A day in Omihachiman,where boats glide through town

Omihachiman, in Shiga Prefecture, is a town where the houses of the Omi merchants, built from the last years of the Edo period into the Meiji era, still stand in orderly rows. White-walled storehouses line the canal, and roofed boats drift slowly along the water.

Walking along the canal, past storehouses perched on stone walls, I came to the old Hachiman Post Office, designed by William Merrell Vories and built in 1921: cream-colored walls and an arched entrance. The whole town felt like the set of a period drama.

The house I borrowed this time is a townhouse built at the very end of the Meiji era. A small lantern hangs beside the gate, and beyond the latticed sliding door a dim corridor runs deep into the house under exposed beams, ending at a small stone-paved garden.

Out on the street, merchant houses with latticed windows and white walls stand in neat rows. Back inside, light through the shoji fell softly on the tatami. It is an old house in a place where time seems to have stopped.

Breakfast was ochazuke made with funazushi, a Shiga specialty. Thin slices of the fish go on the rice with a scattering of chopped green onion, and hot broth is poured over the top.

Funazushi is an old style of fermented sushi: crucian carp from Lake Biwa, salted and then packed in rice for more than half a year. Its mature, rich sourness slowly unfolds in the broth.

Past a street of shop signs, I reached the Hachimanbori canal. It was dug in 1585, when Toyotomi Hidetsugu built his castle on Mt. Hachiman, to link the castle town with Lake Biwa. Boats crossing the lake called here, people and goods gathered, and the canal played a major role in the rise of the Omi merchants and the prosperity of the town.

I climbed into a wooden boat with a roof and windows, sat on the tatami, and watched the town from the water. White-walled storehouses stand on stone embankments, and bare cherry trees stretch their branches over the surface. The boat moved slowly through the atmospheric scenery.

Back on land, I walked along stone pavements still patched with snow. On the latticed window of a souvenir shop were notices for reed flutes, Omi mosquito nets and freshwater pearls from Lake Biwa. The white-walled street ran straight ahead.

For lunch, a diner with a red noren. The curry ramen, with its nostalgic flavor, and the tanin-don, a rice bowl of Omi beef simmered with egg, are said to be the favorites. The thick curry broth comes loaded with cabbage and pork; the beef in the rice bowl is sweetly simmered and bound with egg.

The walls are covered with autographed boards, and a movie poster hangs by the entrance. The diner has appeared in a TV commercial, I was told, and is popular with people in the film business. A cozy place with a Showa-era feel.

Next, a Japanese confectionery on the approach to Himure Hachimangu Shrine. Under a wooden sign, benches draped in red felt run the length of the long eaves. Tsubura mochi, baked fresh and sold only here, are small round rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste, crisp and fragrant on the outside.

I sat in a tatami room with a sunken hearth, steam rising from the kamado stove nearby, and picked at three mochi served in a boat-shaped dish. The complimentary adzuki tea went well with their gentle sweetness.

I passed beneath a great tree hung with a sacred rope and looked across at Hakuunkan, which stands before the shrine's torii gate. Built in 1877 as the Hachiman East School in a Western-influenced style, it now serves as the tourist information center.

My destination was La Collina Omihachiman, a grass-roofed building that looks like something out of a Ghibli film. A path leads between green fields toward roofs that seem to go on forever against the hills. Inside, castella in paper molds were being lined up one after another.

The shop is known for its Hachiman castella, served warm and fluffy from the oven. With tea and an hourglass before me and the grass outside the window, I tore into a cake whose shape begs to be broken by hand. Gently sweet; I felt I could eat it endlessly.

I stopped at a pickle shop beside a stone wall. A banner under the eaves announced that the hinona pickles were ready. In a basket sat piles of red konnyaku, the local specialty I had been curious about, in pink packets.

Hinona pickles, striking for their vivid purple-red color and slender shape, were coiled into spirals and packed. At the back of the shop hung a banner reading "Hinona, a specialty of Omi." I bought both for tonight's table.

Through the shrine's torii, hung with a sacred rope and straw ornaments, I walked to a butcher's whose sign reads "Omi beef." The shop deals in Omi beef the old-fashioned way; old photographs of cattle being led and grazing line the walls, along with a chart tracing the lineage of the cows they raise. Omi beef was something I definitely wanted to taste.

I walked home along the elegant Shinmachi street. After dark, the Hachimanbori canal glowed under orange lights, the shadows of cherry branches wavering on the water.

Dinner was an evening of Omihachiman specialties. I sliced cucumber thinly on the board, seared a thick cut of marbled Omi beef, and carved it with a knife. Omi beef is counted among Japan's three great wagyu, and is said to be the country's oldest brand of beef. I kept it simple, with just salt and pepper.

Small dishes went out on the low table, and I poured a glass of alcohol-free beer. Red konnyaku, fine-grained and smooth, gets its color from iron; one story says Oda Nobunaga, who loved flashy things, had it dyed red. It looks festive and is nourishing too.

The pink hinona pickles had a pleasant bite, and chojifu no karashi-ae, cubes of the local chojifu wheat gluten dressed with mustard, is another dish of this region. The chewy texture of the fu kept my chopsticks coming back.

At night, the lantern by the inn's gate glows. Omihachiman is a town where the look of the Meiji era is woven into daily life. In the Showa era the Hachimanbori canal was nearly filled in, but townspeople waded in to clean it week after week until the plan was dropped. The work of protecting the town's culture and history continues today. I wonder what kind of life I will meet next.