"Here's as close as I can take you," said my taxi driver, a charming fellow named Ishii whose pronounced zuzu-ben (Tohoku accent), was strong enough to cut with the proverbial knife.
"Just follow the path down the hill there — you can't miss it."
He promised to return to the same spot and — fate permitting as Halloween nears — pick me up in time to catch a train from nearby Nihonmatsu to Koriyama, where I could hop a shinkansen to the metropolis.