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Aomori
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Honshu's most northerly city,
AOMORI
, sits at the bottom of Mutsu Bay, sheltered by the two claws of the Tsugaru and Shimokita peninsulas. It's a spacious, but rather characterless, city which has lost a good deal of its Hokkaido-bound visitors now that trains run straight through to Hakodate via the Seikan Tunnel
. However, the crowds still turn up for Aomori's
Nebuta Matsuri
(Aug 2-7), one of Japan's biggest and rowdiest
festivals
, featuring giant illuminated floats and energetic dancing. It takes less than a day to cover Aomori's main sights, of which the most appealing is a park displaying
nebuta
floats, followed by a couple of decent museums of history and folkcraft.
Southwest of Aomori, the small town of
Hirosaki
has a number of interesting historical sights around its once magnificent castle, which can be covered on a day-trip. Allow at least two days, however, to explore the
Shimokita Tono
, the axe-head peninsula lowering over Aomori from the east. Shimokita is dominated by the sacred Osore-zan, an eerie wasteland where souls hover between life and death, but the region also has some excellent coastal scenery and a hardy wildlife population, including the world's most northerly population of wild monkeys. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Japan,
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