http://www.bucketlisttraveller.com/aomori/ Fri, 10 Oct 2014 20:23:57 +0000 Jayne http://www.bucketlisttraveller.com/?p=248 Saturday 4/10/14
Aomori has a history of over 30,000 years settlement, but almost the entire city was burned to the ground at the end of WW2, so there are few old buildings in the area.
We started out early for a trip to Hirosaki castle, about an hour away. The original castle was built in 1611 but destroyed by fire, so it was rebuilt in 1810. Castles in Japan were built for defence and storage. They were not for living in as often depicted in stories. Palaces were built for the shoguns to live in and because it was the custom to burn building if overtaken, most of the palaces and castles have been destroyed. The Lord of Tsugaro and his family lived in a palace here for 260 years.
This is one of the castles.
This castle was probably the biggest land area we’ve seen so far, 49.2 hectare. The grounds have been turned into a parkland with over 2600 of cherry blossom trees planted. In spring it is just covered in pink blossoms – we saw pictures of it and it was just a huge sea of pink. This castle was one of five castles that were built on each of the gates leading into the grounds. Many of the moats were filled with water lilies and the internal moats were much bigger and wider than the external moats.
There are eight bridges across the moats inside the grounds.
It was just a beautiful place to walk around and enjoy the views.
It was raining lightly on and off most of the morning due to the typhoon approaching. Our guide was from Tokyo and told us that people are very worried. The typhoon that is expected to hit Tokyo tomorrow and it is predicted to be pretty bad.
After the castle we walked over to a shopping area. The area we travelled to is the home of the Fuji apple and we passed many apple orchards with trees full of lovely red apples on the way. The apples were much bigger than what we get at home, about twice the size. We bought one for $2.50 and they cut it up for us to eat – it was delicious! They had many apple based products for sale in the shops we visited and you could smell fresh baked pies, cakes, biscuits and pastries as we walked around. This guy was making biscuits. He rolled the dough and cut it into circles which were placed in a biscuit mold – it was like an old style jaffle maker – then this was placed on the hot grill – they smelled wonderful!
Then we had an amazing visit to see some of the floats from a festival that is held each year in Japan and view a drumming display. Each year hand made floats are made with paper and washi tape stretched over wire and timber frames and handpainted by artists. The style of decoration continues the traditional style of artists in the past. People walk under the floats carrying them through the streets to drumming and chanting. The floats actually spin around as they walk and are very three dimensional. The sound of the drumming is so loud you can feel it go through you! These photos just don’t do justice to how spectacular the floats and artwork is.
After seeing the floats we had some time for shopping and looking about. We visited a woodworking craft workshop and then a small Japanese garden.
These fish were so aggressive about getting fed that they were literally jumping out of the water as I was tossing in the food.
Then we drove about an hour back to the ship for a late lunch.
After lunch we went into town on our own. We looked around some department stores and the main shopping areas. Most prices are similar to Australia or lower than what we’d pay here.
We visited the Museum which houses many of the bigger floats from the festival and displays about the artists who create the floats. Honestly, it was incredible! More drumming, so many fantastic floats and masks. The craftsmanship is just amazing. These floats are really large compared to the ones we saw this morning. We spent quite a while here and then caught a bus back to the ship for dinner.