Hirakawa Apple Tour

This past weekend, I went on another tour with a bunch of other foreigners in the area. Most of them were college exchange students studying something related to the Japanese language, so my language skills were far outgunned. Even so, that wasn't going to stop me from enjoying the biggest agricultural industry in this prefecture: apples!

After gathering everyone from different pickup points, we set foot on an apple farm in Hirakawa City, a small city half an hour east of Hirosaki and about an hour southwest of Aomori City. We were basically told: "You can all pick 3. The ones that are yellow are delicious. Go!" We all looked at each other uneasily before asking how to pick them and what kind of apples they were.

The kinds of apples we picked were yellow-skinned Toki apples. Compared to your standard Fuji apple (which the farm grows as well), Toki apples have less wholesome juiciness and more sugary sweetness. We wandered through the groves looking for big apples to pick. They told us not to pull the apples, and that the correct way to pick an apple is to bend the stem and snap it with leverage.

What a beautiful apple...

Honeybunny doing the deed

Showing off our haul in front of Mt. Iwaki

After our short apple-picking session, we moved over to Hotel Apple Land, which is a surprisingly fancy hotel and tourist destination in an otherwise rural area. We went inside to first grab some lunch. They guided us to the main dining hall, and we sat down in a spacious tatami room with a giant open window facing the rice fields and apple orchards.

The hotel is rather new, so everything was shiny and gorgeous.

We were soon served a set meal of 海鮮丼 kaisendon seafood and rice bowls, tsugarusoba buckwheat noodles in a tsuyu soup, pickles, and bamboo shoots in goma sauce (my favorite) on the side.

Our purpose for visiting Apple Land was for opinion exchange to help improve their operations for foreign visitors. They wanted us to rate the taste of the food and give feedback for the facilities offered by the hotel. I chuckled a little watching them try very hard at little things like interior decoration and food selection when they didn't even have an English speaker. It seems a bit naive to think those things would make a difference if they cant assist people who don't speak Japanese. After all, only a very small percentage of foreigners can actually communicate in Japanese. I brushed that thought aside and just did what they asked.

The food itself was pretty standard. The kaisendon, topped with salmon, tuna, amberjack, bream, and salmon eggs, was tasty but small, and it paled in comparison with the fresh fish you can find at Nokkedon. We also had to remind the coordinator that many foreigners are still uncomfortable eating raw fish or meat, so having and alternative would be a good idea. The tsugarusoba was the most mediocre of all and seemed like something you could find in any noodle shop. My favorite thing in the meal was the bamboo shoots in goma sesame seed sauce because the bamboo was soft and supple like I've never tasted (and I'm a huge sucker for goma).

After food, the main coordinator lead us around the entire hotel site, which is large and has many different venues to offer. They showed us the hotel rooms, which were VERY nice (and, I can imagine, expensive), as well as the main buffet and main events hall. They pointed out the window of the 5th floor and showed us a massive female Buddhist figure perched on the roof, holding an apple above her head. The coordinator explained that they were trying to make a "power spot" there to attract visitors, and I couldn't help but scoff at the blasphemy of it all.

Finally, we headed down to the ground floor and went to the bathing areas. Here, they have some very famous apple onsen baths. Inside the baths, hundreds of apples float around in the hot water and release a nice light fruity fragrance. It's a little unnerving to willing hop into fruity water, and I couldn't help but think of it as a waste of fruit, but many people really enjoy the experience. Unfortunately for us, because of time constraints and the fact that the baths were particularly crowded that day, we had to skip the main baths. We only had the opportunity to go to the foot-bath outside.

Entrance to the apple baths

The outdoor apple foot-bath

A few minutes of foot soaking and some underwater apple soccer later, we headed to our final activity for the day: apple pie making! They led us to yet another hall and had us sit at different tables. They first gave each pair a Fuji apple and a knife and told us to peel the apple. Everyone seemed very impressed that I could peel the skin off in one long strand, even with the piece-of-crap knife I was given. I guess nobody expects men to be any good at cooking in this country.

When we were done, they told us we could just eat the apple since we didn't have time to boil the apples anyways. The provided us with slices of apple that were already prepared to be put in the pie, and we enjoyed the delicious Fuji apple after cutting it on a plate. Well, at least we thought it was a plate, but it turned out to be the frozen pastry sheet we would use for the pie. Actually, it was much closer to an apple tart than an apple pie, but let's not try to confuse the Japanese people, shall we?

We cut the sheet in half, stabbed hundreds of holes in the bottom sheet, laid apple slices on top of that, and sealed the sheets shut with a fork. Then, we got to decorate the top of the tart with the discard strips of pastry.

Laying on the apple

Decorating finished!

 The chefs then took our pies and baked them for half an hour while we waited and socialized. 30 minutes later...

Tada! 出来上がり！

The tart itself was really tasty. It was very simple, just pastry and boiled apple, so it wasn't disgustingly sweet like most pastries I've had. Since we used Fuji apple instead of the more traditional Granny Smith used in America, the apple flavor was very mild and not pungent at all. They gave us two different kinds of jam to dip it in so we could personalize the flavor and sweetness. All in all, it was fun to make the pie, but it was pretty simple and nothing challenging enough to be proud of.

Anyways, that's the end for this time! Thanks for reading, and see you again!

Tachineputa Festival in Goshogawara

No matter where you are in Japan, summer is the time for festivals. Last year, I only had the opportunity to go to Aomori City's Nebuta Festival. This year, I took a trip outside the city to Goshogawara to see the Tachineputa Festival.

Goshogawara is a smaller and older city compared to Aomori City. The streets are narrow and are lined with lamp posts and power lines. Because of this, they can't parade very wide floats like in the Nebuta Festival. To make their floats bigger and more impressive, the only direction is upwards! Tachineputa itself means "standing Neputa float", and some of them are towers reaching 6 stories!

Your standard Nebuta float.

And a Tachineputa float by comparison.

A relatively small one is still taller than your standard convenience store sign.

While the Tachineputa festival features the same instruments as the Nebuta Festival (flutes, cymbals, and taiko drums), they play a different rhythm and melody. They also have a different chant. In the Nebuta Festival, they say "Rasse-ra, rasse-ra!" which is supposedly derived from the war chant "dase dase!" meaning "drive ['em] out!" In the Tachineputa Festival, they yell "Yattemare yattemare!" which roughly translates into "beat the crap out of ’em!" In any case, they are all aggressive and war-related.

Getting to Goshogawara is fairly easy by train, and doesn't cost too much either (~500 yen). I am fairly certain there is a bus that runs there too. I've even considered biking there, since it's only 25 km from Aomori City. The only problem is how to get back home, as the trains and buses stop well before the end of the festival. The best option would be by car, but we made a wrong turn and got stuck in some horrific traffic thanks to a navigation blunder made by our friend. That, and you also have to park a short distance away from the actual festival route because of the crowds.

We parked at a department store called ELM about a mile away. On the way to the car after the festival, we walked alongside a river area and heard an oddly familiar cow mooing noise. We were confused at first, but a Japanese friend explained that they were frogs called ushigaeru, or bullfrogs. As we walked down the path, each successive "moo" from the river made us burst into laughter.

That's all for this time! I hope to bring you more festival footage from different places in the coming years!