東京RUNNING ENGINEER: Traveling the Northern Japan "Tsugaru"

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Traveling the Northern Japan "Tsugaru"

Aomori is the northernmost prefecture in the main island of Japan. It has a beautiful nature , mountain and ocean (and fish). Aomori is famous for the apple-producing center in Japan. I traveled west Aomori called Tsugaru (津軽) district for my family travel and to meet my grandparents live there.

Aomori (Google map)

Hirosaki castle (弘前城)

On the first day we moved from Tokyo to Shin-Aomori by Shinkansen called "Hayabusa".

Shinkansen!!

And then moved to Hirosaki(弘前) to see Sakura blossoms around Hirosaki castle. In Tokyo Sakura has no flowers this season but in Aomori it is the time to see just now. There are many tourists, I saw travelers from overseas too. The couple I talked was from Hong Kong and said they will go to beautiful Towada lake. Sakura was beatuful ,and castle too.

Ninja swam here to attack the castle...(once upon a time)

Yeah, Ninja...

Tanakaya(田中屋)

Then we visited a shop called Tanakaya (google map) in town to see traditional crafts made in this place. Tanakaya is make the crafts called Tsugaru-nuri（津軽塗） and sell them. The products of Tsugaru-nuri is expensive but best quality is promised because of this history and trust. It's so different from the one sold in 100 yen store in Tokyo...

Tanakaya

Traditional crafts

Working

Kasose and Gonosen

And I moved to Kasose (風合瀬) village where my relatives live by Gonosen train. This area is fishermen's place for a long time. Yes, family business is "The Old Man and the sea".

Kasose (Google map)

Gonosen, this train seems famous for train geek in Japan. As one of the reason this train moves along the shoreline of the westernmost Aomori and we can see the beautiful ocean view in the train.

Gonosen

And the interesting thing is that this train comes only five times in a day. It surprise me and Tokyo citizens. because in Tokyo trains come every 5 minutes. It seems so inconvenient for us but it's not because they use cars, not train. But if I missed the train, I needed to wait 5 hours for the next train in the boring no-man's station.

I found the great train view when I'm teen. This time it's still perfect and I took videos.

Beautiful Sunset