wanoi KAKUNODATE

Three old houses in the samurai district of Kakunodate, one of them an actual samurai residence, have been turned into a small hotel whose name translates to something like "the old Japanese way of living." The other two were a pickle storehouse and a fabric shop, all painstakingly preserved. Breakfast arrives bento-style; dinner means your hosts pointing you toward town. It's less lodging, more an argument that time is negotiable.