Our lovely three week fall trip is here! I need a break from political ads and I’m mostly just hoping that the Orange Menace doesn’t follow me cross the pacific (AGAIN). (So far, so good on the menace)
This time, our trip is up north, though not to Hokkaido. We’re up to Aomori City, with an overnight on Osorezan in the temple, followed by Sendai, Hakone, and then Tokyo. We’ve got some rental car days ahead of us (whee), and some fancy trains. I am hoping my meniere’s behaves. Mostly, I am pleased to not be working for three whole weeks. Yay!
The pilot claimed it was 60 degrees in Tokyo before we landed. This is wrong, it was like 86 degrees. There was sun. We saw Fuji on landing (yay).
My Fuji sighting is apparently a miracle, as Japan has been hella rainy so far this season. It’s had 35 straight days of rain in Tokyo due to el nino – which is a record for the season. Everyone in Tokyo is apparently cranky about it.
So it appears we have brought the sun with us from Minnesota (dou itashi-friggin-mashite, Tokyo).
Our first night hotel is Remm Tokyo Kyobashi, a repeat, because it’s by Tokyo Station for next day departures and it has a killer shower for that first post-landing cleanse. It also has nice massage chairs in every room. They know their audience.
It is a hot humid swamp. This cannot be 86. I like when it’s 86. I do not like this evil 86. There is a reason why I don’t come to Japan in the summer and that’s because hot weather is only good for being a lizard blob woman and not actually doing anything (and also, I would just be a migraine the entire trip).
I decided to be scandalous and show my bare shoulders in my tank top for our walk around Tokyo station while we waited for our Portland crew to arrive.
I feel somewhat naked but I do not melt as much. Stare at my bare shoulders stealthily all you want, country of conservative dressers. I care not. I am here for milk tea, egg salad sandos, and a pair of onitsuka tigers, and my brazen foreigner yen spends just as well as anyone else’s. I brought them sun, they can overlook my other crimes.
Our little walk around the station to find snacks and our train tickets generated an awful lot of swass and swoob. I was able to find a fun little stationery store!
Once our crew manifested, we made like a banana and split to Akihabara because it is Hot and I want zarusoba (cold dipping noodles, one of my obsessions).
One cannot get zarusoba in the states. It is also a very easy low sodium meal because there ain’t no salt in soba noodles (unlike ramen or udon, le sigh). We take over a little soba shop in Akiba’s back streets. It’s too early for dinner, so the shop is totally empty. My meal is like 8 bucks. I am full of cold noodles and I am pleased.
On Friday, we all wake up at 4:00 (as foretold). We take a little ambling walk up to the palace and pass by the statue of Kusunoki Masahige (he was like, the ideal samurai or some shit back in the Kamakura period) (This statue is NOT IN KAMAKURA). There are not many people out at 5am, but there are lots of crows. The crows sit upon Kusunoki’s helmet and make their caws.
After our walk, we head on over to Tokyo station to catch our train up to Aomori City. The train to Aomori is a hair over 3 hours, and in Gran class, we get complimentary food service and all the drinks you could desire in your reclining heavenly pod. There weren’t that many tunnels, so we got to watch the scenery zip by.
Aomori is far, far cooler than Tokyo was this morning. It’s also hella windy today.
We’re renting cars in Aomori, since the public transit can be sparse, and we want to go a few places that would be annoying to train/bus to. I am able to actually use 2/3 of the mirrors in the car out the gate (the left-hand mirror always takes me a few days), and we didn’t fall off the road (another boon). The odds are greater I’ll take a mirror off on a random pole, but whatever.
I have named our car Shasuke, the equivalent of Carmothy. Shasuke is mighty. The wipers & the signal are flip flopped and I’m going to use my wipers accidentally constantly instead of signal. NEAT. Also everyone backs into parking spots here. This is great because mostly only assholes with big stupid trucks back into spots in the states (I ain’t wrong), so I am very bad at this, on top having literally zero concept of where the car is. What could go wrong?? (nothing has, yet)
Our first stop is the Jomon period historical dig site, Sannai Maruyama. I find a place to park where I can pull through so I don’t have to look like a big foreign dingus failing to park. The wind meanwhile whips the door open on the other car and we door ding a local 🤡 I scrape the back of my college japanese brain to get out my most apologetic polite Japanese as this lady I am SURE simmers in carefully controlled Japanese rage inside as I apologize fifteen different ways (as you do) for the wind and our brash actions. Ope. Her car had a lot of dents any way so…..it’s fine. We will never see her again, unless she is just arriving here instead of leaving. We scurry inside the visitor center and pray she is leaving.
Sannai Maruyama is home to a huge archaeological excavation going back to the Jomon period – featuring loads of pottery and pit homes. The Jomon period was from about 14,000 BCE to 3,000 BCE and is super famous for its pottery. This area of Japan has a ton of Jomon period artifacts and digs and stuff you can explore, which is a pretty unique thing for the region.
Outdoors, they have reconstructed several homes, built in different styles, based on the time period and purpose of the hut. As you may know, I live for reconstructed old buildings. You can go inside a lot of the huts. They smell pretty nice – maybe due to the chestnut wood that’s used to make them. There are lots of signs up warning you to beware of bears since bears have been spotted in Aomori city. Yay bears! I wonder if they live in the jomon pit houses!
We go in and out of the houses and the preserved dig. Just as the rain starts to come down, we pop in the museum and tour around the displays about the dig and life in the jomon period. I think everyone was legally obligated to make pottery because there’s so much of it.
My favorite bit was the preserved dig wall that they moved inside. You can see layers of sand and volcanic ash and dirt mixed in with pottery. Super cool!
The nearby art museum is closed til 2028 (wah!), so we go over to the big Showa era buddha and accompanying shrine. I am pretty sure I commit less than 10 moving misdemeanors, but there are no police to catch me and everyone lives.
The shrine is really new, and has lovely manicured gardens, as one must. I teach the group the art of omikuji (fortunes). Mine is not good, so I tie it.
You can go inside the buddha, where there’s a display on buddhist art and how the big cement buddha was constructed. Tragically, I saw no snakes (false advertising?).
We’re staying up in Asamushi onsen town, which is a little town a short drive/train ride out of Aomori city. It’s definitely off season. Our hotel has some private baths you can sign up for in the evenings.
But more importantly, there is A CAT. The cat loves the warm area you can lie down on and gradually warm up (good for yer back). I will learn kitty’s name and we will become besties.
Our dinner is from a hole in the wall place called Yacchan that’s run by a single lady who does all the cooking. This means it’s going to be Good (and it is). Their menu is largely japanese comfort food. Rhett gets an Omurice and he is in heaven. I get tsukimi soba, which is soba with egg, because soba doesn’t crime me.
