- heart felt robots
- take on the toughies
- codelove
- whalechan
- yugamae
- thisischris
- how-to language
- jeff the fish
- beluga calf
- three ninjas
- rod danz
So Thursday was our trip to Akita. Let me preface this just by saying we were warned by a friend, "You don't want to go to Akita; Akita is downtown Kent." Akita is also the birthplace and hometown of the author of my favorite Japanese cookbook, Gaku Homma. Akita also hosts the National Fermented Foods Summit, in which I am very interested. That was enough to make me at least want to see for myself if it is "downtown Kent". We got to the train station about 2 hours before the Limited Express leaves, so we had a quick breakfast first and hung out in the train station for awhile. The train ride was long, but very smooth. It took us just over two hours. I'm not really going to talk about Akita that much, other than to say that the mall is where it's at - and that's not saying much.
We took five pictures. Three of them were food. Here they are.
That place we ate lunch at was f expensive, for serious. It was good, and the waiter was really funny as he tried out his English skills on us, but we paid twice as much for food as anywhere else we've been. Sandy got a crepe for dessert and we walked over to check train schedules for the trip back to Aomori... we had less than 5 minutes before the last train left! We friggin booked it, making it onboard at the last minute. The express train we took to Akita was a one-time thing, it turned out. We now had to look forward to a 2 hour ride to Odate, waiting for 40 minutes for a transfer train, and another 2 hours back to Aomori. Ugh.
We ate dinner at a place we saw earlier that week and it was very delicious. You aren't tired of looking at awesome food, are you?
I had oyakodon (chicken and egg over rice), pickled vegetables and miso, and Sandy had braised pork and vegetables on rice. We went to bed, disappointed in Akita but looking forward to Friday, when we will travel from Aomori to Osaka via regular train, two Shinkansen, and two subway trains... but more on that later. I leave you with a video of rice paddies - again - on our nearly five hour train ride back to Aomori.
Labels: Akita, Aomori, food, Japan08, train, travel
posted by tangentbot @ 3:51 AM
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Our original plans were to visit the Pacific coast at some point, as it is supposed to be amazing. We looked at some maps and researched a bit, only to discover that a trip to the Pacific coast would mean we would have to ride the same tiny train across the same area we saw on the way up here, for 3+ hours, ride it back to Aomori, then take the same route the very next day to get back to Tokyo. So we decided instead to travel down to Akita, on the Japan Sea side, on Thursday. This means today, Wednesday, we are doing a bit of shopping, relaxing, and hanging out.
For breakfast, I wanted ramen. We found a little place on the main strip called Osanai, which featured the local favorite, hotate (scallop) prominently in a multitude of dishes. I have heard that hotate-don (scallop rice bowl) is amazing, but as soon as I saw hotate ramen my mind was made up. You know how you get scallops, and they are these white hockey puck things? Well, these scallops were all dangly and complex, like they left all the good stuff on them! Which they did! Sandy had a noodle dish with a thick sauce, also with scallops. They were both awesome and delicious.
We walked around afterwards, buying up Aomori-themed souvenirs and checking out some of the places we had passed earlier. If you are planning a visit to Aomori, keep in mind that everything opens at 11am and closes at 7:30pm, unless you want to hang out at Family Mart or Lawson's every night. It was a nice, cool, rainy day; my favorite kind, and so we went back to that little bakery I mentioned in an earlier post and got some yummy momo pan and iced coffee. We sat in the smoky upstairs and listened to Japanese women gossip and it was all delicious. Except for the smoky part. We also got these cheese, katsu, egg bread abominations that were greasy and awesome.
Let's see, we hung out in a bookstore and read Japanese children's books, we walked in the rain through downtown, we drank some really good sake (Hanakizakura, in a pink bottle, if you can find it...), had curry for dinner, watched an hour long show on the scientific principles behind making perfect yakisoba, watched some kids shows... All in all, we pretty much beat this town already. Except for some museums and the Jomon-period ruins, the only other things I would want to see here happen in August, so a return trip is a big possibility. Tomorrow is a day trip to Akita, through the mountains, and Friday we ride the rails to Osaka.
Before I go, here's another video from the little local train ride here, just showing how empty it is and stuff... I forgot to post it before.
Labels: Aomori, Japan08, ramen, scallops, train
posted by tangentbot @ 6:03 AM
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First of all, the videos - scroll past them to see Tuesdays post and images:
Now, as for what we did on Tuesday...
We woke up early, I did some laundry, and we headed out to have a better look at this little town. Aomori is very windy and cool, despite being sunny all the time. There's a tiny bit of tourism here, but I've only seen four 'whites' since we've been here. We walked down to the waterfront, literally less than 5 minutes away, and I got some cool pictures of Mutsu bay, a large train ferry (Japan's first!) and some very interesting architecture.
