Kitayamazaki

Beautiful rugged coastline with picturesque rock formations? Sounds like it's worth seeing! Oh, there are 1,000ish stairs each way involved in seeing this awesome site? Hmmm, Ninoosh and I, both of us currently living the single life, decided it was worth it! Bean may have thought otherwise, but she didn't have much of a choice. She cooperated pretty well, except for the part where she spit up all over Ninoosh and screamed for the last 30 minutes of the drive home. I suppose since she's a baby we'll give her a pass on that, it was a lot of car-riding for one day!

Kitayamazaki is part of the Rikuchu Coast, this stretch of coastline on the east side of the island is 8km long and has cliffs 200m tall. It's near Tanohata Village south of Misawa. Our drive from was about 120km (75mi) and it took 2 1/2 - 3 hours each way.

GPS coordinates: 39.980220, 141.953490

Once we arrived and got Bean strapped into her carrier we were off. There are several observation platforms, a couple are near the parking lot, another is 363 stairs away and then there's another one at sea level...510 more stairs. I know that doesn't equal quite 1,000, but we felt like there were plenty of stairs unaccounted for and it was easily 1,000+. Didn't look like very many people take the trek down to sea level, in fact, we only encountered one person on that portion of our hike. An older gentleman in a business suit, who passed us on our way up. When he got to the bottom he started yelling. No idea what he was yelling or doing. Didn't sound distressed though. It kept us puzzled for the rest of the day.

The stairs were tiring. Totally worth it. The scenery was beautiful. 

My Parents' Visit - Part 11 - Final Days

Man, how fast time flies! It's already time for Mom and Dad to head back to America. Yesterday was their last full day in Japan. We spent the day getting them organized and doing a last bit of exploring.

We had to go to Hachinohe to get their tickets for a train tomorrow morning bound for Tokyo. After getting that must-do out of the way, we wandered the beach one last time hoping to find a glass float...see below for the results.

I will never get over the pretty cosmos
that grow along the roads.

Hachinohe Station.

Great find Mom! Woohoo!
(No, I did not "plant" this for her to find!)

My Parents' Visit - Part 10 - Misawa Air Festival

Fresh off a Husker victory (1:00 am game time, so no, we did not catch the entire thing...), today's adventure kept us close to home at the 60th Annual Misawa Air Festival. 

The yearly event showcases the aircraft of the Japanese Self Defense Force (JASDF) and United States Air Force. The event takes place on our base, which is a joint base shared by Japanese and US Forces. It's a huge festival that draws an average of 100,000 Japanese and American spectators each year. The weather was great today which contributed to this year's crowd being especially big, estimates were around 120,000-130,000 people! It is not unusual for rain to spoil the scheduled flight demonstrations. I specifically remember not going last year due to the fog and downpours I observed from the dry comfort of our house. 

It's hard to describe the noise we hear on an almost daily basis to anyone that hasn't lived on a base serving as home to fighter jets. The pauses in phone calls when I have to say "Hold on a sec, I can't hear you while this jet goes by," don't make sense until you've experienced a jet fly by when you don't expect it. They're loud, but as the saying goes, that's the sound of FREEDOM. So while it may sound like I'm complaining, I'm not, and some days I hardly notice anymore. 

Wouldn't be a Japanese festival without relaxing on
blankets with food and beer.

My Parents' Visit - Part 9 - Waterfalls, Lake & Pancakes

It's day 10 of my parents' visit and they're still hanging in there with me dragging them all over the Japanese countryside! Today we visited the famous Oirase Gorge and Lake Towada, plus tried some Japanese "pancakes."

The Oirase Gorge is a river/stream that runs out of Lake Towada and is designated as a Natural Monument of Aomori Prefecture. It's about a 90 minute drive from Misawa. There are over a dozen waterfalls along the gorge and a 9km walking trail. We chose to drive and just stop a couple times near the main waterfalls and continue up the road to the lake. It's a beautiful area regardless of the season. Lake Towada is Japan's 12th largest lake and is the largest crater lake on the main island. The mountain containing it is 400m (1,800 ft) tall. As for depth, it's the third deepest lake in Japan at 327m (1,073 ft) deep...think about it, that's deep! For comparison, Lake Towada's surface area is half as big as Lake McConaughy in Nebraska...BUT Lake Towada is 10 times deeper! 

An awesome garden along the way.

