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Now that I don't have work to worry about, I decided to take a more leisurely trip to my Orthodontist appointment in Sendai. Usually my trip to the Orthodontist would be a 1hr bus -> 1.5hr flight -> 45min train -> 30min walk -> Lunch -> Ortho -> 30min walk -> 1.5hr train -> 4.5hr train -> 45min walk. I would leave at 7am, and return at 11pm. But not this time...
May 31st - Planning
We are now living in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. Compared to when we were living in Hiroshima, we are now living closer to Sendai (as the bird flies). But in reality, it takes longer to get the Sendai from Asahikawa because there aren't high-speed Shinkansen the entire way.
Hiroshima Station to Sendai Station: 5hr 45min (1150 km)
Asahikawa Station to Sendai Station: 8hr 30min (950 km)
That wouldn't be easy to do in a working day, but fortunately I don't have to worry about that anymore! So instead of doing all the travel in one day, I decided to split it up over a few and visit some cities along the way and do some sight-seeing. General plan:
June 1 - Hakodate
June 2 - Aomori
June 3 - Morioka
June 4 - Sendai
June 5 - Back home to Asahikawa (Flight)
Since it was so soon for the travel, I quickly booked accommodation and figured I would just wing it and plan stuff as I go!
Stop 1 - Hakodate
Hakodate is a small port city on the south end of Hokkaido. It was an integral part of the trade route between mainland Japan and Hokkaido, where lots of raw resources from Hokkaido would be sent into mainland Japan.
This was my longest leg of the journey in 1 day, it's all "low" speed trains between Asahikawa and Hakodate. Granted, "low" speed is just about the same speed as Via in Canada, so nothing too bad. Just not Shinkansen fast. All-in-all, about 4.5 hours. My first stop was Goryokaku Fort.
It's a star-shaped fortress, and can be seen from above from a tower right beside the fort. Nowadays, the fort area is a park that is open to the public. Inside there is a reconstruction of the main office, and there are some concrete foundations depicting where housing used to be. They also had some explanations for various features within the fort.
The most interesting part of the fort is actually the history around it. The construction was finished right before the end of the Edo period. This led into the Meiji Restoration where a war broke out to establish Imperial rule. The remaining Shogunate supporters had retreated to Hakodate and Goryokaku fort, where the final battle of the Boshin War was held. Once this fort fell, the war was over.
So in reality, this fort had a very short-lived but important role in history. After the war, the fort was decommissioned, and later re-opened to the public as a park.
Once night fell, I headed up to Mount Hakodate. The view from the top is boasted as one of the best night views in all of Japan. It was pretty nice, worth going up for, but I don't think I'd tell people to go out of their way to see it. It's nice because you have a good view of the peninsula. I wasn't the only one that had heard about this, because it was packed at the top! They have a viewing platform, and I would estimate there was 200-300 people in total waiting for night to fall.
The gondola was surprisingly fast!
Hakodate has some interesting foods as well. Since it is a port town, it is obviously known for seafood. Apparently Squid is pretty big around there, so much so that when I checked into my hotel I was given a little snack of Black Pepper Squid! Taste and texture wise it was very similar to beef jerky, just a bit less tough. Honestly pretty good!
When I was at the Goryokaku Tower, there was a Gelateria there serving some unique to Hokkaido flavors. The one that caught my eye was "Haskap Berry", which I hadn't heard of before. It's a berry that is unique to Hokkaido, and also popular! It was a bit between a blueberry and a raspberry in terms of flavor, some nice sweetness with a bit of tang. I'd recommend.
Another Hakodate specialty I had was in the morning, kaisendon. It's just sashimi over rice, but it's usually using some fresh caught fish from the morning market! I had a combination of Amberjack, Salmon and Tuna, which was quite tasty. A good way to start the morning.
I also had a pretty interesting supper at a Hakodate-only chain called Lucky Periotte. It's themed like a strange old diner, with mascots and color scheme to match. They have a specialty "Chinese Chicken Burger", which is their most popular burger. In reality, it is just a couple pieces of deep-fried chicken with a sweet sauce. Not bad, but not setting any records in my book.
Lots of style points though for the design of the place though. The clown mascot is a bit creepy though, gives me unhinged Ronald McDonald vibes.
