Hirosaki 2016

Hirosaki 弘前 (Part 2 of my weekend in Aomori)
Hirosaki is famous for its castle, which is beautiful during the cherry blossom season. However, in 2015 the castle was moved to a nearby site for construction to the castle walls. This happens every 100 years. It's particularly impressive because the castle is moved whilst it is fully intact!

 

On my way over to the castle park, I stumbled upon a Yosakoi dance festival. This is a traditional type of dance that you see at festivals all over Japan. There were lots of dance teams performing in different parts of the city.

After watching the dancing I went to see the castle and the surrounding gardens. Neaby the park, I visited Neputa Mura, another museum about the Neputa festival and other loacal specialities. Some staff members taught me a rhythm on the big festival taiko drums and then we played them together. Around the museum there were shamisen performances, craft corners where you could have a go at making some local crafts, and decorations from the Neputa Matsuri festival.
 I had a local set meal at the museum's restaurant. It included: kenoshiru - a miso based soup with carrots, radish, konnyaku, burdock and tofu; kaiyaki miso - white fish, scallops, tofu, onion and egg cooked in a scallop shell; rice; and pickles.

After dinner I walked around the Fujita Memorial Gardens. I stopped in a Japanese house for matcha tea and a sweet to enjoy while looking out over the gardens.

On my way back to Hirosaki Station I caught the end of the Yosakoi festival where someone from each dance group was lined up along a road, waving their giant team flags to music.

Aomori 2016

Aomori 青森 (Part 1 of my weekend in Aomori)
Rokkonsai is a festival started in 2011 after the earthquake and tsunami, as a way to lift the Tohoku region's spirits. The main parade at the festival features 6 of the region's festivals, one from each prefecture:

• Sendai Tanabata
• Fukushima Waraji Matsuri
• Yamagata Hanagasa Festival
• Akita Kanto Festival
• Aomori Nebuta Festival
• Morioka Sansa Odori

In 2016 the festival was held in Aomori City, so I decided to head up to visit.
When I arrived I picked up some apple pie from the festival street food stalls, as Aomori is famous for apples. I watched some live music in Aoiumi Park by the bay before heading to Nebuta Warase, a museum dedicated to Aomori's festival, the Nebuta Matsuri. The museum shows the atmosphere and history of the festival. It also shows the structure of some of the floats used during the parade.
During this festival, which happens in early August, enormous colourful floats are pulled along the streets. They are all built by local teams and businesses. Some of them can be about 5 metres tall. After seeing a smaller version of the Nebuta Matsuri at Rokkonsai, I hope I can go to see the full festival sometime.
I walked to one of the main streets for the festival where people were starting to sit along the side of the road to watch the festival. There were so many people, but I managed to find a space to sit where I would be able to see.

Akita Kanto Festival - The people holding up all of these lanterns were balancing them on their heads, noses and backs.

Morioka Sansa Odori - The largest taiko drum festival in the world.

Sendai Tanabata Festival - ...is hard to show in a parade, as it is made of big decorations throughout the city. Sendai had suzume odori dancers in this Rokkonsai parade. This is the city's traditional dance, using fans. One of the Sendai Assistant language teachers made it into the Sendai official dance group.

Fukushima Waraji Matsuri - They are carrying a huge waraji traditional straw sandal.

Yamagata Hanagasa Festival - Dances with conical hats with local flowers on. (This picture was taken earlier in the day, when I could get a better shot.)

And of course the Nebuta Matsuri!

After the festival, I joined the crowds heading back to the station, where I took the train over to Hirosaki. I then headed to my chosen manga cafe, called Super Freaks.

My booth at the manga cafe.

It had a soft flat floor which extended under the desk. On the desk, there is a computer and a TV.

Morioka 盛岡 June 2016

In the few months before leaving Japan I tried to get in a few last day trips around the Tohoku area. I'd heard about the noodles in Morioka so me and Will decided to head up north to try them and explore the city.

