I love the reduction of details in winter, the spare beauty of the landscape—the leafless trees and the lack of color. The deprivations of the season create a kind of exhilaration and heightened awareness. The Japanese have always had an appreciation, almost a craving, for the forlorn magnificence that a heavy snowfall brings. As the seventeenth-century Zen monk Basho, the first great haiku poet, put it: "Come, let's go / snow-viewing / till we're buried."

A life lived close to nature, and in touch with the seasons, is the eternal Japanese ideal. The snowy north of Japan, where Basho traveled on foot, has struggled with poverty and harsh rural conditions for centuries, but because it is relatively unspoiled, and partly due to the difficulties of life there, it has always been seen as a purer place, where a more authentic spirit prevails. It is no accident that snow is a common backdrop of many Noh and Kabuki dramas, or that Yasunari Kawabata's 1947 masterpiece, the novel Yukiguni, or Snow Country, tells the story of a world-weary Tokyo bachelor who restores himself with visits to an old hot springs ryokan in the north every year.

Hokkaido is the snow country in extreme—cold, harsh, remote. The island was considered uninhabitable for centuries, a place for banished criminals and wild nomads, the indigenous Ainu hunters. About five hundred miles from Tokyo and roughly the size of Austria, Hokkaido constitutes twenty-two percent of all Japan. Only the southwestern edge was opened for trade in 1854, but even then, people were prohibited from settling on the island for another fourteen years, when the port towns of Otaru and Hakodate were built and vast fishing fortunes were made. After World War II, when gas lines and power plants arrived, towns in the central and eastern regions were developed using Western models, and new waves of pioneers came, adventurous individuals who created farms, mining operations, and fisheries.

By the 1960s, a small but steady stream of tourists began coming as well, to hike and bike and swim in the summer, to enjoy the foliage in the autumn, to ski in the winter. The 1972 Winter Olympic Games brought Sapporo international —the 1980s and early 1990s, when Japan's economy boomed—that the larger ski areas, hot springs resorts, and golf courses were developed. These survived the recession of the last ten years with package deals and low prices—and have catered mainly to Japanese, often from other parts of Hokkaido. The population of the island, six million people, is slowly shrinking like the rest of Japan's, and though the island produces one-fifth of Japan's agricultural crops, as well as farmed fish, it is poorer per capita than the country's other rural areas and is the least densely populated prefecture.

As we approach Otaru, Tanaka-san stops to show us the craggy coastline and the view of the sea. It's a blustery day, with big clouds gliding across the blue sky. As you drive into town, the city has an eerie old-Europe feeling, with its redbrick warehouses and methodical design. After wandering a bit through the slushy snow, Leslee and I walk toward Sakaimachi Street, a narrow road cluttered with cracker vendors, fish markets, and enticing shops filled with wooden crafts, glass-blowing studios, and homemade chocolates. I'm starting to worry about the time—at most ryokans, they like to know exactly when you plan to arrive—but as we head up Chuo Dori on our way to the Otaru train station, Leslee and I stumble upon a dangerous distraction, a shadowy, smoke-filled shopping arcade. Stepping inside one of these is like falling down a rabbit hole. You never know where you'll wind up—or how much time has passed.