It starts to snow soon after the train leaves Koriyama, and further inland at Aizu Wakamatsu the snow is knee deep. My hosts, Nobuyuki and Mikiko, are waiting at the station. I'm relieved to see they've brought boots for me.
Aizu has been part of my life for years. A good part of my new novel, "Across a Bridge of Dreams," is set there. I've read everything I can find about it: Shiba Goro's moving memoir, "Remembering Aizu"; "Okei," Saotome Mitsugu's novel based around the city's calamitous fall; and academic papers about the domain and its warriors. I've studied pictures, too, and have imagined myself walking the streets of samurai houses beneath the towering white walls of Tsuruga-jo — Crane Castle — with the River Yukawa running alongside, lined with willows.
But I've never actually been there.