We walked a circle around the downtown area, as it's not a very big city. There was a cute "burger" place called Dom Dom, which we ate breakfast at. My burger was a fishcake with a hard fried egg and some sauce on it. Sandy's was also a fishcake with bonito flakes and sauce.
We found a huge fishmarket at the bottom floor of a mall, with tons of fresh scallops (Aomori's specialty) but no way to cook anything if we bought it. And then, the apple stuff, apples being Aomori's specialty as well. Cookies, cider, pudding, ice cream, apple curry... seriously, they are crazy about them. The apples are huge too! An old Japanese woman cut some up for us to try; two very different, distinct local apples. One was very light and sweet, the other had a tangy edge. I bought two of the sweet apples, and some juice with a dude on it!
We stepped into a little bakery and Sandy bought some sweet stuff for herself. They had bread with ham, egg, and cheese baked on top, so we are going back there later for breakfast or something.
We returned to the hotel and Sandy slept for a bit while I researched Aomori. The ruins would be cool to see, but they are a bit out of our way, and we can't use our rail passes to go there. Although the trains are fairly easy to ride, the bus system is daunting. So instead, we walked to Aomori Park and took some pics:
Then, we found this huge shrine in the center of town. We bought some trinkets and walked around. It's cool to see the rice balls and little bottles of sake sitting on the alters. My favorite thing about shrines are the torii (the large archways), as you can see.
After walking through the city for awhile, we went into a mall. We ate at this place called "Clambon Cafe", an attempt at some sort of American/European cafe. Their specialty was omeraisu (omelet rice), so that's what we had - plus some iced coffee that was delicious. We shopped a bit - there was some awesome Engrish to be had, if you were willing to pay 5000 yen for a t-shirt, which I wasn't. However, I was willing to buy a bento box that made me flip out. I bought a lunch bag as well.
Long day. We bought some snacks and went back to our hotel and watched CRAZY gameshows until bedtime.
I anticipated this little town being just a place to sleep, but I'm really liking the laid back feeling. We do plan on using our rail passes to see a bit more, before our trip to Osaka on Friday, but there are still a couple of interesting things to be seen around here. There are some local pottery places with handmade bowls and stuff, and a footbridge out over the water, and some really good tiny restaurants all over. We'll see what happens; I don't make set-in-stone itineraries for a reason.
Labels: Aomori, food, Japan08, shrine, video
posted by tangentbot @ 4:23 PM
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(EDIT: Sorry about the 'not able to comment' thing - fixed!)I did not sleep well last night, as in, I've been awake since 3am. Tonight I will sleep well, though. I spent a good amount of time trying to make sense of the Shinkansen timetables, and I must say, learning the advanced rules for Battletech was easier. We decided to just do the right gaijin thing and ask someone at the tourist info booth. So our breakfast that morning was, literally, iced coffee and half a tamago-yaki each. We checked out of our hotel, hurried to the Yamanote line, got lost in the Tokyo station more then once, and finally ended up in the right place to exchange our Rail Pass vouchers for real passes. We booked reserved seats on the next Shinkansen to Hachinohe and had about 7 minutes to run to the platform, find the right train, and board. The Shinkansen is fast, but Sandy and I had to sit apart from each other, flanked by strangers and hungry. I tried to sleep but couldn't. Three hours later...
Ahem... Three hours later found us lost in the Hachinohe station, eventually finding our way to an empty platform, and boarding what looked like the correct train. There were maybe 20 other people on board, and about three in our train car. Empty. This was a tiny local access train, so there was less and less English to be seen, all the announcements were in Japanese, and stops were mostly little hick towns and dirt roads - not on any of our maps. In my opinion, this was perfect.
We saw awesome little farm towns, dreary villages, lots of water and mountains, and all the locals stared at us when they thought we weren't looking(and lent a hand if we made understandable mistakes).
(Note:the JR info desk people are very helpful and patient.) We finally rolled into Aomori city, in the Aomori prefecture, after two more hours on the local express. It would have been warm, but it was very windy, which was good. Aomori is tiny, quaint and adorable. It is very "small town", and we saw lots of old people and kids. Every other person is on a bike, which looks like suicide to me, judging from the way folks drive over here. After checking into our nice hotel room (of which I give a tour), we were on a hunt for curry. We had only eaten the tamago-yaki and iced coffee that morning, and we were famished; a kind of hunger only Japanese curry can quench.
We did a bit of shopping afterwards, just a tiny bit, and wandered around, mentally planning our activities for tomorrow. I bought a crazy awesome delicious dessert, and Sandy got some stuff too. All-in-all, the day was a major success.
Labels: Aomori, Japan08, Shinkansen
posted by tangentbot @ 2:41 AM
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