Say gyoza in Japan and most people will say Utsunomiya. The capital of Tochigi has made the dumpling its civic emblem, with dozens of specialist shops, statues of dumplings in the station area and a popular rivalry with Hamamatsu over which city eats more of them. It is a cheerful, big-city sort of town, home to four hundred and fifty thousand people, and for riders it is the gateway to Nikkō, thirty-odd kilometres to the north-west.
The city is also built on stone. Ōya, a soft, greenish volcanic tuff quarried nearby since ancient times, forms the walls of old warehouses and churches, and Frank Lloyd Wright used it in his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The quarries have left enormous underground chambers, now used as an eerie, cool museum and event space. Utsunomiya was a castle town and a key stop on the Nikkō Kaidō, the road that pilgrims and lords took to the shrines of Nikkō.
The road to Nikkō is one of Japan's great avenues. A long line of cedar trees, planted in the seventeenth century by a feudal lord as an offering to the shrine, still runs along the old highway, forming a corridor of dark trunks that is among the longest tree-lined roads in the world. Riding under them in the early morning, with dappled light and the smell of resin, is a gentle pleasure. The modern Nikkō-Utsunomiya road is faster but less memorable, so choose the old way if time allows.
Fuel is no problem here. Utsunomiya is full of stations, and there are plenty more along the route. For food, gyoza is the obvious choice, served pan-fried, boiled or in soup, usually in a set with rice, and a plate is cheap and quick. Check the weather in Nikkō before you go, since the mountains can be cold and foggy while the city is warm. If you reach the avenue in the evening on your way back, the light through the trees is worth the wait.