- heart felt robots
- take on the toughies
- codelove
- whimsiart
- yugamae
- thisischris
- how-to language
- jeff the fish
- beluga calf
- three ninjas
- rod danz
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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