I got a new camera! YES!!! I'm incredibly excited, don't really know that much about shooting with a DSLR but I'm reading and watching YouTube videos so hopefully I learn quickly! This lovely Saturday afternoon we decided to drive west toward Mt Iwaki. There's a switchback road that leads almost to the top of the mountain (much easier than hiking up the whole way). On the way there we stopped at the Jogakura Bridge and a kokeshi doll museum in Kuroishi. We didn't end up driving up Mt Iwaki, but we did visit Senjojiki Beach. More on that later...
The Tsugaru Kokeshi Museum is located in Kuroishi and is about 80 km from Misawa (the route we took today was a little longer). Kokeshi dolls are handmade wooden dolls exclusive to the northern region of Japan, the Tohoku Region. The dolls are thought to have first been produced in the early 1800's as souvenirs for visitors to the many hot springs. We opted not to wander through the museum today, rather just check out the dolls they had for sale.
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| I'm a kokeshi! |
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| Not kokeshi dolls, but also for sale at the museum. |
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| I didn't buy a bigger kokeshi, but did get one of the little ones from these vending machines...of course it said "Made in China." So disappointing! Go figure, haha! |
From Kuroishi we drove on through Hirosaki and around the south side of Mt Iwaki. Unfortunately it was really cloudy (at the top of the mountain) today and we couldn't see the peak. We found out that the toll to drive the Iwaki Skyline road was 1,800¥. Decided it wasn't worth it to just drive into a cloud and not be able to see the view. So we continued driving toward the west coast, the first route I picked took us to a dead end, but also to a beautiful village where every roof was bright blue. Totally random and totally in the middle of nowhere.
We drove to the west coast (finally made it there with another route) to a landmark known as Senjojiki Beach. This "beach" was a huge rock plateau with rocks that looked like the waves of the ocean...or at least that's my interpretation. I guess the plateau was actually formed by an earthquake in 1792. Legend has it that the lord of the area once had 1,000 tatami mats laid out on the rocks for a party. We had fun just wandering around and watching the waves crash.
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| This was labeled as a "Seawater Pool," don't think I'd venture in... |
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| A little less than thrilled with how long our drive ended up being... |
Here's the route we took. Our route going there was a little longer than it could have been but we made a couple other short stops in the mountains, and we took the faster toll road route home.
Up next: Cheapest way to Kyoto from Misawa?
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