Saturday, July 9th we had a slow morning of laundry, breakfast, and packing. Our Sapporo tour guides treated us to an amazing sushi lunch and sent us off with amazing chocolate as we hopped on the 1:35pm train to Aomori. We enjoyed the view from our seaside seats on our 5hr trip down.
After checking into our ryokan 旅館 (we happened to get the same exact room Matt got last year!), we ventured out for some ramen. A ryokan is in a way like an eastern Bed ‘n Breakfast Inn (I’m assuming as I’ve never been to one haha) and the hostess cheerfully directed us to a good local ramen shop. We arrived to an empty shop, but we (Matt) mustered up the courage to ask if they were open. While neither husband or wife spoke English, we were able to place our orders: Matt got the spicy version and I enjoyed the butter/miso. Turns out we got there just in time as when we left all other seats had been taken.
On Sunday, to start off our daytrip exploring Aomori, we had an easy morning waking up pretty ‘late’ (7am). For breakfast, we decided we’d try non-convenience store food and wandered a bit around town.
A big multi-story building caught our eye and we followed the universal fork and knife symbols to the lower level where we found a fish market! It must have been off-peak hours as it was pretty sparse. Still, we walked along to the end of one row and came across a quaint food stall. After some miscommunication about which side of the corner stall was breakfast versus lunch, we ended up getting a 5-plate breakfast dish with miso soup. The sides we chose were fried fish, two kinds of octopus (we think), and egg たまご. The shopkeepers were incredibly welcoming and a fellow diner even gave us local tomatoes to try. The pictures alone doesn’t show just how amazing the experience was.
Making our way down south to Sannai-Maruyama was a fun journey on the local trains. Sannai-Maruyama is a nationally protected historical site of the Jomon people who settled there 5, 500 to 4, 000 years ago. Discoveries in the area include pit-dwellings, pillar-supported buildings, and numerous pottery and stone objects. The largest structure was recreated based off the remanents of large chestnut posts that were 1 meter in diameter.
Getting back to Aomori, we headed over to the tourism center for dinner and dessert. The region is famous for its apples!