Golden Week Part 2: Asamushi Onsen and Hachinohe

(continued from part 1)

Back in my home prefecture and apartment, the next few days would consist of traveling within Aomori prefecture. Since we had so many people with us, we decided that renting a car would be both easier and more cost effective than taking buses and trains.

The larger rental car places, like Toyota Rent-a-car and such, are pretty expensive, but the budget rental car places are much cheaper. I've used Ones and NicoNico Rent-a-car before with good results (a bit more than 2500 yen for same-day pickup and return), but there are local ones that are even cheaper. For this week, I tried out Aomori Car Boy. They offer little kei-cars for 1800 yen for the duration of a business day, with 24-hour rental periods a few hundred yen more. I went with a small sedan that was a little bigger, but still only paid 3000 yen for each 24-hour period (all these prices are before 1000 yen for insurance). All in all, a great deal, even though the car was a bit old and wasn't in the best condition.

For our first day, we were originally planning to go to Hirosaki to look at the Sakura blossoms. However, since the flowers were late this year, we chose to go somewhere else and go back to Hirosaki on a later day. I haven't been to Hachinohe yet, so we decided to explore over there. I've always wanted a Yawata-uma painted wooden worse from there anyways...

Yawata-uma from Hachinohe...

and talking counterpart, Matsukaze, with owner Mayuzumi Yukie from the anime Majikoi. I'm not sure which, but he is one of three main wooden horse dolls produced in the Tohoku region: Yawatauma, Kinoshita-goma, or Miharu-goma .

Hachinohe is on the far east side of the prefecture and a 2 hour drive, so we made a few pit stops along the way. The first one was at Matabei マタベイ Ramen shop on the east side of Aomori City. Matabei means "see you again!" in the local Tsugaru-ben dialect, and the noodles and soup here have a nice country and fishy flavor. My favorite part is how, when you finally finish everything, the bottom of the bowls have "matabei!" written on them. I always love coming to this place (it's very close to my base school and occupies a lonely shack-like building in the middle of rice field country), but Kevin said he didn't care too much for the fish flavor.

Picture from tabelog

After ramen, we went another kilometer or 2 and made a stop at a milkshake shop next to the highway. We parked illegally in the grass by the highway, and then scurried across traffic frogger-style. We each got a tiny, but thick and delicious milkshake to top off lunch.

Since Asamushi onsen is along the way to Hachinohe, we took another break there to bathe. We were a bit short on time, so we went to the closest bathhouse on the top floor of the main tourist building, Yu~sa. The bathhouse is called hadakayu, or "naked springs" (kinda redundant). It was a small place without many fancy extras, but the view from the pools overlooking Aomori Bay and Yunoshima Island was fantastic. Half an hour of soaking and a bit of shopping around later, we finally continued on our way to Hachinohe. We also managed to buy a tsumi-houdai "all you can pick" bag full of apples for 300 yen. We must have ended up with at least 15 apples...

The view from Hadakayu

An hour and a half of driving later, we finally got to Hachinohe. We planned to look at sakura in Hachinohe park, but the rain and wind, along with the fact that we got there right before closing time (4 or 5 pm), cut our plans short.

One of the few pictures taken before we had to bounce.

As the rain died down, we drove to the coast to visit a famous seagull shrine. The black-tailed gulls, called umineko "sea cats" in Japanese, flock to a small island called Kabushima to nest. The gulls are literally EVERYWHERE. We walked up the stairs to the shrine, bobbing and weaving to avoid the gulls on the ground and in the air, to take some videos and pictures.

In the middle of filming, I was hit in the face by a bird-bomb, which forced me to retreat back to the car and clean myself off. A poop-check later and Kevin was cleaning a bomb off his jacket also. We took these as "blessings" from the seagull gods, but felt blessed enough to call it quits and go get some food.

Since we didn't know of any good food in the area, we played it safe by going to a well-known okonomiyaki chain called Doutonbori. We had lots of fun cooking 2 different kinds of okonomiyaki and 2 kinds of monjayaki.

Hmm... what to order...

Okonomiyaki completed! おいしいお好み焼きできあ～がり！

 When we were done, it was well past 9 PM, so I made the long drive home while the other 3 people relaxed in the car. On the way home, we had a close encounter with a common species in Japan: the idiot driver. As we drove down the dark, unlit highway, I saw some strange dim lights in front of me. I squinted to try to get a better look when Kristin jumped and yelled, "Pumpkin, car!" I braked and swerved left just in time to miss the tail end of a person making a slow 3-point turn in the middle of the highway! The dim lights were the headlights and taillights when pointed perpendicular to me. Incredible... after that encounter, everyone in the car was wide awake and I felt the adrenaline pumping.

Anyways, we made it back to Aomori safely and called it a night! I didn't have time to find an affordable Yawata-uma for my collection, but I'll be sure to go back again and find one! Next time, we really go out into the boonies as we explore Shimokita peninsula.