The twenty-first century man learns about the world in reverse order. He perceives his own culture through the lens of the world as the "other" to a universal lowest common denominator, and only then adopts identity on these foreign things. Therefore it is at styleless restaurants where the true regional taste profile can be found the farther one trudges into the countryside.

The Hirosaki chef explained that he did not even like apples growing up. His suppon chawanmushi was accented with ginger and ayu claypot rice with sansho pepper in early anticipation of a northernmost winter.

By August, ayu had grown too large, so its grilled remains had to be deboned painstakingly by the young assistant before being scattered back onto the rice bed. Leftovers were molded into onigiri by the same tender palms.

At the counter, I met a shrine hunter who drove here along the sea coast from Shizuoka on a motorbike. It is unclear whether visiting a large array of shrines over a wide area yields any spiritual advantage, or perhaps it merely justifies an escapade embellished with jizake tasting, or that is exactly a kind of spiritual advantage in itself.

Among tourists, drunkards, the rich and the poor, the casual-shirt-wearing ordinary citizen seemed to have the firmest grasp of reality; he alone had honed the modern day iki.

Sell the Ooma tuna to Toyosu. Let it vanish from the local market. Keep the Hachinohe octopus, Aomori silver duck liver and Kanagi horse meat to ourselves. Drink polished Denshu to soba with grated karasumi. Nobody mention the basil tonkatsu sauce.

They say the environment is harsh, to the point people pluck at shamisen to vent in despair, yet the ants of Tohoku crawl in winding circles, a stark contrast to those at home frantically rushing back and forth between concrete blocks surrounded by bone-white leaves, insect-black flowers and fallen leaves shaped of spider.

From the ash of apple tree branches a deep blue-gray Phantomhive colour was birthed onto the namako-yuu glaze bowl. If the luxurious tsugarunuri lacquerware boasts precision, then this pottery is more of an impressionist. It poses as a perfect tranquil background to not a lot of ginshari white rice.

The view from the hotel room was blurred by cold condensation on the fogged window, and shapeless lights smeared itself over the darkness where nothing more could be made out. They were so isolatedly distributed that they seemingly denied the existence of a nightly Bifröst path.

Films supposedly leave none to imagination, but we always manage to find a way. Ignorance is cathartic - the muffled archaic speeches in Kagero-za add a layer of indirection, like watching a screen projected onto another screen, a dream within a dream.

Suzuki Seijun's style is already cryptic to begin with, so this indirection only amplifies it to a dysfunctional degree. Despite the Crime-and-Punishment-like undertone, we are all too busy admiring the ghastly aesthetics and the exoticism of the other worldly to pay due attention.

Elegant people against rustic backgrounds, refined movements alongside vulgar humour, every scene is its own eye candy. They turned their backs to the temptation of a perfect illusion via computer graphics, and instead pursued the suspended reality of old theatre and Kabuki of wraiths.

It was at a Shuzenji inn where I read Izumi Kyoka's Shunchu from the comfort of the indoor balcony with plum wine in hand. The great void of the centre tatami space invoked a sense of unease, so I instinctively stayed on familiar stone ground with slippers on at the room's edge instead. Lush greens and pink blossoms behind the glass window were pierced through by winter sunset rays.

Unlike moving pictures, texts lie there forever patiently waiting for one's traversal, yet Izumi's writing is as uneasy as a forming storm, growing turbulence twisting at a different angle at every whim, as though it lives and breathes on the very page.

If madness is waves that come and go to each of us and insanity the endless waves against the shore of the mind as he described, then bossa nova might be a lulling highway to insanity.

A ryokan dinner's appropriate role is an invisible one, a tale without protagonists, a film without stars. This way it blends seamlessly into the season like an anonymous flower, just adding perfume to the stay.

The salon upstairs was empty on the weekday night, so after a fragrant glass of Izu Kagerou grappa, I headed back to my private hinoki wooden bath, the water now half-translucent in the dark, and the two fluids compressed my body from outer and within.

As taxi transported door-to-door, the scenery outside appeared almost fake with neither smell nor warmth, soft breeze unfelt and bamboo rustle unheard. The only reality I knew was the amazake served in the morning.

The driver boasted that it never snows here, but the vibrant nature overflowing with life has the same kind of violence as a rich breakfast which punches one in the gut. From afar, Mount Fuji asserted its physical magnificence at every glance, and by early evening, the January full moon parked next to it palely, washed out by the sunsetting sky.