My Parents' Visit - Part 8 - Nebuta, Aquarium & Yakiniku

Today Keenan and I took my parents to Aomori, a large-ish city about an hour away, where we visited the Nebuta Warasse and Asamushi Aquarium. We finished up the day by having dinner at our favorite yakiniku restaurant back in Misawa. 

The Nebuta Warasse is a museum dedicated to Aomori's huge and famous Nebuta Festival. The festival is held every year in August, but for anyone that misses it, the museum offers a year round chance to check it out. It's located right by Aomori Station and the ASPAM Building (Aomori Prefecture Sightseeing Products Mansion). The museum starts out with a section featuring the long history of the festival and pictures from past years. After learning about the festival, continue on and the museum opens up into a huge room filled with floats from the most recent festival and some hands on opportunities to learn about how they're made. The Nebuta Festival has been our favorite festival for 2 years running and it was great to show Mom and Dad a little bit about it. The floats take many months to build each year. The frames are made of wire (used to be bamboo) and then covered with rice paper and hand painted. They are so detailed and beautiful!

ASPAM Building.

Nebuta Warasse. Very unique building.

My Parents' Visit - Part 7 - September 3 & 4

This morning I took Mom and Dad on a tour of the base and then we met Keenan for lunch at the club. Not my first choice of lunch spots but Dad wanted to try it out, it was chicken and waffle Wednesday which is probably the best day to go...

After lunch we headed to Shimoda Mall to do a little browsing and also checked out a couple farmer's markets to look at the different types of produce. Some is the same as in the USA, but there are also some different things that my parents hadn't seen before. From the mall we drove around in the country outside of Misawa, looking at the fields and crops. It's pretty amazing how much farming is still done by hand or with tiny farm equipment. We stopped at a little bakery and got some fresh baked breads too. 

One of the tower housing complexes on base. When buildings
are under construction in Japan the entire thing gets covered
with scaffolding and draped with cloth/tarps.

Japanese people almost always back in to parking spaces.
Mom and Dad thought that was interesting.

My Parents' Visit - Part 6 - Driving around The Hatchet

Another day, another adventure! Today I drove my parents north into the Shimokita Peninsula, also known to many as The Hatchet. It was an all day adventure with lots of time in the car and a few stops along the way. We searched the beach for coveted glass fishing floats, got a view from above, soaked our feet in a natural hot spring, checked out some cool rock formations and saw a couple wild monkeys, all in all a pretty neat day.

Our drive took us about 360 km (225 miles) and without stops is about an 8 1/2 hour drive, yeah, it's slow and was definitely a full day. There's a lot of winding mountain roads. 

Mom took a picture of the stop sign
and child crossing sign.

Road to the beach where we stopped. 

Our first stop was at the beach to look for treasures. I frequently wander looking for glass fishing floats that have washed up. The beaches here are covered in trash, tons of plastic and glass. The fishing floats were used to hold up the ends of fishing nets, sometimes they broke loose and were set free into the waves of the ocean. Eventually some make their way to the beach. Not very many fishermen use the glass floats anymore, plastic floats have replaced them, but they do still occasionally wash up one the beaches. We did not find a float today, which isn't unusual at all. I've been pretty dedicated to searching over the past year, spending a couple hundred hours walking the beaches and have found 17. I'm ecstatic about that number and I feel like I've earned every single one. Still hope I'll get lucky some day and find a whole pile of them tangled up in a net, haha.

Our next stop was the Mount Kamabuse Observatory just outside of Mutsu.

My Parents' Visit - Part 5 - Exploring Misawa & Hachinohe

This morning I took Mom and Dad to a few places around Misawa so they could check out a few of our off base shopping options. We went to Sanwado which is kind of like an all purpose store, they have groceries, auto parts, hardware, gardening supplies, camping equipment, pet supplies, outdoor clothing/shoes and a few home interior items...though those are curtains, shelves and seat cushions, nothing like furniture or home decor that's available in the USA...that kind of stuff is pretty much non-existent here...unless I'd drive 4 hours to the brand new IKEA in Sendai. 

We also went to The Daiso which is a lot like a Dollar General, most things are ¥100 which is pretty much $1 based on the current exchange rate. Biggest difference is that the quality of items seems to be a lot better than dollar stores in the USA and the selection is really good. They have tons of kitchen and home stuff, toys, gardening, crafting, stationary, food and even some tools.

I also took them to a little antique store in Misawa, this guy has sooo much stuff. Mom found a few souvenirs here.