Bumming Around Aomori

With the promise of rain all day, we took our time getting going in the morning and headed down to the train station, umbrellas in hand, to catch a train to Asamushi, which we passed through yesterday, to check out their aquarium (one of the recommended stops when in Aomori).

We got to the station at 9:30 to find the train to Asamushi left at 9:28. Oops. Guess we took a little too much time to get going. Oh well, we'll just catch the next train at...10:49? With suddenly about 90 minutes to waste, we headed outside in the chilly, drizzly morning (the temperature had dropped 20 degrees since yesterday) and walked over to the pier, which is just north of the station.

The highway through town runs across a large suspension bridge. In good weather, there is an observation platform on the bridge. Well, it's there in any kind of weather, but I wasn't about to head up there in wind and rain. 

Ship docked at the port. The sky looked like that all day.

Even as construction pylons, Hello Kitty can be found.

A view from across the street. The building on the right is a cultural museum of sorts. More on that later.

Heading back to the station, which had a shopping mall attached to it, like all trendy stations do, We still had about 40 minuted to kill, so we headed in and went up to the book store to look around. There were two sections that piqued my interest.

I was curious why anyone would buy any of the other books in the shop, seeing as how all the useful ones were here. A better translation would be nonfiction (but not in any other category), like essays, etc

So, here I was expecting books on childbirth, perhaps menstruation, you know, things that largely concern women directly. Instead, there were books on massage, relaxation, solo travel, pop psychology stuff, etc. Apparently men in Japan do not need to learn how to relax.

Finally it was time to board the train to Asamushi, one of the better city names I've seen. A literal translation would be "superficial insect". I now have the perfect alt-rock band name.

Aomori's mascot is a Blue Pine tree (Ao = blue, mori = forest)

When we arrived at Asamushi station, it was raining harder and the wind had picked up quite a bit. We had a short walk (500m) to the aquarium, but it felt like 5000m. The wind gusted at over 40 mph, the rain was pelting us horizontally, our cheap konbini umbrellas threatened to invert every five seconds or so, and did us no good at all. We were very cold and wet when we arrived at the aquarium. After fighting with (and losing to) the ticket vending machine, we got our tickets from the attendants and took a look around. It is a smaller aquarium, with one main floor and a second floor and subfloor for the larger exhibits and the dolphin show.

The main tank had a lot of nice fish, including rays and sharks

Many cool tropical fish from side of the world

Several varieties of Moray Eels that were showing off for us

A brilliant Fire Shrimp, hanging out on top of a Moray Eel.

The dolphin show was well done, with four dolphins doing a variety of stuff that dolphins do. We then headed to the back where there was another tank with a few dolphins. One was very interested in a floating toy, and spent about half an hour playing with it. I marveled at how single-minded it was, until I saw Sumi had been recording video of the dolphin playing with it's toy for about half an hour.

After checking out the penguins and seals (4 different varieties), we headed back to the station. The rain had stopped, but the wind was still pretty brisk. The trip back turned into a jam-packed train with lots of school kids traveling home from some sports event. Returning to Aomori, we were starving, and there was the perfect solution, just north of the station.

A-Factory sits in the shadow of the suspension bridge

 A-Factory is a Cider Brewery that also has a gift shop/market of sorts on the first floor, with all sorts of apple products (Aomori is known for its apples) and some restaurants. The second floor is a tour of the facility and cider tasting. We didn't do the tour or tasting, but the Ocean's Diner advertised real hamburgers and fries. We caved.

and did not regret it one bit.

It was surprisingly good. So were the apple treats we bought.

We also picked up a non-alcoholic sparkling cider to sample for this evening. On the way out, we stopped at the weird red building from an earlier picture. It was a cultural museum/exhibit about the famous Aomori Nebuta Matsuri, the Festival of Colors. Each year 11 new floats are handmade for the festival. These floats are enormous and weigh about 4 tons each. They are wheeled around by 30 men in the first week of August in a parade that includes taiko and dancing. The floats are amazing to behold. Last year's floats were on display in the museum, and there was a hands-on activity where visitors could play the taiko. Sumi was the first in line for that.

One of the floats. Inside is over 100 light bulbs in a wire frame. The paper is then hand drawn and painted.

Each float depicts a legend from Japanese folklore

Seeing people in front of the float gives an idea of the size. This was a small one. Some of them were twice this size.

After the museum, we got ready for tomorrow's trip up to Lake Towada. Forecast: Rain and more rain. Coin laundry was visited, trailers were shipped three days ahead, road food and breakfast was purchased. Tomorrow, we'll likely get to try out our new rain gear.