The culture of Japan’s Deep North is known more for its unspoiled elemental nature and its ancient customs than for its luxury amenities. But among the myths, legends, and hot springs, a deeply rooted culture of unparalleled hospitality abounds. Carrie Dennis writes about her experience healing and unwinding across Tohoku’s six prefectures—Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, Aomori, Akita, and Yamagata.

We partnered with Japan National Tourism Organization to bring this story to life.

When my friends ask me, “How was your trip to Japan?”—which they do often now that I’m back to my everyday life in New York City—I find myself retelling a specific story. I was waiting for continental breakfast in the lobby of the Westin Sendai, a giant Western-style hotel in Miyagi prefecture, along Japan’s eastern coast, and watching a friend back home finish her first marathon on social media. Sitting in a row of chairs just two couples from the host, I teared up. I was so proud of her dedication, and the glowing camaraderie of marathons always makes me emotional. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand as the host, a young man in a crisp black suit and neat haircut, wordlessly showed me to my seat. I blinked back my tears as I went to the buffet. When I returned to my table, the host, or someone, had left me a box of tissues.

It occurs to me, now that I’m back and have processed my Japan experience for a few weeks, that the reason this moment stands out so vividly, especially when it was merely 10 minutes of an eight-day trip in which we—a photographer, tour guide, translator, and I—visited a number of fabulous temples, ryokan, restaurants, and historical sites in search of the perfect magazine story, is that such sincerity is not something I, nor I’d wager many other Americans, encounter frequently in everyday life. It is an unlikely comfort, a bizarre extravagance that we only allow ourselves on special occasions. It is, essentially, a luxury.

Clockwise from top right: Souvenir fabric flowers hang in Ouchijuku, a preserved Edo-Period post town; handmade postcards are displayed outside a local shop; negi-soba served with a traditional green onion utensil and a side of apple slices and pickled vegetables; thatched roofs of the town seen from a low-key walking path.

Americans often associate “luxury,” especially as it pertains to travel, with sprawling hotel campuses run by conglomerates. These offer endless pools, expensive spa treatments, and first-class service. This can be pleasant, but it is also impersonal. What I experienced in Japan was different—a bespoke luxury, in a way. Living in the moment with others, being completely immersed in a culture far from your own, and being treated with exceptional graciousness is another, arguably better, type of extravagance than I was used to. And during the eight days I spent in the northeast of Japan, it just kept happening.

From top to bottom: Souvenir fabric flowers hang in Ouchijuku, a preserved Edo-Period post town; handmade postcards are displayed outside a local shop; negi-soba served with a traditional green onion utensil and a side of apple slices and pickled vegetables; thatched roofs of the town seen from a low-key walking path.

Sekino Sato sits at the hearth in her family’s 500-year-old restaurant, watching over salted fish skewers called shioyaki.

Consider the lunch we had in a 500-year-old thatched-roof noodle restaurant in the middle of Ouchijuku, a former post town in Fukushima. We had arrived in the village early, after a van ride along narrow mountain roads lined with persimmon trees heavy with ripe orange fruit. We were ready to explore, but we were also bushed. I was still exhausted from the time change, the translator had the distinct kind of glassy-eyed stare that comes from thinking in two languages for an extended period of time, and the photographer had been up since 5 a.m. attempting to score quintessential shots of Matsushima Bay, a prefecture away. By chance, we stopped by this restaurant, called Yorozuya, for a bathroom break. The establishment’s matriarch, 90-year-old Sekino Sato, who had lived upstairs her whole life, sat at her hearth roasting skewers of fish. As we took our shoes off at the door, she grinned and beckoned us in. “Sit down and take a load off because we’re going to cook for you,” she said through our weary translator. It was as if she could sense our collective fatigue. We decided we had better stay for lunch.

Sekino Sato sits at the hearth in her family’s 500-year-old restaurant, watching over salted fish skewers called shioyaki.

Sekino’s invitation for us to sit and eat with her is easy to write off as bolstering business during a slow lunch hour, but I prefer to think that she truly just wanted to take care of us. Ensconced at a table, cross-legged on the tatami flooring, the photographer and I slurped (the polite way to eat noodles in Japan) negi-soba with bracken, mushrooms, and menma, fermented bamboo shoots that have a delicate pickle flavor. We laughed and splashed soup on our faces as we attempted to eat the noodles in the traditional way: using a single sturdy green onion instead of chopsticks, biting bits off the end of the stalk for extra flavor. Our guide and the translator, meanwhile, ate kitakata ramen, a Fukushima specialty with soy-sauce-based broth and chewy noodles made with local mountain water. As the afternoon light filtered through the window, photos of five generations of Sekino’s family patriarchs looked down upon us from where they hung near the ceiling. There was warmth, and soup, and fire, and friendliness: hospitality so classic it is literally ancient.

