1 Month In Japan – Aomori （青森市）
First post of a few, since I have been unable to return to Japan this year due to the COVID-19 situation I felt it might be fun to revisit my trip from last year where I was able to spend about 1 month out there.
The first place I stopped was in Aomori (well, Tokyo if you count where the plane landed). But from the plane I jumped straight onto the Shinkansen to head up to Aomori which was after the long (13 hour roughly) flight I had just got off of seemed a little daunting as the journey was several more hours.
The Shinkansen from Tokyo doesn’t actually go direct to Aomori, it hits a station just outside of the main bulk on the city (Shin-Aomori) where you can transfer, however if the weather is nice and you have some comfortable shoes it can be a really great walk and it’s only about 3 miles (4.9km) so can make a pretty nice 1 hour walk in the sun.
After the walk I was pretty tired so decided to just chill and sleep for the rest of the day after getting to my hotel. I was in Aomori for 3 days so I had time to relax a little as the next couple of days were going to be pretty action packed.
Aomori has so many things to visit and with so little time I had to really make some choices, Having only 2 days left here I decided one of them would be a short train journey to Hirosaki （弘前市）which will have its own post. So that meant only 1 day in Aomori.
I started out by heading to visit the Nebuta Museum which is a great place to go – its fairly small so you can get round it quite quickly however inside is crazy cool – Aomori has a Nebuta festival yearly in August and these huge floats lit up from inside and depicting warriors and battles move through the streets. The museum is some of the best / most iconic floats kept on display along with a history of the tradition.
With it being all about bright / colourful floats lit up from inside, the museum itself is kept fairly dark giving it this really unique atmosphere as you walk around – and its fairly cheap for entry around ($6).
From here I made a trip along towards Gappo Park mostly just because it seemed like a fun walk through the city to get to see the place more, but I am very glad that I made this choice.
On the walk I ended up going past several very cool and beautiful areas, the most notable of which was a small shrine area set back a little from the main road, the shrine itself is a little hard to spot from the road however on the opposite side there is a huge concrete Tora gate which is very noticeable and what actually pulled me towards that area. When I got closer though I saw this shrine which I still think has to be one of the most beautiful that I’ve seen in Japan.
After my short little break here I was back on my way to the park, and the walk took me past several other very cool buildings and places. When I got to the park though there was a bit of a shock. I had no idea at the time but I had just so happened to be there as the spring festival was going on.
It’s not a huge event but the place gets pretty crowded and there are food vendors lining the walkways of the park – some local TV Crews as well filming the event and I was fairly certain I was just about the only foreign person there.
On return from my day at the festival, and grabbing some food (separate posts for food places I went / recommend) I headed back to my hotel room to relax the rest of the evening knowing that I had to leave Aomori the next day to go somewhere new.
I honestly cannot recommend visiting Aomori enough – It has so many things going on throughout the entire year so any time you visit you’re going to get a unique experience and I wish I had more to to spend there but my schedule was so tight already there was no time for staying longer.