Stop 2 - Hirosaki, Aomori
Aomori is the prefecture in the North part of mainland Japan (Honshu). After my kaisendon breakfast, I took a couple trains to get out there. On the train I planned out what I would do in Aomori, and I saw that there was an old castle site in a nearby city called Hirosaki. It's also well known for apples (all of Aomori is known for apples, but Hirosaki especially so), and I'm a fan of apples, so I figured I would get some nice apple desserts.
I initially intended to just explore Aomori city, but I thought this would be a worthwhile detour for a day trip. When I arrived in the city, first stop was the tourist booth that exists in every major Japanese train station. This one was particularly helpful because it also had cheap bicycle rentals, along with sample tours to do! So I picked up a 500yen bicycle and headed on my way.
First stop was the Tourist Information Center near the castle, which was also a bit of a museum area. Turned out, it was pretty interesting! That's where I found out there was an "Apple Pie Map" that showcased over 30 cafes/bakeries/patisseries that sold apple pies made with Hirosaki apples. So I decided that I would stop at a bunch on my way back to return my bike after visiting the castle.
A sampling of the lacquer works
In the museum in the Tourist Information Center, there was a display on Lacquer that was particularly interesting to me. They had various samples of work, but also showed samples of work at different stages of the lacquering process! There's a lot of work that goes in to get a nice shiny sheen.
This type of design is created through a few steps. First, a pattern is painted on with black lacquer (image on the left). Second, a few layers of clear lacquer are added. Third, some ground rice husk is sprinkled on through a sieve (middle image). Fourth, more layers of lacquer are added. Finally it is polished using a whetstone and given a glossy look to yield the design on the right.
Another design is created by putting a few layers of lacquer on, and then while it is still wet putting on a layer of small seeds. Then before it dries completely, the seeds are removed. This leaves small protusions of one color, and a second color can be added in between. I like this pattern so much that I bought some chopsticks with the pattern!
Castle Grounds
Next I went to visit the castle grounds. It was a fairly short visit because there wasn't really anything to do there except walk around, and it wasn't a particularly nice day. Still a nice castle grounds though, open to the public.
Neputa Village
There was a small museum near the castle. Although it didn't have any English on the outside, I still ventured in. There was a show every 30 minutes, and it was about to start! The music being displayed was Tsugaru Shamisen. The Shamisen is a traditional 3-stringed instrument from Japan. It has a very plucky sound that most people would associate with Japan/China.
However, Tsugaru Shamisen is much more energetic, kinda like rock and roll of the genre. I find it impressive how not only are the strings being strummed/plucked, but he's also making sound by slapping against the body itself with his strummer (not sure what the tool is called).
After the music performance, I wandered around the rest of the museum area. There was a crafters hall (where I bought the chopsticks from above), and lots of displays of the Hirosaki floats for the summer festival they hold!
Apple Pie
My final adventure in Hirosaki was a brief run through the Apple Pie guide. In total I visited 9 places and had 10 small handheld apple pies. Through this experience of apple pies, I realized that I really like a nicely spiced apple pie. Unfortunately, the majority of pies I had were mainly just Apple + Sugar. Granted, they were all tasty, just not as good as they could be.
All of the apple pipe locations around the city
Stop 3 - Aomori City, Aomori
After Hirosaki, I went to Aomori City as my final destination for the night. I was pretty wiped from my day, so didn't explore the city that much during the night. Honestly, I was having trouble finding things to do in Aomori City, it seemed like Hirosaki was a good choice to visit instead.
However, there were two things of interest that I went to in the following morning. First up was the Nebuta Festival Museum. This is an annual festival that has extravagant floats paraded through the city daily for a week. They are structually similar to the floats in Hirosaki that I had seen a day earlier, but with the main difference being the shape of the floats. Hirosaki floats are usually fan shaped, while Aomori floats are doll shaped (resembling people).
These floats are very large (9m x 7m x 5m), and can weigh up to 4 tons because of the generator + lights + metal wire structure. They are usually mounted on wheels, and then dragged throughout the city.
This showcases what it looks like inside the float. There's the wooden beam giving some centralized structure, along with lighting. Then metal wires attached to the beam give the float the shape. Pieces of paper are then mounted to the metal wire, and finally painted. It is very impressive to see in person.
All of the float designers also get an artpiece of their personalized face created. Here are the faces of many of the previous designers.
