Golden Week Part 3: Shimokita Peninsula

(continued from part 2)

The day after our somewhat wasted trip to Hachinohe, we headed out early for our trip through the Shimokita peninsula. With a reservation at a ryokan (Japanese-style inn) deep in the mountain woods, we were in for a step away from civilization.

Aomori prefecture. The yellow hatchet on the upper right is the Shimokita peninsula.

We started the day off right. For breakfast, we headed downtown to the 魚菜センター gyosai center (lit. fish and vegetable center) to get Nokkedon! If you are unfamiliar with Nokkedon, see my previous post here. I ended up with a rather small bowl this time, since I splurged on some 大トロ fatty tuna. Mmmm... totally worth it.

After breakfast, we started on our long journey. It was another long drive eastward towards Hachinohe, but this time, we split North at Noheiji and ended up on a nearly empty highway. An hour of driving through rural countryside filled with wind farms later, we arrived in Mutsu city. Mutsu is the largest city in the area, but it still can hardly be called urban. We weren't hungry yet from our massive breakfast of raw fish, so we decided to continue on to our first destination of interest: Osorezan.

Osorezan 恐山, which can be translated into "Fear Mountain", is one of the 3 holiest sites in all of Japan. In the middle of the forest and mountains, there is a lake with water too poisonous to drink, let alone even swim in. On one of the beaches lies a rocky barren coast, with sulfuric vents and bubbling pools. This place is considered a perfect representation of Buhddist hell because it is surrounded by 8 peaks (like a lotus flower) and has 108 bubbling sulfuric pools (to represent the 108 wordly evils). There is a temple built on the site, which you can enter for 500 yen. Inside, there are several sulfuric pools housed in bathhouses that you can freely take a dip at your leisure (if you're okay with smelling like rotten eggs for the rest of the day). During the warmer seasons, there are mediums here that offer services to communicate with dead loved ones. We spent a decent amount of time here, exploring the various pools, stone jizou statues, and piles of stones and toy windmills (offerings to the jizou to help deceased children reach the afterlife).

Hellish coastline

Temple grounds

A truly formidable spiritual site.

I forgot what time we were supposed to get to our ryokan, and ,while trying to look it up on my smartphone, discovered that there was absolutely no cell phone reception. Truly, this must be hell.

We continued forward, and after another half an hour of winding mountain roads, we finally arrived at our resting place for the night: Yagen Valley. Yagen valley is probably the least developed space in Aomori prefecture, and maybe even the entire main island of Japan. All that's there are trees, rivers, a couple inns, and hot springs. It was a really quiet and relaxing environment, and we basked in the scent of the trees as we checked into our little ryokan. I chose to stay at a ryokan called 薬研荘 Yagensou because it was relatively unknown and much more traditional and inviting than the more conventional Hotel New Yagen around the corner. The prices are also hard to beat compared to other ryokan. Here's the website where you can get more info and make a reservation, but it's entirely in Japanese, so be warned. We found the owner woman, who led us to our rooms and sat chatting with us (mostly me) while pouring us some green tea.

Checking in to Yagensou

Since there was still an hour or two until dinner, we went looking for the onsen in the area. By recommendation of the ryokan lady, we decided to go to Meoto Kappa no Yu 夫婦カッパの湯. She told us it was walking distance, but afting searching to no avail, we hopped into the car and drove around looking for it. It turns out it was 2 km away, instead of the 200 m the lady had told us. In any case, we paid our small fare of 200 yen and trotted down into the riverside bathing area.

Once inside (after figuring out how to open the door), we bumped into a dad and little sons about to leave. It was a beautiful outdoor open-air bath, and once the other people left, we had the place to ourselves to take pictures. We were originally only going to take pictures of the bath, but then we thought it would be funny to have a risque naked photo shoot to entertain our friends back home, who are not acquainted with public bathing and nudity. Hopefully, this won't ruin our reputations back in the States...

Gorgeous!

Bucket censorship.

Yeah!! Naked freedom!!

More bucket censorship.

After the bath, in which my girlfriend had the entire women's section to herself, we went back to the ryokan for dinner. We changed into yukata, gathered in the larger of the 2 rooms, and were served a feast! This was also the first time Kristin and I had tried sea snail, so it was an interesting experience.