I began to wonder if what I was experiencing was omotenashi, a somewhat ephemeral concept that holds the sincere anticipation of a guest’s needs as the apex of excellent service. A uniquely Japanese concept, the phrase’s meaning and gravity has been somewhat eroded by years of marketing executives using it as a selling point for Western travelers. That afternoon in Ouchijuku, however, I didn’t feel like a tourist being tricked. It was real.

Top to bottom: Workers load up the tabletop grill with fresh oysters at Matsushima Oyster House, a small restaurant by the bay; the writer, tour guide, and translator make new friends at the communal tables.

Top to bottom: Workers load up the tabletop grill with fresh oysters at Matsushima Oyster House, a small restaurant by the bay; the writer, tour guide, and translator make new friends at the communal tables.

Here’s another example: North of Fukushima on Miyagi Prefecture’s eastern coast is a small single-ingredient-focused restaurant: Matsushima Oyster House. It smells like the sea. Men in waders heave live oysters by the literal shovelful into the large grill pits of communal tables, where they cook for 15 minutes under a heavy metal cover. These guys have been up since 3 a.m., harvesting the bivalves from a farm in Matsushima Bay. Bibbed up and wearing a heat-protective glove on my hand, I watched as spunky Yuko Kokubo, who has spent her whole life in Miyagi and has worked at this restaurant for 15 years, flitted between tables checking cooking times and keeping the energy up with frequent shouts of “Guri, guri, guri!” (an onomatopoeia for “jiggle, jiggle, jiggle!”) as she demonstrated to patrons how to pry open the enormous shells with a knife. Once the oysters were cooked, we had one hour to eat as many as we wanted. The meat inside was salty, briny, and buttery; the oysters practically melted in my mouth. I have no idea how many I ate, but the number would probably astonish you.

Left to right: A ferry cruises by one of the many pine-covered islets of Matsushima Bay; the first-class cabin on a ferry cruising around Matsushima Bay, where the oysters of Matsushima Oyster House are harvested.

Left to right: A ferry cruises by one of the many pine-covered islets of Matsushima Bay; the first-class cabin on a ferry cruising around Matsushima Bay, where the oysters of Matsushima Oyster House are harvested.

On our way out, I asked Yuko what omotenashi means to her. She told me that when people come into her restaurant, they’re not just coming to eat. They’re coming to have fun. That’s why she likes to talk with them and engage with them, and ensure that they have the best possible time they can have while they’re there. It’s a little different from the standard definition of omotenashi; more like a core value of kindness and sincerity. Maybe these examples of excellent hospitality have nothing to do with omotenashi at all, and they’re simply illustrative of a culture that values caring: During that week in Tohoku, there were many times when strangers were unusually kind in a way I’ve seldom experienced.

Outside the oyster restaurant there was a foot onsen, a little wooden pavilion over a shallow slate pool where folks can take their shoes off and soak their feet. As my guide later explained, onsen are treasured in Japan, and the Japanese like to take full advantage where they can. Two other diners, Hiromi and her partner Yoichi, were just leaving the foot bath when my translator and I approached and rolled up our jeans.

“Do you have a towel?” Hiromi asked. “No,” the translator said. “We’ll figure it out.” Hiromi disappeared for a few minutes and returned from her car with a hand towel. “You can just throw it away when you’re done,” she said. Instead, I brought it home with me as a souvenir. (I’ve since washed it.)

You’ll have to imagine what the onsen I bathed in look like—the ryokan we visited were so protective of their guests’ comfort that they wouldn’t let us block off the baths for any length of time to take photos.

In fact, a number of experiences I had with this particularly Japanese form of genuineness, this personalized luxury, occurred in and around these hot springs. For example, ryokan, traditional Japanese inns, come in many forms but typically are centered around an onsen. Some ryokan offer personal hot spring baths right in your room, and almost all offer public ones. Over the course of the week we stayed in establishments comparable to all-inclusive resorts or cruise ships with buffets well-suited to the American palate, as well as super-traditional places with meandering hallways and a nightly turndown service in which futons appear on the floor at a set hour. But you’ll have to imagine what the onsen I bathed in look like—the ryokan we visited were so protective of their guests’ comfort that they wouldn’t let us block off the baths for any length of time to take photos—evidence that the hoteliers of northeastern Japan have their priorities in the right place.

