What Aomori Looks Like

Hi again!

While I was reading my past posts, I realized something. I've been here for 3 months now, and I've shown pictures of my workplace, the events and festivals, and some food. However, I have yet to show what my city actually looks like! So, it's about time...

Aomori Prefecture is the northernmost prefecture of Honshu (the main island of Japan) and the second-northernmost prefecture in all of Japan (second only to the island of Hokkaido). It is roughly the same latitude as the northern border of North Korea, so we can expect a pretty frigid winter and 300 inches of snowfall a year. My city is Aomori City, the capitol of the prefecture boasting more than 300,000 residents. It can be described as a 10 mile long strip spanning the southern arc of Aomori Bay, which is a small portion of Mutsu Bay.

The city is by no means small. There are plenty of people and buildings, especially in the downtown area. All the amenities of civilized life are available, even if some may cost more or be harder to come by.

Stock photo of the downtown area.

However, the prefecture itself is regarded as the most backwater prefecture in all of Japan, and relies heavily on the farming, fishing, forestry, and (previously) nuclear power industries. This is easily apparent to me because, while I live in a pretty densely populated neighborhood, the schools I visit are in the outskirts of the city, where farming is prevalent. Here, you can see two of my schools in the middle of rice fields.

The view out the window of Higashi Middle

 It's not much longer of a trek until, suddenly, you find yourself lost in the paddies.

Suddenly, rice paddies as far as the eye can see.

It might be one of the lower income areas of Japan, and it might be buried in snow in the winter, but this place can definitely be beautiful. On some of my bike rides home, I just had to stop and take in the breathtaking view around me.

On the way back from my furthest school, Nonai Elementary. Truly glorious.

Another perk about living where I do is that the ocean is less than half a mile away. I live almost across the street from the a famous local park called Gappo Park. The special thing about this park is that it features a sandy beach alongside your typical pine tree recreation area. It's not everywhere that you get to see pine trees growing not even 50 meters from the water's edge. The whole park is also at a very low elevation, and there is almost zero slope leading into the water. Basically, the effect is that, while you're walking towards the ocean, it seems like you're already swimming in it.

I should probably mention that these photos are a few months old, so don't think that it's warm enough right now to go swimming a the beach. It's cold enough right now to require multiple jackets, and it's already worse than the dead of a Los Angeles winter. The nice thing is that the leaves are changing for autumn, so I'll have some pictures of the pretty fall foliage soon.

That's all for today! Until next time...