Day 17 -- Aomori

Started the day with a tour to Hirosaki castle. Nice bus ride through countryside – a lot of rice paddies and apple orchards. The tour guide told us that this area, Aomori prefecture, produces about 50% of all fuji apples in Japan. The harvest is in October so we saw lots of big, red apples on all the apple trees. Hirosaki castle was built in the 17th century by a powerful feudal lord Tsugaru, but in the 19th century the castle was struck by lightning and only a tower, 5 gates and 3 moats remain intact. Walked around the castle grounds, which include 2,600 cherry trees. It’s a major cherry blossom viewing site in the spring. Then we went to a Nebuda festival hall to look at floats. The festival is held during the first week in August and supposedly each year 3 million tourists descend on this town (Aomori) of 300,000 to participate in the festivities. We were disappointed in the floats and in the displays. They also gave us a demonstration of very loud drumming and a great mini-concert by 3 male shamisen players. Back to the ship for lunch then into town on our own. The town is fairly unremarkable and the most striking structure is the triangular building called ASPAM. Another interesting modern building is the Nebuta House with its façade made of red iron bars, which houses the best floats from the Nebuta festival. We walked around and spent quite some time trying to find an ATM that accepts foreign cards (most ATMs in Japanese banks don’t), which we eventually found. We bought a few little things and bumped into our British table mates and our Polish friends.