Filed under: Uncategorized
Every year, the first week of May is riddled with holidays such as Boy’s Day, Greenery Day, and Constitution Day. Combined with the weekend, this slough of holidays constitutes an extended holiday of five days, otherwise known as Golden Week (although some years aren’t as advantageous and you only get a three or four day holiday). You can think of it as the Japanese Spring Break, but for most everyone, not just schools. I had made big plans to return to my old stomping grounds. Back in the late 1980’s, I lived in Misawa, which is in the Aomori Prefecture—the northernmost prefecture on Honshu. My dad was in the Air Force and we lived there at the American military base for three years. Since Hokkaido is relatively close to Aomori, Golden Week was a great opportunity to make the trek.
Along with some friends, we struck out at dawn to catch our morning ferry from Tomakomai to Hachinohe. Tomakomai is a port town located on the coast directly south of Sapporo and Chitose airport while Hachinohe is on the Pacific coast of the Aomori Prefecture (it’s also the northernmost stop for the Shinkansen [bullet train]). Nine hours on a ferry isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, but I counted myself lucky as the large room we shared with some twenty other people had children of the cute and adorable type, rather than of the whiney and obnoxious breed. We stayed one night in Hachinohe, a place my family used to go to frequently when I was younger. I have memories of the “Fantasy Dome”—an indoor amusement park—and trips to Kentucky Fried Chicken, but it had been 20 years since I was there last and I probably couldn’t map out the city very well on my own.
The next day, coffees in hand, we made our way out to Misawa Air Force Base to see how much I could remember and how much it changed. But first (!), on our way to Misawa, we saw a sign directing folks to “Japan’s Largest Statue of Liberty.” We just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see what very well could be the world’s second largest Statue of Liberty. Being everything we hoped for and more (the more being Lady Liberty’s peculiarly square jaw line), we carried on to the place where I spent three years of my life.
We swung by the ocean and I could see the familiar beaches and breakers, even a mural that was around when I was there—granted the paintings most likely changed several times after the years. Then Misawa! The town where I went to many a festival and even one time explored solo by my five year old “runaway” self (it wasn’t pretty…there were Cocoa Puffs eaten from out of a garbage bag at one point…). Finally, after twenty years I’d be getting back to the roots of my internationalization! “Uh…where is everything again?” “Oh, this is where I…no, wait…maybe it’s over this hill…er, maybe not.” “Oh, so we definitely can’t go onto the base…hmm.” It was a bit anti-climatic. Everything seemed like it changed so much, at least from what I had painted in my memory. I’m not quite sure what I had expected. I felt a little embarrassed for dragging my companions to this bedraggled town so we hightailed it out of there and made for the open, yet narrow, roads of the Aomori countryside. (As a side note, I had emailed the American military base well ahead of time to see if we could get a tour, but as luck would have it, they didn’t respond until after we had left Misawa…bummer.)
We rolled on into the Aomori mountains to get to our primary destination, Lake Towada. The lake is a gorgeous crater lake and is a very popular destination during holidays. Using the lake as our home base, we also went to Hirosaki to try and get in some prime cherry blossom viewing and to check out Hirosaki-jo (jo = castle). Hirosaki is another place we visited several times in my childhood. The castle, I believe, is relatively small compared to the more grand castles down south in Kyoto and Osaka. But, we don’t have castles in Hokkaido, so it was still a neat sight. It felt a lot smaller than I remembered, but of course, back then, I was a couple feet shorter. The castle park had its ongoing festival with all sorts of games for children and tons of food. They even had ice cream that I remember getting way back when. The flavor was quite distinct! And of course, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to indulge in Aomori’s number one crop—apples. Usually, apples cost around $1.50 or $2.00 per apple, but down here, at the source, they were around $0.60. Not only were they cheap, but so sweet and juicy!
After our two days of chilling—Aomori-style—we had to make our way back to our home. We had an early ferry to catch out of Aomori…and when I say early, I mean 5:30am (yeah, actually early). Oh, and we had to be there at 4:30am for the check in. And with the two hour commute from Towada to Aomori, we had to bust on out of our hotel at 2:30am. Try to explain that to the front desk guys with limited Japanese! (It’s not fun) In spite of our ungodly early departure time, there was a sunny side to being up so early. The time zone here in Japan is a bit wacky, and results in unusually early sunrises. So as we pulled into Aomori around 4:30am, we were able to catch a beautiful sunrise at 4:46am. Five hours later, our ferry landed in Hakodate and we began the long drive up to Sapporo, where we would spend the night before returning back home. All in all, it was a great Golden Week. Post-meal constitutionals were plentiful. Lucid, yet challenging, conversation was satisfying. And any guff that appeared along the way was quickly snuffed by a countervailing retort…particularly from sassy tourist children.
