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The seafood barbecue was the main event for the day. Then it was a 1.5 hour train ride from Hachinohe (八戸) to Aomori City (青森市), where we would be staying tonight. With some free time to spend, we paid a short visit to the Sannaimaruyama site (三内丸山遺跡). It is an archaeological site of a settlement from the Jomon period (縄文時代) 4000-5000 years ago.
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The Aonomori Train (青の森鉄道).
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Arrived at Aomori City (青森市). This is the symbol Aomori Bay Bridge. It was already after 4pm, which was still a bit early to finish the day. After a quick browse at the tourist centre outside the train station, we decided to visit the Sannaimaruyama site which is not too far away.
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There are infrequent buses from Aomori train station to Sannaimaruyama site, but to save time we just took a taxi as it only took about 15 minutes.
There was a modern and large visitor centre at the site. But presumably as it’s a weekday, it was almost no other visitors.
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There were various reconstructed buildings which you can go in and check out.
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Probably the most eye-catching was this large tower. This is an estimated reconstruction based on the size and depth of the holes on the ground found in the original site.
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Aomori is famous for its Nebuta Festival featuring lanterns like this. These can be spotted in many places.
The festival is in early August every year and attracts a lot of tourists. We weren’t particularly interested so specifically tried to avoid that period for our trip to avoid the crowd.
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We went back to Aomori City for hotel check-in. Aomori City is the prefecture capital, but it seemed like a pretty quiet town, very few people even on the main shopping street. I guess now might be a bit of a low season, after the flood of visitors during the Nebuta Festival about a week ago.
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There were quite a few “proper” seafood restaurants, but we wanted something more down to earth and found this local eatery. With a big scallop on the sign board it should be pretty confident with its scallops.
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We ordered one set dinner of deep fried scallops and one with grilled scallops.
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More than seafood, Aomori is the top apple producer in Japan. And so we had to try out the apple fried dumplings . We had one serving, not much special, the apple part was a bit of a gimmick to use in dumplings!
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After dinner, we wanted to check out some shops in the Aomori Prefecture Tourist Centre (青森県観光物産館アスパム), which is this distinctive triangular building. It’s just a few minutes walk from the train station, but unfortunately it’s already closed by 7pm. Places close early if you’re not in a large city!