A Trip to Aomori

We're not dead! Have been very busy with work and other travelling so processing the photo backlog has taken a backseat for a while. Hopefully normal service will be resumed now. Normal service being that the "Tokyo" blog has another entry from a totally different part of Japan...

Aomori is the northernmost major city on Honshu, Japan's largest island. It also gives its name to the surrounding prefecture. In the past this was where you would get the boat to Hokkaido, but nowadays there is a tunnel so you can take the train all the way. Or fly.

Back at the start of October we took advantage of a long weekend to head up there to see a new place.

As is traditional, we went on a hike. After an hour in a bus, we arrived at the Sukayu Onsen Ryokan, where the trailhead was. This picture is actually the way back down. We only wasted a couple of minutes going the wrong way.

The most interesting part of the climb up was this rubble field, which I guess is a stream in the spring. There is some volcanic activity nearby, and you could certainly smell it! Apparently that is why there are no trees in this gully -- they don't survive the nasty chemicals that the volcanic water contains.

The view from the the summit of Hakkoda-san (八甲田山） was pretty good : to the west faraway Mt. Iwaki (岩木山), above; to the north the city of Aomori and its bay, below. We didn't linger at the summit -- between latitude and altitude it was a lot colder than Tokyo.

Had we more time, we could have embarked on a fairly epic ridge walk, but unfortunately, we had a bus to catch. We headed back down. This would turn out to be an unexpectedly excellent choice.

Just below the summit was a sequence of grassy plateaux, where the autumn colours were in spectacular display. Although cherry blossom season gets all the headlines, the autumn colours are almost as well beloved. And they start in the north.

After a fairly relaxed hike down, we arrived back at the onsen for a quick wash before our bus back to town. Check out how milky that water is. Rich enough in sulphur to kill trees remember.

Onsen review: nice but overcrowded, especially the changing rooms.

Aomori is a port. This mad building on the waterfront is the tourist agency's main office. You can buy apple products in their shop.

There is a small urban beach next to the museum. The weather was not really suitable for sunbathing however.

Aomori has a definite air of decline. I guess since the railway tunnel, and the advent of cheap air travel, most travellers to the north just miss it out.

A rare opportunity to buy a fish not for eating. We did not buy a pet fish.

Of course, we did also eat some fish. This is a nice lunch-oriented fish market where you can make your own sashimi bowl by getting your choice of cuts from the various merchants there. Mackerel are popular here; we didn't often find it in other places we have been in Japan.

This little guy speaks my language.

This former ferry has been converted into a museum.

(My camera has a bad design feature: it is easy to change the ISO setting with your face when taking a picture. In related news, this photo shows the effect of shooting at ISO 128,000 in broad daylight. Mmmmmmm grains.)

I do not know if these crazy looking mascots (?) were part of the ship's company when it was operational; I hope so.

Every region of Japan seems to have its local speciality produce. In Aomori that is apples. We ate a lot of apples. We tasted 8 different kinds of cider. We drank a lot of different apple juice. We took home apple confectionery for the office. They like apples.

Huge apples.

HUGE APPLES.

Aomori is also famous for its Nebuta Festival where huge paper mache floats, illuminated from the inside, parade around the city. It happens in the summer, so we did not see it, but there are many references to this through out the town.

For example, these little guys in our hotel.