Japan
Murakami
Salmon hanging by their tails from the eaves of old houses, the air salt-sweet and amber.
The salmon hang from the eaves. Hundreds of them, split and salted, curing in the winter wind under the roofs of houses and shops across the town. Murakami, in Japan's Niigata Prefecture, has lived with the salmon of the Miomote River for over a millennium — salmon from this coast was presented to the court in Kyoto in the tenth century — and the fish is not just food here. It is identity.
In the mid-1700s a Murakami samurai named Aoto Buheiji, watching the domain's salmon revenue collapse from overfishing, dug a side channel beside the Miomote where returning fish could spawn in safety — the world's first salmon hatchery, and it is still in use today. The town counts more than a hundred ways to prepare the fish: shiobiki, salted and hung by the tail for weeks in the cold; sakabitashi, dried and sliced thin with a sprinkle of sake; fermented organs, salmon wrapped in kelp, and a museum, the Iyoboya Kaikan, that explains all of it beside the live fish. Murakami is also the northernmost place in Japan where tea is grown commercially, planted here since the 1620s and sweetened, the growers say, by the snow.
Solo
Walking the old streets under the hanging salmon, then tasting preparations you cannot find elsewhere — Murakami is deep Japan for the curious.
Couple
A salmon dinner that serves the same fish seven ways, followed by a walk past the drying racks in the winter dark — Murakami is a food pilgrimage for two.
- The world's first salmon hatchery was dug here in the 1700s by a samurai who saved the river's fish, and it still works.
- Hundreds of salted salmon hang by their tails from the eaves of houses and shops, curing in the winter wind.
- The town has more than a hundred ways to prepare salmon — salted, sake-cured, fermented, wrapped in kelp.
- Murakami is the northernmost place in Japan that grows tea commercially, and has since the 1620s.
Shiobiki salmon — salted, hung for weeks in the winter wind, then grilled lean and smoky-sweet.
Murakami tea from the northernmost tea fields in Japan, mellow and low in bitterness, with a cake made from the leaves.
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