Towada

Five-day tour of Northeast Japan | Don't waste a single minute of your JR PASS① ||| It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Northeast Japan with friends. The first thing to do is to buy the JR PASS Tohoku 5-day ticket (except for foreign tourists, foreign residents in Japan can buy it with just their passport). For each trip on the Shinkansen, you can use this coupon to exchange for a designated seat at the machine or window. Unlimited exchanges (should be). We exchanged for a train in advance but missed it, so we directly exchanged for the next train at the machine without any problem. This step is worth noting: please please keep this JR PASS safe, because once it is lost, there is no way to retrieve it except to buy a new one. (My friend lost it on the second day and had to buy a new one, which was very sad.) Next, let me share our five-day-four-night itinerary: ❄️DAY1: Tokyo → Sendai → Morioka First, I went to the Northeast to check out the statue of Lu Xun, and next to the statue was the Lu Xun Museum, where they had his report card from back then, haha! After leaving the university, I searched for a highly rated restaurant nearby and had a lunch of beef tongue prepared in two ways, grilled and stewed, for just over 1,000 yen, which was very satisfying. Then I took a bus to the area near the Da Guan Yin temple, where you can actually go inside and see over 100 small Buddha statues. After that, I had a sweet soybean dessert near Sendai Station and ordered a soybean milkshake to take on the Shinkansen. In the evening, I chose to stay in Morioka, where the hotels near the station were very cheap and they even gave me a 2,000 yen voucher. I went to a restaurant that served Morioka cold noodles and ordered a set meal of cold noodles and grilled meat, which just happened to use up the voucher. ❄️DAY2 Morioka → Hachinohe → Aomoriya Actually, I wanted to go to the Tenshotei Art Museum that day, but I overslept and didn't have time, so I could only leave regrets. I went straight to the Hachinohe Shokudo Center seafood market when I arrived in Hachinohe. There is a special bus for 100 yen at the bus stop, which takes about ten minutes. Then you can buy seafood in the market and rent a grill to cook and eat by yourself. The rental fee for the grill is 400 yen per person, and it comes with basic soy sauce and salt. Eat on time and take the bus back to Hachinohe Station (remember to plan the time to stay in the market, as the bus runs once an hour). I booked the Aomoriya hotel, which has its own courtyard. It's beautiful when it snows, and there is a sleep demon lamp. You can take a half-hour walk around and come back to the starting point, where there is a footbath to soak in. Back at the hotel, you can continue to soak in the hot spring and drink apple juice. I made an appointment in advance for the Sleep Demon Festival performance, which costs 1500 yen per person. ❄️DAY3 Aomoriya → Aomori → Akita Take a bus from Aomori Station to Aomori Prefectural Museum of Art. Although we only had a brief visit due to time constraints, I really enjoyed the atmosphere and many cute details of this museum. When we returned to the station to take the Gonō Line, we found out that the starting section was suspended due to heavy snow. A bit confused, we asked the station staff who told us to take another bus to a certain station and then catch the Gonō Line from there. We had reserved a private compartment on the Gonō Line in advance, and although the weather was bad that day, there was a unique beauty to it. We slowly enjoyed the sea view all the way to Akita. We had planned to eat the famous Akita dish "Kiritanpo Nabe", but because I was lazy and didn't make a reservation, we couldn't eat at the designated restaurant.

Calming Greenery

The Oirase Stream is only open during the limited snow season, starting the Aomori winter myth

The Oraise Gorge

Hokkaido is just below Aomori~

The hidden gem orirase 🇯🇵🍃

Trekking thru Oirase Stream to Lake Towada

Tsuta Onsen is a secret area in Aomori. It is next to the Mount Hakkoda of Oirase Mountain Stream, so it is also favored by the poetおおまち けいげつ. The wooden structure has strong sense of history. The time for bathing in hot spring will be adjusted for male and female guests in "久安之湯". Male and female guests are separated in "泉響之湯".