Japan 2025 Photos Part 5 - Aomori City
From Sendai we continued North and hit up the smallest city in Japan I've ever been too. Shin-Aomori station was set multiple miles outside the city center. The previous two days of walk had left us simple husks of human beings... so from Shin-Aomori we took a taxi to our hotel just to make things simple. From outside our hotel we could see the Aomori Prefecture Tourist Center staring down at us. Not only was it the largest building around it was also shaped like a triangle... so hard to miss.
Pyramid? I guess it's technically a pyramid.
Aomori City's ocean front has a bunch of hastily assembled attractions to do two things: tell people where they are, and tell people what they are all about... Apples. Cruise ships dock in Aomori for a brief visit as well as tourists to the near by Nebuta Museum Wa Rasse. Aomori prefecture has an idea that these few blocks of the city are about all tourists are going to see and so the gathered products from all over the prefecture into the A-1 Factor building. Apples of all sorts, ciders, ice cream, finely crafted products... it's a wonderful collection of the best the prefecture has to offer. There is some video of us exploring the A-1 Building in the vlog at the bottom of the post.
Aomori is a small town but it's filled with its own blend of interesting cultural sites. The shrine at the city center, Utou Jinja, is older than the city itself. Over 1200 years old and while standing in the shrine it's clear that the city has grown around the calming, ancient grounds.
Downtown Aomori is no Sendai or Tokyo but we had a very good meal at an Isakai with private rooms and they have a few interesting themed bars. One of which is a magic bar that we attempted to go to multiple nights but couldn't quite find. We saw the sign outside a building that had it's shutter half closed but when we entered the building and started climbing the stairs nothing seemed open and it felt like we were trespassing... if we kept climbing we either would have found the magic bar or been arrested for tespassing. I wish I kept going but at the time, the balance didn't seem like it was in our favor.
The cultural pride of Aomori prefecture is the Nebuta Festival. It's held annually from August 2nd to 7th in the heart of Aomori City. But the festival can be experienced, at least in part, year round at the Nebuta Museum Wa Rasse. Here Festival floats from the previous year are preserved as well as information about the structure and interior of the giant art pieces. You can get up and close with models showing how they are built and even duck into the interior of a full scale float.
The floats themselves are otherworldly and certainly deserve to be put on display all year round for as many people to experience as possible. The museum also does recreations of some of the music that is performed during the festival as well as photos and video of the festival at the height of the performances. It allows visitors to experience a little slice of all the aspects of the festival and successfully made me want to return in August and experience the real festival.
