Published April 7, 2026 03:27AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I stepped off the bus from Tokyo and into a dense fog. The town of Kazuno, in Japan\u2019s rural Akita prefecture, looked nearly abandoned. I\u2019d arrived expecting the pastoral whimsy of a Miyazaki film. Instead, I seemed to have wandered into a level of Silent Hill<\/em>.<\/p>\n I crisscrossed the street, peering into mostly vacant shop windows, many of them plastered with flyers warning locals about bears. I saw more signs of bear safety when two elementary-aged girls passed me. Small golden bells hung from their backpacks, and long after the little girls disappeared into the fog ahead, I could hear the bells tinkling in the distance. Then, a trio of military transport trucks sped through the mist.<\/p>\n Kazuno, population 28,000, is a farming community in the far north of Japan\u2019s main island, Honshu. The town is essentially one long road, wedged between the \u014cu Mountains, Japan\u2019s longest range. Rice paddies stretch for a half-mile east and west of town before the land rises into the peaks, which are carpeted by dense forests of rich, green cedar trees, interspersed with beech.<\/p>\n