"Mori is a large, ramshackle village . . . a wild, dreary-looking place with a number of . . . disreputable characters . . . a forlorn, decayed place." Yubetsu "looks like the end of all things, as if loneliness and desolation could go no farther."
Biratori? "A lonelier place could scarcely be found."
Mombetsu? "A stormily-situated and most wretched cluster of 27 decayed houses, some of them Aino, and some Japanese. . . . The whole place smelt of sake."