Onsen are repositories of somewhat arcane rules of behavior and decorum, and like many foreigners, I feared embarrassing myself in the first one I visited. In a traditional ryokan in the northernmost prefecture of Aomori, I went to the onsen early in the morning when few people were likely to be there. I removed my shoes outside the door because there were other shoes there and it seemed to be what I was supposed to do. Inside, baskets lined the walls. Only one other woman was there with me, so I sheepishly eyed her to see what came next. Get completely undressed and put your clothes in a basket was the answer. I did that, and then followed my onsen mentor at a respectful distance into a new room for my next challenge. The steam cleared as I closed the sliding glass door behind me and I approached the plastic stools and accompanying shower heads with quiet confusion. In an onsen, you sit to take a shower. Once I figured that out, I had the showering part well in hand until I tried to locate shampoo among the five bottles identified only in Japanese. My mentor, noticing my distress, offered me a bottle and then gestured to her hair. We smiled at each other and then looked away rather quickly, returning to our shower stations to finish up before entering the actual bath, where we sat in silence, looking in the same direction.

Left to right: Fall colors and traditional architecture at Aizu Higashiyama Onsen Mukaitaki, a ryokan in Fukushima Prefecture; pork cooks over a flame-resistant leaf as part of the kaiseki; the calm hallways of Aizu Higashiyama Onsen Mukaitaki offer beautiful views of the zen garden.

There are many different versions of Japan that a Western mind can conjure based on photos and movies; the wonderful wackiness of technologically hyper-advanced Tokyo, the beguiling discipline of geisha, a meditative zen garden. In Aomori, I felt that the idea of Japan I had developed since I learned I’d be visiting this rural part of the country was playing out exactly as I had imagined it would. It was quiet, kind, respectful, reflective. Routine, but rich. Quintessentially Japanese.

We were lucky enough to spend time with two geisha, an increasingly rare and often misunderstood experience that many Japanese people have never even had.

Perhaps the best example of personalized luxury, or caring, or omotenashi, or whatever you want to call it, in Japan is the idea of a “mood maker,” a person so attuned to the needs of others that he or she can change the emotional atmosphere of an entire room full of people so that everyone feels comfortable. Historically, the apotheoses of this concept were geisha (or geiko, as they’re sometimes called), who spend years training to be perfect hostesses. They entertain—dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments—but they’re also highly skilled conversationalists, making sure the vibe never lags and that everyone is having the best time possible. The culture is changing,though: As ancient customs wane, fewer young women choose to follow the geisha path. The cities of Niigata, Kanazawa, and Kyoto are at the center of the geisha tradition, which is why it was unusual to encounter them in Tohoku. According to one of the geisha I met, only 17 remain in the region.

Clockwise from top: Chiyono and Wakaba perform a traditional dance and song of autumn; Chiyono enacts a samurai story from the Edo Period; Chiyono poses for a portrait.

At a ryokan in Fukushima, we were lucky enough to spend time with two geisha (they always work in pairs), an increasingly rare and often misunderstood experience that many Japanese people have never even had. As we ate kaiseki, a traditional multi-course meal with many beautifully presented components, the women seamlessly switched sides of the room, making sure they spoke to everyone. They refilled our glasses of sake with such uninterrupted grace that I couldn’t even tell how much I was drinking because my glass was never empty. “I became a geisha at 18,” Chiyono told me through the translator. “When I was a student in high school, I passed by these beautiful girls and I asked them, ‘Where are you from?’ They were geisha from Niigata. And so I learned about how to become a geisha and fell in love with the idea. I got my name in three years.” When you become a geisha, you get a new name. How long that takes depends upon the individual’s effort.

Between the main dishes and the rice and miso soup course that marked the end of the meal, Wakaba, who had been a geisha for 50 years, plucked a traditional shamisen as Chiyono performed a dance interpreting key historical events that occurred in Fukushima during Japan’s civil war, the 1868 to 1869 Boshin War. We had spent that very day visiting Aizu Bukeyashiki, a reconstruction of an important samurai mansion that was burned down in that conflict, and Tsuruga Castle, besieged in the same.

As someone who has only about 250 years of history connecting me to my own country, it’s hard for me to truly grasp the significance of ancient traditions. The world has changed in so many ways since the genesis of Japan’s most cherished customs. Even the geisha are no longer as prevalent as they once were. But there are some traditions—dances, hot springs, ways-of-being—that live on exactly the same way. It is a luxury just to be able to witness a through-line to history.

Maybe the most overused word in travel today is “authenticity.” People throw it around like salt at a sumo match. To me it means realness, a connection between people, a link between past and present, a sense that you are in one place that is deeply and unapologetically only that place. It’s not something you’ll find at a luxury megaresort. But I think I found it in northeastern Japan. I learned something there: Authenticity is something that has to be given to you. May you one day find yourself in the right place to receive it.

To start planning your own Tohoku trip, visit here. And for in-depth information on how to visit Tohoku, read more here.