From bottom right to top left: scallop and sea urchin soup, pickled napa cabbage,  yellowtail and sea bream sashimi, cantaloupe, squid tentacles, clams, sea snail, some type of mushroom with sesame seed sauce, some type of mountain vegetable with ground horseradish, grilled fish (trout?), rice, and my personal favorite, wild mushroom nabe hotpot (with 10 different kinds of mushroom).

After dinner, they took our trays away and set up our bedding for us. We took another bath (for real this time, since the outdoor onsen didn't have any soaping/shampooing areas) in the bathing facilities in the ryokan, which didn't even have showers. I later heard from the owner that since the hot water comes straight from an underground hot spring instead of a water heating tank, there is only enough water pressure for faucets and not shower plumbing. It didn't matter to me, since filling small tubs with hot water and dumping them on yourself is oddly satisfying.

We spent the night comfortably and woke up the next morning for breakfast. Though not quite as fancy as the night before, the meal was excellent, and we got to try some more local delicacies, like shredded nagaimo and another gooey vegetable concoction that I can't quite remember. The owner was surprised that we foreigners enjoyed the gooey, slimy foods of rural Japan, since most American and Australian tourists are uncomfortable with the texture.

With breakfast finished and our plans to go hiking thwarted by the rain, we said goodbye to the ryokan owner and piled into the car to head further northward. The target: Ouma Town on the northern-most tip of the main island of Japan. We arrived just before lunchtime, and made it to the tip of the cape to take pictures.

If you don't know already, Ouma is a very famous tuna fishing town, and the tuna caught here are usually sold for upwards of 30,000,000 yen ($300,000) each! One shop in the area was built by a fisherman who sold a catch for over 350,000,000 yen! That's $3.5 million! Most of the stuff being sold was rather expensive, so we held out on spending until lunchtime. At lunch, Kristin and I shared a bowl of expensive 中トロ (medium fat tuna cut) and 大トロ (high fat tuna cut), while Kevin enjoyed a nice large plate of tuna curry.

Tuna "tsukushi-don" まぐろつくし丼

Savoring some 大トロ. Look at the food-gasm face Kristin is making!

Good-looking maguro curry.

With the tuna-tasting mission completed, we headed back east towards the Eastern tip of the peninsula: Cape Shiriya, also known as Shiriyazaki. The reason we'd go out of our way to this sparsely inhabited place is this:

Wild horses! Not only are they wild horses, but they're the burlier, stockier, hairier versions famous in the area. These snow horses, called 寒立馬 kandachime, graze the plains on the cape, even when blizzards are dumping snow on them deep in the winter. They don't look like much in the pictures, but they're MASSIVE in person. The height to their backs alone is over 5 feet! They're very gentle and let people pet them, but their size alone is intimidating. Here is Honeybunny cautiously approaching one of the gentle giants:

She kept saying, "It's going to bite me!" as the horses crunched heavily on the grass. I decided to muster some courage a get a little more friendly, but the sight of those massive hooves - which could knock my skull concave in one swift kick - was still a bit unnerving. Needless to say, I made sure to stay away from the rear of the horses.

There's also a lighthouse that marks the Eastern-most point of the cape, but we mostly bypassed it because we really needed to use the bathroom and we wanted to make it back to Aomori City in time to catch the festival at Gappo Park. We made it back in time to enjoy some of the festivities, but we missed the Yosakoi dancing. Oh well...

That night, Kristin had to get on her bus back to Nagano. As a sendoff, we drove back downtown and ate at a little bar-style shop that served 6 different kinds of gyouza, or "pot-stickers". The special ones to note were the black gyouza (made black with seaweed), miso curry milk gyouza, and their house specialty which I have a hard time describing, gyouja. One of the drunker customers also treated Kevin and Wesley to some Japanese liquor, like Hoppii beer-like malt beverage and nihonshu Japanese sake.

After dinner, I drove Kristin to the bus terminal, where we had to say our farewells. It's always an emotional and sad parting, and the street performers loudly singly dramatic songs didn't help. For her, Golden Week was over, but I still had another day of responsibility to show my guests around.

Next time, it's finally time to go to Hirosaki! See you then!