Curve after curve, road after road, town after town, Miyagi’s Oshika Peninsula is a place where you can spend hours driving and barely see another soul. A place where deer roam freely, stars fill the sky, and nature feels genuinely untouched. Vast, secret, windswept beaches scatter the coastline, each blanketed in a gentle mist that rolls down from the mountains.

I have been fortunate enough to visit this part of Northern Japan a few times now, staying with my wife’s parents who live very remote, about an hour’s drive from the nearest train station. Moving here after the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami, their primary aim was to build relationships in the local community, helping out in whatever way they can.

I’m always struck by the innocent simplicity and resilience of life here – each day filled with a number of daily experiences that on the surface seem so simple, but in essence represent a deeper connection between the landscape and the people who live here. On our last visit, we received a phone call while driving from an elderly friend who lives in a tiny hamlet at the edge of the peninsula. He had been given lots of sea urchins, and wondered if we would like some. So off we went.

Weaving our way up and around the mountains, we circled back down to the sea and found his house perched against the coastline. Living alone since his wife died a few years ago, and experiencing mobility problems himself now, life must be isolated and difficult. Yet the spirit of sharing in these remote areas still binds people together: the local fishermen who freedived for the urchins sharing their bounty with him, who in turn shared it with us. 

The Oshika Peninsula was the closest part of Honshu to the epicenter of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and for many years afterwards, many of the surviving residents lived in makeshift houses built from shipping containers. Thankfully, all of these people now have permanent homes, and the construction that was so prevalent during my first visit in 2017, has all but disappeared.

The colossal devastation – both emotional and physical – that this region went through will never fully be forgotten. But the glorious sunsets that preside over the peninsula each night now feel peaceful, and maybe, just maybe, healing has begun.