir near the middle of the line had ice at the edges and a thin skin of snow on the dam wall. There was no building in view for long stretches, and no road.

The driver stopped at every station, including ones with no platform shelter, and waited the full time. At one of them nobody got on or off. We sat for forty seconds with the engine running, and then the door closed and we left. Some riders call that wasteful. On a line with few trains a day, it is how the timetable keeps its promise.

After Yokote the land flattened and the snow changed. In the mountains it had been deep and soft. On the plain it was a thin, hard crust over the stubble of the rice fields, cut by drainage lines that showed as dark seams. Light was already going at 2:15, and by 4:20 it was dark. In December the day ends sooner than you plan for, and every line I have ridden in Tohoku in winter had a last useful train before dusk. Check it the night before, and keep the hotel booking flexible if you can.

Two costs of winter: the cold platforms, where I waited fifty minutes for a connection, and the early dark, which cut a day of sightseeing to five hours. Two gains: almost no one else on the train, and snow views of a kind that do not exist in the other seasons.

On 31 March the train from Sendai to Hiraizumi was the quietest I rode all year, and the first thing I noticed through the window was how little had happened yet. Fields were brown and wet, willow branches were bare and a few patches of old snow lay in the shade of the cedars on the approach to Chūson-ji. We had the avenue almost to ourselves at 2:50 in the afternoon. The season was a few weeks from doing anything visible, and I liked it for that.

Three days later I took the Resort Shirakami on the Gonō line, which follows the Sea of Japan for long stretches. The seats were booked five days ahead for a Friday and the train was about half full. The sea was a grey-blue that stayed the same for an hour. Wind fences and rows of black pine ran alongside the track, and between them I could see small fishing harbors with a handful of boats each. The staff at Akita had warned me that strong wind suspends this line several times a season. I got a calm day and I know it was luck.

Spring's price is timing. I rode three weeks before the cherry trees opened, and several sights were still on winter hours. Its gain is the emptiest trains and temples of the four rides, and you pay less for rooms.

On Tuesday 14 July I took the Senzan line from Sendai to Yamadera. The window showed rice fields at the height of the green, with the plants knee-high and the water between the rows invisible. It was 29 degrees by 11am on my phone, and the air conditioning on the train was set to a level I would describe as hopeful. Yamadera is a temple complex up roughly a thousand steps, and this is where Bashō wrote his cicada poem. The cicadas had started, though the full chorus was not yet there.

I climbed in forty minutes with a stop at every landing, and passed about thirty people on the way, most of them older than me and better prepared. The steps were damp in the shade. At the top the valley below filled with haze, and the train I had arrived on was a small line of color at the foot of the hill. That is the view of the summer I will remember: a train, very small, in an enormous green.

The next day I took the Senseki line from Aoba-dōri to Matsushima-Kaigan, which took about 40 minutes on a local that stopped everywhere. The coast was flat under a white sky, and the pine islands in the bay looked like furniture someone had left in a large empty room. I walked the waterfront for an hour and got on a train back before noon, because the heat had started to feel like a decision I would regret.

Summer's cost is the heat, and the crowds at the places everyone has heard of. Yamadera on a Tuesday was busy and Matsushima was busier. The gain is the color: every window in July is a different shade of green.

On Thursday 24 September the Yamagata basin, which I had last seen green from the Senzan line in July, was gold, and half of the fields were cut. The Yamagata Line from Yamagata to Ōishida runs through the middle of them. Rice hung to dry on wooden racks beside several of the houses, and farmers were working in pairs, one cutting and one bundling. I changed trains twice that day and sat by the window each time, and I do not think I looked at my phone more than four times.

Ginzan Onsen is a bus ride from Ōishida, and I missed the bus I wanted by two minutes and waited 55 minutes for the next. The village at 6:10 in the evening is lit by gas lamps, and the day visitors have gone home, so the street belongs to people in bathrobes carrying towels. I slept in a small inn, one night, [Inn name], in the $$$ band, and ate dinner in the room. The last bus back to the station leaves early, so if you want the village in the evening you will need a bed there.

Autumn's cost is the bus connection at the end of the rail journey and the price of a room in the onsen street. Its gain is the best light of the four rides, low and warm from about 4pm.

After four rides I read a train window as a calendar. The fields near the line were brown in March, green in July and gold in September, and the Kitakami line was white in December. The best ride of the year was the December one, with six passengers and a fogged window. The best light was in September. I cannot rank those two against each other, and I stopped trying somewhere around Ōishida.

If you can take only one trip, choose by what you want to see. For snow and empty carriages, go in December and plan around dark by 4:30. For the sea and quiet, go in early April and accept that the blossom comes later. For green fields and the famous stops, July, with water and a hat. For harvest and warm light, the last week of September.

Whichever you pick, buy paper tickets at the station and carry coins. Our 10-day Tohoku itinerary strings the sparse lines together in an order that works in any season. If you plan to join it with a shinkansen from Tokyo, price your route before buying a pass, using our guide on whether the JR Pass is worth it, because local rides on their own cost very little.