Kakuda sits between the Zao mountains and the Pacific coast, about an hour by car from either. Sendai Airport is also about an hour away, and a rental car picked up at the airport is the simplest way to reach us. These plans assume you will be driving.
Below are four itineraries, one for each season. Follow one from beginning to end, or take a single stop from it. Everything listed is within a comfortable day's drive of the house.
They suit couples and friends travelling together, but equally families, three generations under one roof, or a group of old friends. The whole house is yours, one group per day, so rearrange any of this to fit your party.
About one hour by rental car from Sendai Airport. You can land at midday and be standing under a kilometres-long tunnel of cherry trees the same afternoon. This is a well-known blossom viewing area within Japan, but few overseas visitors reach it.
All the major rental companies have counters at the airport. An international driving permit is required to drive in Japan.
About 1,200 cherry trees along 8 km of the Shiroishi River, with the snow-capped Zao mountains behind them. The trees were donated by one local man in 1923 and have been cared for by the community ever since.
One group per day. The house is a registered tangible cultural property, over a century old, with the original sliding doors and carved transoms and a fully modern kitchen and bathroom. After check-in no staff remain on site, so the house is entirely yours.
A few minutes away is Marusho, a sake shop selling "Otokurasan" — brewed from rice grown in Kakuda, in the fields you drove past on the way here. Dinner is a short walk away, or you can bring food back and eat at the house.
The castle of Katakura Kojuro, right-hand man to the warlord Date Masamune. Rebuilt in 1995 in wood, using traditional joinery rather than concrete — rare in Japan, and you can smell the timber inside.
Umen are short 9 cm wheat noodles made without oil. The story goes that a son devised them 400 years ago for a father with a weak stomach. Some restaurants serve them with three dipping sauces to compare.
At Yajiro Kokeshi Village you paint a face and pattern onto a plain wooden kokeshi (a traditional wooden doll turned on a lathe) and take it home the same day. You can also watch craftsmen at the lathe. A souvenir you make rather than buy.
Most overseas visitors come to southern Miyagi for two things: the fox village and the crater lake at Zao. Both are within an hour's drive of the house, so you can see them in a single day and still sleep in a century-old merchant's home.
A full-scale model of the H-II rocket stands in the middle of rice fields. Kakuda is home to a JAXA research centre, and the free exhibition hall displays a real rocket engine and a satellite.
One group per day, the whole house. Unpack, do your laundry, talk late — there is no one else in the building. Staff do not stay on site after check-in.
Croquettes from the butcher, bread from the local bakery, cold sake from the liquor shop. The butcher and the bakery both close at 18:30, so shop before then. The wide earthen-floored entrance stays cool in summer, and the veranda opens onto the garden.
About 100 foxes of six species roam free in a wooded enclosure that you walk through. It is the best known spot in southern Miyagi among overseas visitors, and quietest first thing in the morning.
An emerald crater lake at 1,600 m. The viewpoint is a two to three minute walk from the car park, so no hiking gear is needed. The water changes colour with the light and weather.
Not a hotel spa but Kami-no-yu, the bathhouse local people use daily. You wash and rinse thoroughly at the taps before entering the bath, and no swimwear is worn.
The museum displays 5,500 kokeshi dolls, the largest collection anywhere. Painting your own takes about 30 minutes and same-day booking is usually possible.
For autumn colours, most visitors think of Kyoto. Here you drift down an empty gorge in a wooden boat, poled by hand, eating a hot pot cooked on board. The sea is 30 minutes from the house and the gorge 20 minutes, so the two days taste completely different.
Rice cooked in salmon broth, topped with salmon and its own roe. Local tradition says the dish was presented to the lord of this domain some 400 years ago. Restaurants in the town serve it from late August into November.
Hills and woodland built on the coast destroyed by the 2011 tsunami, using rubble from the disaster. Local guides who lived through it explain what happened here.
A merchant's house of the same period as the storehouses you will see tomorrow, kept as a home rather than a museum.
Seventy minutes down a gorge in autumn colour, in a wooden boat poled by a boatman. From October the boats serve imoni (a taro and beef hot pot eaten outdoors in autumn) on board. The boatman's commentary is in Japanese only, but the scenery and the pot need no translation.
The home of a family who traded in kimono fabric, miso and soy sauce for seven generations. Seven storehouses stand behind the gate, still holding the furniture and clothing of the last hundred and fifty years. It is the larger relative of the house you slept in.
For maples, Fudoson Park along the Uchikawa gorge, with a small café beside it. For a walk through old streets, Murata, a nationally preserved district where you can rent a kimono for ¥1,500.
The frost-covered fir trees of Mount Zao, known as snow monsters, form in only a handful of places on earth. Staying in Kakuda lets you reach them without paying ski-resort prices, and come back to a quiet house with a heated floor and a hot bath.
Yamamoto is the largest strawberry growing town in the region. Inside the greenhouses it is warm even in snow, and the plants are raised to waist height so you pick standing up. January to March is when the fruit is sweetest.
A merchant's house from a hundred years ago, with modern heating, a deep bath and a 100-inch projector screen. Old Japanese houses have a reputation for being cold; this one is insulated and heated throughout.
Vegetables from the roadside market and warmed local sake bought earlier in the day. Winter is when having the whole house to yourself matters most: the best evenings are the ones you do not go out for.
Conifers encased in wind-driven snow and ice stand in ranks across the mountainside. A large snowcat carries you up to about 1,600 m, where you get out and walk among them. The tour takes roughly two hours.
Coming down from the mountain, stop at the public bathhouse in Togatta Onsen. Wash at the taps first, then soak; no swimwear is worn.
All travel times are approximate. Opening hours, prices and event dates change; please check each facility's official information before you set out.
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