A continuous bluster rips snow from the white ground all around us and keeps sending it flying into our faces, as we stand on the platform of Kanagi Station in Goshogawara. It is frigid weather and I am relieved when I finally spot our train emerge out of the bleached hazy distance. Two identical orange train cars — named Hashire Merosu, the title of a short story by famous the Japanese writer Osamu Dazai who grew up in these parts — arrive simultaneously at two adjacent platforms headed in opposite directions. But the one on our side is different. It is pulling a black, antique car behind it.

This is the so-called “stove train”, a diesel powered vehicle we have come all this way north, into the frozen hinterlands of Aomori Prefecture, just to ride. A conductor on the platform ushers us on board, along with around two dozen other passengers. I show him my ticket, a thick cardboard stub reminiscent of old school movie tickets and nothing like the cheap paper slips we use to get into stations in Tokyo.

On each side of the aisle is a row of four-seat booths with tables attached. These rows are interrupted by two stoves, one on the left side about a third of the way from the front of the car, and one on the right side a third of the way from the back. They are coal-powered cast iron affairs with roundish, somewhat bloated frames. Traditionally they are called “Daruma stoves” because their portly shapes are said to resemble Daruma dolls, an iconic Japanese character originally modeled after the posture of the Zen patriarch Bodhidharuma while seated in meditation. A grill rests on top of each stove and a chimney rises from each stove through the roof.