Friday, July 4, 2014

2014 Golden Week: Last day

It's the last day in Aomori.
M had gone back yesterday, and I'm going to tour alone in the city.
Goodbye!
First stop is breakfast.
I'd had the apple pies for breakfast in ASPAM, some sort of tourist center.
ASPAM
My breakfast.........apples of Aomori.

Apple Pie and Apple puff
Then I took a stroll along the coast, watching the harbor, listening to my blues....
 See the clouds? The wind was quite strong that day, drifting all the clouds to gathered near the mountains. Nope, it wasn't raining at all.



Then I went to the Seikan ferry museum, the Hakkodamaru.

Inside, there's a replica of the times when the ferry started operating until it end in 1988, with the opening of Seikan tunnel. There was also an English catalogue given, making the tour foreigner friendly.

Seikan ferry was also in operation during World War II. Though, I think that it was meant to carry passengers to and fro from Hokkaido, the ferry was attacked, killing all the passengers. (I'd learnt in History that Japan was bombed in Tokyo raid; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki for atomic bombs. Never heard of Aomori history). After WWII, the ferry resumed it's operation, but alas, due to storms, more casualties were born, thus the Seikan Tunnel project began.

What I really like in this tour is that how big the ferry is! I had ridden on Penang ferries and Sarawak ferries, but never had I known how really big a ferry is! There was the engine room, and rooms that stored trains inside! It's like the ferry was the ocean railway connecting Aomori and Hakodate.

The first class seat of the 1980s

Enormous engine room 
Fishes are flying in the sky on the top of Hakkodamaru

That conclude my last day in Aomori as I rode on the bus back to Tokyo.
Aomori station! Ao = blue, Mori = forest; get the logo?

On the way back, the bus stopped at several R&R, and these was taken in the early morning, in which I was in haze, but took pictures anyway since the R&R was quite eccentric.

The R&R
Never knew that Edo-style R&R existed! Very funky!


Until my next trip,

Ha Hu Hi

Thursday, July 3, 2014

2014 Golden Week: Day 3

Aomori city, Aomori Prefecture

It was cloudy and the sky looked like it was going to rain sometime soon, we went around the Aomori city. 
(mainly because M is going back to Tokyo today)

Aomori city is a port city (think of Klang if you're a Malaysian), providing passages between Hokkaido and Honshu. There's a history guide around the city and also a ferry museum, the last Seikan ferry, which I went to for my last day in Aomori.

Just a bit information on Aomori. 
First of all, Aomori is famous for it's apple and fishery.
Then, Aomori is famous for birthing intellectuals and writers.
Aomori also have a pre-historic site of Jomon period (5500 - 4000 BC). 
In August, Aomori city is fully festive with the Nebuta festival, a festival for floating light-up giants paper crafts (if I'm not mistaken) and dancing and singing.

Now the proof of Aomori apple.

 This is the A-Factory. The Apple factory.
Where you can find all apple products from apple to apple wine. You can smell the apples even before going in!
There's also an eatery inside, so you can still have udon if you're tired of eating apple pies, apple sorbets, apple juices, apple mochis, ya da da de da....

Nebuta museum 
It is giant floating light-up crafted paper! Though in the museum is in small scale, but by looking at the handicrafts, you can see how tedious the details are being made to make it so outrageously beautiful!
Wa Rase ワ・ラッセ
I think that the festival is to honor the samurais. Or maybe back in the days the nebuta was used to scare the opponents. To say, if this was made in it full scale and lighten up in the night, everybody would thought that monsters had descended.

Me and M didn't make it to the Jomon site, but we made it to the Aomori Art museum. 
Aomori-ken あおもり犬(aka Aomori dog)
It's the famous dog! It was big and simple design... though I don't know what the sculpture was about.

At Aomori port, there have been some figurines that taken from Aomori writers.
  
Akai Ito
This is Akai Ito (赤い糸) aka red destiny (or red thread) monument. The novel Omoide (思い出) aka Memory was written at around 1930s, with the theme of true love, in which one of the characters lived in Aomori and the other one in Hakodate (Hokkaido). It was the days when there was not much transportation between Aomori and Hakodate ..... (since I don't read the  novel, I don't know how the characters met)

Oh! Lunch!
M and I ordered a Tsugaru set for lunch!
Tsugaru set 津軽定食
There's rice, misoyaki hotate, hotate sashimi, a miso soup with fish, big pickled radish and spicy fish.
It was delicious!!
(P/S: Hotate is scallop)

That's conclude of what I did in the 3rd day.

Till then,
Ha Hu Hi