Hanamaki Onsen, Koiwai Farm, and the "World Heritage Site" Hiraizumi are all within an hour. Morioka City is the leading commercial city in the northern Tohoku region and a traditional castle town.

Donald Keene's journey tracing the footsteps of haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) in Basho's masterpiece "Oku no Hosomichi," which Keene later translated into English as "The Narrow Road to Oku," ...