Seikan Train Ferry Museum
My second stop in Aomori City was a boat museum. This one in particular was about the Rail Ferry that used to exist between Aormori and Hakodate. It was the primary connection point between mainland Japan and Hokkaido.
The museum was literally on a decommissioned Rail Ferrry that used to run trips between the cities. It was cool to walk through the various levels of the ship and read about the history. One thing that stood out to me was the importance of these kinds of ships during major wars, as they would bring back lots of raw resources from Hokkaido, while also bringing forces to protect the island. In WW2 all but 2 of the ships were destroyed, paralyzing the transportation route.
The final nail-in-the-coffin for these kind of ships was a large tropical storm in 1954 which destroyed 5 ships, damaged more, and led to the death of over 1000 people. That, along with a booming economy in the 1960s, led Japan to start investigating connecting the two islands with an undersea rail tunnel. The tunnel was eventually completed in 1988, at which point the ferry service was stopped.
Stop 4 - Morioka
When I arrived in Morioka, I did the first thing I always do when going to a new city... Check out the tourist information center in the station. I was able to find a single pamphlet with things to do in the city, all of the other pamphlets were about doing day trips out of Morioka. I'm not sure that I've been to a city where the majority of tourist information was "Hey, you should leave the city!".
This one pamphlet had a couple walking tours to visit notable places in the city.
Morioka City Museum
First stop was the city museum. It was a fairly small museum, but luckily they had an audio guide in English! It definitely wasn't as in-depth as the displays, but I'm used to that by now.
They had a special exhibit at the time which was all about Onsen. They had poured through tons of diaries/journals of officials and important people through the eras and gathered first-hand accounts of going to Onsen. In the old days, going to an Onsen was only done for medical reasons. Different hot springs would have specific ailments that they supposedly treated (arthritis, bad vision, bad skin, etc...).
An interesting tidbit from the museum was about how the ruler of Morioka handled the unification of Japan. There was one specific rule that under the Shogunate, you were not allowed to start a war with your neighbors without approval. However, some rulers ignored that. As a result, they would eventually lose their land, and the ruler of Morioka was granted lots of additional land since he obeyed the Shogunates laws.
Eboshi Rock
First stop on the walking tour. This rock was dug up when Morioka castle was being built. Since it was so large and found in a sacred area of the city, it is widely believed to be a symbol of good luck. When disasters happen, people come to the rock to pray for peace.
Rock-Splitting Tree
Self-explanatory, this tree grew through a rock and eventually split it in half. It is a cherry blossom tree and looks very pretty earlier in spring.
Demon's Hand Prints
Legend goes that a demon was harassing the local people. The poeple prayed to the local god "Mitsuishi" to eject the demon from the village. The god then expelled the demon and bound him to these three rocks. When the demon eventually swore not to harass the people anymore, the god demanded the demon leave handprints in the three rocks as a sign of his promise.
Last Stop - Sendai
After the short stay in Morioka, I was off to Sendai for my ortho trip. There's less to explore here for me, but I still enjoyed walking through familiar grounds. It turns out that the coming weekend from when I was visiting, there was a festival going on. So the shopping streets were all decorated with very pretty paper lanterns!
I still wanted Sendai to be an interesting stop, so I booked myself in a capsule hotel for the night (it helps that it was also only $20). It was definitely an interesting experience. Part of me felt like the entire facility was a fancy prison. First, I stopped at my locker to drop off my stuff, and grab the provided pajamas + towels. Then it was off to the row of showers. Luckily they were all enclosed rooms and pretty clean. After that it was over to another hallway with the sinks + toilets to do the nightly routine. Finally it was off to another series of hallways which had all of the capsules.
Inside the capsule was a simple mattress+pillow+blanket, a single outlet, and a switch for the built-in light. Very simple. It wasn't particularly comfortable or quiet, but it was indeed a place to sleep! It got stuffy part-way through the night, so I wouldn't recommend for any picky sleepers.
And that was it for this trip to Sendai! It was pretty last minute, but a nice way to celebrate being free from work. As of writing, the trip has been done for a bit over a week. Marlena and I have been busy writing and getting ready for our last month and a half in Japan! We are enjoying the downtime now, but we'll be on the move again soon. The next adventure is a 5-day trip through Hokkaido in a camper van!
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