It took about 40 minutes to reach Morioka by shinkansen. Before going for Morioka's famous Wanko Soba noodles, we had a little wander round the city. The first place we visited was Sakurayama shrine. At the entrance to the shrine was a purification ring 茅の輪. There was a sign telling you how to walk through it.
茅の輪のくぐり方
最初左にまわります。
次に右にまわります。
最後左にまわって、お進み下さい。
茅の輪を三度くぐる事により
今年上半期の罪や穢れをお祓いしましょう。
First you walk through the ring and turn left, next walk thrrough and turn right, finally walk through and turn left. Go through the ring again and carry on walking towards the shrine. Walking through the ring will purify you of any misdeeds or impurities from the first half of the year.

Once purified at the shrine, we carried on through the shrine and came to Morioka Castle Ruins Park. While there is no longer a castle at this park, it's quite nice for a walk around the ruins, stone walls, and little red bridges in the park. It was quite quiet when we visited but it gets very busy in the Spring for cherry blossom viewing parties 花見. We walked back into town along a little stream and saw some turtles on the way.

Next we went to find a restaurant that served wanko soba called Azumaya. Wanko soba is a speciality in Morioka. You eat as many mouthful servings of soba noodles as you can.

We both sat knelt at a table, where we were given a variety of toppings for our noodles like raw tuna, mushrooms, seaweed, daikon radish and a few others. The server stays standing by the table with a tray full of small bowls of mouthful servings of noodles. When we took the lids off our bowls, wanko soba eating began. Everytime we finished our serving she would pour another serving into our bowl while saying something like  「じゃんじゃん」「頑張って」「はいまだまだ」「もう一杯」 which is things like "One more bowl" or " keep trying" in English. She stacked the empty bowls next to us. Every 10-15 bowls we would have a couple of minutes break while she went to refill her tray of noodles. (She was serving Will, me, and a man who was sharing our table.) When we were full we had to make sure we had emptied our bowl and put the lid back on, or else we would get another serving. It was very fast paced and sometimes noodles would fly everywhere while they were being poured (thrown) into our bowls. I managed 69 bowls and Will had 111. We got a little certificate and a little souvenir that said how many we had eaten. The souvenir kind of looked like the little wooden ema boards that people write wishes on at shrines. It was a fun experience and definitely something I wanted to try while living in the Tohoku area.

Not wanting to head straight back to Sendai, we had another wander round the city. We decided to go into an owl cafe. Owl cafes were becoming very popular at the time so it was something I wanted to try before leaving. At this one, unlike cat cafes, there was a small cafe area and in the next room there were owls and other birds around the edge of room sitting on perches. You could stroke them or ask a staff member to help you hold one. I tried, and held an owl for a few minutes, but actually I was a bit nervous of them haha. While there were a few cute owls in there and it was another fun "Japan" experience, I wasn't sure how I felt about how all the birds were all just sitting round on perches, with some sort of lead attached to their claws. This cafe did seem to have an area for owls to be away from cutomers, so that they don't have to be bothered by people all day. So maybe they limit how long the owls are "working". It was kind of fun to try out another novelty cafe though.
There were two cute owls that seemed very attached. If someone held one of them the other one would seem irritated.

Ishinomaki

In the Autumn holiday Shibi and me went up to Ishinomaki, an area hit the eartquake and tsunami in March, to do some volunteering. We joined an organisation called It's Not Just Mud. http://itsnotjustmud.com/ Someone from this group met us as the station and drove us to where the group was staying. In the area around the station the only sign that something so bad had happened were lines on buildings left from the tsunami water. However, as we turned down another street to head towards where we were going to be staying more and more houses and shops were patched up with boards. About 2 minutes into the journey though, and we could really see the damage. There were areas where maybe only one house would be standing (or half standing) with all of its neighbours left in rubble or completely cleared away by volunteers. There must have been miles and miles of neighbourhoods like this one. All along the coast there were miles of piles of waste and rubble that had already been cleared. It was shocking to see just how big of an area had been affected and how seriously, and this was only one of the towns that had been hit.

A school, that although it was still standing, all the rooms were left in ruins

This giant red tin had apparently fallen off the top of a factory nearby and been carried to here by the tsunami